Top 40 Laurence Olivier Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive for excellence – doing your best.”

— Laurence Olivier

2. “Striving for perfection is the greatest stopper there is. You’ll be afraid you can’t achieve it. It’s your excuse to yourself for not doing anything. Instead, strive for excellence, doing your best.”

— Laurence Olivier

3. “The humility to prepare and the self-confidence to bring it off.”

— Laurence Olivier

4. “Have a very good reason for everything you do.”

— Laurence Olivier

5. “Use your weaknesses; aspire to the strength.”

— Laurence Olivier

6. “The art of persuasion. The actor persuades himself, first, and through himself, the audience.”

— Laurence Olivier

7. “I should be soaring away with my head tilted slightly toward the gods, feeding on the caviar of Shakespeare. An actor must act.”

— Laurence Olivier

8. “I don’t know what is better than the work that is given to the actor-to teach the human heart the knowledge of itself.”

— Laurence Olivier

9. “Shakespeare – The nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of God.”

— Laurence Olivier

10. “The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.”

— Laurence Olivier

11. “When you’re a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you’re older, it’s a straight part.”

— Laurence Olivier

12. “I have to act to live.”

— Laurence Olivier

13. “Art is a little bit larger than life – it’s an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.”

— Laurence Olivier

14. “Don’t be afraid to be outrageous; the critics will shoot you down anyway.”

— Laurence Olivier

15. “If you’re an artist, you’ve got to prove it.”

— Laurence Olivier

16. “Life is enthusiasm, zest.”

— Laurence Olivier

17. “Acting is an everlasting search for truth.”

— Laurence Olivier

18. “Without acting, I cannot breathe.”

— Laurence Olivier

19. “Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.”

— Laurence Olivier

20. “We used to have actresses trying to become stars; now we have stars trying to become actresses.”

— Laurence Olivier

21. “Of all the things I’ve done in life, directing a motion picture is the most beautiful. It’s the most exciting and the nearest than an interpretive craftsman, such as an actor can possibly get to being a creator.”

— Laurence Olivier

22. “I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theater is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.”

— Laurence Olivier

23. “Living is strife and torment, disappointment and love and sacrifice, golden sunsets and black storms. I said that some time ago, and today I do not think I would add one word.”

— Laurence Olivier

24. “What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?”

— Laurence Olivier

25. “Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.”

— Laurence Olivier

26. “We ape, we mimic, we mock. We act.”

— Laurence Olivier

27. “If I wasn’t an actor, I think I’d have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights.”

— Laurence Olivier

28. “I’d like people to remember me for a diligent expert workman. I think a poet is a workman. I think Shakespeare was a workman. And God’s a workman. I don’t think there’s anything better than a workman.”

— Laurence Olivier

29. “Above all, you must remain open and fresh and alive to any new idea.”

— Laurence Olivier

30. “No matter how well you perform, there’s always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it’s lousy.”

— Laurence Olivier

31. “I’m rather bored by the subject – meaning me. It’s a sort of a yoke, but at times you know, a yoke is a kind of comfort. And it’s always there.”

— Laurence Olivier

32. “I am far from sure when I am acting and when I am not or, should I more frankly put it, when I am lying and when I am not. For what is acting but lying and what is good acting but convincing lying?”

— Laurence Olivier

33. “I believe in the theater; I believe in it as the first glamorizer of thought. It restores dramatic dynamics and their relations to life size.”

— Laurence Olivier

34. “Scratch an actor and you’ll find an actor.”

— Laurence Olivier

35. “Surely we have always acted; it is an instinct inherent in all of us. Some of us are better at it than others, but we all do it.”

— Laurence Olivier

36. “Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real.”

— Laurence Olivier

37. “What is the main problem of the actor? It is to keep the audience awake, and not let them go to sleep, then wake up and go home feeling they’ve wasted their money.”

— Laurence Olivier

38. “If he was lost for a moment, he would dive straight back into its honey.”

— Laurence Olivier

39. “Acting, is not a profession for adults.”

— Laurence Olivier

40. “I often think that could we creep behind the actor’s eyes, we would find an attic of forgotten toys and a copy of the Domesday Book.”

— Laurence Olivier

41. “There is a spirit in us that makes our brass to blare and our cymbals crash-all, of course, supported by the practicalities of trained lung power, throat, heart, guts.”

— Laurence Olivier

42. “You must have – besides intuition and sensitivity – a cutting edge that allows you to reach what you need. Also, you have to know life – bastards included – and it takes a bit of one to know one, don’t you think?”

— Laurence Olivier

43. “We have all, at one time or another, been performers, and many of us still are – politicians, playboys, cardinals and kings.”

— Laurence Olivier

44. “My stage successes have provided me with the greatest moments outside myself, my film successes the best moments, professionally, within myself.”

— Laurence Olivier

45. “Work is life for me, it is the only point of life-and with it there is almost religious belief that service is everything.”

— Laurence Olivier