David Mamet Quotes

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.

written without hatred. They are not exploitative attempts to sell soap powder or political candidates; they are parables about the human condition, which, without connection to the divine, is always sin. With thanks to Billy Graham.

Revolutions begin with the mutual discovery of the ideologues and the Jacobins: the first happy to have discovered compatible souls, the second to have found flunkies.

Somebody told you, and you hold it as an article of faith, that higher education is an unassailable good. This notion is so dear to you that when I question it you become angry. Good. Good, I say. Are not those the very things which we should question? I say college education, since the war, has become so a matter of course, and such a fashionable necessity, for those either of or aspiring to to the new vast middle class, that we espouse it, as a matter of right, and have ceased to ask, “What is it good for?” (Pause)

Writers are asked, 'How could you know so much about [fill in the profession]?' The answer, if the writing satisfies, is that one makes it up. And the job, my job, as a dramatist, was not to write accurately, but to write persuasively. If and when I do my job well, subsequent cowboys, as it were, will talk like me.

We can only interpret the behavior of others through the screen we create.

The priests of our new idolatry are the politicians and their nongovernmental like who have discovered the old secret of power gained through fear of the mob.

Fox: It's lonely at the top.
Gould: But it ain't crowded.

Always tell the truth. It's the easiest thing to remember.

"Just so with the movie, which is why bad filmmaking can "succeed." It is our nature to want to make sense of these events — we can't help it. The human mind would make sense of them even if they were a random juxtaposition."

Cop couldn't find his dick, two hands and a map.

We're basically nuts. Human beings, we're basically insane.

My Alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.

I have sworn off the news because there is nothing new, and reiteration of the well-known and unfortunate serves no purpose other than as the bad narcotic of despair.