Quotes by Robert Downey, Jr.

The lesson is that you can still make mistakes and be forgiven.

I like mainstream movies that are completely off the wall.

Half the people that were out there saying 'No nukes' and 'Shut down the power plants' are now realizing that, some would say, nuclear is the best way to go for energy for the future. So I think it's natural to reexamine your beliefs as you age up.

There are some parents who have really done it right and told their kid, 'You know, we have this dough, none of this is for you. You have to get your own.

I felt like a fighter who was training for a title bout that had not been booked yet.

I'm not a method guy. I can't be bothered to have a method. I just want to be a part of a good movie and I can't stand to be surrounded by morons.

I know if you talk faster and use more ten-dollar words than everyone around you, you convince half of them that they should shut up because you know what you're talking about.

The audience can feel the subtleties of the characters.

I, personally, would be shocked if we went to the end of the tape now and I didn't have at least one... Look, even if I don't get one directly, eventually they're just going to have to give me one when I get old. So no matter how you slice it, I'm getting one.

I know who I am. I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude.

I think a hero is someone who, if abroad or traveling, they go to the GOOP website to see what shops to go to, what restaurants to eat at, what clothes to buy, and they do that not fearlessly but in spite of their fear.

I never know when the seeds are being laid, I'm just like, Wow, that's a pretty cool scene. Is that? Are we laying seeds here?

Violent ground-acquisition games such as football are in fact a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.

Nobody learns a German aria overnight, except Jared Harris.

I'm an actor, a husband, a father of two, and a full-time Avenger.

Job one is get out of that cave. A lot of people do get out but don't change.

Mediocrity is my biggest fear. I'm not afraid of total failure because I don't think that will happen. I'm not afraid of success because that beats the hell out of failure. It's being in the middle that scares me.

You know, when you're part of a comedic duo, you can take breaks. It's kind of like having a partner that is good with a kid.

Pick a dysfunction and it's a family problem.

Everyone has a story, and the story changes, and the more I can root into the truth of things -- it's so hard -- I don't think anyone ever really puts it all together. But somewhere along the way it all became fused.

People rise out of the ashes because, at some point, they are invested with a belief in the possibility of triumph over seemingly impossible odds.

It's like I have a loaded gun in my mouth and I like the taste of metal.

At the end of the day, anything I think I'm sacrificing I'm just giving up because it makes me feel better.

You can't go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary, and really understand it, and come out a liberal.

It's become this really odd thing where even some of the folks who build the things that we wear for entertainment are contacted by DARPA-esque companies who are saying, Yeah, we're really doing that, and we want to talk to you.

Addiction's not about placating the bad dog -- it's about feeding the good dog. You still have to feed the bad dog, but only enough so that the ASPCA doesn't bring you up on charges.

If I was a Pokemon, I'll either be a Psyduck or a Jigglypuff.

I need a lot of support... Life is really hard, and I don't see some active benevolent force out there. I see it as basically a really cool survival game. You get on the right side of the tracks, and you now are actually working with what some people would call magic.

I'm not used to studios being ecstatic about we did and saying, Please go do that again.

Smoking dope and smoking coke, you are rendered defenseless. The only way out of that hopeless state is intervention.

Tofu is the root of all evil, and there's only one thing that can change a man's mind, and that's a modified Uzi with an extra-long clip.

The greatest thing my dad taught me came from when I called him from a phone booth and said, 'Hungry. No bus token. Please. Out of options.' He said, 'Pfft, get a job.

There is unpanned gold in every soul you run into, no matter what walk of life they are from.

Wing Chun teaches you what to concentrate on, whether you're here or out in the world dealing with problems. It's second nature for me now. I don't even get to the point where there's a problem.

I've always felt that if you're not on your side, why should anyone else be. So I always encourage people to be confident, and sometime even a little falsely so, just so you can give yourself an opportunity.

I just think it's good to be confident. If I'm not on my team why should anybody else be?

I wouldn't want to see anything irreparable happen, but I also like it when seemingly irreparable thing occur and men and women find a way to move past it.

I think paranoia goes from generation to generation. It's convenient to imagine that there's a few people controlling everything, that way it's manageable and small. But that's not life, life is messy.

Sometimes if you're wanting to look just a little bit taller, then you want to dress with just more of a thin cut.

A lot of my peer group think I'm an eccentric bisexual, like I may even have an ammonia-filled tentacle somewhere on my body. That's okay.

Sometimes you're not supposed to enjoy it acting. You're supposed to cooperate with misery and proceed anyway. But what I do enjoy is a sense of well-being and just participating in life and life's turns.

I understand reversal of fortune; that usually has come through my own hand, but you know, you live life on life's terms.

Every time I feel that I really hit critical mass and I'm in the right place is when I feel like the director and I become a third thing, and that's the character.

All I want, and I think all any parent with a semblance of a moral psychology wants, is for my kid to have his own experience, uninhibited.

Give me a scotch, I'm starving.

I guess the main thing is, you unconsciously take things for granted, and you think the audience is with you, because you're with yourself.

It was a democracy in the truest and most frustrating and most rewarding sense of the word. Anybody could come in and say, You know, I'm just not cool with that. We'd be like, Who's that? Oh, I was just cleaning the trailers. It was nuts.

I am in the continual process of transcending fear-based rituals.

People never change because they are under threat or under duress. Never. They change because they see something that makes their life seem valuable enough to start moving toward a life worth living.

McDonald's being the official restaurant of the Olympics is like smoking being the official medicine of cancer.

I'm not a poster boy for good behavior and recovery in Hollywood, I'm just a guy who knows he has a lot to be grateful for.

