David Mamet Quotes

"Art has no chance of making the world "more just" than politics has of making it more beautiful."

Fuck the machine? FUCK THE MACHINE! What is this, courtesy class? You're fucked, Rick.

If I fail all the time, it must be that I think of myself as a failure. If I do not want to think of myself as a failure, perhaps I should begin by succeeding now and again. Look. The tests, you see, which you encounter, in school, in college, in life, were designed, in the most part, for idiots. By idiots. There is no need to fail at them. They are not a test of your worth. They are a test of your ability to retain and spout back misinformation. Of course you fail them. They’re nonsense. And I …

Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit.

Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams — like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams.

I go out there. I'm out there every day. [Pause] There is nothing out there.

That's fucked. That's fucked. You don't look at the fucking percentage. You look at the gross.

Matrimony and monogamy have forever been linked with property and inheritance, the nuclear family, in the West, having been decided upon through trial and error as the most effective unit for preservation of both.

Elected federal officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution. When they aren’t held strictly to that oath, we have that anarchy we see metastasizing around us.

You ever take a dump, made you feel you'd just slept for twelve hours?

The power of the dramatist, and of the political flack therefore, resides in the ability to state the problem.

An Evangelical who thinks the world is ending is called a religious fanatic; a liberal who thinks so is called an environmentalist.” — Dennis Prager * Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind.

We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.

Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.

It's not a lie. It's a gift for fiction.

[A Chinese Restaurant.] Roma is seated alone at the booth.Lingk is at the booth next to him.Roma is talking to him.
* * *

Roma: . . . Eh? What I’m saying, what is our life? (Pause.) It’s looking forward or it’s looking back. And that’s our life. That’s it. Where is the moment? (Pause.) And what is it that we’re afraid of? Loss. What else? (Pause.) The bank closes. We get sick, my wife died on a plane, the stock market collapsed . . . the house burnt down . . . what of these happen . . . ? None of ’em. We worry anyway. What does this mean? I’m not secure. How can I be secure? (Pause.) Through amassing wealth beyond all measure? No. And what’s beyond all measure? That’s a sickness. That’s a trap. There is no measure. Only greed. How can we act? The right way, we would say, to deal with this: “There is a one-in-a million chance that so and so will happen. . . . Fuck it, it won’t happen to me. . . .” No. We know that’s not the right way I think. (Pause.) We say the correct way to deal with this is “There is a one-in-so-and-so chance that this will happen . . . God protect me. I am powerless, let it not happen to me. . . .” But no to that. I say. There’s something else. What is it? “If it happens, AS IT MAY for that is not within our powers, I will deal with it, just as I do today with what draws my concern today.” I say this is how we must act. I do those things which seem correct to me today. I trust myself. And if security concerns me, I do that which today I think will make me secure. And every day I do that, when that day arrives that I need a reserve, (a) odds are that I have it, and (b) the true reserve that I have is the strength that I have of acting each day without fear. (Pause.) According to the dictates of my mind. (Pause.)