Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade.
BEN HECHTWhen you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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Immorality, perversion, infidelity, cannibalism, etc., are unassailable by church and civic league if you dress them up in the togas and talliths of the Good Book.
BEN HECHT -
I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
BEN HECHT -
Three years ago, the white hope of the theatre. Today, a mug. That’s New York for you. Puts you on a Christmas tree, and then – the alley.
BEN HECHT -
Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit or talent.
BEN HECHT -
There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
BEN HECHT -
Love is the magician that pulls him out of his own hat.
BEN HECHT -
I ran everywhere in the city like a fly buzzing in the works of a clock, tasted more than any fit belly could hold, learned not to sleep, and buried myself in a tick-tock of whirling hours that still echo in me.
BEN HECHT -
Socially, a journalist ranks somewhere between the madam of a whorehouse and a bartender. but spiritually he ranks with Galileo, for he knows the world is round.
BEN HECHT -
Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.
BEN HECHT -
The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
BEN HECHT -
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
BEN HECHT -
I’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.
BEN HECHT -
For many years Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.
BEN HECHT -
Bad writing is not easier than good writing. It’s just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. Only the view is different.
BEN HECHT -
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.
BEN HECHT