Top 257 Quotes & Sayings by Jack Nicholson - Page 2

There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I'm not in that state now and that makes me sad.

One of my school friends' parents owned a minigolf course, and a bunch of us kids would play there all day in the summer. Two-under deuces was a good score.

I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye.

I can't hit on women in public any more. I didn't decide this; it just doesn't feel right at my age.

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

I'm content with the fact that I made a decent effort. That's what I've always worried about: that I wouldn't try hard enough.

The camera photographs what's there.

I'm definitely still wild at heart.

I'm a good friend.

I hate giving advice, because people won't take it.

I just like art. I get pure pleasure from it. I have a lot of wonderful paintings, and every time I look at them I see something different.

Once I got started acting I loved it.

I would never complain about my life, even though I really would like to have a mate.

I wanted to be the best actor possible. I worked very hard at the craft of it.

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

I like to not care that much about criticism, but I do care about it.

I worry from the moment I take a job. I worry about how I'm going to do it, if I can do it... Then I walk on set and the director says, 'Roll', and all of a sudden, all of it disappears and it's all happening, and I relax, and I'm doing what I do, and I'm not even thinking about it.

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.

We live, we die, and the wheels on the bus go round and round.

Women -- a mistake, or did He do it to us on purpose?

If you want your freedom, you have to be willing to work hard to exercise it.

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.

People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.

You can't handle the truth!

The only way to break a bad habit was to replace it with a better habit.

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

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

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

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.

This town needs an enema!

You can call me Joker. And as you can see, I'm a lot happier.

Men dominate because of physicality, and thus they have mercy where women do not.

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

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

It's very easy to go down, so always live up. Incline yourself upward.

I respect the social graces enormously. How to pass the food. Don't yell from one room to another. Don't go through a closed door without a knock. Open the doors for the ladies. All these millions of simple household behaviors make for a better life. We can't live in constant rebellion against our parents - it's just silly. I'm very well mannered. It's not an abstract thing. It's a shared language of expectations.

You know, I think I understand what you're like now. You're very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you're beautiful. But you want them to be interested in you because you're you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you're not very interesting. You're rude, you're hostile, you're sullen, you're withdrawn... oh, I know- you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath. But the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you're beautful. Ironic, isn't it? In an odd way you're your own problem.

I want a big 25-foot pink statue that holds my grave. Or I also might like the way the Indians did it. They hang you up on the top of a tree and the birds eat you. No, really I would probably choose cremating.

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.

I love women who have a strong sense of themselves because I know I have a pretty good idea of what I want out of life and I like to be around other people who are also pretty secure. It just makes things easier.

You are more thoughtful because you don't act as quickly anymore. When I turned 70 it was the first time I felt young for my age. Fifty dropped on me like a ton of bricks - there is something about that number - but when 70 came along I felt good about it.

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.

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.

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

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.

There is one thing I know about creative conflict: once my argument is exhausted, I am not going to be unhappy whether it moves in my direction or away.

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.

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

Human beings are always going to find interesting ways of making a mess of their lives. It's human nature.

Just because you're perfectionist doesn't mean you're perfect.

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

I envy people of faith. I'm incapable of believing in anything supernatural.

A lot of people in the middle of their lives have a secret yearning for more romance.

When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes mistakes they call it Nature!

I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now.

If you think you’re attractive, you’re always attractive.

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.

I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.

When you look at life retrospectively you rarely regret anything that you did, but you might regret things that you didn't do.

Do you think God knew what he was doing when he created woman?