Mark ruffalo quotes

There was no mistake in us making abortion legal and available on demand. That was what we call progress. Just like it was no mistake that we abolished institutional racism in this country around the same time. The easy thing to do is lay low, but then are we who we say we are? Do we actually stand for anything, if what we do stand for is under attack and we say nothing? There is nothing to be ashamed of here except to allow a radical and recessive group of people to bully and intimidate our mothers and sisters and daughters for exercising their right of choice.

Do theater. Because you'll develop a craft that you'll always have. It'll give you a chance to really learn how to act and you won't go into the world with a few measly tricks that will only carry you so far.

We're warriors, this culture, and we're very puritanical about sex and very embracing about violence and I don't know why that is.

I think of marriage as a garden. You have to tend to it. Respect it, take care of it, feed it. Make sure everyone is getting the right amount of, um, sunlight.

Studio movies are looking more like independent movies and independent movies are looking more like studio movies, and I think cinema is better now because of it.

It's a point of pride that no one would treat me any differently because I'm an actor than if I was a gardener.

A home life where it's so full of so many rigorous ideas about the way things should be, this word "should," I think is absolutely toxic to children. It hurts their personalities, it hurts their points of view in the world, it hurts their ability to be open and caring and curious. An element of allowance in a family, is, I think, really a positive thing.

I try to do the things that speak to me in one way or another, and sometimes I'm even drastic.

I like extremes. I like to change things up and keep from getting complacent or stale.

The idea of selling is a projection that people create about people that is more of a reflection of who they are than what is actually happening in front of them with the artist.

I love acting and I love it in all its different manifestations.

I don't understand how people can take a gentle, loving life and treat it with such cruelty.

Folks should be able to harvest, store, use, or sell their own energy as they see fit. This is not a Democratic nor Republican issue, and if anyone tries to convince you it is, they are being purposely misleading.

My own mother fought to make herself more than a possession; she lived her life as a mother who chose when she would have children, and a wife who could earn a living if she so chose. I want my daughters to enjoy that same choice.

Climate change is the greatest threat to our existence in our short history on this planet. Nobody's going to buy their way out of its effects.

But, the relationships that I see work - As long as they're telling the truth, and saying the things that you don't ever want to have to say to another human being.

Burning natural gas will not save us from climate change. It's the same as burning any other carbon-based fuel.

The true cost of the pollution that is being dumped into the atmosphere and manifests itself in our sick children dealing with asthma or older folks dealing with heart and lung disease from the pollutions created by the burning of these fossil fuels, may not be reflected in the prices of fossil fuels, but that does not mean we aren't paying a high price for them.

Ask people who are close to the natural world: farmers, people who work the land or in some way use the land for their livelihoods. They will tell you what they are seeing isn't so good. They will tell you the changes they have seen in the past twenty years are remarkable in one way or another and unlike anything they had seen before that.

You can tell a lot about a person by what’s on their playlist.

Trying to find the story within the story was hard. Filmmaking is such a reductive process in a strange way and you keep whittling away to what is essential.

Graduates, I'm asking each of you, at some point, to act up, be misbehaved. Buck the system. Fight for what you believe in. This is the time to do it. You're the ones to do it. Your world, is like no other generation, you actually get to create the world that you can imagine.

Nothing anyone says in a bar is true.

I remember riding my bike down the boardwalk with nowhere to go and looking at the girls. It was really innocent.

Whoever controls your energy controls your destiny. 100 percent renewable energy is 100 percent American.

I became an actor so I didn't have to be myself.

My dad [...] sent me a text saying, 'You know who you should play? Columbo. That's your Academy Award.'

People say funny things all the time during really serious moments in life.

We are living in revolutionary times. The good news is we have everything we need to leave fossil fuels in the ground. All we need is for you to join the rest of the world to bring about a cleaner, more stable, and peaceful future.

We'll engage in pretty extreme violence in the world but, you know, the one thing that comes to humans as easily as eating or breathing or sleeping, is sex.

