James Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 – September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter and novelist. As one of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry. Trumbo won two Academy Awards while blacklisted; one was originally given to a front writer, and one was awarded to "Robert Rich," Trumbo's pseudonym. Blacklisting effectively ended in 1960 when it lost credibility. Trumbo was publicly given credit for two blockbuster films: Otto Preminger made public that Trumbo wrote the screenplay for the smash hit, Exodus, and Kirk Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo was the screenwriter of Spartacus. Further, President John F. Kennedy crossed picket lines to see the movie. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not.
A man doesn't say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving, or that he'd spend all of his money to save money. Why should he be willing to die for the privilege of living?
Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well. It means that everybody should have a job, if he's willing to work, and an education, and the right to bring up his children without fear of the future. And it means that the old shall be provided for, without shame to themselves or to their families. It means do unto others as you would have others do unto you. It also means the prayers of the pilgrim fathers in the wilderness, and the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights, and the Emancipation Proclamation, and the dreams of an immigrant mother for her children. And that's what I believe in.
Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen.... It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.
Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades.
I fought fire with oil.
I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of.
It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for....
Now the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things people don't understand. Take the Einstein theory. Take taxes. Take love. Do you understand them? Neither do I. But they exist. They happen.
One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you're obliged to act like one.
Privately, I believe in none of them. Neither do you. Publicly, I believe in them all.
The blacklist was a time of evil. No one on either side who survived it came through untouched by evil. There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides. It will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims. Some suffered less than others, some grew or were diminished, but in the final tally we were all victims because almost without exception each of us felt compelled to say things he did not want to say, to do things he did not want to do, to deliver and receive wounds he truly did not want to exchange. That is why none of us- right, left, or center- emerged from that long nightmare without sin.
The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.
The only interesting thing that can happen in a Swiss bedroom is suffocation by feather mattress.
The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living and laughing and fighting and loving.
There's no problem about proving authorship. The problem, in Hollywood, has been to admit authorship.
Well, life isn't always what one likes.
What's so noble about being dead?
When one man says, 'No, I won't,' Rome begins to fear.
You know, I was born in Colorado, and I remember the first self-starting car that came to town. And I flew here today on a 747. That's too damned much for one lifetime.
Categories: Dalton Trumbo, Quotes of the day
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