James Cameron famous quotes

People call me a perfectionist, but I'm not. I'm a rightist. I do something until it's right, and then I move on to the next thing.
-- James Cameron

#Inspirational #Moving #People

There seems to be a lot of excitement around something that, to me, is a yawn, frankly,
-- James Cameron

#Excitement

This is a vast frontier that's going to take us awhile to understand. It was very lunar, desolated, isolated.
-- James Cameron

#Isolated

All my films are love stories,
-- James Cameron

#Stories #Love Story #Film

James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is... James Cameron.
-- James Cameron

#Doe #Cameron

You can't be an environmentalist, you can't be an ocean steward without truly walking the walk and you can't walk the walk in the world of the future, the world ahead of us, the world of our children, not eating a plant-based diet.
-- James Cameron

#Children #Ocean #World

I want to challenge all of you as people of deep conscience, people who are environment stewards of the earth and oceans ... By changing what you eat, you will change the entire contract between the human species and the natural world.
-- James Cameron

#Ocean #People #Challenges

I like the evening in India, the one magic moment when the sun balances on the rim of the world, and the hush descends, and ten thousand civil servants drift homeward on a river of bicycles, brooding on the Lord Krishna and the cost of living.
-- James Cameron

#Rivers #Magic #Balance

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.
-- James Cameron

#Inspirational #Friends #Stars

It's important for me to have hope because that's my job as a parent, to have hope, for my kids, that we're not going to leave them in a world that's in shambles, that's a chaotic place, that's a dangerous place.
-- James Cameron

#Jobs #Kids #Parent

It’s not a requirement to eat animals, we just choose to do it, so it becomes a moral choice and one that is having a huge impact on the planet, using up resources and destroying the biosphere.
-- James Cameron

#Animal #Impact #Choices

I've sworn off agnosticism, which I now call cowardly atheism. I've come to the position that in the complete absence of any supporting data whatsover for the persistence of the individual in some spiritual form, it is necessary to operate under the provisional conclusion that there is no afterlife and then be ready to amend that if I find out otherwise.
-- James Cameron

#Spiritual #Persistence #Data

Imagination is a force that can actually manifest a reality.Don't put limitations on yourself.Others will do that for you.
-- James Cameron

#Reality #Imagination #Force

In writing the new films, I’ve come to realize that AVATAR’s world, story and characters have become even richer than I anticipated, and it became apparent that two films would not be enough to capture everything I wanted to put on screen.
-- James Cameron

#Writing #Character #Two

If you wait until the right time to have a child you'll die childless, and I think film making is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something even if it's bad.
-- James Cameron

#Children #Thinking #Waiting

I love short trips to New York; to me it is the finest three-day town on earth.
-- James Cameron

#Short Love #Travel #New York

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.
-- James Cameron

#Inspirational #Motivational #Monday

There are many talented people who haven't fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.
-- James Cameron

#Dream #People #Leap Of Faith

Curiosity is the most powerful thing you own.
-- James Cameron

#Powerful #Curiosity #Most Powerful

I had read tons of science fiction. I was fascinated by other worlds, other environments. For me, it was fantasy, but it was not fantasy in the sense of pure escapism.
-- James Cameron

#Other Worlds #Fiction #Fantasy

I had pictured myself as a filmmaker but I had never pictured myself as a director if that makes any sense at all.
-- James Cameron

#Directors #Filmmaker

My mother was a housewife but she was also an artist. My father was an electrical engineer.
-- James Cameron

#Mother #Father #Artist

You have to not listen to the nay sayers because there will be many and often they`ll be much more qualified than you and cause you to sort of doubt yourself.
-- James Cameron

#Doubt #Causes #Qualified

A director's job is to make something happen and it doesn't happen by itself. So you wheedle, you cajole, you flatter people, you tell them what needs to be done. And if you don't bring a passion and an intensity to it, you shouldn't be doing it.
-- James Cameron