It is a fact that many of the wars and conflicts happening all over the world are aggravated or fought strictly for geopolitical fossil fuel energy interests, and many of the world's most dangerous regimes are funded by fossil fuel dollars.

I'd never seen anyone do a rebuttal review to some of the reviews.

I always like having kid energy around. I think it's good for a movie, even when you're doing dramatic stuff.

Commercials that are geared towards kids. I think they should just, like, wipe them out.

I didn't really have any interest in producing anything.

Actors, you kind of have these ebbs and flows. These moments where you're in your glory - where you're really cracking - and moments where you're not.

We're clearly coming to the end of the fossil fuel era. We have the technology to shift to renewable energy, we have the will of the people. The only thing that's keeping us back is the fossil fuel industry's hold on our political system. That's what we need to change.

We are turning our grief into winnable actions.

People who are slavish to a fantasy ideology become very lonely in the world. It's very alienating and sometimes reality is very threatening to this magical way of thinking. On the other hand, if it is a politician or leader that chooses for whatever reason to remain in this state of magical thinking, then they should be called out for it strongly and repeatedly.

My kids get very upset with me when I leave to do film work, but they have a lot of patience with me when I leave to do environmental work.

There's a level of trust that you have to have with somebody.

Yeah, there's a tendency to get pigeonholed in Hollywood.

Electrify your life! With heating and cooling, cooking and travel, and you will be doing a lot to help the future of this planet. There is no need to burn anything anymore.

A leader in America or anyone who says they truly care about this nation without taking some kind of action is either a liar or insane. In either case, they are unfit to lead.

I enjoyed growing up part of my life in Virginia Beach. We had the ocean and the beach and a beautiful landscape.

I had to work on a Marlin boat, like gutting fish, like as the bait boy.

Even if my movies weren't big blockbusters, directors generally liked me, so they would fight for me.

I ran to my marriage, I was happily ready to take on marriage.

The problem to me is violence. It's not cool to kill somebody or hurt people.

People are like, 'How does Julianne Moore look naked?' I don't know. She was pressed up against me the whole time. I couldn't look at her.

"What is normal?" really becomes the question. What is normal, and how are we fooled into thinking it's something other than what we're doing at any given time. Every family has either a drug addict or an alcoholic or some sort of dysfunction that the family is dealing with. And I think the grace of this family is that they actually could be that far out there but also be forgiving, and be really human, and be human in front of each other without much shame.

I still feel like I'm trying to make it. It's hard to shed the struggling actor thing.

When you're trying to do character work that's different from what people expect from you, you're sort of in territory that is uncharted, and you don't know how it's playing all the time.

I don't want to feel like I'm stuck doing one-stock performances.

The technology is available to us today to begin the transition to 100 percent renewable energy. What is keeping us from making that transition is nothing more than misinformation, a lack of knowledge by most people of what is available, and an unwillingness on the part of many of our politicians for either ideological slavishness or something more self-serving, like major campaign contributions from the oil and gas corporations or from utilities who enjoy the monopoly they have on our energy systems.

There's a misperception about actors that we actually choose the roles we end up doing - it's more that we're chosen for them.

I became really aware that when you're making a movie, you're making it three times. You're making it when you're writing it. You're making it when you're shooting it. And then you're remaking it again when you're editing it.

Artists have always been the front line; that's part of our responsibility. But a lot of the big actors come out, they get slammed, and then they retreat.

You reminded me of a quote that my acting teacher Stella Adler wrote in her book ['The Art of Acting'], which I asked her to sign: "The young actor feels some greatness inside themselves that they want to give back to the world." That resonated with me, but I didn't really understand what she was talking about until much later, in the way you surmised that my struggle to become an actor was from being this kind of introverted young boy.

That's my secret Cap: I'm always angry.

I don't know, one out of every two marriages ends up in divorce so there's a lot of great people out there who people aren't happy with.

My first cut was three hours and 17 minutes. And then I just became very shrewd about the editing.

