David Puttnam Quotes

#1. A country that fails to value its teachers, fails to value its future.

David Puttnam

#2. At least in the West, politicians, corporations and media moguls can no longer take for granted their power to control the public discourse - and have it go unchallenged.

David Puttnam

#3. Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.

Doris Lessing

#4. If it's not true, don't say it; if it's not right, don't do it.

David Puttnam

#5. Newspapers and their editors have to become as accountable as the rest of us - they are not 'a special case,' and they have only themselves to blame for having lost the argument for 'exceptionalism' - and with it the right to 'self-regulation.'

David Puttnam

#6. Film and the other creative industries are being transformed by digital technologies.

David Puttnam

#7. Without any doubt at all, teacher quality is the fundamental differentiator. Not just, incidentally, of education, but I would argue, probably the biggest single differentiator of success for the nations of the 21st Century.

David Puttnam

#8. It is all in vain; the torture of the unfulfilled law cannot be overcome.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#9. People don't belong to people. I'm not gonna let anyone put me in a cage.

Truman Capote

#10. What is certain is that plurality and diversity are not, and never can be, a natural 'byproduct' of unregulated market forces.

David Puttnam

#11. I've always sensed what a script should sound like - even before the movie's been made

David Puttnam

#12. In the U.K., the history of regulation, certainly regulation of the media, is one in which, time and again, successive governments lacked the 'bottle' to enforce the powers that were available to them.

David Puttnam

#13. My belief is that no movie, nothing in life, leaves people neutral. You either leave them up or you leave them down.

David Puttnam

#14. There's always a miasma of misinformation emerging from the higher education sector as to which are the 'best' courses to take. My advice would always be to ignore the perceived wisdom and look for the most reliable evidence on the ground.

David Puttnam

#15. At its best, cinema does retain a remarkable ability to speak to people of every age, from every background, and in ways that almost any other art form in popular culture struggles to compete with.

David Puttnam

#16. There is no education system in the world - none at all - that's better than its average teacher.

David Puttnam

#17. Most parliamentarians don't have a clue as regards the challenges or the opportunities the games industry faces.

David Puttnam

#18. For me, I get immense pleasure out of giving. I do what I can. I try and give around 10% of my earnings a year. Some years, I give more, some I give less.

Michael Hintze

#19. As intelligent and responsible filmmakers, working in a free society, we have a duty to ensure that our chosen medium is a force for good. Especially in this ever-more complex and difficult world.

David Puttnam

#20. It wasn't my childhood fantasy to work with Truffaut or be in obscure films. I like Midnight Run better than I like The Bicycle Thief. It was films like Die Hard and Bladerunner that made me want to be an actor.

Ben Affleck

#21. A vital step for the technology sector is to signpost legitimate search options far more clearly and to delete links to sites that promote illegally sourced content.

David Puttnam

#22. Working hard is very important. You're not going to get anywhere without working extremely hard.

George Lucas

#23. The most important thing I think teachers can do for young people is to make them inquiring, is to ensure that they know how to gather information, that they check information and they take their information from a multiplicity of sources.

David Puttnam

#24. So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.

John Keats

#25. I'm not naive enough to pretend that on its own cinema can capture the very soul of significant social and cultural problems.

David Puttnam