110+ Jack Nicholson Quotes On Truth, Iconic And Intense

Jack Nicholson is an American actor and filmmaker who has had an extensive career spanning over six decades. He is best known for his roles in films such as The Shining, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Chinatown, and The Departed, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He has also been nominated for twelve Academy Awards, winning three, and has also won seven Golden Globe Awards. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Jack Nicholson on life, truth, iconic.

Top 10 Jack Nicholson Quotes

1. People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.
2. Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world.
3. Human beings are always going to find interesting ways of making a mess of their lives. It's human nature.
4. Men dominate because of physicality, and thus they have mercy where women do not.
5. I don't think many people have a very good understanding of leisure and the importance it plays in our lives.
6. I'm very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I'm positively against it. I don't have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life.
7. I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.
8. It's very easy to go down, so always live up. Incline yourself upward.
9. Son, we live in a world that has walls and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You!?
10. When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes mistakes they call it Nature!

Jack Nicholson Short Quotes

• You can call me Joker. And as you can see, I'm a lot happier.
• Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?
• The only way to break a bad habit was to replace it with a better habit.
• [on the birth of his son after having had two daughters] I finally got it right.
• Once you've been really bad in a movie, there's a certain kind of fearlessness you develop.
• Everybody's old enough for a beer, ain't that right, Mule?
• I'm definitely still wild at heart.
• You make me want to be a better man.
• We live, we die, and the wheels on the bus go round and round.
• When they say I'm a great actor, I close my ears because it's not good for you to think that way.

Jack Nicholson Quotes About Life

I love discourse. I'm dying to have my mind changed. I'm probably the only liberal who read Treason, by Ann Coulter. I want to know, you understand? I like listening to everybody. This to me is the elixir of life. — Jack Nicholson

I usually don't get too bogged down with my personal problems because that's a one-way street if you get yourself into a negative frame of mind and only see the dark side of life. — Jack Nicholson

I didn't know that my sister was really my mother until I was thirty-seven years old. But life has taught me that there have been a lot of things that I didn't know. — Jack Nicholson

I've never lost a friend over work. I come from a small-town environment and I remember my childhood impressions that, if you were a conniver or a fink or whatever, everybody knew about it and you were a louse for the rest of your life. So I never lost those values in some way. — Jack Nicholson

Life doesn't have to be about finding Osama bin Laden or becoming the president of the United States. Life is about the little things, which is one of the things you learn when you get older. — Jack Nicholson

I never had a policy about marriage. I got married very young in life and I always think in all relationships, I've always thought that it's counterproductive to have a theory on that. — Jack Nicholson

There are many directors in the middle range who've made mostly successful pictures, and then there are a few great directors who've had some successes and some failures. I suppose my life would be smoother if I wasn't almost totally enamored of the latter category. — Jack Nicholson

Now comes the part where I relieve you, the little people, of the burden of your failed and useless lives. But remember, as my plastic surgeon always said: if you gotta go, go with a smile. — Jack Nicholson

Always try in interviews to avoid the cliches about the problems of public life. — Jack Nicholson

My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life. — Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson Quotes About Truth

You can't handle the truth! — Jack Nicholson

I have never lied to you, I have always told you some version of the truth. — Jack Nicholson

Time keeps no measure when true friends are parted, No record day by day; the sands move not for those who, loyal-hearted, friendship's firm laws obey. — Jack Nicholson

You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures. You can follow your instincts, which will probably get you in trouble. Or, you can follow the money, which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth. — Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson Quotes About People

I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye. But I can't look into the eyes of everyone who wants to look into mine; I can't emotionally cope with that kind of volume. Sunglasses are part of my armor. — Jack Nicholson

I don't have any plugs or tucks but people do what they want. I look at it as mutilation. — Jack Nicholson

A star on a movie set is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear. — Jack Nicholson

Decent people shouldn't live here. They'd be happier some place else. — Jack Nicholson

Because you know, down deep in my heart, when all is said and done, I still live under the illusion that basically people think of me as an up-and-coming young actor. — Jack Nicholson

Staying together is a challenge. We all have to accept qualities in other people that aren't always exactly what we want or need. — Jack Nicholson

It's difficult for people sometimes to recognise when they're happy. People sometimes seem to me to be afraid to be happy. — Jack Nicholson

I don't want people to know what I'm actually like. It's not good for an actor. — Jack Nicholson

That's what I like about the movie business: you're always in contact with wonderful and interesting people. — Jack Nicholson

I'd prefer if people had no impressions of me. As a kid, I had to tell my own family, "Please, just don't talk about me!" Because they always got it wrong. Always. I just didn't want them to tell anyone anything about me. — Jack Nicholson

Jack Nicholson Famous Quotes And Sayings

A lot of people manage to find common ground and not let disagreements or tensions build up and destroy them, and other people break up or get divorced. I don't think anything is ever going to change that situation. You simply try to find an accommodation and an understanding with another person and work from there. — Jack Nicholson

