Hecht Quotes & Sayings

Epistemology is still a central issue in philosophy, and we moderns are particularly vexed with the question of how we can come to know anything outside what we already know, that is, how we can climb out of our own culture's basic assumptions, and how we can hope to see beyond our brains' basic formation. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Plato offers the amazing idea that contemplation of the way things really are is, in itself, a purifying process that can bring human beings into the only divinity there is. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Mysteries, like the Masonic rites, are ones parents and elders are sworn not to reveal to the uninitiated, which include all children. And so we sought for signs. — Anthony Hecht

Kindness, tolerance, integrity, modesty, generosity - these are attributes that events permit us. They are our holiday moods, and we are as proud of them as of the fine clothes we have hung away to wear on occasions. — Ben Hecht

Lucian [of Samosata; 120-190 CE] was trying to make his audience laugh, rather than start a revolution — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew. — Anthony Hecht

That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence. — Ben Hecht

Socrates counts among those great minds who actually cultivated doubt in the name of truth. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It's just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different. — Ben Hecht

I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt. — Ben Hecht

A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling "Thief."
If he is wise he has not been impoverished.
Nor has the fool been enriched.
The thief flatters us by stealing.
We flatter him by complaining. — Ben Hecht

In Hollywood, a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel. — Ben Hecht

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind ... — Ben Hecht

There's only one law you gotta follow to keep outta trouble. Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doin' it. — Ben Hecht

Death is no problem because when we are alive we are not dead and when we are dead we don't know it. So long as you can possibly worry about it, you've got nothing to worry about. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins. — John Scalzi

History
Even Eve, the only soul in all of time
to never have to wait for love,
must have leaned some sleepless nights
alone against the garden wall
and wailed, cold, stupefied, and wild
and wished to trade-in all of Eden
to have but been a child.
In fact, I gather that is why she leapt and fell from grace,
that she might have a story of herself to tell
in some other place. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass. — Ben Hecht

You don't always get to chose who you fall in love with — Stephani Hecht

When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy. — Ben Hecht

The German mass murder of the Jews ... brought my Jewishness to the surface. — Ben Hecht

One must devote oneself to figuring out that one must live for the good, for its own sake. It was a secular morality. Contemporaries did not know what to call a thing like that - he questioned their every faith, their every way of life - so they called it atheism. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace. — Ben Hecht

Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing. — Ben Hecht

H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators. — Ben Hecht

Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle. — Ben Hecht

Plato's sense that this was the only religion that would hold up nowadays was thoroughgoing. The only religion that could be really believed by anyone in his time, he said, is based on belief that the stars have intelligence, and that we and they have immortal souls of some sort.18 The more we learn - and mathematics is the queen of the soul's subjects - the more we will ascend toward self-knowledge and universal truth. This ascension is the drama of Plato's religion. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite; you can't have both. — Ben Hecht

Job moans that it is wanton cruelty that suffering people, brutalized or in mourning, should have to relive their horrors in dreams. In fact, why should any of us, in seeking rest, be met with nightmares? — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Since my boyhood, I have sought always to please, but out of a kindness in me, never out of fear or respect for what was in others. — Ben Hecht

A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. — Ben Hecht

Working with Bryan Cranston on 'Breaking Bad' has been totally thrilling because he is so clear in his approach. — Jessica Hecht

The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type - as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer - an insipid one or a clumsy one - but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes and gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can write. People who hang around writers for years - as producers did - who are much smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write. — Ben Hecht

I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer. — Ben Hecht

The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links. — Ben Hecht

What sparked my interest in the combat sports in general was my older brother. I guess older brothers are supposed to pick on their young brothers, but mine took it to a whole new level. He broke my collarbone, broke my rib, and knocked my teeth out. — Jake Hecht

I see a lot of fog and a few lights. I like it when life's hidden. It gives you a chance to imagine nice things, nicer than they are. — Ben Hecht

None of us can truly know what we mean to other people, and none of us can know what our future self will experience. History and philosophy ask us to remember these mysteries, to look around at friends, family, humanity, at the surprises life brings - the endless possibilities that living offers - and to persevere. There is love and insight to live for, bright moments to cherish, and even the possibility of happiness, and the chance of helping someone else through his or her own troubles. Know that people, through history and today, understand how much courage it takes to stay. Bear witness to the night side of being human and the bravery it entails, and wait for the sun. If we meditate on the record of human wisdom we may find there reason enough to persist and find our way back to happiness. The first step is to consider the arguments and evidence and choose to stay. After that, anything may happen. First, choose to stay. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

The sacrificial part of the Greek religion had to do with submitting to the wild chaotic world beyond one's own will; getting used to the idea that your rational plans will be knocked around by larger forces. The ecstatic-ritual part of ancient Greek religion was a kind of throwing oneself into the chaos, not pitting your rationality against the tempestuous world, but rather leaving your rationality on the shore, letting the waves toss you about, and coming to identify with the waves, with the storm, with the weather. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

