Paul newman quotes

What we got here is a failure to communicate.

You can't really appreciate anonymity until you've lost it. People say that's sour grapes, but it really isn't To be able to walk down the street without people paying attention to you is a real blessing and you lose it when you become an actor.

There are two Newman's laws. The first one is "It is useless to put on your brakes when you're upside down." The second is "Just when things look darkest, they go black.

Watching something is nothing like doing it.

The Alexander Technique helped a long-standing back problem and to get a good night's sleep after many years of tossing and turning.

We are such spendthrifts with our lives, the trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.

The problem with getting older is you still remember how things used to be.

I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.

Those with a moral deficit put on a good show, and sleep like a baby.

It happens to everybody, horses, dogs, men. Nobody gets out of life alive.

There are three rules for running a business; fortunately, we don't know any of them.

It's been a privilege to be here.

I would like it if people would think that beyond Newman, there's a spirit that takes action, a heart, and a talent that doesn't come from my blue eyes.

Well, the nice thing about animation, you don't even really have to account for yourself. All of the physical stuff that you work on as an actor, you just throw away.

Acting is like letting your pants down; you're exposed.

The concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has less, or someone who isn't hurting holds his hand out to someone who is, is simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some institutions and some people. I'm bewildered by it. You can only put away so much stuff in your closet.

I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.

The first time I remember women reacting to me was when we were filming Hud in Texas. Women were literally trying to climb through the transoms at the motel where I stayed. At first, it's flattering to the ego. At first. Then you realize that they're mixing me up with the roles I play - characters created by writers who have nothing to do with who I am.

I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

Being on President Nixon's enemies list was the highest single honor I've ever received. Who knows who's listening to me now and what government list I'm on?

I like racing but food and pictures are more thrilling. I can't give them up. In racing you can be certain, to the last thousandth of a second, that someone is the best, but with a film or a recipe, there is no way of knowing how all the ingredients will work out in the end. The best can turn out to be awful and the worst can be fantastic. Cooking is like performing and performing like cooking.

Sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.

I wasn't driven to acting by any inner compulsion. I was running away from the sporting goods business.

It seems to me that the older I get, the more running around I do with less satisfaction, just spinning my wheels.

You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: 'Holy Christ, whaddya know - I'm still around!' It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.

It's like chasing a beautiful woman for 80 years. Finally, she relents and you say, 'I'm terribly sorry. I'm tired.'

Newman's second law: Just when things look darkest, they go black.

From the very beginning, we bucked tradition. When the experts said that something was "always done" in a certain way, we'd do it our way, which was sometimes the very opposite.

A dollar won is twice as sweet as a dollar earned.

I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor. You don't want any woman to look under the carpet because there's lots of flaws underneath. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge" comes closest to who I really am. I personally don't think there's one character who comes close... but I learned a long time ago not to disagree on things that I don't have a solid opinion about.

We all die, just a question of when.

People like to do what they used to do after they've stopped being able to do it.

I respect generosity in people, and I respect it in companies too, I don't look at it as philanthropy; I see it as an investment in the community.

Choose between yesterday and tomorrow.

If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

How many honest men do you know? Take the sinners away from the saints, you're lucky to end up with Abraham Lincoln.

The characters I have the least in common with are the ones I have the greatest success with. The further a role is from my own experience, the more I try to deepen it.

A lot of people have dreams and never do anything about them. When you have ideas and dreams, you do something about it.

Newman's first law: It is useless to put on your brakes when you're upside down.

To that extent that you can sustain and maintain that childlike part of your personality is probably the best part of acting.

I've been accused of being aloof. I'm not. I'm just wary.

I wasn't running toward the theater but running away from the sporting goods store. Of course now that I'm selling spaghetti sauce (with Newman's Own), I begin to understand the romance of business.. the allure of being the biggest fish in the pond and the juice you get from beating out your competitors.

Make sure you live life, which means don't do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society.

Where the hell are the singing cats?