#Jobs #Passion #People

I actually started as a model builder and quickly progressed into production design, which made sense because I could draw and paint. But I kept watching that guy over there who was moving the actors around and setting up the shots.
-- James Cameron

#Moving #Design #Guy

I do an awful lot of scuba diving. I love to be on the ocean, under the ocean. I live next to the ocean.
-- James Cameron

#Ocean #Diving #Awful

Inspiration can hit you in the head at any time in any context. It could happen in a conversation. Talking to someone at a party, you can get an idea. But you've got to remember those inspirations.
-- James Cameron

#Party #Inspiration #Talking

But failure has to be an option in art and in exploration - because it's a leap of faith. And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks....
-- James Cameron

#Confidence #Art #Risk

When you have the feeling that anything’s possible, sometimes you wind up acting on it.
-- James Cameron

#Wind #Feelings #Acting

Your imagination can create a reality
-- James Cameron

#Reality #Imagination

Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.
-- James Cameron

#Luck #Strategy

I mean, you have to be able - you have to have made the commitment within yourself to do whatever it takes to get the job done and to try to inspire other people to do it, because obviously the first rule is you can't do it by yourself.
-- James Cameron

#Jobs #Mean #Commitment

Every time you dive, you hope you'll see something new - some new species. Sometimes the ocean gives you a gift, sometimes it doesn't.
-- James Cameron

#Ocean #Giving #Sometimes

I'm hopeful that we'll be able to study the ocean before we destroy it.
-- James Cameron

#Ocean #Hopeful #Able

I always do makeup touch-ups myself, especially for blood, wounds, and dirt. It saves so much time.
-- James Cameron

#Makeup #Blood #Dirt

The films that influenced me were so disparate that there's almost no pattern.
-- James Cameron

#Patterns #Film

I do not know why journalists insist on calling their stuff "pieces", when they are in fact little entities, attempting to have beginnings, middles and endings.
-- James Cameron

#Calling #Pieces #Littles

Muslims shared many of the deep-seated characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon elite-an intuitive resentment of culture, an amicable contempt for women, a proclivity for riding about on horses, a pleasure in discipline, and a covert homophilia.
-- James Cameron

#Horse #Discipline #Riding

It was long ago in my life as a simple reporter that I decided that facts must never get in the way of truth.
-- James Cameron

#Simple #Long #Way

We have a great responsibility. Whatever we make will become the truth, the visual reality that a generation will accept.
-- James Cameron

#Responsibility #Reality #Generations

If you want to move through a virtual reality it’s called a video game, it’s been around forever.
-- James Cameron

#Moving #Reality #Games

I set my goals way higher than the achievable. And when I fail, I fail at a very high level. That's my process. It's really demented, but it actually works. When you are aiming really high and doing something new, you must be also prepared to fail, learn from your mistakes and begin with a new plan. More motivated than before.
-- James Cameron

#Mistake #Goal #Levels

Nature's not our enemy, it's our sustenance; and we need it - and we need nature healthy for us to be healthy and to survive long term
-- James Cameron

#Long #Healthy #Enemy

The quickest way to destroy ocean science is to take human explorers out of the water
-- James Cameron

#Ocean #Water #Way

To convince people to back your idea, you've got to sell it to yourself and know when it's the moment. Sometimes that means waiting. It's like surfing. You don't create energy, you just harvest energy already out there.
-- James Cameron

#Mean #Ideas #People

The new world will be a place of answers and no questions, because the only questions left will be answered by computers, because only computers will know what to ask.
-- James Cameron

#Answers #World #Computer

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Where else but in Texas would men set up to administer space?
-- James Cameron

#Men #Texas #Space

It took me a long time to realize that you have to have a bit of an interlanguage with actors. You have to give them something that they can act with.
-- James Cameron

#Long #Giving #Actors

Broken Horses is an artistic triumph. Beautifully written, acted and imaged, this film wraps slowly around you like a king snake and squeezes,
-- James Cameron

