Top 33 Werner Herzog Quotes

I do other sorts of things. I act in other people’s movies. I direct operas. I write books.

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

I think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you’re working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity.

The universe is not harmonious: you know that by looking outside.

The universe is monstrously indifferent to the presence of man.

I never have searched for a subject. They always just come along. They never come by way of decision-making. They just haunt me. I can’t get rid of them. I did not invite them.

I prefer to be alive, so I’m cautious about taking risks.

I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.

I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.

If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him.

There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you’ve got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I’m sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn’t have the same substance.

I’m not an activist.

I find it interesting that there are impostors out on the Internet pretending to be Werner Herzog.

You should look straight at a film; that’s the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It’s an ego trip, and I’m not on an ego trip. I don’t have ambitions – I have a vision.

I’m not very eager to sit and look at my films all the time.

I work very fast and steadily, and I don’t hardly ever notice that I’m working. It feels like just breathing or walking when I do films.

I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I’m good at that!

I don’t spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.

If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn’t matter whether you’re bold or cowardly, or whether you’re stupid or intelligent. Doesn’t get you anywhere.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

I’m not a journalist; I’m a poet.

Yes, the pyramids have been built, but if you give me 300,000 disciplined men and give me 30 years, I could build a bigger one.

I’m a very professional man. I’m not out for the experience of adventure.

I’m not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming – I’ve always been a man of the theaters.

I’m not an interviewer. I have conversations.

Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like ‘Grizzly Man’? It’s the sheer joy of storytelling – it’s the urge.

Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden, we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are.

I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.

Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.

I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.

Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it’s not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it’s not your fault.

I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.