Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the “Man with No Name” in Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s and as antihero cop Harry Callahan in the five Dirty Harry films throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made Eastwood an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. Elected in 1986, Eastwood served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.
Eastwood’s greatest commercial successes are the adventure comedy Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its action comedy sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980). Other popular Eastwood films include the Westerns Hang ‘Em High (1968), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Pale Rider (1985), the action-war film Where Eagles Dare (1968), the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979), the war film Heartbreak Ridge (1986), the action film In the Line of Fire (1993), and the romantic drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995). More recent works include Gran Torino (2008), The Mule (2018), and Cry Macho (2021). Since 1967, Eastwood’s company Malpaso Productions has produced all but four of his American films. An Academy Award nominee for Best Actor, Eastwood won Best Director and Best Picture for his Western film Unforgiven (1992) and his sports drama Million Dollar Baby (2004). In addition to directing many of his star vehicles, Eastwood has also directed films in which he did not appear, such as the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the war film Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations. He also directed the biographical films Changeling (2008), Invictus (2009), American Sniper (2014), Sully (2016), and Richard Jewell (2019).
Eastwood’s accolades include four Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three César Awards, and an AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2000, he received the Italian Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion award, honoring his lifetime achievements. Bestowed two of France’s highest civilian honors, he received the Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1994, and the Legion of Honour in 2007.
Clint Eastwood Quotes
1. “Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome!”
— Clint Eastwood
2. “Self-respect leads to self-discipline.”
— Clint Eastwood
3. “Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that’s real power.”
— Clint Eastwood
4. “Go ahead, make my day.”
— Clint Eastwood
5. “They say all marriages are made in heaven, but so are thunder and lightning.”
— Clint Eastwood
6. “Tomorrow is promised to no one.”
— Clint Eastwood
7. “It’s not about you. It’s about them.”
— Clint Eastwood
8. “Always keep your ego in check and not be afraid to listen. Listening is a great art form.”
— Clint Eastwood
9. “If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.”
— Clint Eastwood
10. “Keep your eyes on the horizon and your nose to the wind.”
— Clint Eastwood
11. “A good man always knows his limitations.”
— Clint Eastwood
12. “There’s a rebel lying deep in my soul. Anytime anybody tells me the trend is such and such, I go the opposite direction. I hate the idea of trends. I hate imitation; I have a reverence for individuality.”
— Clint Eastwood
13. “You see, in this world, there are two kinds of people, my friend – those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.”
— Clint Eastwood
14. “Libertarian: everyone leaves everyone else alone.”
— Clint Eastwood
15. “You should never give up your inner self.”
— Clint Eastwood
16. “I have a very strict gun control policy: if there’s a gun around, I want to be in control of it.”
— Clint Eastwood
17. “I tried being reasonable, I didn’t like it.”
— Clint Eastwood
18. “It’s always fun to talk about jazz.”
— Clint Eastwood
19. “The reason I still work at this stage of life is because I enjoy learning something new each day.”
— Clint Eastwood
20. “If you think it’s going to rain, it will.”
— Clint Eastwood
21. “There’s a rebel lying deep in my soul.”
— Clint Eastwood
22. “What I think the mentor gets is the great satisfaction of helping somebody along, helping somebody take advantage of an opportunity that maybe he or she did not have.”
— Clint Eastwood
23. “You have to feel confident. If you don’t, then you’re going to be hesitant and defensive, and there’ll be a lot of things working against you.”
— Clint Eastwood
24. “Participating in a gun buy-back program because you think that criminals have too many guns is like having yourself castrated because you think your neighbors have too many kids.”
— Clint Eastwood
25. “Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn’t have messed with? That’s me.”
— Clint Eastwood
26. “Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands.”
— Clint Eastwood
27. “My whole life has been one big improvisation.”
— Clint Eastwood
28. “If a person is confident enough in the way they feel, whether it’s an art form or whether it’s just in life, it comes off – you don’t have anything to prove; you can just be who you are.”
