Michael Douglas quotes:

It took me too long to realise that if you go to a marriage counsellor to resolve problems, it's in his interest to keep the marriage going.

With 'Black Rain,' I spent a lot of time with homicide detectives, and I spent a lot of time with different brokers on 'Wall Street.' It helps get the rhythm of the piece and the tone, and how overplayed or underplayed it might be. That's also the magic of movies: You get to hang out and live these different lives.

My memories of Las Vegas were all with my father when I was, like, a teenager. He was best friends with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and we'd come up and see the shows and go backstage afterwards and have dinner together. It was one of my first educations about stars and how they really are back stage.

I think sometimes in relationships, ladies like having a man who takes care of them, nurtures them. If you can't find it in a man your own age, you find it in somebody who is older.

I have some idea of the pressure of finding your own identity with a famous father.

Five Easy Pieces,' 'Easy Rider' - those are indie pictures; those were not studio pictures. They had relationships with studio distribution, but they were indies.

The quality of health care in Canada is excellent.

During my first marriage, my career was the most important thing in my life.

The Cold War's end pushed disarmament down most leaders' agendas. It's a sophisticated issue, which I think is one reason why it is not so hands-on to many people. It's not visceral. It's not like a starving child.

For an actor, it's great fun to play one of these hungry white sharks. Audiences love to hate them.

I love kids, and I love having had this second chance to have a family.

I don't smile a lot in my pictures. I'm always so... grim.

Learning patience was not an easy lesson.

The arts are a celebration of life.

The studios basically, besides developing some material, their strength is distribution. Distribution in any other business is a cost that you incur. You know, in a trucking business, you eat it. In a film business, distribution is a profit center.

Sometimes art imitates life.

When I was working on pictures with my father, there were a couple leading ladies to whom I wish I'd expressed how I felt rather than being too cool or too shy.

A lot of actors get concerned about their own image, even going so far as to rewrite a movie to best serve that image. All I want to do is be in good movies.

Women are now very comfortable to have babies into their late 30s. You can be a father in your 50s. I'm not saying it's for everybody, and I think people have to get their own life secure before they take on the responsibility of a partner and children.

Sometimes we spend more efforts with people that are strangers in terms of making an impression than the person that's closest to us. And you just gotta remember not to take for granted that person that's closest to you.

The message from national security experts and citizens around the world is clear: The only way to eliminate the global nuclear danger is to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

Religion has certainly been shoved down my throat.

I guess there are some women who like older men, but it's a smaller group.

I have nothing against her, and in fact I'm very fond of my first wife. But we should have ended that marriage eight or 10 years earlier.

I've always worked hard and played hard, and I'm sure I'll be cleaning up my act in the future.

My marriage and my families come certainly before my career.

Do you know what absolute happiness is? For me, it is to wake up my kids in the morning - these little pieces of innocence - to wake them and find they're so happy to see me! It is unequivocal love, no question about it.

King of California' was just, I thought, a really great, fresh, original kind of script. I loved the tone, the mix of tragedy, comedy, and drama, and that it was a good part.

I have hardly ever worked with the same director twice. But when you have worked with a director before, you understand his behavior.

I think the quality of television, given the amount of time you have, how short you have, is proportionally so much better than most movies.

I've always been somebody who, when I started a picture, never knew what the next picture would be.

I've taken blame about being a bad father - if being a bad father is working your butt off trying to create a career at one time.

Our economy is increasingly dependent on the success and integrity of the financial markets.

When you're making pictures out of heartfelt passion, it hurts when someone calls them a calculated business move.

When you've accomplished a certain amount in your career, you're not so focused on your ambitions.

I've never been one to carefully calculate my career decisions, to sit on the outside looking in. I go with my passion and what moves me.

Capitalism is part of our system, but it's not for the faint of heart.

There is something about seeing rhinos and lions running free that excites you. It's not that you feel afraid; it's more like you're liberated by seeing them.

In the movie 'Wall Street' I play Gordon Gekko, a greedy corporate executive who cheated to profit while innocent investors lost their savings. The movie was fiction, but the problem is real.

