“To know that the odds are so high that only through the perishing of your life will the minions survive, that’s love. That’s heroism.”

You have to have an almost boundless reservoir of energy and interest to enter politics because quite often it’s thankless and fruitless and you can’t accomplish much.

At the end of the day, ‘Rocky’ is a love story, and he could never have reached the final bell without Adrian.

I was an insecure kid. Once I saw ‘Hercules’ with Steve Reeves, it completely changed my life. If I had never gone to that film, I wouldn’t be here today.

There’s a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone.

I believe there’s an inner power that makes winners or losers. And the winners are the ones who really listen to the truth of their hearts.

I consider myself something of a raconteur. I have a rather audacious sense of humour.

Nothing’s harder than writing. There’s no comparison. With directing, you can bounce a lot of ideas around. There’s tremendous support – you’ve got editors and sound mixers. With writing, it’s all you, and it’s just crippling when people tear up your pages.

When I was in junior high school, the teachers voted me the student most likely to end up in the electric chair.

Boxing is a great exercise as long as you can yell “cut” whenever you want to.

I think I’m a much better painter than an actor.

The problem is, your ego sometimes tells you that you can do many things. But sometimes it’s best to stay focused and be honest with yourself.

If you’re gonna be a failure, at least be one at something you enjoy.

When I tried to play characters that strayed from who I am it ended in disaster. People didn’t expect me in comedies or musicals.

I thought marriage was tough. Golf’s like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel! It’s a psychological game that gets into your blood.

I am a sensitive writer, actor and director. Talking business disgusts me. If you want to talk business, call my disgusting personal manager.

I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil.

There is a kind of expressed love which is easy to subvert. When a figure is loved for their deeds, their conquests, their heroism, their goodness, their love of the people, these are easy enough to destroy… But there is a kind of love which is felt for apparently no reason…

This is what makes heroism so important: it reflects our own sense of identity and from this our own heroism is molded.

[As] Santayana wrote, ‘Nothing requires a rarer intellectual heroism than willingness to see one’s equation written out.’

Heroism does not require spiritual maturity.

If an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not found in such a writer.

I am bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

Truth is a tyrant-the only tyrant to whom we can give our allegiance. The service of truth is a matter of heroism.