It is a fact that our fresh water is becoming more scarce and that the new ways we are getting energy in America - fracking, mountaintop removal, cyclic steam extraction, deep-sea drilling - all pollute water, pollute the air, and pollute our soil and food.

Tom [McCarthy] said to me, "Buddy, you got an Oscar nomination through that haircut! That's the real feat, man."

It's easy to do nothing, but your heart breaks a little more every time you do.

I guess the biggest lesson would be to have faith in that little part of yourself that knows what it's doing, knows what it wants, knows what you should be doing, even when all the clamour around you is telling you something else. That's the part that you want to keep alive and that's the part that people want to see when they see you on the screen.

When you have to fight for the things you love, you have to measure the value of those things in ways you may not in any other way.

People use the Method as a shield; it shields them from being vulnerable. I hear all these young actors who are like, 'I'm Method, I'm gonna go live in the house, you know, I totally get it, I've done it, I've been there', but one thing I know is it kills spontaneity.

As an actor, I started using dreams more, which is not mystical or anything like that. I just found that I've been using that as a tool to give me another point of view towards the work. It's often surprising but really helpful.

I think we've all been kind of... everyone's been hurt, everyone's felt loss, everyone has exultation, everyone has a need to be loved, or to have lost love, so when you play a character, you're pulling out those little threads and turning them up a bit.

Some of my favorite scenes aren't in the movie. Because you, at some point, realize that your responsibility as director is purely to the story. It's not to your pleasure.

The working-class folks and the poor, and those normal people living their lives out in the world without the glitter and the fanfare. There is a lot to learn from them.

It is a fact that, up to seven million people a year are dying from fossil fuel pollution. It is a fact that we are already dealing with the catastrophe of climate change in places like California, where people have been burnt out of their homes and where they are dealing with record droughts.

It is a fact that, today, up to seven million people a year are dying from fossil fuel pollution.

Renewable energy fits well into the conservative mindset by allowing competition into the energy markets so that consumers have choice. The system as it is, with big utilities monopolizing the energy playing field or fossil fuel energy being given massive subsidies so that they are on a kind of corporate welfare, is the antithesis of conservative principles.

You value the thing you are fighting for, but then you learn to value the time it takes to do it and the time you have off. Both of which are precious.

I like to disappear in the parts I play.

That's what I love about music...all these banalities suddenly turn into these beautiful, effervescent pearls.

Climate change is not going away. It will only get more extreme and more dangerous with time. There is no hiding from it. Yes, those living in poverty today will be hit first and the hardest, but we are all going to feel it and see it. We already are.

For some reason, my whole life has been, 'You can't do this, you can't do that.

The fact that I can make a living and support three kids and my wife doing what I love to do... who does that? That's golden. It's a very privileged thing.

I know what it's like to have these big multinational corporations invade your land and promise jobs and promise it's gonna be safe, and then you see the consequences.

After the brain tumor happened, I realized I love acting, I've always loved it, I may never get a chance to do it again.

That was an interesting aspect: to go to war with the Church to fight for the very thing that the Church was meant to give to people.

By electrifying our lives, we reduce our energy costs by 39 percent, which is a huge savings in itself.

I have a carpool with a corrections officer and a construction worker. My kids get to see that we're not segregated based on wealth or standing. It's very cool.

I have a bag full of stuff that I give to people when they come to my house.

Each role, I feel like takes you on a different journey based on who that character is.

When you're on the road, you sort of go crazy and being away from your family you get stir-crazy and lonely, so I try to keep myself involved as much as possible.

But in my heart of hearts, this is the kind of thing... this is what everyone is struggling with in their lives - relationships and family. To me, it's always an interesting area to mine. I'm drawn to it.

I got into acting because I wanted to act and I love acting. That's my true north: to be creative and to be challenged in what I love to do.

When people sit across from people - gay, straight, whatever - and they talk, they find out that people they may have been demonizing for their lifetime aren't the demons we've expected them to be.