I saw School of Rock, and I was like, why haven't I worked with Richard Linklater already? Then by the time I got him I was like, I'm really pissed off I feel like you owe me some retroactive swag. He gave me the 10-year anniversary Dazed and Confused T-shirt, which I still wear with relish.

I thought that the grounded-ish nature of the first Iron Man and where I think the success of it was based was I think people got excited that this was a technologically possible occurrence; and didn't Obama order an Iron Man?

I don't need an Iron Man suit. I'm already a weapon of mass seduction.

My old man had a philosophy: peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.

I don't want to go all Michael Jackson on you, but I never really had a childhood.

I don't drink these days. I am allergic to alcohol and narcotics. I break out in handcuffs.

I'm a soldier who didn't know how nasty the battle was going to be, and now, I've got a purple heart and I'm back.

If you're doing a drama that has some comedic elements you can't forget that it's primarily a very serious film that has some light relief.

But I will agree that I think that things happen with people in relationships, that you might have been able to enjoy Morocco, say, if you weren't getting out of a bad marriage. You know what I mean?

I'm very good at deconstructing. I'm a very good troubleshooter for why something is unlikely to work. And most everything is unlikely to work.

In movies, people seem to be more emotional than they would ever be if that situation was actually happening to them.

Dad's Jewish and Irish, Mom's German and Scotch. I couldn't say I was anything. My last name isn't even Downey. My dad changed his name when he wanted to get into the Army and was underage. My real name is Robert Elias. I feel like I'm still looking for a home in some way.

It's hard to get out of the barrel. It's slippery around the edges and people are happy to see you fall back in.

'Shaggy Dog' was a very, very important movie for me. It was a very enjoyable experience.

I take some pride in... representing myself exactly how I would like to have my son remember me to his kids.

I know very little about acting. I'm just an incredibly gifted faker.

I'm not 40 yet. I wouldn't even bother comparing myself to Chaplin.

Acting is always a challenge.

I'm not particularly tall, strong, fast, or aggressive.

I had this bad-boy-from-New York vibe going, dressed like a punk rocker with spiky hair.

There are some parents who have really done it right and told their kid, 'You know, we have this dough, none of this is for you. You have to get your own.'

I'm in a happy relationship, me and my ex are on really good terms, my kid and I are in a good spot.

Does any new parent, even if you're not a first-time parent, ever really know what to do?

With a terrible script you hustle and try to make it better. But with a good script it can be trouble because you rest on your laurels, so to speak, you think it's going to translate easily.

I think I just never wanted to be the creepy guy where people say, 'Why do his leading ladies keep getting younger and younger, and why do they think he's so hot even though we know that the girl who's playing this part actually has a handsome boyfriend?'

I always think part of success is being able to replicate results, taking what is interesting or viable about yourself as a professional person and seeing if you bring it into different situations with similar results.

Life is just so painful and messy and hard and worth it and all that stuff.

I was kind of like chasing my tail and trying to do the right thing, and was a little bit stupid. Or irresponsible, which is the same thing I guess. It's just been really busy and I had a lot of great opportunities.

But I think Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang really got that thing where, if a movie reads really funny and then has some dramatic or violent or sinister stuff in it, you can't forget that primarily it has to be even funnier than you read it or that other stuff doesn't work.

I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you've done.

Acting is the most wildly overpaid position imaginable.

Nothing pleases me more than when somebody who was awe-inspired to be working with me realizes I'm just another schmuck that they're bored of hanging out with on a set. I love that moment. I like it when that persistent illusion is smashed.

If you're raised with a poverty mentality, nothing is going to change it. I do know some really stingy billionaires. I come from such a generation of hand-to-mouthers.

I want to give myself the freedom not to have to be projecting my whole life ahead.

I think life changes every year. This is just a little more comfortable.

I grew up with a lot of people whose whole prime mover was dad rage. I never really had it -- it always seemed so empty. It always seemed to be masking something else, which was really their own lack of initiative.

I walk by studio heads and they actually look and put their hand out now, like maybe I should be on their radar.

When you have a good script you're almost in more trouble than when you have a terrible script.

I loved it, it's such fun. I like that people are seeing it and then talking about it. Like when I took my son and his friends to see Napoleon Dynamite last year, we spent the next six weeks trying to explain it.

I think that we all do heroic things, but hero is not a noun, it's a verb.

I just don't like big guys who speak cryptically and act like they understand the language better than me.

In the marathon obstacle course of a career, it's just good to have all the stats on paper for why you're not only a team player but also why it makes sense to support you in the projects you want to do -- because you've made so much damned money for the studio.

I've noticed that worrying is like praying for what you don't want to happen.

I'm coming from a place of total strength and humility now.

Do I want to be a hero to my son? No. I would like to be a very real human being. That's hard enough.

Nothing's a break for me. Not even the breaks are breaks.

It's interesting when you're old enough to take a new, objective approach looking at your parents, frame them in a way where you are actually taking yourself out of the equation and just look at the things that are true about their life.

Sometimes you just gotta be drop-kicked out of the nest.

I don't want to be so confident in myself.

Look, even bad years are pretty good years I think.

I read the script for Wonder Boys, and I said that was almost perfect, it was so classy, cool and funny. It's a really specific thing. We stuck to it, it turned out good and a lot of people liked it.

I've always just shown up and tried to figure out what's for lunch and am I going to get to play some racquetball that night.

I think you end up doing the stuff you were supposed to do at the time you were supposed to do it.

I think I've been lucky, being my frequent appearances on Court TV have brought to me another level than just the actor guy.

I guess the issue for me is to keep things dynamic.

It's a very smart and heartfelt movie and that's why, I think, we're all drawn to it. We really showed up for this with this collective idea that it was really ambitious, but we felt we all really had something to gain from it.

I've always been a fella who put most of my eggs in one basket and then take a dump in the basket but I really don't know.