Stanley Kubrick

Full Metal Jacket suggests there is more to say about war than it is just bad.

Everything serious the drill instructor says, such as 'A rifle is only a tool, it is a hard heart that kills', is completely true.

Good God, no. You don't stop being concerned with man because you recognize his essential absurdities and frailties and pretensions. To me, the only real immorality is that which endangers the species; and the only absolute evil, that which threatens its annihilation.

You have not yet learned that in this life you have to be like everyone else: the perfect mediocrity--no better, no worse. Individuality is a monster and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel comfortable.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

All my life I've always spoiled the things that meant the most to me.

The criminal and the soldier at least have the virtue of being against something or for something in a world where many people have learned to accept a kind of grey nothingness, to strike an unreal series of poses in order to be considered normal…. It's difficult to say who is engaged in the greater conspiracy – the criminal, the soldier, or us.

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.

There's something in the human personality which resents things that are clear, and conversely, something which is attracted to things that are vague, mysterious, or even a little opaque.

Heroic violence in the Hollywood sense is a great deal like the motivational researchers' problem in selling candy. The problem with candy is not to convince people that it's good…but to free them from the guilt of eating it. We have seen so many times that the body of a film serves merely as an excuse for motivating a final blood-crazed slaughter by the heroes of his enemies, and at the same time to relieve the audience's guilt of enjoying this mayhem.

I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists. Neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are.

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything by using fear as the basic motivation.

I have always been drawn to characters who are self-destructive.

The most overrated film of all time is 'Citizen Kane'.

I like to work with actors who are a little bit crazy.

The only way to make a good film is to be obsessed.

I don’t think anyone should ever be bored.

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; if we can only bring ourselves to accept this, then our lives as a species will have meaning because we are the ones who can create our own meaning.

I think that the big mistake people make about movies is that they don't understand that films are essentially a dream process. You're not supposed to be able to explain what's going on in a dream. If you can, it's not a dream.