Michael Moore famous quotes

Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.
-- Michael Moore

#Sports #Democracy #Events

I'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire. I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millions like what I do.
-- Michael Moore

#Success #Causes #Rich

I was a good little boy and a good student. I've never been arrested.
-- Michael Moore

#Boys #Littles #Students

There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.
-- Michael Moore

#People #Sides #Gullible

I don't support the troops, America, and neither do you.
-- Michael Moore

#America #Support #Troops

Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.
-- Michael Moore

#Evil #People #Democracy

One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America -- and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simply can't turn their heads away from an injustice when they see one taking place.
-- Michael Moore

#Numbers #America #Trying

If I were a capitalist I would not give my employees health insurance with no deductible, which I do, including dental, and paid pregnancy leave. That's not called capitalism, that's called being a Christian and someone who believes in democracy, so that everyone should get a fair slice of the pie.
-- Michael Moore

#Christian #Believe #Pregnancy

Librarians see themselves as the guardians of the First Amendment. You got a thousand Mother Joneses at the barricades! I love the librarians, and I am grateful for them!
-- Michael Moore

#Mother #Grateful #Firsts

I respect the fact that people have worked hard all week and want to go to the movies on the weekend and be entertained.
-- Michael Moore

#Weekend #People #Want

Documentaries are a form of journalism.
-- Michael Moore

#Documentaries #Journalism #Form

I think there are few things more patriotic than taking the time to make your country a better place.
-- Michael Moore

#Country #Patriotic #Thinking

You can't regulate child labor. You can't regulate slavery. Some things are just wrong.
-- Michael Moore

#Children #Slavery #Child Labor

Yeah, I think of what I do as a work of journalism. It's more like the op-ed page, though. These are my opinions. My point of view. The opinions are mine and I let you make up your own mind.
-- Michael Moore

#Thinking #Views #Mind

Capitalism is against the things that we say we believe in - democracy, freedom of choice, fairness. It's not about any of those things now. It's about protecting the wealthy and legalizing greed.
-- Michael Moore

#Believe #Greed #Choices

The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich.
-- Michael Moore

#Country #Motivation #Business

Capitalism would have never let me be a filmmaker, living in Flint, Michigan with a high school education. I was going to have to make that happen myself.
-- Michael Moore

#School #Michigan #Filmmaker

I don't 'support the troops' or any of those other hollow and hypocritical platitudes uttered by Republicans and frightened Democrats. Here's what I do support: I support them coming home. I support them being treated well.
-- Michael Moore

#Home #Support #Troops

Here's what I don't think works: An economic system that was founded in the 16th century and another that was founded in the 19th century. I'm tired of this discussion of capitalism and socialism; we live in the 21st century; we need an economic system that has democracy as its underpinnings and an ethical code.
-- Michael Moore

#Tired #Thinking #Democracy

I did not like 'The Hurt Locker.' It's a lazy way to make a movie, frankly. I could put you on the edge of your seat quite easily, and have you feel the tension for 2 hours, if every other scene practically is, 'Should we cut the red wire or the green wire?'
-- Michael Moore

#Hurt #Cutting #Lazy

Every night I watch the nightly news. It's funded by the pharmaceutical companies. Virtually every ad is a drug ad. They get their say every night on the nightly news through advertising.
-- Michael Moore

#Night #Drug #Watches

I believe that when you provide information to people, they become less fearful and they will engage more in their democracy if they are empowered with information.
-- Michael Moore

#Believe #People #Democracy

Because I have an opinion, I have become public enemy number one to the Fox News Channel and the right wing.
-- Michael Moore

#Wings #Numbers #Enemy

I don't like to sit around whining about the corporate media, how they control everything, own everything. We already know that.
-- Michael Moore

#Media #Whining

Everybody gets sick; everybody has had a problem with insurance or the prescription drugs they're supposed to be taking or an elderly parent who needs care.
-- Michael Moore

#Elderly #Sick #Parent

How could a guy sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, have... plotted so perfectly the hijacking of four planes and then guaranteed that three of them would end up precisely on their targets?
-- Michael Moore

#Guy #Target #Sitting

I don't believe that the Bush Administration had something to do with September 11th. I do believe that there were a lot of warning signals, but I don't think they were ignored on purpose - Bush just wanted to go to the ranch for a month.
-- Michael Moore

#Believe #Thinking #Purpose

I was one of the first 18-year-olds in the United States elected to public office right after 18-year-olds got the right to vote back in the early '70s. I ran for the Board of Education.
-- Michael Moore

#Years #Office #Board Of Education

I was kind of a strange child. My parents knew early on that something must have been wrong with me. I crawled backwards until I was two, but had Kennedy's inaugural address memorized by the time I was six.
-- Michael Moore

