Arthur Miller Quotes

I don't believe you outsource your convictions and principles to people.

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

I would rather do what I did than crawl in front of a ritualistic Left and lie the way those other comrades did betray my own soul.

The disparity between what people said life was and what I knew it to be unnerved me at times, but I swore that nothing would ever make me say life should be anything.

It would be better for me ... that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.

I understand that nobody understands me, but I can't be someone I'm not.

It will be necessary for us to be a nation of men, and not laws.

Forget conventionalisms; forget what the world thinks of you stepping out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best words, work your best works, looking to your own conscience for approval.

It was then that I realized that while playing the well-meaning tolerant individual (in short: liberal) garnered you fans and grades, it didn't matter. In my heart and head, I was a fraud.

I'm not conflicted. Because I know. There's me, and there's the show.

I believe in me, in my view of the world. I believe in my responsibility for my own destiny, guilt for my own sins, merit for my own good deeds, determination of my own life. I don't believe in miracles, I believe in hard work.

It's pretty hard when you are Caesar and everyone is saying how wonderful you are and they are giving you all the goodies and the girls, it's pretty hard to break out of that, to say 'Well, I don't want to be king, I want to be real.'

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can’t. It’s important to stay the course. I don’t think I would have lasted this long if I’d listened to anyone. You have to listen somewhat and then put that to the side and know that what you do matters.

My whole love and respect is for the person who accepts himself totally, as he is. He has courage. He has courage to face the whole pressure of the society which is bent upon splitting him into divisions — into good and bad, into saint and sinner. He is really a brave, courageous being who stands against the whole history of man, of morality, and declares to the skies his reality, whatever it is.

If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, - under all these screens I have diffuculty to detect the precise man you are: and of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blind-man's bluff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect I anticipate your argument.

Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

Humanity is less, far less than the individual, because the individual may sometimes be capable of truth, and humanity is a tree of lies.

I won't change anything in my life I'm staying myself tonight

The most reckless sinner against his own conscience has always in the background the consolation that he will go on in this course only this time, or only so long, but that at such a time he will amend. We may be assured that we do not stand clear with our own consciences so long as we determine or project, or even hold it possible, at some future time to alter our course of action.

I get it," said Link. "Even if it wrecks everything, even if you know you're gonna get busted, sometimes you gotta do it anyway." "Something like that.

But in my life, in my personality, there is an essence of falseness and insincerity. A thin, fine vapor of fraud hangs always over me and dampens and injures some things in me that I value.

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

All I want is to enter my house justified.