There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
BEN HECHTAs an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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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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Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women’s hair rhapsodically described, women’s faces acclaimed in odelike language.
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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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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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Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him.
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In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
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Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
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The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them.
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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 movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
BEN HECHT -
The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
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I see a lot of fog and a few lights. I like it when life’s hidden. It gives you a chance to imagine nice things, nicer than they are.
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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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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.
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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.
BEN HECHT







