Richard Attenborough Quotations

I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man, who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something.

At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone darling, it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them, but I know I'm safe calling them that. Although, of course, I adore them too.

I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.

I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view.

I can't write, I can't paint, I don't compose.

There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.

I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived.

I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.

And I believe we need heroes, I believe we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.

I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject.

If you've ever seen the film In Which We Serve, but it was about a destroyer in the Mediterranean.

I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.

What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit.

And there are certain things, and they are evident, obviously, without being boring about it, but I mean obviously, the two evident and easy ones being Gandhi and Cry Freedom, there are things which I do care about very much and which I would like to stand up and be counted.

David has asked me, a number of people have asked me and said, What performance do you like best or what's the best film you've made and so on and I don't really have any hesitation that the film I'm least embarrassed by and ashamed of or uneasy about is Shadowlands.

In other words, if you - the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie.

Well, I think In Love and War, which had a wonderful performance by Sandy, Sandra Bullock, who the authorities and, the supposed authorities, in cinema didn't want to know about.

I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.

I do not have a brain that I long for in dealing with matters of which I am ignorant, that don't come within my ken and a rationale, a reason, and argument and so on, and I can't do that and I'm not in that bracket at all.

Well, you cannot think of cinema now, and you cannot think of cinema in the UK and not place Chaplin in the most extraordinary elevated context, if there can be such a thing, in that he was a genius, he was unique.

I was on my own union council for twenty-odd years.

Pier Angeli was in the movie called Sea of Sand that Guy Green directed where this idea came up.

He was a great friend and will be sorely missed on both sides of the Atlantic.

Guy was a leading figure in cinema both in the UK and in the United States for over 40 years.

Guy was a leading figure in cinema both in the U.K. and in the United States for over 40 years, ... I had the most profound respect for his remarkable talent.

On my last day of shooting, I'd be happy to say 'Cut, it's a wrap' and fall off the twig.

And that is how I employ my time in cinema, saying things about people who I think have touched us in terms of our value judgement and by example.

I prefer fact to fiction.

If you are directing, you have the opportunity to put your signature on the bottom of the frame. You have the opportunity to say, "This is what I believe. That is my credo. That is what I wish to state."

I'm a passionate trade unionist.

I don't blame people for their mistakes, but I do ask that they pay for them.

Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone.

I want to be remembered as a storyteller.

When asked what attribute he most admired in human nature, Mahatma Gandhi replied, simply and immediately, 'Courage'. 'Nonviolence', he said, 'is not to be used ever as the shield of the coward. It is the weapon of the brave.

I passionately believe in heroes, but I think the world has changed its criteria in determining who it describes as a hero.

I believe we need heroes...we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.