All Quotes

"Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it."

"When annual elections end, there slavery begins."

"Monday, July 18, marks the 30th anniversary of the debut of Aliens, so EW asked Weaver, director James Cameron, and producer Gale Anne Hurd to reminisce about that final knock-down drag-out. Cameron: I did the initial drawings. I presented them to Stan Winston, and then the next thing was, all right, now how are we going to do this damn thing? Because you got to remember, there was no CGI back then. So, you know, we’re talking about big puppets, miniature puppets, and maybe some guys inside it, and I said, well, I think you can put guys inside this thing. I think you can put two people inside it. He thought I was nuts. So we did a test where we built a frame that could hold two people. Hurd: You’ve got to remember the state of computers back then also, this was not a time of microcircuitry that’s as advanced as it is today. There were robots in manufacturing lines, and we used some robotics in the film, but it was first generation. If it could be choreographed with people, it’s much easier to tell someone what you want to do and how to change something in a nuanced way. And it’s less likely to break!"

"Weaver: Looking back, I’m always astonished that they trusted me to flame the dummies and shoot blanks into the stunt guys and bazookas into some of the other targets. You know, we just went for it. And luckily I didn’t kill anyone."

"What returns from Alien: creepy egg chamber, spidery face-clinging larval parasite, chest-bursting imago, search missions in dark and wet places, a race against a nuclear self-destruct device, android malfunctioning and going literally to pieces, corporate conspiracy to obtain an alien at the cost of innumerable human lives, the airlock as weapon of choice, and the nasty suggestion that it isn’t all over (embodied there in a cat, here in a little girl, both apparently red herrings). What’s new in Aliens: Cameron replaces the timeless lethargy of Ridley Scott’s space and the sweaty, stultifying boredom of life on an intergalactic freighter with frenetic pace. Aliens grab you immediately and never lets go; it seems much shorter than its 2:17 running time (and even the 2:34 restored/enhanced edition released in 1999 streaks by with white-knuckle kinetics)."

"No futuristic plastic fantastic technology. Metal takes over, and dominates the look and sound of the film. Sigourney Weaver’s wonderful, resourceful Ripley doesn’t just continue the tough-woman role but transforms and refines it until she out-Rambos Rambo, succeeding where the military cannot. And of course there are the Marines—the “mechanized infantry” of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, which Cameron boldly adopted a decade before Paul Verhoeven’s film and dropped into Aliens about forty minutes in. We have references to a “bug hunt,” getting the shakes before a drop, female pilots, cameras mounted on the Marines so leaders behind the lines can see what the troopers on the point are seeing. Cameron clearly loved Heinlein’s novel and found a way to film it by dovetailing it neatly into his sequel to someone else’s film of someone else’s vision."

"What’s not to like? There are a few things, including four of my seven least favorite movie clichés: sitting bolt upright from a dream, yelling “no” at something that’s already happened, outrunning an explosion, and having a computer voice remind us that time is running out. Newt, the little girl who is the sole survivor of an ill-fated farming colony on LV-426, is witty, wise, and brave beyond her years, but when the chips are down she has nothing to contribute beyond screaming repeatedly. The marines talk in a 1970s idiom (“check it out,” “badass,” “get it on”) even though the movie is set in a future by which, surely, those vacuous expressions—which sounded false even in 1986—will be unheard of. Their weapons are so impractically huge as to be more comical than impressive. Indeed, most of the film’s machinery seems designed with its human interface only half thought-out, creating the impression of future man as a kind of industrial junkyard hybrid. And of course this underscores the mirroring effect of the android: a machine that is almost human interacting easily with humans who are almost mechanical."

"But the film’s many fine touches more than balance out the occasional clichés and annoyances. We cut from an alien larval parasite’s spidery legs gripping the head of a space farmer to a close shot of Ripley’s spidery fingers manipulating a cigarette. Cameron enjoys giving us Kubrick references: reverse tracking, especially long corridors; a kid riding a three-wheeler; human talks in alien environments; sidewise tracking cameras discover characters and events around corners; scenes are introduced and enhanced by drums; we’re won over by an android as logical and as humanly fallible and wistful as HAL. There’s even a tough-talking, verbally abusive sergeant whose attitudes and phraseology recall Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (but wait, that can’t be a Kubrick reference since Full Metal Jacket didn’t come out until after Aliens…) Aliens also shares Kubrick’s atmosphere of a desensitized future; but here, feelings aren’t deadened, but heightened. It’s more Clockwork Orange than 2001 everyone is edgy, resentful, suspicious, abusive; their only humor is insult-humor. These are the ‘80s, the era of The Road Warrior and dozens of other junkyard futurism films in which human behavior has been stripped to the essentials and human emotions reduced to raw-edged anger or screaming terror."

