Top 100 Stanley Kubrick Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

— Stanley Kubrick

2. “Everything has already been done. every story has been told every scene has been shot. it’s our job to do it one better.”

— Stanley Kubrick

3. “If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.”

— Stanley Kubrick

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4. “However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

— Stanley Kubrick

5. “The truth of a thing is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.”

— Stanley Kubrick

6. “Never say no to an idea – you never know how that idea will ignite another idea.”

— Stanley Kubrick

7. “Be suspicious of people who have, or crave, power. Never, ever go near power. Don’t become friends with anyone who has real power. It’s dangerous.”

— Stanley Kubrick

8. “I do not always know what I want, but I do know what I don’t want.”

— Stanley Kubrick

9. “The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.”

— Stanley Kubrick

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10. “Either you care, or you don’t. There’s no in-between. And if you care, then go all of the way.”

— Stanley Kubrick

11. “The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.”

— Stanley Kubrick

12. “The most terrifying fact about the universe not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent.”

— Stanley Kubrick

13. “The first really important book I read about filmmaking was The Film Technique by Pudovkin. This was some time before I had ever touched a movie camera and it opened my eyes to cutting and montage.”

— Stanley Kubrick

14. “I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit.”

— Stanley Kubrick

15. “Bad films gave me the courage to try making a movie.”

— Stanley Kubrick

16. “I used and abused drugs and alcohol. When I stopped doing that it became a lot clearer that life goes from inside to giving as opposed to taking and destroying.”

— Stanley Kubrick

17. “The essence of dramatic form is to let an idea come over people without it being plainly stated. When you say something directly, it’s simply not as potent as it is when you allow people to discover it for themselves.”

— Stanley Kubrick

18. “All my life I’ve always spoiled the things that meant the most to me.”

— Stanley Kubrick

19. “You have not yet learned that in this life you have to be like everyone else: the perfect mediocrity – no better, no worse. Individuality is a monster and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel comfortable.”

— Stanley Kubrick

20. “Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.”

— Stanley Kubrick

21. “The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

— Stanley Kubrick

22. “A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.”

— Stanley Kubrick

23. “The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.”

— Stanley Kubrick

24. “It’s impossible to tell you what I’m going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.”

— Stanley Kubrick

25. “Private Joker is silly and he’s ignorant but he’s got guts and guts is enough.”

— Stanley Kubrick

26. “I’ve never been certain whether the moral of the Icarus story should only be, as is generally accepted, ‘don’t try to fly too high,’ or whether it might also be thought of as ’forget the wax and feathers, and do a better job on the wings.”

— Stanley Kubrick

27. “The feel of the experience is the important thing, not the ability to verbalize or analyze it.”

— Stanley Kubrick

28. “How could we possibly appreciate the Mona Lisa if Leonardo had written at the bottom of the canvas: ‘The lady is smiling because she is hiding a secret from her lover.’ This would shackle the viewer to reality, and I don’t want this to happen to 2001.”

— Stanley Kubrick

29. “The best education in film is to make one.”

— Stanley Kubrick

30. “I’m just an old man and I smell bad, remember?”

— Stanley Kubrick

31. “I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”

— Stanley Kubrick

32. “If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.”

— Stanley Kubrick

33. “The director’s job is to know what emotional statement he wants a character to convey in his scene or his line, and to exercise taste and judgment in helping the actor give his best possible performance.”

— Stanley Kubrick

34. “I’m a slave to my imagination in terms of making narrative films.”

— Stanley Kubrick

35. “I’m happy – at times – making films. I’m certainly unhappy not making films.”

— Stanley Kubrick

36. “The whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, ‘2001’ shows that what some people call ‘god’ is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don’t understand, they call ‘god’ -Stanley Kubrick, interview, 1963.”

— Stanley Kubrick

37. “Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you’re in trouble.”

— Stanley Kubrick

38. “It’s a mistake to confuse pity with love.”

— Stanley Kubrick

39. “Nothing is as dangerous as a sure thing.”

— Stanley Kubrick

40. “There are few things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating than seeing someone else die.”

— Stanley Kubrick

41. “I’m not afraid of dying tomorrow, only of being killed.”

— Stanley Kubrick

42. “Like the man said, can happiness buy money?”

— Stanley Kubrick

43. “Regret isn’t going to get me anywhere. It’s like being obsessed with something. It doesn’t bring you anywhere.”

— Stanley Kubrick

44. “Don’t get obsessed with not liking a movie.”

— Stanley Kubrick

45. “I’ve never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I’m a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.”

— Stanley Kubrick

46. “The dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive.”

— Stanley Kubrick

47. “In his essay on the uncanny, Das Unheimliche, Freud said that the uncanny is the only feeling which is more powerfully experienced in art than in life. If the horror genre required any justification, I should think this alone would serve as its credentials.”

— Stanley Kubrick

48. “You know, I often thought that the gangster and the artist are the same in the eyes of the masses. They’re admired and hero-worshipped but there is always present underlying desire to see them destroyed at the peak of their glory.”

— Stanley Kubrick

49. “A satirist is someone who has a very skeptical view of human nature, but who still has the optimism to make some sort of a joke out of it. However brutal that joke might be.”

— Stanley Kubrick

50. “God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours.”

— Stanley Kubrick