150 Quotes by Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin, a pioneering actor, comedian, and filmmaker, is regarded as one of the most iconic figures in the history of cinema. Born in 1889 in London, England, Chaplin rose to fame during the silent film era and became known for his endearing "Tramp" character—a bumbling, bowler-hat-wearing, mustached figure with a cane. Through his performances, Chaplin brought a unique blend of humor, physicality, and social commentary to the screen, addressing relevant issues of his time, such as poverty, industrialization, and the human condition.
He was not only a talented actor but also a brilliant director, writer, and composer. With a keen understanding of visual storytelling, Chaplin's films transcended language barriers and cultural differences, captivating audiences worldwide. His masterpiece works, such as "City Lights" and "Modern Times," remain timeless classics. Beyond entertainment, Chaplin's films served as mirrors to society, encouraging introspection and empathy. His remarkable contributions to the art of filmmaking and his lasting impact on popular culture have solidified him as a true legend of the silver screen.
Charlie Chaplin Quotes
That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head. (Meaning)
All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl. (Quote Meaning)
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up. (Meaning)
A day without laughter is a day wasted. (Quote Meaning)
Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish. (Meaning)
My pain may be the reason for somebody's laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody's pain.
The best thing in life is to go ahead with all your plans and your dreams, to embrace life and to live everyday with passion, to lose and still keep the faith and to win while being grateful. All of this because the world belongs to those who dare to go after what they want. And because life is really too short to be insignificant.
Life is a beautiful, magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish... The trouble is you won't fight. You've given in, continually dwelling on sickness and death. But there's something just as inevitable as death, and that's life. Life, life, life. Think of all the power that's in the universe, moving the earth, growing the trees. That's the same power within you if you only have courage and the will to use it.
Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul.
To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it. (Meaning)
We think too much and feel too little. (Quote Meaning)
As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health - food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is Love of Oneself.
More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. (Meaning)
Life laughs at you when you are unhappy; Life smiles at you when you are happy; But life salutes you when you make other happy.
Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles. (Quote Meaning)
The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The mirror is my best friend because when I cry it never laughs.
You'll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile. (Meaning)
As for politics, I’m an anarchist. I hate governments and rules and fetters. Can’t stand caged animals. People must be free.
You have to believe in yourself. That's the secret.
Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded. (Meaning)
You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down. (Quote Meaning)
Simplicity is not a simple thing. (Meaning)
One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. (Meaning)
I remain just one thing, and one thing only - and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone. (Meaning)
Brunettes are troublemakers. They're worse than the Jews.
I am at peace with God. My conflict is with Man. (Quote Meaning)
I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying. (Meaning)
In the end, everything is a gag. (Quote Meaning)
Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it. All it takes is courage, imagination and a little dough
We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness - not by each other's misery.
Judge a man not by how he treats his equals but by how he treats his inferiors.
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.
My technique is the outcome of thinking for myself, of my own logic and approach; it is not borrowed from what others are doing.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to act. (Meaning)
You are only as good as the woman you are standing beside.
"Nothing is more important than the moving image; except for my cup of coffee in the morning."
In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
Simplicity is a difficult thing to achieve. (Meaning)
To help a friend in need is easy, but to give him your time is not always opportune.
What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.
Life is laughter when seen in a long shot, but it is a tragedy when seen in a close-up.
There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.
I do not need drugs to be a genius, do not take a genius to be human, but I need your smile to be happy.
You need Power, only when you want to do something harmful otherwise Love is enough to get everything done. (Quote Meaning)
Life salutes u when u make others happy (Meaning)
The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage. (Meaning)
Imagination means nothing without doing. (Quote Meaning)
That's what all we are: amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else.
Think about yourself at least once in your life otherwise you may miss the best comedy in this world.
Greed has poisoned men's souls. (Meaning)
my lips never know my problem they just always smile
Don't be afraid of the unknown because, even when they wander into chaos, planets are born stars!
I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of ancestral promptings and urgings, a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, all of which I am the sum total.
Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is "elephant". (Meaning)
Ability to think, like the violin or piano, requires daily practice
I like friends as I like music - when I am in the mood.
Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.
Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels.
It isn't the ups and downs that make life difficult; it's the jerks.
Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference. (Quote Meaning)
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain. (Meaning)
Tomorrow, the birds will sing. Be brave. Face life.
My character of the Tramp, the millions of workers symbolized in that one figure.
Simplicity of approach is always best. (Meaning)
Life is a play that does not allow testing. So, sing, cry, dance, laugh and live intensely, before the curtain closes and the piece ends with no applause.
Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.
A man's true character comes out when he's drunk. (Meaning)
Sound has spoiled the most ancient of the world's arts, the art of pantomime, and has canceled out the great beauty that is silence.
Dictators free themselves by enslaving others. They work not for your benefit, but their own.
Anyone can make them cry, but it takes a genius to make them laugh.
By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.
Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world. I had to feel the exuberance that comes from utter confidence in yourself. Without it, you go down to defeat.
I don't believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.
In the light of our egos, we are all dethroned monarchs
I will not join any club who will take me as a member.
This is a ruthless world and one must be ruthless to cope with it.
I do not wish to lose my temper because very shortly I will lose my head. Nevertheless, upon leaving this spark of earthly existence, I have this to say: I shall see you all very soon ... very soon.
They cheer me because they all understand me, and they cheer you because no one understands you.
As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call it 'maturity'.
Time is the best author. It always writes the perfect ending. (Meaning)
You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
I hope we shall abolish war and settle all differences at the conference table I hope we shall abolish all hydrogen and atom bombs before they abolish us first.
I've arrived at the age where a platonic friendship can be sustained on the highest moral plane.
We must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature, or go insane.
Unless I write every day, I don't feel I deserve my dinner.
I'm an old sinner. Nothing shocks me. (Meaning)
Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Have them all shot. I don't want any of my workers dissatisfied.
More than machinery, we need humanity. (Meaning)
The heart and the mind, what an enigma.
There is greatness in everyone.
Nothing in life is permanent, not even one's troubles.
I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone.
I have found that great ideas come when you have a great desire to have them.
Perfect love is the most beautiful of all frustrations because it is more than one can express.
Why should poetry have to make sense?
Over the years I have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watchtower on the lookout for incidents that may excite the imagination.
What a sad business is being funny!
I suppose that's one of the ironies of life doing the wrong thing at the right moment. (Quote Meaning)
Actors search for rejection. If they don't get it they reject themselves.
The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury. (Meaning)
Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.
I believe in the power of laughter and tears as an antidote to hatred and terror
The building is a special place because of its architecture; But it's people who make it special by participating in it.
We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. (Quote Meaning)
As long as men die, liberty will never parish.
The rights of citizenship will be taken away from all Jews and other non-Aryans. They are inferior and therefore enemies of the state. It is the duty of all true Aryans to hate and despise them.
Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!
When we got off the streetcar at Times Square, it was somewhat of a letdown. Newspapers were blowing about the road and pavement, and Broadway looked seedy, like a slovenly woman just out of bed.
The glamour of it all! New York! America!
Your Pain May Give Laugh To Somebody But Your Laugh Shouldn't Give Pain To Anybody
The people are applauding you because none of them understands you and applauding me because everybody understands me.
Quebec from the boat looked like the ramparts where Hamlet's ghost might have walked.
I hate the sight of blood, but it's in my veins.
Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing. (Meaning)
I am known in parts of the world by people who have never heard of Jesus Christ.
All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.
The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.
My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them.
We might as well die as to go on living like this. (Meaning)
Hair is vitally personal to children. They weep vigorously when it is cut for the first time; no matter how it grows, bushy, straight or curly, they feel they are being shorn of a part of their personality.
Man is an animal with primary instincts of survival. Consequently his ingenuity has developed first and his soul afterwards. The progress of science is far ahead of man's ethical behavior.
My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist.
Through humour, we see in what seems rational, the irrational; in what seems important, the unimportant
I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. (Meaning)
That's the trouble with the world. We all despise ourselves.
The kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you!
I'd sooner be called a successful crook than a destitute monarch.
I have no further use for America. I wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ was President.
If you're really truthful with yourself, it's a wonderful guidance.
To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.
Words seem so futile, so feeble. You are all such lovely, beautiful people.
Where words leave off, gesture begins. Don't we speak of a person being speechless with rage, dancing with impatience, setting his teeth? The final motions of the soul are speechless, animal, grotesque, or of an incomparable beauty.
If anybody else says it's like old times, I'll jump out the window.
I don't want to create a revolution - I just want to create a few more films.
Nothing quite like it. The feeling of film.
From such trivia, I believe my soul was born.
Moving pictures need sound as much as Beethoven symphonies need lyrics.
The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.
Let us fight to free the world!
In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature - or go insane
Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite! (Meaning)
This is a story of a period between two World Wars - an interim in which Insanity cut loose. Liberty took a nose dive, and Humanity was kicked around somewhat.
― Charlie Chaplin Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
