Top 80 Marlene Dietrich Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.”

— Marlene Dietrich

2. “I’m worth more dead than alive. Don’t cry for me after I’m gone; cry for me now.”

— Marlene Dietrich

3. “Morocco: Looks better in films.”

— Marlene Dietrich

4. “I am at heart a gentleman.”

— Marlene Dietrich

5. “Grumbling is the death of love.”

— Marlene Dietrich

6. “Darling, the legs aren’t so beautiful, I just know what to do with them.”

— Marlene Dietrich

7. “Without tenderness, a man is uninteresting.”

— Marlene Dietrich

8. “Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin.”

— Marlene Dietrich

9. “The Germans and I no longer speak the same language.”

— Marlene Dietrich

10. “To lose your prejudices you must travel.”

— Marlene Dietrich

11. “Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.”

— Marlene Dietrich

12. “Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him.”

— Marlene Dietrich

Featured in: Hilarious Quotes

13. “To be completely woman you need a master, and in him a compass for your life. You need a man you can look up to and respect. If you dethrone him it’s no wonder that you are discontented, and discontented women are not loved for long.”

— Marlene Dietrich

14. “Love for the joy of loving, and not for the offerings of someone else’s heart.”

— Marlene Dietrich

15. “When you’re dead, you’re dead. That’s it.”

— Marlene Dietrich

16. “Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.”

— Marlene Dietrich

17. “If there is a supreme being, he’s crazy.”

— Marlene Dietrich

18. “Dietrich would never do that.”

— Marlene Dietrich

19. “How do you know love is gone? If you said that you would be there at seven and you get there by nine, and he or she has not called the police yet – it’s gone.”

— Marlene Dietrich

20. “Habit: Often mistaken for love.”

— Marlene Dietrich

21. “In language gender is particularly confusing. Why, please, should a table be male in German, female in French, and castrated in English?”

— Marlene Dietrich

22. “When you prostitute yourself, you have to get paid for it.”

— Marlene Dietrich

23. “The average man is more interested in a woman who is interested in him than he is in a woman with beautiful legs.”

— Marlene Dietrich

24. “Sex is much better with a woman, but then one can’t live with a woman.”

— Marlene Dietrich

25. “For women, beauty is more important than the mind, because the man is easier to watch than to think.”

— Marlene Dietrich

26. “I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men.”

— Marlene Dietrich

27. “Chanel was a workaholic. She must have had a lot to forget.”

— Marlene Dietrich

28. “Being in the depths of sadness is just as important an experience as being exuberantly happy.”

— Marlene Dietrich

29. “You can’t live without illusions, even if you must fight for them.”

— Marlene Dietrich

30. “Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.”

— Marlene Dietrich

31. “Timing: The alpha and omega of aerialists, jugglers, actors, diplomats, publicists, generals, prizefighters, revolutionists, financiers, dictators, lovers.”

— Marlene Dietrich

32. “The weak are more likely to make the strong weak than the strong are likely to make the weak strong.”

— Marlene Dietrich

Featured in: Strong Quotes

33. “On Teasing : Teach your teen-age daughters not to tease boys into physical desire. You might save their lives.”

— Marlene Dietrich

34. “Love affairs are the real only education in life.”

— Marlene Dietrich

35. “What remains is solitude.”

— Marlene Dietrich

36. “Latins are tenderly enthusiastic. In Brazil they throw flowers at you. In Argentina they throw themselves.”

— Marlene Dietrich

37. “Courage and grace are a formidable mixture. The only place to see it is in the bullring.”

— Marlene Dietrich

38. “Where have all the flowers gone.”

— Marlene Dietrich

39. “Duties are what make life most worth living. Lacking them, you are not necessary to anyone.”

— Marlene Dietrich

40. “I have been photographed to death.”

— Marlene Dietrich

41. “Soup not only warms you and is easy to swallow and to digest, it also creates the illusion in the back of your mind that Mother is there.”

— Marlene Dietrich

42. “I had no desire to be an film actress, to always play somebody else, to be always beautiful with somebody constantly straightening out your every eyelash. It was always a big bother to me.”

— Marlene Dietrich

43. “Logic is the key to an all-inclusive spiritual well-being.”

— Marlene Dietrich

44. “I’m not an actress, I’m a personality.”

— Marlene Dietrich

45. “I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”

— Marlene Dietrich

46. “Champagne makes you feel like it’s Sunday and better days are just around the corner.”

— Marlene Dietrich

47. “Tenderness is greater proof of love than the most passionate of vows.”

— Marlene Dietrich

48. “Careful grooming may take twenty years off a woman’s age, but you can’t fool a flight of stairs.”

— Marlene Dietrich

49. “There is a gigantic difference between earning a great deal of money and being rich.”

— Marlene Dietrich

50. “In America, sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it’s a fact.”

— Marlene Dietrich