Quotes by Dalton Trumbo

About Dalton Trumbo:

James Dalton Trumbo 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.
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There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.

Dalton Trumbo

How could you believe or disbelieve anything anymore? Four maybe five million men killed and none of them wanting to die while hundreds maybe thousands were left crazy or blind or crippled and couldn’t die no matter how hard they tried.

Dalton Trumbo

An equation: 40,000 dead young men = 3,000 tons of bone and flesh, 124,000 pounds of brain matter, 50,000 gallons of blood, 1,840,000 years of life that will never be lived, 100,000 children that will never be born (the last we can afford: there are ...

Dalton Trumbo

They are talking like fools. They are saying that two and two make nothing. They are saying that a man will have to die to in order to protect his life. If you agree to fight you agree to die. Now if you die to protect your life you aren't alive anyh...

Dalton Trumbo

Then there was this freedom the little guys were always getting killed for. Was it freedom from another country? Freedom from work or disease or death? Freedom from your mother-in-law? Please mister give us a bill of sale on this freedom before we go...

Dalton Trumbo

There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.

Dalton Trumbo

What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't sh...

Dalton Trumbo

I will, proudly and by preference, do at least one picture a year for King Brothers, and I will try to make it the best picture that I have it in me to do.

Dalton Trumbo

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.

Dalton Trumbo

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.

Dalton Trumbo

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 a...

Dalton Trumbo

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. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and t...

Dalton Trumbo

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.

Dalton Trumbo

The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living and laughing and fighting and loving.

Dalton Trumbo

The only interesting thing that can happen in a Swiss bedroom is suffocation by feather mattress.

Dalton Trumbo

I am one day going to be working openly in the motion picture industry. When that day comes, I swear to you that I will never sign a term contract with any major studio.

Dalton Trumbo

I fought fire with oil.

Dalton Trumbo

I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of.

Dalton Trumbo

One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you're obliged to act like one.

Dalton Trumbo

Privately, I believe in none of them. Neither do you. Publicly, I believe in them all.

Dalton Trumbo

Author Bio

  • NameDalton Trumbo
  • DescriptionAmerican screenwriter and novelist
  • BornDecember 9, 1905
  • DiedSeptember 10, 1976
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Writer; Novelist; Director; Actor
  • AwardsNational Book Award