Charlie Chaplin Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

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

Charlie Chaplin
Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.
On the universality of silent films

Charlie Chaplin
Where words leave off, gesture begins. Don't we speak of a person being speechless with rage, dancing with impatience, setting his teeth? The final motions of the soul are speechless, animal, grotesque, or of an incomparable beauty.

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

Charlie Chaplin
As for politics, I'm an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can't stand caged animals. People must be free.

Charlie Chaplin
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

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

Charlie Chaplin
I hate the talkies and will not produce talking films.... I cannot conceive of my films as other than silent. My shadow appears on the screen as in a dream, and dreams do not speak.

Charlie Chaplin
The tramp character:
A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

Charlie Chaplin
I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of an ancestral promptings and urgings, a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, of all of which I am the sum total.

Charlie Chaplin
Schultz: You must speak.
Jewish Barber: I can't.
Schultz: It's our only hope.

Charlie Chaplin
Look up to the sky
You'll never find rainbows
If you're looking down.

Charlie Chaplin
I am not religious in the dogmatic sense … I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything.

Charlie Chaplin
This is a story of a period between two World Wars — an interim in which insanity cut loose. Liberty took a nose dive, and humanity was kicked around somewhat.

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

Charlie Chaplin
Wars, conflict, it's all business. "One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero". Numbers sanctify.

Charlie Chaplin
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Charlie Chaplin
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.

Charlie Chaplin
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.

Charlie Chaplin
I am known in parts of the world by people who have never heard of Jesus Christ.

Charlie Chaplin
Hynkel, the dictator, ruled the nation with an iron fist. Under the new emblem of the double cross, liberty was banished, free speech was suppressed and only the voice of Hynkel was heard.

Charlie Chaplin
Hynkel addressing the crowds, referring to his colleagues, clearly modeled upon Göring and Goebbels:
Hynkel: Herring shouldn smelten fine from Garbitsch, und Garbitsch shouldn smelten fine from Herring. Herring und Garbitsch... [He clasps his hands together]
Translator: His excellency has just referred to the struggles of his early days shared by his two loyal comrades.

Charlie Chaplin
I remain just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

Charlie Chaplin
Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. … The trouble is you won't fight. You've given up. But there's something just as inevitable as death. And that's life. Think of the power of the universe — turning the Earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you — if you'll only have the courage and the will to use it.

Charlie Chaplin
The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people.

Charlie Chaplin
I am not a political man and I have no political convictions. I am an individual and a believer in liberty. That is all the politics I have. On the other hand I am not a super-patriot. Super-patriotism leads to Hitlerism — and we've had our lesson there. I don't want to create a revolution — I just want to create a few more films.

Charlie Chaplin
Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them.
Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities — a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one.

Charlie Chaplin
Hannah: Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.

Charlie Chaplin
I hope we shall abolish war and settle all differences at the conference table... I hope we shall abolish all hydrogen and atom bombs before they abolish us first.

Charlie Chaplin
What do you want meaning for? Life is desire, not meaning.

Charlie Chaplin