Charlton Heston Quotes That Are iconic, passionate and versatile

There's no such thing as a good gun. There's no such thing as a bad gun. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a very dangerous thing. A gun in the hands of a good person is no danger to anyone except the bad guys.

Political correctness is just tyranny with manners.

I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history's pocket change. Courage is history's true currency.

Dirty Harry, for example. Clint Eastwood was not a rogue cop. He was a maverick cop, but he was a good guy.

One way or another, if you're persistent, fortune always smiles on you.

Another plague upon the land, as devastating as the locusts God loosed on the Egyptians, is 'Political Correctness.'

If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist.

If you see distinctions between the genders, it does not make you a sexist. If you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not make you a homophobe.

Moses is the keystone to every man's ethical code.

He was the first man of record in history to conceive of the law as separate from the will of a ruler, to choose whether a man should live by grace of law, or law by grace of man. In a literal sense Moses lives at every council table today.

Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing.

Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody — except bad people.

It's the camel's nose in the tent. Look at Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin - every one of these monsters, on seizing power, their first act was to confiscate all firearms in private hands.

In recent years, anyone in the government, certainly anyone in the FBI or the CIA, or recently, in again, Clint's film, In the Line of Fire, the main bad guy is the chief advisor to the president.

We will preach the truth to a new generation: The doorway to all freedoms is framed with muskets. It's time the apologists step aside and let freedom's followers lead the way.

I believe that in your heart you already know something is profoundly wrong.

When bartenders are responsible for drunk drivers' acts, and gunmakers are responsible for criminals' acts, and nobody is responsible for O. J. Simpson's acts, something is wrong.

The Internet is for lonely people. People should live.

You can spend a lifetime, and, if you're honest with yourself, never once was your work perfect.

And their pals vote for their stuff when they're not on the panel, and it just keeps going that way. And they tend to be very fringe artists, so anything before the 20th century is not worth considering. This is out of date.

A policemans job is only easy in a police state.

Clergymen tend to be unreliable and pompous figures.

Seldom Jewish rabbis, less often Catholic priests, but Protestant ministers tend to be... not really very admirable. Not necessarily evil, but silly. And wrong, of course.

What you hold in your hand is proof of man's power - against which our strength means nothing. It has the force of 100 spears. I warn you, man's ingenuity goes hand-in-hand with their cruelty. No creature is as devious or violent.

You could think of extraordinary examples to the contrary: The Grapes of Wrath... and even into the 70s.

I am very proud of the fact that I led the arts contingent on the civil rights march in the summer of '63. In many ways, I think it was the high-water mark of the civil rights movement.

I always work on the theory that the audience will believe you best if you believe yourself.

As an actor, I'm thankful I have lived not one life, but many.

Life is full of surprises, isn't it?

You simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don't. We disobey the social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.

I'm neither giving up nor giving in.

As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.

You could say that the paparazzi and the tabloids are sort of the 'assault weapons' of the First Amendment. They're ugly, a lot of people don't like them, but they're protected by the First Amendment - just as 'assault weapons' are protected by the Second Amendment.

In what I think is the most serious problem the world faces, which is the population explosion, we will come I think to a time when measures that are not even dreamt of now will become necessary.

I'm not a vegetarian but I want you to know that my four dogs are safe.

I have lived my whole life on the stage and screen before you. I found purpose and meaning in your response.

I intend to dedicate my remaining time as president of the NRA to ensure that the Second Amendment is safe from Al Gore and all those who threaten it.

The First Amendment is crucial. Of course it is. So are all the others. And the Second Amendment is the one that guarantees that people can bear arms to protect themselves.

I don't think rock music has any positive function.

A clear enunciation of these rights needs to be enshrined in the constitution to guarantee that this basic right of law-abiding gun owners and sportsmen shall not be infringed upon by anti-gun public officials.

[President Clinton] boasts about 186,000 people denied firearms under the Brady Law rules. The Brady Law has been in force for three years. In that time, they have prosecuted seven people and put three of them in prison. You know, the President has entertained more felons than that at fundraising coffees in the White House, for Pete's sake.

The big studio era is from the coming of sound until 1950, until I came in... I came in at a crux in film, which was the end of the studio era and the rise of filmmaking.

An epic is the easiest kind of picture to make badly.

Lenin in 1921 observed very presciently that motion pictures were the most powerful tool ever invented to shape the way we thought. He was right. Political films can be successful.

I've been a public person for most of my life. It has advantages and disadvantages. I can't take my kids to Disneyland. On the other hand, I can get a table at a restaurant or tickets to a play.

One of the [Million Mom] marchers said 'the hands that rock the cradle rule this nation.' I thought, 'no Madame, the hands that rock the cradle rule our families and governments and corporations. The hands that wrote the Constitution rule this nation'.

To me Moses is all men grown to gigantic proportions.

I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural way that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what resides in your heart. I fear you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you... the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is.

You cut their money back, for one thing... I go back a long way with the NEA.

Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can't be far behind.

To the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to tell you something: You can have my gun. You can pry it from my cold dead hands!

Society mends its wounds. And that's invariably true in all the tragedies, in the comedies as well. And certainly in the histories.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobedience of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men

To the world, you are America.

I've used too many pistols in too many movies. They're kind of heavy to carry.