"The studio vice president called me in and said: 'Sit down, kid' even though he was only about six years older than I was. 'I want to tell you a story. The first time Tony Curtis was ever in a movie he dlivered a bag of groceries. We took one look at him and knew he was a movie star. You ain't got it kid, you ain't got it. You ain't working hard enough. I want you to get back to class and study. Now get out of here'. I leaned across the table and said: 'I thought you were supposed to think he was the grocery delivery boy'."
On a cornerstone experience at Columbia Pictures in 1966

"I missed."
The studio executive above on a card delivered to Ford on a silver tray during a party some years later.

"I'm like old shoes. I've never been hip. I think the reason I'm still here is that I was never enough in fashion that I had to be replaced by something new."

"I am only willing to reveal a certain part of myself and that part is to be taken as the whole person."

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."

"You know you are getting old when all the names in your black book have MD after them."

"Peace isn't merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice."

"You sure can type this sh** George, but you can't say it."
Comment to George Lucas during the shooting of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

"Uh - I prefer the Let's Pretend school of acting."
Smart reply to pretentious reporter re: what school of acting [= method/manner of acting] he prefers

"If you become a part of that machinery, someone the machinery thinks it can use and exploit at that particular moment. Then there is sure to be a time limit on you, and you are soon going to be unfashionable. Because I have never been fashionable I can never be unfashionable."
Vanity Fair magazine, July 1993

"When it was fashionable to say, 'May the Force be with you,' I always said, 'Force yourself'...'The Force is within you, force yourself'"
Barbara Walters Oscar Special Interview, March 1997 on ABC Television

"Why this sudden outpuring for geezers?"
Comment when he was voted Sexiest Man of the Year by People Magazine in 1998

"I never feel sexy. I have a distant relationship with the mirror."
Terse reply to an obvious question re: the occasion above

"I never dropped acting. I merely took up carpentry [ because it ] allowed me to not take every acting job that came along to provide myself with an alternate income so that I could begin to reject episodic television guest star shots. I thought I was beginning to wear out my face on episodic TV. I wanted to hold out for more ambitious kind of work. Of course, today there's a great deal more ambitious work in television than there was then."
Explanation re: why he took up carpentry, Mr. Showbiz Interview, October 1999

"I got into it kind of sideways. I was a philosophy and English major in college and was failing my last year. I was looking for something to get my grade point average up, and I saw a class called 'Drama'. My school didn't offer basket weaving, so I thought that was probably the next best thing. But I failed to note in the class description that it was required to get up and act. That just terrified me. I became interested in overcoming that lack of control over myself, which came from fear.So my first ambition was to overcome the fear, and then I became involved in the process and once that went away I began to enjoy. I found a way to commit to a character and lose my own concerns in it and became sort of not quite excited but interested in the prospect of living many lives as an actor. I had this idea that you would work for a finite period of time with one group of people on one idea and then you'd go some place else and meet a new group of people and work on a new idea."
Why and how he became an actor, Mr. Showbiz Interview, October 1999

"I never had any ambition other than to make a living as an actor. I didn't know how it would play out. I never thought I would be a leading man. I always thought I was a character actor."
Reply to what he thinks about being one of the biggest movie stars ever, Mr. Showbiz Interview, October 1999

"I'm an assistant storyteller. It's like being a waiter or a gas station attendant but I'm waiting on six million people a week if I'm lucky."
Remarked when asked what it is like to be Harrison Ford the Actor

"I don't do much. I play an hour of tennis with a pro five or six days a week. That's all I do. I worked out for years but I got bored. I'm pretty careful about what I eat but I'm not obsessed. I'm lucky genetically, I guess".

Lucky enough to keep making bone-crunching action movies halfway through your sixth decade?

"I'm quite comfortable with the reality of my age and I don't feel old. I'll continue to do physical roles until it begins to hurt too much."
Explaining how he kept in shape at 55 and if he'd still be fit enough to do action movies, E! Online Interview, July 1997

"As a man I've always felt Irish. As an actor I've always felt Jewish."
Reply to James Lipton on the experience of having a multicultural background. Inside the Actors Studio (Bravo Channel) with Harrison Ford, August 2000

"You're much better looking in person."
Reply to James Lipton's question on what he would like God to say to him when he arrives at the Pearly Gate. Inside the Actors Studio (Bravo Channel) with Harrison Ford, August 2000

"I'm in love."
Confession to People Magazine June 23, 2003 issue

"What does that mean [when a director says] 'trust me'? Does that mean I should obviate all of my experience? Should I replace a certain knowledge with belief? Where does that get you? I have had experience in my life. I am 63 years old. Why should I be trusting a director?"
On trusting directors, 2005

"Listen George, listen...Get on with it, man!! If you wait around much longer, Sean is gonna be much too old to play my father."
Appeal to George Lucas re: Indiana Jones IV at the 2005 AFI Lifetime Achievement Award Show, June 2005

"Wanna come outside and find out?"
Quip to college student who stated his opinion about Ford being too old to play Indiana Jones. February 2006

"Ninety-nine and, eh - three quarters percent"
Reply to the inevitable question about the probability of Indiana Jones IV being made. Interview with Jonathan Ross of the BBC. April 2006

"The worst thing about the internet is that anything and everything is up for grabs. How can that be, when I limit my public conversations to about once every couple of years? Any kind of rubbish goes on the internet and it can have a f**king life of its own."
Opinion on the Internet, given in a promo Interview for "Firewall" in March 2006