Quote

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.

David Mamet

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

David Mamet
Age: 76
Born: 1947
Born: November 30
Actor
Author
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Television Producer
Theatrical Director
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
David Alen Mamet
David Alan Mamet
Process
Instead
Commercial
Thought
Media
Limit
Become
Liberty
Police
Live
Wonder
Calling
Viability
Call
Concern
Censoring
Nations
Limits
Oppressive
Freedom
Nation
Dissent
Times
Expression
Censorship

More quotes by David Mamet

Image
I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.
David Mamet
Image
IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.
David Mamet
Image
Every scene should be able to answer three questions: Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?
David Mamet
Image
The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.
David Mamet
Image
In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed unwittingly, the writer scowling naively and the diners wondering, What the hell is he doing?
David Mamet
Image
The most charming of theories holds that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays -- that he was of too low a state, and of insufficient education. But where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?
David Mamet
Image
Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director.
David Mamet
Image
Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction - the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one's own beliefs. It's total freedom.
David Mamet
Image
I go out there. I'm out there every day. [Pause] There is nothing out there.
David Mamet
Image
One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery.'
David Mamet
Image
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.
David Mamet
Image
We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.
David Mamet
Image
I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old.
David Mamet
Image
The correct unit of study is not the play it is the scene.
David Mamet
Image
They have a desire to put on plays and to fulfill that traditional role of a theater in a community: to be the place where people go to hear the truth.
David Mamet
Image
People only speak to get something.
David Mamet
Image
Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He's taken an imperial view of the presidency.
David Mamet
Image
The secret knowledge is there's nobody home but us chickens. The Constitution was written by a bunch of regular guys who tried to get together and thrash out a contract under which they could get together that would keep people together.
David Mamet
Image
People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.'
David Mamet
Image
Every fear hides a wish.
David Mamet