I'm like a good cheese. I'm just getting mouldy enough to be interesting.

I really just can't watch myself. I see all the machinery at work and it just drives me nuts.

You got to have two things to win. You got to have brains and you got to have balls. Now you've got too much of one and not enough of the other.

It's always darkest before it turns absolutely pitch black.

I don't go for the so-called "intimate" stuff. Column items that report: "Minerva Ferncroft sleeps in pink dusting powder between puce-colored sheets in a heart-shaped bed." It leaves me cold.

People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked.

Natural law. Sons are put on this earth to trouble their fathers.

The only way we can give our children the best education in the world and prepare them for the next century is by funding the programs that serve them.

I think it's very desirable to be an individual and a free thinker.

The accusation is always on the first page, and the retraction on page 19.

There really is no such thing as a sick child; there are children who happen to be sick. Think about it, and you will understand the magic of the Camps

I'm a great believer in luck and the extraordinary role that plays in all of our lives.

In the early days of films, the movie star in this country replaced royalty. They've been demoted since then but they're still treated as beings larger than life.

To be an actor you have to be a child.

I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried - who tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out.

I just hope when my body goes, or when my mind does, I have the guts to end it the way Hemingway did. I don't want anybody wiping drool off my chin.

For some players, luck itself is an art

Our marriage works because we each carry clubs of equal weight and size.

You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning.

On adultery: "Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home?

I have vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals.

I don't like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?

I can eat fifty eggs.

The spaghetti sauce is a good thing to think about. Morning, noon, and night, think about the spaghetti sauce. Think about hustling other people to buy the spaghetti sauce.

If you don't have enemies, you don't have character.

Men experience many passions in a lifetime. One passion drives away the one before it.

It's really important to be attentive to the people who have less - who are less fortunate than you are.

I'd done some acting in high school. Then I went to Kenyon College and got thrown in jail and kicked off the football team. Since I was determined not to study very much, I majored in theater the last two years. Got my degree in speech; they didn't actually have a degree in theater. I graduated at two o'clock in the afternoon, and at three-thirty I was on the train for Williams Bay, Wisconsin, for summer stock, and then I did winter stock.

In racing, the fastest person wins. It is very simple.

Almost everything I learned about being an actor came from those early years at the Actor's Studio.

I have taken roads that I wished I had not traveled on. And I'm traveling on some pretty exciting ones, too. Just hope when you get to that great racetrack in the sky, that the balance will tip slightly into those things that you'd be proud of.

You say somebody’s guilty, everybody believes you. You say they’re innocent, nobody cares.

I have an extraordinary attention span. I manage to juggle two or three different ideas at the same time, and that's probably, if I have a gift, that's probably the best gift that's given me.

I had no natural gift to be anything - not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director, a painter of garden porches - not anything. So I've worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me.

There are many ingredients that go into making a film. It baffles me, what works and what doesn't.

If you have no enemies, you have no character.

I want to acknowledge luck, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others.

Winning isn't everything.... it's just all there is.

I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.

At the beginning of your career, it's 'Who is Paul Newman?' and then it's 'Get me Paul Newman.' Then it's 'Get me a young Paul Newman.' Then it's 'Who is Paul Newman?'

You can't stop being a citizen just because you have a Screen Actors' Guild card.

For those of you who like to scarf your popcorn in the sack, the good news is that Newman's Own contains an aphrodisiac.

The best thing you can give yourselves...is the gift of possibility. And the best thing you can give each other is the pledge to go on protecting that gift in each other as long as you live.

Who's to say who's an expert?

I check my pulse and if I can find it, I know I've got a chance

What could be better than to hold your hand out to people less fortunate than you are?

Fill the moment and find variety.

A man can only be judged by his actions, and not by his good intentions or his beliefs.

If you have no enemies, you have no character. Taking a stand always creates opposition.

...." I was rather discouraged when I discovered that Paul and Hotch had no marketing survey, no business plan, no budget, no organized strategy for the introduction of the sauce. When asked about this lack of preparation, the haphazard nature of their business, Paul said, 'Me in this business is just part of life's great folly. Stay loose, men, keep 'em off balance.'"