If it is difficult to know yourself as an individual, it seems to be more complex as a couple. So if you say, "Oh I like a person who is like this and that," you might take away the possibility of seeing the only one that might be right for you. — Jack Nicholson

I've always had an urge to feed my need to have fun and feel free. I don't see any interesting alternatives. — Jack Nicholson

I'm against cronyism, and I had to learn that early on. Like, I don't have an entourage, because I saw the negative effects of those things. — Jack Nicholson

I would never want to vilify somebody who considered abortion murder. I was an illegitimate child myself. I may not have existed today. — Jack Nicholson

I don't know if this is a true statistic, but I heard somewhere that there are three times as many single women over forty as single men. That's what we got from the women's movement. The chickens have come home to roost. — Jack Nicholson

It's not like I'm starved for company - I have a few very good lady friends - but there's only a certain amount of times a woman wants to see you and never go out for dinner. — Jack Nicholson

Before I moved into the mainstream of American movies, I wrote a script as an experiment. I wanted to get very far away from the clichés about the three-act play - structure, development. — Jack Nicholson

We learn how to kiss, or to drink, talk to our buddies-all the things that you can't really teach in social studies or history-we all learn them at the movies. — Jack Nicholson

My point of view, while extremely cogent, is unpopular. . . . That the repressive nature of the legalities vis-a-vis drugs are destroying the legal system and corrupting the police system. — Jack Nicholson

I'm the age where we didn't have television as kids. So when I saw my nieces and nephews watching Howdy Doody, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and so forth, I thought the world had gone mad. — Jack Nicholson

I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy. — Jack Nicholson

And this, incidentally, is my thumbnail sketch of American marriage: A woman sees a man; she likes him. Now she jumps on this thing and rides it to some kind of standstill. Then she changes it and trains it, and to the exact degree that she's able to do this, she disrespects him. — Jack Nicholson

Even in the most sophisticated person, it is the primitive eye that watches the film. — Jack Nicholson

Women are sort of like motorcycle gangs with me. They get really shy and polite. I don't know why. — Jack Nicholson

I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability. — Jack Nicholson

Through all permutations and youthful poetry, I came to believe that the film actor was the great "literateur" of his time. — Jack Nicholson

I know I can act. There aren't too many other jobs I know how to do — Jack Nicholson

I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy. In sports there are absolute rules. It's not, What about this? What about that? Either you're safe or you're out. It's ten yards or it's not. It's in the hoop or out of the hoop. It's certain. — Jack Nicholson

I goddamn near lost my nose. And I like it. I like breathing through it. — Jack Nicholson

I know I can act. There aren't too many other jobs I know how to do. Financially, I've lost money and made money, but I know my way around financially. I've been too many places. I'm like the bad penny. — Jack Nicholson

Once you've started a film you don't become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don't know, and they don't know. It's through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with. — Jack Nicholson

I want my kids to have a deep, inner feeling that it's alright to be happy, that you don't have to be constantly manufacturing problems that you don't really have. — Jack Nicholson

You look at someone long enough, you discover their humanity. — Jack Nicholson

Never rub another man's rhubarb. — Jack Nicholson

I've spent more time playing golf than anything else the last 18 years. Just wanted to be an 80s-shooter. Got there, too. — Jack Nicholson

Just because you're perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect. — Jack Nicholson

I eat breakfast 300 yards from 4000 Cubans, who are trained to kill me, so don't think for one second that you can come down here, flash your badge and make me nervous. — Jack Nicholson

There has long been a bemoaning of the lack of opportunity to make films that are anything but explosions or the ladling on the pea soup or whatever you want to call it. You can hardly make a movie today where somebody isn't a murderer or a rapist or, if it's a "Fried Green Tomatoes" that isn't some wistful thing on this, that or the other thing. — Jack Nicholson

I love working with women directors. They don't mind making you cute. — Jack Nicholson

I have given a name to my pain, and it is Batman. — Jack Nicholson

There's probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do, or actually uses it more in his work. But it's funny - nobody really sees that. It's perception versus reality, I suppose. — Jack Nicholson

I certainly knew my father. He just didn't happen to be my biological father. — Jack Nicholson

I take responsibility for my successes as well as my failures. But when I look at my professional mistakes, I'm always left with the feeling that maybe I should have done more. — Jack Nicholson

Everyone pretty much acknowledges that he's the man, and I still feel that underrates him. — Jack Nicholson

The stage has a certain discipline. But the ultimate standard is more exacting in film, because you have to see yourself and you are your own toughest critic. — Jack Nicholson

The first role I ever played I had the lead and it's pretty much stayed that way, though people take great relish in calling me a character actor, which I am. There are a lot of short parts I could play, but I only do them when they are like this ("A Few Good Men"), central to the idea of the movie. — Jack Nicholson

I have never felt brutalized as an actor. Many actors do, some times, but I've never had that experience. If I'm not happy with the balance, I just won't work with that person again. — Jack Nicholson

