Oliver Stone Quotes & Sayings

My protest against digital has been me saying, "What's going to happen to film?" The result is that Kodak is out of business. That's a national tragedy. We've got to keep making film. — Oliver Stone

If we [Americans] are a strong people, a united people, why do we always have to hear how great we are? What is this self-love? Where does this come from? It got worse, because after the war we thought we'd won it. That's the first myth. Frankly, Russia won it. The Soviet Union sacrificed far greater form than anyone else to win that war. Secondly, we had the atomic bomb. We should not have dropped it on Japan. We did as an example to the Soviets, not to defeat Japan and to save American lives. These are myths that we explode with a lot of research early on. — Oliver Stone

Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that. — Oliver Stone

What Chavez has done [in Venezuela] is that he has brought extreme poverty to an end. — Oliver Stone

Forget the grand plan. Forget the master scheme. Forget control. That is the bleak but true basis of independent cinema. Inch by motherfuking inch we must, because we have no other choice. — Oliver Stone

One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia. — Oliver Stone

I make my films like you're going to die if you miss the next minute. You better not go get popcorn. — Oliver Stone

In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity - and it was an atrocity. — Oliver Stone

I'm terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily. — Oliver Stone

By creating false environment of a war on drugs, and cruel and unusual punishment with these crimes, 50% of our U.S. population is in jail without having hurt anybody, mostly for drugs. — Oliver Stone

Well first of all you have to make the character strong so that people can follow that. And then hopefully that character can integrate with the background of the social situation that people can recognize. — Oliver Stone

I like automatic weapons. I fought for my right to use them in Vietnam. — Oliver Stone

I've been to war, and it's not easy to kill. It's bloody and messy and totally horrifying, and the consequences are serious. — Oliver Stone

I think that many people in history who had power were bumped off because they had power. — Oliver Stone

It's interesting that when economic times were the hardest, that's when many people embraced liberalism. — Oliver Stone

I couldn't despise a man more than George W. Bush. — Oliver Stone

I might as well be myself. Everyone else is taken. — Oliver Stone

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. ... And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. — Oliver Stone

Let the capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own corpses and there will never be another war on the face of the earth. — Oliver Stone

Anybody who's been through a divorce will tell you that at one point. they've thought murder. The line between thinking murder and doing murder isn't that major. — Oliver Stone

I'm going to hold onto my Blu-ray collection because I really think it's hardware and it's important. I don't want to live in a cloud, all my life. — Oliver Stone

According to Japanese scholar Yuki Tanaka, the United States firebombed over a hundred Japanese cities. Destruction reached 99.5 percent in the city of Toyama, driving Secretary of War Henry Stimson to tell Truman he "did not want to have the US get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities," though Stimson did almost nothing to halt the slaughter. He had managed to delude himself into believing Arnold's promise that he would limit "damage to civilians." Future Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who was on LeMay's staff in 1945, agreed with his boss's comment that of the United States lost the war, they'd all be tried as war criminals and deserved to be convicted.
Hatred towards the Japanese ran so deep that almost no one objected to the mass slaughter of civilians. — Oliver Stone

Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another. This painting here. I bought it 10 years ago for 60 thousand dollars. I could sell it today for 600. The illusion has become real and the more real it becomes, the more desperately they want it. — Oliver Stone

Independence is a state of mind. Independence is spirit without category. — Oliver Stone

I was lost, and that war [in Vietnam] was very alienating - not that I was against it or for it, but I was just lost after that war. As were many Americans. — Oliver Stone

I wish that George W. Bush had gone to Vietnam, because he would have seen history in a different light. He would've experienced it in a different light because I don't think he understood the nature of war. — Oliver Stone

By the early 1920s, the America of Jefferson, Lincoln, Whitman, and the young William Jennings Bryan had ceased to exist. It had been replaced by the world of McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, and Woodrow Wilson. — Oliver Stone

I would vote for the man who's lived life, who's done different occupations, who's been out in the real world and struggled to make a living, struggled to raise a family, struggled with life as it exists. So I'd vote for experience, honest experience. — Oliver Stone

Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valour pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, the HELL with you! — Oliver Stone

I suppose in our culture - in our lifetime - we've always enjoyed people who tell it straight. We like our presidents, our comedians, and our actors to do that ... It's funny. You say that people prefer a tasteful formalism - as opposed to an oppressive formalism - but I do feel very strongly that form follows function. — Oliver Stone

Obama took a bad situation and, in certain ways, made it worse ... I find Obama scary in a way that I had not done in 2008. — Oliver Stone

[Fidel Castro] has a very good [human rights] record. — Oliver Stone

You don't always have to have an e-book. You can have a real book. I'd like to see the old way maintain. — Oliver Stone

