Michael Shannon Quotes
As an actor, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never known what I was doing. I show up the first day, I'm scared, and I just hang out. It's like being in detention - you just wait for it to be over. Then gradually I start to figure out what's going on.

Quotes to Explore
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My daughter is my passion and my life.
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Inappropriateness is funny to me. Rudeness is hilarious.
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I got to grow up in an incredibly artistic family.
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I've had death threats, if you can imagine.
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The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more.
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Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.
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Could today's construction worker married to a clerical worker guarantee four children a college education and buy a house? That's what we're fighting about.
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Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends.
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His mother should have thrown him out and kept the stork.
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A throne is only a bench covered with velvet.
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We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.
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People really think that the only way I got to be press secretary is because I somehow had a personal family connection to the Bushes or the Cheneys, and that wasn't true.
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It is better to live rich than to die rich.
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In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.
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I’ve found opposition to my teaching because I said it’s not the strength which does it, it’s a rhythm. You don’t need huge muscles great strength. In fact, if you have that and misuse it, you’re going to damage the material. It’s absurd. It’s a rhythmical flow of an idea, whichever sex you are.
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Ideology is a system of beliefs, held in common by the members of a collectivity.
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There's a place for him, but he's the final determinant as to whether he achieves that or not. He needs to capture the imagination of a universe hungry for decent thought and passion. All he has to do is be truthful and have a vision for what to do and stop playing a goddamn game of politics. If he does that, he'll get everything he needs.
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A religious creed differs from a scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modification in its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration.
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Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
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I never thought innovation as such was very important. Not when you have to think about it... If you're going to come up with a new direction or a really new way to do something, you'll do it by just playing your stuff and letting it ride. The real innovators did their innovating by just being themselves.
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Rex Stout's narrative and dialogue could not be improved, and he passes the supreme test of being rereadable. I don't know how many times I have reread the Wolfe stories, but plenty. I know exactly what is coming and how it is all going to end, but it doesn't matter. That's writing.
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As an actor, I don't know what I'm doing. I've never known what I was doing. I show up the first day, I'm scared, and I just hang out. It's like being in detention - you just wait for it to be over. Then gradually I start to figure out what's going on.