Charlie Chaplin

Hanns Eisler is a personal friend and I am proud of the fact... I don't know whether he is a communist or not. I know he is a fine artist and a great musician and a very sympathetic friend. No it wouldn't [make any difference if he was a communist].

The USSR is a brave new world that gave hope and aspiration to the common man. I hoped that the USSR would grow more glorious year by year. Now that the agony of birth is at an end, may the beauty of its growth endure forever.

As for politics, I am an anarchist. I hate government and rules - and fetters ... People must be free.

Patriotism is the greatest insanity the world has ever suffered.

I have yet to know a poor man who has nostalgia for poverty, or who finds freedom in it … I found poverty neither attractive nor edifying. It taught me nothing but a distortion of values, an over-rating of the virtues and graces of the rich and the so-called better classes.

Too much kindness and respect are given to the unseen and not enough to humanity. It seems that in our nature we loathe each other and bestow our respect and love on the abstract.

Everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.

I have faith in the unknown, in everything that we do not understand by reason I believe that what is beyond our understanding is a simple fact in other dimensions, and that in the kingdom of the unknown there are immense reserves of energy for good.

It's not the reality that counts in a film, but what imagination can do with it.

As my mother used to say, guests are like cakes: if you keep them too long, they turn rancid and become inedible.

Celebrity gives you the impression that everyone knows you, but in reality, you don't know anyone.

That's what all we are. Amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else.

Once again, the same depressing question arose: should I make another silent film? I knew I would take a big risk by doing it. If I spoke, I would become an actor like the others.

I was determined to go ahead, for Hitler must be laughed at.

You, the people, have the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure!

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed - the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.

Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes - men who despise you - enslave you - who regiment your lives - tell you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drill you - diet you - treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder.

Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men - machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don't hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural!

Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people!

Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.