Matt Damon Quotes

You will never solve poverty without solving water and sanitation.

Now I feel I have an unspoken deal with the paparazzi: 'I won't do anything publicly interesting if you agree not to follow me.'

I think it's still hard for me to turn down work if it's really good because for so many years I was desperate to get a job and couldn't, so I think it's anathema for me to turn down work if I think it's really good.

I think what's important for kids to know is that your decisions here on earth matter, your behavior matters and how you treat other people matters.

If anybody wanted to photograph my life, they'd get bored in a day.

My wife is my soul mate. I can't imagine being without her.

I'm always cautious about overstepping any boundaries. At the end of the day, it's a director's medium, and if they don't want to hear from me I just step back.

We live in a world, it's very hard for Americans to understand that every 20 seconds a kid dies, a kid under the age of five, right, dies somewhere on the Earth because of lack of access to clean water and sanitation. Every 20 seconds that happens on our planet. It's just very hard for us to relate to.

Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage

If you can't help people, then what is the point of being successful?

It's just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants.

Please find out what you can do to make a difference. Take five minutes to educate yourself on an issue you didn't know about before. Then tell somebody else.

Eventually stardom is going to go away from me. It goes away from everybody and all you have in the end is to be able to look back and like the choices you made.

Now that I have kids, I'm probably more overprotective than I've ever been. My wife's nickname for me is "red alert." I sometimes check just to see if the kids are breathing. But I try not to be a helicopter parent.

I grew up in and the teachers. I think I was very lucky. I think I had a lot of social capital, and so when I found myself in this position of influence, I just - then I started to engage a bit with some of the problems in the world and realize that I could actually have an impact.

All you have in the end is to look back and like the choices you've made.

Bond is part of the system. He's an imperialist and a misogynist, and he laughs at killing people, and he sits there slugging martinis. It'll never be the same thing as this, because Bourne is a guy who is against the establishment, who is paranoid and on the run. I just think fundamentally they're just very different things.

We're here for such a short time. When your great-great-grandkids study history, don't you want them to be proud that you were part of the solution?

Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.

Some people get into this business and they're so afraid to lose anything. They try to protect their position like clinging to a beachhead. These Actor s end up making really safe choices. I never wanted to go that route. If I go down, I'm going down swinging. I know that's the way Heath Ledger feels and Ben Affleck feels the same way, too. We want to take the big swings.

Clean water is only as far away as the nearest tap, and there are taps everywhere. There's a faucet everywhere. But the reality is, the water in our toilets is cleaner than the water that most people are drinking.

If you work at something, you get better at it.

[Americans] can't understand that the water in our toilet is cleaner than 880 million have access to.

It's better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.

If I had a bucket list, I'd say raising my four girls to be strong, good women would be No. 1.

My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor.

I’ll play Pretty Pretty Princess with you if you just let me watch a little bit of March Madness.

Some people just see the glory and they don't want to know about the story.

I should have done it years ago. It's amazing I didn't even want cigarettes anymore.

I can't think of any more important value to instill in our children than the desire to help others. I feel strongly about setting an example for them. Real problems can be solved by the next generation if we instill in them the right values.

I need to know if she [Sarah Palin] thinks dinosaurs were here four thousand years ago... because she's going to have the nuclear code.

For a lot of actors, our biggest fear is that we're going to start talking about things we don't fully understand and sound like idiots.

Poverty feeds into the clean-water crisis, which contributes to hunger, and so on. There's undeniable interconnectivity among these issues. Just one of these problems can be deadly on its own, but in the most disadvantaged areas there is a perfect storm of problems. And it takes its greatest toll on children.

Part of the American ethos is that you want to leave something better for your kids than you had and I know that my parents felt that way and I know that my grandparents felt that way and everybody worked hard so that their kids had a better chance. I just don't want to be the first generation that doesn't do that.

As a struggling actor, youre not looking for parts that define you; youre just looking for work.

There are people who appear in the magazines and I don't know who they are. I've never seen anything they've done and their careers are over already. They're famous for maybe 10 minutes. Real careers, I think, take a long time to unfold.

Paranoid is what people who are trying to take advantage call you in an effort to get you to drop your guard.

I believe a solid, really strong middle-class is the key to making the country in the best way.

Any moron with a pack of matches can start a fire. Raining down sulfur takes a huge level of endurance. Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer.

I love shooting, when the character is interesting and the script is interesting, but the research beforehand is really fun. The whole process makes me anxious and restless, and I have trouble sleeping, just trying to figure out the character.

I'd had people say, 'You'll enjoy being famous for a week, and you'll never enjoy it again'. But I don't think I had that week. I may have been working and missed that moment.

Most films and directors lose their nerve and want to indicate [emotions] a bit more, to show that their story is clear. I'm not saying that's a good thing; as an actor its anathema to good acting, but to have someone with the confidence to say that should I be utterly natural and minimalist is great.

Right before 'The Bourne Identity' came out, I hadn't been offered a movie in a year.

Life is on the wire. The rest is just waiting.

I found myself getting more publicly shy when the gala events and big crowds started. Some people embrace it. To me, it's not worth enough to risk my private life being public.

Our problem is civil obedience

If we listen to the better angels of our nature, there are creative and good solutions to serious problems.

If your movies don't perform, they just stop calling you.

My heart goes out to the people of the city of Boston. My thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones in such a senseless and heartless way.

The first time I smoked was at home with my mother and stepfather; they were like, If you are going to do this, we'd rather you did this with us.