Robert Altman Quotes

I always think of the Joker as the ultimate bully. Nothing he says is funny except to him.

It is possible for leaders or regimes to be cruel, bigoted, twisted in their world views and still make rational calculations with respect to their limits and their self-preservation.

Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave.

What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one,--and that is not only true, but identical,--that men always act from self-interest.

Any man who does not see everything in terms of self, that is to say who wants to be something in respect of other men, to do good to them or simply give them something to do, is unhappy, disconsolate, and accursed.

There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.

I shall not fear to say that the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood seems to me of all the philosophic theories the most appropriate to the needs of men in our time, and that I see in it the most powerful guarantee against themselves that remains to them. The minds of the moralists of our day ought to turn, therefore, principally toward it. Even should they judge it imperfect, they would still have to adopt it as necessary.

Fear, true fear, is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable, it is surely the cruelest. There is naught to equal its drive, and naught can survive its thrust.

Capital must be propelled by self-interest; it cannot be enticed by benevolence.

For good days one should save money, women should be protected even if it takes the money saved. But for self preservation the money and the women should be sacrificed!!

It's proper that people have friends, friendships without self-interest. Without friends, life is too lonely.

The howl of self-interest is loud ... but the heart is black which throbs solely to its note.

Selfishness is the most constant of human motives. Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts sweep away the heaped-up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times, while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearyingly,burrowing always at the very root of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away.

This was 1990, the year that communism died in Europe and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the iron curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.

You are One with everything. When you are clear about this, your definition of self-interest will change.

Men follow their sentiments and their self-interest, but it pleases them to imagine that they follow reason. And so they look for, and always find, some theory which, a posteriori, makes their actions appear to be logical. If that theory could be demolished scientifically, the only result would be that another theory would be substituted for the first one, and for the same purpose.

You bet I write disaster fiction. We have compiled a disastrous record on this planet, a record of stupidity and absurdity and self-abuse and self-aggrandizement and self-deception and pompousness and self-righteousness and cruelty and indifference beyond what any other species has demonstrated the capacity for, which is the capacity for all the above.

In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty.

The acceptance of corporatism causes us to deny and undermine the legitimacy of the individual as citizen in a democracy. The result of such a denial is a growing imbalance which leads to our adoration of self-interest and our denial of the public good.

Self-interest is an ineffable feeling which shall follow us into God's very presence since they say there is a hierarchy even among the Holy Saints.

Democrats see our voluntary military supported by taxpayer dollars as their personal Salvation Army. Self-interested behavior, such as deploying troops to serve the nation, is considered boorish in Manhattan salons.

Cats are autocrats of naked self-interest. They are both amoral and immoral, consciously breaking rules. Their ''evil'' look at such times is no human projection: the cat may be the only animal who savors the perverse or reflects upon it

Excesses are essentially gestures. It is easy to be extremely cruel, magnanimous, humble or self-sacrificing when we see ourselves as actors in a performance.

This is partly a function of approval ratings. People pay attention [to polls] and start saying, 'Lets take a more independent tack.' It is frankly self-interest, self-preservation.