Quote

Socially, a journalist ranks somewhere between the madam of a whorehouse and a bartender. but spiritually he ranks with Galileo, for he knows the world is round.

Ben Hecht

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ben Hecht
Age: 71 †
Born: 1893
Born: February 28
Died: 1964
Died: April 18
Film Director
Film Producer
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Somewhere
Madam
Politics
Bartender
Political
Ranks
World
Socially
Spiritually
Journalist
Round
Whorehouse
Rounds
Galileo

More quotes by Ben Hecht

Image
In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
Ben Hecht
Image
The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
Ben Hecht
Image
The rule in the art world is: you cater to the masses or you kowtow to the elite you can't have both.
Ben Hecht
Image
The factors that laid low so whooping and puissant an empire as the old Hollywood are many. I can think of a score, including the barbarian hordes of Television. But there is one that stands out for me in the post-mortem.... The factor had to do with the basis of movie-making: 'Who shall be in charge of telling the story.'
Ben Hecht
Image
Love is the magician that pulls him out of his own hat.
Ben Hecht
Image
When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance.
Ben Hecht
Image
Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only critical tut-tut for him. The producer, director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it's a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it's a flop.
Ben Hecht
Image
A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him.
Ben Hecht
Image
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.
Ben Hecht
Image
The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
Ben Hecht
Image
People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.
Ben Hecht
Image
In the court of the movie Owner, none criticized, none doubted. And none dared speak of art. In the Owner's mind art was a synonym for bankruptcy. The movie Owners are the only troupe in the history of entertainment that has never been seduced by the adventure of the entertainment world.
Ben Hecht
Image
He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
Ben Hecht
Image
In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
Ben Hecht
Image
For many years Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.
Ben Hecht
Image
H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.
Ben Hecht
Image
The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.
Ben Hecht
Image
I see a lot of fog and a few lights. I like it when life's hidden. It gives you a chance to imagine nice things, nicer than they are.
Ben Hecht
Image
Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
Ben Hecht
Image
Television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry, the last place where I hear women's hair rhapsodically described, women's faces acclaimed in odelike language.
Ben Hecht