Top 44 Werner Herzog Quotes

I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.

I work very fast and steadily, and I don’t hardly ever notice that I’m working. It feels like just breathing or walking when I do films.

I have a great map of the Tibesti Mountains in the southern Sahara or Northern Chad. It’s a dream of mine to go there, but it’s such a volatile area, you have to be prudent.

I’m not an activist.

I have nothing against 3D films but I do not need to see them.

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.

I’m not an interviewer. I have conversations.

I never have searched for a subject. They always just come along. They never come by way of decision-making. They just haunt me. I can’t get rid of them. I did not invite them.

You should look straight at a film; that’s the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

Let’s put it this way: art house theaters are vanishing. They have almost disappeared completely, and that means there’s a shift in what audiences want to see. And they have to be aware of that and be realistic. It’s as simple as that.

Film should be looked at straight on; it is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you’ve got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I’m sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn’t have the same substance.

I’m not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming – I’ve always been a man of the theaters.

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

I live my life outside of the glitz and glamour of the red carpet events, and so you’ll never see me there. I’m never at parties.

I cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard.

If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn’t matter whether you’re bold or cowardly, or whether you’re stupid or intelligent. Doesn’t get you anywhere.

The universe is not harmonious: you know that by looking outside.

I prefer to be alive, so I’m cautious about taking risks.

I think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you’re working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity.

Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like ‘Grizzly Man’? It’s the sheer joy of storytelling – it’s the urge.

I do other sorts of things. I act in other people’s movies. I direct operas. I write books.

I find it interesting that there are impostors out on the Internet pretending to be Werner Herzog.

Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There’s no doubt in my heart.

I’m not very eager to sit and look at my films all the time.

I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.

I’m simply not afraid. It’s not in my dictionary of behaviour.

I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I’m good at that!

I think there are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there’s insecurity, collapse of financial systems – that’s where film noir always hits fertile ground.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

I’m not a journalist; I’m a poet.

I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.

Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden, we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are.

I don’t spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.

You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn’t mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that’s what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.

I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.

I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.

The universe is monstrously indifferent to the presence of man.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It’s an ego trip, and I’m not on an ego trip. I don’t have ambitions – I have a vision.

Yes, the pyramids have been built, but if you give me 300,000 disciplined men and give me 30 years, I could build a bigger one.

I’m a very professional man. I’m not out for the experience of adventure.

Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it’s not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it’s not your fault.

Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.