Richard Attenborough Quotes

“I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man, who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something.”

— Richard Attenborough

At my age the only problem is with remembering names. When I call everyone darling, it has damn all to do with passionately adoring them, but I know I'm safe calling them that. Although, of course, I adore them too.

— Richard Attenborough

“I am passionately opposed to capital punishment, and I have been all my life.”

— Richard Attenborough

I just love biography, and I'm fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view.

— Richard Attenborough

“I can't write, I can't paint, I don't compose.”

— Richard Attenborough

“There's nothing more important in making movies than the screenplay.”

— Richard Attenborough

“I think Tom Paine is one of the greatest men that's ever lived.”

— Richard Attenborough

“I think it is obscene that we should believe that we are entitled to end somebody's life, no matter what that person has supposedly done or not done.”

— Richard Attenborough

“And I believe we need heroes, I believe we need certain people who we can measure our own shortcomings by.”

— Richard Attenborough

“I prefer fact to fiction.”

— Richard Attenborough

“I do care about style. I do care, but I only care about style that serves the subject.”

— Richard Attenborough

“If you've ever seen the film In Which We Serve, but it was about a destroyer in the Mediterranean.”

— Richard Attenborough

I don't read a great deal of fiction, to my shame, other than the classics.

— Richard Attenborough

What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit.

— Richard Attenborough

And there are certain things, and they are evident, obviously, without being boring about it, but I mean obviously, the two evident and easy ones being Gandhi and Cry Freedom, there are things which I do care about very much and which I would like to stand up and be counted.

— Richard Attenborough

“David has asked me, a number of people have asked me and said, What performance do you like best or what's the best film you've made and so on and I don't really have any hesitation that the film I'm least embarrassed by and ashamed of or uneasy about is Shadowlands.”

— Richard Attenborough

“In other words, if you - the cost of promoting movies, the advertising and promotion of a movie, the budget is almost as large as the cost of the movie.”

— Richard Attenborough

“Well, I think In Love and War, which had a wonderful performance by Sandy, Sandra Bullock, who the authorities and, the supposed authorities, in cinema didn't want to know about.”

— Richard Attenborough

I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.

— Richard Attenborough

I'm a passionate trade unionist.

— Richard Attenborough

“I do not have a brain that I long for in dealing with matters of which I am ignorant, that don't come within my ken and a rationale, a reason, and argument and so on, and I can't do that and I'm not in that bracket at all.”

— Richard Attenborough

Well, you cannot think of cinema now, and you cannot think of cinema in the UK and not place Chaplin in the most extraordinary elevated context, if there can be such a thing, in that he was a genius, he was unique.

— Richard Attenborough

“I was on my own union council for twenty-odd years.”

— Richard Attenborough

“Pier Angeli was in the movie called Sea of Sand that Guy Green directed where this idea came up.”

— Richard Attenborough

“When asked what attribute he most admired in human nature, Mahatma Gandhi replied, simply and immediately, 'Courage'. 'Nonviolence', he said, 'is not to be used ever as the shield of the coward. It is the weapon of the brave.”

— Richard Attenborough

I passionately believe in heroes, but I think the world has changed its criteria in determining who it describes as a hero.

— Richard Attenborough

“Art is not an elitist gift for a few select people. Art is for everyone.”

— Richard Attenborough

“On my last day of shooting, I'd be happy to say 'Cut, it's a wrap' and fall off the twig.”

— Richard Attenborough

I don't blame people for their mistakes, but I do ask that they pay for them.

— Richard Attenborough

“If you are directing, you have the opportunity to put your signature on the bottom of the frame. You have the opportunity to say, "This is what I believe. That is my credo. That is what I wish to state."”

— Richard Attenborough