84 Inspiring Quotes By Harrison Ford That Will See You Through

We all have big changes in our lives that are more or less a second chance.

  

I get mad when people call me an action movie star. Indiana Jones is an adventure film, a comic book, a fantasy.

Me

  

I don't do a huge amount of physical activity. I play tennis, I work out sporadically, and I eat well and take care of myself.

  

I went down to Venezuela and ended up renting a helicopter and flew with my sons to the tops of the tepuis, these freestanding jungle mesas, 'lost worlds' as it were. In fact, it's almost impossible to access them without one. So we were able to land and spend some time there. We were trapped for about six hours by clouds that came in.

Time

  

I fly myself everywhere. I like all kinds of flying, including practical flying for search and rescue. And I also like to fly into the backcountry, usually the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho. I go with a group of friends, and we set up camp for about five days and explore little dirt strips and canyons.

Like

  

I am Irish as a person, but I feel Jewish as an actor.

  

I had a very strong feeling about the Vietnam War, and I had a strong feeling about participating in it. The military draft was in place, I was summoned for a physical exam, and I was either going to be classified as fit for military service or make my objection to it. So I made my objection to it.

  

We're all interconnected. For example, a simple lack of fresh water can lead to population dislocation, which can lead to political radicalization, which can lead to great pressure on the states that receive refugees because of a migrating population.

  

The kindest word to describe my performance in school was Sloth.

  

Am I grumpy? I might be. But I think maybe sometimes it's misinterpreted.

Think

  

You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow.

Time

  

Nature doesn't need people - people need nature; nature would survive the extinction of the human being and go on just fine, but human culture, human beings, cannot survive without nature.

Culture

  

I don't think I've mastered anything. I'm still wrestling with the same frustrations, the same issues, the same problems as I always did. That's what life is like.

Life , Like , Think

  

My character is meant to know nothing about rap, and not to like it very much, but I know about it, because my kids make me listen to it. There's some rap I do like very much. I like Eminem, Blackalicious.

Character , Like , Me

  

Peace is not the absence of war but the presence of justice.

Peace

  

I love the comic opportunities that come up in the context of a father-son relationship.

Relationship

  

Starring in a science-fiction film doesn't mean you have to act science fiction.

  

I'd love to do another 'Indiana Jones.' A character that has a history and a potential, kind of a rollicking good movie ride for the audience, Steven Spielberg as a director - what's not to like?

Character , Like

  

I think 'Indiana Jones' was a lot of fun to do because of the places we went to and the adventures and the action. But Han Solo was also a huge part of my life.

Life , Think

  

It's very little trouble for me to accommodate my fans, unless I'm actually taking a pee at the time.

Me , Time

  

I think retirement's for old people. I'm still in the business, thank you. I have a young child of nine years old, and I want to live as long as I can to see him grow up. I'm enjoying my life and I want to stick around for as long as I can.

Life , Think

  

'Years of Living Dangerously' is a wonderful opportunity to reach a lot of people with the story and importance of climate change in our lives; in recent history, there's no bigger threat to the quality of human life than what is taking place right now in respect of climate change.

Life

  

I don't do celebrity endorsements. My work with Conservation International is a good use of whatever celebrity I might have to draw attention to important problems. I have the same responsibility as everyone to reduce consumption and to teach children to respect the environment.

  

I'm not a poster boy for Conservation International. I'm a working member of the board.

  

I want to go back to the Pantanal in Brazil. I've never been to sub-Saharan Africa. I'd like to take my Caravan over there and do a flying safari. I've never flown to Alaska.

Like , Never

  

The original 'Star Wars' that I was a part of really was the beginning of my working life.

Life

  

The set for 'Blade Runner' was maybe the hardest set I've ever worked on because I think we worked 50 nights in a row, and it was always raining.

Think

  

I don't do nostalgia. It just doesn't occur to me. I'm living in the moment, and I don't have that gene.

Me

  

I retire every time I'm done with a movie. Then I go back. You know, I enjoy sleep. But I love to work; it's fun for me. As long as it continues to be fun, and I'm tolerated by the people around me, I will do it.

Me , Time

  

J. J. Abrams is a director that I've admired for a long time, from the very first scripts he wrote - including 'Regarding Henry,' which I was in.

Time

  

I think of myself as an assistant storyteller.

Think

  

My approach to acting is the 'let's pretend' school of acting.

  

I think what a lot of action movies lose these days, especially the ones that deal with fantasy, is you stop caring at some point because you've lost human scale.

Think

  

I rarely play a real person, because I don't think I'm a good imitator.

Think

  

I am not the first man who wanted to make changes in his life at 60 and I won't be the last. It is just that others can do it with anonymity.

Life

  

The third time you say a thing it sounds like a lie.

Like , Time

  

When I first started out, I was a bad actor.

  

The focus and the concentration and the attention to detail that flying takes is a kind of meditation. I find it restful and engaging, and other things slip away.

  

Sometimes I try to improve the language, the lines, or the delivery, but I don't ad-lib because I think that makes it really hard for everybody else involved.

Think

  

Parenting is an impossible job at any age.

