Oliver Stone > Quotes

“Hell is the impossibility of reason.”
― Oliver Stone

“Films might get to you and your subconscious and make a little difference, but when the vigilante drum beats, the mob screams and the conformists go along with it. There have to be people who are non-conformists.”
― Oliver Stone

“To fail is not tragic. To be human, is.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of The United States

“Most American view World War II nostalgically as the "good war," in which the United States and its allies triumphed over German Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese militarism. The rest of the world remembers it as the bloodiest war in human history. By the time it was over, more than 60 million people lay dead, including 27 million Russians, between 10 million and 20 million Chinese, 6 million Jews, 5.5 million Germans, 3 million non-Jewish Poles, 2.5 million Japanese, and 1.5 million Yugoslavs. Austria, Great Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and the United States each counted between 250,000 and 333,000 dead.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of The United States

“The secret to writing a screenplay is keeping you ass in the chair.

(ASS + CHAIR = PAGES!)”
― Oliver Stone

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other religions were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. … And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“The Nation observed, “If you steal $25, you’re a thief. If you steal $250,000, you’re an embezzler. If you steal $2,500,000, you’re a financier.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“Either you're born crazy or you're born boring.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of The United States

“According to Japanese scholar Yuki Tanaka, the United States firebombed over a hundred Japanese cities. Destruction reached 99.5 percent in the city of Toyama, driving Secretary of War Henry Stimson to tell Truman he "did not want to have the US get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities," though Stimson did almost nothing to halt the slaughter. He had managed to delude himself into believing Arnold's promise that he would limit "damage to civilians." Future Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who was on LeMay's staff in 1945, agreed with his boss's comment that of the United States lost the war, they'd all be tried as war criminals and deserved to be convicted.
Hatred towards the Japanese ran so deep that almost no one objected to the mass slaughter of civilians.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of The United States

“Man looks in the abyss, there’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss.”
― Oliver Stone, Wall Street

“Let the capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own corpses and there will never be another war on the face of the earth.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“Prominent among the American capitalists with ties to Nazi counterparts was Prescott Bush, the father of one president and grandfather of another.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“Prominent among the American capitalists with ties to Nazi counterparts was Prescott Bush, the father of one president and grandfather of another. Researchers have been trying for years to determine the precise nature of Bush’s ties to Fritz Thyssen, the wealthy German industrialist who played a crucial role in bankrolling Hitler, as revealed in his 1941 memoirs I Paid Hitler. Thyssen ultimately repudiated the Nazi dictator and was himself imprisoned.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“By the early 1920s, the America of Jefferson, Lincoln, Whitman, and the young William Jennings Bryan had ceased to exist. It had been replaced by the world of McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, and Woodrow Wilson.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“Despite the well-deserved criticism, controlling public opinion became a central element in all future war planning.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“Americans, like people everywhere, are in thrall to their visions of the past, rarely realizing the extent to which their understanding of history shapes behavior in the here and now. Historical understanding defines people’s very sense of what is thinkable and achievable. As a result, many have lost the ability to imagine a world that is substantially different from and better than what exists today.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“Stop going for the easy buck and produce something with your life. Create instead of living off the buying and selling of others.”
― Oliver Stone, Wall Street

“No greater satisfaction exists now than a paragraph well written in honor of something you value.”
― Oliver Stone, Chasing The Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game

“Destiny is never clear when it arrives. Sometimes we just refuse to do what we no longer feel good about doing. These moments are mysteries in our lives, but we know everything will change.”
― Oliver Stone, Chasing The Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game

“عندما ينتمي المرء الى بلد امبريالي، أو قوم من الإمبرياليين يعتقد أن العالم ملكه”
― Oliver Stone, On History: Tariq Ali and Oliver Stone in Conversation

“Such power, so much death in one place at one time. Never to be forgotten.”
― Oliver Stone, Chasing The Light: How I Fought My Way into Hollywood - From the 1960s to Platoon

“ostentatious”
― Oliver Stone, Chasing The Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game

“Para la mayoría de norteamericanos la Segunda Guerra Mundial es, quizá por nostalgia, la «guerra buena» en que Estados Unidos y sus aliados triunfaron sobre el nazismo alemán, los fascismos y el militarismo japonés. El resto del mundo la recuerda, sin embargo, como el conflicto más sangriento de la historia de la humanidad.”
― Oliver Stone, Historia silenciada de Estados Unidos

“«Con su pasividad, Gran Bretaña está ayudando a los nazis. ¿Comprenden los británicos lo que quiero decir? Yo diría que sí. Entonces, ¿qué es lo que quieren? Según parece, quieren que nos debiliten».”
― Oliver Stone, Historia silenciada de Estados Unidos

“La guerra duró tres años. La República cayó en la primavera de 1939, y con ella no solo cien mil soldados republicanos y cinco mil voluntarios extranjeros, sino los sueños y esperanzas de una gran parte de la humanidad.”
― Oliver Stone, Historia silenciada de Estados Unidos

“Without a moral center -- there can be no string family. And without family, we one and all suffer.”
― Oliver Stone, Chasing The Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game

“No person should ever have to witness so much death,”
― Oliver Stone, Chasing The Light: Writing, Directing, and Surviving Platoon, Midnight Express, Scarface, Salvador, and the Movie Game

“If we have to suppress everything we don’t like to hear, this country is on a pretty wobbly basis. This country was founded on disrespect and the denial of authority, and it is no time to stop free discussion.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States

“I have been accused of obstructing the war. I admit it. Gentlemen, I abhor war. I would oppose war if I stood alone. . . . I have sympathy with the suffering, struggling people everywhere. It does not make any difference under what flag they were born, or where they live.”
― Oliver Stone, The Untold History of the United States