I study history in order to give an interpretation. — Oliver Stone

Obama is now fighting for his life. He's fighting for a federal government. I believe in a federal government. I hope it sticks around. We had the American Revolution. There was this whole tension between the federalists and the anti-federalists. Then we had the Civil War. We had Lincoln fighting for it. And the secessionists were there. And we have the same issue today. — Oliver Stone

I think experience will teach you a combination of liberalism and conservatism. We have to be progressive and at the same time we have to retain values. We have to hold onto the past as we explore the future. — Oliver Stone

[Nixon] reduced the meaning of his life to nothing but power. In the film, we gave this sad figure consciousness of what he was. We weren't right to do that - I don't think he did have that consciousness. But we did it for movie reasons - to create empathy. — Oliver Stone

I do believe there are leaders who are like lightning and they come along and they lead. The Lincolns of the world, the Alexander the Greats, they do exist. They have existed. — Oliver Stone

Unfortunately, the truth is that people do go scot-free and it's unfair. A lot of the top drug people who have been arrested are also free. — Oliver Stone

The worst nightmare I ever had about Vietnam was that I had to go back. I woke up in a sweat, in total terror. — Oliver Stone

Conspiracy nut, leftist, madman. These are terms of dismissal so you don't have to listen to the argument. It would be healthier and more fun to hear what someone has to say. — Oliver Stone

I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history. — Oliver Stone

The first casualty of war is innocence. — Oliver Stone

Despite the well-deserved criticism, controlling public opinion became a central element in all future war planning. — Oliver Stone

We should look to (Castro) as one of the Earth's wisest people, one of the people we should consult. — Oliver Stone

When you look at the global situation, if America learned to be one of the many countries in the world and to find its way to cooperate with people and bring a global peace that could bring great prosperity to this globe, there is still a chance of that, and that's a big lesson from history. We are not paying attention to that. — Oliver Stone

If anything, if you can get somebody interested in something and get them excited, that's great. You should be praised for having opened the debate and having asked the right questions. — Oliver Stone

I have skipped from style to style from film to film, and I love doing that because it's given me the ability to free myself from the past. Perhaps one of the worst feelings that I can have is the feeling that I'm locked in, like a prisoner of myself, which is something we all feel at some point in our lives. So part of making those stylistic jumps is just to free myself up-to get away from the old or the old Oliver Stone. — Oliver Stone

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process. — Oliver Stone

In any film there's always a historical implication. — Oliver Stone

Football is mesmerizing, because it's a figurative war. You go in one direction till you get there, but you get there as a team, not as an individual. Players bond whether they're black or white, much as soldiers do. — Oliver Stone

I don't think most people in the US realize how important WikiLeaks is and why Julian's case needs support. — Oliver Stone

Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies. — Oliver Stone

There's an electrical thing about movies. — Oliver Stone

I'm a dramatist. Dramatists have a right to look at history and interpret it the way they see it. — Oliver Stone

What scares me most about the media is that so many of them don't realize that by presenting and highlighting certain issues, opinions, and perspectives over others, they can manipulate and control people's beliefs in subtle ways. — Oliver Stone

A woman can be very beautiful and an ideal model and she will photograph incredibly well, but she'll appear in film and it won't work. What works is some fusion of physical beauty with some mental field or whatever you call it. I don't know. — Oliver Stone

Films might get to you and your subconscious and make a little difference, but when the vigilante drum beats, the mob screams and the conformists go along with it. There have to be people who are non-conformists. — Oliver Stone

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed. — Oliver Stone

You do the best job you can. You take it step by step. It's hard enough to make a movie. If it works, that's great. If it means something beyond the moment to somebody, they can take it and it lasts through the years, we'll see. — Oliver Stone

I'd like to do a story about the medieval ages where in every scene you'd sort of feel that you were in the 12th century. That would be great to get that feeling. — Oliver Stone

Prominent among the American capitalists with ties to Nazi counterparts was Prescott Bush, the father of one president and grandfather of another. — Oliver Stone

Many films are forgotten and deserve to be, but others
glom onto the DNA and they keep a share of the collective consciousness.
It's a profound question: What are we here for? What is the purpose,
the sum effect of our work? — Oliver Stone

Americans, like people everywhere, are in thrall to their visions of the past, rarely realizing the extent to which their understanding of history shapes behavior in the here and now. Historical understanding defines people's very sense of what is thinkable and achievable. As a result, many have lost the ability to imagine a world that is substantially different from and better than what exists today. — Oliver Stone

I've liked different women at different times in my life. I've been attracted to white women. I've been attracted to black women. I've been attracted to Asian women. I've been attracted to various subspecies of women. I can say with gratitude that I've been able to experiment. — Oliver Stone

The second [presidential] term changes, and I think that John F. Kennedy certainly ran on that and he knew that second term would give him oxygen, and he needed it. Unfortunately, he didn't get there. — Oliver Stone

