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Quotes by David Mamet

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
– David Mamet
Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.
– David Mamet
I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.
– David Mamet
I hate vacations. There's nothing to do.
– David Mamet
In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed unwittingly, the writer scowling naively and the diners wondering, What the hell is he doing?
– David Mamet
In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.
– David Mamet
It's only words... unless they're true.
– David Mamet
People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
– David Mamet
Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.
– David Mamet
The Oscars demonstrate the will of the people to control and judge those they have elected to stand above them (much, perhaps, as in bygone days, an election celebrated the same).
– David Mamet
The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.
– David Mamet
The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.
– David Mamet
We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a Protective Monastery of Aesthetic Truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.
– David Mamet
We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder censorship, we call it concern for commercial viability.
– David Mamet
We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.
– David Mamet
You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'
– David Mamet
When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.
– David Mamet
There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead.
– David Mamet
The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.
– David Mamet
The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil, that there must be opposition, between its various branches, and between political parties, for these are the only ways to temper the individual's greed for power and the electorates' desires for peace by submission to coercion or blandishment.
– David Mamet
One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery.'
– David Mamet
Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.
– David Mamet
My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die.
– David Mamet
My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line.
– David Mamet
Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.
– David Mamet
Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost.
– David Mamet
It's upsetting to be a man in our society.
– David Mamet
It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.
– David Mamet
In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.
– David Mamet
In my family, in the days prior to television, we liked to while away the evenings by making ourselves miserable, solely based on our ability to speak the language viciously.
– David Mamet
If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.
– David Mamet
I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.
– David Mamet
I understand that computers, which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet, offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing, however it may appear on the surface.
– David Mamet
Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.
– David Mamet