Milos Forman Quotations

The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.

I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press - that's the cornerstone.

I get out of the taxi and it's probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York.

Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom.

I remember in 1968 when we were in Cannes, in the festival, and we were supposed to be there 10 days, and the second day the festival collapsed because the French, you know, film-makers raised the red flag in the festival and ended the festival.

Well, listen, you know, the Czech saying is, you know, when you are drowning you are grabbing even a little twig. That's what all Czechs were doing, grabbing for... with the hope for this little twig.

People must not think that all bad in man which is unleashed, the moment you impose censorship disappears from man.

I think everybody dreamt somehow to make a film in Hollywood, you know.

You know what happened, you know, in 1938: France, England, you know, just sold out Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

And also they were absolutely brilliant in one way, you know: they knew how effective is not to punish somebody who is guilty; what Communist Party members could afford to do was mind-boggling: they could do practically anything they wanted - steal, you know, lie, whatever.

And everything is controlled and everybody is a member of some committee, because then their watchdogs placed in the committees can control everything, what this person says or how this person think(s), you know.

So, thanks God, our films, our first films were suddenly being appreciated by the Western media; especially France was very good, and Switzerland was very good.

You know, 20 years... the films of television when it started, the literature, radio in communist countries, they're clean as a whistle; there was no violence, no sex, no drugs, nothing.

So I left with Jean Claude and went to Paris, so when the Russians came to Prague, I was in Paris.

Because I just loved to spend two years of my life in the company of Andy Kaufman and other characters.

First of all, to defend my work, I had to believe that I am doing a totally silly, stupid, innocent comedy.

Humor was not important only for me, humor was important for this nation for centuries, to survive, you know.

When I came for the first time to the United States, visiting, I was absolutely fascinated by New York.

Well, I wouldn't say that this experience had any influence on my decision to do this film about Andy, because Andy was apolitical. Andy was never political.

First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined.

Now, after the communist take-over in 1948, the amount of feature films produced dwindled to three a year, while the school was, you know, every year another three, four, five students.

We have confidence in the abilities of the dedicated officers on both sides of the border to detect and seal tunnels such as these.

This will shine a very bright light on an issue that has been camouflaged and buried for a long time.

This is something that must be resolved as soon as possible, before the end of 2006. It's a security problem. I'm thinking of the different risks of disruption of the region and what this could lead to.

This means that if 54.5 percent of voters in Montenegro want independence, then we remain in union with Serbia and a minority wins over the majority. This does not seem fair to me, but we fully accept the proposal of the European Union.

The most dangerous is that it's humiliating you. The communism humiliates your pride, because it's forcing you voluntarily to twist your spine.

It's hard to go door to door in a neighborhood where no one's in it. It's hard to ring a doorbell if no one's there. It's hard to make a phone call when no one's answering the phone.

It was great to see committed Europeans understanding our situation and the reasons behind our desire for independence.

Serbia produces wheat and so - understandably - they want to protect their farmers from imports of cheap wheat and bread. But we have our own port and think that we should give our people the cheapest prices for bread, no matter where we import it from.

If you look at the natural dispositions of the economies, a union does not make sense. Their economy has an agricultural basis and ours relies a great deal on tourism.

If you look over the last three years, you can see Montenegro has a durable economy.

I'm convinced the Beatles are partly responsible for the fall of Communism.

What I like about masturbation is that you don't have to talk afterwards.

Memories are doing funny things to us.

The formula proposed by the EU harms the basic democratic principle that each vote should have the same democratic value.