Top 126 Quotes & Sayings by Matt Damon - Page 2

Oftentimes when I'm deciding to do a movie, the main thing is really, that I look at, is the director. I've come to feel that more and more. The more movies I've done and the older I've - the more experience I have, I always knew it was a director's medium, and I always said that.

For a lot of actors, our biggest fear is that we're going to start talking about things we don't fully understand and sound like idiots.

History is change happening one person at a time.

Liberty is a soul’s right to breathe.

Some people get into this business and they're so afraid to lose anything. They try to protect their position like clinging to a beachhead. These Actor s end up making really safe choices. I never wanted to go that route. If I go down, I'm going down swinging. I know that's the way Heath Ledger feels and Ben Affleck feels the same way, too. We want to take the big swings.

Any moron with a pack of matches can start a fire. Raining down sulfur takes a huge level of endurance. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer.

We're here for such a short time. When your great-great-grandkids study history, don't you want them to be proud that you were part of the solution?

It was shameful and embarrassing that there were two years in a row without a single actor of color nominated. That's insane.

If you're just an actor you're reactive. You're saying, "Well, I hope Hollywood gives me a role, or gives me a chance at a role," whereas if you can generate your own content, then you can go where you want to go.

I think Clint Eastwood is a well oiled machine. Everyone that works with him has the same reaction, "Can I stay with you?"

You will never solve poverty without solving water and sanitation.

When you have a child, your relationship with every child in the world changes. It's like you're in a club you didn't know existed before a child came into your life. I believe you should make the world more beautiful for all children in any way that you can.

Now that I have kids, I'm probably more overprotective than I've ever been. My wife's nickname for me is "red alert." I sometimes check just to see if the kids are breathing. But I try not to be a helicopter parent.

It's intuitive in terms of when I read a piece of material or I hear about a project. I'm a writer, so I've written movies. I've read at this point thousands and thousands and thousands of screenplays. So if something gets me, then I don't ignore that.

If we listen to the better angels of our nature, there are creative and good solutions to serious problems.

The director's in charge of every single decision [in film]. It's a dictatorship.It's a benevolent dictatorship, but it's true. It's every single shot. There's nothing arbitrary.

I usually play characters that are a lot different than me. I mean, I'm never in a fight in a movie and if I'm in them, I'm usually losing.

The better the actor, the less you know about his life. I mean, nobody's better than De Niro and you don't know anything about him, right?

If there's an idea I think is really good and I feel like I can write it, then I'll do it.

There are people who just collect a bunch of footage and then edit it later. You definitely feel more protected when a director is moving on when you've actually felt something happen and you know they're watching intently.

Clint Eastwood just runs an incredibly tight ship, but it's really laid back.

If you work at something, you get better at it.

Please find out what you can do to make a difference. Take five minutes to educate yourself on an issue you didn't know about before. Then tell somebody else.

If Brad Pitt walked down the street, cars would crash into each other. I'm really lucky not to have to deal with that.

I grew up in and the teachers. I think I was very lucky. I think I had a lot of social capital, and so when I found myself in this position of influence, I just - then I started to engage a bit with some of the problems in the world and realize that I could actually have an impact.

I’ll play Pretty Pretty Princess with you if you just let me watch a little bit of March Madness.

It's an objective fact, that if you want to solve some of these huge, kind of bigger problems of extreme poverty, you have to include the women. They're the ones who will get it done.

If I had a bucket list, I'd say raising my four girls to be strong, good women would be No. 1.

I should have done it years ago. It's amazing I didn't even want cigarettes anymore.

All parents are trying to balance. Look, I'm lucky in the sense that I can control my hours. I can choose my jobs, and not everybody has that choice. But I definitely, it's a family decision every time I take a job.

Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.

Clean water is only as far away as the nearest tap, and there are taps everywhere. There's a faucet everywhere. But the reality is, the water in our toilets is cleaner than the water that most people are drinking.

It's pretty easy to kind of lose your way. Having kids is really helpful. They kind of disabuse you of the notion of your greatness pretty quickly.

