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Orson Welles

Orson Welles Quotes

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Famous Orson Welles Quotes

“My theory is that everything went to hell with Prohibition, because it was a law nobody could obey. So the whole concept of the rule of law was corrupted at that moment. Then came Vietnam, and marijuana, which clearly shouldn't be illegal, but is. If you go to jail for ten years in Texas when you light up a joint, who are you? You're a lawbreaker. It's just like Prohibition was. When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society, you see?”

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“The people who've done well within the [Hollywood] system are the people whose instincts, whose desires [are in natural alignement with those of the producers] - who want to make the kind of movies that producers want to produce. People who don't succeed - people who've had long, bad times; like [Jean] Renoir, for example, who I think was the best director, ever - are the people who didn't want to make the kind of pictures that producers want to make. Producers didn't want to make a Renoir picture, even if it was a success.”

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“Take myself as a good-will ambassador. I'm great - I'm taking myself as a character - for the intellectuals and the man on the street. I'm great where Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. leaves off. I'm not so good with high society, in either North or South America, because I'm highly unconventional. Perhaps I bewilder people by being at once the esthete, the intellectual and the vulgarian.”

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“Today I believe that man cannot escape his destiny to create whatever it is we make - jazz, a wooden spoon, or graffiti on the wall. All of these are expressions of man's creativity, proof that man has not yet been destroyed by technology. But are we making things for the people of our epoch or repeating what has been done before? And finally, is the question itself important? We must ask ourselves that. The most important thing is always to doubt the importance of the question.”

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