Tom Selleck Quotes

#1. And besides, because of all she has accomplished, Barbara Jordan has always been a hero of mine.

Tom Selleck

#2. To me, the excitement is in ordering a fine shotgun, going through the process that everybody who has bought one has gone through for 100 years. You order it, you make a significant down payment, and then you wait three or four years for the gun to be custom-made for you.

Tom Selleck

#3. I praise CBS for taking a risk, which is always the price you pay for opportunity. This is not standard movie of the week storytelling. I think movies of the week have fallen into a niche and that isn't my niche.

Tom Selleck

#4. I think of myself as an actor first, not a sex symbol. Do I think I'm sexy? No, that's someone else's judgment, and I honestly don't think you can try to be sexy and really succeed.

Tom Selleck

#5. You know, there's so much imitation and so much pandering in Hollywood.

Tom Selleck

#6. If you buy an expensive thing and you never use it, I don't think there's a point to it.

Tom Selleck

#7. If a guy as good and decent with as much grace as Chuck Heston can stand up for an issue that I think is very important ... then I certainly could stand up and I plan on remaining a life member for life.

Tom Selleck

#8. I think character is real important. And you know, and I think the public does.

Tom Selleck

#9. I think television has always been one to replicate when something's successful. I don't think there's quite as much innovation.

Tom Selleck

#10. Risk is the price you pay for opportunity.

Tom Selleck

#11. I don't think you should do something just to prove to an audience that you can do it, that's way out of your wheelhouse.

Tom Selleck

#12. We judge ourselves by our good intentions, but we're judged by our last word.

Tom Selleck

#13. I think a lot of Magnum was me.

Tom Selleck

#14. Unless you treat failure as part of the journey, you're never going to get anywhere.

Tom Selleck

#15. I guess after Dances With Wolves they probably tried some derivative westerns, and if they didn't work, they said the western is dead and moved on to something else.

Tom Selleck

#16. Why westerns get segregated into a genre in Hollywood, I don't know ... It's just good entertainment.

Tom Selleck

#17. I think there have been more movies in the Western genre than any other. I grew up watching those movies.

Tom Selleck

#18. Life isn't fair, but you can be.

Tom Selleck

#19. It's not that conservatives don't care. We do. We just have different answers than liberals do. It's a difference of the mind, not of the heart.

Tom Selleck

#20. The Westerns I like aren't really comedies. I'm drawn to the scope of them and the land as a central character.

Tom Selleck

#21. All I see is people out there who are hungry for more.

Tom Selleck

#22. People tracking your life and photographing you anywhere you go, that can make you crazy.

Tom Selleck

#23. It is scary for an actor when you get hired as a lead. No matter what the plot is, it is your job to do something interesting enough to make them want to get inside the lead character's head.

Tom Selleck

#24. At my age, turning gray is kind of a blessing, where it softens all of the other horrible things it does to you, but it is what it is.

Tom Selleck

#25. Good parts should always scare you a little bit, and good parts ... you might not get advice to do them.

Tom Selleck

#26. My mustache gets so many questions he has his own agen now.

Tom Selleck

#27. Few of us are as good as we think we are; none of us are as good as we can be.

Tom Selleck

#28. Im a registered independent with a lot of libertarian leanings,

Tom Selleck

#29. I don't feel the obligation to have a big explosion in the first 20 seconds so the audience doesn't turn on another channel. We are trying to make something that looks like a feature film that was bought for television and I think we are succeeding.

Tom Selleck

#30. I feel the other element of a western is the land, which is very important in this movie. I mean the land is another character in the piece, actually.

Tom Selleck

#31. I realized I really liked the screen. I knew it was a challenge, but I wasn't afraid of risk.

Tom Selleck

#32. But, you know there's a lot of westerns - not that they were bad - it's just that they can be remade because they're great stories that aren't indelible in an audience's mind when it comes to both the cast and the story.

Tom Selleck

#33. You don't do characters that are the same as you, otherwise why bother to act?

Tom Selleck

#34. Shooting clay targets is a very cleansing experience. It's very relaxing. It takes a lot of concentration. It's also very social, since you're usually shooting with friends. You can talk and forget about almost anything else that's on your mind.

Tom Selleck

#35. On a day when you're not feeling so good, you put on a happy face, it's infectious - these things sound kind of corny and stupid, but this is our life.

Tom Selleck

#36. I haven't made a political statement in quite a long time because, frankly, they get repeated, changed.

Tom Selleck

#37. I quit 'Magnum' to have a family. It took a long time to get off the train, but I try very hard to have balance, and this ranch has helped me do that.

Tom Selleck

#38. I never try to pander to an audience, and I'm really not concerned with my image. I'm far more interested in stretching my abilities as an actor.

Tom Selleck

#39. Popularity is the pocket change of history. The true measure is courage. There will never be another Charlton Heston.

Tom Selleck

#40. I've learned by hanging out in Hollywood, where I disagree politically with most people, that most people's hearts are in the right place, and the only thing we have to argue about is the way to solve the problems.

Tom Selleck

#41. I live a pretty simple life.

Tom Selleck

#42. I've never reacted well to other people telling me what to do.

Tom Selleck

#43. Hopefully you marry someone who you not only love, but who you like as well.

Tom Selleck

#44. There was a time I could have been mistaken for Burt Reynolds. I had a moustache and so did he. But he was the number one star in the world, so there wasn't really much confusion.

Tom Selleck

#45. You know I grew up watching the TV series The Rifleman.

Tom Selleck

#46. Stand up and pledge with me: A government of the United States is not on the auction block. And America is not for sale!

Tom Selleck

#47. Which to this day is a source of enormous guilt, because I left with three classes to go in the business school to sign a contract with 20th Century Fox.

Tom Selleck

#48. I hate going to the gym, so sweating outdoors sure beats sitting on a stationary bike staring at my navel.

Tom Selleck

#49. My first priority is time with my family.

Tom Selleck

#50. Son, never throw a punch at a redwood.

Tom Selleck

#51. I had a strong, really good upbringing, not puritanical.

Tom Selleck

#52. Do you like my suit? I think this is an amazing suit, don't you think?

Tom Selleck

#53. I haven't gotten fired from many jobs, but you finish a job and nine times out of ten you're just unemployed and you don't know where the next one is. And that does get old. It's stressful.

Tom Selleck

#54. Having had that experience ... I think, what modern culture wants to see is the relationship with the woman. I don't think you can tell a story on film nowadays where the woman simply is there for the man when he decides to settle down.

Tom Selleck

#55. The two things that will defeat a lot of young actors are fear of failure and lack of preparation. With acting, I didn't have a problem with either one - but somehow I didn't equate either one of them to the academic world.

Tom Selleck

#56. Television's grown up a lot. It's a little more adult, which I think is a good thing. It allows actors to tell more complex stories. I'm happy to see where it ends up.

Tom Selleck