Orson Welles
Citizen Kane, transformed cinema and radio
Most quoted
"I hate to be a failure. I hate and regret the failure of my personal life. I've been married three times. I've been a father. I've been a lover. I've been a friend. I've been a lot of things. I've been a lot of things that I'm not now. I've been a lot of things that I'm not now. I've been a lot of things that I'm not now."
"I believe that television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television—of that I am quite sure."
— from Speech: 'The Mercury Theatre on the Air', 1938
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love—they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
— from Film: The Third Man (as Harry Lime), 1949
All quotes by Orson Welles (351)
I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist. The world is a terrible place, but it's the only one we've got.
I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.
I have always been a great lover of the morning. I cannot think of any good thing that has ever happened to me before noon.
A film director is not a creator, but a midwife. His business is to deliver the actor of a child he didn't know he had in him.
I'm not a complicated person. I'm just a simple man with a complicated life.
The most terrible thing about war is that it's always started by the old men and fought by the young.
I'm a charlatan. I'm a fake. I'm a fraud. I'm a mountebank. I'm an impostor. But I do it with such style and grace that nobody seems to mind.
I have a theory that the moment one is conscious of being happy, one ceases to be happy.
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
I'm not a great film director. I'm a good film director who had a great opportunity.
I'm an American. I was born here. I live here. I'm going to die here. But I'm not going to like it.
Contemporaries of Orson Welles
Other Film & Theaters born within 50 years of Orson Welles (1915–1985).