Top 35 Sterling Hayden Quotes

Audiences may not realize it, but heroes and leading men always depend on their muscles to get out of jams. They don’t have to slug a guy in the mouth to solve a problem, but it’s always hinted that he can fight like the heavyweight champ if he has to.

For us to support the liquidation of a simple life in a large part of the world is not a particularly attractive prospect.

I got stardom too easily. I didn’t appreciate the breaks. But that’s all behind me now.

I think my opinion of Hollywood must stem from my own, philosophy as a man.

I realize now that it is a serious business requiring honest, hard work. The first time Hollywood was served up to me on a silver platter. I’ve finally gotten rid of the platter.

I’ve been offered the role of Franklin Roosevelt, and I wouldn’t presume to undertake it.

I don’t remember even having spoken a piece in Sunday school.

It’s a presumptuous thing to write one’s autobiography, but this is really an effort in the deepest sense to explore the struggle of a tortured individual to be himself in a hostile society.

Out of 35 pictures I made, 30 were ridiculous.

I was navigator on the Gloucester schooner ‘Gertrude L. Thebaud’ in the International Fisherman’s race. That’s a big thing in New England – the race, I mean. A Boston newspaper man covered it, and saw me on board. For a long time I wished he hadn’t! He wrote a piece saying I ought to be in motion pictures.

I am an expert in loneliness and have wandered around a great deal.

Sooner or later a man has simply got to do what he thinks is right, no matter what other people, or the courts, or his friends, or his enemies, or God himself may tell him.

The number of fights in movies is haywire.

When they saddle the leading man with violence it makes the characters look weak. If a man is a heroic type he doesn’t have to resort to violence. How many successful men in the world have to settle problems with their fists?

Only when a film comes along that I really believe in like this one will I turn to acting.

Once I tried to do Jack London’s ‘Sea Wolf’ as a picture. I wanted to film most of the scenes at sea but ran into opposition from those who wanted studio sets.

All I need is a place to put my things, somewhere to lay a mattress.

As a child I was told if I was ever given ruled paper I should write across the lines. And that’s what I’ve done, traveling the roads with the least traffic.

You can measure a man’s capacity by the depth of his mistakes.

I felt reluctant accepting the very lucrative and easy life Hollywood had offered me. All of it planted a seed: If I could do something about the conditions of the world, I could probably justify my position as an actor.

I brag like hell when I’m confident of what I’m doing. Back when I was sailing ships for a living, I would take a schooner up to San Francisco – I had my master’s certificate at 22 – and I would tell myself, ‘There isn’t a man in the world can do this better ‘n I can.’ And I meant it.

I don’t call myself a writer, much as I’d love to be. An author, maybe – the novel ‘Voyage’ made $870,000. Writer, no. Nor am I an actor. I was never on the stage.

I always hated acting but I kept on acting.

I’m an alcoholic.

I don’t guess anybody likes the idea of being locked up.

Bahamians are wonderful seamen.

John Brown was one of my longtime heroes, and it was with no little amount of temerity that I accepted the role. There are some things I am hesitant about, and playing a hero of mine is one of them.

At heart, I’m not an actor, I’m an accident.

You can’t just run away from everything.

Tahiti is now completely occupied by materialistic ideas and I think it is wrong.

I have no respect for acting where I’m concerned.

Actually, I wish I did nothing but write. Acting takes a lot of heat off of me monetarily but it puts a lot of beat on me emotionally.

If you stop to think, the only films that don’t include at least one punch in -the jaw are musical comedies. And even then some of those villains get brained in the middle of an aria.

I ran away to sea. I know that only happens in fiction. But it’s what I did.

I work in pictures when I have to. In 1979 that was one day’s work.