"Despite the relentlessly bleak and pessimistic view of future humankind, Aliens sings an ultimately joyful song, and I will always love it for the bold self-assurance with which Cameron does Heinlein and out-does Scott."

"Before he started developing Aliens, Cameron had a different kind of extraterrestrial-themed project in mind, tentatively titled E.T. That name, of course, changed once he learned of Steven Spielberg’s film — Cameron retitled it Mother after its maternal themes. The script languished until he started developing the Alien sequel. “I cribbed some chunks from [Mother]. But it seemed to fit very well,” Cameron told us. “In the same way we needed to evolve and ratchet up Sigourney’s character, we needed to take the nemesis — the idea of the alien — and take it to another level. It was kind of staring us in the face: There was this ship filled with all these eggs. … Who laid the eggs? Continued Cameron: “Now, a scene that was removed from Ridley’s film showed there was a closure of the life cycle where the humans were cocooned and became eggs. We just threw that out. In my mind, I didn’t go against canon because that scene hadn’t made it into the release cut. So, I thought, ‘You got a mother someplace.’ Now you’ve got two mothers. Obviously, I never went anywhere with [Mother] — I just stuck it all into Alien 2.”"

"”Sigourney set the bar. I was in awe of her before I ever met her. I had her picture up on the wall while I was writing the script,” said Cameron, who directed her to an Academy Award nomination for the performance. “No actress had gotten nominated for Best Actress for a genre picture until then, not for science fiction or horror.” “I was just starting Gorillas in the Mist, which was an intimidating project because I had to play a real person and I had never done that,” Weaver recalled. “So it [the Oscar nomination] was a real shot in the arm. I didn’t realize it was groundbreaking until Jim told me. He still thinks I should have won.”"

"“For better or for worse,” said Hurd, who currently produces The Walking Dead. “All of a sudden, sequels, which were not common then, became considered a little more viable.” “A lot more viable,” Cameron interjected. “At the time we made Aliens, the rule was that a sequel would cost twice as much and make half as much. So, it never looked like a particularly good business model.” Hurd said Aliens established a rulebook for making a quality sequel: “As opposed to formulaic filmmaking, go to an auteur and have the auteur write the script and reinvent the story while staying true to canon.” “It’s about answering a question they didn’t know to ask, but when they see it, it seems obvious,” said Cameron."

"In its first five days, “Aliens” took in a healthy $13.4 million at 1,437 theaters. Seven years after Ridley Scott’s space- noir classic “Alien” first arrived, “Aliens” looks like the runaway hit of the summer and may even surpass “Top Gun” when all the counting is done. But “Aliens” almost didn’t make it to the screen. In an era when it seems as if half the current releases are sequels feeding off yesterday’s fare, “Aliens” almost crashed and burned. At one point, 20th Century Fox, the studio releasing the film, nearly sold the rights to the sequel to the producers of “Rambo.”"

"Today, the lines for “Aliens” snake around the block even for weekday mid-afternoon screenings. The line to take credit for making “Aliens” is only slightly shorter. If movie-making is a collaborative art, the story behind the making of “Aliens” offers classic evidence that the number of contributors increases exponentially with the success of a film."

"Fall, 1983: The 42-page treatment, written in three days, was submitted to Fox where, because of lack of support for the idea, the project went into its own form of hyper-sleep. Said Cameron: “An executive told me he didn’t like the treatment because it was wall-to-wall horror and it needed more character development.” At one point a deal was almost closed to sell the rights to the sequel to producers Mario Kassar and Andrew Vanja (“Rambo”) but the lawyers couldn’t close the deal. Prospects for a sequel looked dim. July, 1984: Independent producer Larry Gordon was hired to replace former studio production head Joe Wizan. Finding few projects in the production pipeline, he looked for possible sequels and came across the “Aliens” file. “I couldn’t believe it hadn’t already been done,” Gordon said. “In this business there are those decisions you agonize and lose sleep over, but this was so obvious. It was a no-brainer.”"

"When Fox insisted that it would make “Aliens” with or without Weaver, Cameron and Hurd quit again, this time taking off for a honeymoon in Hawaii. Said Hurd: “We assumed it was a dead issue, and when we left for Hawaii we thought the movie was off.” But when they returned, the movie was on--with Weaver as the star. According to those close to the negotiations, she was paid close to $1 million in compensation plus a percentage of the profits, the highest salary she has earned to date in her career."

