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 actors end up making really safe choices. I never wanted to go that route. If I go down, I'm going down swinging.
Interpretation
Embrace risks in your pursuits rather than playing it safe.
Matt Damon emphasizes the importance of taking risks and not succumbing to fear of failure in one's career. He contrasts the approach of many actors who settle for safe choices to maintain their positions with his own philosophy of embracing challenges and fighting for success, even if it leads to failure.
In practice
In a motivational speech about pursuing dreams, this quote can inspire the audience to take bold actions.
Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.
You will never solve poverty without solving water and sanitation.
Sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage
It's just better to be yourself than to try to be some version of what you think the other person wants.
If I had a bucket list, I'd say raising my four girls to be strong, good women would be No. 1.
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.
If you start thinking war is inevitable, then in your own times, you don't resist it as strongly as you should.
Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.
When the soldiers stand leaning on their spears, they are faint from want of food.
We don’t constrain our mental powers when we store new long-term memories. We strengthen them. With each expansion of our memory comes an enlargement of our intelligence. The Web provides a convenient and compelling supplement to personal memory - but when we start using the Web as a substitute for personal memory, by bypassing the inner processes of consolidation, we risk emptying our minds of their riches.
Life is very interesting... in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.
Simply let experience take place very freely, so that your open heart is suffused with the tenderness of true compassion.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.