Top 160 Orson Welles Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”

— Orson Welles

Featured in: Famous Quotes, Emotional Quotes, Quotes About Humanity, Quotes About People, Loneliness Quotes

2. “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”

— Orson Welles

Featured in: Storytelling Quotes, Famous Movie Quotes, Filmmaking Quotes

3. “Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.”

— Orson Welles

Featured in: Depressing Quotes, Demotivational Quotes, Justice Quotes

4. “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.”

— Orson Welles

5. “The cinema has no boundary; it is a ribbon of dream.”

— Orson Welles

6. “Don’t give them what you think they want. Give them what they never thought was possible.”

— Orson Welles

7. “The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.”

— Orson Welles

8. “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.”

— Orson Welles

Featured in: Country Quotes

9. “Never expect justice in this world. That is not part of God’s plan. Everybody thinks that if they don’t get it, they’re some kind of odd man out. And it’s not true. Nobody gets justice – people just get good luck or bad luck.”

— Orson Welles

10. “A man is not from where he is born, but where he chooses to die.”

— Orson Welles

11. “We will sell no wine before its time.”

— Orson Welles

12. “Many would never speak with a full mouth, but do it with an empty head.”

— Orson Welles

13. “Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It’s only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.”

— Orson Welles

14. “A bad word from a colleague can darken a whole day. We need encouragement a lot more than we admit, even to ourselves.”

— Orson Welles

15. “You’re beautful. Yes you are, you’re very very beautiful. Extremely beautiful.”

— Orson Welles

16. “A good artist should be isolated. If he isn’t isolated, something is wrong.”

— Orson Welles

17. “I look back on my life and it’s 95% running around trying to raise money to make movies and 5% actually making them. It’s no way to live.”

— Orson Welles

18. “Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing.”

— Orson Welles

19. “I have an unfortunate personality.”

— Orson Welles

20. “In common with all Protestant or Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise, the frontier could never have been opened, ’cause it was lawless. A man’s word had to mean something.”

— Orson Welles

21. “I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.”

— Orson Welles

22. “A poet needs a pen, a painter a brush, and a director an army.”

— Orson Welles

23. “If there hadn’t been women we’d still be squatting in a cave eating raw meat, because we made civilization in order to impress our girlfriends.”

— Orson Welles

24. “I hate Woody Allen physically, I dislike that kind of man.”

— Orson Welles

25. “The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.”

— Orson Welles

26. “I prefer people who rock the boat to people who jump out.”

— Orson Welles

27. “Living in the lap of luxury isn’t bad except that you never know when luxury is going to stand up.”

— Orson Welles

28. “Friendship creates only the illusion of not being alone.”

— Orson Welles

29. “Gluttony is not a secret vice.”

— Orson Welles

30. “The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.”

— Orson Welles

31. “I love moving around from town to town. I never got on a train in my life without my spirits rising.”

— Orson Welles

32. “I am essentially a hack, a commercial person. If I had a hobby, I would immediately make money on it or abandon it.”

— Orson Welles

33. “The basic and essential human is the woman.”

— Orson Welles

34. “Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?”

— Orson Welles

35. “Fake is as old as the Eden tree.”

— Orson Welles

36. “The enemy of society is middle class and the enemy of life is middle age.”

— Orson Welles

37. “Hollywood is Hollywood. There’s nothing you can say about it that isn’t true, good or bad. And if you get into it, you have no right to be bitter – you’re the one who sat down, and joined the game.”

— Orson Welles

38. “What’s happening now is what happened before, and often what’s going to happen again sometime or other.”

— Orson Welles

39. “I have always been more interested in experiment, than in accomplishment.”

— Orson Welles

40. “My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.”

— Orson Welles

41. “Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.”

— Orson Welles

Featured in: Real Quotes

42. “Criticism is the essence of creation.”

— Orson Welles

43. “If I had only one film in the world to save, it would be ‘Grand Illusion.’”

— Orson Welles

44. “I prefer the old masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.”

— Orson Welles

45. “A movie studio is the best toy a boy ever had.”

— Orson Welles

46. “My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.”

— Orson Welles

Featured in: Quotes About Actors

47. “I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.”

— Orson Welles

48. “Hollywood expects you to experiment but on a film that makes money and if you don’t make money, you’re to blame. Your job is to make money.”

— Orson Welles

49. “The essential is to excite the spectators. If that means playing Hamlet on a flying trapeze or in an aquarium, you do it.”

— Orson Welles

50. “I never make my mind up about anything at all, until it’s over and done with.”

— Orson Welles