Top 100 Leading Men Quotes
#1. As far as the lack of hits goes, I think perhaps it's because I've played a lot of different roles and have not created a persona that the public can latch on to. I have played everything from psychopathic killers to romantic leading men, and in picking such diverse roles I have avoided typecasting.
Jeff Bridges
#2. My hopes and aspirations haven't changed since I started in this business. They've been to be able to play drama, to be able to play comedy, to be able to play leading men, and to be able to play character roles. I have no other aspirations in this regard.
Rob Lowe
#3. I've worked with leading men so worried about losing their charm that they were always winking to the audience.
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
#4. When I was growing up, it was Clint Eastwood, it was Harrison Ford and Steve McQueen - these guys were tough. They were leading men, but they were also tough and physical.
Joe Manganiello
#5. I've got a range as an actor! There was a time I played dramatic leading men.
Charles Dance
#6. All the roles I play, I don't see any of my roles in films that they're typically leading men.
Steve Buscemi
#7. Movies are full of leading men, most of whom aren't working. It's much harder to find a good villain.
Lee Van Cleef
#8. The depth of John Candy's talent did surprise me. He was one of my all-time favorite leading men.
Maureen O'Hara
#9. Who could have asked for anything better? I was cast in movies with great actors, with great leading men.
Julie Adams
#10. Are there any leading men in your life?"
"Several, but they're all fictional.
Catherine Lowell
#11. Jon Snow had dreamed of leading men to glory just as King Daeron had, of growing up to be a conqueror. Now he was a man grown and the Wall was his, yet all he had were doubts. He could not even seem to conquer those.
George R R Martin
#12. I really have been so, so blessed with all my leading men.
Laura Osnes
#13. Character actors aren't a brand in the same way that high-profile leading men are.
Alfred Molina
#14. I want to play everything. I want to be like Christian Bale: I want to be able to be Batman and then, like, his character in 'The Fighter.' That is what is so impressive about really good actors, that they can be character actors and leading men at the same time.
Ansel Elgort
#15. My parents thought it was nice to develop my imagination, but they never seriously thought that anything would ever come of it. They said that I couldn't be an actress because I would be taller than all my leading men, so I thought I would be a writer instead.
Nicole Kidman
#16. I've been pretty lucky in the leading men department.
Cate Blanchett
#17. I was a stage actor for 20 years or so; I was leading men in classical things. 'Shakespeare,' you know. And now, I never play leading men. I'm that kamikaze comic that comes from the left, turns the table over, and leaves, or the hyper-intelligent yuppie scumbag if it's a drama.
John Michael Higgins
#18. I look at leading men because that's ultimately what I'm aspiring to do. But I also look at character actors and people that I'm just in awe by, just because I can relate to it.
Shemar Moore
#19. It's the unusual leading man. Most of the Hollywood leading men are powerful and capable and strong, heroes. He has this vulnerability, he's fragile, he struggles to find a way to live from day to day that we can identify with, that we can understand.
Mark Rydell
#20. Sometimes the best parts are the leading men. But the little parts can be similarly gratifying.
Theo James
#21. Until I came along all the leading men
were handsome, but luckily they wrote a
lot of stories about the fellow next door.
Gary Cooper
#22. There's a million leading men on TV today that are perfectly great, and their jobs are fantastic. But it's not as interesting to me when every fight they win, every case they solve, every girl they get.
Geoff Stults
#23. Oh I had crushes on all my leading men, I think. Oh, you know who I really had fun with? In this movie 'Mother, Jugs & Speed,' I really liked working with Harvey Keitel.
Raquel Welch
#24. I've always seen actresses who constantly date their leading men or somebody they co-star with, and I've been the opposite. Once I act with you, I feel like you're my brother.
Eva Longoria
#25. A handful of older, romantic leading men, like Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Redford are still landing parts.
Charles Dance
#27. The Bible is a guidebook, leading men [and women] to God in a personal faith. Like a map or guidebook, it will show you the way, but you must take it one step at a time.
Billy Graham
#28. In my opinion, the BBC are one of the best producers of drama in the world, and it made me incredibly happy to get the opportunity to be one of the leading men in one of their productions.
Luke Pasqualino
#29. The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.
Bertrand Russell
#30. Even now, there are young actors who want careers as romantic leading men, and the best thing is not to reveal you're gay.
Ian McKellen
#31. I'm lucky to have a job doing something I really love to do, and I'm happy to accept the pressures of relentless deadlines or reader expectations as necessary evils. It's probably not as stressful as mining coal or leading men into battle.
Grant Morrison
#32. What is reprehensible is that while leading good lives themselves and abhorring those of wicked men, some, fearing to offend, shut their eyes to evil deeds instead of condemning them and pointing out their malice.
Saint Augustine
#33. Don't fall in love with your leading man. Of course, that's just what I did.
Claire Trevor
#34. Ladies and gentlemen, if some of the leading artists in a civilization see a man urinating in another man's mouth and see composition and lighting and do not see their civilization being pissed upon, we are in trouble.
Dennis Prager
#35. In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other prohibiting him from thinking at all.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#36. PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom - and of whom only - it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.
