Charlie Chaplin quotes

Charlie Chaplin quotes
  • 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.   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?”)
  • You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down.
    Swing Little Girl (opening song sung by Charlie Chaplin for The Circus.)
  • 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)
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Professional clown for over 25 years - happily married, with 5 children and 1 grandson