#Horse #Kings #Snakes

Targets and timetables do matter. But there is a dispirited feeling that the U.S. just rejects multilateral target-setting for the time being.
-- James Cameron

#Rejection #Feelings #Target

You can't really call yourself an environmentalist if you're still consuming animals. You just can't.
-- James Cameron

#Animal #Environmentalist #Consuming

I dreamed I was a soldier who could bring peace. Sooner or later, though, you always have to wake up.
-- James Cameron

#Soldier #Wake Up #Sooner Or Later

You know, in the film making business no one ever gives you anything.
-- James Cameron

#Business #Giving #Film

Sometimes your whole life boils down to one insane move.
-- James Cameron

#Moving #Insane #Sometimes

That worst evil of long dictatorships: the loss of all political experience.
-- James Cameron

#Loss #Long #Evil

The universe is like a giant bank vault lock, where the tumblers are constantly moving and once in a while the tumblers line up and you have to listen for the click. So you must be prepared in that moment to step through the door.
-- James Cameron

#Moving #Doors #Giants

When Nikita Khrushchev wrapped himself in the bloody mantle of the Czars he broke Hungary, he broke the little Communist parties over the western world, and he broke the hearts of many honest men who had trusted a little too far, a little too long.
-- James Cameron

#Party #Heart #Men

It's really the sense of isolation, more than anything, realizing how tiny you are down in this big vast black unknown and unexplored place,
-- James Cameron

#Black #Tiny #Realizing

Much of my life seems in retrospect to have been spent in the company of putative national leaders passing through the process of being denounced and imprisoned for sedition, as part of the inevitable progression towards the Prime Ministership and the ritual tea-party at Windsor Castle.
-- James Cameron

#Party #Leader #Tea

Avatar is the most high tech film in terms of its execution, dealing with essentially a very low tech subject; which is our relationship with nature...and in fact the irony is that the film is about our relationship with nature and how our technological civilization has taken us several removes away from a truly natural existence and the consequences of that to us.
-- James Cameron

#Taken #Civilization #Facts

Religions fulfill deep-seated psychological needs for people, and if you don't get it from a specific religious doctrine, you'll get it from the kind of films I like to make. A film like The Terminator is consciously meant to give a sense of empowerment to the individual.
-- James Cameron

#Religious #Giving #People

Jack: Where to, Miss? Rose: To the stars.
-- James Cameron

#Movie #Stars #Rose

Rose: You're crazy. Jack: That's what everybody says but, with all due respect, Miss, I'm not the one hanging off the back of a ship here. Come on. C'mon, give me your hand. You don't want to do this.
-- James Cameron

#Crazy #Hands #Rose

Failure is an option, fear is not.
-- James Cameron

You're so stupid, Rose! - Jack Dawson
-- James Cameron

#Stupid #Rose

Rose: You're trembling. Jack: I'll be alright.
-- James Cameron

#Rose #Trembling #Alright

When the ship docks, I'm getting off with you. This is crazy. I know it doesn't make any sense, that's why I trust it.
-- James Cameron

#Crazy #Docks #Ships

I'm King Of The World!!!
-- James Cameron

#Kings #World

The snake kills by squeezing very slowly. This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be.
-- James Cameron

#Snakes #World #Forests

So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level. We'll create a world for people and then later present a narrative in that world.
-- James Cameron

#Creating #People #World

I've tried not to get sucked into the Hollywood hierarchy system. Personally, I don't like it when people are deferential to me because I'm an established filmmaker. It's a blue-collar sensibility.
-- James Cameron

#Blue #People #Hierarchy

I try to live with honor, even if it costs me millions of dollars and takes a long time. It's very unusual in Hollywood. Few people are trustworthy - a handshake means nothing to them. They feel they're required to keep an agreement with you only if you're successful or they need you.
-- James Cameron

#Mean #Successful #Agreement

I think people had somehow gotten the sense that we have explored everything, when that isn't the case. We so know so little about the ocean, and so much of it is being destroyed.
-- James Cameron

