Top 100 Richard Gere Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I don’t regret anything. Everything happens for a reason-it’s part of the healing process. Life is a healing process.”

— Richard Gere

2. “The drive for happiness is vital; it’s what keeps us in motion.”

— Richard Gere

3. “If the work is going well and it’s something that has value with some meaning to it, it gives back a lot.”

— Richard Gere

4. “I’m a 50 year-old guy and I’m not in shape like I was when I was 30.”

— Richard Gere

5. “Tibetan Buddhism had an enormous impact on me.”

— Richard Gere

6. “Food is the only beautiful thing that truly nourishes.”

— Richard Gere

7. “As custodians of the planet it is our responsibility to deal with all species with kindness, love, and compassion. That these animals suffer through human cruelty is beyond understanding. Please help to stop this madness.”

— Richard Gere

8. “The Dalai Lama said that he thinks mother’s love is the best symbol for love and compassion, because it is totally disinterested.”

— Richard Gere

9. “I don’t meet many people that are evil. I meet human beings who are flawed, who are mentally ill and have enormous problems, but I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who was a totally dark energy that had no humanity or sense of love or affection for anything in their life. That’s very rare.”

— Richard Gere

10. “If people lose their land, they have nothing. You lose your land – you lose your culture, you lose self.”

— Richard Gere

11. “I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I’d think, no, actually I’m a giraffe.”

— Richard Gere

12. “Mindfulness is a quality that’s always there. It’s an illusion that there’s a meditation and post-meditation period, which I always find amusing, because you’re either mindful or you’re not.”

— Richard Gere

13. “From a Buddhist point of view, emotions are not real. As an actor, I manufacture emotions. They’re a sense of play. But real life is the same. We’re just not aware of it.”

— Richard Gere

14. “Always walk towards open doors. And if they slam shut in your face, kick that sucker in and keep going.”

— Richard Gere

15. “What we all have in common is an appreciation of kindness and compassion; all the religions have this. We all lean towards love.”

— Richard Gere

16. “My life is pretty simple and normal.”

— Richard Gere

17. “I meditate. Daily practice is essential to my life.”

— Richard Gere

18. “I have no sense of time, and I’m a dreamer.”

— Richard Gere

19. “The secret of my success is my hairspray.”

— Richard Gere

20. “Meditation is such a more substantial reality than what we normally take to be reality.”

— Richard Gere

21. “In saving Tibet, you save the possibility that we are all brothers, sisters.”

— Richard Gere

22. “I tend to be a bit of a dreamer.”

— Richard Gere

23. “We’ve had too many World AIDS Days.”

— Richard Gere

24. “I’m younger than I once was. Internally. Less self-conscious. Less insecure.”

— Richard Gere

25. “Arabs are a burden on the world and should be annihilated.”

— Richard Gere

26. “I think that as human beings we tend to compartmentalize, and we have a selective morality based on the situation we’re in.”

— Richard Gere

27. “Sometimes I’m kind of spacey. I’m like Ferdinand the bull, sniffing the daisy, not aware of time, of what’s going on in the real world.”

— Richard Gere

28. “I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but if Jesus Christ lived in Chicago today, and he had come to me and he had five thousand dollars, let’s just say things would have turned out differently.”

— Richard Gere

29. “People don’t understand what happiness is, so they have an idea of what will make them happy, but it never does.”

— Richard Gere

30. “I have made plenty of mistakes. The key to life is to learn from them. I have been a little too introspective, but I think that stemmed from insecurity or shyness. I took a long time to grow up.”

— Richard Gere

31. “There are times when telling lies are not a bad thing. It can be a compassionate thing. But to make it benign, you have to be aware of your compassionate reasons for telling that lie.”

— Richard Gere

32. “People get offended by animal rights campaigns. It’s ludicrous. It’s not as bad as mass animal death in a factory.”

— Richard Gere

33. “If you have any question in your mind, don’t do it. If you go in thinking it’s going to fix something that’s wrong, don’t do it.”

— Richard Gere

34. “One of the joys of being an actor is that you’re always learning new things. And I’ve been doing this since I was 19, so there’s been a lot of new things I have learned for each part. I always assume that I can do it.”

— Richard Gere

35. “It’s rare that a good writer will sit down and write a good script. Writers are greedy too, and they don’t want to work without getting paid. But quality will find its way out.”

— Richard Gere

36. “A lot of making a movie is the comfort level of the people. It’s just feeling open. We need to get along. We have to know something about each other.”

— Richard Gere

37. “Everyone seems to think they know what acting techniques are. Techniques just help you get to a certain place, but if the thing is happening just by itself you don’t need those techniques.”

— Richard Gere

38. “I’ve lived in New York when I’ve had nothing, and I’ve lived in New York when I had money, and New York changes radically depending on how much money you have. It’s the texture of life.”

— Richard Gere

39. “I think most of our religious institutions are pretty corrupt, so they’re not reliable. I think the Christian religion that I was brought up with has very little to do with Christ, really, and more an institutions that have built up around the church.”

— Richard Gere

40. “When you get up in the morning, set your motivations.”

— Richard Gere

41. “There is nothing real about film. Nothing. Even the light particles that project the film can’t be proven to exist. Nothing is there.”

— Richard Gere

42. “To read your own mind is to look at your self and read your soul. Hatred becomes love and that is the path I am working on.”

— Richard Gere

43. “The idea of fixing of healing is an important part of any genuine spiritual approach. Kabbalah is very much about this idea of fixing of things that have been damaged. From a Buddhist point of view, things have been damaged because ignorance has intoxicated the mind.”

— Richard Gere

44. “I haven’t worked with people who are jealous or competitive. That’s a particularly deadly attitude to have when you’re working on a film.”

— Richard Gere

45. “Editing a film is always a question of time, and the director. I’ve worked with a lot of directors who don’t mind my involvement. They appreciated it.”

— Richard Gere

46. “Anything that’s expanding the mind and heart is happiness. But it’s not a goal.”

— Richard Gere

47. “Billions of people don’t practice a religion at all.”

— Richard Gere

48. “On a movie set that works, you have your father figure, the director, you have your siblings, your other actors.”

— Richard Gere

49. “When His Holiness won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was a quantum leap. He is not seen as solely a Tibetan anymore; he belongs to the world.”

— Richard Gere

50. “I think life is self-examination. Certainly the voyage that one takes.”

— Richard Gere