I try not to dwell too much on a bad marriage.

Actresses have more fear of being disliked. I, on the other hand, revel in it.

I've always tried to kind of stretch my wings as an actor and do things that are different.

I met Michael Milken for the first time with Oliver Stone at the Drexel Burnham offices in Los Angeles.

The thing with cancer is that you want to get it as early as you can.

There's nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his life.

People are goofy about the movie business, so you end up counting on friends you knew before you were successful. It is harder to make new friends because you are a little more cautious.

My mother is Bermudan, so I had a lot of memories when I was a kid, used to go down to Bermuda a lot.

When you are a celebrity, nothing remains secret for very long.

All the pictures I do are contemporary. I've sort of discovered I haven't really been into science fiction or period pictures. And so, in that vein, psychological thrillers play a big part.

It's difficult for me to meet women because my crowd is much older. I know that for some of the young women I do meet, a relationship with me can be envisioned as a benefit to their career.

When I go on a holiday to a tropical place, I'll spray tan before I go.

Being single is pretty good. It's a nice sense of irresponsibility.

I dont know about Brad Pitt leaving that beautiful woman to go hold orphans for Angelina. I mean how long is that going to last?

Cancer did not bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet.

I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work.

Wherever arms flow, violence follows. Bullets replace ballots as the solution to political disputes.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and cuts through to the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed is good! Greed is right! Greed works! Greed will save the U.S.A.!

Someone reminded me I once said, 'Greed is good.' Now it seems it's legal.

Human Rights for everyone is the necessary foundation upon which all of us may build a world where everybody may live in peace and serenity and plenty.

With little knowledge of what it meant to be a Jew, I found myself passionately defending the Jewish people. Now, half a century later, I have to defend my son. Anti-Semitism, I've seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger.

Suddenly you've worked yourself up to the top of the pecking order and you say to yourself, okay, this is going to be fun.

If we confront anti-Semitism ... if we combat it individually and as a society, and use whatever platform we have to denounce it, we can stop the spread of this madness.

Everybody knows about Las Vegas. It's a state of mind. Some people want to come with their kids and have a great weekend. Some people want to shop. Some people want to find hookers. Some people want to eat. Some people just want to gamble. It's a potpourri of decadence.

I've always liked Tina Turner.

My movies are usually about stripping off the makeup, getting down to the skeleton.

My dad was a movie star. Having that name was good and bad. People think it's a silver spoon. It's not.

I went into rehab to save my marriage, but I wound up saving myself.

That's why I'm such a big sports fan, with sports you can never guess what's gonna happen. Most movies you get halfway through and you can kind of guess the ending.

There was a lot of tabloid journalism about my supposed sex addiction. Bullshit. It's all bullshit. I mean, come on, I never pretended to be a saint. But give me a break.

Like a lovely orchid, or anything else that's nurtured, marriage prospers and grows, but if it's ignored, it withers.

Most of the stories I read are about my Hollywood pedigree.

Since Catherine [Zeta-Jones] and I got together, I've cut back dramatically. My priorities changed, and I still love acting and all that, but not as much as I love watching my two kids grow up.

Everything's so repressive now - it's the No generation. You can't do anything, you can't eat anything, you have to abstain.

I don't know about Brad Pitt leaving that beautiful woman to go hold orphans for Angelina. I mean how long is that going to last?

In 'Wall Street,' Charlie Sheen carried that movie.

Chemotherapy takes its toll; the more you keep doing it, you lose your energy, and it gets more difficult to swallow.

I grew up on the East Coast and was going to go to an Ivy League School, but at the last minute I decided to be a hippy. It was the protest movements on the war, peace movements were going on at our university. It was a fantastic time.

Cancer didn't bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet.

Liberace was one of the biggest stars in America. He was a kind of a phenomenon.

Liberace was a lovely guy.

I don't know if likeable, pleasant characters have enough conflict for me to want to do them. I admire those people, but I've never been that kind of screen presence who can do nothing. I need to do something.

