"America doesn't have the moral right to tell other people what to do. To say the whole world has to fall into line is you-know-what. I hope more people will rise up."
Read quote
9 likes
Quote collection
Spike Lee quotes (page 3 of 7)
130 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Violence is a part of America. I don't want to single out rap music. Let's be honest. America's the most violent country in the history of the world, that's just the way it is. We're all affected by it."
Read quote
9 likes
"What's the difference between Hollywood characters and my characters? Mine are real."
Read quote
8 likes
"We’ve gone through the names—Negro, African American, African, Black. For me that’s an indication of a people still trying to find their identity. Who determines what is black?"
Read quote
8 likes
"Since the days of slavery, if you were a good singer or dancer, it was your job to perform for the master after dinner."
Read quote
8 likes
"A spine to my films that's become more evident to me is that many are about the choices people make, and the reverberations of those choices. You go this way, or that way, and either way, there's going to be consequences."
Read quote
8 likes
"I really don't deal with hypotheticals."
Read quote
8 likes
"It is really important that young people find something that they want to do and pursue it with passion. I'm very passionate about filmmaking. It's what I love to do."
Read quote
8 likes
"Our greatness, our talent has never been the question. It's been a matter of grappling for control over what we do."
Read quote
8 likes
"Racism is when you have laws set up, systematically put in a way to keep people from advancing, to stop the advancement of a people. Black people have never had the power to enforce racism, and so this is something that white America is going to have to work out themselves. If they decide they want to stop it, curtail it, or to do the right thing... then it will be done, but not until then."
Read quote
8 likes
"I'm not the go-to guy. Everybody is trying to tell their story and have different ways of telling it."
Read quote
7 likes
"Cause mo better makes it mo better."
Read quote
7 likes
"I live in New York City, the stories of my films take place in New York; I'm a New York filmmaker."
Read quote
7 likes
"My cousin Malcolm Lee is also a filmmaker."
Read quote
7 likes
"People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world."
Read quote
7 likes
"As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing."
Read quote
6 likes
"I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street."
Read quote
6 likes
"The truth is I've been doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter; there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes."
Read quote
6 likes
"I want to tell stories, I don't really try to get boxed in by a specific genre."
Read quote
6 likes
"Music is, for me, a great tool of a filmmaker, the same way cinematography, the acting, editing, post-production, the costumes are. You know, to help you tell a story."
Read quote
6 likes