Charlton Heston
The trouble with movies as a business is that it's an art, and the trouble with movies as art is that it's a business.Collection: Movies
Sometimes life drops blessings in your lap without your lifting a finger. Serendipity, they call it.
It's been quite a ride. I loved every minute of it.
The film itself, and my role as Moses, will always remain one of the creative peaks of my career.
All the good modern parts go to Jack Lemmon or Cary Grant.
You cut their money back, for one thing... I go back a long way with the NEA.
I always thought of myself as inadequate. Kids of divorced parents always feel that way - that, on some subconscious level, they're responsible.
To the world, you are America.
I've played three presidents, three saints and two geniuses - and that's probably enough for any man.
I like portraying heroes of antiquity whose values were grander and more spectacular than those of today.
In recent years, anyone in the government, certainly anyone in the FBI or the CIA, or recently, in again, Clint's film, In the Line of Fire, the main bad guy is the chief advisor to the president.
You could think of extraordinary examples to the contrary: The Grapes of Wrath... and even into the 70s.
And their pals vote for their stuff when they're not on the panel, and it just keeps going that way. And they tend to be very fringe artists, so anything before the 20th century is not worth considering. This is out of date.
As an artist, I understand that, and I value the creative input of the artist.
Dirty Harry, for example. Clint Eastwood was not a rogue cop. He was a maverick cop, but he was a good guy.
Shakespeare is the outstanding example of how that can be done. In all of Shakespeare's plays, no matter what tragic events occur, no matter what rises and falls, we return to stability in the end.
Society mends its wounds. And that's invariably true in all the tragedies, in the comedies as well. And certainly in the histories.
The big studio era is from the coming of sound until 1950, until I came in... I came in at a crux in film, which was the end of the studio era and the rise of filmmaking.
Undeniably the American art form, too. And yet more and more, we see films made that diminish the American experience and example. And sometimes trash it completely.
Well, we have certainly produced great art before we did this. In my view, there are any number of areas of government which tax money should not be spent.
You can spend a lifetime, and, if you're honest with yourself, never once was your work perfect.
Kids are the most conventional people in the world. It is more important than anything else for them to conform, and I was a kind of oddball. I was driven into being independent. I was very, very unhappy.
What acting offered me was the chance to be many other people.
My appearance qualifies me for historic characterizations, going back to the year one.
When you are a young actor, you're imbued with the high purpose of your art. You think, 'They hire me for my talent; if that's not good enough, then they can hire somebody else.' Later, you realize that your body is as much a part of what you do as your talent.
You can be sure that they'll be showing 'Ben-Hur' somewhere for a long, long time to come.
Acting, taken to the highest level, requires a fierce, total focus of your time and energy at the cost of just about everything else.
I'll never forget the blooming happiness that spread in me like the sun coming up when Lydia's obstetrician poked me awake: 'Congratulations... you have a fine son.'
Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history's pocket change. Courage is history's true currency.Collection: Political
You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.Collection: Gun
There's no such thing as a good gun. There's no such thing as a bad gun. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a very dangerous thing. A gun in the hands of a good person is no danger to anyone except the bad guys.Collection: Gun
Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind.Collection: Thinking
One way or another, if you're persistent, fortune always smiles on you.Collection: Way
Political correctness is tyranny with manners.Collection: Funny
If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.Collection: Thinking
I simply cannot stand by and watch a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States come under attack from those who either can't understand it, don't like the sound of it, or find themselves too philosophically squeamish to see why it remains the first among equals: Because it is the right we turn to when all else fails. That's why the Second Amendment is America's first freedom.Collection: Gun
Sometimes, to be silent is to be most eloquent.Collection: Wisdom
You simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey the social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.Collection: Thinking
I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural way that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in your heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you... the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is.Collection: Country
Another plague upon the land, as devastating as the locusts God loosed on the Egyptians, is 'Political Correctness.'Collection: Land
It's the camel's nose in the tent. Look at Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin - every one of these monsters, on seizing power, their first act was to confiscate all firearms in private hands.Collection: Hands
Let’s be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they really believe? It scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason. What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can’t be far behind. Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did political correctness originate on America’s campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who’re supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression?Collection: Believe
I'm neither giving up nor giving in.Collection: Giving Up
To the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to tell you something: You can have my gun. You can pry it from my cold dead hands!Collection: Gun
The minute you feel you have given a faultless performance is the time to get out.Collection: Minutes
Moses is the keystone to every man's ethical code. He was the first man of record in history to conceive of the law as separate from the will of a ruler, to choose whether a man should live by grace of law, or law by grace of man. In a literal sense Moses lives at every council table today.Collection: Men
As is well know, I, ah..regard myself as a religious man, yet I belong to no church. I'm an able soldier yet I abhor armies. I can even add that I've been introduced to hundreds of women but never married. in other words no one's ever talked me into anything.Collection: Religious
The First Amendment is crucial. Of course it is. So are all the others. And the Second Amendment is the one that guarantees that people can bear arms to protect themselves.Collection: Gun
[President Clinton] boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at fundraising coffees in the White House, for Pete's sake.Collection: Coffee
As an actor, I'm thankful I have lived not one life, but many.Collection: Actors