Walter Slezak Quotes

Walter Slezak was an Austrian-born character actor and singer who appeared in German films before migrating to the US in 1930 and featuring in numerous Hollywood productions.Slezak often portrayed villains or thugs, most notably the German U-boat captain in Alfred Hitchcock's film Lifeboat , but occasionally he got to play lighter roles, as in The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and as a wandering gypsy in The Inspector General . He also played a cheerfully corrupt and philosophical private detective in the film noir Born to Kill and appeared as Squire Trelawney in Treasure Island . Wikipedia  

✵ 3. May 1902 – 21. April 1983
Walter Slezak photo
Walter Slezak: 10   quotes 0   likes

Famous Walter Slezak Quotes

“Spending money you don't have for things you don't need to impress people you don't like.”

Quoted as "Actor Walter Slezak's version of "keeping up with the Joneses"": in LOOK magazine, Vol. 21 number 14 (July 9, 1957) p. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=-NERAQAAMAAJ&q=%22impress+people%22, in LOOK's permanent category of quotes "WHAT THEY ARE SAYING".
Already in 1905 W.T. O'Connor had stated that advertising was "The gentle art of persuading the public to believe that they want something they don't need" in "Advertising Definitions", in Ad Sense, Vol. 19, No. 2 (August 1905), p. 121 http://books.google.com/books?id=zPRKAAAAYAAJ&q=%22W.+T.+O%27CONNOR%22, and in 1931 one finds Will Rogers being quoted with advertising "as something that makes you spend money you haven't got for things you don't want." But this complete statement with the finale "to impress people you don't like" seems to have originated with Slezak. However, Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/04/21/impress/ instead traces the quotation back to American humorist Robert Quillen, who wrote in 1928: "Americanism: Using money you haven't earned to buy things you don't need to impress people you don't like."

“You have to work years in hit shows to make people sick and tired of you, but you can accomplish this in a few weeks on television.”

As quoted in Return of the Portable Curmudgeon (1995), edited by Jon Winokur, p. 290

“In that wonderful musical show Knickerbocker Holiday Maxwell Anderson defined the outstanding characteristics of an American as "one who refuses to take orders!"
I think that I qualified for that, my chosen nationality, at an early age.”

Source: What Time's the Next Swan? (1962), Ch. 1, p. 3
Context: In that wonderful musical show Knickerbocker Holiday Maxwell Anderson defined the outstanding characteristics of an American as "one who refuses to take orders!"
I think that I qualified for that, my chosen nationality, at an early age. As far back as I can remember, an expressly given order triggered instant defiance. My little mind started functioning like an IBM machine; signals flashed in my resistance center, lights flickered around my resentment glands, bell and buzzer alerted all the cunning of a five-year-old.
Strategy and tactics went to work, not to rest till they had circumvented or defied that specific order.
I don't know if that character trait was deplorable or laudable; I only know that I have never been able to lose it. And I am extremely grateful that I was too young to serve in the First World War and too old for the Second; I surely would have been court-martialed for insubordination, and expired in front of a firing squad.
Even today, at my ripe old age, if someone suggests I do something and this suggestion is tinged with an excessive amount of authority, I immediately turn into a bristling fortress of resistance.

“After America had entered the war in December 1941 all postal service with Germany and Austria was stopped. But Papa had faithfully kept on writing to me, a ten-page letter nearly every week.”

On reading letters his father had written him during the years of World War II, after his father's death, p. 226
What Time's the Next Swan? (1962)
Context: After America had entered the war in December 1941 all postal service with Germany and Austria was stopped. But Papa had faithfully kept on writing to me, a ten-page letter nearly every week. They were never mailed and I found them, neatly bundled, sealed and addressed to me. … And now, on the plane, winging back home, I began to read his letters. They are remarkable documents. It's the whole war, as seen from the other side, through the eyes of a man who detested the fascist system, who hated the Nazis with a white fury. In the midst of the astonishing German victories in the early part of the war he was firmly convinced that Hitler MUST and WOULD lose. He dreaded communism, and all his predictions have come true. He told of all the spying that went on, the denunciations to the Gestapo, the sudden disappearances of innocent people, of the daily new edicts and restrictions, of confiscations that were nothing but robberies, arrests, and executions; how every crime committed was draped in the mantilla of legality.
His great perception, intelligence, decency, his wonderful humanity, his love of music and above all his worshipful adoration for his Elsa — through every page they shimmered with luminescent radiance.

“He told of all the spying that went on, the denunciations to the Gestapo, the sudden disappearances of innocent people, of the daily new edicts and restrictions, of confiscations that were nothing but robberies, arrests, and executions; how every crime committed was draped in the mantilla of legality.”

On reading letters his father had written him during the years of World War II, after his father's death, p. 226
What Time's the Next Swan? (1962)
Context: After America had entered the war in December 1941 all postal service with Germany and Austria was stopped. But Papa had faithfully kept on writing to me, a ten-page letter nearly every week. They were never mailed and I found them, neatly bundled, sealed and addressed to me. … And now, on the plane, winging back home, I began to read his letters. They are remarkable documents. It's the whole war, as seen from the other side, through the eyes of a man who detested the fascist system, who hated the Nazis with a white fury. In the midst of the astonishing German victories in the early part of the war he was firmly convinced that Hitler MUST and WOULD lose. He dreaded communism, and all his predictions have come true. He told of all the spying that went on, the denunciations to the Gestapo, the sudden disappearances of innocent people, of the daily new edicts and restrictions, of confiscations that were nothing but robberies, arrests, and executions; how every crime committed was draped in the mantilla of legality.
His great perception, intelligence, decency, his wonderful humanity, his love of music and above all his worshipful adoration for his Elsa — through every page they shimmered with luminescent radiance.

Walter Slezak Quotes

“I don't know if that character trait was deplorable or laudable; I only know that I have never been able to lose it.”

Source: What Time's the Next Swan? (1962), Ch. 1, p. 3
Context: In that wonderful musical show Knickerbocker Holiday Maxwell Anderson defined the outstanding characteristics of an American as "one who refuses to take orders!"
I think that I qualified for that, my chosen nationality, at an early age. As far back as I can remember, an expressly given order triggered instant defiance. My little mind started functioning like an IBM machine; signals flashed in my resistance center, lights flickered around my resentment glands, bell and buzzer alerted all the cunning of a five-year-old.
Strategy and tactics went to work, not to rest till they had circumvented or defied that specific order.
I don't know if that character trait was deplorable or laudable; I only know that I have never been able to lose it. And I am extremely grateful that I was too young to serve in the First World War and too old for the Second; I surely would have been court-martialed for insubordination, and expired in front of a firing squad.
Even today, at my ripe old age, if someone suggests I do something and this suggestion is tinged with an excessive amount of authority, I immediately turn into a bristling fortress of resistance.

“I never lie unless it is absolutely necessary. Or convenient.”

Source: What Time's the Next Swan? (1962), Ch. 1, p. 8

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