I have lived in other cities but been inside of only one. I once wore all the windows of Chicago and all its doorways on a key ring. Salons, mansions, alleys, courtrooms, depots, factories, hotels, police cells, the lake front, the rooftops and the sidewalks were my haberdashery. — Ben Hecht

I have known a number of Don Juans who were good studs and who cavorted between the sheets without a psychiatrist to guide them. But most of the busy love-makers I knew were looking for masculinity rather than practicing it. They were fellows of dubious lust. — Ben Hecht

Tell it, Fanny. About the crowds, streets, buildings, lights, about the whirligig of loneliness, about the humpty-dumpty clutter of longings. And then explain about the summer parks and the white snow and the moon window in the sky. Throw in a poignantly ironical dissertation on life, on its uncharted aimlessness, and speak like Sherwood Anderson about the desire that stir in the heart. Speak like Remy de Gourmont and Dostoevsky and Stevie Crane, like Schopenhauer and Dreiser and Isaiah; speak like all the great questioners whose tongues have wagged and whose hearts have burned with questions. He will listen bewilderedly and, perhaps, only perhaps, understand for a moment the dumb pathos of your eyes. — Ben Hecht

I understand boxing has been around for so long, and it's old money. The sport has such a history, I just don't understand how it's even a competition though. — Jake Hecht

The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people. — Ben Hecht

I look and look, / As though I could be saved simply by looking — Anthony Hecht

OMG, I am so WTF over it, I'm LOL-ing — Stephani Hecht

Producers are men who will keep their heads in the noisy presence of writers and directors and not be carried away by art in any of its subversive guises. Their task is to guard against the unusual. They are the trusted loyalists of cliche. — Ben Hecht

We believe each other into being. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice. — Anthony Hecht

My second passion besides fighting is traveling. So, for me to be able to go somewhere like the places I've been is just awesome. — Jake Hecht

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos. — Ben Hecht

Out of the seventy movies I've written some ten of them were not entirely waste product. — Ben Hecht

The factors that laid low so whooping and puissant an empire as the old Hollywood are many. I can think of a score, including the barbarian hordes of Television. But there is one that stands out for me in the post-mortem ... The factor had to do with the basis of movie-making: 'Who shall be in charge of telling the story.' — Ben Hecht

Without the outside context of a political war between faith and reason, Epicurus does not fear that any single point he might award to the religious will be used against him. Nor is he eager to have his followers shunning prayer or ritual in order to demonstrate publicly their disbelief. Outside the context of a political war between faith and reason, more nuanced arrangements may be safely undertaken. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

I was pregnant with my first child during 'Stop/Kiss,' and for whatever reason, the fact that I was so physically uncomfortable allowed me to be freer in the role. — Jessica Hecht

People always think I'm so calm and ethereal. But my family certainly doesn't feel that way all the time. They tease me about it. — Jessica Hecht

A lot of campaigning for food purity is a translated worry about abundance. You still eat your fill, but you agonize over the food's contents. We are a pack of animals that allows some to have excess food while others starve. Those who have so much get finicky about what is good to eat; they become obsessed by it, re-creating scarcity for themselves so as to not feel guilty, confused, or dangerously envied. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Real Evolution is a state of consciousness. To really and truly evolve, means to align with the truth; to align with something other than the illusion and delusion of the ego mind and lower states of consciousness. — Arielle Hecht

Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him. The producer, director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it's a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it's a flop. — Ben Hecht

Of the 60 movies I wrote, more than half were written in two weeks or less. — Ben Hecht

Some primary reasons that both Plato and Aristotle had for believing in God were utterly erroneous - simple errors caused by our being stuck to the planet and misled by the sensation that the planet is standing still. If they had been aware that the Earth spins, they would have understood that, by and large, we are making our own light show in the night sky. As it was, the precision of the movements of all the stars seemed astonishing. If we knew how we lined up among the planets, their motion would not seem so strange and willful. Also, had the philosophers been able to leave planet Earth for a jaunt in outer space, they could have seen that, at a distance from gravity and atmosphere, moving things tend to keep moving, without any need for an impelling force. From out there, the motion of the planets would seem natural as well. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Then he closed his eyes and said grace silently. I noticed that any meal set before Andy was given respect. Dinners in diners--frozen shrimp with canned tomato sauce, canned vegetables, salads made with the worst part of the lettuce. And then chocolate and vanilla ice cream for dessert. "I'll pay extra for it if I have to," Andy said to the waitress. — Julie Hecht

I know that a man who tries to convert me to any cause
is actually at work on his own conversion,
unless he is looking for funds under the mask of some fancied nobility. — Ben Hecht

The history of doubt is not only a history of the denial of God; it is also a history of those who have grappled with the religious questions and found the possibility of other answers. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Why do people report themselves to be as happy as they were back when we all had less? Well, for one thing, we are comparing two societies that are both majestically wealthy in comparison to almost all societies throughout history. Neither the surveyed Americans of the 1950s nor those of the 2000s were struggling with endemic distress- hunger, pain, humiliation. And average people who are not in such distress are statistically more likely to call themselves happy than not. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself. — Ben Hecht

