Matt Dillon Quotes

There used to be a tradition of the loveable rogue who would steal from the honour boxes in churches and buy a round of drinks with the money he snagged. And everyone would find him tremendously good company. But not any more.

A rich rogue nowadays is fit company for any gentleman; and the world, my dear, hath not such a contempt for roguery as you imagine.

Some things are easier to legalize than to make legitimate.

Using the term 'locker room talk' blurs the line between what is criminal and what is simply oafish. That's not a line anyone should want blurred.

The problem with individual opinion is that it doesn't necessary correlate with what the mass audience is thinking.

Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.

People are either attracted to the unseemly or disapproving of it, or both; yet we try to sound superior to the unseemly by pretending to be amused by it or indifferent to it.

There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned.

Reality is: Should people steal in this world? Yes. How do I know they should? They all do.

Nudity doesn't scare me at all; the only thing about it is the perception by the audience.

Conscience and public opinion enforce the laws. The police suppress the exceptions.

We find the people to be no better than their laws.

All laws which can be broken without any injury to another, are counted but a laughing-stock, and are so far from bridling the desires and lusts of men, that on the contrary they stimulate them.

In America there is not one single element of civilization that is not made to depend, in the end, upon public opinion.

Laws are often made to express collective ethical principles, to establish a climate of opinion …

Any law that takes hold of a man’s daily life cannot prevail in a community, unless the vast majority of the community are actively in favor of it.

If a statute rightly reflects the opinion of the people for whom it is passed, or is adapted to give effect to that opinion, it gets itself enforced. If the contrary is true, the law fails of effect.

When I look at public opinion, I'm not far out of the mainstream. I'm in it, in many respects. In some respects, public opinion goes beyond anything I've ever said.

To put it mildly, nothing can be turned and worn inside out with greater ease than one's notion of social justice, public conscience, a better future, etc.

In some people's eyes, nudity is so much more dangerous than violence. I never really understood that.

We're a miserably violent species. But there's a complication, which is we don't hate violence, we hate the wrong kind. And when it's the right kind, we cheer it on, we hand out medals, we vote for, we mate with our champions of it. When it's the right kind of violence, we love it.

The things that are considered to be respectable have their roots in unrespectable things.

The entertainment industry has an effect on social consciousness.

I learned this through Iron Man - it really doesn't matter what I think about who he is because everybody has such a huge idea about what they think the guy is. You can't just rely on your instincts and your imagination, you have to match up with what the expectations are from the people.

I don't know if they're really like everybody else, or if they're able to pretend they are.