531 Fame Quotes

The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me.

In my life, I don't need to have my face plastered everywhere. It's not really something I want.

From the moment I leave my house or my hotel room, the public owns me. The public made Alice Cooper and I can't imagine ever turning my back on my fans.

If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.

In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it may be ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise.

They laughed at Edison and Einstein, but somehow I still feel uncomfortable when they laugh at me.

Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.

Sometimes girls write me. One girl in Yugoslavia sent me a whole slew of love letters. I don't know how she got my address. She was in a crowd watching me play. She says when I left there the stars fell out of the sky over Yugoslavia, or something like that.

I think with anybody who's doing well in the public eye or whatever, there's always gonna be a shift because people don't wanna see somebody happy all the time. And they're gonna try to take shots at people.

The cool thing about being famous is traveling. I have always wanted to travel across seas, like to Canada and stuff.

You just wait. I'm going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

This is Davey. I'm not special.

I'm an instant star. Just add water and stir.

Some people obtain fame, others deserve it.

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow.

Let the famous not denounce fame. Far from being empty and meaningless, it fills those it touches with divine power.

In the end all books are written for your friends. The problem after writing One Hundred Years of Solitude was that now I no longer know whom of the millions of readers I am writing for; this upsets and inhibits me. It's like a million eyes are looking at you and you don't really know what they think.

I would like for my books to have been recognized posthumously, at least in capitalist countries, where they turn you into a kind of merchandise.

I was asked the other day if I would be interested in the Nobel Prize, but I think that for me it would be an absolute catastrophe. I would certainly be interested in deserving it, but to receive it would be terrible. It would just complicate even more the problems of fame. The only thing I really regret in life is not having a daughter.

Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

My dad was undeniably famous when I was a kid - he was on Wogan and Clive James and the radio every week, but as far as I was concerned he wasn't famous enough. My best friend was Ben Brooke-Taylor. His dad Tim was in The Goodies - that was famous.

To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.

Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.

People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It's generally wrong. Or oversimplified - which is sometimes useful.

Stardom can be a gilded slavery.

Legends die hard. They survive as truth rarely does.

The news of the discovery spread fast all over the country, and inquisitive enquiries mingled with congratulations from this moment became the daily programme.

Mommy, why does daddy cuss the TV and call it Howard?

Writers are idolized not because they love their fellow men, which is never a recommendation and in extreme instances leads to crucifixion, but because their self-love is in tune with current fears and desires, and in giving it expression they are speaking for an inarticulate multitude.

hey Jack now for the tricky part when you were the brightest star who were the shadows? of the San Francisco beat boys you were the favorite now they sit and rattle their bones and think of their blood stoned days

'Heart of Gold put me in the middle of the road. Travelling there soon became a bore so I headed for the ditch. A rougher ride, but I saw more interesting people there.' -- Expressing his disdain for the fame that he received from his song Heart of Gold

Even those regarded as evil want their deeds to be known

Why should we care about Feynman? What was so special about him? Why did he become a public icon, standing with Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking as the Holy Trinity of twentieth-century physics? The public has demonstrated remarkably good taste in choosing its icons. All three of them are genuinely great scientists, with flashes of true genius as well as solid accomplishments to their credit. But to become an icon, it is not enough to be a great scientist. There are many other scientists, not so great as Einstein but greater than Hawking and Feynman, who did not become icons. ... Scientists who become icons must not only be geniuses but also performers, playing to the crowd and enjoying public acclaim. Einstein and Feynman both grumbled about the newspaper and radio reporters who invaded their privacy, but both gave the reporters what the public wanted, sharp and witty remarks that would make good headlines. Hawking in his unique way also enjoys the public adulation that his triumph over physical obstacles has earned for him. I will never forget the joyful morning in Tokyo when Hawking went on a tour of the streets in his wheelchair and the Japanese crowds streamed after him, stretching out their hands to touch his chair. Einstein, Hawking, and Feynman shared an ability to break through the barriers that separated them from ordinary people. The public responded to them because they were regular guys, jokers as well as geniuses. The third quality that is needed for a scientist to become a public icon is wisdom. Besides being a famous joker and a famous genius, Feynman was also a wise human being whose answers to serious questions made sense. To me and to hundreds of other students who came to him for advice, he spoke truth. Like Einstein and Hawking, he had come through times of great suffering, nursing Arline through her illness and watching her die, and emerged stronger. Behind his enormous zest and enjoyment of life was an awareness of tragedy, a knowledge that our time on earth is short and precarious. The public made him into an icon because he was not only a great scientist and a great clown but also a great human being and a guide in time of trouble. Other Feynman books have portrayed him as a scientific wizard and as a storyteller. This collection of letters shows us for the first time the son caring for his father and mother, the father caring for his wife and children, the teacher caring for his students, the writer replying to people throughout the world who wrote to him about their problems and received his full and undivided attention.