I do think of myself as a bit of a loner, a bit of an independent. I'm one of those people who, when they're sick, like to curl up and remove myself. I don't like a lot of people around. There is nothing you can do to help.

I haven't played a lot of nice guys.

You just have to know what your responsibility is to the movie, and live up to that, and be considerate of the other actors in the scene... I have never been competitive in that way - I always want my leading ladies to be as good as they possibly can be.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' which my father had tried to get made for six, seven years, and I for four, was turned down by every studio. Every studio in the world had passed on it.

Actors, I have to say, most of the time, they elevate things; they don't screw things up most of the time.

Wall Street' was a very important movie for me in terms of my career. I won an Oscar, and then the film 'Fatal Attraction' came right after it.

My mother and father met at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He was a senior and she was a junior, and their marriage didn't last very long.

If your work isn't exciting, doesn't stir the emotions, where's the challenge? Where's the progress if you always play it safe?

Kids know. They know everything. I would err on the side of pretty much sharing everything.

Serious is when they tell you, 'You've got cancer.' Cancer is serious, but then the rest of it is not.

A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place.

Basketball is great; no one in Europe seems to believe just how close the spectators can sit to the players.

Cigar smoking by it's very nature is much more reflective than interactive.

Even when you're acting with a producing hat, when you're in every scene, you're really conscious of trying to make everybody as good as they are, because ultimately you're trying to make the best movie possible.

Every empire eventually falls.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

I don't even know why, but my entire career is contemporary films. Entire career! There's no period movies - there's one - but there's no period movies, no special effects movies. I just do character studies and so, some of them are gonna bump into each other, but I love the challenge, with a good script. I love the challenge of playing not a very pleasant or attractive character that seduces an audience or wins an audience over by the end.

I have met with political leaders, legislators, and diplomats, seeking the next steps to press in reducing and eliminating the nuclear threat in this century. I have participated in public coalitions developing programmes for action to combat the global rash of small arms. All are trying and making a difference.

I thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while.

I'm not a big filmophile. I don't watch movies a lot for a hobby. I spend all my time watching sporting events. Because, opposed to movies, you can never tell how they're going to end.

I'm questioning it. We're trying to get a lot of money for health and education and I'm wondering... You look at these gangs, and I look back at Prohibition. When we didn't allow alcohol, what did we have? We had gangs. We had big gangs. It's something that needs to be discussed a little more. It's an economic issue and a violence issue.

It's a phenomenon that I see with young actors - a lot of American speaking parts going to British actors.

It's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.

It's important to save your money. We need it for the long haul but too many Americans don't save and don't invest. It used to be that people would be proud of the fact that they were middle class. You'd have your church and buy a house and you had a car and everything else. Now, it's really, really tough. Everybody has financial issues except for the one percent.

Money itself isn't lost or made. It's simply transferred from one perception to another.

My brain cannot conceive how old my body is.

My entire career is contemporary based, not by choice, but just by character. So, all the movies I've done, except for one in 40 years, are contemporary. But I never did an effects movie. So, I'm also a producer and I was really curious about how this whole thing went together.

Never knew how poor I was until I started making money.

Oh, I get it, it's simple. PG means the hero gets the girl, 15 means that the villain gets the girl, and 18 means everybody gets the girl.

One of the things that I find most incredible about dad is the third act of his life.After all he accomplished in his professional career and what he's given for his country, at the point in his life where he's faced adversity, losing a son, having a helicopter crash, having a stroke, and what he's accomplished in this third act in his life, I find quite extraordinary.

Out there is nothing but possibilities.

Players never die - they just try their luck at another table.

Relationships are like bubbles "? they're fragile.

Sometimes we spend more efforts with people that are strangers in terms of making an impression than the person that's closest to us. And you just got to remember not to take for granted that person that's closest to you.

The hardest thing about sex scenes is that everybody is a judge. I don't know the last time you murdered somebody or blew anyone's brains out, but everyone has had sex and probably this morning, which means everyone has an opinion on how it should be done.

The history of second-generation actors isn't great in our industry,

The one thing that men and women have in common - they both like the company of men.

We must unite to make nuclear weapons a horror of the past.