The Best Werner Herzog quotes

Facts do not constitute truth. — Werner Herzog

Truth itself wanders through the forests. — Werner Herzog

One more thing: Philippe, you are not a coward–so what I want to hear from you is the ecstatic truth about the twin towers. — Werner Herzog

I do not believe in the Cinema verite. Sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth. — Werner Herzog

Fact creates norms and truth illumination. — Werner Herzog

There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization. — Werner Herzog

Facts do not convey truth. That’s a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination. — Werner Herzog

Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable. — Werner Herzog

Maybe I should stay a good soldier of cinema. — Werner Herzog

One of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seventies. — Werner Herzog

Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs. — Werner Herzog

I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema, writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting. — Werner Herzog

I’m not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming–I’ve always been a man of the theaters. — Werner Herzog

Public life is constantly aware of the volcano. — Werner Herzog

Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life. — Werner Herzog

I live my life outside of the glitz and glamour of the red carpet events, and so you’ll never see me there. I’m never at parties. — Werner Herzog

Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There’s no doubt in my heart. — Werner Herzog

Without dreams we would be cows in a field, and I don’t want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project. — Werner Herzog

It happens sometimes that the material itself carries things you have not fully planned. The footage has its own right, its own life, its own vibrancy and energy in it. — Werner Herzog

I have been in lots of very intense life situations. I have been shot at, and I have been hungry, and I have been in solitude, and I have also briefly been behind bars. So in a way, I know the heart of men. — Werner Herzog

I’m a very professional man. I’m not out for the experience of adventure. — Werner Herzog

With actors, normally I don’t like to have any conversation about background and about motivations and all this. — Werner Herzog

Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes. — Werner Herzog

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition. — Werner Herzog

Internet] is amazing as much as human beings can be amazing, and it’s debased and depraved and vile as human beings can be. — Werner Herzog

I am so used to plunging into the unknown that any other surroundings and form of existence strike me as exotic and unsuitable for human beings. — Werner Herzog

Along with this rapid growth of forms of communication at our disposal–be it fax, phone, email, internet or whatever–human solitude will increase in direct proportion. — Werner Herzog

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot. — Werner Herzog

However, there are a couple of volcanoes very close nearby, like Vesuvius in Italy right next to Naples. — Werner Herzog

Most of the volcanoes are pretty far away. You have to go to, God knows, Alaska. Or you have to go to the Southern Indies or you have to go to a specific island. — Werner Herzog

Everything you see in North Korea, it’s all propaganda, but it’s all connected to the volcano. — Werner Herzog

I wouldn’t make a connection between the daily news and volcanoes. — Werner Herzog

North Korea is not an exception. Even there, where you think it would be completely sober, they have the myth of their revolution being connected to the volcano. — Werner Herzog

The power of a volcano when it erupts is so evident, so visible, so palpable. — Werner Herzog

As for the ‘anger’ of the volcano, we leave it up to the local populations who create their demons, their gods and their divine punishment. — Werner Herzog

It’s very strange, for example, in North Korea where the volcano at the Chinese border is some sort of the mythical birthplace of the Korean people. — Werner Herzog

I’m very, very curious about how people live under the volcano, how they handle the permanence of danger. — Werner Herzog

I went to volcanoes where I knew that there was a lot of mythology around them; there was something like the creation of gods and monsters and demons. — Werner Herzog

It’s not far–fetched that almost everywhere in the world where you have volcanoes you have mythologies or new gods being created. — Werner Herzog

At the same time, there’s something magnificent about volcanoes; they created the atmosphere that we need for breathing. — Werner Herzog