Top 90 Dalton Trumbo Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If I were dead and buried And I heard your voice, Beneath the sod My heart of dust Would still rejoice.”

— Dalton Trumbo

2. “Goodbye, my love, my life. Goodbye, goodbye.”

— Dalton Trumbo

3. “When one man says, “No, I won’t,” Rome begins to fear.”

— Dalton Trumbo

4. “Nothing is bigger than life. There’s nothing noble in death. What’s noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What’s noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What’s noble about being an idiot? What’s noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What’s noble about being dead?”

— Dalton Trumbo

5. “He thought if I never have anything else I will always have dawn and morning sunlight.”

— Dalton Trumbo

6. “There’s a game out there, and the stakes are high. And the guy who runs it figures the averages all day long and all night long. Once in a while he lets you steal a pot. But if you stay in the game long enough, you’ve got to lose. And once you’ve lost there’s no way back, no way at all.”

— Dalton Trumbo

7. “A man doesn’t say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving, or that he’d spend all of his money to save money. Why should he be willing to die for the privilege of living?”

— Dalton Trumbo

8. “Now I lay me down to sleep my bomb proof cellar’s good and deep but if i’m killed before I wake remember god it’s for your sake amen.”

— Dalton Trumbo

9. “Democracy isn’t a gift. It’s a responsibility.”

— Dalton Trumbo

10. “I feel like my sixteenth birthday and the time I graduated from high school, and the first time I flew solo all wrapped up in one.”

— Dalton Trumbo

11. “How could you believe or disbelieve anything anymore? Four maybe five million men killed and none of them wanting to die while hundreds maybe thousands were left crazy or blind or crippled and couldn’t die no matter how hard they tried.”

— Dalton Trumbo

12. “An animal can learn to fight, but to sing beautiful things and make people believe them...”

— Dalton Trumbo

13. “Now the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things people don’t understand. Take the Einstein theory. Take taxes. Take love. Do you understand them? Neither do I. But they exist. They happen.”

— Dalton Trumbo

14. “I am one day going to be working openly in the motion picture industry. When that day comes, I swear to you that I will never sign a term contract with any major studio.”

— Dalton Trumbo

15. “He could almost hear the wail of pain that went up from his heart. It was a sharp terrible personal pain the kind of pain that comes only when someone to whom you have never done any harm turns on you and says goodbye goodbye forever without any reason for doing it. Without any reason at all.”

— Dalton Trumbo

16. “The war was to make the world safe for democracy for the little countries for everybody. If the war was over now then the world must be all safe for democracy. Was it? And what kind of democracy? And how much? And whose?”

— Dalton Trumbo

17. “Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.”

— Dalton Trumbo

18. “You show me a politician with his heels ten feet in the air, and by Judas priest, Ill show you an honest politician.”

— Dalton Trumbo

19. “If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn’t know what death is. He isn’t able to judge. He only knows about living. He doesn’t know anything about dying. If he is a fool and believes in death before dishonor let him go ahead and die.”

— Dalton Trumbo

20. “The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living and laughing and fighting and loving.”

— Dalton Trumbo

21. “You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else’s life. They’re plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That’s their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously. They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead.”

— Dalton Trumbo

22. “Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shell shock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rockaby baby in the tree top don’t stop a bomb or you’ll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellars good and deep but if I’m killed before I wake remember god its for your sake amen.”

— Dalton Trumbo

23. “Then there was this freedom the little guys were always getting killed for. Was it freedom from another country? Freedom from work or disease or death? Freedom from your mother-in-law? Please mister give us a bill of sale on this freedom before we go out and get killed. Give us a bill of sale drawn up plainly in advance what we’re getting killed for... so we can be sure after we’ve won your war that we’ve got the same kind of freedom we bargained for.”

— Dalton Trumbo

24. “What’s so noble about being dead?”

— Dalton Trumbo

25. “The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.”

— Dalton Trumbo

26. “Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don’t understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn’t like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It’s the kind of a life a decent man leads, it’s something to live for and to die for.”

