The best Quotes by Tom Hanks

There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.

At the end of the day it's got to be a good movie, it's got to be a funny movie, and it's got to make people think, 'Hey, I couldn't have spent my time any better.'

Truth is, I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour.

Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.

You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it's like to be up there amongst the stars. And I always look up at the moon and see it as the single most romantic place within the cosmos.

It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.

Dear God, make me a bird, so I can fly far - far far away from here.

I am not a smart man, but I know what love is.

I don't remember being born. I don't recall what I got for my first Christmas and I don't know when I went on my first outdoor picnic. But, I do remember the first time I heard the sweetest voice in the wide world.

Momma says, "stupid is as stupid does."

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.

If you was to put me and this here sniper rifle anywhere up to and including one mile of Adolf Hitler with a clear line of sight, sir - pack your bags, fellas, war's over.

You want to leave? You want to go off and fight the war? All right. All right. I won't stop you. I'll even put in the paperwork. I just know that every man I kill the farther away from home I feel.

He better be worth it. He better go home and cure a disease, or invent a longer-lasting light bulb.

Actually, the trick to falling asleep is trying to stay awake.

War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man.

I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully. Abraham Lincoln.

My dear Mrs Ryan: It's with the most profound sense of joy that I write to inform you your son, Private James Ryan, is well and, at this very moment, on his way home from European battlefields. Reports from the front indicate James did his duty in combat with great courage and steadfast dedication, even after he was informed of the tragic loss your family has suffered in this great campaign to rid the world of tyranny and oppresion. I take great pleasure in joining the Secretary of War, the men and women of the U.S. Army, and the citizens of a grateful nation in wishing you good health and many years of happiness with James at your side.

Annie Reed: "Now that was when people KNEW how to be in love. They knew it! Time, distance... nothing could separate them because they knew. It was right. It was real. It was...-"
Becky: "A movie! That's your problem! You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie."

Annie, when you're attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match.

Destiny is something we've invented because we can't stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental.

Donovan: "You don't seem alarmed."
Abel: "Would it help?"

We have to have the conversations our governments can't.

The boss isn't always right, but he's still the boss.

Donovan: "You have been charged with three 3 counts and 19 overt acts: Conspiracy to transmit United States defense and atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, conspiracy to gather secrets and failing to register as a foreign agent."
Abel: "Do many foreign agents register?"

Every accident, properly viewed, is an opportunity.

But sometimes people think wrong. People are people.

Donovan: "I think they have snipers."
Hoffman: "Well, I'm sure they do."
Donovan: "How are you sure they do?"
Hoffman: "Because we have snipers."

Is there any outcome here where I'm not either detained or shot?

California has officially announced that jaywalking is now no longer a crime. So congratulations to the Californians who like walking places. This is great news for the six of you.

New Mexico. It's another state. I mean, it's like California, just less traffic.

We all have our little faults. Mine's in California.

All creative people should be required to leave California for three months every year.

I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand.

I've committed to nothing... and that's just suicide by tiny, tiny increments.

I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.

It's a mystery of human chemistry and I don't understand it, some people, as far as their senses are concerned, just feel like home.

It's not what you like but what you are like that's important.

Real loneliness is not necessarily limited to when you are alone.

Being gay was a bit like the Olympics: It disappeared in ancient times, and then they brought it back in the twentieth century.