I play in a rock and roll band called The Rock Bottom Remainders. It's other authors. It's Stephen King and Amy Tan and Dave Barry and a bunch of others of us. We play to raise money for charities, because we're kind of a freak show, but we're not bad. I play a guitar and a mandocello... And since you don't know what a mandocello sounds like or how it should be played, you can say with some authority I'm the most interesting mandocello player you've ever heard. Anyhow, we're in this hotel and this maid comes in and she keeps looking at me and she smiled and she said, 'I know who you are.' And I said, 'No you don't. Who am I?' And said, 'You're Kenny Rogers.' And I of course said, 'No, no, no.' And she said, 'If you were Kenny Rogers you wouldn't say you were Kenny Rogers would you? So you must be Kenny Rogers.' ... So that evening I'm walking along with my guitars going to the elevator and she went up like a skyrocket, 'See! I knew you were Kenny Rogers!' So I signed her card, 'Love and kisses, Kenny Rogers.'

It's bad to use words like 'genius' unless you are talking about the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, the black Chatterton of the 80s who, during a picturesque career as sexual hustler, addict and juvenile art-star, made a superficial mark on the cultural surface by folding the conventions of street graffiti into those of art brut before killing himself with an overdose at the age of twenty-seven. The first stage of Basquiat's fate, in the mid-80s, was to be effusively welcomed by an art industry so trivialized by fashion and blinded by money that it couldn't tell a scribble from a Leonardo. Its second stage was to be dropped by the same audience, when the novelty of his work wore off. The third was an attempt at apotheosis four years after his death, with a large retrospective at the Whitney Museum designed to sanitise his short, frantic life and position him as a kind of all-purpose, inflatable martyr-figure, thus restoring the dollar value of his oeuvre in a time of collapsing prices for American contemporary art. One contributor to the catalogue proclaimed that 'Jean remains wrapped in the silent purple toga of immortality'; another opined that 'he is as close to Goya as American painting has ever produced.' A third, not to be outdone, extolled Basquiat's 'punishing regime of self-abuse' as part of 'the disciplines imposed by the principle of inverse ascetism to which he was so resolutely committed.' These disciplines of inverse ascetism, one sees, mean shooting smack until you drop dead.

'His son thinks that his father is a superman, But you can't blame the kid. The moment he switches on the TV he sees his father, when he travels to school, he sees banners of his father's films along the roads, and whenever his fathers alights people go hysterically, 'Shah Rukh, Shah Rukh!'' - Shashilal Nair

When I see Aryan and Suhana, I see purity and spontaneity. Untouched by commerce, untainted by envy even as an actor, I grow simply by watching them. The truth is that I dont want to be this famous but absentee father. I want my children to flower under my care. - Shahrukh

Politicians and hypocrites, they don't wanna listen/If I'm insane, it's the fame made a brother change/It wasn't nuttin like the game/It's just me against the world

9-1-1 its a emergency cowards tried to murder me/From hood to the 'burbs, everyone of you niggas heard of me/Shit I'm legendary niggas scary and paralyzed/Nothing more I despise than a liar

So many rumors but I'm infinitely Immortal Outlaw

Criminal ties for centuries, a legend in my own rhymes

Now its all about versace/You copied my style/Five shots couldn't drop me/I took it and smiled

I heard a rumour I died, murdered in cold blood dramatized/Pictures of me in my final stage you know Mama cried/But that was fiction, some coward got the story twisted/Like I no longer existed, mysteriously missin

Gettin raw till the day I see my casket/Buried as a g while tha whole world remembers me

I rose up from the slums, made it out the flames/In my search for fame will I change? I'm askin

When I die, I wanna be a livin legend, say my name/Affiliated with this motherfuckin game, with no more pain

Thanks! Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted this! You don't know...my brother sitting there, he says 'Thank God we don't have to listen to anymore... you can do it now!' My mom's home, everyone's watching... I have to thank the people at Paramount; I have to thank Jerry Zucker for taking the time he took before he decided to use me because he was sure it was for me... I have to thank Patrick Swazye... he was a stand up guy and went to them and said 'I wanna do it with her'... I wanna thank Demi... I wanna thank everybody who makes movies... I come from New York; as a kid, I lived in the projects and you're the people I watched...you're the people that made me wanna be an actor... I'm so proud to be here, I'm proud to be an actor and I'm gonna keep on acting, and thank you so much!

I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself.

It's Britney, bitch!

He rocked the United States by flying all over the country and playing that rock and roll He is a good singer He is my rock star

Maybe if I put a bullet in my brain They'd remember me like Kurt Cobain And the parasites on MTV Would wipe their eyes and act like they knew me

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man.

This world is bullshit. And just because I appear in music video wherein I am in my underwear, and make young women feel not good enough so that they become anorxeic; and okay, maybe because of that I became popular more quickly than other singers who are, I don't know, maybe more talented or better songwriters. That doesn't matter because, and ... um ... my boyfriend is a magician, and he can pull a quarter out of your ear and say things like 'We have not met before have we?' Go with yourself.