— Clint Eastwood
29. “When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn’t out collecting for the Red Cross.”
— Clint Eastwood
30. “Fate pulls you in different directions.”
— Clint Eastwood
31. “It’s what people know about themselves inside that makes them afraid.”
— Clint Eastwood
32. “I mean, I’ve always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else’s hair.”
— Clint Eastwood
33. “I don’t wanna need you because I can’t have you.”
— Clint Eastwood
34. “Extremism is so easy. You’ve got your position, and that’s it. It doesn’t take much thought. And when you go far enough to the right you meet the same idiots coming around from the left.”
— Clint Eastwood
35. “One day we will look back and realize that the Barack Obama Presidency was the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people.”
— Clint Eastwood
36. “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.”
— Clint Eastwood
37. “I am sort of anti-hunting. I don’t put down what anyone wants to do, but it seems to me that killing a creature for fun is not a progressive idea.”
— Clint Eastwood
38. “You change as the years go by. The more knowledge you get, the more things change in your life and circumstances change.”
— Clint Eastwood
39. “You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don’t want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you’re not performing at your best.”
— Clint Eastwood
40. “A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness.”
— Clint Eastwood
41. “I keep working because I learn something new all the time.”
— Clint Eastwood
42. “A Love like this happens but once in a lifetime.”
— Clint Eastwood
43. “Nobody, I mean nobody, puts ketchup on a hot dog.”
— Clint Eastwood
44. “I don’t see myself as conservative, but I’m not ultra-leftist. You build a philosophy of your own. I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone. Even as a kid, I was annoyed by people who wanted to tell everyone how to live.”
— Clint Eastwood
45. “The more time you have to think things through, the more you have to screw it up.”
— Clint Eastwood
46. “Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it.”
— Clint Eastwood
47. “The most gentle people in the world are macho males, people who are confident in their masculinity and have a feeling of well-being in themselves. They don’t have to kick in doors, mistreat women, or make fun of gays.”
— Clint Eastwood
48. “I try to stick to a vegan diet heavy on fruit and vegetables.”
— Clint Eastwood
49. “If a person doesn’t change, there’s something really wrong with him.”
— Clint Eastwood
50. “I was drafted during the Korean War.”
— Clint Eastwood
51. “I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it’s going to rain, it will.”
— Clint Eastwood
52. “You take the work seriously, you don’t take yourself seriously. You keep that straight and you’ll do well the rest of your life.”
— Clint Eastwood
53. “You have to teach yourself to act but Michael Chekhov will give you the necessary tools – and for me, Psychological Gesture and Centers are extremely valuable They work like a charm. I’ve used them all along and still do.”
— Clint Eastwood
54. “Abuse of power isn’t limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in our own country if we’re not vigilant.”
— Clint Eastwood
55. “Crimes against children are the most heinous crime. That, for me, would be a reason for capital punishment because children are innocent and need the guidance of an adult society.”
— Clint Eastwood
56. “Dying ain’t much of a living, boy.”
— Clint Eastwood
57. “My wife and I are both Libertarian; she was a Democrat and I was a Republican, and we both met in the middle somewhere.”
— Clint Eastwood
58. “To me, life is like the back nine in golf. Sometimes you play better on the back nine. You may not be stronger, but hopefully, you’re wiser. And if you keep most of your marbles intact, you can add a note of wisdom to the coming generation.”
— Clint Eastwood
59. “When I was young there was no respect for the young, and now that I am old there is no respect for the old.”
— Clint Eastwood
60. “I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.”
— Clint Eastwood
61. “Once a man has some money, peace begins to sound good to him.”
— Clint Eastwood
62. “Let’s take the work seriously, and not ourselves seriously.”
— Clint Eastwood
63. “I pay tribute to the writing always. The writer is a creative artist the director is an interpretive artist and the actors are interpretive. You take zero and make it into something, that’s always amazing to me.”
