Quotes quotes

View Quote Wars, conflict, it's all business. "One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero". Numbers sanctify.

View Quote Monsieur Verdoux (1947); Chaplin in this line is quoting an older statement of Bishop Beilby Porteus: "One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero."

View Quote I am at peace with God; my conflict is with man.

View Quote Monsieur Verdoux (1947). Chaplin's answer as a Verdoux that is to be guillotined and receives a visit from a priest who tell him 'I've come to ask you to make your peace with God'. "Comedy Quotes from the Movies" (2001), Larry Langman, Paul Gold, Ed. McFarland, p. 274

View Quote I am for people. I can't help it.

View Quote As quoted in The Observer [London] (28 September, 1952)

View Quote I remain just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

View Quote As quoted in The Observer (17 June 1960)

View Quote I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

View Quote My Autobiography (1964)

View Quote All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

View Quote My Autobiography (1964), Ch. 10

View Quote Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities — a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one.

View Quote My Autobiography (1964)

View Quote I am not religious in the dogmatic sense … I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything.

View Quote My Autobiography (1964), p. 287

View Quote I believe that faith is a precursor of all our ideas. Without faith, there never could have evolved hypothesis, theory, science or mathematics. I believe that faith is an extension of the mind. It is the key that negates the impossible. To deny faith is to refute oneself and the spirit that generates all our creative forces. My faith is in the unknown, in all that we do not understand by reason; I believe that what is beyond our comprehension is a simple fact in other dimensions, and that in the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good.

View Quote My Autobiography, p. 291

View Quote I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of an ancestral promptings and urgings, a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, of all of which I am the sum total.

View Quote My Autobiography (p. 271 Simon and Schuster 1964 edition)

View Quote Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. … The trouble is you won't fight. You've given up. But there's something just as inevitable as death. And that's life. Think of the power of the universe — turning the Earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you — if you'll only have the courage and the will to use it.

View Quote Calvero's answer to Terry's question: "What is there to fight for?" in Limelight (1952)

View Quote I feel I am privileged to express a hope. The hope is this: that we shall have peace throughout the world: that we shall abolish wars, and settle all international differences at the conference table: that we shall abolish all atom and hydrogen bombs, before they abolish us first.

View Quote In response to journalist for his views on the future of mankind at his 70th birthday (16 April 1959)

View Quote I am not a political man and I have no political convictions. I am an individual and a believer in liberty. That is all the politics I have. On the other hand I am not a super-patriot. Super-patriotism leads to Hitlerism — and we've had our lesson there. I don't want to create a revolution — I just want to create a few more films.

View Quote In response to journalist for comments on United States Attorney-General's announcement to revoke his re-entry visa, Cherbourg, England, as quoted in "Mr. Chaplin's Defense", The Guardian (23 September 1952)

View Quote Look up to the sky You'll never find rainbows If you’re looking down.

View Quote "Swing High Little Girl", opening song written and sung by Chaplin for the 1969 re-release of The Circus (1928) - Full text online

View Quote Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

View Quote As quoted in his obituary in The Guardian (28 December 1977)