John Joseph Nicholson is an American actor and filmmaker whose career has spanned more than 60 years. He is known for having played a wide range of starring and supporting roles, including comic characters, romantic leads, anti-heroes, and villains. In many of his films, he played the “eternal outsider, the sardonic drifter”, someone who rebels against the social structure. These Jack Nicholson quotes will motivate you.
Best Jack Nicholson Quotes
- “I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “You know, I think I understand what you’re like now. You’re very beautiful and you think men are only interested in you because you’re beautiful. But you want them to be interested in you because you’re you. The problem is, aside from all that beauty, you’re not very interesting. You’re rude, you’re hostile, you’re sullen, you’re withdrawn… oh, I know- you want someone to look past all that at the real person underneath. But the only reason anyone would bother to look past all that is because you’re beautful. Ironic, isn’t it? In an odd way you’re your own problem.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “There’s only two people in your life you should lie to… the police and your girlfriend.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Life doesn’t have to be about finding Osama bin Laden or becoming the president of the United States. Life is about the little things, which is one of the things you learn when you get older.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Human beings are always going to find interesting ways of making a mess of their lives. It’s human nature.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“People who speak in metaphors should shampoo my crotch.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “The minute that you’re not learning I believe you’re dead.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I’m Irish. I think about death all the time.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “It’s very easy to go down, so always live up. Incline yourself upward.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Just because you’re perfectionist doesn’t mean you’re perfect.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I don’t have any plugs or tucks but people do what they want. I look at it as mutilation.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I’ve always had an urge to feed my need to have fun and feel free. I don’t see any interesting alternatives.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“I resist all established beliefs. My religion basically is to be immediate, to live in the now.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I don’t think many people have a very good understanding of leisure and the importance it plays in our lives.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “With my sunglasses on, I’m Jack Nicholson. Without them, I’m fat and 60.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Men dominate because of physicality, and thus they have mercy where women do not.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I didn’t know that my sister was really my mother until I was thirty-seven years old. But life has taught me that there have been a lot of things that I didn’t know.” ~ Jack Nicholson , Jack Nicholson quotes about life
- “I envy people of faith. I’m incapable of believing in anything supernatural.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I usually don’t get too bogged down with my personal problems because that’s a one-way street if you get yourself into a negative frame of mind and only see the dark side of life.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“I have never lied to you, I have always told you some version of the truth.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes mistakes they call it Nature!” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “You look at someone long enough, you discover their humanity.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I love women who have a strong sense of themselves because I know I have a pretty good idea of what I want out of life and I like to be around other people who are also pretty secure. It just makes things easier.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Women — a mistake, or did He do it to us on purpose?” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “The only way to break a bad habit was to replace it with a better habit.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“Beer, it’s the best damn drink in the world.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “There’s no point dwelling on what might or could have been. You just have to go forward.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I’m very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I’m positively against it. I don’t have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I love discourse. I’m dying to have my mind changed. I’m probably the only liberal who read Treason, by Ann Coulter. I want to know, you understand? I like listening to everybody. This to me is the elixir of life.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“You can’t handle the truth!” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye. But I can’t look into the eyes of everyone who wants to look into mine; I can’t emotionally cope with that kind of volume. Sunglasses are part of my armor.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “No issue is more compelling than the air we breathe, be it hot or cold, be it hawk or human.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “You can call me Joker. And as you can see, I’m a lot happier.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “If it is difficult to know yourself as an individual, it seems to be more complex as a couple. So if you say, “Oh I like a person who is like this and that,” you might take away the possibility of seeing the only one that might be right for you.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “A lot of people manage to find common ground and not let disagreements or tensions build up and destroy them, and other people break up or get divorced. I don’t think anything is ever going to change that situation. You simply try to find an accommodation and an understanding with another person and work from there.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“You’re anachronistic when you know that your feelings aren’t going to have any effect on anything.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “My point of view, while extremely cogent, is unpopular. . . . That the repressive nature of the legalities vis-a-vis drugs are destroying the legal system and corrupting the police system.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Frankly, I got into the movies because I like the movies a lot.” ~ Jack Nicholson , Jack Nicholson quotes about movies
- “I’ve never been able to say I’ve been influenced by a list of artists I like because I like thousands and thousands and I’ve been influenced in some way by all of them.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I think that’s what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There’s no melodrama; there’s no device, It’s just about a human being.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“I only take Viagra when I’m with more than one woman.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “A star on a movie set is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “In this industry, there are only two ways up the ladder. Rung by rung or claw your way to the top. It’s sure been tough on my nails.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Decent people shouldn’t live here. They’d be happier some place else.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Now comes the part where I relieve you, the little people, of the burden of your failed and useless lives. But remember, as my plastic surgeon always said: if you gotta go, go with a smile.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “[on the birth of his son after having had two daughters] I finally got it right.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“Just let the wardrobe do the acting.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Comedy is more difficult. You can look at scenes when you’re doing a drama like, Maybe it works, but in comedy, when you’re doing it, either it works or it doesn’t. You have to keep doing it until it does, and the requirement is more.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Before I moved into the mainstream of American movies, I wrote a script as an experiment. I wanted to get very far away from the clichés about the three-act play – structure, development.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I’ve never lost a friend over work. I come from a small-town environment and I remember my childhood impressions that, if you were a conniver or a fink or whatever, everybody knew about it and you were a louse for the rest of your life. So I never lost those values in some way.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I love the company of people. I always have and always will, it comes with my family. But earlier in life I might have got a little nervous if I was alone for a day or two in a row. I might think, “Where are they?” Now, I just go on doing naturally what I do.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“I don’t have any fear of intimacy, but rather thrive on it, which is rare in a public person.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “There is one thing I know about creative conflict: once my argument is exhausted, I am not going to be unhappy whether it moves in my direction or away.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “There are many directors in the middle range who’ve made mostly successful pictures, and then there are a few great directors who’ve had some successes and some failures. I suppose my life would be smoother if I wasn’t almost totally enamored of the latter category.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “My whole career strategy has been to build a base so that I could take the roles I want to play. I’d hate to think that a shorter part might not be available because I was worried about my billing.” ~ Jack Nicholson
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“I’m the last guy in the world to feel overlooked by the Academy.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Once you’ve started a film you don’t become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don’t know, and they don’t know. It’s through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “Through all permutations and youthful poetry, I came to believe that the film actor was the great “literateur” of his time.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I’ve spent more time playing golf than anything else the last 18 years. Just wanted to be an 80s-shooter. Got there, too.” ~ Jack Nicholson
- “I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Of course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free, ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they’re gonna talk to you and talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.” ~ Jack Nicholson
