Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Errol Morris

Image
But there's a big difference between, say, reporting on a story and simply making up a story.
Errol Morris
Image
People often trust low-res images because they look more real. But of course they are not more real, just easier to fake. [...] You never see a 10-megapixel photograph of Big Foot or the Abominable Snowman or the Loch Ness Monster.
Errol Morris
Image
Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies.
Errol Morris
Image
The claim that everybody sees the world differently is not a claim that there's no reality. It's a different kind of claim.
Errol Morris
Image
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility.
Errol Morris
Image
I've never seen myself as a documentary filmmaker. I see myself as a filmmaker, period, and I am interested in drama as well as in documentary.
Errol Morris
Image
There is only one direction. (Down.) There is only one color. (Black.) And there is only one number (Zero.)
Errol Morris
Image
I'm really interested in self-deception. Really interested in how people live in bubble universes. How people can fail to see the seemingly obvious.
Errol Morris
Image
I believe we have two ideas about how movies are made in our heads. Idealizations. Platonic ideals. One of them is of a movie that is completely uncontrolled, and another is a movie that is completely controlled. The auteur theory vs. cinéma vérité.
Errol Morris
Image
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
Image
I asked [Donald Trump] if he had any advice for Charles Foster Kane and he said, Yeah, get yourself a different woman.
Errol Morris
Image
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
Image
The imprimatur of truthfulness does not guarantee truthfulness. People should know better. But they don't.
Errol Morris
Image
I like to think that one of things I've done with non-fiction since the very beginning is to find new ways of telling true stories.
Errol Morris
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The smarter people I know declined to watch the most recent debate [with Donald Trump].
Errol Morris
Image
Truth and falsity is something that concerns language, it's a property of language.
Errol Morris
Image
Nothing is so obvious that it's obvious.
Errol Morris
Image
If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I’m not saying that the truth doesn’t matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.
Errol Morris