Ambrose Bierce
#37. The greatest kindness one can render to any man is leading him to truth.
Saint Augustine
#38. I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.
Antonin Artaud
#39. Leading man seems to quite often be an idealized figure.
James McAvoy
#40. I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.
Charles Darwin
#41. But I would reinvent myself if I could. As a sexy leading man! We all would like that, but I don't know how to.
Dustin Hoffman
#42. An era that I specifically like is sort of late 50's, early 60's. I guess mid 50's too. I like these types of films that deal with post WWII America and this more complex leading man that kind of emerges from that.
Alden Ehrenreich
#43. For an actor to be working at all is a kind of miracle, because most actors aren't. So it's just silly for a working actor to say, 'Oh, I don't care if anybody knows I'm gay' especially if you're a leading man. Personally, I wouldn't advise a gay leading man-type actor to come out,
Richard Chamberlain
#44. I just pick the best roles that are left over, and they usually aren't the heterosexual, leading-man, non-drug-addict parts. And once you get into doing them, people know you do them.
Peter Sarsgaard
#45. But man's eyes are blind through sin, and he can discern no part of God's truth till the Spirit opens them. Inner illumination, leading directly as it does to a deep, inescapable conviction, is thus fundamental to the Spirit's work as a teacher.
J.I. Packer
#46. Vanity costs money, labor, horses, men, women, health and peace, and is still nothing at last,
a long way leading nowhere.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#47. I adopted the assumption of many of my generation that women were intellectually inferior to men, that we were not capable of governing, leading, managing anything but our homes and our children.
Katharine Graham
#48. You have to be doing something you enjoy. That is a definition of happiness: Complete use of one's faculties along lines leading to excellence in a life affording them scope. It applies to women as well as to men. We can't all reach it, but we can try to reach it to some degree.
Jackie Kennedy
#49. Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its temper, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self, and benevolence to men.
Jonathan Edwards
#50. A race or nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type ... The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever higher national and racial forms is thus a process of liberation [leading to] an ideal future.
Rudolf Steiner
#51. I haven't aged into a character actor. I'm an old leading man.
Stewart Granger
#52. In China, lung cancer is already a leading cause of death attributable to smoking in men.
Siddhartha Mukherjee
#53. Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.
Winston S. Churchill
#54. That this works, a woman leading five men, is a marvel.
Lindsay Buroker
#55. I want to be a man's man-not a kid actor or a glitzy pop star but a no-bullshit leading man.
Scott Eastwood
#56. Yes, we gave her drugs - we wanted to free her from those sinister clinics up in the hills, from those men in white coats who know best. Bibi needed to soar over our heads, dreaming her amphetamine dreams, coming off the beach in the evening and leading everyone into the cocaine night.
J.G. Ballard
#57. The moment a man questions the meaning and value of life, he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence; by asking this question one is merely admitting to a store of unsatisfied libido to which something else must have happened, a kind of fermentation leading to sadness and depression.
Sigmund Freud
#58. The State of Israel has faced obstacles and challenges to its very survival, with conventional military attacks leading the way to suicide bombers who have killed innocent Israeli men, women, and children.
Jerry Costello
#59. With few exceptions, the leading women in philanthropy, notably Melinda Gates, are the wives or daughters of rich and powerful men.
Kavita Ramdas
#60. For the three years I lived in New York leading up to moving out to Los Angeles for 'Mad Men,' I was an office temp at Ernst & Young in Times Square. That's about as desk-jobby as it can get. There was a lot of, 'Go two floors up and make a copy of this and then bring it to me.'
Rich Sommer
#61. The longing for peace is rooted in the hearts of all men. But the striving, which at present has become so insistent, cannot lay claim to such an ambition as leading the way to eternal peace, or solving all disputes among nations.
Alva Myrdal
#62. I was born a character actor. I was never really a leading man type.
Burgess Meredith
#63. This is essentially a people's contest ... whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men - to lift artificial weights from all shoulders - to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all - to afford all, an unfettered start and a fair chance, in the race of life.
Abraham Lincoln
#64. The art of leading, in operations large or small, is the art of dealing with humanity, of working diligently on behalf of men, of being sympathetic with them, but equally, of insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems.
Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall
#65. Numbers have a way of taking a man by the hand and leading him down the path of reason.
Pythagoras
#66. And on my conscience," he said, "I will for ever bear the weight of all those men who died in a hopeless cause. Two thousand against five thousand? How can 1 justify leading so few against so many?"
"You know how."
"So I can be king?"
"So that we are not slaves in our own land," I said.
Bernard Cornwell
#67. Patience is important for a man, vital for a leader
James Clavell
#68. Muhammad had close links with three of the leading hanifs of Mecca. 'Ubaydallah ibn Jahsh was his cousin and Waraqah ibn Nawfal was a cousin of Khadijah: both these men became Christians.
Karen Armstrong
#69. In a democracy such as ours the leading minds seldom achieve a place of permanent influence. And the men who sit in Congress or even in the White House are usually not our leading minds. They are not the thinkers. Still less have they time for reflection ...
