110+ Oliver Stone Quotes On Politics, Education And Religion

Oliver Stone is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is well-known for films such as Platoon, Wall Street, JFK, Natural Born Killers, and many more. He has won three Academy Awards for Best Director and has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Oliver Stone on politics, education, religion.

Top 10 Oliver Stone Quotes

1. 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.
2. Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.
3. When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.
4. Hell is the impossibility of reason.
5. If you make the movie from your heart and it stands over time, that's what matters to me.
6. I think our life is a series of adventures.
7. Every day that you get up, it's some kind of victory if you're making a good product, or working on a project that can only help mankind.
8. Coming Home had been made before and Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter, different kinds of movies.
9. 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.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• The first casualty of war is innocence.
• I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history.
• I think everyone has the same question on their mind: Is the glass half-full or half-empty?
• Lunch is for wimps.
• Christianity did take a lot of Greek concepts.
• Anyone can relate to suffering in this world.
• In any film there's always a historical implication.
• Television has usurped everybody from film. And so have commercials, by the way.
• I'm more comfortable with simplicity as I get older.
• For some reason, television still bores me. Even the best shows.

Oliver Stone Quotes About Politics

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

Pat Nixon was called the Mona Lisa of American politics. She never wrote anything. Her interviews tell us nothing. — Oliver Stone

As a dramatist, I don't have politics. — Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone Quotes About Love

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

A life like Nixon's is filled with shame and filled with glory. He loved to quote Teddy Roosevelt: "He was a man; sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but he was a man." I love that line. — Oliver Stone

I love the act of writing. I like the quiet, internal aspect of it. If I lost track of that, I couldn't direct the same way. I couldn't be a director for-hire; it's just not my nature. — Oliver Stone

I am a storyteller, and I do love ideas. — Oliver Stone

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

I'm a history person; I love history. But I am conditioned by the present. — Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone Quotes About Film

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

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. — 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

You can never judge how the film will be taken; you can only make your best effort, and put out what you feel. How it's read, you never can tell. Or remembered for that matter. — 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

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

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 don't want to make a half-assed film. It's not my area of expertise. — 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

Oliver Stone Quotes About Movies

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

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

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

You always try to find the right style for the movie. That's the key. — Oliver Stone

When I go to the movies, and I have to sit through ten previews of films that look [alike] and tell the whole story, you know that we've reached an age of consensus. And consensus is the worst thing for us. We all agree to agree. That's where we lose it as a culture. We have to move away from that. — Oliver Stone

Every movie requires its own style. Just be honest to the story. Tell the story in the best possible way that is different, exciting and original. — Oliver Stone

Now with digital, we have much better projection, and if the theaters are charging higher prices but providing refreshments and a clean, well-lit theater, there's no reason why this cannot go on as a senior-citizen-driven business for years. Especially with movies for adults. — Oliver Stone

I can see a movie and believe the story and characterization and stay proud of it. It doesn't change. Even if it's unappreciated, that doesn't mean it can't be appreciated in the future. — Oliver Stone

People should really horde their Blu-rays like old comic books and baseball cards. Because they're really beautiful, and will be worth something if you like movies as I do. — Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone Quotes About Interpretation

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

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

I study history in order to give an interpretation. — 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

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

Oliver Stone Quotes About People

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

People will go to clean theaters; they don't like to go to dirty theaters. — Oliver Stone

I think a lot of people misunderstand what I'm doing, because my films are not easy sometimes. They do deserve a second viewing. I think they get misunderstood easily. — Oliver Stone

Concepts of integrity and heroism and honor are still important to the world today. Some people behave well, and some people behave badly. — 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

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

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

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

Oliver Stone Quotes About Movie

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

I think there is a whole older generation that will go to movies still. People like me; people over 45. — Oliver Stone

Every time you go into a movie, you go into the point of view of who it is about. — Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone Famous Quotes And Sayings

I knew that one day I would come to this point that I would make something so outrageous and so ambitious that... it'd be that Don Quixote feeling, that I'd have to tilt at a windmill. Sometimes you've got to do it. That's the only way you can do things. — 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

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

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

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

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

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 may have disparaged the idea that people are looking at films on smaller and smaller screens... it's a shame that people have to watch DVDs with the lights on in a television-type situation where people are wandering in and out of the room. Movies are different from television, and you cannot watch movies like television. It distorts it. — 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

