Stanley Kubrick Quotes

22 Sourced Quotes

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.

Stanley Kubrick
If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

Stanley Kubrick
The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage.

Stanley Kubrick
One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film.

Stanley Kubrick
Somebody has said that man is the missing link between primitive apes and civilized human beings. You might say that the idea is inherent in 2001. We are semi-civilized, capable of cooperation and affection, but needing some sort of transfiguration into a higher form of life.

Stanley Kubrick
Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.

Stanley Kubrick
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Stanley Kubrick
You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.

Stanley Kubrick
I think you're some kind of deviated prevert, and I think General Ripper found out about your preversion and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts.

Stanley Kubrick
Ghost stories appeal to our craving for immortality. If you can be afraid of a ghost, then you have to believe that a ghost may exist. And if a ghost exists then oblivion might not be the end.

Stanley Kubrick
When I made my first film, I think the thing was probably helped me the most was that it was such an unusual thing to do in the early 50s for someone who actually go and make a film. People thought it was impossible. It really is terribly easy. All anybody needs is a camera, a tape recorder, and some imagination.

Stanley Kubrick
I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.

Stanley Kubrick
There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to puzzles, enigmas, and allegories.

Stanley Kubrick
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

Stanley Kubrick
Never, ever go near power. Don't become friends with anyone who has real power. It's dangerous.

Stanley Kubrick
Confront a man in his office with a nuclear alarm, and you have a documentary. If the news reaches him in his living room, you have a drama. If it catches him in the lavatory, the result is comedy.

Stanley Kubrick
I don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly.

Stanley Kubrick
Think [Schindler's List] was about the Holocaust?... That was about success, wasn't it? The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. ''Schindler's List'' is about 600 who don't. Anything else?

Stanley Kubrick
Have you ever had a single moment's thought about my responsibilities?

Stanley Kubrick
Truth is too multi-faceted to be contained in a five-line summary.

Stanley Kubrick
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

Stanley Kubrick
I have always enjoyed dealing with a slightly surrealistic situation and presenting it in a realistic manner. I've always liked fairy tales and myths, magical stories. I think they are somehow closer to the sense of reality one feels today than the equally stylized "realistic" story in which a great deal of selectivity and omission has to occur in order to preserve its "realist" style.

Stanley Kubrick