Quotes from Charlie Chaplin

Why should poetry have to make sense?

I don't believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Actors search for rejection. If they don't get it they reject themselves.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

I am for people. I can't help it.

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles.

We think too much and feel too little.

Perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it 'maturity'.

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is "AUTHENTICITY".

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth.

The glamour of it all! New York! America!

So when I cease to be I want to go back...to the sea! Oh for the life of a sardine! That is the life for me!

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

I hope we shall abolish war and settle all differences at the conference table I hope we shall abolish all hydrogen and atom bombs before they abolish us first.

You are only as good as the woman you are standing beside.

I do not need drugs to be a genius, do not take a genius to be human, but I need your smile to be happy.