Errol Morris Quotes

31 quotes in 482 categories

• Those who cannot condemn the past repeat it in order to remember it.
• War is such a peculiar thing - inaugurated by the whims of few, affecting the fate of many. It is difficult, if not impossible, thing…
• I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular.
• Like all great documentaries, The Act of Killing demands another way of looking at reality. It starts as a dreamscape, an attempt to allow the…
• The pursuit of truth, properly considered, shouldn't stop short of insanity.
• I believe that we face incredible obstacles in our attempts to see the world. Everything in our nature tries to deny the world around us;…
• The proper route to an understanding of the world is an examination of our errors about it.
• A lot of the themes of my movies, the actual stories, come from tabloid stories.
• Truth is a pursuit, it's a quest. And proof is certainly in the pudding in this particular instance, because the film, and the evidence accumulated…
• Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.
• But there's a big difference between, say, reporting on a story and simply making up a story.
• Ecstatic absurdity: it's the confrontation with meaninglessness.
• Certain kinds of intimacy emerge on a phone call that might never occur if you were sitting right next to the other person.
• I used to work as a private detective years and years ago.
• My stuff always starts with interviews. I start interviewing people, and then slowly but surely, a movie insinuates itself.
• Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again…
• If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that…
• I've been horribly depressed (lately), which, as you know, can be terribly time-consuming. I mean, if you're going to do it right, that is.
• If everything was planned, it would be dreadful. If everything was unplanned, it would be equally dreadful.
• Despite all of our efforts to control something, the world is much, much more powerful than us, and more deranged even than us.

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