  

It took me a long time to figure out how to act, and how to conduct myself in the business so I could get what I felt I needed to support my potential and give them what they wanted.

Me , Time

  

If I were a serious person, I'd probably have a real job.

  

I was never that much a focus of interest in my career. I'm aware of that now, which doesn't give me a lot of pleasure.

Me , Never

  

I was completely unprepared for the public spectacle my private life became, and didn't like it a bit.

Life , Like

  

I was always very grateful I was never hot. In the entire length of my career, I haven't been the most adored.

Never

  

I wanted to be a forest ranger or a coal man. At a very early age, I knew I didn't want to do what my dad did, which was work in an office.

  

I have relationships with people I'm working with, based on our combined interest. It doesn't make the relationship any less sincere, but it does give it a focus that may not last beyond the experience.

Experience , Relationship

  

I accrued anger from people's low opinion of me and my work, and for the work I might be capable of.

Me

  

Hollywood's got its own particular environment.

  

Everything I do, I'm sort of half in, half out.

  

I'm addicted to Altoids. I call them 'acting pills.'

  

I could take Sean Connery in a fight... I could definitely take him.

  

There is no child left within me, none whatsoever.

Me

  

You may get real tired watching me, but I'm not going to quit.

Me

  

Some actors couldn't figure out how to withstand the constant rejection. They couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  

I wanted to live the life, a different life. I didn't want to go to the same place every day and see the same people and do the same job. I wanted interesting challenges.

Life

  

I enjoyed carpentry, and it was very good to me for 12 years.

Me

  

Bikes and planes aren't about going fast or having fun; they're toys, but serious ones.

  

I don't like baseball movies. I like movies about moral courage and people who are indomitable and courageous and right.

Like

  

You know you're getting old when all the names in your black book have M. D. after them.

  

We have to understand in value what the services of nature are so that we can understand that degrading them is an irreplaceable resource that no amount of money or human ingenuity can replace.

  

It's part of the job of the actor to torture the director.

  

I have the ordinary experience of being anonymous when I'm in an airplane talking to air-traffic control, and they don't know who they're talking to. I have a lot of common experiences.

Experience

  

I'm like old shoes. I've never been hip. I think the reason I'm still here is that I was never enough in fashion that I had to be replaced by something new.

Like , Never , Think

  

The actor's popularity is evanescent; applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.

  

If you're asking me to acknowledge that I've gotten older, I can do that.

Me

  

What I observed about my fellow actors was that most gave up very easily.

  

To me, success is choice and opportunity.

Me

  

Really, what are the options? Levi's or Wranglers. And you just pick one. It's one of those life choices.

Life

  

My older kids are fantastic people. It can't be the result of my influence on them.

  

My goal was just to work regularly. I didn't ever expect to be rich or famous. I wanted to be a working character actor.

Character

  

I've never wanted to be the boss.

Never

  

I've always been somewhere down from the top, so I've never had to suffer being knocked off the top.

Never

  

Directing is too hard, it takes too much time, and it doesn't pay very well.

Time

  

All my friends were going off to be professionals, and I said I wanted to be an actor.

  

It doesn't interest me to be Harrison Ford. It interests me to be Mike Pomeroy and Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan. I don't want to be in the Harrison Ford business. I take what I do seriously, but I don't take myself seriously.

Me

  

I don't mind doing interviews. I don't mind answering thoughtful questions. But I'm not thrilled about answering questions like, 'If you were being mugged, and you had a lightsaber in one pocket and a whip in the other, which would you use?'

Like

  

I actually like snakes! When I was young, I was a boy scout nature camp counselor, and one of our projects was collecting snakes and creating an environment for them, so I'm quite familiar with snakes and think they're fantastic creatures.

Like , Think

  

On the first 'Indiana Jones' movie, I tore an ACL in one of my knees - can't remember which knee. The scene in which I was fighting the big German mechanic on an airplane called a flying wing, I was run over by the landing gear and injured my knee, but I can't remember which one it was. Lots of bumps and injuries along the way.

  

What is news? It's hard to quantify. Certainly news has changed completely, and the morning shows are not really designed to bring you the news, except to tell you what happened overnight, and the rest of it is a kind of magazine mentality - a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's harder to be an educated and informed citizen.

  

What's important is to be able to see yourself, I think, as having commonality with other people and not determine, because of your good luck, that everybody is less significant, less interesting, less important than you are.

Think , Yourself

  

The trick of this thing and the beauty of this thing is that it's a cowboy movie first and then stuff happens. Even after stuff happens it doesn't change - it hasn't suddenly changed into another kind of movie. It's still a cowboy movie. And that's what's incredible about it because nobody has done that before, that's new territory.

  

I'm quite curious and excited about seeing a new script for 'Blade Runner.' If, in fact, the opportunity would exist to do another, if it's a good script, I would be very anxious to work with Ridley Scott again; he's a very talented and passionate filmmaker. And I think it would be very interesting to revisit the character.

Character , Think

  

It's a privilege to be able to be involved with people as talented as the people I've had the luck to work with, and it's just been a great experience for me, and I'm glad that so many of the films I've had the luck to do were films that could be enjoyed by families together.

Experience , Me , Together