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Werner Herzog Quotes

born 1942 Germany

Werner Herzog (born Werner Stipetic on 5 September 1942) is a German screenwriter, film director, actor and opera director.

Germany
Actors
Film directors
Film producers
Screenwriters

Also known as: Herzog, Werner

Random Werner Herzog quote

35 quotes

I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.

Grizzly Man (2006)

I am so used to plunging into the unknown that any other surroundings and form of existence strike me as exotic and unsuitable for human beings.

Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.

Minnesota declaration (1999)

If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams and I don't want to live like that: I live my life or I end my life with this project.

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

I shouldn't make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum.

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.

Minnesota declaration (1999)

I am fascinated by the idea that our civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

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.

If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980)

Film is not the art of scholars, but illiterates.

There are dignified stupidities, and there are heroic stupidities, and there is such a thing as stupid stupidities, and that would be a stupid stupidity not to have a camera on board.

The White Diamond (2004)

Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.

Minnesota declaration (1999)

As you see [filmmaking] makes me into a clown. And that happens to everyone — just look at Orson Welles or look at even people like Truffaut. They have become clowns.

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980)

James Joyce is a cul-de-sac. [Ulysses is] … an example how literature branched out and went into, lost itself in nowhere, no man's land.

Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.

Minnesota declaration (1999)

We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.

Minnesota declaration (1999)

You can fight a rumour only with an even wilder rumour.

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Werner Herzog (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.