Eddie Murphy Quotes

Every bad decision I've made has been based on money.

I think I probably have the philosophy of a poor man. You know, like maybe I'd steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes.

The only reason I'm in Hollywood is that I don't have the moral courage to refuse the money.

Jay-Z is as politically correct as some of the politicians. He's safe. There's points when you're acquiring financing, you make adjustments. He's made those adjustments. It's his choice. For me, it's not a necessity.

I probably made a few pictures I shouldn't have done, but I have four sons and I have to pay the rent. If you have a decision to make about whether or not you can buy groceries at the market or whether or not you're going to make a bad movie, you're going to make a bad movie.

In the military, they give medals for people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may survive. In business, we give bonuses to people who sacrifice others.

Money is... I'm very conscious of it because I have it. It's powerful, man. It can change you ever so slightly, ever so slowly, and all of a sudden you're addicted to a million-dollar lifestyle and you've got no choice but to make a bad movie.

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

Pressure is playing for ten dollars when you don't have a dime in your pocket.

I've never chosen or rejected a role because of money.

I think more money can be very detrimental to movies and TV because things get solved economically rather than creatively, and that's never a good solution.

If you find yourself desperate for money, you sometimes do whatever, but on the other hand, if you really want to be known as a certain type of actor, then you have to restrain yourself.

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work.

Self-preservation has a tendency to lead to poverty.

I've never done anything that I felt was crossing the line for me. But everybody has to make that decision individually. Like, I've never shot heroin to play a heroin addict. I've never turned a trick to play a prostitute. Whatever. You draw the line where you feel it could be harmful.

Nothing so evil as money ever grew to be current among men. This lays cities low, this drives men from their homes, this trains and warps honest souls till they set themselves to works of shame; this still teaches folk to practise villainies, and to know every godless deed. But all the men who wrought this thing for hire have made it sure that, soon or late, they shall pay the price.

Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.

Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.

Perhaps selling your children, your future, just happened one bad decision at a time.

Part of the blame can be put at the artists' door, too - no question. But I see our involvement more as a consequence. When there is too much money at stake, the whole system gets corrupted. Artists can be very vulnerable to these mechanisms.

Morality must keep up with technology because if a person is faced with the choice of being moral and dead or immoral and alive, they'll choose life everytime.

We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women, and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hungers on us, and now we hunger for justice.

You're broke, eh?" I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.

Money corrupts the process of reasoning.