Tag: psychology

Quoting Margaret Thatcher, on personal attacks

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

Quoting Nora Ephron, on certain among the insane

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

Quoting Walter Lippmann, on self-awareness

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

Quoting “Any Given Sunday,” on how to succeed

Three minutes until the biggest battle of our professional lives, all comes down to today ….

I look around, I see these young faces and I think, I mean, I made every wrong choice a middle aged man can make …. But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out life is this game of inches. So’s football.

Because in either game, life or football, the margin for error is so small. I mean, one half a step too late or too early, and you don’t quite make it. One half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it.

The inches we need are everywhere around us, they’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team we fight for that inch ….

Tony D’Amato (Al Pacino).

— Oliver Stone, director

Quoting “Goldfinger,” on self-discipline

Discipline, Double-O Seven. Discipline.

James Bond (Sean Connery).

— Guy Hamilton; Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman (character originally created by Ian Fleming)

Quoting “Shawshank Redemption,” on hope

In 1966, Andy Dufrane escaped from Shawshank Prison.

Ellis Boy “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), voiceover.

— Frank Darabont

Quoting Cary Grant, on Cary Grant

Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.

Said after his own retirement from film, in his later years. Perhaps reflecting an appreciation that he, himself, must now be counted among those who envied the iconic “Cary Grant persona” of His Girl Friday. And that this was a character that he, then, could no longer portray?

Ironically, by virtue of having made this observation, himself, I think he evidences an ongoing command of that very thing he claims to have lost.

Quoting “The Maltese Falcon,” on purpose

Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart):

If you kill me, how are you gonna get the bird? And if I know you can’t afford to kill me, how are you gonna scare me into giving it to you?

Kasper Gutman, “the Fat Man” (Sydney Greenstreet):

Well, sir, there are other means of persuasion besides killing and threatening to kill,

Sam Spade:

Yes, … that’s true. But they’re none of ’em any good unless the threat of death is behind them. Do you see what I mean? If you start something, I’ll make it a matter of your having to kill me or call it off.

Kasper Gutman:

That’s an attitude, sir, that calls for the most delicate judgment on both sides. ‘Cause as you know, sir, in the heat of action, men are likely to forget where their interests lie and that their emotions carry them away,

Sam Spade:

Then the trick from my angle is to make my play strong enough to tie you up, but not make you mad enough to bump me off against your better judgment,

— John Huston, director