Werner Herzog Quotes

I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.

The trees are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing. They just screech in pain. …Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of harmony: it’s the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.

Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.

I'm trying to find these rare moments where you feel completely illuminated. Facts never illuminate you. The phone directory of Manhattan doesn't illuminate you, although it has factually correct entries, millions of them. But these rare moments of illumination that you find when you read a great poem, you instantly know. You instantly feel this spark of illumination. You are almost stepping outside of yourself and you see something sublime.

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

I am torn between the beauty of the natural world, which you see all around us, and the idea that some dumb tornado could blow a telephone pole onto my sweet Camaro.

Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.

I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.

Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.

I am a product of my failures.

I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.

What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.

I love nature but against my better judgment.

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.

Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species—including man—crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.

We live in an era when established values are no longer valid, when prodigious discoveries are being made every year, when catastrophes of unbelievable proportions occur weekly. In ancient Greek the word “chaos” means “gaping void” or “yawning emptiness.” The most effective response to the chaos in our lives is the creation of new forms of literature, music, poetry, art and cinema.

Martin Luther was asked, what would you do if tomorrow the world would come to an end, and he said, 'I would plant an apple tree today.' This is a real good answer. I would start shooting a movie.

I would travel down to Hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.

Nature is monumentally indifferent.

You are confronted with abysses of time that are, in a way, unfathomable. You see a painting in charcoal of raindeer and it was left unfinished and somebody else finished it. But through radio carbon dating we know that the next one completed the painting 5,000 years later. You're just blown away by the notion of passage of time. We have no relationship to that kind of depth of time.

May I propose a Herzog dictum? Those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it.

Without dreams we would be cows in a field, and I don't want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project.

Money doesn't make films. You just do it and take the initiative.