Quote

The ultimate trick is to convince, persuade. Every single person out there is an idiot, but collectively they're a genius.

Billy Wilder

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Billy Wilder
Age: 95 †
Born: 1906
Born: June 22
Died: 2002
Died: March 27
Film Director
Film Producer
Filmmaker
Journalist
Screenwriter
Writer
Samuel Wilder
Ultimate
Genius
Single
Collectively
Persons
Persuade
Person
Trick
Every
Convince
Tricks
Idiot

More quotes by Billy Wilder

Image
Marilyn was mean. Terribly mean. The meanest woman I have ever met around this town. I have never met anybody as mean as Marilyn Monroe or as utterly fabulous on the screen.
Billy Wilder
Image
I just made pictures I would've liked to see.
Billy Wilder
Image
I never overestimate the audience, nor do I underestimate them. I just have a very rational idea as to who we’re dealing with, and that we’re not making a picture for Harvard Law School, we’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.
Billy Wilder
Image
The Austrians are brilliant people. They made the world believe that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian.
Billy Wilder
Image
I'm delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we've got something to look down on.
Billy Wilder
Image
If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.
Billy Wilder
Image
I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
Billy Wilder
Image
If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.
Billy Wilder
Image
What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.
Billy Wilder
Image
When Chaplin found a voice to say what was on his mind, he was like a child of eight writing lyrics for Beethoven's Ninth.
Billy Wilder
Image
A bad play folds and is forgotten, but in pictures we don't bury our dead. When you think it's out of your system, your daughter sees it on television and says, My father is an idiot.
Billy Wilder
Image
The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king.
Billy Wilder
Image
Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.
Billy Wilder
Image
Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window - that is at once interesting.
Billy Wilder
Image
[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.
Billy Wilder
Image
An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.
Billy Wilder
Image
Develop a clean line of action for your leading character
Billy Wilder
Image
Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
Billy Wilder
Image
I had one life. And what did I do? Wasted it in some palooka preliminaries in Spain, just before Hitler and Chamberlain warm up for the main event.
Billy Wilder
Image
Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.
Billy Wilder