68 Marlon Brando Quotes

Marlon Brando quotes

1. An actor's a guy, who if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.

2. When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues.

3. I think awards in this country at this time are inappropriate to be received or given until the condition of the American Indian is drastically altered. If we are not our brother's keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.

4. Bertolucci is extraordinary in his ability to perceive, he's a poet...he is very easy to work for.

5. Chaplin you got to go with. Chaplin is a man whose talents is such that you have to gamble. First off, comedy is his backyard. He's a genius, a cinematic genius. A comedic talent without peer.

6. Kazan is a performer's director, the best director I ever worked with... Most actors don't get any help from directors. Emotional help, if you're playing an emotional part. Kazan is the only one I know who really gives you help.

7. Even today I meet people who think of me automatically as a tough, insensitive, coarse guy named Stanley Kowalski. They can't help it, but, it is troubling.

8. I have always considered my life a private affair and the business of no one beyond my family and those I love. Except for moral and political issues that aroused in me a desire to speak out, I have done my utmost throughout my life, for the sake of my children and myself, to remain silent ... But now, in my seventieth year, I have decided to tell the story of my life as best I can, so that my children can separate the truth from the myths that others have created about me, as myths are created about everyone swept up in the turbulent and distorting maelstrom of celebrity in our culture.

9. I was surprised as anyone when T-shirts, jeans and leather jackets suddenly became symbols of rebellion. In the film there was a scene in which somebody asked my character, Johnny, what I was rebelling against, and I answered 'Whaddya got?' But none of us involved in the picture ever imagined that it would instigate or encourage youthful rebellion.

10. On the day Kazan showed me the completed picture I was so depressed by my performance that I got up and left the screening room.

11. The power and influence of a movie star is curious: I didn't ask for it or take it; people gave it to me. Simply because you're a movie star, people empower you with special rights and privileges.

12. I don't think I was constructed to be monogamous. I don't think it's the nature of any man to be monogamous. Men are propelled by genetically ordained impulses over which they have no control to distribute their seed.

13. There's a line in the picture where he snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do.' That's exactly how I've felt all my life.

14. Hollywood is run by Jews. It is owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity. They should have greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering because they've [been] exploited. We have seen the nigger, we've seen the greaseball, we have seen the chink, the slit-eyed dangerous Jap. We have seen the wily Filipino. We've seen everything, but we never saw the kike, because they know perfectly well that is where you draw the wagons around.

15. This picture will try to show the Nazism is a matter of mind, not geography, and that there are Nazis - and people of good will - in every country. The world can't spend its life looking over its shoulder and nursing hatreds. There would be no progress that way.

16. Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we're acting. Most people do it all day long.

17. If a studio offered to pay me as much to sweep the floor as it did to act, I'd sweep the floor. There isn't anything that pays you as well as acting while you decide what the hell you're going to do with yourself. Who cares about the applause? Do I need applause to feel good about myself?

18. The close-up says everything, it's then that an actor's learned, rehearsed behavior becomes most obvious to an audience and chips away, unconsciously, at its experience of reality. In a close-up, the audience is only inches away, and your face becomes the stage.

19. I suppose the story of my life is a search for love, but more than that, I have been looking for a way to repair myself from the damages I suffered early on and to define my obligation, if I had any, to myself and my species.

20. When I lie on the beach there naked, which I do sometimes, and I feel the wind coming over me and I see the stars up above and I am looking into this very deep, indescribable night, it is something that escapes my vocabulary to describe. Then I think: 'God, I have no importance. Whatever I do or don't do, or what anybody does, is not more important than the grains of sand that I am lying on, or the coconut that I am using for my pillow.' So I really don't think in the long sense.

21. Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.

22. An actor is at most a poet and at least an entertainer.

23. While I do believe in God, I do not believe in the same way as others, so I would prefer not to swear on the Bible. (being sworn in at his son's murder trial)

24. Agents made me a geek who gets $100,000 per chicken head.

25. He's the kind of guy that when he dies, he's going up to heaven and give God a bad time for making him bald. (on Frank Sinatra)

26. I don't mind that I'm fat. You still get the same money.

27. I don't want to spread the peanut butter of my personality on the moldy bread of the commercial press.

28. If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.

29. If you're successful, acting is about as soft a job as anybody could ever wish for. But if you're unsuccessful it's worse than having a skin disease.

30. Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite.

31. The more sensitive you are, the more likely you are to be brutalised, develop scabs and never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything because you always feel too much.

32. The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.

33. To grasp the full significance of life is the actor's duty, to interpret it is his problem, and to express it his dedication.

34. Would people applaud me if I was a good plumber?

35. You can sit there and have a universal experience, of fear, of anger, of tears, of love, and I discovered that its the audience, really, that is doing the acting.

36. Simply put, in film acting, there is before Brando, and there is after Brando. And they are like different worlds.

37. He gave us our freedom.

38. When the curtain came down at the Ethel Barrymore theater on Dec. 3, 1947, our standards for performance, our expectations of what an actor should offer us in the way of psychological truth and behavioral honesty, were forever changed.

1. I put on an act sometimes, and people think I’m insensitive. Really, it’s like a kind of armor because I’m too sensitive. If there are two hundred people in a room and one of them doesn’t like me, I’ve got to get out.

2. Elvis Presley had nothing to do with excellence, just myth.

3. Mafia is the best example of capitalism we have.

4. Most writers write haphazardly. The actor is fighting unjustified words all the time.

5. Acting serves as the quintessential social lubricant and a device for protecting our interests and gaining advantage in every aspect of life.

6. (...the non-conformist, how do you keep from getting scarred?)/i don’t! i got a scar here…and uh i got a scar on my knee…and uh a few scars on my soul.

7. We make up any excuse to preserve myths about people we love, but the reverse is also true; if we dislike an individual we adamantly resist changing our opinion, even when somebody offers proof of his decency, because it's vital to have myths about both the gods and devils in our lives.

8. I don't know what people expect when they meet me. They seem to be afraid that I'm going to piss in the potted palm and slap them on the ass.

9. Only the one who walks his own way can't be overtaken.

10. Kowalski was always right, and never afraid. He never wondered, he never doubted. His ego was very secure. And he had the kind of brutal agressiveness that I hate. I'm afraid of it. I detest the character. (his feelings about one of his most famous characters, Stanley Kowalski from 'A Streetcar Named Desire').

11. The four pillars of wisdom that support journalistic endeavors are: lies, stupidity, money-grubbing, and ethical irresponsibility.

12. I have never been able to remember the number of my driver's license, and there have been times when I couldn't even remember my own telephone number, but when I hear a song, sometimes only once, I never forget the melody or the lyric.

13. Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.

14. At fourteen or fifteen, I decided to earn my living when I grew up playing drums made from wooden beer kegs and leading a group called Keg Brando and His Kegliners. We organized a little band, but it didn't last long and didn't make any money.

15. We'd all like to be certain of what we know, but I think the most important question is to ask yourself do you really know what you know?

16. We don't go anywhere. Going somewhere is for squares. We just go!

17. Working with any actor is like working with a monkey.

18. Ask most kids about details about Auschwitz or about how the American Indians were assassinated as a people and they don't know anything about it. They don't want to know anything. Most people just want their beer or their soap opera or their lullaby.

19. I value each woman for what she has to offer whether it be charm-beauty-wit-intelligence or humor but warmth is the quality I value most.

20. The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside of a camel's mouth. That and watching a girl eat octopus or squid.

21. I don't think that people generally realize what the motion picture industry has done to the American Indian, as a matter of fact, all ethnic groups. All minorities. All non-whites. People just simply don't realize. They take it for granted that that's the way people are going to be presented and that these cliches are just going to be perpetuated.

22. Never confuse the size of your paycheck with the size of your talent.

23. Regret is useless in life. It's in the past. All we have is now.

24. I thank you for not snoring.

25. Acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. It's a bum's life. Quitting acting, that's the sign of maturity.

26. If the expenditure of money for entertainment in America is any indication of taste, clearly the majority of us are addicted to trash.

27. George Bernard Shaw said that thinking was the greatest of all human endeavors, but I would say that feeling was. Allowing yourself to feel things, to feel love or wrath, hatred, rage.

28. You've seen every single race besmirched, but you never saw an unfavorable image of a kike because the Jews are ever watchful for that. They never allowed it to be shown on the screen!

29. It's a long climb up Fools' Hill.

30. The only thing an actor owes his public is not to bore them.