On this day, December 25, 1977, the great movie actor, composer and director Charlie Chaplin passed away. He was 88 years old. Let's remember his best quotes.
"I am what I am: a unique individual with my own history of hereditary impulses, personal aspirations, cherished desires and special experiences - the sum of which I am."
"The secret is to believe in yourself. Even when I was living in a shelter and prancing the streets to get food, I always thought I was the greatest actor in the world."
"I had no idea what my character was supposed to be. But as soon as I changed into his costume and applied makeup, I began to understand him, and by the time I was on stage, he had come into my own."
"Comedy is a serious subject, though it cannot be taken seriously. It sounds like a paradox, but it is not. Understanding your characters, getting ready to shoot, is serious, hard work. But for a comedy to really succeed, every actor needs ease, spontaneity.
"My acting method is unusual: preparing to go on stage, I was so nervous and excited that the terrible thing tired - and by the beginning of work I only had to relax.
"I don't consider myself deserving of dinner if I didn't devote the day's work to going out."
"Through humor we see the irrational in the rational, the irrelevant in the important, humor helps us survive and keep our sanity."
"I insisted, as much as I could, that my films remain silent. I was a pantomime actor, and I can say without false modesty that I was few equals in this capacity."
"A good spoken film is worse than a good play, but a good silent film is better than a good play."
"Failure is not the end of the world. After all, it takes a certain amount of courage to make yourself look like an idiot, too."
"Imagination means nothing if the one endowed with it is idle."
"Even funnier than the frankly ridiculous person is the one who flatly refuses to believe that anything funny has happened to him. The best example is a man who is tipsy, whose speech and gait give him away, but who tries to behave as if he were sober.
"Tragedy is asking for us to make fun of it. Perhaps this is our challenge to circumstances-we laugh, feeling our own helplessness before the forces of nature, because otherwise we would go mad."
"I was and still am a clown, and that puts me above any of the politicians."
"I would give anything to know what Hitler appeared to be like as a 'Great Dictator.'
"I like to walk in the rain - then no one can see my tears."
"I am not a politician and have never had strongly held political convictions. I am a person, I believe in freedom, and I don't need any other politics. I don't want to be a revolutionary - I just want to make a few more films".
"I don't think the audience knows what they want. My experience has convinced me otherwise."
"Time is my only enemy."
"Life will seem like a tragedy if you shoot it close-up, but from a general perspective it's certainly a comedy."
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