Seven cities warred for Homer, being dead, Who, living, had no roof to shroud his head.

Hollywood dishes out too much praise for small things I won't let it get me, but too much praise can turn a fellow's head if he doesn't watch his step.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honoured by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

There are two kinds of people, there's those who like Johnny Cash, and those that will.

Go where glory waits thee, But while fame elates thee, Oh! still remember me!

He was not of an age, but for all time!

The fact that Fred and I were in no way similar - nor were we the best male dancers around never occurred to the public or the journalists who wrote about us...Fred and I got the cream of the publicity and naturally we were compared. And while I personally was proud of the comparison, because there was no-one to touch Fred when it came to 'popular' dance, we felt that people, especially film critics at the time, should have made an attempt to differentiate between our two styles. Fred and I both got a bit edgy after our names were mentioned in the same breath. I was the Marlon Brando of dancers, and he the Cary Grant. My approach was completely different from his, and we wanted the world to realise this, and not lump us together like peas in a pod. If there was any resentment on our behalf, it certainly wasn't with each other, but with people who talked about two highly individual dancers as if they were one person. For a start, the sort of wardrobe I wore - blue jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers - Fred wouldn't have been caught dead in. Fred always looked immaculate in rehearsals, I was always in an old shirt. Fred's steps were small, neat, graceful and intimate - mine were ballet-oriented and very athletic. The two of us couldn't have been more different, yet the public insisted on thinking of us as rivals...I persuaded him to put on his dancing shoes again, and replace me in Easter Parade after I'd broken my ankle. If we'd been rivals, I certainly wouldn't have encouraged him to make a comeback

Mark how my fame rings out from zone to zone: A thousand critics shouting: 'He's unknown!'

The present age delights in unearthing a great man's secrets; for one thing because we like to temper our admiration and also perhaps we have a vague hope of finding a clue to genius in such 'revelations.'

To this day, when men meet me, there's always that movie in the back of their mind.

Honor ... means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

'Do you believe in vampires?' Yes. Three of them I married.

Posterity is a most limited assembly. Those gentlemen who reach posterity are not much more numerous than the planets.

Fame and power are the objects of all men. Even their partial fruition is gained by very few; and that, too, at the expense of social pleasure, health, conscience, life.

The Duke of Wellington brought to the post of first minister immortal fame; a quality of success which would almost seem to include all others.

What strikes me most singular in you is, that you are fonder of Power than of Fame.

I hated it. Everybody'd say, 'Hey, mama, what's happening?' Then came the Mamas and Papas and I was stuck with it. And now people call me Mama Cass because of the baby. So I don't know whether I'm gonna be able to really get away from it.

Everything I've learned in life I've learned either by doing it or watching the changes other people go through. And when you're famous, you don't get to meet people - because they want you to like them when they present themselves to you, present the best sides of themselves, and you don't see the real people. Which is why I don't really go anywhere. And when I do, I put on my silly face and do what they expect me to do. Actually, I never do what they expect me to do. It's the only way I could go on doing what I have to do. I do whatever I: you know, I didn't even comb my hair today. I didn't know we were taking pictures but when I found out, it didn't change my mind any.

Ambition, I've found, can lead only to failure. I do not read the reviews. No, I am not singing for you.

Well, I could have been a famous singer If I had someone else's voice But failure's always sounded better Let's fuck it up, boys, make some noise!

Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice - a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess.

I know, that obscure as I am, my name is making a considerable deal of fuss in the world. I can't tell why it is, nor in what it is to end. Go where I will, everybody seems anxious to get a peep at me ... There must therefore be something in me, or about me, that attracts attention, which is even mysterious to myself.

Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!

Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young.

People come up to me and say, 'Emo, do people really come up to you?'

If you can make just one person laugh, then you are already doing better than Tony Danza.

'Pain is temporary, glory...lasts forever!'

'If I had been born ugly, you would never have heard of Pele.'

'So George, where did it all go wrong?' (The hotel bellboy who delivered champagne to Best's room and found him entertaining a scantily-clad Miss World on a bed covered with his winnings from the casino.)

The world used The Beatles as an excuse to go mad.

I wanted to be successful, not famous.

The Beatles will exist without us.

The nicest thing is to open the newspapers and not to find yourself in them.

Sometimes, you release an album and the record company just about ignores it, and so many people don't even know it's out. And I'm not about to jump up and down shouting, 'Hey folks, look at me! I'm cool and groovy!' That's not what George Harrison is all about.

I got $25 from Reader's Digest last week for something I never said. I get credit all the time for things I never said. You know that line in You Bet Your Life? The guy says he has seventeen kids and I say: 'I smoke a cigar, but I take it out of my mouth occasionally'? I never said that.

Eventually I smoked Havanas. A cigar makers' organization once said that I was the most famous cigar smoker in the world. I don't know if that's true, but once while visiting Havana, I went to a cigar factory. There were four hundred people there rolling cigars, and when they saw me, they all stood up and applauded.