— Clint Eastwood
64. “I’m a firm believer in research, but I’m also a firm believer in utilizing the instincts that are within your soul or in your body or in your stomach, wherever they reside.”
— Clint Eastwood
65. “I never expect anything. I am always amazed at why anybody goes to any movie or why anybody doesn’t go to any movie. Any movie you make, you make it because you’re hoping somebody wants to see it, but you never know.”
— Clint Eastwood
66. “When I look back on my life, I don’t have regrets about what I didn’t do. If I’d become a musician, it could have ruined my life.”
— Clint Eastwood
67. “I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me.”
— Clint Eastwood
68. “As you get older, you’re not afraid of doubt. Doubt isn’t running the show. You take out all the self-agonizing.”
— Clint Eastwood
69. “Whether you like it or not, you’re forced to come to the realisation that death is out there. But I don’t fear death, I’m a fatalist. I believe when it’s your time, that’s it. It’s the hand you’re dealt.”
— Clint Eastwood
70. “There’s really no way to teach you how to act, but there is a way to teach you how to teach yourself to act. That’s kind of what it is; once you learn the little tricks that work for you, pretty soon you find yourself doing that.”
— Clint Eastwood
71. “The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your fife, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there’s nothing really to talk about.”
— Clint Eastwood
72. “Take your work seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously.”
— Clint Eastwood
73. “I’ve never met a genius. A genius to me is someone who does well at something he hates. Anybody can do well at something he loves – it’s just a question of finding the subject.”
— Clint Eastwood
74. “You have to be realistic about where you are in life and enjoy it.”
— Clint Eastwood
75. “I’d like to be a bigger and more knowledgeable person ten years from now than I am today. I think that for all of us as we grow older, we must discipline ourselves to continue expanding, broadening, learning, keeping our minds active and open.”
— Clint Eastwood
76. “Kids piercing themselves, piercing their tongues, what kind of masochism is that? Is it to show you can just take it?”
— Clint Eastwood
77. “I like the inspiration of the first take.”
— Clint Eastwood
78. “An awful lot of good movies have gone unrecognized, and an awful lot of bad movies have had tremendous recognition. As long as you keep that in mind, you are never really disappointed.”
— Clint Eastwood
79. “Let’s not go and ruin it by thinking too much.”
— Clint Eastwood
80. “People have lost their sense of humor. In former times, we constantly made jokes about different races.”
— Clint Eastwood
81. “Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you’re the mayor. The bad news is, now you’re the mayor.”
— Clint Eastwood
82. “Of course we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic Party. Kind of a grin with a body behind it.”
— Clint Eastwood
83. “There’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.”
— Clint Eastwood
84. “I love every aspect of the creation of motion pictures and I guess I am committed to it for life.”
— Clint Eastwood
85. “My wife is my closest friend. Sure, I’m attracted to her in every way possible, but that’s not the answer. Because I’ve been attracted to other people, and I couldn’t stand ’em after a while.”
— Clint Eastwood
86. “When you hang a man, you better look at him.”
— Clint Eastwood
87. “Things always look different from higher up.”
— Clint Eastwood
88. “Are you going to pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?”
— Clint Eastwood
89. “Most people are afraid of change. But if you look at it as something you can always count on, then it can be a comfort.”
— Clint Eastwood
90. “The reason I don’t retire is that I learn something new every day. The brain has to be exercised the same as the rest of the body. It’s about expanding, constantly pushing yourself.”
— Clint Eastwood
91. “I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.”
— Clint Eastwood
92. “There are two kinds of people in this world. ‘I’ people and ‘we’ people. I’ve always tried to be a ‘we’ person.”
— Clint Eastwood
93. “Buzzards got to eat, same as the worms.”
— Clint Eastwood
94. “I’m just a kid – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.”
— Clint Eastwood
95. “When you’re an actor, you’re so busy: people are always coming up to you and pulling your collar, making sure that things fit, brushing your hair and you’re always being yanked up, so finally when you’re behind a camera, you’re just a slob.”
— Clint Eastwood
96. “The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.”
