Quote

When you start talking about the known knowns and the unknown unknowns, you're thrown into a crazy meta-level discussion. Do I know what I know, do I know what I don't know, do I know what I don't know I don't know. It becomes a strange, Lewis Carroll - like nursery rhyme.

Errol Morris

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Errol Morris
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: February 5
Actor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Non-Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Hewlett
New York
Errol Mark Morris
Becomes
Meta
Levels
Lewis
Strange
Nursery
Crazy
Rhyme
Start
Unknown
Known
Discussion
Talking
Thrown
Carroll
Like
Level
Unknowns

More quotes by Errol Morris

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There is something about the photographs that is endlessly disturbing. The fact that we like to think of them as torture actually hides what is really deeply offensive about them.
Errol Morris
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We falsely interpret the world around us. We ignore evidence that doesn't support our prior beliefs and we convince ourselves we know things we don. We think we know things we don't know.
Errol Morris
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I used to work as a private detective years and years ago. And my boss gave me this one very simple piece of advice about trying to figure out who to interview first in any investigation. His recommendation: Always pick the people who were fired. Pick the people who are pissed off.
Errol Morris
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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.
Errol Morris
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I think we get into all kinds of difficulty by saying photographs should be taken in a certain way which guarantees their veracity. I think that's a slippery slope to hell.
Errol Morris
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There is only one direction. (Down.) There is only one color. (Black.) And there is only one number (Zero.)
Errol Morris
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The very idea of photography is as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in the 19th century, it's a mirror with a memory.
Errol Morris
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I've done interviews in one day that went on for fifteen, sixteen hours. And at a certain point, the control over what they're saying breaks down it becomes different. It becomes really powerful, and for me, real. It becomes out of control.
Errol Morris
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A lot of the distinctions that we make between drama and documentary are spurious. We're deeply confused about these issues. About the difference between the two, about where documentary ends and drama begins.
Errol Morris
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I like to think that every movie emerges from the conversations.
Errol Morris
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It's so much easier to make a movie about someone who is so likeable that you just want to get out of the way.
Errol Morris
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I remember on page one of The New York Times the article about Fred Leuchter. The heading was Can Capital Punishment Be Humane and it was the story about an electric chair repairman and execution machine designer. And then buried in the back of the paper was the fact that Fred Leuchter had also been involved in holocaust denial.
Errol Morris
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Part of the mystery of any given photograph is the fact that it was taken at a certain time and in a certain place and time keeps moving on. A photograph might be a moment in time preserved, but the world continues to change around it.
Errol Morris
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You know, anything more negative, anything more disparaging, anything more adversarial than what [Donald Trump] does already. The mystery is how he's gotten as far as he's gotten.
Errol Morris
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They say seeing is believing, but the opposite is true. Believing is seeing.
Errol Morris
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I used to live in New York City, then when my son was two years old we moved to Cambridge Massachusetts and we've been there ever since. My son is now twenty-nine years old, so we've been up there for a while.
Errol Morris
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Everything is a reenactment. We are reenacting the world in the mind. The world is not inside there. It does not reside in the gray matter of the brain.
Errol Morris
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The perfect war is started for obscure reasons, is hopelessly murderous, and accomplishes nothing.
Errol Morris
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There's a line I love in Conan The Barbarian where someone says, That used to be another snake cult, now I see it everywhere. That's certainly true of documentaries. I wouldn't say it's ubiquitous, but it's become close to ubiquitous. It's everywhere.
Errol Morris
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It's pretty clear that fame isn't inextricably connected with merit .
Errol Morris