Top 225 Quotes & Sayings by Ridley Scott
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British director Ridley Scott.
Last updated on September 9, 2024.
Good FBI officers are not noticeable. You would never look at them.
I want a certificate that allows me to make as big a box office as possible.
Fire is our first form of technology.
The key thing is you can be the only person, your own critic.
One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven't done one for many, many years, is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar, and the planets are similar.
I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there's got to be a captain.
You could have ten scientists in this room. You could ask them all: 'Who's religious?' About three to four will put their hands up.
I am a science fiction enthusiast, really, deep down.
I'm fundamentally a positive person. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing some of the insane movies that I do.
I want to return to the epic idea of the grand, big Western, in the sense that 'The Searchers' was.
I'm agnostic because I went through the usual process of parents insisting you go to church, and yet they didn't. So there's me, sitting in the chairs, thinking, 'Jeez, why am I here? I'd rather be playing tennis, seriously.'
If you believe, you believe; if you're faithful, you're faithful. I don't care what your religion is. The same if you're agnostic. That should be accepted, too.
I was always amazed about how much I could finally squeeze into a thirty second commercial.
I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.
Everyone is tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshiping the same god.
I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith. I don't care who you are, it's what we all think about. It's in the back of all our minds.
I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.
I think one of the successes of Gladiator is how we manage to turn on a dime the character from one thing to another where you believe he is one thing and he is something very different.
I do a pretty good job at casting actually.
The great film editor is not a cutter, he's a storyteller, right?
'The Man In High Castle' is one of Dick's most imaginative and captivating works, and certainly one of my favorites.
What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be.
In film, it's very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.
The word 'religion' is only a label. What lies behind that, the most important thing of all, is the word 'faith'. You either have faith, or you don't have faith, or you have degrees of faith - and if you have degrees of faith, then you become agnostic. You're kind of in-between, or you're on the fence.
How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant?
In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.
I made the mistake of saying I was an atheist at one point, when I was doing 'Kingdom of Heaven.'
Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict.
Technology will need to make many more huge leaps before one can ever view films with the level of picture and sound quality many film lovers demand without having to slide a disc into a player, especially with the technical requirements of today's 3D movies.
If I have to, I'll go and direct theater and talk till the cows come home.
I try to make films, not movies. I've never liked the expression 'movie', but it sounds elitist to say that.
In science fiction, we're always searching for new frontiers. We're drawn to the unknown.
We can't terraform yet, but we know it exists.
Any period is fascinating: the more ancient, the better.
I have a healthy competitive nature.
MPC, Moving Picture Company, they're really excellent, they did the majority of the effects.
There has to be absolute trust between the tiger and its master, but its master must be the master - there must be no mistake about that.
Are we the first hominids? I really, really, really doubt it.
'The Duellists' won Cannes, but Paramount didn't know how to release a film about two guys in bizarre breeches, waving swords around. I actually think it's a pretty good Western.
Try writing a book, dude. That's difficult.
People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at.
And I maintain good relationships with all the studios so I've never been bullied into any cut, frankly.
I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It's a great movie.
Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.
When you're watching a documentary, the danger is to romanticize.
That's part of the policy: To keep switching gears.
Churchill strikes a note in my life because my father worked on Mulberry Harbour, which was the code name for the temporary concrete harbours which were towed across the Channel to make the D-day landings in France possible.
I've gradually realised that what I do best is universes. And I shouldn't be afraid of that.
Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.
And anyway, it's only movies. to stop me I think they'll ahve to shoot me in the head.
If you circle above Central Park at night in a helicopter, you're looking down at the most expensive real estate in the world. It's the American Monopoly board.
On rare occasions, Dad used to reminisce about when he met Eisenhower and how Churchill would pop in, in the late hours of the evening or night, carrying a cigar, when he'd obviously had a good dinner.
The great attraction to 'American Gangster' is these two great characters who are absolute paradoxes within their own sphere.
A hit for me is if I enjoy the movie, if I personally enjoy the movie.
I don't get attached to anything. I'm like a good antique dealer. I'm prepared to sell my most valuable table.
Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?
I don't ever blink, honestly.
I'll reshoot a corridor 13 different ways, and you'll never recognise them.
For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.
The story of 'Prometheus' is the idea that if you're given a gift from the gods, do not abuse it, and do not think you can compete.
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