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library. — Anthony Hecht

Now look: Droplets of oil were dotted across the front of her best dress, over the mound of her stomach. She was clumsy and fat-stomached and she didn't even have the sense to wear an apron while she was cooking. Also she had paid way too much for this dress, sixty-four dollars at Hecht's, which would scandalize Ira if he knew. How could she have been so greedy? She dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand. Took a deep breath. Well. Anyhow. — Anne Tyler

What better is there to sigh for than happiness, yesterday's or tomorrow's. — Ben Hecht

I had the gift, and arrived at the technique
That called up spirits from the vasty deep... — Anthony Hecht

Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you're in over your head. — Ben Hecht

I'm the only one in my family - I'm a practicing Jew - who has attached themselves to religion in a more traditional way. — Jessica Hecht

Trust just doesn't come because you ask
for it. It has to be earned. Even then it's usually a
false word people toss around just to get what
they want. Then in the end they always end up
doing the same thing, stabbing you in the back. - Andrew to Vapor — Stephani Hecht

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. — Ben Hecht

I know that man who shows me his wealth
is like the beggar who shows me his poverty;
they are both looking for alms from me,
the rich man for the alms of my envy,
the poor one for the alms of my guilt. — Ben Hecht

Get this straight, you can use a Leopard in a mission, you can send him out to kill for you. Hell, you can even fuck one. The one thing you can never, ever do is trust one. Leopards by nature are cold, emotionless and psychotic. They were made with one purpose and that was to destroy others. So whatever you do, don't turn your back on one and you sure as hell don't fall in love with one of the batshit, crazy loons - Carson to Trevor about Shane — Stephani Hecht

Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away. — Ben Hecht

I have known a handful of producers who actually were equal or superior to the writers with whom they worked. These producers were a new kind of nonwriting writer hatched by the movies - as Australia produced wingless birds. They wrote without pencils or even words. Using a sort of mime-like talent, they could make up things like writers. — Ben Hecht

The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them. — Ben Hecht

We are humanity, Kant says. Humanity needs us because we are it. Kant believes in duty and considers remaining alive a primary human duty. For him one is not permitted to "renounce his personality," and while he states living as a duty, it also conveys a kind of freedom: we are not burdened with the obligation of judging whether our personality is worth maintaining, whether our life is worth living. Because living it is a duty, we are performing a good moral act just by persevering. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Love is a hole in the heart. — Ben Hecht

The scene we shot with Charlie Rose was actually the last piece that was ever shot for 'Breaking Bad.' My daughter and I flew to New York; we got to shoot in the 'Charlie Rose' studio. Adam Godley and Jessica Hecht are such expert performers that we were able to get it very beautifully and very quickly. — Peter Gould

Children know from a remarkably early age that things are being kept from them, that grown-ups participate in a world of mysteries. — Anthony Hecht

Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade. — Ben Hecht

If you look at a testimony of love from 2,000 years ago it can still exactly speak to you, whereas medical advice from only 100 years ago is ridiculous. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Yet one of the most important things we have to learn is how to cope with abundance and with our hunger for yet more abundance — Jennifer Michael Hecht

You think he has some bomb defusing MacGyver contraption cooked up that involves lube, condoms, and a paper clip? — Stephani Hecht

A wise man will not trust too much those who admire him, even for his wisdom. He knows that an admirer is never truly satisfied until he can substitute pity for his admiration and disdain for his applause. Our admirers are always on the lookout for evidence of our collapse. They find a solace in the fact that our superiority was transitory and that we end as they do - old and useless. — Ben Hecht

Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat. — Ben Hecht

Doctors of Science, what is man that he
Should hope to come to a good end?
The best is not to have been born. — Anthony Hecht

Socially, a journalist ranks somewhere between the madam of a whorehouse and a bartender. but spiritually he ranks with Galileo, for he knows the world is round. — Ben Hecht

I can't wait to continue traveling and do as much as I can possibly do. — Jake Hecht

Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty. — Ben Hecht

Logan couldn't have been more surprised if Satan himself had come up from hell and started ladling soup at a homeless shelter. — Stephani Hecht

Maybe at 87 you slow down a drop, but between 44 and 64, there is no difference. — Jessica Hecht

The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them - as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people. — Ben Hecht

In the court of the movie Owner, none criticized, none doubted. And none dared speak of art. In the Owner's mind art was a synonym for bankruptcy. The movie Owners are the only troupe in the history of entertainment that has never been seduced by the adventure of the entertainment world. — Ben Hecht

Why is it that men can be bastards and women must wear pearls and smile? — Lynn Hecht Schafran

Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene. — Ben Hecht

Immorality, perversion, infidelity, cannibalism, etc., are unassailable by church and civic league if you dress them up in the togas and talliths of the Good Book. — Ben Hecht