Top 132 Chaplin Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

People always say to me, 'It must have been wonderful coming from old Hollywood, with all those movie stars,' but I never knew anyone. I didn't even know who Charlie Chaplin was. My parents really kept me away from it all.

The end of 'City Lights' makes me cry every time I see it - when Charlie Chaplin walks by the shop window and the once-blind girl brings him a flower and pins it to his lapel.

I just bought a building in Los Angeles - on Sunset Boulevard. It's a building that was owned by Charlie Chaplin. It's going to be a sound- stage for videos; for full-scale productions.

Shakespeare wrote great plays that we're still watching all these years later. Charlie Chaplin made great comedies and they are still as funny today as they ever were.

The Hollywood business has been experiencing continual change since about 1915, when Charlie Chaplin was in Venice. The current time is no exception... You have to accept there will be constant change in the future.

Charlie Chaplin said something to the effect that humor is an act of defiance, that we must laugh in the face of our helplessness in the forces of nature or go insane. And where is he now? Dead.

Charlie Chaplin, too, through spectacle, contraband certain ideas, put them through, ideas that even today are not being expressed by great statesmen and politicians.

The real achievement of Woody Allen was that he was making movies that felt very personal, and for a whole group of people, it spoke to them. Then he became an archetype, like Groucho Marx or Chaplin.

Charlie Chaplin is the greatest artist of the 20th century. He takes me from laughter to tears in seconds. And he was one of the very first funny men. It's like the original violins were made in Cremona and there's never been any better since. Sometimes the best come right off the bat.

When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.

I'm in the back of a limousine with Charlie Chaplin and it’s 1928. Charlie is beautiful; his body language seems to skip, and reel and rhyme, heartbreaking and witty at the same time. It seems to promise a better world.

Comedy is a universal language. I grew up watching Nagesh, Surilirajan, Thenga Srinivasan and S.V. Shekhar's comedies. And, of course, Charlie Chaplin! These artists are so blessed: they can make other people happy.

Well, you cannot think of cinema now, and you cannot think of cinema in the UK and not place Chaplin in the most extraordinary elevated context, if there can be such a thing, in that he was a genius, he was unique.

People try to put ownership on things: 'That's mine, that's my joke.' No such thing. Like if you tripped or stumbled and people go, 'Oh, that's Charlie Chaplin.' You know what I mean? You can't own a joke. You can be the guy that tells it the best, but you can't own a joke. Nowhere can you own a laugh.

Although I had good hand-eye coordination, I was so tall and skinny and muscularly weak that I just was not well coordinated. But what I started to do quite early on was watch some of the great old silent comedians, like Laurel and Hardy and Chaplin, and then later on Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton.

There’s not one major greatest influence on my career. It would be film and great artists and great imagineers - Jim Henson, Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, people who understand the joy of the imagination.

For some of the large indignities of life, the best remedy is direct action. For the small indignities, the best remedy is a Charlie Chaplin movie. The hard part is knowing the difference.

I went to Berlin and Warsaw and Kraków to do research. Right after we got started, I had already booked this trip, so I went. Seeing the history and the posters, and hearing from the guy certain phrases and words and images, it's stunning how much they're playing from the handbook of the little mustache that isn't Chaplin. With Rudy Giuliani as Mussolini.

What guided Chaplin was the proper protection of self-interest (or craziness). So Chapling, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mark Pickford, with DW Griffith and William S Hart, made an alliance, called United Artists, whereby they would own a distribution company that would market their pictures, allowing them a greater return than if they leased the movies to some outside distributor.

I know of only six genuine comic geniuses in movie history; Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho Marx & Harpo Marx, Peter Sellers, and W.C. Fields.

You won't find another Chaplin, you won't find another Keaton, because the school is closed.

Ensnared in his starvation, Chaplin-man is always just below political awareness. A strike is a catastrophe for him because it threatens a man truly blinded by his hunger; this man achieves an awareness of the working-class condition only when the poor man and the proletarian coincide under the gaze (and the blows) of the police.

It didn't matter that Charlie Chaplin may not have been a great director or a great anything else. He made great movies.

I would say that Pixar is doing for animation what Chaplin did for film, infusing it with heart and characters that you care about and stories that you lose yourself in. They are similar revolutionaries and changing a medium.

When people say 'Charlie Chaplin' I still think now of the guy in the moustache and bowler hat and funny walk - I don't think of an old man who was my grandfather.

Kamal Haasan got inspired by his brief appearance in a role similar to Charlie Chaplin in 'Punnagai Mannan' and developed that into a full-fledged character in 'Apoorva Sagodharargal.'

In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers.

I read every book about Buster Keaton and Chaplin to see how they worked - it's all about dedication, tunnel vision, pursuit of perfection, getting the gag right.

I think it's amusing to watch a naive, well-meaning character kind of undo more cynical characters - kind of like watching Laurel and Hardy or Charlie Chaplin.

Bob Dylan may be the Charlie Chaplin of rock n' roll. Both men are regarded as geniuses by their entire audience. Both were proclaimed revolutionaries for their early work and subjected to exhaustive attack when later works were thought to be inferior. Both developed their art without so much as a nodding glance toward their peers.

There's not one major greatest influence on my career. It would be film and great artists and great imagineers - Jim Henson, Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, people who understand the joy of the imagination.