The less people know about me, the easier my job is. — Jack Nicholson

Once I got started acting I loved it. — Jack Nicholson

It always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wisdom, film was the artful medium for the actor, not the stage. — Jack Nicholson

I'm fairly well off. I can't poor-mouth that away from people's sensibilities about me, which is something I worry about as an actor. But it would be real stupid of me to do something for the money. — Jack Nicholson

Take caution in your tone, commander. I'm a fair man, but this -- heat is making me absolutely crazy. — Jack Nicholson

Dissembling is a common tool of the anger junkie. — Jack Nicholson

Everybody said I was good, but being known and not having a big film success is almost tougher than being completely new. It just kind of turned my life around and was definitely a highlight. — Jack Nicholson

I'm in the movie business; it's meant to be very cutthroat. But you won't find anybody that ever says I cheated them or manipulated them. — Jack Nicholson

For an actor, style comes last. You first have to implement the whole thing, but your style comes from the subconscious, which is the best part an actor brings to his work. — Jack Nicholson

I don't play golf competitively. I tell everybody that I cheat so they won't gamble with me. That's why you can't watch football. Everybody's gambling. They don't want to watch the game; they watch the spread. — Jack Nicholson

I wasn't a babe in the woods. I'd watched a lot of stars, from James Dean to Brando, and I'd seen everybody alive work at MGM. I had a certain old-timer's quality, even though I was young and new, and drew on what I believed before I made it. — Jack Nicholson

I love writing, but I stopped because I felt I was more effective approaching filmmaking from a different vantage point. — Jack Nicholson

I just know that sameness, repetition, and conceptualizing are the acting craft's adversaries, and it seems more intelligent to start off within a framework where those things are, to some degree, taken out of your hands. — Jack Nicholson

I'm not a power person. I like everyone to be on an equal footing. — Jack Nicholson

I never thought in terms of typing myself, because I wasn't that successful. After an actor has done a few pieces of work, his naïveté is the part of the craft he has to nurture most. — Jack Nicholson

No issue is more compelling than the air we breathe, be it hot or cold, be it hawk or human. — Jack Nicholson

At 55 I said the probability is I won't have another relationship. I just didn't want to start another family. Between my own bizarre criteria and taste and the fact that I'm not available for many things I thought it was unlikely. Once you know the science about it, I don't think anybody should consider being committed to a real eternal relationship until you're through something called the infatuation circle. — Jack Nicholson

If you're going to write, write one poem all your life, let nobody read it, and then burn it. This is very young thinking, I confess, but it is the seminal part of my life. — Jack Nicholson

When you use a dialect, you worry that the people you're imitating will think you're making fun of them. — Jack Nicholson

There's no point dwelling on what might or could have been. You just have to go forward. — Jack Nicholson

When it's over for a woman, it's over. You're not getting an appeal. — Jack Nicholson

I began to think that the finest modern writer was the screen actor. This was in the spirit of the Fifties where a very antiliterary literature was emerging - Kenneth Patchen and others. I kind of believed what Nietzsche said, that nothing not written in your blood is worth reading; it's just more pollution of the airwaves. — Jack Nicholson

Believe it or not, I supported Richard Nixon on the issue of presidential privilege. How could anyone conceive of being the president of the United States and think that every single thing that you say or do can become a part of the public record? It just seems so stupid to me. — Jack Nicholson

There's a tacit agreement today that the white male is the only legitimate target for any and all satire, criticism, and so forth. And we pretty much just accept it. — Jack Nicholson

I assume most of the characters I play are exactly like me. — Jack Nicholson

I love the company of people. I always have and always will, it comes with my family. But earlier in life I might have got a little nervous if I was alone for a day or two in a row. I might think, "Where are they?" Now, I just go on doing naturally what I do. — Jack Nicholson

Most of the early part of an actor's career, you do the jobs you get. — Jack Nicholson

I used to be very quick, I would be able to leave the room and be back before you noticed. When you can't do that anymore you need to change the style of how you do things. But I'm very interested in life and you don't want to lose that. — Jack Nicholson

I was invited to join the MGM cartoon department. But if I'd started work in animation I'd have had to take a cut in salary, so I didn't. — Jack Nicholson

I do pray. I pray to something...up there. I have a God sense. It's not religious so much as superstitious. It's part of being human, I guess. — Jack Nicholson

Life Lessons by Jack Nicholson

1. Jack Nicholson has demonstrated the importance of never giving up on your dreams, no matter how difficult the challenge may be. He faced many rejections early in his career, but kept pushing until he became one of the most successful and well-known actors of all time.
2. Jack Nicholson has also shown the power of staying true to yourself. He has had a long and successful career by being unapologetically himself and staying true to his values.
3. Finally, Jack Nicholson has shown that it is important to take risks and try new things. He has taken on a variety of roles, from comedic to dramatic, which has allowed him to explore new avenues of acting and grow as an artist.