— Dalton Trumbo

27. “Oh Kareen why do they have a war right now just when we find each other? Kareen we’ve got more important things than war. Us Kareen you and me in a house. I’ll come home at night to you in my house your house our house. We’ll have fat happy kids smart kids too. That’s more important than a war. Oh Kareen I look at you and you’re only nineteen and you’re old old like an old woman. Kareen I look at you and I cry inside and I bleed.”

— Dalton Trumbo

28. “Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shellshock.”

— Dalton Trumbo

29. “Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There’s no particular gift in that. Democracy isn’t a gift. It’s a responsibility.”

— Dalton Trumbo

30. “A good businessman never makes a contract unless he’s sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not.”

— Dalton Trumbo

31. “Bankers, nepotists, contracts and talkies: on four fingers one may count the leeches which have sucked a young and vigorous industry into paresis.”

— Dalton Trumbo

32. “A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let’s fight for liberty and he can’t show you liberty. He can’t prove the thing he’s talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?”

— Dalton Trumbo

33. “I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of.”

— Dalton Trumbo

34. “One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you’re obliged to act like one.”

— Dalton Trumbo

35. “Time presses. Death waits even for us. We have a dream to pursue, the whitest white hope of them all, and we must follow and find it before the light fails. So long, losers. God bless. Take care. We’ll be seeing you.”

— Dalton Trumbo

36. “Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well.”

— Dalton Trumbo

37. “It didn’t seem like a year. It had gone by like a lifetime when you look back and think of a time so far away that you can’t clearly remember what happened yet a time that has gone so quickly it seems only a minute ago it started.”

— Dalton Trumbo

38. “A man can’t fight always. If he’s drowning or suffocating he’s got to be smart and hold back some of his strength for the last the final the death struggle.”

— Dalton Trumbo

39. “There’s nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you’re so great your name will never be forgotten and who’s that great? The most important thing is your life little guys. You’re worth nothing dead except for speeches.”

— Dalton Trumbo

40. “New nursery rhymes for new times. HIckory dickery dock my daddy’s nuts from shelshock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and hurned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o-clock schollar blow off his legs and then watch him holler...”

— Dalton Trumbo

41. “It will come with a rush and a roar and a shudder. It will come howling and laughing and shrieking and moaning. It will come so fast you can’t help yourself you will stretch out your arms to embrace it. You will feel it before it comes and you will tense yourself for acceptance and the earth which is your eternal bed will tremble at the moment of your union.”

— Dalton Trumbo

42. “When armies begin to move and flags wave and slogans pop up watch out little guy because it’s somebody else’s chestnuts in the fire not yours.”

— Dalton Trumbo

43. “When armies begin to move and flags wave and slogans pop up watch out little guy because it’s somebody else’s chestnuts in the fire not yours. It’s words you’re fighting for and you’re not making an honest deal your life for something better. You’re being noble and after you’re killed the thing you traded your life for won’t do you any good and chances are it won’t do anybody else any good either.”

— Dalton Trumbo

44. “This is a war and war is hell and what the hell and so to hell with it.”

— Dalton Trumbo

45. “He looked down at a tired face that was only fifty-one years old. He looked down and thought dad I feel lots older than you. I was sorry for you dad. Things weren’t going well and they never would have gone well for you and it’s just as good you’re dead. People’ve got to be quicker and harder these days than you were dad. Goodnight and good-dreams. I won’t forget you and I’m not as sorry for you today as I was yesterday. I loved you dad goodnight.”

— Dalton Trumbo

46. “I will, proudly and by preference, do at least one picture a year for King Brothers, and I will try to make it the best picture that I have it in me to do.”

— Dalton Trumbo

47. “Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can’t talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead. If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn’t know what death is. He isn’t able to judge. He only knows about living. He doesn’t know anything about dying.”

— Dalton Trumbo

48. “We stumble into our graves knowing so well how to have done better.”

— Dalton Trumbo

49. “There’s no word worth your life.”

— Dalton Trumbo

50. “The only interesting thing that can happen in a Swiss bedroom is suffocation by feather mattress.”

— Dalton Trumbo