Oliver Stone quotes

Oliver Stone is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer known for his provocative and politically charged movies. His works often explore controversial historical events and challenge mainstream narratives. He has won multiple Academy Awards and remains a prominent voice in cinema and public debate. Here are 59 of his quotes:

Balzac was right.... There is tremendous jealousy about money.

Oliver Stone

Wall Street was an extension of Scarface.

Oliver Stone

Zero sum game implies winners and losers. If somebody wins, somebody gotta lose.... I don't agree with that. Because all boats can rise on a rising sea. Good films help other good films. Different psychology. If you're overly competitive, you say it is exclusionary, a zero sum game: I must win so he must lose. That's not true. We can all win without forcing the other guy to lose.

Oliver Stone

My father was a Republican and he hated Roosevelt. And that's sort of been the battle of my life, I think. You have to understand I grew up a Republican conservative. I hated Castro. And I put my money where my mouth was because I went to war, but I understood pretty quickly that this was another place, another culture and we would never fit in there.

Oliver Stone

I'm ambivalent. I like Gekko, which is partly why Michael Douglas did so well.... Gekko is despicable but kinda fun too.

Oliver Stone

It's funny to read articles about Gordon Gekko as if he exists.... If you really listen to Gekko's speech, half of it makes sense.... But it's the excess, losing moderation, that destroys all.... There is nothing inherently wrong with greed as a human motivator, greed motivating evolution.... But there's a huge disconnect between the classes. It is very demoralizing to work for someone who makes a billion dollars a year while you make just barely enough to make it.

Oliver Stone

This is about getting into a corporation, screwing it up, putting in poison pills so your competitor can't swallow it.... Very intricate game played in the 1980's.... Mike Milken did it with junks bonds, Drexel Burnham.

Oliver Stone

Greed is good. Taken from Ivan Boesky's speech saying ‘Greed is right.'... Gekko says he wrecks it ‘because it is wreckable.' There is an impulse in Gekko to take, to rape.... Kirk Kerkorian destroyed MGM and UA.... Buy both companies and destroy both. And that was the end of the movie business. UA and MGM were two great film companies. Suddenly they were one lousy company. Kerkorian did it for the money, like Gekko. He didn't care about film. Never. He sold it off in pieces. He cannibalized it. Just like Gekko. These guys do what suits their short-term.

Oliver Stone

All these Wall Street lawyers are running the system according to Buckminster Fuller. After World War II they took most of the money out of the United States, they drained the blood out of the United States and put it abroad, overseas capital.... Fuller calls it Lawyer Capitalism, the lawyers run the show. Tax laws are the key. In the postwar years, tax law allowed US capital to go abroad.... It all fled the country and stayed abroad and America changed tremendously.... We became a world power, yet a rapacious one, with capitalists really doing a major theft of our money.... Nixon took us off the Gold standard in 1972 because America went bankrupt.... All these recessions in the 70's, 80's.... My father got wiped out on Wall Street.

Oliver Stone

Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.

Oliver Stone

I think experience will teach you a combination of liberalism and conservatism. We have to be progressive and at the same time we have to retain values. We have to hold onto the past as we explore the future.

Oliver Stone

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

Oliver Stone

I will come out with my interpretation. If I'm wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take.

Oliver Stone

It's interesting that when economic times were the hardest, that's when many people embraced liberalism.

Oliver Stone

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.

Oliver Stone

One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia.

Oliver Stone

I'd like to do a story about the medieval ages where in every scene you'd sort of feel that you were in the 12th century. That would be great to get that feeling.

Oliver Stone

I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history.

Oliver Stone

One of the joys of going to the movies was that it was trashy, and we should never lose that.

Oliver Stone

But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with editing.

Oliver Stone

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.

Oliver Stone

I do believe there are leaders who are like lightning and they come along and they lead. The Lincolns of the world, the Alexander the Greats, they do exist. They have existed.

Oliver Stone