"September, 1985: “Aliens” finally started shooting on a London sound stage. After all the debate and questions about the budget, Hurd and Cameron brought in their movie on schedule and on budget. The studio loved the dailies and the buzz began to leak out: “Aliens” just might be the sleeper hit of the summer. But there was one more bitter struggle preceding the film’s opening. Fox wanted a movie of two hours or less but Cameron’s print came in at a lengthy 2 hours, 17 minutes. Nowadays, studios rarely release movies longer than 2 hours, 5 minutes, because the length cuts the number of daily screenings from five to four, substantially reducing the box-office take. For Fox to have the extra showing, Cameron would have had to cut 12 minutes. Late April, 1986: As Cameron and Hurd were working on their final “mix” (joining sound and picture together), Rudin flew to London to see their cut. Said Cameron: “We were standing on this London sidewalk and Rudin asked us if there was anything that could be cut. But we felt that if we had to take out 12 more minutes, the movie wouldn’t make sense.” Rudin acquiesced."

"There are always motherfuckers queuing up to pull you down to earth. But we must fly occasionally, we all have to feel that joy or we are nothing."

"If I was English I would be very much against Putin. If I was American I would even fight with him, but if I was Russian I would vote for him."

"I just don't get it. The pigeon was already dead, we found it in the road. And no other censor has objected. What is the problem with you, English? You killed millions of Indians and Africans, and yet you go nuts about the circumstances of the death of a single Serbian pigeon. I am touched you hold the lives of Serbian birds so dear, but you are crazy. I will never understand how your minds work."

"In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernise, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things. Since they don't have experience of the west, they even believe that a western pile of shit is actually pie."

"My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb. Okay, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks."

"That is a Medieval way of drawing history, in which they do not respect the law and want the rest of the world to respect the law. That's not possible."

"The nation had no instinct and no productive power that emancipated it from the customs of its forefathers. Every appeal against oppression was to the hereditary rights; the only protection which the Englishman knew was in the traditional laws of his country. By means of this perpetual recurrence to old principles, and of the gradual contrivance of new forms in which to secure their action, the English people conquered their freedom. The intensity of their conservatism was an impulse as well as a guide of their progress."

"Without presuming to decide the purely legal question, on which it seems evident to me from Madison's and Hamilton's papers that the Fathers of the Constitution were not agreed, I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo."

"Patriotism is in political life what faith is in religion, and it stands to the domestic feelings and to home-sickness as faith to fanaticism and to superstition."

"The man who prefers his country before every other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the State. They both deny that right is superior to authority."

"A State which is incompetent to satisfy different races condemns itself; a State which labours to neutralise, to absorb, or to expel them, destroys its own vitality; a State which does not include them is destitute of the chief basis of self-government. The theory of nationality, therefore, is a retrograde step in history."

"Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition."

"Although, therefore, the theory of nationality is more absurd and more criminal than the theory of socialism, it has an important mission in the world, and marks the final conflict, and therefore the end, of two forces which are the worst enemies of civil freedom, — the absolute monarchy and the revolution."

"The Protestants never occupied a more triumphant position, and their prospects were never brighter, than in the summer of 1572. For many years the progress of their religion had been incessant. The most valuable of the conquests it has retained were already made; and the period of its reverses had not begun. The great division which aided Catholicism afterwards to recover so much lost ground was not openly confessed; and the effectual unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet dissolved. In controversial theology the defence was weaker than the attack. The works to which the Reformation owed its popularity and system were in the hands of thousands, while the best authors of the Catholic restoration had not begun to write. The press continued to serve the new opinions better than the old; and in literature Protestantism was supreme. Persecuted in the South, and established by violence in the North, it had overcome the resistance of princes in Central Europe, and had won toleration without ceasing to be intolerant. In[Pg 103] France and Poland, in the dominions of the Emperor and under the German prelates, the attempt to arrest its advance by physical force had been abandoned. In Germany it covered twice the area that remained to it in the next generation, and, except in Bavaria, Catholicism was fast dying out. The Polish Government had not strength to persecute, and Poland became the refuge of the sects. When the bishops found that they could not prevent toleration, they resolved that they would not restrict it."

"The decisive struggle was in France. During the minority of Charles IX. persecution had given way to civil war, and the Regent, his mother, had vainly striven, by submitting to neither party, to uphold the authority of the Crown. She checked the victorious Catholics, by granting to the Huguenots terms which constituted them, in spite of continual disaster in the field, a vast and organised power in the State. To escape their influence it would have been necessary to invoke the help of Philip II., and to accept protection which would have made France subordinate to Spain."