#Children #Two #Parent

I think if people who are attacking me or against me, if they would just watch one of my films, they would - they may not agree with me politically on all the things I'm saying. But they will know at the end of the film that I love this country and that I have a heart. And they'll have a good laugh throughout the film.
-- Michael Moore

#Country #Heart #Thinking

I think as a filmmaker my first contribution would just be to make a good movie that people would love to see and leave the theatre charged, with a sense of excitement.
-- Michael Moore

#Thinking #People #Good Movie

I still believe the lessons I learned when I was raised in a Roman Catholic household. Like, it's harder for a rich man to get into Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.
-- Michael Moore

#Believe #Eye #Men

I remember the first time I received a cassette tape of a band called The Clash. I became an instant fan of the Clash and then bought their albums after that and went to their concerts and gave them my money... but I first got it for free.
-- Michael Moore

#Albums #Tape #Band

I personally hold Blair more responsible for this war than I do George Bush. The reason is, Blair knows better, Blair is not an idiot. What is he doing hanging around this guy?
-- Michael Moore

#War #Guy #Idiot

I made 'Bowling for Columbine' in the hope the school shootings would stop and that we would address the issue of how easy it is to get a gun in the United States, and tragically, those school shootings continue.
-- Michael Moore

#School #Gun #Issues

I like BuzzFeed, and I understand the pressure that online reporters are under. But I think everyone agrees that, despite all the awesome kitten gifs, they're still obligated to be skeptical of government officials and ask the right questions.
-- Michael Moore

#Thinking #Government #Pressure

I have enormous respect for anyone who would offer to sacrifice their life to defend my right to live. Is there any greater gift one can give another?
-- Michael Moore

#Sacrifice #Giving #Enormous

I had a newspaper in Flint, Michigan called the 'Flint Voice,' and so it was a, you know, underground, alternative newspaper that I edited and put out for about ten years.
-- Michael Moore

#Years #Voice #Michigan

I don't even like DVDs. Honest to God, in my lifetime, I might have rented a dozen DVDs, literally gone into a video store and rented a dozen DVDs in my lifetime, because I don't like to see movies that way. I like to see them on the big screen.
-- Michael Moore

#Dvds #Gone #Dozen

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash.
-- Michael Moore

#Country #Giving Up #Believe

Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody.
-- Michael Moore

#Mean #Opposites #Democracy

Capitalism is an organized system to guarantee that greed becomes the primary force of our economic system and allows the few at the top to get very wealthy and has the rest of us riding around thinking we can be that way, too - if we just work hard enough, sell enough Tupperware and Amway products, we can get a pink Cadillac.
-- Michael Moore

#Hard Work #Thinking #Greed

We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.
-- Michael Moore

#War #Men #President

Occupy has to continue as a bold, in-your-face movement - occupying banks, corporate headquarters, board meetings, campuses and Wall Street itself. We need weekly - if not daily - nonviolent assaults right on Wall Street.
-- Michael Moore

#Wall #Boards #Needs

And realising that humour is the most powerful way to make a political statement and say the things that you want to say. And it's not used enough, at least not in the U.S.
-- Michael Moore

#Powerful #Political #Want

'Zero Dark Thirty' is a disturbing, fantastically-made movie. It will make you hate torture.
-- Michael Moore

#Zero #Hate #Dark

You know we are flawed people, so if someone is going to make a movie about me, they don't have to make it up. My real flaws are much funnier.
-- Michael Moore

#Real #People #Flaws

You do not have the right to take another human's life, unless it's in strict self-defense.
-- Michael Moore

#Self #Defense #Strict

You can't debate satire. Either you get it or you don't.
-- Michael Moore

#Debate #Satire

WikiLeaks, God bless them, will save lives as a result of their actions.
-- Michael Moore

#Wikileaks #Action #God Bless

When I make a film, I'm not doing it purely for political reasons. If I just wanted to do that, I'd run for office.
-- Michael Moore

#Running #Office #Political

What I'm asking for is a new economic order. I don't know how to construct that; I'm not an economist.
-- Michael Moore

#Order #Asking #Economic

I think that there's something in the American psyche, it's almost this kind of right or privilege, this sense of entitlement, to resolve our conflicts with violence. There's an arrogance to that concept if you think about it. To actually have to sit down and talk, to listen, to compromise, that's hard work.
-- Michael Moore

#Hard Work #Thinking #Arrogance

Back in the late '90s, I put together a humorous newsmagazine program called 'The Awful Truth' for Bravo. We helped one guy get an organ transplant whose insurance company had refused to pay. I thought, if we could save a guy's life in a 10-minute segment on cable, what could we do if we devoted a whole movie to a whole bunch of people?
-- Michael Moore