— Clint Eastwood
97. “I’m always trying to tackle subjects that tax me and make me think. That’s the key to staying young at heart. The brain has to be exercised the same as the rest of the body.”
— Clint Eastwood
98. “I never look back and think too much about my films. I’ve done some work I’ve been proud of over the years but which of them is my favorite I really don’t know. I could say the last one. I’ve had little jumps in my career like Unforgiven possibly.”
— Clint Eastwood
99. “The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.”
— Clint Eastwood
100. “What do you want me to tell Romney? I can’t tell him to do that. I can’t tell him to do that to himself. You’re crazy. You’re absolutely crazy. You’re getting as bad as Biden.”
— Clint Eastwood
101. “Politicians have to make unpopular decisions. Schwarzenegger is going to understand the nature of his job. I wish him good luck, he’s going to need it. It’s going to be difficult for him.”
— Clint Eastwood
102. “I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that’s OK, too. It’s whatever suits you.”
— Clint Eastwood
103. “I don’t mind telling a dark side.”
— Clint Eastwood
104. “Casting a film is to me one of the most important things next to writing. If you cast it properly everything takes place very easily. If you cast it improperly you’re fighting an uphill battle.”
— Clint Eastwood
105. “Once you finish a film, it doesn’t belong to you anymore – it belongs to the audience to interpret it the way they feel like interpreting.”
— Clint Eastwood
106. “Nobody wants to make something that displeases people, but once you make a film, that’s out of your control and you can’t think about that. You just have to follow your head and make sure that you’re satisfied by putting down what you intended.”
— Clint Eastwood
107. “You have to trust your instincts. There is a moment when an actor has it, and he knows it.”
— Clint Eastwood
108. “I’m past doing one chin-up more than I did the day before. I just kind of do what I feel like.”
— Clint Eastwood
109. “I don’t necessarily look for dark themes; they just seem to appear.”
— Clint Eastwood
110. “That’s why I don’t rehearse a lot and why I shoot a lot immediately. I have ideas of where I’d like to take the character, but we both end up going together.”
— Clint Eastwood
111. “With people in high office, the old – you go into the extreme, which is absolute power and absolute power corrupts.”
— Clint Eastwood
112. “Plagiarism is always the biggest thing in Hollywood.”
— Clint Eastwood
113. “I haven’t been very active in politics.”
— Clint Eastwood
114. “When you’re making a movie, you can’t think anybody will ever see it. You’ve just got to make a movie for the values it has. The greatest films were made because someone really wanted to make them. And, hopefully, the audience will show up, too.”
— Clint Eastwood
115. “The thing that haunts a man the most is what he isn’t ordered to do.”
— Clint Eastwood
116. “The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.”
— Clint Eastwood
117. “I take vitamins daily, but just the bare essentials not what you’d call supplements. I try to stick to a vegan diet heavy on fruit, vegetables, tofu, and other soy products.”
— Clint Eastwood
118. “A man’s just gotta know his limits.”
— Clint Eastwood
119. “I like the libertarian view, which is to leave everyone alone. Even as a kid, I was annoyed by people who wanted to tell everyone how to live.”
— Clint Eastwood
120. “Overnight stardom can be harmful to your mental health. Yeah. It has ruined a lot of people.”
— Clint Eastwood
121. “Writing is a creative art form and the acting and directing is more of an interpretive art form.”
— Clint Eastwood
122. “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
— Clint Eastwood
123. “Work hard, keep your nose clean, and just stick around.”
— Clint Eastwood
124. “My old drama coach used to say, ‘Don’t just do something, stand there.’ Gary Cooper wasn’t afraid to do nothing.”
— Clint Eastwood
125. “If you’re afraid to take risks in anything in life, it’s just boredom.”
— Clint Eastwood
126. “When you’re young, you’re very reckless. Then you get conservative. Then you get reckless again.”
— Clint Eastwood
127. “Everybody always feels that they’re right even if they’re wrong and that’s what a whole actor’s career is built around rationalizing your way into whatever character you’re playing.”