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 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

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

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

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

Now, we live in an age where we have so much information that we do tend to overload. The Greeks did too, though. — Oliver Stone

I've changed my style constantly, so I'm not sure I have one defined style, except perhaps style of subject matter. — 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

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

There is this thing about time that you can't see at the time you're at. — Oliver Stone

You get much more heat when you do something current. — Oliver Stone

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

I look at Homer and The Odyssey and all the disparate adventures this guy goes through, and then he returns home and the question is, is he the same man who left? — 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 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

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

The truth is not being aired in the West. It’s a surreal perversion of history that’s going on once again, as in Bush pre-Iraq ‘WMD’ campaign. — Oliver Stone

Gore Vidal said "Nixon is us, we are Nixon." I think we have to acknowledge that combination of idealism and sleaze; we want to be better than we are, and we sometimes don't face up to the real questions. — Oliver Stone

I do have a side as a citizen, and I've always expressed it, and that's where I've gotten into misunderstandings, because some people see me as a leftist nut or whatever. A conspiracy nut. All that stuff. These are definitions that don't really apply to a dramatist, because a dramatist is working from empathy. — Oliver Stone

Nixon identified himself as a crisis-laden man. He'd reach levels of victory and then he'd plunge into defeat. He was vice president, then he lost to Kennedy, then he lost the California governorship. Then came a great comeback and then he blew it again - and the next comeback, after he lost the presidency. He was a man who needed the feeling of walking the precipice. — Oliver Stone

Every day that you get up, it's some kind of victory if you're making a good product, or working on a project that can only help mankind. We pray for no destruction, and for the forces of destruction not to take over. We're all divided, but some of us have children, and we are invested in the future and would like to see good things happen. — Oliver Stone

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

Just because we live in a Christian era doesn't mean we're all Christian, necessarily. — Oliver Stone

We pray for no destruction, and for the forces of destruction not to take over. — Oliver Stone

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

The secret to writing a screenplay is keeping your ass in the chair. — Oliver Stone

People are still living in the moment, and they feel the passion of now. — Oliver Stone

I think you should do rehearsal and work at it, but when the camera rolls, you should be ready. Try to make it good the first time. — Oliver Stone

Horses are very difficult to shoot. — Oliver Stone

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

What I've experienced, I'm trying to put in a narrative form, I suppose, to say that it does make sense in this way. — Oliver Stone

I feel like I am what I am. — Oliver Stone

I've changed my style constantly, so I'm not sure I have one defined style, except perhaps style of subject matter. But you learn as you go, I suppose. — 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'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

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

There is nothing inherently wrong with greed as a human motivator - greed motivating evolution. But there's a huge disconnect between the classes. It is very demoralizing to work for someone who makes a billion dollars a year while you make just barely enough to make it. — Oliver Stone

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

I think any filmmaker will tell you when they wandered from theater to theater to watch their prints, it was disheartening to see the poor levels of light and the disrespect for films that existed in certain theater chains. It was always inconsistent. — 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

Get the overall. Some of my films may have been crude at times, or tough, or missed the points, but I've tried to get the overall in. I think that's more important. You may miss a thing or two, but you move faster. If you can do it in three takes, do it in three takes. — Oliver Stone

The past assumes the nature of the present. — Oliver Stone

I see films in theaters, and I enjoy films. I enjoy the art of storytelling, and the different ways to tell them. — Oliver Stone

I'm interested, I suppose, in tortured power. — Oliver Stone

We all know what we know. We experience with our minds and breath. — Oliver Stone

With television, the image has been degenerated, no question. With the internet, commercials... people are much too cynical about image. It's stale. And all over the world, not just America. — Oliver Stone

Each actor requires a different language. — Oliver Stone

Life Lessons by Oliver Stone

1. Oliver Stone has taught us to be brave and take risks in order to achieve success. He has shown us that it is important to stay true to your beliefs and to never give up on your dreams.
2. He has also taught us to be open to different perspectives and to think outside the box in order to create something unique and impactful.
3. Lastly, Oliver Stone has taught us to never be afraid to challenge the status quo and to always strive to make a positive difference in the world.