Top 40 Michael Douglas Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Money never sleeps, pal.”

— Michael Douglas

2. “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”

— Michael Douglas

3. “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and cuts through to the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”

— Michael Douglas

4. “It’s all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.”

— Michael Douglas

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5. “What’s worth doing is worth doing for money.”

— Michael Douglas

6. “I’m impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work.”

— Michael Douglas

Featured in: Quotes About New York

7. “Money itself isn’t lost or made. It’s simply transferred from one perception to another.”

— Michael Douglas

8. “Relationships are like bubbles – they’re fragile.”

— Michael Douglas

9. “Cancer did not bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet.”

— Michael Douglas

10. “Every empire eventually falls.”

— Michael Douglas

11. “Players never die – they just try their luck at another table.”

— Michael Douglas

12. “Human Rights for everyone is the necessary foundation upon which all of us may build a world where everybody may live in peace and serenity and plenty.”

— Michael Douglas

13. “Oh, I get it, it’s simple. PG means the hero gets the girl, 15 means that the villain gets the girl, and 18 means everybody gets the girl.”

— Michael Douglas

14. “There’s nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his life.”

— Michael Douglas

15. “Out there is nothing but possibilities.”

— Michael Douglas

16. “When you’re making pictures out of heartfelt passion, it hurts when someone calls them a calculated business move.”

— Michael Douglas

17. “We must unite to make nuclear weapons a horror of the past.”

— Michael Douglas

18. “A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place.”

— Michael Douglas

19. “Being single is pretty good. It’s a nice sense of irresponsibility.”

— Michael Douglas

20. “Never knew how poor I was until I started making money.”

— Michael Douglas

21. “Sometimes we spend more efforts with people that are strangers in terms of making an impression than the person that’s closest to us. And you just got to remember not to take for granted that person that’s closest to you.”

— Michael Douglas

22. “Cigar smoking by it’s very nature is much more reflective than interactive.”

— Michael Douglas

23. “Everybody knows about Las Vegas. It’s a state of mind. Some people want to come with their kids and have a great weekend. Some people want to shop. Some people want to find hookers. Some people want to eat. Some people just want to gamble. It’s a potpourri of decadence.”

— Michael Douglas

24. “My brain cannot conceive how old my body is.”

— Michael Douglas

25. “I’m not a big filmophile. I don’t watch movies a lot for a hobby. I spend all my time watching sporting events. Because, opposed to movies, you can never tell how they’re going to end.”

— Michael Douglas

26. “Someone reminded me I once said, ‘Greed is good.’ Now it seems it’s legal.”

— Michael Douglas

27. “That’s why I’m such a big sports fan, with sports you can never guess what’s gonna happen. Most movies you get halfway through and you can kind of guess the ending.”

— Michael Douglas

28. “I am a Jew. Those are four words of pride. My Jewishness is as deep as my genes.”

— Michael Douglas

29. “When I look at myself as a younger actor, I see what a tight ass I was. I had a pretty big shadow because of my father and the comparisons. I was self-conscious about that. Now I realize there was nothing to be worried about.”

— Michael Douglas

30. “I went into rehab to save my marriage, but I wound up saving myself.”

— Michael Douglas

31. “The one thing that men and women have in common – they both like the company of men.”

— Michael Douglas

32. “Chemotherapy takes its toll; the more you keep doing it, you lose your energy, and it gets more difficult to swallow.”

— Michael Douglas

33. “For an actor, its great fun to play one of these hungry white sharks. Audiences love to hate them.”

— Michael Douglas

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34. “Everything’s so repressive now – it’s the No generation. You can’t do anything, you can’t eat anything, you have to abstain.”

— Michael Douglas

35. “You have to make entertaining movies. But like a good meal, it’s nice to have a little food for thought after you walk out of the theater rather than just wiling away a couple of hours.”

— Michael Douglas

36. “It’s a phenomenon that I see with young actors – a lot of American speaking parts going to British actors.”

— Michael Douglas

37. “Wherever arms flow, violence follows. Bullets replace ballots as the solution to political disputes.”

— Michael Douglas

38. “With little knowledge of what it meant to be a Jew, I found myself passionately defending the Jewish people. Now, half a century later, I have to defend my son. Anti-Semitism, I’ve seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger.”

— Michael Douglas

39. “Basketball is great; no one in Europe seems to believe just how close the spectators can sit to the players.”

— Michael Douglas

40. “A lot of actors get concerned about their own image, even going so far as to rewrite a movie to best serve that image. All I want to do is be in good movies.”

— Michael Douglas

41. “Actresses have more fear of being disliked. I, on the other hand, revel in it.”

— Michael Douglas

42. “Even when you’re acting with a producing hat, when you’re in every scene, you’re really conscious of trying to make everybody as good as they are, because ultimately you’re trying to make the best movie possible.”

— Michael Douglas

43. “I’ve always tried to kind of stretch my wings as an actor and do things that are different.”

— Michael Douglas

44. “Suddenly you’ve worked yourself up to the top of the pecking order and you say to yourself, okay, this is going to be fun.”

— Michael Douglas

Featured in: Fun Quotes

45. “It’s difficult for me to meet women because my crowd is much older. I know that for some of the young women I do meet, a relationship with me can be envisioned as a benefit to their career.”

— Michael Douglas

46. “My entire career is contemporary based, not by choice, but just by character. So, all the movies I’ve done, except for one in 40 years, are contemporary. But I never did an effects movie. So, I’m also a producer and I was really curious about how this whole thing went together.”

— Michael Douglas

47. “I thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while.”

— Michael Douglas

48. “I fell asleep to the sounds of the end of the world.”

— Michael Douglas