139 Quotes by Kirk Douglas

I have a great respect for actors like Clint Eastwood, who's a wonderful director. I think two pictures that I directed were not successful, so I decided not to make any more.

I was going to play in First Blood, but I suggested to changing it and I dropped out. I said to [Silvester] Stallone, 'You know, I almost stopped you from making millions of dollars,' because in my suggestion, I killed his character at the end of the picture .

I directed two films, not very successfully, and after that, I went back to being an actor and a producer.

When you get old the worst thing is you lose so many friends. Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne. People who I loved to work with.

When I made Spartacus during the McCarthy Era, we were losing our freedom. It was an awful, awful way. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, in every level of government and they concentrated on Hollywood and especially on Hollywood writers.

I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.

I've played some good guys as well, in Spartacus, Paths of Glory and my favorite picture, Lonely Are the Brave, so I had a mixture of parts in my life.

Really a bad guy is more interesting, dramatically, than the good guy.

I'm concerned that the world is a mess. That's why when I wrote my last book, Let's Face It, I dedicated it to the younger generation because, let's face it, the world is in a mess. Right now, the young people will inherit that mess. I think we have to do everything we can.