Everyone in the world is impacted by the United States' Big Brother attitude toward the world. We need countries to say no to the United States. The United States is the dominant power in the universe, with its eavesdropping abilities, cyber abilities. And the world is in danger with our tyranny. — Oliver Stone

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history. — Oliver Stone

The secret to writing a screenplay is keeping you ass in the chair.
(ASS + CHAIR = PAGES!) — Oliver Stone

[When making movies I] set out to be authentic to [myself] and to put it down the way [I] feel it and know it and interpret it. And then others sometimes key into it and get it. — Oliver Stone

I do believe that movies are subject to a million interpretations. — Oliver Stone

I'd love to do historical pictures more, but I don't know if I can. — Oliver Stone

What needs to happen is more of a global understanding, and I believe the United States can work as a global partner and not be the hegemon. — Oliver Stone

This myth that America has this atomic bomb that makes us right, it makes us good, it makes us set the agenda for the world. Everywhere, we can go global, we determine. — Oliver Stone

I've met people who will go to a movie that I can't stand and they say that they saw that movie ten times. There's something they like and identified in that movie, and I don't see it. — Oliver Stone

I went to Vietnam, and I was there for a long time. [Using marijuana] made the difference between staying human or, as Michael Douglas said, becoming a beast. — Oliver Stone

Fear may very well be a caveman fear of the predator, of the giant lizard chasing them - maybe that's what Steven Spielberg connects with so well in Lost World. — Oliver Stone

Bin Laden was completely protected by the oil companies in this country who told [President] Bush not to go after him because it would piss off the Saudis. — Oliver Stone

I have the right to interpretation as a dramatist. I research. It's my responsibility to find the research. It's my responsibility to digest it and do the best that I can with it. But at a certain point that responsibility will become an interpretation. — Oliver Stone

When I was a child, I'd see a movie, I took it for what it was, I enjoyed it. And if I believed it I would tend to be more interested in knowing more about it. — Oliver Stone

JFK was leading the world, leading the United States into a new position with the Soviet Union. He was calling for the end of the Cold War. He would have been reelected in 1964 because he was vastly popular. — Oliver Stone

The Nation observed, If you steal $25, you're a thief. If you steal $250,000, you're an embezzler. If you steal $2,500,000, you're a financier. — Oliver Stone

I'd like to be honest to my time, and I lived from 1946, and I want to understand why our country, which I love so much, and was a great country when I was young, it seemed, became this monster vampire on the face of humanity- a vampire squid, to quote Matt Taibbi, sucking out the juices of all mankind. Why? It's a basic question. — Oliver Stone

Most American view World War II nostalgically as the "good war," in which the United States and its allies triumphed over German Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese militarism. The rest of the world remembers it as the bloodiest war in human history. By the time it was over, more than 60 million people lay dead, including 27 million Russians, between 10 million and 20 million Chinese, 6 million Jews, 5.5 million Germans, 3 million non-Jewish Poles, 2.5 million Japanese, and 1.5 million Yugoslavs. Austria, Great Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and the United States each counted between 250,000 and 333,000 dead. — Oliver Stone

Lunch is for wimps. — Oliver Stone

One of the joys of going to the movies was that it was trashy, and we should never lose that. — Oliver Stone

Nationalism and patriotism are the two most evil forces that I know of in this century or in any century and cause more wars and more death and more destruction to the soul and to human life than anything else. — Oliver Stone

But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with editing. — Oliver Stone

We are seeing entertainment become politics and we're seeing people acting out in ways that are extremely violent and destabilizing. No rules apply. We're in an era of no rules now, it seems. — Oliver Stone

I will come out with my interpretation. If I'm wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take. — Oliver Stone

Hell is the impossibility of reason. — Oliver Stone

Venezuela is a democratically elected government. These people who keep protesting are sore losers, — Oliver Stone

We all have idealism. We think we're healthy and then, all of a sudden, one day, you have cancer. The truth has a mind of its own. — Oliver Stone

Each year, the The U.S. Army & its contractors SHOOT, STAB, MUTILATE, & KILL more than TEN THOUSAND live animals in cruel training exercises. — Oliver Stone

But in answer to your question about the conspiracy angle, I think that any historian worth his salt, and this is where I fault Stephen Ambrose and a lot of these guys who attack me - not all of life is a result of conspiracy by any means! Accident occurs alongside conspiracy. — Oliver Stone

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other religions were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do. — Oliver Stone

When I make a new movie, I always get stuck with, "That's not an Oliver Stone film." But I don't know what to do about that except just move on. — Oliver Stone

I love films. I love fiction films, too. I do. I love making them, but it has to be the right one. Hopefully, I'll never become a director for hire. It's horrible to make a film that you're not really interested in. — Oliver Stone

To fail is not tragic. To be human, is. — Oliver Stone