Anthony Hopkins Quotes

You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I'm given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one's own vision.

I don't take myself too seriously. I think that's something so many actors and people in general tend to do.

The whole 'Melrose' series is an attempt to tell the truth, and is based on the idea that there is some salutary or liberating power in telling the truth.

If the world was perfect, it wouldn't be.

It's so rare, actors who are not vain.

At some point, we all reach that moment where it's such a waste of energy to act as if you know things that you really don't. It's really kind of liberating to be okay with that.

A really big thing I've learned - and I think it's so liberating - is when you realize no one knows what they're doing.

There's a downside to glamour and since I know that, I think that's why I have been able to stay grounded.

Freedom is the moment between sleep and waking before selfhood and the world return.

For some slaves, the first step out of bondage is to learn to see their lives with new eyes. Their reality is a social world where they have their place and some assurance of a subsistence diet. Born into slavery, they cannot easily redefine their lives outside the frame of enslavement.

To really belong, we have got, first, to get it clear with ourselves that we do not belong and do not want to belong to an unfree world. As free men and women we have got to reject much of it and to know why we are rejecting it.

Whether arrogantly or what, I view myself simply as an actor.

The minute I get swelled up about something, something has always brought me back down to earth.

Knowing that you are living in a dreamworld is very liberating, because it gives you the option of waking up.

Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.

There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.

I was having a wonderful time and the whole world opened up before me because I had no dreams.

The more you reveal, the more you have to question and the freer you get. Until, finally, you're absolutely exposed. And that leaves you in a fearless position, because you can work in the world without the fear of being found out. That is freedom.

We in the church have humility and contrition to offer the world, not a formula for success. Almost alone in our success-oriented society, we admit that we have failed, are failing, and always will fail.

If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.

You have to see your unimportance before you can see your importance and your significance to the world.

When you find peace within, you also find that you can do without. This means simply that you no longer need the things of your outside world, and not needing is a great freedom.

When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were but we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning.

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.