#Ocean #Thinking #People

Any direct experience that I have with indigenous peoples and their plights may feed into the nature of the story I choose to tell. In fact, it almost certainly will.
-- James Cameron

#Stories #Plight #May

There is a hugely underserved population out there... those who are the least capable of paying pay the highest.
-- James Cameron

#Population #Pay #Capable

The film industry is about saying 'no' to people, and inherently you cannot take 'no' for an answer.
-- James Cameron

#People #Answers #Saying No

Rose: But now you know there was a man named Jack Dawson and that he saved me... in every way that a person can be saved
-- James Cameron

#Men #Rose #Way

Old Rose: It's been 84 years, and I can still smell the fresh paint. The china had never been used. The sheets had never been slept in. Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
-- James Cameron

#Dream #Smell #Years

Rose: You have a gift Jack, you do. You see people. Jack: I see you. Rose: And? Jack: You wouldn't have jumped.
-- James Cameron

#People #Rose #Titanic Movie

Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It's like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they'll crystallize into a pattern.
-- James Cameron

#Writing #Air #Ideas

I am king of the world!
-- James Cameron

#Kings #World #Oscars

The last I checked, 'Titanic' worldwide has grossed $1.3 billion. Imagine how much more it would have grossed if I had gotten the sky correct,
-- James Cameron

#Sky #Lasts #Imagine

Hate is a disease, and in 1930 I became sick with hatred.
-- James Cameron

#Hate #Sick #Hatred

I watched a couple of really bad directors work, and I saw how they completely botched it up and missed the visual opportunities of the scene when we had put things in front of them as opportunities. Set pieces, props and so on.
-- James Cameron

#Couple #Opportunity #Directors

I was always fascinated by engineering. Maybe it was an attempt maybe to get my father's respect or interest, or maybe it was just a genetic love of technology, but I was always trying to build things.
-- James Cameron

#Father #Technology #Engineering

I lived in a small town. It was 2,000 people in Canada. A little river that went through it and we swam in the - you know, there was a lot of water around. Niagara Falls was about four or five miles away.
-- James Cameron

#Fall #Rivers #People

I certainly didn't think of myself as gifted. The standards for being gifted in my environment were if you were good in Little League or if you were good in football.
-- James Cameron

#Football #Thinking #League

I don't look at scripts. I just write them.
-- James Cameron

#Writing #Looks #Scripts

So my message is in whichever realm, be it going into space or going into the deep sea, you have to balance the yin and yang of caution and boldness, risk aversion and risk taking, fear and fearlessness. No great accomplishment takes place, whether it be a movie or a deep ocean expedition, or a space mission, without a kind of dynamic equipoise between the two. Luck is not a factor. Hope is not a strategy. Fear is not an option.
-- James Cameron

#Ocean #Sea #Two

With ‘Avatar,’ I thought, Forget all these chick flicks and do a classic guys’ adventure movie, something in the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold, like John Carter of Mars—a soldier goes to Mars,
-- James Cameron

#Adventure #Guy #Soldier

The magic doesn't come from within the director's mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.
-- James Cameron

#Heart #Magic #Mind

What are you gonna do, talk the alien to death?
-- James Cameron

#Aliens

I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength. [From a 1986 Fangoria interview]
-- James Cameron

#Strong #Character #Interesting

Jack: Rose! You're so stupid. Why did you do that, huh? You're so stupid, Rose. Why did you do that? Why? Rose: You jump, I jump, right? Jack: Right. Rose: Oh God! I couldn't go. I couldn't go, Jack. Jack: It's all right. We'll think of something. Rose: At least I'm with you.
-- James Cameron

#Stupid #Thinking #Rose

I blame it on Walt Disney, where animals are given human qualities. People don't understand that a wild animal is not something that is nice to pat. It can seriously harm you.
-- James Cameron

#Nice #Animal #People