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 HECHTOf the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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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.
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The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
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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.
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People’s sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
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I 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.
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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.
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Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
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Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
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That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
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There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence.
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I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.
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I have written a raucous valentine to a poet’s dream and agony.
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A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
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H.L.Mencken’s war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.
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Innocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you’re in over your head.
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The rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.
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As an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
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I’ll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.
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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.
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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.
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The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
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Out of the seventy movies I’ve written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I’m a Hollywood writer, so I put on my sports jacket and take off my brain.
BEN HECHT