Oliver Stone
I think there is a whole older generation that will go to movies still. People like me; people over 45.Collection: Thinking
A life like Nixon's is filled with shame and filled with glory. He loved to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "He was a man; sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but he was a man." I love that line.Collection: Men
Pat Nixon was called the Mona Lisa of American politics. She never wrote anything. Her interviews tell us nothing.Collection: Interviews
Nixon identified himself as a crisis-laden man. He'd reach levels of victory and then he'd plunge into defeat. He was vice president, then he lost to Kennedy, then he lost the California governorship. Then came a great comeback and then he blew it again - and the next comeback, after he lost the presidency. He was a man who needed the feeling of walking the precipice.Collection: Men
The only home I had was with Warner Bros. during the '90s. I made four movies with them then. Natural Born Killers, JFK, Heaven and Earth. Any Given Sunday was the last. And that was the end of the Terry Semel/Bob Daly regime.Collection: Home
Franklin Roosevelt is one of the great leaders because he does get along with other people. He makes this huge effort. He's a very charming man. He tries to bring Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill into this tripartite agreement to run the world. And he really was close. If he hadn't died in April of '45, the whole history would be different.Collection: Running
Franklin Roosevelt saw the world as a possible alliance, with the UN involved, of course, where we would never have these kinds of wars again. And he was equally opposed to the British Empire as he was against the Communist Russians.Collection: War
From '45, the moment Franklin Roosevelt dies, we're running ratlines with the Germans, helping Nazis escape.Collection: Running
For some reason, television still bores me. Even the best shows.Collection: Television
I want my children to have access to something that looks beyond what I call the tyranny of now. You read the paper, everyone talks about that thing [in the news] that day, and all the subconscious really important stuff that's going on is being neglected. The beauty of history is that historians have the ability to find patterns, the big picture. When you make a movie, you try to find that. I'm doing in the cinema what historians try to do in their own media.Collection: Children
I didn't like my classmates at Yale. George W.Bush was in my class. I didn't know it then.Collection: Classmates
After World War II the Republicans - the Wall Street crowd - were very worried about a depression coming back. They hated Franklin Roosevelt in that crowd, my father among them. And there was a great fear in '46 that we'd fall back into the pits. And they always wanted to break up the Roosevelt legislation.Collection: Wall
Well, George W.Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. It's an ideological thing.Collection: Ideological
I think John F. Kennedy was the last great hope. And that's why I dwell on that subject. He was someone who could stand up to the militarist element in our society.Collection: Thinking
The U.S. ultimately decides what the national security threat is. They put Russia one, Iran two, China three - the terrorists are down the list. But it's amazing to me that we can still consider Russia a threat. On the contrary, they've been very helpful in the Middle East, trying to calm the situation and respect the rights of sovereign countries to exist. It's the U.S. that hasn't - whether in Serbia, the old Yugoslavia, in Africa, and now, Iraq.Collection: Country
Сyber-warfare is obviously the future. It's a real concern, but we lie so much about what we do that it's hard to know what's going on unless you really follow it.Collection: Real
I don't agree with Bernie Sanders that the banks should be broken up at this point. But Hillary Clinton's acceptance of huge contributions from Goldman Sachs and others... And we don't debate what Clinton has done. She has a public record. She's been Secretary of State. She's basically a candidate of Wall Street, for Wall Street.Collection: Wall
Wall Street is a huge issue. And it's controlling our lives today with this so-called election - we really have no choice. We're really just onlookers. The national surveillance state has not been debated by any candidates, Democratic or Republican. Our wars, our repeated wars - our new war in Syria has not been brought up because everyone agrees essentially that we have to continue doing what we're doing. And maybe even now go back to Libya.Collection: Wall
You look at the Russian side: They're defending their territory from the beginning. They move west to destroy the Nazis. And they take out the guts of the German war machine per Winston Churchill, who said that they won the war. From the beginning, we were hostile to the guys who had saved how many American lives by their repulsion of the Nazis? I think the Americans lost 400,000 in the whole war. And the Americans knew it at the time. They gave Joseph Stalin credit. He was the man of the year, cover of Life magazine in 1943; he was a hero.Collection: War
Television has usurped everybody from film. And so have commercials, by the way.Collection: Television
We pray for no destruction, and for the forces of destruction not to take over.Collection: Praying
