Top 90 Aaron Sorkin Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Never argue with a drunk or a fool.”

— Aaron Sorkin

2. “First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one.”

— Aaron Sorkin

3. “Decisions are made by those who show up.”

— Aaron Sorkin

4. “Develop your own compass, and trust it. Take risks, dare to fail, remember the first person through the wall always gets hurt.”

— Aaron Sorkin

5. “Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.”

— Aaron Sorkin

6. “Decisions are made by those who show up. Don’t ever forget that you’re a citizen of this world.”

— Aaron Sorkin

7. “Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal from them outright.”

— Aaron Sorkin

8. “You’re going to fall down, but the world doesn’t care how many times you fall down, as long as it’s one fewer than the numbers of times you get back up.”

— Aaron Sorkin

9. “Don’t ever forget that you’re a citizen of this world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day. Civility, respect, kindness, character.”

— Aaron Sorkin

10. “Music is what mathematics does on a Saturday night.”

— Aaron Sorkin

11. “You can only write, ‘Somebody wants something, something else is in their way of getting it.’”

— Aaron Sorkin

12. “I don’t believe there are two sides to every argument. I think the facts are the center. And watching the news abandon the facts in favor of ‘fairness’ is what’s troubling to me.”

— Aaron Sorkin

13. “Toby Zeigler: There’s literally no one in the world I don’t hate right now.”

— Aaron Sorkin

14. “A hero would die for his country, but he’d much rather live for it.”

— Aaron Sorkin

15. “If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people, and if you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”

— Aaron Sorkin

16. “Tell me what you think and then tell me what the really smart person in the room who disagrees with you thinks.”

— Aaron Sorkin

17. “Certainly, last year we did an episode about the census and sampling versus a direct statistic. You just said the word ‘census,’ and people fall asleep.”

— Aaron Sorkin

18. “We live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns.”

— Aaron Sorkin

19. “Socializing on the internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.”

— Aaron Sorkin

20. “Elite is not a bad word, it’s an aspirational one.”

— Aaron Sorkin

21. “Rule of storytelling: When a character is shoved against a wall, shove them against a wall harder.”

— Aaron Sorkin

22. “I think it’s up to writers to write stuff that is compelling enough that people want to watch.”

— Aaron Sorkin

23. “She’s a person; the doctor pronounces her dead, not the news.”

— Aaron Sorkin

24. “I worship at the altar of obstacle and intention.”

— Aaron Sorkin

25. “Conflict, when used as a device, makes for good television and bad journalism.”

— Aaron Sorkin

26. “With a television series, there’s a hard deadline, and so you have to write even when you’re not writing well.”

— Aaron Sorkin

27. “It wouldn’t kill you to watch a film or pick up a newspaper once in a while.”

— Aaron Sorkin

28. “A friend is somebody who says the same things to your face that they would say if you’re not in the room.”

— Aaron Sorkin

29. “There’s that process of writing it – then you come out of your room into the sunlight, and you now have to complete the circuit and make the connection finally with the audience.”

— Aaron Sorkin

30. “I think mostly about intention and obstacle somebody wants something somethings standing in their way of getting it.”

— Aaron Sorkin

31. “I love writing. I’m not particularly comfortable in the actual world – I’m much more comfortable on the page. So if I could have a life where I could just slip the pages under the door and somebody would slip me a meal back, then that would be perfect for me.”

— Aaron Sorkin

32. “Josh: So, Toby, it’s election night. What do you say about a country that goes out of its way to protect even those citizens that try to destroy it? Toby: God bless America.”

— Aaron Sorkin

33. “I’m not interested in the difference between good and bad, I’m interested in the differences between good and great.”

— Aaron Sorkin

34. “It seems to me that more and more we’ve come to expect less and less from each other, and I think that should change.”

— Aaron Sorkin

35. “It’s a combination of life being unpredictable, and you being super dumb.”

— Aaron Sorkin

36. “The real problem with all drugs is that they work. Fantastically. They’re great, right up until the moment they kill you.”

— Aaron Sorkin

37. “As a dramatist, you’re looking for points of friction...”

— Aaron Sorkin

38. “It’s nice that HBO is in business with the audience and not with the advertisers. There’s a difference.”

— Aaron Sorkin

39. “TOBY: The world can move or not by changing some words.”

— Aaron Sorkin

40. “You know, one of the things I like about this world, or at least I like about the way we’re presenting this world, is these issues are terribly complicated – not nearly as black and white as we’re led to believe.”

— Aaron Sorkin

41. “The downside to series television is that the schedule is ferocious. It constantly feels like you have a midterm due that you haven’t started yet.”

— Aaron Sorkin

42. “Perhaps something like Facebook couldn’t have been invented by somebody who goes out five nights a week and has a ton of friends and makes friends really easily.”

— Aaron Sorkin

43. “You are like seven of the strangest women I have ever met.”

— Aaron Sorkin

44. “Roxy Sorkin, your father just won the Academy Award. I’m going to have to insist on some respect from your guinea pig.”

— Aaron Sorkin

45. “Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That’s what I look for.”

— Aaron Sorkin

46. “There are no Asian movie stars.”

— Aaron Sorkin

47. “President Bartlet: There’s a delegation of cardiologists having their pictures taken in the Blue Room. You wouldn’t think you could find a group of people more arrogant than the fifteen of us, but there they are, right upstairs in the Blue Room.”

— Aaron Sorkin

48. “And a wheat thin the size of Lake Tahoe.”

— Aaron Sorkin

49. “I’m a registered Republican, I only seem liberal because I believe that hurricanes are caused by high barometric pressure and not gay marriage.”

— Aaron Sorkin

50. “Writers are opposite of athletes, they get better with age.”

— Aaron Sorkin