Downey: "Maybe the goal really should be a life that values honor, duty, good work, friends and family."

Downey: "I always think part of success is being able to replicate results, taking what is interesting or viable about yourself as a professional person and seeing if you bring it into different situations with similar results."

Downey: "Acting is the most wildly overpaid position imaginable."

Downey: "In the marathon obstacle course of a career, it's just good to have all the stats on paper for why you're not only a team player but also why it makes sense to support you in the projects you want to do - because you've made so much damned money for the studio."

Downey: "Nothing will serve you better than a strong work ethic. Nothing!"

Downey: “Discipline for me is about respect. It’s not even about self-respect; it’s about respect for life and all it offers.”

Downey: "I’m not afraid of total failure because I don’t think that will happen. I’m not afraid of success because that beats the hell out of failure."

Downey: "I'm very good at deconstructing. I'm a very good troubleshooter for why something is unlikely to work. And most everything is unlikely to work."

Downey: "I don't want to be so confident in myself."

Downey: "Nothing pleases me more than when somebody who was awe-inspired to be working with me realizes I'm just another schmuck that they're bored of hanging out with on a set. I love that moment. I like it when that persistent illusion is smashed."

Downey: "I think you end up doing the stuff you were supposed to do at the time you were supposed to do it."

Downey: "I think that the power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you've done."

Downey: "I've noticed that worrying is like praying for what you don't want to happen."

Downey: "If you're raised with a poverty mentality, nothing is going to change it. I do know some really stingy billionaires. I come from such a generation of hand-to-mouthers."

Downey: "I know very little about acting. I'm just an incredibly gifted faker."

Downey: "With a terrible script you hustle and try to make it better. But with a good script it can be trouble because you rest on your laurels, so to speak, you think it's going to translate easily."

Downey: "In movies, people seem to be more emotional than they would ever be if that situation was actually happening to them."

Downey: "I just don't like big guys who speak cryptically and act like they understand the language better than me."

Downey: "I want to give myself the freedom not to have to be projecting my whole life ahead."

Downey: "All I want, and I think all any parent with a semblance of a moral psychology wants, is for my kid to have his own experience, uninhibited."

Downey: "I think that we all do heroic things, but hero is not a noun, it's a verb."

Downey: "Dad's Jewish and Irish, Mom's German and Scotch. I couldn't say I was anything. My last name isn't even Downey. My dad changed his name when he wanted to get into the Army and was underage. My real name is Robert Elias. I feel like I'm still looking for a home in some way."

Downey: "Life is just so painful and messy and hard and worth it and all that stuff."

Downey: "I take some pride in... representing myself exactly how I would like to have my son remember me to his kids."

Downey: "I've always been a fella who put most of my eggs in one basket and then take a dump in the basket but I really don't know."

Downey: "It's a very smart and heartfelt movie and that's why, I think, we're all drawn to it. We really showed up for this with this collective idea that it was really ambitious, but we felt we all really had something to gain from it."

Downey: "I've always just shown up and tried to figure out what's for lunch and am I going to get to play some racquetball that night."

Downey: "I grew up with a lot of people whose whole prime mover was dad rage. I never really had it - it always seemed so empty. It always seemed to be masking something else, which was really their own lack of initiative."

Downey: "Sometimes if you're wanting to look just a little bit taller, then you want to dress with just more of a thin cut."