Top 60 Kirk Douglas Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “In order to achieve anything you must be brave enough to fail.”

— Kirk Douglas

2. “The learning process continues until the day you die.”

— Kirk Douglas

3. “Virtue is not photogenic. What is it to be a nice guy? To be nothing, that’s what. A big fat zero with a smile for everybody.”

— Kirk Douglas

4. “You haven’t learned how to live until you’ve learned how to give.”

— Kirk Douglas

5. “When I made Spartacus during the McCarthy Era, we were losing our freedom. It was an awful, awful way. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, in every level of government and they concentrated on Hollywood and especially on Hollywood writers.”

— Kirk Douglas

6. “No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. So what if my stroke left me with a speech impediment? Moses had one, and he did all right.”

— Kirk Douglas

7. “The biggest lie is the lie we tell ourselves in the distorted visions we have of ourselves, blocking out some sections, enhancing others. What remains are not the cold facts of life, but how we perceive them. That’s really who we are.”

— Kirk Douglas

8. “My kids never had the advantages I had. I was born poor.”

— Kirk Douglas

9. “Virtue is not photogenic.”

— Kirk Douglas

10. “Fear is a terrible thing. It makes you do awful things.”

— Kirk Douglas

11. “I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.”

— Kirk Douglas

12. “When you get old the worst thing is you lose so many friends. Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne. People who I loved to work with.”

— Kirk Douglas

13. “Life is like a B-picture script. It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I’d turn it down.”

— Kirk Douglas

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14. “On a crowded bus in Israel, a mother was speaking to her son in Yiddish. An Israeli woman reprimanded her. “You should be speaking Hebrew. Why are you talking to him in Yiddish?” The mother answered, “I don’t want he should forget he’s a Jew.””

— Kirk Douglas

15. “I remember little things that break my heart. We were coming out of Michael’s house one day, and he noticed my shoelaces were undone. He bent down and tied them. I almost cried. To me, it was such a gesture of love.”

— Kirk Douglas

16. “When you become a star, you don’t change – everyone else does.”

— Kirk Douglas

17. “I’m concerned that the world is a mess. That’s why when I wrote my last book, Let’s Face It, I dedicated it to the younger generation because, let’s face it, the world is in a mess. Right now, the young people will inherit that mess. I think we have to do everything we can.”

— Kirk Douglas

18. “My children didn’t have my advantages; I was born into abject poverty.”

— Kirk Douglas

19. “When I produced Spartacus, the writer was Dalton Trumbo, who spent a year in jail because he would not answer McCarthy’s questions about other people. He submitted the picture under the false name of Sam Jackson.”

— Kirk Douglas

20. “Why can’t a woman be more like a dog, huh? So sweet, loving, attentive.”

— Kirk Douglas

21. “I never wanted to be in movies. In a sense, I’m still a failure because I wanted to be a star on the stage.”

— Kirk Douglas

22. “What would my parents think about America if they arrived here today? Would they even want to come? I wonder.”

— Kirk Douglas

23. “Listen – pacemaker, crash, stroke. What does it mean? God doesn’t want me now. That’s all.”

— Kirk Douglas

24. “I came from abject poverty. There was nowhere to go but up.”

— Kirk Douglas

25. “If I thought a man had never committed a sin in his life, I don’t think I’d want to talk with him. A man with flaws is more interesting.”

— Kirk Douglas

26. “My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn’t believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn’t believe that it was free.”

— Kirk Douglas

27. “The best wine comes from home, wherever it is.”

— Kirk Douglas

28. “My mother, we were a very poor family. When I was a kid, we would be in our little room, and there would be a knock on the door almost every night with a hobo begging for food. Even though we didn’t even have enough to eat, my mother always found something to give them.”

— Kirk Douglas

29. “I don’t need a critic to tell me I’m an actor. I make my own way. Nobody’s my boss. Nobody’s ever been my boss.”

— Kirk Douglas

30. “I have always been grateful that my Russian mother and father came to this country to give me a better chance, and I have had a better chance.”

— Kirk Douglas

31. “Obey the voice within – it commands us to give of ourselves and help others. As long as we have the capacity to give, we are alive.”

— Kirk Douglas

32. “With John Wayne, we argued all the time and we made four pictures.”

— Kirk Douglas

33. “Sometimes, the thing that ties you down sets you free.”

— Kirk Douglas

34. “The only advantage I have found in being Jewish is that I can be openly anti-Semitic.”

— Kirk Douglas

35. “I’ve played some good guys as well, in Spartacus, Paths of Glory and my favorite picture, Lonely Are the Brave, so I had a mixture of parts in my life.”

— Kirk Douglas

36. “Love has more depth as you get older.”

— Kirk Douglas

37. “Fame is as much about luck as it is about talent, perhaps more.”

— Kirk Douglas

38. “The first thing I look for in a woman is warmth-femininity. It’s got nothing to do with a pretty face.”

— Kirk Douglas

39. “I never had any desire to be a film actor. I never thought I was the good-looking movie type, which I assumed they wanted.”

— Kirk Douglas

40. “You know, you have to have some inner philosophy to deal with adversity.”

— Kirk Douglas

41. “All children are natural actors, and I’m still a kid. If you grow up completely, you can never be an actor.”

— Kirk Douglas

42. “I have a great respect for actors like Clint Eastwood, who’s a wonderful director. I think two pictures that I directed were not successful, so I decided not to make any more.”

— Kirk Douglas

43. “Now, why is it that most of us can talk openly about the illnesses of our bodies, but when it comes to our brain and illnesses of the mind we clam up and because we clam up, people with emotional disorders feel ashamed, stigmatized, and don’t seek the help that can make the difference.”

— Kirk Douglas

44. “I have one computer that my wife gave me. All I know how to do, and I do it every day, is play Spider Solitaire. And I don’t have a cell phone.”

— Kirk Douglas

45. “I believe much of the divisiveness in the world has been caused by religion, even in the time of Spartacus when they worshipped many gods. What is the purpose of religion? After ninety-five years on this planet, I have come to the conclusion that religion should be based on only one thing: helping your fellow man. If everybody followed that religion – helping his fellow man – armies would vanish overnight.”

— Kirk Douglas

46. “If you want to know about a man you can find out an awful lot by looking at who he married.”

— Kirk Douglas

47. “When you get to my age, you find that most of your dear friends are gone.”

— Kirk Douglas

48. “Since my stroke, I have begun to see so many miracles all around me. I look out of the window in my room: verdant grass, silver-tipped oak leaves, tall palm trees gentle swaying as they reach to the sky, masses and masses of roses. All colors, so many shapes, exquisite fragrances.”

— Kirk Douglas

49. “Really a bad guy is more interesting, dramatically, than the good guy.”

— Kirk Douglas

50. “When you reach 95, after you get over your surprise, you start looking back.”

— Kirk Douglas