Ron Silver Quotations

Artists speak the truth to the public without fear of retribution or damage to their careers.

I don't even like to use the word relationship. I don't know what it means.

You have to think an awful lot about your motivations or people's behavioral intentions or what their body language can indicate or what's really going on or what makes people sometimes do, sometimes, the irrational things they do.

The twentieth century has exhibited a barbarism and lack of respect for human life on a massive scale just about unknown before

I was immature the way I handled the business. I saw myself as a tribune of the people.

Nothing gets a bigger laugh than when you refer to things like ethics or human rights.

I think it's good to meet smart people and talk.

It's not like I'm the most famous person in the world

Then I realized that to be really good at this requires a lot of energy and concentration and skill.

Involvement in public affairs is a legitimate use of celebrity

Anyone who devotes time and attention to what makes people tick, to me, is a smart person.

I think you have an obligation to be an optimist. Because if you're not, nothing will change

I just don't get invited to the same dinner parties I used to like to go to.

Acting is not about knowing all this stuff; it's about character.

But why should I run for office and lose what little influence I have?

For about the first ten years of my career, I wasn't terribly motivated.

I had no desire from an early age to be on the stage.

I kind of have a dilettantish spirit about me

I started getting jobs, and I thought it was going to be real easy.

I still think I'm going to do something else when I grow up

If I don't see my kids for six days, I start to get withdrawal pains

In Europe, people in the arts are considered part of the intelligentsia; they are considered part of the elite

What I liked about Clinton is what I like about Rudy, strange as that may sound: their approach to crime and family responsibility.

Too often in the past, U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks.

Two, I actually learned a lot of things that served me very well when it came to repeating performances on stage, because it is a craft and you do need a technique for it.

We will never forgive. Never forget. Never excuse!

Even though I am a well-recognized liberal on many issues confronting our society today, I find it ironic that many human rights advocates and outspoken members of my own entertainment community are often on the front lines to protest repression, for which I applaud them but they are usually the first ones to oppose any use of force to take care of these horrors that they catalogue repeatedly.

I started taking acting classes because I had fooled around with it in college and I had received some encouragement and liked it.

Isn't the rationale, fundamentally, for democracy, that we're going to get people of unequal abilities to ultimately make very important decisions?

It made me think about a whole area of human activity that was not really a concern to me before that, because I was involved in reading Chinese history, or languages, or whatever.

I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy, it's very important that I participate in that.

And, more than anything else, what I liked about it - which doesn't work for all actors - was the reflective nature, the self-reflection.

But some actors I have met possess an intelligence that I can only dream of. It's about character, it's about behavior. They understand things about people that I simply don't see.

I do believe all actors are smart.

Too often in the past, U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks

I'm a 9/11 Republican.

I saw and I met a lot of people who were in the field. It also provided a context in which I came to respect what the actor did, because I saw how difficult it actually was to do.

I've seen people with a tremendous amount of educational background in the field not turn out to be terribly good actors, and I've seen people with no education in the field turn out to be people that I admire quite a bit

I kind of dwindled into acting.

Nobody has a franchise on what is good

If you don't think you want to go on a train and read the paper every day and work from nine to six at night, there was something about the uncertainty when I was younger which was very attractive