I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.
A day without laughter is a day wasted.
A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.
Actors search for rejection. If they don’t get it they reject themselves.
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl. (My Autobiography)
All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.
I don’t believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.
I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born. (My Autobiography)
I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. Everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.
In the end, everything is a gag.
Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot
That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.
The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.
Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Â Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities – a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one. (My Autobiography)
I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of an ancestral promptings and urgings, a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, of all of which I am the sum total.
Life is a beautiful magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. Limelight (Calvero’s answer to Terry’s question: “What is there to fight for?”)
I hope we shall abolish war and settle all differences at the conference table … I hope we shall abolish all hydrogen and atom bombs before they abolish us first. (In response to journalist for his views on the future of mankind at his 70th birthday)
I am not a political man and I have no political convictions. I am an individual and a believer in liberty. That is all the politics I have. On the other hand, I am not a super-patriot. Super-patriotism leads to Hitlerism – and we’ve had our lesson there. I don’t want to create a revolution – I just want to create a few more films. — in response to a journalist for comments on United States Attorney-General’s announcement to revoke his re-entry visa, September 23, 1952, Cherbourg, England (quoted from “Mr. Chaplin’s Defence,” Guardian)
