Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Ben Hecht (American Screenwriter)

Ben Hecht (1894–1964) was an American journalist, playwright, and novelist. He was one of Hollywood’s most prolific and in-demand scriptwriters during the 1930s and 1940s. He not only wrote or co-wrote more than 60 films, but also published 15 novels, 14 volumes of short fiction, and 2 biographies.

Born in New York City, Hecht ran away from home at age 16 to Chicago, where he became a journalist. He used his inside knowledge of the newspaper trade as fodder for his play The Front Page (1928,) which he co-authored with playwright Charles MacArthur. This fast-paced comedy about the moral ambiguities of the newspaper business was later made into the movie The Front Page (1931,) and adapted yet again for the screen in His Girl Friday (1940.)

Hecht wrote many books, including the novels Erik Dorn (1921) and Fantazius Mallare (1922,) but made his reputation as a writer for stage and the screen. He wrote many screenplays, including Underworld (1927,) The Scoundrel (1935,) Wuthering Heights (1939,) Spellbound (1945,) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946.) His play A Flag is Born (1946) is famous for its dedication to Zionism.

Hecht wrote the raucous autobiography Child of the Century (1953.)

More: Wikipedia READ: Works by Ben Hecht

I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer.
Ben Hecht

Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Fame

Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
Ben Hecht

When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Money

Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Love, Magic

The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
Ben Hecht

In the court of the movie Owner, none criticized, none doubted. And none dared speak of art. In the Owner’s mind art was a synonym for bankruptcy. The movie Owners are the only troupe in the history of entertainment that has never been seduced by the adventure of the entertainment world.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Hollywood

Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Hollywood

Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Time Management

There’s a thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die; their silence.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Death, Dying

Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Prejudice

Movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century. Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them—as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
Ben Hecht

There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.
Ben Hecht

Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Effort, Trying

I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
Ben Hecht
Topics: Vanity

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