Top 162 Quotes & Sayings by Michael Douglas - Page 2

I don't look good in tights. I know that.

During my first marriage, my career was the most important thing in my life.

'King of California' was just, I thought, a really great, fresh, original kind of script. I loved the tone, the mix of tragedy, comedy, and drama, and that it was a good part.

I was undeclared. I was in my third year of school. They said you have to decide upon a major, and my father was an actor. My mother was an actress. So, I thought theater might be the way to go.

All the pictures I do are contemporary. I've sort of discovered I haven't really been into science fiction or period pictures. And so, in that vein, psychological thrillers play a big part.

I've never been one to carefully calculate my career decisions, to sit on the outside looking in. I go with my passion and what moves me.

I've always worked hard and played hard, and I'm sure I'll be cleaning up my act in the future.

In the movie 'Wall Street' I play Gordon Gekko, a greedy corporate executive who cheated to profit while innocent investors lost their savings. The movie was fiction, but the problem is real.

I've always liked Tina Turner.

Early on, someone had told me, 'You know, the camera can always tell when you're lying.' And, Jesus, that intimidated me. 'The camera can always tell? How am I going to do this?' Until one day I thought, 'Wait a minute, acting is lying. Acting is all about lying.'

Capitalism is part of our system, but it's not for the faint of heart.

I've just kind of been used to carrying movies. I look back and I'm just used to being in every single scene in a lot of pictures.

I thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while.

My own parents divorced when I was six. I was raised with my brother Joel by our mother on the East Coast, visiting my father in Los Angeles during holidays. When your parents are divorced, you don't know anything else, do you?

There are not a lot of sons or daughters of actors who have made it. Hollywood is awash with failures.

My daughter is a horseback rider, so I try to watch her ride; we take holidays together.

Celebrity gets you access to world leaders.

I think the quality of television, given the amount of time you have, how short you have, is proportionally so much better than most movies.

'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' which my father had tried to get made for six, seven years, and I for four, was turned down by every studio. Every studio in the world had passed on it.

I've been dying to do a Marvel picture for so long.

Kids know. They know everything. I would err on the side of pretty much sharing everything.

My mother and father met at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He was a senior and she was a junior, and their marriage didn't last very long.

I love kids, and I love having had this second chance to have a family.

I don't think tongue cancer is the best cancer for an actor.

Cancer has shown me what family is. It showed me a love that I never knew really existed.

Of course it's important to make mistakes, as long as you grow from them.

My father did 90-plus films. He was Spartacus!

To me, Bermuda is a real family spot.

Sometimes art imitates life.

I tell my kids they are going to live to over 100.

You just have to know what your responsibility is to the movie, and live up to that, and be considerate of the other actors in the scene... I have never been competitive in that way - I always want my leading ladies to be as good as they possibly can be.

I have hardly ever worked with the same director twice. But when you have worked with a director before, you understand his behavior.

Paul Rudd is ripped.

I was there the night John Lennon was shot, three blocks away. It left a lasting impression on me.

When I was working on pictures with my father, there were a couple leading ladies to whom I wish I'd expressed how I felt rather than being too cool or too shy.

The quality of health care in Canada is excellent.

My memories of Las Vegas were all with my father when I was, like, a teenager. He was best friends with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and we'd come up and see the shows and go backstage afterwards and have dinner together. It was one of my first educations about stars and how they really are back stage.

Like my father, like most actors, I was a pretty ambitious guy.

My mother is Bermudan, so I had a lot of memories when I was a kid, used to go down to Bermuda a lot.

The thing with cancer is that you want to get it as early as you can.

When you've accomplished a certain amount in your career, you're not so focused on your ambitions.

I never really look at my movies.

My marriage and my families come certainly before my career.

I have nothing against her, and in fact I'm very fond of my first wife. But we should have ended that marriage eight or 10 years earlier.

I think sometimes in relationships, ladies like having a man who takes care of them, nurtures them. If you can't find it in a man your own age, you find it in somebody who is older.

I've taken blame about being a bad father - if being a bad father is working your butt off trying to create a career at one time.

It took me too long to realise that if you go to a marriage counsellor to resolve problems, it's in his interest to keep the marriage going.

I have some idea of the pressure of finding your own identity with a famous father.

I try not to dwell too much on a bad marriage.

Liberace was a lovely guy.

Religion has certainly been shoved down my throat.

I do think of myself as a bit of a loner, a bit of an independent. I'm one of those people who, when they're sick, like to curl up and remove myself. I don't like a lot of people around. There is nothing you can do to help.

Our economy is increasingly dependent on the success and integrity of the financial markets.

Chemotherapy takes its toll; the more you keep doing it, you lose your energy, and it gets more difficult to swallow.

I haven't played a lot of nice guys.

Cancer did not bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet.

Out there is nothing but possibilities.

If we confront anti-Semitism ... if we combat it individually and as a society, and use whatever platform we have to denounce it, we can stop the spread of this madness.

Sometimes we spend more efforts with people that are strangers in terms of making an impression than the person that's closest to us. And you just got to remember not to take for granted that person that's closest to you.

Players never die - they just try their luck at another table.