If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space? Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives in this perspective — who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled — can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate anime. The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache.

— Stanley Kubrick

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

— Stanley Kubrick

I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.

— Stanley Kubrick

Observation is a dying art.

— Stanley Kubrick

Part of my problem is that I cannot dispel the myths that have somehow accumulated over the years. Somebody writes something, it's completely off the wall, but it gets filed and repeated until everyone believes it. For instance, I've read that I wear a football helmet in the car.

— Stanley Kubrick

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but the best thing that young filmmakers should do is to get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all.

— Stanley Kubrick

The dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive

— Stanley Kubrick

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.

— Stanley Kubrick

The destruction of this universe would have no significance on a cosmic scale.

— Stanley Kubrick

The great nations have always acted like gangsters and the small nations like prostitutes.

— Stanley Kubrick