“You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”
— Sylvester Stallone
“Every champion was once a contender that refused to give up.”
“Going that one more round when you don’t think you can – that’s what makes all the difference in your life.”
“I am not the richest, smartest or most talented person in the world, but I succeed because I keep going and going and going.”
“When you're scared, when you're hanging on, when life is hurting you, then you're going to see what you're really made of.”
“Every time I've failed, people had me out for the count, but I always come back.”
“I believe any success in life is made by going into an area with a blind and furious optimism.”
“Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!”
“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.”
“Success is usually the culmination of controlling failures.”
“There’s a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone.”
“Don’t discuss your dreams. Pursue them!”
“I learned the real meaning of love. Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades. You can depend so much on certain people, you can set your watch by them. And that's love, even if it doesn't seem very exciting.”
“Now if you know what you’re worth. Then go out and get what you’re worth.”
“When I was in junior high school, the teacher voted me the student most likely to end up in the electric chair.”
“Dreams cost nothing. They are free. The hard part is just keeping them going.”
“The world meets nobody halfway. When you want something, you gotta take it.”
“Every rep I did on chin-ups, on squats with 500 pounds, I never said, to myself, ‘Oh, my God, another rep.’ I said, ‘Yes, another rep, because that will make my dream turn into a reality.’”
“Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.”
“Plan B. You’ve always got to have a Plan B.”
“I’d rather do something I love badly than to feel bad about not doing something I love.”
“The older I get the more things I gotta leave behind.”
“Nothing is real if you don’t believe in who you are!”
“Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but the loyalty never fades.”
“The church is the gym of the soul.”
“You have to be really loyal to the people that supported you when you were coming up.”
“I think there comes a time when you realize that you need God in your life, God’s Word, and the spiritual guidance that only He can give.”
“Life is more than sunglasses and hit movies. Reality – that’s the main event.”
“Don’t be gullible, use life before it uses you. Understand there are no free lunches, and for every action you take, there’s a reaction.”
“When you’re pushed killing is as easy as breathing.”
“You have to grab life by the throat and squeeze before it grabs you by your neck and breaks it. Own your destiny.”
“When life hits you pretty hard, you can go into a dark corner.”
“The character of Rocky was built on the idea that he was chosen to do something. That’s why the first image in Rocky is the picture of Christ.”
“Gangster is the truest friend I can ever ask for.”
“I’m not right wing, I’m not left wing. I love my country.”
“Clothing is the first step to building a character.”
“If I’d succeeded right away at acting I wouldn’t have sought out writing.”
“Once in one’s life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived.”
“Study people’s success stories hard. Study their failures even harder.”
“I thought I had reached a point in life where everything would be smooth. But it is not. It just gets more jagged and pitted and filled with turns that take you into the dark recesses of your mind. It never seems to get easy.”
“When boxers are in the ring, they’re simple. It’s when the fight is over, that’s when the other fight, the real fight, begins. That’s the problem.”
“If you think people are inherently good, you get rid of the police for 24 hours – see what happens.”
“You’re a disease. And I’m the cure.”
“I’m usually taken for a non-intellectual, a person of limited intelligence. I don’t know why, but I figure it’s because physically I don’t look intelligent.”
“Every morning, I crawl out of bed. I sit there and think, ‘Do I really need this?’ And I drag myself to the gym in my garage. It’s not fun. I hate it. I work out alone. Weights.”
“Movies are the work of a collective conscious. It takes 500-800 people on a movie to complete a vision.”
“In the movies, I kill guys with an axe. In real life, I can’t control a nine-year-old girl.”
“Through failure, I found different ways to reverse my problems and get into the mainstream of Hollywood.”
“Back there I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment, back here I can’t even hold a job PARKING CARS!”
“If bad decorating was a hanging offense, there’d be bodies hanging from every tree!”
“To me, the most perfect screenplay ever written will be one word, when you finally reduce it down to that. Until then, writing will be an imperfect form of communication.”
“When crossing someone’s borders you have to be prepared to engage in a war that is far more brutal than if it were to take place on neutral territory.”
“You can actually alter a person’s perception when they’re that young. I mean, it can affect them in a very positive way.”
“I feel that America is like a child that grew up so strong and so fast and so tall that it became self-conscious about its size and started to stoop over so as not to offend anyone.”
“I have all kinds of chest injuries; I tore my vein during ‘Rocky II’ and had 60 stitches. If you’ve seen ‘Rocky Balboa,’ you’ll know how bad they look.”
“I thought marriage was tough. Golf’s like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel! It’s a psychological game that gets into your blood.”
“I have great expectations for the future, because the past was highly overrated.”
“The phenomenal thing that happened to me is that I was able to create two memorable men: one is the ultimate optimist, Rocky, and then you have Rambo, the ultimate pessimist. You’re going to always be remembered for them, no matter what you do.”
“When I was a kid, my mother used to feed me mashed-potato sandwiches, brussel sprout sandwiches; my brain cells were starving from lack of food. I’ll eat anything. I’ll eat dirt.”
