Top 200 Michael Moore Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

— Michael Moore

2. “Democracy is not a spectator sport, it’s a participatory event. If we don’t participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.”

— Michael Moore

3. “Jesus told us that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us.”

— Michael Moore

4. “There’s politics in all aspects of our daily lives.”

— Michael Moore

5. “I don’t want to do anything that violates my own personal code of ethics and morals.”

— Michael Moore

6. “You can’t regulate child labor. You can’t regulate slavery. Some things are just wrong.”

— Michael Moore

7. “It turns out Cuba has this incredible healthcare system for a very poor country.”

— Michael Moore

8. “No decisions should ever be made without asking the question, is this for the common good?”

— Michael Moore

9. “As far as what I do love, I love birds; I love lavender.”

— Michael Moore

10. “Documentaries are a form of journalism.”

— Michael Moore

11. “Capitalism is against the things that we say we believe in – democracy, freedom of choice, fairness. It’s not about any of those things now. It’s about protecting the wealthy and legalizing greed.”

— Michael Moore

12. “I get called ‘controversial’ all the time.”

— Michael Moore

13. “I made ‘Bowling for Columbine’ in the hope the school shootings would stop and that we would address the issue of how easy it is to get a gun in the United States, and tragically, those school shootings continue.”

— Michael Moore

14. “Our laws demand that a corporation have a fiduciary responsibility with shareholders to maximize profits. They are legally required to make as much money as possible, any way possible within ‘the law.’”

— Michael Moore

15. “Librarians see themselves as the guardians of the First Amendment. You got a thousand Mother Joneses at the barricades! I love the librarians, and I am grateful for them!”

— Michael Moore

16. “Halliburton is not a ‘company’ doing business in Iraq. It is a war profiteer, bilking millions from the pockets of average Americans. In past wars, they would have been arrested – or worse.”

— Michael Moore

17. “If we say, ‘The government sucks,’ we’re kind of saying that we suck.”

— Michael Moore

18. “I’m a citizen in a democracy. To call me an activist would be redundant. It’s not a spectator sport. If we all become non-participants, it no longer works.”

— Michael Moore

19. “How do you deliver democracy to a country? You don’t do it down the barrel of a gun. That’s not how you deliver it.”

— Michael Moore

20. “I’m the kind of person that believes there’s a part of your voting that has to be purely on principle, and there’s a part that has to be on strategy.”

— Michael Moore

21. “I never know why these people talk to me. I would not talk to me.”

— Michael Moore

22. “For kids who are exposed to books at home, the loss of a library is sad. But for kids who come from environments where people don’t read, the loss of a library is a tragedy hat might keep them from ever discovering the joys of reading-or from gathering the kind of information that will decide their lot in life.”

— Michael Moore

23. “I’m actually a fairly conservative person. I live a very conservative lifestyle.”

— Michael Moore

24. “If you reduce the guns and the ammo, you’ll reduce the murders.”

— Michael Moore

25. “You think history is going to remember the United States as a great democracy? No, they’re going to think of us as a nation that became addicted to war. They’ll call us warlords.”

— Michael Moore

26. “What I’m asking for is a new economic order. I don’t know how to construct that; I’m not an economist.”

— Michael Moore

27. “Maybe it’s a sick fantasy of mine, but I am really looking forward to a debate between a general and a deserter. Plus, I really want to hear President Bush have to say, ‘Yes, General, No, General.’”

— Michael Moore

28. “Every parent wants to do what’s best for their child. Whatever I can afford, I’m going to get my kid the best education I can get.”

— Michael Moore

29. “One of the most ironic things about capitalism is that the capitalist will sell you the rope to hang himself with. Actually they will give you the money to make a movie that makes them look bad, if they believe they can make money off it.”

— Michael Moore

30. “My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot you in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders are worse.”

— Michael Moore

31. “Many criminals believe what they say is true; they could pass a lie detector test.”

— Michael Moore

32. “You can’t debate satire. Either you get it or you don’t.”

— Michael Moore

33. “I may be preaching to the choir, but the choir needs a good song.”

— Michael Moore

34. “I’ve made a lot of enemies in all the right places, and there aren’t enough hours in the day to respond to either the well-financed corporate hacks or the lowly stalkers who seek to libel me or make a buck off the fact that I’m a well-known person.”

— Michael Moore

35. “The purpose of art actually is, in many cases, to make you feel quite uncomfortable. Or at least to go to that place that’s already of discomfort inside of you and tap into that.”

— Michael Moore

36. “I did not like ‘The Hurt Locker.’ It’s a lazy way to make a movie, frankly. I could put you on the edge of your seat quite easily, and have you feel the tension for 2 hours, if every other scene practically is, ‘Should we cut the red wire or the green wire?’”

— Michael Moore

37. “There’s a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.”

— Michael Moore

38. “I say stupid white men are always the problem. That’s never going to change.”

— Michael Moore

39. “Any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up.”

— Michael Moore

40. “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.”

— Michael Moore

41. “I think there are few things more patriotic than taking the time to make your country a better place.”

— Michael Moore

42. “Librarians in America do something like a couple of billion dollars worth of book business every year.”

— Michael Moore

43. “It is the responsibility of every human to know their actions and the consequences of their actions and to ask questions and to question things when they are wrong.”

— Michael Moore

44. “Greed has been with human beings forever. We have a number of things in our species that you would call ‘the dark side,’ and greed is one of them. If you don’t put certain structures in place or restrictions on those parts of our being that come from that dark place, then it gets out of control.”

— Michael Moore

45. “Nobody was talking about healthcare until ‘Sicko’ came out.”

— Michael Moore

46. “You do not have the right to take another human’s life, unless it’s in strict self-defense.”

— Michael Moore

47. “When the women’s liberation movement began, when people began protesting against the Vietnam War, civil rights movement, at the beginning of those movements, the majority of the country was not with them, did not believe in the basic principles of any of those philosophies.”

— Michael Moore

48. “By the end of the millenium five men controlled the world’s media. And the people rejoiced, because their TVs told them to.”

— Michael Moore

49. “Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody.”

— Michael Moore

50. “Horace’s best ode would not please a young woman as much as the mediocre verses of the young man she is in love with.”

— Michael Moore