"Judged by its immediate result, the massacre of St. Bartholomew was a measure weakly planned and irresolutely executed, which deprived Protestantism of its political leaders, and left it for a time to the control of zealots. There is no evidence to make it probable that more than seven thousand victims perished. Judged by later events, it was the beginning of a vast change in the conflict of the churches. At first it was believed that a hundred thousand Huguenots had fallen. It was said that the survivors were abjuring by thousands, that the children of the slain were made Catholics, that those whom the priest had admitted to absolution and communion were nevertheless put to death. Men who were far beyond the reach of the French Government lost their faith in a religion which Providence had visited with so tremendous a judgment; and foreign princes took heart to employ severities which could excite no horror after the scenes in France."

"The worst criminals were not the men who did the deed. The crime of mobs and courtiers, infuriated by the lust of vengeance and of power, is not so strange a portent as the exultation of peaceful men, influenced by no present injury or momentary rage, but by the permanent and incurable perversion of moral sense wrought by a distorted piety."

"In Italy, where the life of a heretic was cheap, their wholesale destruction was confessed a highly politic and ingenious act. Even the sage Venetians were constrained to celebrate it with a procession. The Grand Duke Cosmo had pointed out two years before that an insidious peace would afford excellent opportunities of extinguishing Protestantism; and he derived inexpressible consolation from the heroic enterprise."

"A time came when the Catholics, having long relied on force, were compelled to appeal to opinion. That which had been defiantly acknowledged and defended required to be ingeniously explained away. The same motive which had justified the murder now prompted the lie. Men shrank from the conviction that the rulers and restorers of their Church had been murderers and abetters of murder, and that so much infamy had been coupled with so much zeal. They feared to say that the most monstrous of crimes had been solemnly approved at Rome, lest they should devote the Papacy to the execration of mankind. A swarm of facts were invented to meet the difficulty: The victims were insignificant in number; they were slain for no reason connected with religion; the Pope believed in the existence of the plot; the plot was a reality; the medal is fictitious; the massacre was a feint concerted with the Protestants themselves; the Pope rejoiced only when he heard that it was over. These things were repeated so often that they have been sometimes believed; and men have fallen into this way of speaking whose sincerity was unimpeachable, and who were not shaken in their religion by the errors or the vices of Popes. Möhler was pre-eminently such a man. In his lectures on the history of the Church, which were published only last year, he said that the Catholics, as such, took no part in the massacre; that no cardinal, bishop, or priest shared in the councils that prepared it; that Charles informed the Pope that a conspiracy had been discovered; and that Gregory made his thanksgiving only because the King's life was saved. Such things will cease to be written when men perceive that truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history."

"The sentiment on which [papal] infallibility was founded could not be reached by argument, the weapon of human reason, but resided in conclusions transcending evidence, and was the inaccessible postulate rather than a demonstrable consequence of a system of religious faith."

"To proclaim the Pope infallible was their compendious security against hostile States and Churches, against human liberty and authority, against disintegrating tolerance and rationalizing science, against error and sin."

"The yeoman farmers of the United States have always been the strength of the republic."

"I was struck in reading Karl Marx's new work by the extent to which he fetches his materials from England. It is a remarkable book, as the Koran of the new socialists."

"It is more essential that an enthusiast of the papacy be made to contemplate its crimes, because its influence is nearer the Conscience; and the spiritual danger of perverted morals is greater than the evil of perverted politics. It is an agency constantly active, pervading life, penetrating the soul by many channels, in almost every sermon and in almost every prayer book. It is the fiend skulking behind the Crucifix."

"Liberty, next to religion has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand four hundred and sixty years ago, until the ripened harvest was gathered by men of our race."

"In every age its [liberty's] progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food."

"At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition, and by kindling dispute over the spoils in the hour of success."

"There are few people in this world with whom I can converse."

"No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more; and its advance is recorded in the increase of knowledge, as much as in the improvement of laws."

"The history of institutions is often a history of deception and illusions; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has passed away."

"According to the common opinion indirect elections are a safeguard of conservatism. But all the Assemblies of the French Revolution issued from indirect elections."

"Legally and to outward seeming the American President is the successor of Washington, and still enjoys powers devised and limited by the Convention of Philadelphia. In reality the new President differs from the Magistrate imagined by the Fathers of the Republic as widely as Monarchy from Democracy..."

"[W]e are not so much concerned this evening with the dead letter of edicts and of statutes as with the living thoughts of men."