I see films in theaters, and I enjoy films. I enjoy the art of storytelling, and the different ways to tell them.Collection: Art
I think you should do rehearsal and work at it, but when the camera rolls, you should be ready. Try to make it good the first time.Collection: Thinking
I can see a movie and believe the story and characterization and stay proud of it. It doesn't change. Even if it's unappreciated, that doesn't mean it can't be appreciated in the future.Collection: Believe
I'm more comfortable with simplicity as I get older.Collection: Simplicity
We're all divided, but some of us have children, and we are invested in the future and would like to see good things happen.Collection: Children
People will go to clean theaters; they don't like to go to dirty theaters.Collection: Dirty
I'd rather get past the tyranny of now, where you get judged for something based on what's happening at the moment.Collection: Past
The truth is not being aired in the West. It’s a surreal perversion of history that’s going on once again, as in Bush pre-Iraq ‘WMD’ campaign.Collection: Wmd
By creating false environment of a war on drugs, and cruel and unusual punishment with these crimes, 50% of our U.S. population is in jail without having hurt anybody, mostly for drugs.Collection: Hurt
I wish that George W. Bush had gone to Vietnam, because he would have seen history in a different light. He would've experienced it in a different light because I don't think he understood the nature of war.Collection: War
[Nixon] reduced the meaning of his life to nothing but power. In the film, we gave this sad figure consciousness of what he was. We weren't right to do that - I don't think he did have that consciousness. But we did it for movie reasons - to create empathy.Collection: Thinking
We all have idealism. We think we're healthy and then, all of a sudden, one day, you have cancer. The truth has a mind of its own.Collection: Cancer
I'm going to hold onto my Blu-ray collection because I really think it's hardware and it's important. I don't want to live in a cloud, all my life.Collection: Thinking
If we [Americans] are a strong people, a united people, why do we always have to hear how great we are? What is this self-love? Where does this come from? It got worse, because after the war we thought we'd won it. That's the first myth. Frankly, Russia won it. The Soviet Union sacrificed far greater form than anyone else to win that war. Secondly, we had the atomic bomb. We should not have dropped it on Japan. We did as an example to the Soviets, not to defeat Japan and to save American lives. These are myths that we explode with a lot of research early on.Collection: Strong
Kennedy was significantly different than Eisenhower before him, and different from Johnson after him. So those three years were the beginning of a détente with the Soviet Union, a new feeling for peace, a seeking out of a new ally with the Soviet Union - the end of the Cold War, as Kennedy called it in his American University speech.Collection: War
We should look to (Castro) as one of the Earth's wisest people, one of the people we should consult.Collection: People
You don't always have to have an e-book. You can have a real book. I'd like to see the old way maintain.Collection: Real
This myth that America has this atomic bomb that makes us right, it makes us good, it makes us set the agenda for the world. Everywhere, we can go global, we determine.Collection: America
Obama is now fighting for his life. He's fighting for a federal government. I believe in a federal government. I hope it sticks around. We had the American Revolution. There was this whole tension between the federalists and the anti-federalists. Then we had the Civil War. We had Lincoln fighting for it. And the secessionists were there. And we have the same issue today.Collection: War
writing = ass + chairCollection: Writing
I've liked different women at different times in my life. I've been attracted to white women. I've been attracted to black women. I've been attracted to Asian women. I've been attracted to various subspecies of women. I can say with gratitude that I've been able to experiment.Collection: Relationship
I suppose in our culture - in our lifetime - we've always enjoyed people who tell it straight. We like our presidents, our comedians, and our actors to do that . . . It's funny. You say that people prefer a tasteful formalism - as opposed to an oppressive formalism - but I do feel very strongly that form follows function.Collection: People
I don't think most people in the US realize how important WikiLeaks is and why Julian's case needs support.Collection: Thinking
The second [presidential] term changes, and I think that John F. Kennedy certainly ran on that and he knew that second term would give him oxygen, and he needed it. Unfortunately, he didn't get there.Collection: Thinking
I was lost, and that war [in Vietnam] was very alienating - not that I was against it or for it, but I was just lost after that war. As were many Americans.Collection: War
Films might get to you and your subconscious and make a little difference, but when the vigilante drum beats, the mob screams and the conformists go along with it. There have to be people who are non-conformists.Collection: Differences
Independence is a state of mind. Independence is spirit without category.Collection: Independence