Pearl S. Buck
#70. Most roads lead men homewards, My road leads me forth
John Masefield
#71. The bands were everywhere, close and faraway, a blend of discordant noise. He passed close to one now, a half-dozen drummers pounding away, a sergeant leading them in a rhythm that was no rhythm at all, and behind, men with fifes, squealing out something that had no resemblance to a song.
Jeff Shaara
#72. The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter, but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer.
John Jay Chapman
#73. The men of England,- the men, I mean, of light and leading in England.
Edmund Burke
#74. I think the whole thing is kind of sad, honestly, in the same way that our civilization - particularly the consumers of pop culture - has grown so used to an emasculated, bare-chested leading man that something like simply growing a mustache can impress people.
Nick Offerman
#75. It's often women who are writing leading roles for women. Most of the stuff that comes my way is not actually about women. I'm just asked to be a supporting player in a story about a man, and I, frankly, was not interested in doing that.
Carrie Coon
#76. Leading a family is the hardest job a man can ever have.
Dave Ramsey
#77. Oh, he was ever a leading spirit in controversies," Bernard said. "I well remember his sentiments. He believed that men, when confronted with a vast plenitude of anything, feel an irresistible urge to take it all, then to smash and destroy what they cannot use." (4th Estate, London, 2016, p. 211.)
Annie Proulx
#78. What she was doing was, she was letting it be his idea. She was walking him along, holding his hand tightly enough to lead him, loosely enough for him to be unaware of it. She was an absolute natural. Or maybe all women could do that to all men, if they wanted to.
Ben H. Winters
#79. You know, years ago John Calhoun said that West Point men would lead great armies ... He never thought they'd be leading them against each other. Well, if we have to meet like that, I'd rather we never meet again.
Philibert Orry
#80. Silently, she wondered whether this was the same desperation, the same impotence that grips many men by their shirts, their T-shirts, their work vests, gripping them equally hard, shaking them and leading them to drink,to beating or the noose. Was this it?
Panashe Chigumadzi
#81. I don't look like a leading man, whatever they look like. It's changing a little.
James Cromwell
#82. Traditionally, women have a lot of different roles in society. It is very difficult to balance all these roles and at the same time to compete with men. A leading, successful woman has to put in much bigger efforts to be more competent and faster, more dynamic and organized, than a successful man.
Dalia Grybauskaite
#83. Perspective starts from one viewpoint and never gets away from it. But the viewpoint is quite unimportant. It is though someone were to draw profiles all his life, leading people to think that a man has only one eye ...
Georges Braque
#84. I'm a character actor. Nobody's ever seemed to think of me as a leading man. I'm 6'6'. I've got a big nose. I'm gangly. I've got crooked teeth. That's certainly not Brad Pitt. I'm still around and alive, so if they need older guys, I guess they're thinking of me.
James Cromwell
#85. I'm hesitant to do leading man character roles because I think they can be a little boring in terms of needing to be the everyman who navigates the amazing stuff around them.
Alexander Koch
#86. Yahweh - a jealous god, who would hold men to himself and who turned mankind away from the Tree of Immortality, instead of leading us to it. Such a god in the Orient would be regarded as a deluding idol.
Joseph Campbell
#87. It's really hard to get stories made that are about women. Not just women being obsessed with men, or supporting men. And it's really hard to get men to be a part of films that are about women in a leading role. I'm really interested in how we can adjust that.
Olivia Wilde
#88. A tall young man sped swiftly up the wide stone steps leading to the doorway of a mansion in one of Chicago's most fashionable avenues.
George Barr McCutcheon
#89. Most men had rather say a smart thing than do a good one. John P. Kotter, Leading Change.
Josh Billings
#90. When one man becomes more important than the country he's supposed to be leading, this will always create a problem.
Martina Navratilova
#91. What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle - the sheet anchor of American republicanism.
Abraham Lincoln
#92. We must admit that it is quite common that people do have affairs with their leading ladies and men.
William H. Macy
#93. While the mass of men went on leading thoroughly unexamined lives of monstrous consumption, Augustus Waters examined the collection of the Rijksmuseum from afar.
John Green
#94. Never take advice about never taking advice. That is an old vice of men - to dish it out without being able to take it - the blind leading the blind into more blindness.
Criss Jami
#95. New York is the biggest mouth in the world. It appears to be prime example of the herd instinct, leading the universal urban conspiracy to beguile man from his birthright (the good ground), to hang him by his eyebrows from skyhooks above hard pavement, to crucify him, sell him, or be sold by him.
Frank Lloyd Wright
#96. The women I know with strong personalities, the ones who might have become generals or the heads of companies if they were men, become teachers. Teaching is a calling, too. And I've always thought that teachers in their way are holy
angles leading their flocks out of the darkness.
Jeannette Walls
#98. Still, he felt lonely and fell into the trap of pretending to prefer being alone, thus leading to further loneliness in a vicious circle of solitude that young men of a certain temperament build for themselves and then inhabit. But
E.E. Knight
#99. In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#100. It gives a man character as a poet to have a daily contact with a job. I doubt whether I've lost a thing by leading an exceedingly regular and disciplined life.
Wallace Stevens
