Top 35 John Ford Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You can speak well if your tongue can deliver the message of your heart.”

— John Ford

2. “Electronics is clearly the winner of the day.”

— John Ford

3. “Not only does God play dice with the universe, He’s using loaded dice.”

— John Ford

4. “Diamonds cut diamonds.”

— John Ford

5. “When in doubt, make a western.”

— John Ford

6. “What is done, is done: Spend not the time in tears, but seek for justice.”

— John Ford

7. “Revenge proves its own executioner.”

— John Ford

8. “I didn’t show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.”

— John Ford

9. “The main thing about directing is: photograph the people’s eyes.”

— John Ford

10. “The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth, Life’s paradise, great princess, the soul’s quiet, Sinews of concord, earthly immortality, Eternity of pleasures.”

— John Ford

11. “Delay in vengeance delivers a heavier blow.”

— John Ford

12. “Contentment gives a crown, where fortune hath denied it.”

— John Ford

13. “Busy opinion is an idle fool.”

— John Ford

14. “They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings.”

— John Ford

15. “Truth is child of Time.”

— John Ford

16. “Beauty that clothes the outside of our face, is cursed if it not be clothed with grace.”

— John Ford

17. “Why, I hold fate Clasped in my fist, and could command the course Of time’s eternal motion, hadst thou been One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.”

— John Ford

18. “Tell us, pray, what devil This melancholy is, which can transform Men into monsters.”

— John Ford

19. “Melancholy Is not, as you conceive, indisposition Of body, but the mind’s disease.”

— John Ford

20. “Let them fear bondage who are slaves to fear; the sweetest freedom is an honest heart.”

— John Ford

21. “Who better than an Irishman can understand the Indians, while still being stirred by tales of the US cavalry?”

— John Ford

22. “Tis as manlike to bear extremities as godlike to forgive.”

— John Ford

23. “Titles of honor add not to his worth, who is himself an honor of his titles.”

— John Ford

24. “I love making pictures but I don’t like talking about them.”

— John Ford

25. “Affections injured by tyranny, or rigor of compulsion, like tempest-threatened trees, unfirmly rooted, never spring to timely growth.”

— John Ford

26. “Most of the good things in pictures happen by accident.”

— John Ford

27. “How did I get to Hollywood? By train.”

— John Ford

28. “A bachelor May thrive by observation on a little, A single life’s no burthen: but to draw In yokes is chargeable, and will require A double maintenance.”

— John Ford

29. “Honour, How much we fight with weakness to preserve thee!”

— John Ford

30. “Whilst we strive To live most free, we’re caught in our own toils.”

— John Ford

31. “Sister, look ye, How, by a new creation of my tailor’s I’ve shook off old mortality.”

— John Ford

32. “Love is a tyrant, resisted.”

— John Ford

33. “Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it’s not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people’s eyes.”

— John Ford

34. “He hath shook hands with time.”

— John Ford

35. “Physicians are the cobblers, rather the botchers, of men’s bodies; as the one patches our tattered clothes, so the other solders our diseased flesh.”

— John Ford