"THE QUOTE VAULT"

Nobody will ever notice that. Filmmaking is not about the tiny details. It's about the big picture.


Really? Worst film you ever saw. Well, my next one will be better. Hello. Hello.


This story's gonna grab people. It's about this guy, he's crazy about this girl, but he likes to wear dresses. Should he tell her? Should he not tell her? He's torn, Georgie. This is drama.


We are going to finish this picture just the way I want it... because you cannot compromise an artist's vision.

We shot ten minutes of the movie, and now we're looking for completion funds.



Well, I started thinking about what you were saying about how your movies need to make a profit. Now, what is the one thing, if you put it in a movie, it'll be successful?


What do you know? Haven't you heard of suspension of disbelief?
Ed Wood

Why if I had half a chance, I could make an entire movie using this stock footage. The story opens on these mysterious explosions. Nobody knows what's causing them, but it's upsetting all the buffalo. So, the military are called in to solve the mystery.

Yes, but if you take that crap and put a star in it, then you've got something.

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

And you know, I've had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.

Fortunately we're not a public company - we're a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.


I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It's done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn't really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won't make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa - and it's about getting a balance.

The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers their name alone can practically gaurantee hit records.

You never know with these things when you're trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.

An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.

I love fools' experiments. I am always making them.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.

In the survival of favoured individuals and races, during the constantly-recurring struggle for existence, we see a powerful and ever-acting form of selection.

Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence.

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.

The very essence of instinct is that it's followed independently of reason.

We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act.

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
Isaac Asimov

All sorts of computer errors are now turning up. You'd be surprised to know the number of doctors who claim they are treating pregnant men.
Isaac Asimov

And above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life people will take you at your own reckoning.
Isaac Asimov

Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
Isaac Asimov

Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov

From my close observation of writers...they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.
Isaac Asimov

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
Isaac Asimov

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
Isaac Asimov

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
Isaac Asimov

I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
Isaac Asimov

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.
Isaac Asimov

I don't believe in personal immortality; the only way I expect to have some version of such a thing is through my books.
Isaac Asimov

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.
Isaac Asimov

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
Isaac Asimov

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
Isaac Asimov

Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.
Isaac Asimov

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
Isaac Asimov

It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
Isaac Asimov

It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.
Isaac Asimov

John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Isaac Asimov

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all time low over the world.
Isaac Asimov

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.
Isaac Asimov

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right.
Isaac Asimov

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
Isaac Asimov

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.
Isaac Asimov

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
Isaac Asimov

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
Isaac Asimov

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
Isaac Asimov

Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know - and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance.
Isaac Asimov

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
Isaac Asimov

Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Isaac Asimov

To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult.
Isaac Asimov

To introduce something altogether new would mean to begin all over, to become ignorant again, and to run the old, old risk of failing to learn.
Isaac Asimov

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.
Isaac Asimov

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov

"Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say "no." I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible."

"I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning."

"I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner."

"The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach."

"The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing."

"To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them."

"A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist."

"By 2000, politics will simply fade away. We will not see any political parties."

"Don't fight forces, use them."

"Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery."

"Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons."

"I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly."

"I look for what needs to be done. After all, that's how the universe designs itself."

"I'm not a genius. I'm just a tremendous bundle of experience."



"Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't."

"Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment."

"Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable."

"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."

"The earth is like a spaceship that didn't come with an operating manual."

"The pyramids, attached with age, have forgotten the names of their founders."

"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."

"To expose a 4.2 trillion dollar ripoff of the American people by the stockholders of the 1000 largest corporations over the last one-hundred years will be a tall order of business."

"War is the ultimate tool of politics."

"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims."

"We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody."

"What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded, stuffed and paralyzed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities."

"Adventure upon all the tickets in the lottery, and you lose for certain; and the greater the number of your tickets the nearer your approach to this certainty."

"As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce."

"Defense is superior to opulence."

"Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity that of a man."

"Labour was the first price, the original purchase - money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased."

"On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity."

"Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."

"The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster."

"The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation."

"This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts."

"What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?"

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri."

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."

"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it."

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws."

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

"CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power."

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

"Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories."

"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

"I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books."

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

"A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible - indeed, inevitable - the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody."

"It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars."

"The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space."

"If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative."

"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have."

"All great change in America begins at the dinner table."

"Coersion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him."

"Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States."

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

"Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit."

"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."

"I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."

"I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves."

"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting."

"I know in my heart that man is good.
That what is right will always eventually triumph.
And there's purpose and worth to each and every life."

"If you're afraid of the future, then get out of the way, stand aside. The people of this country are ready to move again."

"People don't start wars, governments do."

FROM THE GREAT, LATE PRESIDENT AND SUPER-HUMAN BEING, RONALD REAGAN, 1911-2004