Top 80 James Cameron Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.”

— James Cameron

Featured in: Work Hard Quotes

2. “The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make.”

— James Cameron

Featured in: Future Quotes, Moving Forward Quotes, Famous Movie Quotes

3. “The nation that leads in renewable energy will be the nation that leads the world.”

— James Cameron

4. “Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own.”

— James Cameron

5. “Failure is an option, fear is not.”

— James Cameron

6. “I am king of the world!”

— James Cameron

7. “Sometimes your whole life boils down to one insane move.”

— James Cameron

8. “Your imagination can create a reality.”

— James Cameron

9. “Your only competitors are your past achievements.”

— James Cameron

10. “Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. Everything after that you’re just negotiating your budget and your fee.”

— James Cameron

11. “People call me a perfectionist, but I’m not. I’m a rightist. I do something until it’s right, and then I move on to the next thing.”

— James Cameron

12. “A woman’s heart is an ocean of deep secrets.”

— James Cameron

13. “Go home, pick up your video camera, and make a film.”

— James Cameron

14. “The magic doesn’t come from within the director’s mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.”

— James Cameron

15. “It’s about human imagination and curiosity. What’s out there? What’s in the great beyond? What exists at levels we can’t see with our five senses?”

— James Cameron

16. “What are you gonna do, talk the alien to death?”

— James Cameron

17. “Tread softly upon the earth because the faces of the unborn look up at you.”

— James Cameron

18. “But failure has to be an option in art and in exploration – because it’s a leap of faith. And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks...”

— James Cameron

19. “A director’s job is to make something happen and it doesn’t happen by itself. So you wheedle, you cajole, you flatter people, you tell them what needs to be done. And if you don’t bring a passion and an intensity to it, you shouldn’t be doing it.”

— James Cameron

20. “Old Rose: It’s been 84 years, and I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in. Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.”

— James Cameron

21. “I love it when I have a nightmare to me that means I got my money’s worth out of that eight hours.”

— James Cameron

22. “The universe is like a giant bank vault lock, where the tumblers are constantly moving and once in a while the tumblers line up and you have to listen for the click. So you must be prepared in that moment to step through the door.”

— James Cameron

23. “Here’s my philosophy in life: If there’s a fire, you put it out. If there’s a flood, you fill sandbags and you build a dike. You roll up your sleeves and you get to work.”

— James Cameron

24. “When you have the feeling that anything’s possible, sometimes you wind up acting on it.”

— James Cameron

25. “I dreamed I was a soldier who could bring peace. Sooner or later, though, you always have to wake up.”

— James Cameron

26. “I guess Titanic because it made the most money. No, I’m kidding. I don’t really have a favorite. Maybe Terminator because that was the film that was the first one back when I was essentially a truck driver.”

— James Cameron

27. “Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It’s like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they’ll crystallize into a pattern.”

— James Cameron

28. “If you wait until the right time to have a child you’ll die childless, and I think film making is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something even if it’s bad.”

— James Cameron

29. “When the ship docks, I’m getting off with you. This is crazy. I know it doesn’t make any sense, that’s why I trust it.”

— James Cameron

30. “To convince people to back your idea, you’ve got to sell it to yourself and know when it’s the moment. Sometimes that means waiting. It’s like surfing. You don’t create energy, you just harvest energy already out there.”

— James Cameron

31. “I do an awful lot of scuba diving. I love to be on the ocean, under the ocean. I live next to the ocean.”

— James Cameron

32. “You know, in the film making business no one ever gives you anything.”

— James Cameron

33. “I don’t look at scripts. I just write them.”

— James Cameron

34. “There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.”

— James Cameron

35. “Don’t get seduced by your own stuff; work hard to keep a blank slate state of mind each time you watch your film.”

— James Cameron

36. “Getting the audience to cry for the Terminator at the end of T2, for me that was the whole purpose of making that film. If you can get the audience to feel emotion for a character that in the previous film you despised utterly and were terrified by, then that’s a cinematic arc.”

— James Cameron

37. “I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to study the ocean before we destroy it.”

— James Cameron

38. “So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level. We’ll create a world for people and then later present a narrative in that world.”

— James Cameron

39. “I actually started as a model builder and quickly progressed into production design, which made sense because I could draw and paint. But I kept watching that guy over there who was moving the actors around and setting up the shots.”

— James Cameron

40. “If you want to move through a virtual reality it’s called a video game, it’s been around forever.”

— James Cameron

41. “It was long ago in my life as a simple reporter that I decided that facts must never get in the way of truth.”

— James Cameron

42. “Jack: Where to, Miss? Rose: To the stars.”

— James Cameron

43. “Rose: You have a gift Jack, you do. You see people. Jack: I see you. Rose: And? Jack: You wouldn’t have jumped.”

— James Cameron

44. “Nature’s not our enemy, it’s our sustenance; and we need it – and we need nature healthy for us to be healthy and to survive long term.”

— James Cameron

45. “You can’t be an environmentalist, you can’t be an ocean steward without truly walking the walk and you can’t walk the walk in the world of the future, the world ahead of us, the world of our children, not eating a plant-based diet.”

— James Cameron

46. “You’re so stupid, Rose! – Jack Dawson.”

— James Cameron

47. “You can’t really call yourself an environmentalist if you’re still consuming animals. You just can’t.”

— James Cameron

48. “Every time you dive, you hope you’ll see something new – some new species. Sometimes the ocean gives you a gift, sometimes it doesn’t.”

— James Cameron

49. “God wears white flannels.”

— James Cameron

50. “If it was up to the studio, everything would be shot with a camcorder.”

— James Cameron