Chaplin and Keaton are still the best. They know that there is nothing more serious than laughter, an art demanding infinite work, and that as long as the world revolves, making others laugh is the most splendid of activities.

Making people laugh is one of the highest achievements you can have. And when you can make someone laugh and cry, alternatively, as Chaplin does - now that's the highest of all personal achievements. I don't know that I aim for it, but I recognize it as the supreme goal.

Charles Chaplin makes a million dollars a year out of a funny, shuffling walk and a pair of baggy trousers, because he does "something different." Take the hint and "individualize" yourself with some distinctive idea.

I think there's plenty of room, even in the most serious activist circles, for humor. Humor can be very effective both to inspire, and as a weapon. Just ask Frank Zappa and Charlie Chaplin.

I grew up in a small village outside of Krakow, and when I was small we had only a small television, and we had only one and two programs. I remember it was black and white. And I loved to watch Charlie Chaplin. I was so small, but I remember his movement.

My initial introduction to him was - this is a funny story... My Aunt Marian, my entire life growing up, told me that I looked like Charlie Chaplin. That didn't really resonate with me when I was younger - I hadn't seen a lot of his films.

Einstein - the greatest Jew since Jesus. I have no doubt that Einstein's name will still be remembered and revered when Lloyd George, Foch and William Hohenzollern share with Charlie Chaplin that ineluctable oblivion which awaits the uncreative mind.

Truly great performers reveal not only their characters but bring everything they know about the world with them. It's not just what's in the script but the story of everything you've done and of who you are. If you're Chaplin, you're the immigrant. No matter what he's doing, he's always the little guy trying to make his place in the world.

I grew up watching a lot of old movies, so getting to ask about making movies in the '70s and people he was friends with, like Orson Welles, Lillian Hellman and Charlie Chaplin, and hearing a first-person account was pretty incredible.

I've always loved silent movies. I recently saw 'Tilly's Punctured Romance' at the Academy, which is the first comedy made with Charlie Chaplin in 1914, and I sat there, and I couldn't believe that the entire audience of 2,000 people were laughing that hard from a movie made in 1914 - and there were no words; it was all faces.

I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.

'Spin City' was a really wonderful time for me. I made friends for life on that show. I made friends with Richard Kind, Michael Boatman, Barry Bostwick, Sandy Chaplin. We're all close. It was a really wonderful time.

I liked the America of Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton - it was all a dream, of course, but a very alluring dream for a young man from Canton.

My father had been an avid fan of Chaplin during the silent film days, but when the talkies came along, my father lost all interest in movies.

I discovered the 7th art at home when I was kid, through Charlie Chaplin's movies and those of my father who shot documentaries. He was my biggest influence. So I took his camera and started shooting.

I grew up and I was weaned on the Marx Brothers. They were sort of my all-time favorite. My parents showed me their movies when I was very young. And as I got older, I became a Charlie Chaplin fan, and I love Buster Keaton.

Maggie and I got married and then had to wait three years before we got to take our honeymoon because we were both working! Right before 'Chaplin' began, we got to go to Hawaii.

I don't want to compare myself to him - I don't want people to see me as this great genius - but when I see Charlie Chaplin's movies there is a combination of drama, naivety and social meaning that I can see in myself, at a different level.

If you know anything about James Whitcomb Riley, you know that Little Orphan Annie is one of the most fantastic characters who ever lived in America before Charlie Chaplin.

I thought if I could do stand-up comedy well enough, I could parlay it back into films - like Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen did. They merged principles of comedy and drama together, and that's what my first film really was, a stab at that kind of comedy.

In 1972 Charlie Chaplin was allowed back to America to receive an honorary Oscar, 'for the incalculable he had on making motion pictures the art form of this century'. That's what the Academy was always for - to blur the equation enough so that profit and fame could be called art.

I think physical comedy is an amazing asset because it tells a story that's more universal than just language and dialogue. I grew up watching Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. They're very powerful figures in my life.

A certain type of critic doesn't really want French movies to be visual. They think movies started from books and they forgot this part of moviemaking, like Chaplin and Buster Keaton, which I didn't forget.

I was only to see Mr. Chaplin once after 'The Kid.' A great artist, one of the greatest, but I'm afraid I don't think very much of him as a man. Running away from the country that gave him everything and denouncing the country in addition is something you simply can't make any allowances for.

My parents used to do these little film festivals in our house where we'd watch all the Marx Brothers movies, or Chaplin movies, and a lot of westerns.

All I did as a child was pretend to be James Bond or Marlon Brando. When I was about four, I put on my dad's work boots and went up and down the street with his walking stick pretending to be Charlie Chaplin.

We used Chaplin's formula in all my pictures. Make 'em laugh for five and a half reels, and then make 'em cry in the last half reel. But give 'em a chance to dry their eyes before the lights come up.

My mother doesn't have much of a social life with other A-list people. Which in a way I'm very grateful for, because if I do make something of my career I will be able to say it wasn't because I was a Chaplin.

He [Charlie Chaplin] was always playing as if it were to the camera, if you've seen the live shots of him when he's going to an opening night or something like that. And the skills that he had were beyond my ability to throw together. You just couldn't really compete with him. He was too athletic at that.