Nothing is permanent in this wicked world— not even our troubles.

In the end, everything is a gag.

Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of oneself.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

It isn't the ups and downs that make life difficult; it's the jerks.

I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it has fulfilled its purpose.

I consider myself a citizen of the world! On why he had never become a U.S. citizen.

I am applauded, because everybody understands me; you are applauded, because nobody understands you. Addressed to Albert Einstein.

You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down. Swing High Little Girl (opening song sung by Charlie Chaplin for The Circus.)

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

Figuring out what the audience expects, and then doing something different, is great fun to me.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.

You have to believe in yourself, that's the secret. Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world.

There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth.

I have no further use for America. I wouldn't go back there if Jesus Christ was President. After difficulties in being re-admitted to the United States, based on suspicions of communist sympathies.

I don't believe that the public knows what it wants; this is the conclusion that I have drawn from my career.

I am for people. I can't help it.

By simple common sense I don't believe in God, in none.

Life is a beautiful magnificent thing, even to a jelly fish.

I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of an ancestral promptings and urgings, a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, of all of which I am the sum total.

My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.