The only way I can describe it-at the end of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you know how his heart grows like five times? Everything is full; it's just full all the time.

Generally, the bigger the budget, the less interesting the characters become.

He's famous for being obsessive about details.

Sending our kids in my family to private school was a big, big, big deal. And it was a giant family discussion. But it was a circular conversation, really, because ultimately we don't have a choice. I mean, I pay for a private education and I'm trying to get the one that most matches the public education that I had, but that kind of progressive education no longer exists in the public system. It's unfair.

It's very frustrating [ to work under director's control], not just because you're getting rejected constantly, but also because you're at a time in your life where you have an enormous amount of creative energy, and there's no way to express it. That's why a lot of people get into drinking or drugs or whatever.

As actors, we react to the material that's out there, and I probably just react more strongly to things that I feel will have some social value.

My heart goes out to the people of the city of Boston. My thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones in such a senseless and heartless way.

Paranoid is what people who are trying to take advantage call you in an effort to get you to drop your guard.

I can't think of any more important value to instill in our children than the desire to help others. I feel strongly about setting an example for them. Real problems can be solved by the next generation if we instill in them the right values.

The ideal life is you don't sell a single magazine, nobody's interested, but they want to come see your movie. Because that gives you true freedom.

I think it's something that the citizenry needs to be vigilant about - participating in democracy, and that includes issues like what's going on and how much secrecy and transparency there should be. That's an on-going thing - in a democracy you want checks and balances and oversight, but you need a covert agency to protect the country. It's a very tricky balance and I think it changes as the world changes and I think we all need to be mindful of that.

As a struggling actor, youre not looking for parts that define you; youre just looking for work.

Clint Eastwood expects you to know what you're doing. He's going to take two giant steps back and let you do it. I have such appreciation for that part of him.

I think it's still hard for me to turn down work if it's really good because for so many years I was desperate to get a job and couldn't, so I think it's anathema for me to turn down work if I think it's really good.

I need to know if she [Sarah Palin] thinks dinosaurs were here four thousand years ago... because she's going to have the nuclear code.

[Americans] can't understand that the water in our toilet is cleaner than 880 million have access to.

Most films and directors lose their nerve and want to indicate [emotions] a bit more, to show that their story is clear. I'm not saying that's a good thing; as an actor its anathema to good acting, but to have someone with the confidence to say that should I be utterly natural and minimalist is great.

Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.

There are a lot of things that I really question - the legality of the drone strikes, these NSA revelations. Jimmy Carter came out and said we don’t live in a democracy. That’s a little intense when an ex-president says that. So you know, he’s got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor.

Part of the American ethos is that you want to leave something better for your kids than you had and I know that my parents felt that way and I know that my grandparents felt that way and everybody worked hard so that their kids had a better chance. I just don't want to be the first generation that doesn't do that.

We live in a world, it's very hard for Americans to understand that every 20 seconds a kid dies, a kid under the age of five, right, dies somewhere on the Earth because of lack of access to clean water and sanitation. Every 20 seconds that happens on our planet. It's just very hard for us to relate to.

And you know, we were talking about American identity, and where we've come from and where we are and where we're headed. We knew that we wanted to have a hopeful ending and we wanted it to be pro-community, and a pro-democracy type of movie.

People do things in the names of good, and in the name of ideals, but the world isn't that simple. So they end up doing things that aren't necessarily good. Even if they think they're doing the right thing, but when viewed from a different perspective they can look barbaric and crazy.

You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.

Before the days of video village a director should stand right next to the camera, look with his naked eye and if he sees something that is real to him, he'd look up at the [camera] operator and if he gives the look to indicate he'd seen it to, then you print and you'd move on.

I've gotten much better at multi-tasking. It's hard, though. But, writing a script is not totally focused. You're taking little breaks, all the time. If a kid runs in, you give 'em a horsey ride. It's a pretty fluid process.

The whole thrust of theatre is different, just because the writing is so much more respected in a play. Whereas in movies - and having been the writer, I can say from experience - the writer is lower down on the food chain.