Quotes
When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have.
You have to edit the material. That assumes that some kind of a mind is operating in relation to the material. Not all minds are the same. Every aspect of filmmaking requires choice. The selection of the subject, the shooting, editing and length are all aspects of choice.
Whether you're a newspaper journalist, a lawyer, a doctor. You have to organize your thoughts.
They're all movies. I've always just done whatever interested me and this interested me. I never felt any need to rationalize to myself or to anyone else why I chose to do a fiction film. Maybe I'll do another fiction film, maybe I won't; maybe I'll do another documentary, maybe I won't.
My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life.
I hope that not only my documentaries, but everybody's documentaries, last. It will really confuse historians in the next century, because they'll have, in addition to all the print material, they'll have all these pictures to look at.
I don't like to read novels where the novelist tells me what to think about the situation and the characters. I prefer to discover for myself.
Anybody whose mind is functioning at all can't be content with the way the world works.
On the whole, audiences prefer that art be not a mirror held up to life, but a Disneyland of the soul, containing Romanceland, Spyland, Pornoland and all the other escape lands which are so much more agreeable than the complex truth.
We're going to raise a lost generation of children unless they are properly disciplined and properly spanked.
Vision looks upward and becomes faith.
Vision looks outward and becomes aspiration.
Vision looks inward and becomes duty.
Henry A. Wise
We in the South claim to be high-minded, gentlemanly, lordly fellows, who think nothing of money; and, therefore, we are poor.
Henry A. Wise
I will not nullify, I will not secede, but I will under sovereign State authority fight in the Union another revolutionary conflict for civil liberty, and a Union which will defend it.
Henry A. Wise
I have lately returned from Harpers Ferry, to which place I was suddenly called, on the 17th instant, by causes the most disturbing and destructive to the peace and safety of this State.
The Greek grasped the present moment, and was the artist; the Jew worshipped the timeless spirit, and was the prophet.