Top 60 Charlton Heston Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”

— Charlton Heston

2. “There’s no such thing as a good gun. There’s no such thing as a bad gun. A gun in the hands of a bad man is a very dangerous thing. A gun in the hands of a good person is no danger to anyone except the bad guys.”

— Charlton Heston

3. “To the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to tell you something: You can have my gun. You can pry it from my cold dead hands!”

— Charlton Heston

4. “Life is full of surprises, isn’t it?”

— Charlton Heston

5. “Political correctness is tyranny with manners.”

— Charlton Heston

6. “The Internet is for lonely people. People should live.”

— Charlton Heston

7. “Telling us what to think has evolved into telling us what to say, so telling us what to do can’t be far behind.”

— Charlton Heston

8. “Political correctness is just tyranny with manners. I wish for you the courage to be unpopular. Popularity is history’s pocket change. Courage is history’s true currency.”

— Charlton Heston

9. “You simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don’t. We disobey the social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.”

— Charlton Heston

10. “One way or another, if you’re persistent, fortune always smiles on you.”

— Charlton Heston

11. “Film is the only art form whose raw materials are so horrendously expensive that the artist cannot afford to buy them for himself.”

— Charlton Heston

12. “Maybe it’s good if God gives you something to think about every so often.”

— Charlton Heston

13. “Sometimes, to be silent is to be most eloquent.”

— Charlton Heston

14. “I can’t change yesterday, but I can sure mess up today.”

— Charlton Heston

15. “I’ve come to feel very strongly, not as a joke, that if you appoint a committee of more than four people, their efficiency starts to deteriorate.”

— Charlton Heston

16. “What you hold in your hand is proof of man’s power – against which our strength means nothing. It has the force of 100 spears. I warn you, man’s ingenuity goes hand-in-hand with their cruelty. No creature is as devious or violent.”

— Charlton Heston

17. “The trouble with movies as a business is that it’s an art, and the trouble with movies as art is that it’s a business.”

— Charlton Heston

18. “It’s the camel’s nose in the tent. Look at Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin – every one of these monsters, on seizing power, their first act was to confiscate all firearms in private hands...”

— Charlton Heston

19. “Lenin in 1921 observed very presciently that motion pictures were the most powerful tool ever invented to shape the way we thought. He was right. Political films can be successful.”

— Charlton Heston

20. “Another plague upon the land, as devastating as the locusts God loosed on the Egyptians, is ‘Political Correctness.’”

— Charlton Heston

21. “I’m neither giving up nor giving in.”

— Charlton Heston

22. “Moses is the keystone to every man’s ethical code. He was the first man of record in history to conceive of the law as separate from the will of a ruler, to choose whether a man should live by grace of law, or law by grace of man. In a literal sense Moses lives at every council table today.”

— Charlton Heston

23. “You can spend a lifetime, and, if you’re honest with yourself, never once was your work perfect.”

— Charlton Heston

24. “I think narcotics and alcohol, and even tobacco are enormously costly ingredients in our society.”

— Charlton Heston

25. “I think there are probably more closet conservatives in Hollywood than there are closet homosexuals.”

— Charlton Heston

26. “I’m not a vegetarian but I want you to know that my four dogs are safe.”

— Charlton Heston

27. “I always work on the theory that the audience will believe you best if you believe yourself.”

— Charlton Heston

28. “An epic is the easiest kind of picture to make badly.”

— Charlton Heston

29. “A war put off is not a war avoided.”

— Charlton Heston

30. “Celebrity is a corrosive condition for the soul.”

— Charlton Heston

31. “I don’t think rock music has any positive function.”

— Charlton Heston

32. “Skijoring is just something that people want to see, it’s like Ben Hur on snow, the modern way. I love the speed, the adrenalin rush is something special. It’s just unique.”

— Charlton Heston

33. “We will preach the truth to a new generation: The doorway to all freedoms is framed with muskets. It’s time the apologists step aside and let freedom’s followers lead the way.”

— Charlton Heston

34. “Dirty Harry, for example. Clint Eastwood was not a rogue cop. He was a maverick cop, but he was a good guy.”

— Charlton Heston

35. “You have to be very careful to view yourself with a somewhat skeptical eye and to remember that you’re not here taking down everything I’m saying because you think I’m such a marvelous fellow but because your editors say go get 1,200 words or whatever on Chuck Heston.”

— Charlton Heston

36. “I intend to dedicate my remaining time as president of the NRA to ensure that the Second Amendment is safe from Al Gore and all those who threaten it.”

— Charlton Heston

37. “It’s fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting ‘inside’ a character. But you can’t get to the inside without getting the outside right first.”

— Charlton Heston

38. “In what I think is the most serious problem the world faces, which is the population explosion, we will come I think to a time when measures that are not even dreamt of now will become necessary.”

— Charlton Heston

39. “So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobedience of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men.”

— Charlton Heston

40. “To be an actor you need four things: energy, concentration, a lot of luck and, of course, good roles.”

— Charlton Heston

41. “I have lived my whole life on the stage and screen before you. I found purpose and meaning in your response.”

— Charlton Heston

42. “You could say that the paparazzi and the tabloids are sort of the ‘assault weapons’ of the First Amendment. They’re ugly, a lot of people don’t like them, but they’re protected by the First Amendment – just as ‘assault weapons’ are protected by the Second Amendment.”

— Charlton Heston

43. “I don’t seem to fit really into the 20th Century.”

— Charlton Heston

44. “My dad always said he wanted to be remembered for his body of work, and he’s made more than 75 pictures, some good, some bad, and they will be his legacy to the world of acting.”

— Charlton Heston

45. “I’ve been a public person for most of my life. It has advantages and disadvantages. I can’t take my kids to Disneyland. On the other hand, I can get a table at a restaurant or tickets to a play.”

— Charlton Heston

46. “I’ve played three presidents, three saints and two geniuses – and that’s probably enough for any man.”

— Charlton Heston

47. “For an actor, there is no greater loss than the loss of his audience.”

— Charlton Heston

48. “Above all, a director has to be a good captain.”

— Charlton Heston

49. “The big studio era is from the coming of sound until 1950, until I came in I came in at a crux in film, which was the end of the studio era and the rise of filmmaking.”

— Charlton Heston

50. “To the world, you are America.”

— Charlton Heston