We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.
Fixing a broken immigration system. Protecting our kids from gun violence. Equal pay for equal work, paid leave, raising the minimum wage. All these things still matter to hardworking families; they are still the right thing to do; and I will not let up until they get done.
If we think we can just use the same partisan playbook where we just challenge our opponent’s patriotism to win an election, then the American people will lose. The times are too serious for this kind of politics.
It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.
If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep on walking, eventually you’ll make progress.
The future rewards those who press on. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I’m going to press on.
Focussing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realise your true potential.
Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.
The role of citizen in a democracy does not end with your vote.
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.
A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
But what is happiness, except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
When Lucas was doing Star Wars, he didn’t have a 50 million person Facebook following where he could just sift through feedback to try to get an idea for what he was going to do next. It’s a luxury we have today.
The most important thing in life will always be family. The people right here, right now.
It’s very rewarding to see the movie, and it’s very rewarding to make the movie, but playing the character [Riddick] is sometimes a lot more difficult than other characters because it takes so much preparation to get into that character.
If you take my performance or my understanding of the role and my appreciation for story and then dress it in CGI, that I guess becomes an action film.
I used to do fight sequences, and I started to get self-conscious about fight sequences because invariably the other person would get hurt, and you never want anyone to be hurt on a film, let alone you being responsible. The great thing about working with guys who have spent their life choreographing fights for wrestling is that that’s what they do. That’s their specialty. Their specialty is selling taking hits. Their specialty is selling explosive hits without making a contact or doing too much damage.
I live my life a quarter-mile at a time. Nothing else matters not the mortgage, not the store, not my team and all their bullshit. For those ten seconds or less, I’m free.
I don’t know when the last time was that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas made a movie with Universal, but I can tell you that Universal is leading the charge. They’re looking at film differently. They’re planning ahead in a way that I’ve never seen a studio do before. They’re believing in a relationship between fan and film franchise, in a new way. They’re more receptive to an audience, in part because of social media, in a way we’ve never been allowed.
The video game culture was an important thing to keep alive in the film because we’re in a new era right now. The idea that kids can play video games like Grand Theft Auto or any video game is amazing. The video games are one step before a whole other virtual universe.
If you’re the type of person who has to fulfill your dreams, you’ve gotta be resourceful to make sure you can do it. I came out to California when I was 21, thinking my New York credentials would take me all the way. I came back home a year later all dejected and a failure.
I would love to do more science fiction. I always envisioned the Riddick franchise as a continuing mythology, so I always imagined that there would be many other films to follow.
If you have an opportunity to use your voice you should use it.
The best advice that was given to me was that I had to be 10 times smarter, braver and more polite to be equal. So I did.
I’ve been fortunate to be in films that are classic, that are going to be around.
All movies aren’t fun; some are hard work. You try to do something and convey a set of emotions that have to do with some real life kind of stuff.
Take a stand for what’s right. Raise a ruckus and make a change. You may not always be popular, but you’ll be part of something larger and bigger and greater than yourself. Besides, making history is extremely cool.
You ain’t got but one life. You ought to live it the way you want.
Anyone who tells you money can’t buy happiness never had any.
For he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.
I kind of realize that I have a tendency to choose the kind of films I watched when I was a kid and would go home and pretend with my friends that we were in those movies after we saw them.
I grew up in the South with guns everywhere and we never shot anyone. This [shooting] is about people who aren’t taught the value of life.
Just keep moving forward, and don’t give a shit about what anyone thinks. Do what you have to do, for you.
People say I make strange choices, but they’re not strange for me. My sickness is that I’m fascinated by human behavior, by what’s underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.
I’ve never felt particularly ambitious or driven, that’s for sure, although I like to create stuff, whether it’s a little doodle, a drawing, a small painting or a movie or a piece of music, so I suppose I’m driven by that. Everything I’ve done has felt very natural, and it’s happened because it’s happened.
As a teenager, I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too.
I like the challenge of trying different things and wondering whether it’s going to work or whether I’m going to fall flat on my face.
If there’s any message to my work, it is ultimately that it’s OK to be different, that it’s good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.
When I see someone who just follows their dream and succeeds, and just does basically what they want to do and doesn’t have to answer to anyone, obviously not harming anyone, that’s great.
I don’t think it’s anything you ever get used to… for many years, I could never sort of put my name in the same sort of category as the word ‘famous’ or anything like that. And I just found it very uncomfortable… if you get used to it, then something must be wrong.
There are four questions of value in life… What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.
People cry not because they’re weak, it’s because they’ve been strong for too long.
I’ve never done work for money ever. If your choices are based on grosses and the film doesn’t do well, what does that mean? It leaves you with nothing.
With each one (film), I love working on the story and the characters. The stunts, each time, we keep pushing ourselves harder and harder. And they are stunts, so there’s always a danger in doing them, but fortunately, I have not had a problem. I have not missed a day of work, ever, in my career. I’m always there early. And I train very hard, and we prepare very carefully for each one.
I don’t hide from cameras or anything. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t seek our press for the women I’m dating, but if it finds me, it finds me.
Every time I make a ‘Mission’ movie or other films, people kind of look at me and go, “Well, now what? What’s next?” I think there’s always going to be another mountain. I think there’s something always in store.
In this life, it’s not what you hope for, it’s not what you deserve – it’s what you take!
I love adventure movies; I just love action adventure films. It’s pure cinema and you go in and you’re lost to it. To me, it’s that challenge – I want to give an audience that ride, that entertainment.
When you become successful in any type of life, there are people who are not contributing to the motion.
Whether it’s making a film or raising my children, personally I’m striving to do the right things and to learn.
I look at the Samurai because they were the artists of their time. What I think struck me when I read Bushido is compassion. ‘If there’s no one there to help, go out and find someone to help.’ That hit me, because I try to lead my life like that.
When you have to cope with a lot of problems, you’re either going to sink or you’re going to swim.
If you’re not making someone else’s life better, than you’re wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better.
The concept of improving lives runs through the center of everything I do. And then I realized the way to improve lives is to continually improve yourself.
I am motivated by fear. I hate being scared to do something. I think what developed in my early days, was the attitude that I started attacking things that I was scared of.
Self-discipline is the center of all material success. You can’t win the war against the world if you can’t win the war against your own mind.
The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.
As long as we are pointing the finger and stuck at who’s fault something is, we are jammed and trapped into victim mode. When you are in victim mode you are stuck in suffering.
The prerequisite for spending time with any person is that they nourish and inspire you. They feed your flame.
There’s no easy way around it. No matter how talented you are, you talent is going to fail you if you are not skilled. If you don’t study, work really hard, and dedicate yourself to being better every single day.
The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is, I am not afraid to die on a treadmill. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things. You are getting off first. Or I am going to die. It’s that simple.
Let your smile change the world. Don’t let the world change your smile.
Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
Marketers make things better by making change happen.
How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?
Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.
The key to success is to find a way to stand out – to be the purple cow in a field of monochrome Holsteins.
Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.
The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.
The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by. The challenge is getting into the habit of starting.
The most successful givers aren’t doing it because they’re being told to. They do it because doing it is fun. It gives them joy.
We believe what we want to believe in, and once we believe something, it becomes a self-fulfilling truth.
