Errol Morris famous quotes

04-28-2025

Language can be used to so many diverse ends. It can be used to clarify and, of course, it can be used to obfuscate, confuse, evade...
-- Errol Morris

#Language #Used #Ends
I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.
-- Errol Morris

#Self #People #Deception
When you start talking about the known knowns and the unknown unknowns, you're thrown into a crazy meta-level discussion. Do I know what I know, do I know what I don't know, do I know what I don't know I don't know. It becomes a strange, Lewis Carroll - like nursery rhyme.
-- Errol Morris

#Crazy #Talking #Levels
We falsely interpret the world around us. We ignore evidence that doesn't support our prior beliefs and we convince ourselves we know things we don. We think we know things we don't know.
-- Errol Morris

#Thinking #Support #World
I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular.
-- Errol Morris

#Behavior #Ability #Skeptical
War is such a peculiar thing - inaugurated by the whims of few, affecting the fate of many. It is difficult, if not impossible, thing to understand, yet we feel compelled to describe it as though it has meaning - even virtue. It starts for reasons often hopelessly obscure, meanders on, then stops
-- Errol Morris

#War #Fate #Peculiar
Those who cannot condemn the past repeat it in order to remember it.
-- Errol Morris

#Past #Order #Remember
A lot of the themes of my movies, the actual stories, come from tabloid stories.
-- Errol Morris

#Movie #Stories #Tabloids
Truth is a pursuit, it's a quest. And proof is certainly in the pudding in this particular instance, because the film, and the evidence accumulated in making the film, led to this man's release from prison. And that's hardly ever happened, if it's happened at all, in any other film that I can think of.
-- Errol Morris

#Men #Thinking #Pudding
I gave someone a perverse argument not so long ago about why advertising is better than movies. You want to hear it? Movies operate from a really disingenuous premise, that people are heroes. I know a lot of people and have had an opportunity over the years to observe them. Are they heroes...? Let's put it this way. Advertising tries something simpler and more believable: Products as heroes. I guess the idea is: When all else fails, put your faith in conditioner.
-- Errol Morris

#Hero #Opportunity #Years
I've always wondered where explanations end and excuses begin.
-- Errol Morris

#Excuse #Ends #Explanation
Listening to what people were saying wasn't even important. But it was important to look as if you were listening to what people were saying. Actually, listening to what people are saying, to me, interferes with looking as if you were listening to what people are saying.
-- Errol Morris

#People #Listening #Important
You can think of my films as cautionary tales, but you might even think of them as despairing tales, because at least in a cautionary tale, you have this idea that by listening to the story you can assure a better outcome. Whereas I'm not at all convinced that's the case. In fact, if anything, I'm convinced that it's the opposite.
-- Errol Morris

#Thinking #Opposites #Ideas
The perfect war is started for obscure reasons, is hopelessly murderous, and accomplishes nothing.
-- Errol Morris

#War #Perfect #Obscure
I think calling someone a character is a compliment.
-- Errol Morris

#Character #Thinking #Calling
Maybe existence is ultimately a lonely thing.
-- Errol Morris

#Lonely #Existence
The proper route to an understanding of the world is an examination of our errors about it.
-- Errol Morris

#Errors #Understanding #World
I believe that we face incredible obstacles in our attempts to see the world. Everything in our nature tries to deny the world around us; to refabricate it in our own image; to reinvent it for our own benefit. And so, it becomes something of a challenge, a task, to recover (or at least attempt to recover) the real world despite all the impediments to that end.
-- Errol Morris

#Real #Believe #Challenges
The pursuit of truth, properly considered, shouldn't stop short of insanity.
-- Errol Morris

#Insanity #Pursuit
But there's a big difference between, say, reporting on a story and simply making up a story.
-- Errol Morris

#Differences #Stories #Bigs
Ecstatic absurdity: it's the confrontation with meaninglessness.
-- Errol Morris

#Confrontation #Absurdity #Ecstatic
Certain kinds of intimacy emerge on a phone call that might never occur if you were sitting right next to the other person.
-- Errol Morris

#Phones #Sitting #Might
I used to work as a private detective years and years ago.
-- Errol Morris

#Years #Detectives #Used
My stuff always starts with interviews. I start interviewing people, and then slowly but surely, a movie insinuates itself.
-- Errol Morris

#People #Stuff #Interviews
Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again - and if people can stop and think and reflect on some of the ideas and issues in this movie, perhaps I've done some damn good here!
-- Errol Morris

#Country #Thinking #Years
If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. Iâ€™m not saying that the truth doesnâ€™t matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.
-- Errol Morris

#Believe #Self #Deception
I've been horribly depressed (lately), which, as you know, can be terribly time-consuming. I mean, if you're going to do it right, that is.
-- Errol Morris

#Mean #Consuming
Like all great documentaries, The Act of Killing demands another way of looking at reality. It starts as a dreamscape, an attempt to allow the perpetrators to reenact what they did, and then something truly amazing happens. The dream dissolves into nightmare and then into bitter reality. An amazing and impressive film.
-- Errol Morris

#Dream #Reality #Demand
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.
-- Errol Morris

#Past #Ironic #Remember

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