Charlie Chaplin Quotes

33 quotations by Charlie Chaplin

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.

We think too much and feel too little.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery.

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!

To help a friend in need is easy, but to give him your time is not always opportune.

This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

The glamour of it all! New York! America!

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles.

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.

In the end, everything is a gag.

I'd sooner be called a successful crook than a destitute monarch.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth.

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.

I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ was President.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

I don't believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

Brunettes are troublemakers. They're worse than the Jews.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

A man's true character comes out when he's drunk.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.