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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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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
Around
Interpret
Things
Ignore
Think
Convince
Thinking
Beliefs
World
Evidence
Support
Belief
Falsely
Doesn
Prior

More quotes by Errol Morris

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[Elsa Dorfman]was well known. Certainly in the Boston area, she's well known as a portrait photographer. My wife always wanted to meet her and then there was some benefit where she was taking pictures.
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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I probably wouldn't have done [ Fred Leuchter story] if it was just a story about an executioner or a holocaust denier, but the combination of the two elements was irresistible. So yeah, I find it strange that there are so many people out there now.
Errol Morris
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The chance that any given sentence is a lie, rather than a truth, I think, is fairly great. An intentional lie, a self-deception, a misconception - there are lots of categories of untruth, not one grab bag. And hotographs can reveal something to us, and they can also conceal things.
Errol Morris
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I don't think that anybody really makes films quite like mine. That's maybe true of any filmmaker.
Errol Morris
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Twenty to thirty years ago, who was making documentary films? Nobody. Well, relatively few people. It was an art form that had limited theatrical distribution, if any at all. Some television distribution, but relatively small audiences regardless. And in the intervening years it's become more and more popular with a lot of people.
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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I've been horribly depressed (lately), which, as you know, can be terribly time-consuming. I mean, if you're going to do it right, that is.
Errol Morris
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Right now, we live in bad times in this country, and the fact that there are filmmakers addressing political and social issues is to me a good thing.
Errol Morris
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Mike Wallace's interviews may make great television, but they don't produce great evidence.
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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You can't really trust anybody who doesn't talk a lot, because how would you know what they're thinking?
Errol Morris
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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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I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular.
Errol Morris
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Truth and falsity is something that concerns language, it's a property of language.
Errol Morris
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Certain kinds of intimacy emerge on a phone call that might never occur if you were sitting right next to the other person.
Errol Morris
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The smarter people I know declined to watch the most recent debate [with Donald Trump].
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've been involved in doing advertising for various elections and I just couldn't see doing anti-Trump advertising in this election. My line has been, How could you do anything worse that what he does himself?.
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