Martin Sheen quotes: on golf, God, recovery, money, and more.
“Find something in your life worth fighting for.”
“If all of the issues that I have worked on were depending on some measure of success, it would be a total failure. I don’t anticipate success. We’re not asked to be successful, we are only asked to be faithful. I couldn’t even tell you what success is.”
“Stop going for the easy buck and start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living off the buying and selling of others.”
“There is no greater virtue than honesty.”
“I think all of us are striving to lead honest lives. That’s a requirement of every human being.”
“You can’t know what is at stake or how much it is going to cost you until you get in the game. That’s the only way, and the level of cost is equal to the level of involvement.”
“If you have an awareness that your life is not full and that you are not yourself, that is the beginning, I think, of the journey toward spirituality. I don’t have a clue what God is; I really don’t. I would never, ever and tell anyone what to look for. The only thing I would say is: the journey to spirituality is the journey to your own humanity. The more human you are, I think, the more Godlike you are. And that is the genius of God.”
“You have to earn your way through growth. And in the end you become yourself.”
“Piety is something you do alone. True freedom, spirituality, can only be achieved in community.”
“We all yearn for the sacred, we are always looking for a transcendence; some people go about it with drugs or alcohol or sex or power or ego, whatever, and when they prove not satisfying and we come to our senses, we begin to realize that there’s another costly journey. It has to cost you something; if something worthwhile doesn’t cost you something, you are left to question its worth. And so I decided to go on that journey and, you know, I’m still at it.”
“You are equally responsible for your place in the culture, and you must make a contribution, and you must accept responsibility for what goes down on your watch.”
“We are not asked to do great things. We are asked to do all things with great care.”
“I just think that the only way we come to ourselves is through each other.”
“I think service to others is the real key to winning our own personal freedom and the road to our own happiness, our own personal contentment and fulfillment.”
“The best way to heal is to help healing someone else, and it takes one to know one, so you can appreciate what someone’s going through if you’ve gone there yourself.”
“When you come to understanding that the only thing you can ever possess is the thing that you cherish, and you give away with love, including your precious time and talent. That’s why volunteering is so important, because that’s the only thing we can take with us when the job is over. The only things you can take with you are the things which you cherish and gave away with love.”
“People, although having their own cross to carry, can minister to others through their own pain.”
“Nothing ever gets done unless it’s done by a fanatic.”
“If you are on an honest journey to find yourself, you’ll find God.”
“You never know when you are doing something that is affecting someone.”
“I’m an actor. This is what I do for a living. I am still a journeyman actor and a peace and justice activist. I’m a pilgrim trying to win my freedom and serve as best I can in the time I have, with this gift I’ve been given.”
“While acting is what I do for a living, activism is what I do to stay alive.”
“I act because I can’t seem to live with myself if I do not. I don’t know any other way to be. It isn’t something you can explain; it is just something that you do; it is something that you are.”
“I don’t have any conscious memory of wanting to be an actor, but early on, there was something in my makeup that I felt comfortable with. Then when I was around five or six, I started going to the movies and gradually it dawned on me that I was like one of those people on the screen. And that was it. There was never any question or doubt about what I was going to do for a living. I also knew I’d be happy there.”
“I became an actor because it was my clumsy attempt to become myself.”
“I am not the President; instead, I hold an even higher office, that of citizen of the United States.”
“I love The West Wing for many reasons. The show has been a fantasy. But we have offered a parallel universe to reality.”
“On the show, we are not trying to get people to eat their vegetables; we are not trying to get people to become democrats. We are basically trying to encourage people to get involved with public life so that politics isn’t left to the wealthy and privileged.”
“Kids don’t always stop to judge or analyze a new experience unless the adults around them react strongly. Otherwise, they just take in the experience and move on to the next one.”
“The most satisfying thing in my life and my career is to work with my children.”
“My recovery is the single greatest accomplishment of my life. Without that, the rest of my life would have fallen apart.”
“I started caddying when I was nine years old at a very exclusive country club in Dayton, Ohio. And I saw how the other half lived, if you will. Those years on the golf course as a caddie, boy, those people were something. They were vulgar, some were alcoholics, racist, they were very difficult people to deal with. A lot of them didn’t have a sense of humor.”
“Golf is fundamentally about being honest. I see people hit eight shots and tell me they shot five. I never say a word. It is a reminder to me of what is at stake. I am a very conscientious golfer. I count every stroke. I learned to play that way. That is the only way I can play. It taught me to be honest.”
“The lessons learned in Dayton have guided me throughout my life.”
“I sincerely believe that everything – everything – is grace, and you have to stick around long enough to see it through. I’m a very optimistic person.”
“I learned I had to stand for something so I could stand to be me.”
“You do it for yourself. You don’t expect to change the world. You don’t even expect to influence your family or your friends. You do it because you can’t not do it and be who you are. Or who you’re meant to be.”
“If you stand up for something you believe in, if you make it truly personal, you often will pay a price.”
“I’m filled with life and continued successes and still unfulfilled dreams.”
“Money’s only something you need in case you don’t die tomorrow.”
