Top 40 Richard Armitage Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Whatever I lack in talent I have in stamina.”

— Richard Armitage

2. “I have a bit of pride, which is always my downfall.”

— Richard Armitage

3. “I’d say that, to be a good deal maker, you have to have three basic characteristics – timing, timing, and timing.”

— Richard Armitage

4. “I feel like my imagination was crafted by Tolkien. He seemed to tap into that childhood intrigue of secret doors and hidden worlds.”

— Richard Armitage

5. “The bad guys have all the fun!”

— Richard Armitage

6. “Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.”

— Richard Armitage

7. “I know what Twitter is; I don’t use it. I don’t use Facebook, so luckily, it does zero to my ego.”

— Richard Armitage

8. “I’d have described myself as a Tolkien reader before this, but now I’d describe myself as a Tolkien geek.”

— Richard Armitage

9. “I can work hard and be disciplined like a soldier, but I could never reach their level of fitness. I have a strange appreciation of soldiers. I saw myself on screen and thought, ‘That body is so not hard enough to be a soldier.’”

— Richard Armitage

10. “I love being grungy and dirty.”

— Richard Armitage

11. “I think, as a general matter, clearly, the United States globally supports the development of democracy and the democratic yearnings of all people.”

— Richard Armitage

12. “I’m not interested in building wealth, which is kind of naive and probably frowned on, living in America. It’s something that people don’t necessarily understand, but if I die poor, I die poor.”

— Richard Armitage

13. “I think if I had come out of drama school and been an instant Hollywood superstar, I would be taking long, leisurely holidays.”

— Richard Armitage

14. “What could be better in al-Qaeda’s mind than to have India and Pakistan going at each other? What more to further their aims?”

— Richard Armitage

15. “It fills me with dismay sometimes when you look at the scripts that do come to you that are primarily focused on violence. There are so many other things to play around with.”

— Richard Armitage

16. “You have to remove your human sentiment when it comes to greed and the accumulation of wealth.”

— Richard Armitage

17. “Unfortunately, my love life is nil. I’m working too much – but I would like to settle down at some point.”

— Richard Armitage

18. “The problem with me is I read everything, but it’s only the bad stuff that stays with me. It’s weird, you only need to be told something once and it stays with you.”

— Richard Armitage

19. “Trying to please everyone can be very hard, but, like Shrek or The Simpsons, Robin Hood manages to entertain adults and children at the same time, but in different ways.”

— Richard Armitage

20. “I can’t bear shopping. I can choose clothes for my characters, but not for myself. I’ve got no dress sense. Or I’ve lost it.”

— Richard Armitage

21. “Do people really think that about my nose? I spent my whole life hating it, so its amusing that people like it!”

— Richard Armitage

22. “I think most conflicts do end with negotiated settlements; some don’t, but most do.”

— Richard Armitage

23. “Ive never been that cute kid that was forgiven for being naughty.”

— Richard Armitage

24. “The war we are fighting today against terrorism is a multifaceted fight. We have to use every tool in our toolkit to wage this war – diplomacy, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, and of course, military power – and we are developing new tools as we go along.”

— Richard Armitage

25. “The development of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to carry them would be a very destabilizing effect, should Iran be able to accomplish that.”

— Richard Armitage

26. “I value my ability to keep state secrets.”

— Richard Armitage

27. “I think there was a pretty smooth hand-off from the administration of President Clinton to the administration of President Bush, particularly in the counterterrorism area. The reason I say that is because there was, for transitions, I think a stunning continuity.”

— Richard Armitage

28. “Iran has interest in seeing that the Shia population of Iraq basically adhere to a line that comes from Iran.”

— Richard Armitage

29. “Once you don’t smile on film, they say, ‘Let’s have that bloke who doesn’t smile.’”

— Richard Armitage

30. “You can spend a bit of yourself when you give yourself to a character. At the end of a job, you have to remind yourself who and what you are.”

— Richard Armitage

31. “I never like to go out of character when filming starts. I fear that if I do, I might not be able to pick it up again.”

— Richard Armitage

32. “A terrorist is one who kills innocents for the pursuit of a political aim.”

— Richard Armitage

33. “I have an accountant, obviously, because I’m self employed, and I use an independent financial adviser. I trust my accountant because we have worked together for a long time now.”

— Richard Armitage

34. “I come from very conservative parents, and we weren’t particularly wealthy, but we were comfortable.”

— Richard Armitage

35. “I think what Osama bin Laden does is to take the fact that some peoples lack hope and lack opportunity, and twist it to his own ends.”

— Richard Armitage

36. “I have a secret feeling that we’re all Hobbits. Deep down we all want to stay home and feel safe, but we all dream about someone knocking on the door and saying “Come on an adventure and let’s have a fun ride.”

— Richard Armitage

37. “I’m not a massive fan of 3D. I’ve seen some good 3D, and I’ve seen quite a lot of bad 3D. I think if a film is created for the shock effect of 3D, then it’s a certain type of film that I’m not massively bothered about.”

— Richard Armitage

38. “Let’s face it, the Obama administration was handed a pretty poor deal from the previous administration.”

— Richard Armitage

39. “I must say I’ve rarely been described as ’diplomat.”

— Richard Armitage

40. “Tolkien was, I believe, writing about his experience in the First and Second World Wars, where he would have spent a lot of time without any female contact. He was part of the fellowship of men who went to war, and I think, really, that’s what he’s writing about.”

— Richard Armitage

41. “Adults will not necessarily laugh at the same thing as their children.”

— Richard Armitage

42. “I don’t know if, at the end of the day, how brave Saddam Hussein would be if he were stripped of his bodyguards and everything else.”

— Richard Armitage

43. “Well, I think finding the weapons of mass destruction is going to be quite time consuming. I know we’ve uncovered some documents, we’ll have to exploit them, and we’re going to have to blanket a country the size of California and search, I think, quite rigorously, but we’ll come up with them.”

— Richard Armitage

44. “I think insanity is the hardest thing to play.”

— Richard Armitage

45. “I’m the only honest person in Washington.”

— Richard Armitage

46. “Well, first of all, I have to say that Iraq has already used weapons of mass destruction against her own people and against Iranians during their long war, so we know that weapons of mass destruction are existent with the Iraqis.”

— Richard Armitage

47. “The CIA estimates that Iraq probably has a few hundred metric tons of chemical weapons agents, for mustard gas, sarin, and other deadly concoctions. This is addition to an extensive capacity to produce biological weapons, including anthrax and ricin, which is fatal within 24 to 36 hours of exposure.”

— Richard Armitage

48. “As far as this citizen is concerned, the decision to commit men and women, who are also sons and daughters, to combat is an extraordinarily important one, and not to be done to just feel good; to be done to absolutely accomplish a mission.”

— Richard Armitage