American Quotes

A film director has to get a shot, no matter what he does. We're desperate people.

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable.

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.

I would rather do what I did than crawl in front of a ritualistic Left and lie the way those other comrades did betray my own soul.

I was taken in by what might be called the Hard Times version of the Communists' advertising or recruiting technique.

I value peace when it is not bought at the price of fundamental decencies.

I knew the exuberance of playing before an admiring audience and hearing my secret voice.

Anybody who informs on other people is doing something disturbing and even disgusting.

I was an outsider... but I was also sympathetic with people that were struggling to get up, because I struggled to get up.

I used to spend most of my time straining to be a nice guy so people would like me.

I like directors who come on the set and create something that's a little dangerous, difficult or unusual.

I may be getting old, but not foolish.

I spoke without fear of contradiction. I simply did not suffer self-doubt.

What's called a difficult decision is a difficult decision because either way you go there are penalties.

Every fighter has one fight that makes or breaks him.

You bet I arrived overnight. Over a few hundred nights in the Catskills, in vaudeville, in clubs and on Broadway.

To travel is to take a journey into yourself.

I wasn't born a fool. It took work to get this way.

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.

The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.

The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong, and we've got to figure out what was there. And that's what I call fundamental fault analysis.

The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location.

Sen. Edward Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction.

Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of U.N.Resolution 1441.

I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.

I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war - certainly, the French president, Jacques Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq's possession of WMD.

I think the aim - and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving - is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine.

I think that shows a level of maturity and understanding that I think bodes well for getting to the bottom of this. But it is really up to you and your staff, on behalf of the American people, to take on that challenge.

I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance.