The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
BEN HECHTI discovered early in my movie work that a movies never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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When 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.
BEN HECHT -
As an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
BEN HECHT -
A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him.
BEN HECHT -
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 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 -
In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
BEN HECHT -
A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
BEN HECHT -
They’re a symbol of the whole town, pretending to fight, love, weep and laugh all the time – and they’re phonies, all of them. And I head the list…their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness.
BEN HECHT -
In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
BEN HECHT -
The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
BEN HECHT -
Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.
BEN HECHT -
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 -
A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.” If he is wise he has not been impoverished. Nor has the fool been enriched. The thief flatters us by stealing. We flatter him by complaining.
BEN HECHT -
Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
BEN HECHT -
Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
BEN HECHT