#Humorous #People #Guy

But I'm not a member of the Democratic Party. If you know anything about me, anybody who's followed me, I'm the anti-Democrat. I have railed against the Democrats for a long time.
-- Michael Moore

#Party #Long #Members

Back in the '80s and '90s, when GM was consistently posting giant profits, they were simultaneously firing tens of thousands of workers in my hometown of Flint and across Michigan.
-- Michael Moore

#Michigan #Giants #Hometown

Ask anyone on Social Security if their check comes on time every month. Like clockwork. And it comes through the so-called dilapidated U.S. mail. My dad's check literally will come on the same day every month. The government has been quite good and efficient at creating a number of systems.
-- Michael Moore

#Dad #Creating #Numbers

All of our political parties are bought and paid for by corporate America, Wall Street, and the wealthy interests. The Republican Party more so, but the Democrats take their share of the loot, too.
-- Michael Moore

#Wall #Party #America

A newspaper is a public trust, and we will suffer as a society without them. It is not the Internet that has killed them. It is their own greed, it is their own stupidity, and it is capitalism that has taken our daily newspapers from us.
-- Michael Moore

#Trust #Taken #Greed

There's not democracy in the workplace. I mean, through most of our daily lives, the idea of democracy is fairly nonexistent. And I think things work better when the people who have to work with whatever it is we're working with have a say in how it's working.
-- Michael Moore

#Mean #Thinking #Ideas

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow - and they will win.
-- Michael Moore

#Winning #Numbers #Enemy

Openness, transparency - these are among the few weapons the citizenry has to protect itself from the powerful and the corrupt... and that is the best thing that WikiLeaks has done.
-- Michael Moore

#Powerful #Wikileaks #Done

Nobody had a credit card when I was a kid. No one had credit card debt. But these big companies and banks wanted to know how to get more money out of people - get them charging things.
-- Michael Moore

#Kids #People #Cards

If you believe in equality, if you believe in standing up for the rights of all, especially for people most affected by bigotry and discrimination, then you have no choice but to be present and accounted for when it comes to standing up for gays and lesbians in our society.
-- Michael Moore

#Believe #Gay #Rights

A sane person would think that Wal-Mart would never carry 'Capitalism: A Love Story' because it's simply not in their best interests to inform their customers of their shady past.
-- Michael Moore

#Past #Thinking #Stories

We should all spend some time of our life doing service to our country. To me, I would give up a couple of years.
-- Michael Moore

#Country #Couple #Giving Up

The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people-and this is true whether or not they are well-educated-is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations-in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.
-- Michael Moore

#Stupid #Intelligent #Differences

This book, 'Stupid White Men,' has sold now over four million copies worldwide. Probably about half of that may be in the U.S. and Canada, and the rest, overseas.
-- Michael Moore

#Stupid #Book #Men

There's only one movie theater in the entire city of Detroit. The entire city has one open movie theater, and it is in the - it is in the General Motors headquarters complex.
-- Michael Moore

#Cities #Detroit #Theater

There's nothing inherently or patently wrong with anybody who does well, works hard, earns a living, betters themselves. I'm not against any of these things. It's about how you make that money, and then what you do with it.
-- Michael Moore

#Hard Work #Doe #Wells

The vast majority of the guns in the U.S. are sold to white people who live in the suburbs or the country. When we fantasize about being mugged or home invaded, what's the image of the perpetrator in our heads? Is it the freckled-face kid from down the street - or is it someone who is, if not black, at least poor?
-- Michael Moore

#Country #Kids #Home

The purpose of art actually is, in many cases, to make you feel quite uncomfortable. Or at least to go to that place that's already of discomfort inside of you and tap into that.
-- Michael Moore

#Art #Purpose #Cases

The products built in the factories of G.M., Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps.
-- Michael Moore

#Melting #Weapons #Global Warming

The money to fund great things and innovations and programs is gone in our lifetime; it's all gone to debt. So we won't be able to solve global warming or have the transportation that we needed for the 21st century. We should be supporting people with great ideas, but it's gone, and now it's gotta be paid back with interest to banks in China.
-- Michael Moore

#Ideas #People #Innovation

The media love to cover black people on the front page. After all, when you live in a society that will lock up about 30 percent of all black men at some time in their lives and send more of them to prison than to college, chances are a fair number of those black faces will end up in the newspaper.
-- Michael Moore

#College #Men #Media

We should be licensing everybody with a gun. I have to have a license for my dog. I have to have a license for my car. If you're going to do my hair later you have to have a license... We don't require a license to own a firearm?
-- Michael Moore

#Dog #Gun #Hair

The left, liberals, believe that if we just have more gun control laws, all the problems are going to go away. Well, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think - yes, it will, it will be reduced. There's no question about that.
-- Michael Moore