— Clint Eastwood
128. “There’s a lot of great movies that have won the Academy Award and a lot of great movies that haven’t. You just do the best you can.”
— Clint Eastwood
129. “I would like to be interpreted as a liberal libertarian, like leave everybody alone and let them do their own thing.”
— Clint Eastwood
130. “On a scale of one to ten, you’re a two, and that’s cuz I’ve never seen a one.”
— Clint Eastwood
131. “Don’t look at me like I’ve gotten old or something like that.”
— Clint Eastwood
132. “It takes tremendous discipline to control the influence, the power you have over other people’s lives.”
— Clint Eastwood
133. “We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has.”
— Clint Eastwood
134. “I do believe in self-help.”
— Clint Eastwood
135. “I like a drama. And I think that’s the basis of good films or good plays, is to have a nice drama.”
— Clint Eastwood
136. “In America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience.”
— Clint Eastwood
137. “If you’ve done what you intended and if nobody tampered with it, then it’s yours. And if people don’t like it, then they just don’t agree with you on that subject matter, and that’s life.”
— Clint Eastwood
138. “Pose? I don’t pose. What am I? Paris Hilton or something?”
— Clint Eastwood
139. “I know what you’re thinking ‘Did he fire six shots or only five?”
— Clint Eastwood
140. “In recent times it just seems that women have been relegated to either romantic roles or fluff pieces. So the appeal, for me, is to make a picture about a real woman.”
— Clint Eastwood
141. “A lot of people regret because we live in a society that reveres being at the prime of life and everything, but you have certain primes at certain times, and mine happens to be…”
— Clint Eastwood
142. “I always like to try different things, different genres; stories that have a dramatic element and can generate conflict which I find appealing; where the characters have to overcome obstacles. That kind of thing is challenging.”
— Clint Eastwood
143. “This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money, I could have invaded some country.”
— Clint Eastwood
144. “There are a lot of conservative people, a lot of moderate people, Republicans, Democrats, in Hollywood. It is just that the conservative people by the nature of the word itself play closer to the vest. They do not go around hot dogging it.”
— Clint Eastwood
145. “I couldn’t tell you exactly what I like about golf. Just when you think you’ve got it mastered it lets you know you haven’t. I’m just crazy enough to do it.”
— Clint Eastwood
146. “My uncle played rugby, and my dad played football, and they used to argue which game was the roughest – and everybody agreed rugby was. It’s a great team sport, and to be successful, every person has to play in the same level.”
— Clint Eastwood
147. “I’m not really conservative. I’m conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don’t anymore.”
— Clint Eastwood
148. “I haven’t killed anybody all day. Help me keep it that way.”
— Clint Eastwood
149. “Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff.”
— Clint Eastwood
150. “Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.”
— Clint Eastwood
151. “You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.”
— Clint Eastwood
152. “Actors know what actors are insecure about – and they’re all insecure.”
— Clint Eastwood
153. “You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.”
— Clint Eastwood
154. “I’m not a chick-flick enthusiast.”
— Clint Eastwood
155. “I never considered myself a cowboy, because I wasn’t. But I guess when I got into cowboy gear I looked enough like one to convince people that I was.”
— Clint Eastwood
156. “I don’t write. I usually look for material by other people. Sometimes I change things or adapt things but I don’t write from scratch. I wish I had that ability.”
— Clint Eastwood
157. “You get to a certain age and you’re just glad to be there. I don’t know what to add to that. It’s fun. You have to be a realist, so you try to look for roles that are within the age you are.”
— Clint Eastwood
158. “You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.”
— Clint Eastwood
159. “I guess any movie actor can become a role model for audiences out there who enjoy him.”
— Clint Eastwood
160. “There’s a lot of young guys coming along, but I’d like to say to the various financiers, don’t forget the senior guys. The senior guys and gals are there, willing to do their best work for you.”
— Clint Eastwood
