Top 279 Quotes & Sayings by George Clooney - Page 5

As time goes on and you become more comfortable in your career path, and things are starting to make sense, and it's not just about work, you find that you're able to focus on other things and other people.

[On charity] I try to pick subjects that I can learn about and then focus on and then do as much as I can. If you have a tremendous amount of heat from the spotlight, then you're able to shine a little bit more of your light in a different direction. It's just deflecting. My dad calls it a celebrity credit card that you can cash in. I think if you're in this position you should do it.

I'm always sort of optimistic about how good we are, as a country, at fixing ourselves.

It's not ideal to have three films coming out at once.

If you're going to do a romantic comedy it was about housing it in something that we haven't seen before.

Growing up during the Cold War period, I always found that, although we always thought that the world would end in some sort of nuclear holocaust, at some point, everybody was pretty hopeful.

The actions of President Trump have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies, and whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it - and rather successfully.

I don't remember who wins awards [Oscars]. I've won a few but what I really remember are movies. I love films, so I'm not concerned about speculation about winning things because I really enjoy being in films that last longer than an opening weekend. That's my goal in life.

If we dig deep in our history and remember that we are not descendants from fearful people, we proclaim ourselves indeed as we are the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world.

Newsman are the ones who - without them we don't have a civil rights movement, we don't have a women's movement, we don't have a Vietnam movement.

I've always been an optimist.

I didn't enjoy working with Bill [Murray]. We fought a lot... but I've let go of some of the anger and we seem to get along fine now.

Any topical subject, if it's Hollywood, will be a couple of years later because you've got to write it, produce it and distribute it, so automatically you're never going to be right on the cutting edge of stories.

I'm the son of a newsman, I grew up around news, so I can understand the issue, which is that papers are losing subscribers and they're getting less and less outlets... it's a tricky thing. You're going to have to sell papers. The problem is, there's so little reporting anymore.

I don't know of an actor that the Coen brothers would come to and say, "Hey, I've got a movie for you to be in, if you want to do it," that would say, "No." That's the truth.

Both of my grandparents died of lung cancer. So I got quite a lesson in the payback later in life of smoking, and if you keep it up how bad it can be.

We're in a strange state in our world where we sort of have that belief - and I have it too - that if it's written down there's got to be some truth in it. We haven't quite got to the spot where you go: "Well, it doesn't necessarily mean it's true." It could actually be completely made up and made to look very nice. So, we have to get to the point where scandal and those kinds of things are less and less important because otherwise we won't have anyone willing to run as politicians.

I don't think that Hollywood will have much to do with changing politics. Hollywood usually reflects things.

What I try to do is make sure that the directors I'm working with are on the same page and want to do the same kind of films. You can really protect yourself as an actor if you work with really good people. It can hide a lot of flaws along the way.

It's fun to slap people around.

In the United States 95% of the people who win elections have the most money. That's it. So, money is a big part of elections. But that happens all the time.

As a director, I do very few takes, because I feel like you hire the right actor and they'll do the job right. And the directors that I've worked with and had the best luck with - Jason and [ Steven] Soderbergh and the Coen brothers - all have been that kind of director.

There are people who like to work in chaos, and some people work better under that, and create that sort of chaos, but that makes a set not necessarily very fun. I like to work on sets that don't have that.

It is a question in that case of breaking up one piece of art, and whether that piece of art can be as best as possible put back together. So it's an argument to say, maybe that's one of those instances, like the bust of Nefertiti, I think that should be given back [Egyptian piece currently in Neues Museum in Berlin]. It's one of those pieces you look at and think that would probably be the right thing to do.

I enjoy directing. I don't know whether it's improving or not, but it's certainly evolving in different directions.

"Is Art worth dying for?" Well I don't know a single inanimate object that's worth dying for.

I think there are a lot of great journalists out there. I don't find much fault in the journalist in general; I think everybody would like to break a good story.

Getting older is not something that you're not much concerned with.

I grew up at a time where I think most people had a social and political conscience. Some of the biggest changes in our country's political history happened at the time I was growing up, so I was raised to be a part of those things and to participate and I will continue to do that as much as I can.

I find politics in almost every country I go to be incredibly different and incredibly similar and I'm never surprised by anything.

The truth is my development I hope is the same way as everything, which is, I succeed some, I fail some, and I keep slugging away at it. I really enjoy it. It's fun.

When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script.

It's hard to find actors that don't feel contemporary when you put them in a period piece.

When you see Hitler burning paintings by Salvador Dali and Picasso he's telling you that this time period and these men and this culture didn't exist, and I've seen that happen in other countries, Sudan for instance, it's not enough to kill them you have to destroy all of their markings that they left that was their history.

The timing for directing is usually because it takes that long to develop a piece and then do pre-production and then post-production. It takes at least a couple of years. I prefer directing to doing other things. Directing and writing seem to be infinitely more creative

Politicians have a tremendous amount of ego to be able to do it. It's very hard when the product your selling to an entire country is yourself and you're just selling the hell out of it all the time.

What I learned is that I should probably read a screenplay every once in a while before I said 'yes'. You could make bad film out of a good script, but you're never going to make a good film out of a bad script.

I'm not completely against khakis. It's just the level that you have to wear them. The higher you pull them, then more excruciating it is.

My little animal secrets must remain my little animal secrets. How I do my nails, that is really my business.