Forest Whitaker Quotes

I submerged myself in all the information that I could find about Idi Amin. I mean, before I left Los Angeles, I was studying Kiswahili. I was working on the dialect. I was studying every documentary and tape of him that I could find - not just visual, but also audiocassettes, even in other languages when he was speaking in other dialects.

Ya know, Hitler was a great leader, too.

[The Fuhrer] is one of those lonely men of the ages on whom history is not tested, but who themselves are the makers of history.

History deals mainly with captains and kings, gods and prophets, exploiters and despoilers, not with useful men.

It's an incredible education [for the movie J. Edgar Hoover] . It was like I did a college course on J. Edgar Hoover but not knowing and understanding the history and reading the books, but understanding what motivated this man was the most fascinating part of the research.

For me, Lincoln is like just a handful of people - a Gandhi, or a Picasso, or a Martin Luther King Jr. - who is an original and captures something essential.

Tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so.

How many kings are governed by their ministers, how many ministers by their secretaries? Who, in such cases, is really the chief?

His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.

What identifies an individual as a king is how other people behave towards him. All authority is assumed, and if other people don't accept your authority then you don't have it. Perhaps the critical thing to being a convincing figure of authority is actually not to try too hard.

A weak King must be what other Kings have been; a strong King is himself, and from then on the meaning of the name of King is changed.

Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings.

At one time kings were anointed by Deity, so the problem was to see to it that Deity chose the right candidate. In this age the myth is "the will of the people" ... but the problem changes only superficially.

Bill Proxmire represents almost the last of one of America's most remarkable generations.

As soon as politicians start climbing up the ladder, they suddenly become kings. I don't know how it works, but what I do know is that republics came to the world to make sure that no one is more than anyone else. The pomp of office is like something left over from a feudal past: "You need a palace, red carpet, a lot of people behind you saying, 'Yes, sir.' I think all of that is awful."

A people may let a king fall, yet still remain a people, but if a king let his people slip from him, he is no longer a king.

He [Castro] is a genius. We spoke about everything.

Don Rumsfeld is the finest secretary of defense the nation has ever had.

Kill the king but spare the man.

The only place where you can be a dictator and still be loved is on the movie set

Sometimes the king is a woman.

Hitler was the first superstar.

The look of a king is itself a deed.

I'm not an actor who approaches films doing a lot of research. I do zero research, unless it's a film where I'm playing a mock version of someone who already existed. Then, you've got to do a lot of research.

In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind-but he must get there first.