360 Quotes by David Mamet

If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.

The job of the artist, is to say, wait a second, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's re-examine it.

Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English.

If you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you're plagued by it 'til it's cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.

People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.

Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide.

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.

All rhetorical questions are accusations.

I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old.