Top 60 Ridley Scott Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A good year for me is when me and my family are in good health. I’m just lucky to have good years doing something I like to do.”

— Ridley Scott

2. “Life isn’t black and white. It’s a million gray areas, don’t you find?”

— Ridley Scott

3. “I’m a moviemaker, not a documentarian. I try to hit the truth.”

— Ridley Scott

4. “That’s part of the policy: To keep switching gears.”

— Ridley Scott

5. “Once you crack the script, everything else follows.”

— Ridley Scott

6. “Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it’s why I’ve never re-visited that area because I feel I’ve done it.”

— Ridley Scott

7. “Audiences are less intrigued, honestly, by battle. They’re more intrigued by human relations. If you’re making a film about the trappings of the period, and you’re forgetting that human relationships are the most engaging part of the storytelling process, then you’re in trouble.”

— Ridley Scott

8. “Never be put off by anything because failure teaches you something.”

— Ridley Scott

9. “There’s great wine from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and, of course, California. But there’s nothing like a really great French wine, they’re so well balanced. The better the wine, the less you feel the effects I think.”

— Ridley Scott

10. “There’s nothing really original. Alien was a B-movie. Five directors passed on it before me. Because I was into Heavy Metal, I read it, and thought, “Wow, I want to do this.” I was on a plane to Hollywood in 22 hours. It was a B-movie and was elevated to an A-plus movie by sheer good taste.”

— Ridley Scott

11. “I think there’s nothing worse than inertia. You can inert and study your navel and gradually you’ll fall off the chair. I think the key is to keep flying.”

— Ridley Scott

12. “Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict.”

— Ridley Scott

13. “Usually, when special effects get in the way, it’s because the story isn’t strong enough. If you don’t start with a strong screenplay, it’s easy to fall back on special effects, thinking it’s going to carry you. But it never works. It’s just tiresome.”

— Ridley Scott

14. “Digital is a different world because you are sitting at home and a hi tech piece of equipment today is within reach of most people, so they are watching a pretty hi tech version of whatever you’ve done.”

— Ridley Scott

15. “The time it would take me to write a screenplay it would take me the time to make two films. I would rather make the movies and I’m a better moviemaker than I a would be writer.”

— Ridley Scott

16. “How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant?”

— Ridley Scott

17. “I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It’s a great movie.”

— Ridley Scott

18. “Films like Harry Potter and Narnia, I’m sure they’ll do another one. The biggest audience of course is the youngsters.”

— Ridley Scott

19. “Blade Runner was the godfather of all these fantastic movies that occur today. What’s frustrating is that we’re short of really great writing and great ideas. Blade Runner was full of them.”

— Ridley Scott

20. “I think one of the successes of Gladiator is how we manage to turn on a dime the character from one thing to another where you believe he is one thing and he is something very different.”

— Ridley Scott

21. “Some people like to do everything always the same thing. That’s another way: To do the same thing.”

— Ridley Scott

22. “People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God’s sake, I’m not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I’m making a movie that people are going to look at.”

— Ridley Scott

23. “I was a very earnest, hard working boy at school, but my parents were distressed because I was always bottom of the class. But I wasn’t dilatory, I worked like crazy.”

— Ridley Scott

24. “I love different themes, different venues, different movies. I love to jump about and tackle different subjects. I have no intellectual master plan.”

— Ridley Scott

25. “I want to make films about the human condition, what we’re doing to the world or ourselves.”

— Ridley Scott

26. “There’s a little thing on your shoulder called intuition and it whispers in your ear. Everyone has that, there is a voice telling you to do something. Most people ignore it – but you must listen to it. I do it every day, all day.”

— Ridley Scott

27. “MPC, Moving Picture Company, they’re really excellent, they did the majority of the effects.”

— Ridley Scott

28. “Well, not totally because over the years I’ve probably done 2,700 commercials. So, I’m always ticking. And in a way that was a huge advantage because I was able to take my time choosing my film subjects because I wasn’t relying on the fear of not being able to work.”

— Ridley Scott

29. “Nowadays, everything’s evolved into superheroes and it’s boring. If I see one more superhero movie I’m going to shoot myself.”

— Ridley Scott

30. “In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.”

— Ridley Scott

31. “Scaring someone’s the hardest thing to do, and that’s why most of scary movies are not scary. They’re sick, but not scary. There’s a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.”

— Ridley Scott

32. “And I maintain good relationships with all the studios so I’ve never been bullied into any cut, frankly.”

— Ridley Scott

33. “I spend a lot of my time just developing material; or the company does. That material can come from a book, can come from a newspaper, can come from a discussion and sometimes it can come from a script that got passed over and is floating around.”

— Ridley Scott

34. “And anyway, it’s only movies. to stop me I think they’ll ahve to shoot me in the head.”

— Ridley Scott

35. “As I’m getting older, I want to make sure every film I do really counts.”

— Ridley Scott

36. “Is it terrible to not understand a thing, if it’s beautiful?”

— Ridley Scott

37. “Same thing with film, by the time you’ve finished shooting and you’ve really been into everything, you’ve touched up everything in the editing room. You’ve gone in there and taken little bits from everything.”

— Ridley Scott

38. “I think if I’m going to do a science fiction, I’m going to go down a new path that I want to do.”

— Ridley Scott

39. “But Gladiator is one of my favourite adventures because I really loved going into the world. I loved creating the world to the degree where you could almost smell it.”

— Ridley Scott

40. “The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.”

— Ridley Scott

41. “I don’t ever blink, honestly.”

— Ridley Scott

42. “I was always amazed about how much I could finally squeeze into a thirty second commercial.”

— Ridley Scott

43. “I knew exactly what to do on Alien, it was funny.”

— Ridley Scott

44. “You’ve got to be able to know someone really well to be able to have a row and then also walk away from it and not have it matter, especially in this business. That doesn’t mean to say we have many rows but I think the nearest thing to a row would be just flatly disagreeing with something .”

— Ridley Scott

45. “I think I was really bored at school. I was quietly clock watching for years. I went to 10 schools because my dad was in the Army and we moved around a lot.”

— Ridley Scott

46. “Everyone sniggered because I was going to do a sandal and toga movie. But I knew exactly how to do it and I know how to make Robin Hood.”

— Ridley Scott

47. “A hit for me is if I enjoy the movie, if I personally enjoy the movie.”

— Ridley Scott

48. “Yes, obviously, there’s this degree of wanting people to accept other people faiths and philosophies.”

— Ridley Scott

49. “I do a pretty good job at casting actually.”

— Ridley Scott

50. “I always say to people when I’m trying to get something going, bringing on other producers or other directors, “You can think of 95 reasons why not to make a movie. You’ve got to address why you want to make the movie and get it done. Just do it.” I tend to live by that rule.”

— Ridley Scott