Top 78 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Attenborough - Page 2

I never want to make the kind of film whose impact ends when the audience leaves the cinema.

I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived. He lived in the 18th century; as you all know, he was an Englishman who was involved in the writing of American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, the French Constitution, wrote the great book called 'The Rights of Man' - commercial over.

I passionately believe in heroes, but I think the world has changed its criteria in determining who it describes as a hero.

If you are playing in 'Charley's Aunt,' and your favourite aunt died that lunchtime, you'll still have to go on the stage and play 'Charley's Aunt.'

I adore my family; they are my joy. However, I am committed to my work. If, on a Saturday morning when I was ostensibly going to be with the children, and something arose at RADA or at UNICEF or at the orphanage or whatever, I would allow the other pressures to take precedent.

I'm simply saying that heroes are people whose activities, whose attitudes, and whose judgment you just think, 'Wow. That's good. That's right. That's real.'

I always wanted to make films that might change or at least focus people's views.

We used to indulge hopelessly as a family at Christmas. When the children were little, I dressed up as Father Christmas. They knew it was a gag, but they loved it. I remember stealing into their bedrooms at 1 A.M. and filling the stockings up at the end of the bed.

I don't use film in the way that the great auteurs do. I use film, the camera, to record as effectively and as perceptive as I am able what I want to say through the actors.

When asked what attribute he most admired in human nature, Mahatma Gandhi replied, simply and immediately, 'Courage'. 'Nonviolence', he said, 'is not to be used ever as the shield of the coward. It is the weapon of the brave.

I don't blame people for their mistakes, but I do ask that they pay for them.

If you are directing, you have the opportunity to put your signature on the bottom of the frame. You have the opportunity to say, "This is what I believe. That is my credo. That is what I wish to state."

And that is how I employ my time in cinema, saying things about people who I think have touched us in terms of our value judgement and by example.

On my last day of shooting, I'd be happy to say 'Cut, it's a wrap' and fall off the twig.

I do not have a brain that I long for in dealing with matters of which I am ignorant, that don't come within my ken and a rationale, a reason, and argument and so on, and I can't do that and I'm not in that bracket at all.

Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone.

I believe we need heroes...we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.

I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man, who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something.