Top 200 David Mamet Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He’s taken an imperial view of the presidency.”

— David Mamet

52. “Here is a sovereign talisman against regret: never do that which might engender it.”

— David Mamet

53. “All fears are one fear. Just the fear of death. And we accept it, then we are at peace.”

— David Mamet

54. “I’m greedy and ambitious like everybody else.”

— David Mamet

55. “Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost.”

— David Mamet

56. “Don’t assume I’m dumb because I wear a suit and tie.”

— David Mamet

57. “The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let’s think about what’s the whole battle.”

— David Mamet

58. “To find beauty in the sad, hope in the midst of loss, and dignity in failure is great poetic art.”

— David Mamet

59. “I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.”

— David Mamet

60. “My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign.”

— David Mamet

61. “When you come into the theatre, you have to be willing to say, ‘We’re all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.’ If you’re not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.”

— David Mamet

62. “You got an all-out prize fight, you wait ’til the fight’s over, one guy’s left standing and that’s how you know who’s won.”

— David Mamet

63. “Film is a collaborative business: bend over.”

— David Mamet

64. “All rhetorical questions are accusations.”

— David Mamet

65. “You get rich through luck. You get rich through crime. You get rich through fulfilling the needs of another. You can be as greedy as you like. If you can’t do one of those three things, you ain’t going to get any money.”

— David Mamet

66. “The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.”

— David Mamet

67. “The theatre is traditionally where people go to hear the truth.”

— David Mamet

68. “All drama is about lies. When the lie is exposed, the play is over.”

— David Mamet

69. “The secret knowledge is there’s nobody home but us chickens. The Constitution was written by a bunch of regular guys who tried to get together and thrash out a contract under which they could get together that would keep people together.”

— David Mamet

70. “Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all ‘pictures of people talking’ – as, indeed, most of them are.”

— David Mamet

71. “The essence of jiu-jitsu is philosophy.”

— David Mamet

72. “Art is about the spontaneous connection of the artist to his own unconscious – about insight beyond reason. If his insight were reasonable, anyone could do it, but anyone cannot. Only few can, and they are called.”

— David Mamet

73. “Marijuana, for example, won’t help one determine the correct aspect ratio...”

— David Mamet

74. “My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die.”

— David Mamet

75. “I love Superman. I’m a big fan of anyone who can make his living in his underwear.”

— David Mamet

76. “A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That’s like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance.”

— David Mamet

77. “It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.”

— David Mamet

78. “Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else.”

— David Mamet

79. “I hate the computer. I hate their spell-check. I won’t ever do e-mail.”

— David Mamet

80. “I’ve been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. When ‘American Buffalo’ came out on Broadway, people would storm out and say, ‘How dare he use that kind of language!’ Of course I’m alienating the public! That’s what they pay me for.”

— David Mamet

81. “The mind is a mill which can incessant turn, ’til its mere operation focus the stress inward and the stones grind themselves to dust.”

— David Mamet

82. “In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn’t threaten us.”

— David Mamet

83. “People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.”

— David Mamet

84. “Characters on stage, like people in what we refer to as “real life,” do not speak to reveal themselves. They do not speak to conceal themselves. They speak to get whatever it is that they want. It is the only reason they speak.”

— David Mamet

85. “I don’t have any experience with film schools. I suspect that they’re useless, because I’ve had experience with drama schools, and have found them to be useless.”

— David Mamet

86. “Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible.”

— David Mamet

87. “We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a Protective Monastery of Aesthetic Truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.”

— David Mamet

88. “I love working on a typewriter – the rhythm, the sound; it’s like playing the piano, which I do, too.”

— David Mamet

89. “A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds – one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience.”

— David Mamet

90. “If the scene bores you when you read it, rest assured it WILL bore the actors, and will then bore the audience, and we’re all going to be back in the breadline.”

— David Mamet

91. “The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.”

— David Mamet

92. “The audience requires not information but drama.”

— David Mamet

93. “I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn’t what’s on the screen. It’s what you have to do to raise the money.”

— David Mamet

94. “My dad was a labour lawyer, and the ideas that I grew up with – bad management, bad capitalism, robber barons – when I applied this to my own life, I saw that we are all on both sides of the coin.”

— David Mamet

95. “Always do things the least interesting way, the most blunt way, and you make a better movie. This is my experience.”

— David Mamet

96. “My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.”

— David Mamet

97. “The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal for 78 years. Did the ban make them ‘more’ illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation.”

— David Mamet

98. “Being among my people is a delight. We Jews live among ourselves. I love it.”

— David Mamet

99. “My definition of a ‘friend’ is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, ‘Yeah, sure. You know what? Let’s talk about what we can talk about. Let’s help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.’”

— David Mamet

100. “If you’re writing an opinion piece, it’s your job to write your opinion. If, on the other hand, you wrote a novel, as Virginia Woolf tells us, it would be inappropriate if you let your novel be influenced by your political opinions.”

— David Mamet