Literally, I think I've quit acting three or four times, only for a few days. Maybe for a few weeks.

I think people ought to realize that if you're doing investigative reporting, you're putting something on your newspaper or on your website that no one can get anywhere else, and theoretically at least, that should make people subscribe.

I come from the theatre where there are no boundaries to the style you're doing; you're doing Molière, then you're doing Chekhov and then you're doing Arthur Miller in a season and no-one bats an eye.

I like to think the movies that I've picked have something worthwhile to say. Something relevant.

My belief about acting in one foot on a banana peel and the other one in the grave.

It really is the relationship you have with your self that presents the key to the “kingdom”, so to speak... Fighting is good, but not when it is fighting yourself. Changing the world is good but first one has to start inside and concurrently make that place right. The strife and the ugliness in the world is the outward manifestation of this troubled relationship we have within on a whole.

I am grateful to the fossil fuel industry for bringing us the concentrated carbon that took us through the Industrial Revolution and through the technological revolution and brought us to the gateway of the renewable energy revolution, or what I call the sunlight revolution. But that is where we must part ways. It's the natural order.

I didn't like the distance between my family and myself that I was experiencing from having to work all the time.

No great advancement has ever been kept at bay because of ideology, nor greed. Eventually progress moves us forward.

I grew up on Lake Michigan during the PCB explosion, and I remember seeing the sick, dead fish with tumors, the weird deformed seagulls, the scum and the filth floating. We couldn't go swimming.

I do readings at the public library. I just did a benefit scene night for my old acting teacher.

We only gain collectively by acting now. We gain by one day not having to pay a thing for fuel. We gain by having cleaner air, water, and food so that we are healthier and our health care costs come down. We gain by deflating the global fossil fuel markets that drive much of the conflict around the world.

Certainly, it's very easy to fall in love with cash. If you're going to make all your decisions based on cash, you're going to have a pretty naffy career.

I've just been more interested in doing film right now and I don't want to go away from my family for six months, which was what I would have had to have done if I did the play on Broadway.

I come from a traditional theater background.

And my mother caught wind of this. She never had really tried to guide my career or really had any say in my life as an adult, but this was the one time she said she would never speak to me again if I quit acting.

As an actor, you want to remain vulnerable. You don't want to always have all the answers and you want to be fine doing things in the moment with your fellow actors.

I live a bourgeois life.

Today, wind is the cheapest energy in America; solar is not far behind. In time, fossil fuels will only get more and more expensive.

Love conquers all - love is the grace that transcends any kind of injustice in the end.

There is nothing a good long walk can't help work out.

The biggest industry hoax is that the United States can't move to renewable energy now. It's a lie.

The abundance that is offered to us by leaving behind the fossil fuel paradigm is very promising for the world and the people of the world. We will have cleaner air, water, and food; we will have more resources to share with our people. There will be more economic freedom because people will be able to harvest their own energy.

Most great parts for guys in wheelchairs tend to go to actors who walk.

I haven't had such an overwhelmingly positive response as I have from The Normal Heart directly to me. And it's a blessing. If this is it, if I have a piano dropped on me tomorrow, then I would go down thinking, 'You know what, I did okay as far as my career goes, because that's a gift. That's rare.'

There are wonderful low-interest loans you can take out to own your own solar and cut your energy bills down drastically. You can retrofit your home to become more energy efficient with on-bill financing, where the upgrades you make pay for themselves with the energy savings you generate. Ten years ago, there were only a few electric vehicles on the market, and today there are many, many more coming, and with each year the cost of them comes down.

No great undertaking ever looks like it's winnable. That only comes later and only if you are lucky and are willing to fight and have a group of folks around you that are willing to do the same thing, too.

Also, stick around. Don't lose your heart, just keep going, keep at it.

I'm very nervous in the beginning and then I get in there and start doing my work and I feel more comfortable.

Activists must be admired for the sacrifices they are willing to make for those things they hold dear. I would say those kinds of ways of looking at life enrich the value of life, and that is a good thing.