Harrison Ford quotes: the Star Wars and Indiana Jones actor shares his wisdom.
“I don’t want to be a movie star. I want to be in movies that are stars.”
“All my friends were going off to be professionals, and I said I wanted to be an actor.”
“Acting is not about competing. Acting is about cooperating. Acting is about collaboration. It’s about your utility, your usefulness, your capacity to add to the work that has already been done and will be done. You’re just part of a team. I never feel competitive about acting.”
“I wanted to live the life, a different life. I didn’t want to go to the same place every day and see the same people and do the same job. I wanted interesting challenges.”
“You may get real tired watching me, but I’m not going to quit.”
“If I were a serious person, I’d probably have a real job.”
“I don’t think I’ve mastered anything. I’m still wrestling with the same frustrations, the same issues, the same problems as I always did. That’s what life is like.”
“My goal was just to work regularly. I didn’t ever expect to be rich or famous. I wanted to be a working character actor.”
“It’s always nice to anticipate working in something that you know people will have an appetite for.”
“‘May the force be with you’ is charming but it’s not important. What’s important is that you become the force – for yourself and perhaps for other people.”
“The force is within you. Force yourself.”
“If you’re going to define me properly, you must think in terms of my failures as well as my successes.”
“To me, success is choice and opportunity.”
“Money is really only important if you don’t have any.”
“All I would tell people is to hold onto what was individual about themselves, not to allow their ambition for success to cause them to try to imitate the success of others. You’ve got to find it on your own terms.”
“You have to have a darkness… for the dawn to come. You have to have experienced difficulties and challenges to fully appreciate and be grateful for success.”
“Work hard and figure out how to be useful and don’t try to imitate anybody else’s success. Figure out how to do it for yourself, with yourself.”
“We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.”
“You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow.”
“Wood burns faster when you have to cut and chop it yourself.”
“I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up. Most people in this business gave up and went on to other things. If you simply didn’t give up, you would outlast the people who came in on the bus with you.”
“What’s important is to be able to see yourself, I think, as having commonality with other people and not determine, because of your good luck, that everybody is less significant, less interesting, less important than you are.”
“Behind every great man is a woman. Telling him he’s not so hot.”
“Romantic love is one of the most exciting and fulfilling kinds of love and I think there is potential for it at any stage of your life.”
“You know how a woman gets a man excited? She shows up.”
“I have relationships with people I’m working with, based on our combined interest. It doesn’t make the relationship any less sincere, but it does give it a focus that may not last beyond the experience.”
“If people recognize me when I’m out in public, I’m very nice to them. I’m very nice to people even when they don’t recognize me. I don’t even mind if people come up to me while I’m eating dinner, but if they recognize me while I’m having sex, I refuse to sign autographs.”
“I don’t mind doing interviews. I don’t mind answering thoughtful questions. But I’m not thrilled about answering questions like, ‘If you were being mugged, and you had a lightsaber in one pocket and a whip in the other, which would you use?'”
“It’s a privilege to be able to be involved with people as talented as the people I’ve had the luck to work with, and it’s just been a great experience for me, and I’m glad that so many of the films I’ve had the luck to do were films that could be enjoyed by families together.”
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
“The focus and the concentration and the attention to detail that flying takes is a kind of meditation. I find it restful and engaging, and other things slip away.”
“Why do I ask for directions? Because I hate wasting time.”
“Everything I do, I’m sort of half in, half out.”
“If you’re asking me to acknowledge that I’ve gotten older, I can do that.”
“I am not the first man who wanted to make changes in his life at 60 and I won’t be the last. It is just that others can do it with anonymity.”
“I’ve never wanted to be the boss.”
“I rarely play a real person, because I don’t think I’m a good imitator.”
“My approach to acting is the ‘let’s pretend’ school of acting.”
“I think of myself as an assistant storyteller.”
“Starring in a science-fiction film doesn’t mean you have to act science fiction.”
“What I observed about my fellow actors was that most gave up very easily.”
“The third time you say a thing it sounds like a lie.”
“Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It’s your turn to be afraid.”
“What is news? It’s hard to quantify. Certainly news has changed completely, and the morning shows are not really designed to bring you the news, except to tell you what happened overnight, and the rest of it is a kind of magazine mentality – a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It’s harder to be an educated and informed citizen.”
“Our health relies entirely on the vitality of our fellow species on earth.”
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