Dennis Hopper Quotes

In fact history does not belong to us; but we belong to it.

We are products of the past and its useful to remember that as we move into the future.

I think Hollywood has gone in a disastrous path. It's terrible. The years of cinema that were great were the '30s, '40s, not so much the '50s...but then the foreign films took over and it was a great age of cinema as American directors were influenced by them and that fueled the '50s and '60s and '70s.

When you look at my life, you can go back to the late 1930s, what I saw was, first of all, Hitler, he was going to live forever. Mussolini was in for 10,000 years. You had the Soviet Union, which was, by definition, going to last forever. There was the British empire -- nobody imagined it could come to an end. So why should one believe in any kind of permanence?

History is full of people who thought they were right -- absolutely right, completely right, without a shadow of a doubt. And because history never seems like history when you are living through it, it is tempting for us to think the same.

If filmmakers are ignorant of the past, they laborto re-invent the wheel in every picture. You sit and think, 'Well,we're back to 1903 here.'

The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.

I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history.

He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.

To think historically is almost the same thing now as if in all ages history had been made according to theory.

I think of myself in a continuum as a woman. Two hundred years ago, it would have been very difficult for me to write at all.

Ten years from now I think people are going to look back and say Willis Reed pulled a Curt Schilling...Willis Reed scored four points. Curt Schilling went seven innings against one of the best offenses of recent memory. No offense to Willis Reed.

I just finished a film a few days ago, and I came home and said I learned so much today. So if I can come home from working on a little film after doing it for 45 years and say, "I learned so much today," that shows something about the cinema. Because the cinema is very young. It's only 100 years old.

Ialways think it's funny when Indians celebrate Thanksgiving. I mean, sure, the Indians and Pilgrims were best friends during the first Thanksgiving, but a few years later, the Pilgrims were shooting Indians. So I'm never quite sure why we eat Turkey like everybody else. (101)

I don't think we've seen any cinema yet. I think we've seen 100 years of illustrated text.

History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film.

Look, history is interesting. I read three books on George Washington last year. And my opinion is that if they're still analyzing the first president, the 43rd president ought to be doing what he thinks is right. And eventually, historians will come and realize whether... the decisions I made made sense.

If we want to know history, I would think there would be every reason to.

History proves nothing because it contains everything.

Well, I started years ago with Flashdance and we also did Coyote Ugly, so I have put my toe in the water before with romantic comedies. I love making them and I love making people laugh. That's a trademark that I don't think any producer would turn down.

History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning ofthings, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,--when did burdock and plantain sprout first?

I did a film many years ago called The Man Without A Face.Gaby [Hoffmann] was in with Mel Gibson. That was his directing debut. He did a great job.

Like the seasons of the year, like history, truth always repeats itself.

History is not truth versus falsehoods, but a mixture of both, a mélange of tendencies, reactions, dreams, errors, and power plays. What's important is what we make of it; its moral use. By writing history, we can widen readers' thinking and deepen their sympathies in every direction. Perhaps history should show us not how to control the world, but how to enlarge, deepen, and discipline ourselves.