Elia Kazan Quotes

But rarely have I made choices that made me feel I was really compromising what I believe.

You can't betray yourself too often, or you become somebody else.

In order to remain true to oneself one ought to renounce one's party three times a day.

One cannot be a Communist and preserve an iota of one's personal integrity.

If I fought like I was looking for a place in history, it would ruin me as a person. I don't think history is worth selling my soul.

To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one s own conscience is to abandon mankind.

In this business, it's easy for either your heart or your head to be swayed, and I try to always stay true to who I am.

You don't have to sacrifice who you are to follow your beliefs.

I had a rough spot about being a goody-goody Mormon, and not drinking or smoking. But I'm kind of grateful I've got this image now. There are no skeletons in my closet. What you see is what you get.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Unjust. How many times I've used that word, scolded myself with it. All I mean by it now is that I don't have the final courage to say that I refuse to preside over violations against myself, and to hell with justice.

I know in my soul when something feels like a sell out and I think for me, I knew that if I did the Jane's Addiction reunion thing, that I would feel like a sell out. That's how it would feel to me.

I did what I felt, and I felt what I did, at all costs.

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.

We've all done actions in our lives where we compromise what we believe in. And if we keep doing it, there's no way back, no pride to hold on to.

I don't sell myself. I am what I am. I'm a role model for a lot of people, for my kids. I don't want to just change because I want to make more money.

There's nothing worse than betraying yourself.

And is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification

One should stick by one's soul, and by nothing else. In one's soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one's own soul-knowledge one is the worst of traitors.

Whatever the consequences of staying true to yourself, they're much less than the consequences of selling your soul.

The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed.' 'I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self.' He turned. 'You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy.'

I want my inner truth to be the plumb line for the choices I make about my life - about the work that I do and how I do it, about the relationships I enter into and how I conduct them.

Being true to ourselves doesn't make us people of integrity. Charles Manson was true to himself, and as a result, he rightly is spending the rest of his life in prison. Ultimately, being true to our Creator gives us the purest form of integrity.

We follow the codes not because they bring gain, but because we loathe the people we would otherwise become.

I may be a f..kwit but I'm not a liar. I was a believer.