#Believe #Gun #Thinking

The Justice Department needs to investigate how Goldman Sachs was able to steer things in such a manner through their former employees in the Bush administration, so that in the end Goldman's competitors have disappeared and Goldman is left standing.
-- Michael Moore

#Justice #Needs #Able

This is the crux of the problem: because the Republicans and the right wing have been successful in almost eliminating unions, everyone else has suffered as a result.
-- Michael Moore

#Successful #Wings #Unions

Wall Street, the banks, and corporate America, has been able to call the shots here. They control our members of Congress and they get what they want.
-- Michael Moore

#Wall #America #Want

We as Americans believe it's OK to kill people. We believe it's OK to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. We think it's OK to invade a country where we think Osama Bin Laden is and he's in the other country. So we just go in and we just kill. And we have the death penalty; we sanction it.
-- Michael Moore

#Country #Believe #Thinking

I realized that this was the big secret of democracy -- that change can occur by starting off with just a few people doing something.
-- Michael Moore

#People #Secret #Democracy

A government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom, morality, and humanity.
-- Michael Moore

#Running #Government #Humanity

Capitalism means that a few people will do very well, and the rest will serve the few.
-- Michael Moore

#Mean #People #Wells

Nothing seems crueler--or more ironic--than these upper crusters who never pay a dime for their high-priced shrinks or reflexology sessions to call those who just want that tumor removed from their uterus a bunch of commies. Well, the revolution is at hand and let's hope all those uninsured commies give the rich such a headache that a whole bottle of Advil won't be enough to take the pain way.
-- Michael Moore

#Pain #Hands #Giving

[Librarians] are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them.
-- Michael Moore

#Men #Thinking #Sitting

You think history is going to remember the United States as a great democracy? No, they're going to think of us as a nation that became addicted to war. They'll call us warlords.
-- Michael Moore

#War #Thinking #Democracy

When you come from the working class and you do well enough whereby you can provide a little bit better for your family, get a decent roof over their head and send them to a good school, that's considered a good thing.
-- Michael Moore

#School #Class #Littles

When the women's liberation movement began, when people began protesting against the Vietnam War, civil rights movement, at the beginning of those movements, the majority of the country was not with them, did not believe in the basic principles of any of those philosophies.
-- Michael Moore

#Country #Philosophy #War

We're never gonna get rid of crazy people. They've been around for thousands of years - they'll continue to be around; they'll continue to do horrible things.
-- Michael Moore

#Crazy #Years #People

We reward people for making money off money, and moving money around and dividing up mortgages a thousand times over, selling it to China... and it becomes this shell game.
-- Michael Moore

#Moving #Games #People

We have to see that we're a part of each other, and we have to take care of each other. The reason why they have universal health care in Canada and Britain, these other places? Because they believe if one suffers, everybody suffers.
-- Michael Moore

#Believe #Suffering #Care

The health insurance industry does not like to pay out claims, because they don't make money. The only way they can make a profit is if they don't pay for your operation. If they pay for your operation and your doctor's appointment and your pharmaceuticals, they don't make any money.
-- Michael Moore

#Doctors #Pay #Way

Television has its own award. It's called the Emmy. It's a good award. I like it. I have one. But you don't see movies like 'The King's Speech' win Oscars and then go to TV and qualify for Emmys. In documentaries, some networks have been able to game the system.
-- Michael Moore

#Kings #Winning #Games

Sometimes it's important to vote - you know, to make a statement, to make a point; certainly, many of us who were involved in the Nader campaign in 2000 felt that way.
-- Michael Moore

#Important #Way #Campaigns

If the Founding Fathers could have looked into a crystal ball and seen AK-47s and Glock semi-automatic pistols, I think they would say, you know, 'That's not really what we mean when we say bear arms.'
-- Michael Moore

#Father #Mean #Thinking

If anything, I don't have to convince the American public that we have a broken health-care system. I think the majority of Americans since they have to go through that health-care system, already know it.
-- Michael Moore

#Thinking #Broken #Care

I've read stories of slave owners who were very generous. They didn't keep them in shackles, they didn't whip the slaves, they built schools and churches for them, free housing, free food, free everything. It's wrong. No matter how nice you make it look, it's wrong.
-- Michael Moore

#Nice #School #Church

I've made a lot of enemies in all the right places, and there aren't enough hours in the day to respond to either the well-financed corporate hacks or the lowly stalkers who seek to libel me or make a buck off the fact that I'm a well-known person.
-- Michael Moore

#Enemy #Bucks #Facts

I've been encouraging documentary filmmakers to use more and more humor, and they're loath to do that because they think if it's a documentary it has to be deadly serious - it has to be like medicine that you're supposed to take. And I think it's what keeps the mass audience from going to documentaries.
-- Michael Moore

#Thinking #Medicine #Documentaries