Robert Downey Jr. quotes: the A-Lister’s awesome insight.
“Nothing will serve you better than a strong work ethic. Nothing. And it’s something that you can’t teach. You have to be thrown into it, where you’re going to sink or swim.”
“Discipline for me is about respect. It’s not even about self-respect; it’s about respect for life and all it offers.”
“I always think part of success is being able to replicate results, taking what is interesting or viable about yourself as a professional person and seeing if you bring it into different situations with similar results.”
“I just think it’s good to be confident. If I’m not on my team why should anybody else be? So I always encourage people to be confident, and sometime even a little falsely so, just so you can give yourself an opportunity.”
“If someone really takes a risk, it doesn’t get dismissed.”
“I have a sense of destiny that you are led to the things you are supposed to do.”
“One must always be mindful.”
“Remember that just because you hit bottom doesn’t mean you have to stay there.”
“The lesson is that you can still make mistakes and be forgiven.”
“Look, even bad years are pretty good years, I think.”
“You need to know what to do when the sun is not shining.”
“People rise out of the ashes because, at some point, they are invested with a belief in the possibility of triumph over seemingly impossible odds.”
“People never change because they are under threat or under duress. Never. They change because they see something that makes their life seem valuable enough to start moving toward a life worth living.”
“I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.”
“Mediocrity is my biggest fear. I’m not afraid of total failure because I don’t think that will happen. I’m not afraid of success because that beats the hell out of failure. It’s being in the middle that scares me.”
“Worrying is like praying for something you don’t want to happen. I have such an overwhelming sense that if you’re in the right state of heart, the next right thing appears to you.”
“I’m such a work in progress at the moment, it’s crazy, and life wants me on edge, I swear to you. But as long as I don’t forget the past, I’m cool. One must always be mindful, just like you might forget that old girlfriend who tried to slit your throat, but she’s really still hot. If you remember the stitches more than you remember the pussy, you’re going to be just fine.”
“I need a lot of support. Life is really hard, and I don’t see some active benevolent force out there. I see it as basically a really cool survival game. You get on the right side of the tracks, and you now are actually working with what some people would call magic.”
“It’s really not that difficult to overcome these seemingly ghastly problems. What’s hard… is to decide.”
“Most difficult situations will resolve themselves if you are persistent and if you don’t give up entirely. And that’s what I did – I never gave up.”
“When life is kicking your butt, never forget to kick it back in the face.”
“I think you end up doing the stuff you were supposed to do at the time you were supposed to do it.”
“You can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary, and really understand it, and come out a liberal.”
“I’m a soldier who didn’t know how nasty the battle was going to be, and now, I’ve got a purple heart and I’m back.”
“I’m coming from a place of total strength and humility now.”
“I don’t need an Iron Man suit. I’m already a weapon of mass seduction.”
“Listen, smile, agree, then do whatever you were going to do anyway.”
“There are some parents who have really done it right and told their kid, ‘You know, we have this dough, none of this is for you. You have to get your own.'”
“The greatest thing my dad taught me came from when I called him from a phone booth and said, ‘Hungry. No bus token. Please. Out of options.’ He said, ‘Pfft, get a job.'”
“Sometimes you just gotta be drop-kicked out of the nest.”
“I understand reversal of fortune; that usually has come through my own hand, but you know, you live life on life’s terms.”
“There is unpanned gold in every soul you run into, no matter what walk of life they are from.”
“There’s a little bit of asshole in every nice guy, and there’s a little bit of genius in every moron.”
“I think it’s miraculous that anybody survives themselves.”
“I would say that among my many huge emotional miscalculations was my taking a film career for granted. It is the most awesome privilege to be able to use one’s imagination and wit, physicality and musicality, conscious brain and unconscious instinct, in the service of a work that has a chance to move and excite and amuse and delight people all over the world. Including long after we’re dead. What a noble calling! And I felt it was just there for me as a kind of given, some sort of inherited birthright – when, in reality, it’s the most magnificent luxury.”
“Acting is the most wildly overpaid position imaginable.”
“I’m not a poster boy for good behavior and recovery in Hollywood, I’m just a guy who knows he has a lot to be grateful for.”
“The higher the stakes, the happier I am, the better I will be.”
“I used to be so convinced that happiness was the goal, yet all those years I was chasing after it I was unhappy in the pursuit. Maybe the goal really should be a life that values honor, duty, good work, friends and family.”
