Stanley Kubrick > Quotes

“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism – and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But, if he’s reasonably strong – and lucky – he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s elan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don't want.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space? Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives in this perspective — who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled — can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate anomie. The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“Observation is a dying art.”
― Stanley Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick: Interviews

“If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“I’ve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, ‘don’t try to fly too high,’ or whether it might also be thought of as ‘forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive”
― Stanley Kubrick

“If you really want to communicate something, even if it’s just an emotion or an attitude, let alone an idea, the least effective and least enjoyable way is directly. It only goes in about an inch. But if you can get people to the point where they have to think a moment what it is you’re getting at, and then discover it, the thrill of discovery goes right through the heart.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“If chess has any relationship to film-making, it would be in the way it helps you develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives at a time when an impulsive decision seems very attractive.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, '2001' shows that what some people call 'god' is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don't understand, they call 'god' -Stanley Kubrick, interview, 1963”
― Stanley Kubrick

“Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“You're an idealist, and I pity you as I would the village idiot.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later?"
Stanley Kubrick”
― Stanley Kubrick

“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized "realistic" story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its "realist" style.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The most terrifying fact about the universe not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent”
― Stanley Kubrick

“The book can also be a hat.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“Never, ever go near power. Don’t become friends with anyone who has real power. It’s dangerous.”
― Stanley Kubrick

“I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.”
― Stanley Kubrick