I have taken roads that I wished I had not traveled on. And I'm traveling on some pretty exciting ones, too.

A man without enemies is a man without character.

While progress should never come to a halt, there are many places it should never come to at all.

The embarrassing thing is that my salad dressing is out-grossing my films.

Now then, if we were to go the lowest road and plaster my face on the bottle of oil and vinegar dressing just to line our pockets, it would sink. But to go the low road to get to the high road- shameless exploitation for charity, for the common good- now that's an idea worth the hustle, a reciprocal trade agreement.

The need is great and so are the opportunities to make a difference.

When you see the right thing to do, you'd better do it.

The only question I ever ask any woman is, 'what time is your husband coming home?'

Building weapons that we don't need, don't work, and aren't necessary, and have no mission — that's not bad politics, that's robbery.

We've polluted the stratosphere with these chlorine and bromine compounds, and because it's now colder, and because we have this change in the climate, we're getting more ozone loss than we would have gotten in a normal year.

An actor has to evaluate his own abilities and be honest with himself.

A man with no enemies is a man with no character.

You only grow when you are alone.

It wasn't as though I really made a commitment to it; there wasn't anything else around. So I wasn't driven to become an actor.. it just seemed to be the thing that I managed to do best.

The best gift you can give yourself is the gift of possibility.

A feud should live a full and colorful life, and then it should die a natural death and be forgotten.

I wish I could recall with clarity the impulse that compelled me to help bring this camp into being. I'd be pleased if I could announce a motive of lofty purpose. I've been accused of compassion, of altruism, of devotion to Christian, Hebrew, and Muslim ethic, but however desperate I am to claim ownership of a high ideal, I cannot. I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck; the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others, made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.

There are a lot of drivers who can carry a car. It doesn't happen very often very successfully. I think it takes a certain amount of sensible bravery. It's no good to be brave and just keep crashing.

From salad dressings all blessings flow.

I changed my life today. What did you do?

The big difference between people is not between the rich and the poor, the good and the evil. The biggest of all differences between people is between those who have had pleasure in love and those who haven't.

If I ever feel like I’m doing something I’ve done before, I scrap it and start over again.

Dreams without movement are delusions, escapes, kid’s play. You have to put your feet into your dreams if they’re ever going to be reality. The dreamers we know and love today are the ones who worked the hardest

I think transitions are never that noticeable, but they are always on their way. It has to do with distance and accessibility. People call it mellowing, but I think it's how available you are toward other people, or how much you distance yourself.

I am convinced that a person is entitled to as much privacy as he wants. It should be his privilege to keep certain areas of his life out of the newspapers.

Twenty-five years ago I couldn`t walk down the street without being recognized. Now I can put a cap on, walk anywhere and no one pays me any attention. They don`t ask me about my movies and they don`t ask me about my salad dressing because they don`t know who I am. Am I happy about this? You bet.

I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor.

Well, I'm not able to work anymore as an actor and still at the level I would want to ... you start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So, that's pretty much a closed book for me. And I'm grateful for the other things that have come into my life: grandkids, and restaurants and charity ... I've been doing it for 50 years. That's enough.

A rebel is a nonconformist who is constantly saying no, and I'm not that. I'm a conformist and I believe in progress, and you can't make much progress by saying no all the time. A rebel is destructive. I know I have something constructive to offer.

When the idea came up, (Newman's Own) I said, "Are you crazy? Stick my face on the label of salad dressing?" And then, of course, we got the whole idea of exploitation and how circular it is. Why not, really, go to the fullest length, and the silliest length, in exploiting yourself and turn the proceeds back to the community?

Husbands and wives should have separate interests, cultivate different sets of friends and not impose on the other... You can't spend a lifetime breathing down each other's necks... We are very, very different people and yet somehow we fed off those varied differences and instead of separating us, it has made the whole bond a lot stronger.