“When you are young, you often think that the world spins around you. You think you can do anything, can take the world on your shoulders.”
“The trouble with remakes is that people fall in love with the original. It’s like peanut butter. If you try to change the taste of peanut butter, you’re in trouble.”
“Rocky would definitely run for councilman. Maybe mayor. But these people are actually most effective in the family unit. That’s where they shine.”
“In Philadelphia, there’s no delineation, they address me as Rocky, for real. They’ll say things like: “Rocky, do you like this coat?” Or: “Rock, say hi to my sister.” Or: “Yo Rock, I know a great restaurant.” There’s no Sylvester. Even the Mayor goes: “It’s good to have Rocky here today.””
“I abused my body so much throughout my career that I am literally held together by glue. The stuff I took thickens the bones and reinforces the tendons.”
“Sometimes I write with music on, and if I’m in a good flow, I don’t even hear it.”
“The men in Vietnam weren’t allowed to fight the war with any kind of concern to win by the government. It was like a war of attrition.”
“I’m a patriot of the heart.”
“I was an ambitious child and I tended to be scatterbrained. If I was at school and saw a bird outside the window I wanted to follow it. I was adventurous.”
“In fact, every day I’ll read a chapter of some art book. I don’t know why. It’s just a habit.”
“Training and working in Philadelphia is a very unusual situation because that city does believe that Rocky is real. No one calls me Sylvester, it’s Rocky.”
“I love art more than anything in the world except for my family.”
“For ‘Rocky II,’ I got a torn pectoral muscle, I got all beat up inside, I had to have an operation to splice things back together.”
“You know you’ve been around when they start to remake your own movies when you’re still alive.”
“My favorite snack would have to be Fritos, no doubt about it. Fritos and mayonnaise. I know. Really healthy, isn’t it?”
“Nothing’s harder than writing. There’s no comparison. With directing, you can bounce a lot of ideas around. There’s tremendous support – you’ve got editors and sound mixers. With writing, it’s all you, and it’s just crippling when people tear up your pages.”
“When I’m doing a movie, I eat the same thing every day. For lunch, it’s tuna salad or chicken salad and cole slaw. That’s it. For dinner it’s either veal and rice, fish and rice or steak and rice. It gets boring; boy, does it get boring.”
“I guess the best thing I do of all is ride. Horsemanship, I have a natural flair for it.”
“I have two lovely sons and some good memories, but I’ve had a rather tumultuous personal life. It hasn’t been dull; I’ve been the Hiroshima of love.”
“To know that the odds are so high that only through the perishing of your life will the minions survive, that’s love. That’s heroism.”
“Voices are like fingerprints, from Cagney to Bogart. They never lost it. My voice is instrumental in categorizing me.”
“Action film is really easy to do, you just get in a car and smash through things and it’s called action. The real key is what happens between the action when it’s quiet. Loud is easy. Quiet, real hard.”
“I really have very little aspirations about acting because I think that probably the best things have come and gone. I would like to focus on writing and directing. I love writing and directing even though writing can be incredibly painful and lonely. I get great satisfaction from doing it.”
“I just fight in my movies, never in real life.”
“Action is always seen as the bottom rung of thespian endeavour, that’s just the way it is.”
“I was on cruise control from ’85 to ’95, and it was my fault. There were a lot of self-inflicted wounds, when I was not doing any original material. I wasn’t directing. I wasn’t writing. That’s not who I am.”
“I think that’s become passe, but if you can surround yourself with a kind of monument to yourself and your family – a statement – and you can afford it, then that’s a noble project.”
“Certain characters, mostly heroes, have to be the straight silent type; that is part of the make-up.”
“I’ve always boxed a certain way. But with Rocky, the character himself had to be kind of awkward. So I had to learn to fight that way.”
“Until America, door to door, takes every handgun, this is what you’re gonna have. It’s pathetic. It really is pathetic. It’s sad. We’re living in the Dark Ages over there.”
“I think there’s a kind of built-in arrogance to anyone who considers themself an artist. They want to feel as though like they can run the whole spectrum. “I can do it all. I can do minimalism, and I can do classical art.” Well, that’s not true.”
“To be really artful, though, you have to be subjective and so singular.”
“I would never run for president.”
“Movies are a whole different ball-game, now. It’s much more of a business – very scientific.”
“I do believe that American should deal from strength.”
“There aren’t a lot of opportunities for that rite of passage that makes you a man. War is one of them, and violent sports are another.”
“Often people going into directing want to learn as much as they possibly can about “technique.” And I say the hell with that.”
“People asked if I could have played the Terminator. Are you kidding? Not a chance, I never could have played the Terminator.”
“There’ll never be a ‘Rocky IV.’ You gotta call a halt.”
“I want to turn my attention to movies about love relationships. Exploring the female psyche – there ought to be some interesting discoveries there. Love stories. If you do it right, people want to hear romantic dialog.”
“I think I came along at an opportune time. I don’t know if that would happen anymore, because the whole way of doing business in Hollywood has changed.”
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