Sidney poitier quotes

I learned to hear silence. That's the kind of life I lived: simple. I learned to see things in people around me, in my mom, dad, brothers and sisters.

If I'm remembered for having done a few good things and if my presence here has sparked some good energies, that's plenty.

An appreciable number of directors have shifted to lower-cost films, allowing them to be satisfied with a more modest return.

If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you're not going to get very far. You simply won't.

I would like to grow less afraid of dying. I am infinitely less afraid today than I was 15 or 25 years ago. I was most afraid of dying when I was 33, because I come from a Catholic family.

I set my star so high that I would constantly be in motion toward it.

History passes the final judgment

My father was the quintessential husband and dad.

I sometimes like the pictures photographers take of me.

I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.

If the image one holds of one's self contains elements that don't square with reality, one is best advised to let go of them, however difficult that may be.

I know how easy it is for one to stay well within moral, ethical, and legal bounds through the skillful use of words - and to thereby spin, sidestep, circumvent, or bend a truth completely out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions.

I lived in a country where I couldn't live where I wanted to live. I lived in a country where I couldn't go where I wanted to eat. I lived in a country where I couldn't get a job, except for those put aside for people of my colour or caste.

But perhaps more important, as someone wishing to make a comment or two about contemporary life and values, I don't have to dig through libraries or travel to exotic lands to arrive at a view of our modern situation refracted through the lens of the preindustrial world, or the uncommercialized, unfranchised, perhaps unsanitized-and therefore supposedly more "authentic"-perspective ofthe Third World. Very simply, this is because that "other" world, as alien as if separated by centuries in time, is the one from which I came

My mother was the most amazing person. She taught me to be kind to other women. She believed in family. She was with my father from the first day they met. All that I am, she taught me.

You don't have to become something that you aren't to become better than you are.

I've learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage--self destructive, destroy the world rage--and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.

I was fortunate enough to have been raised to a certain point before I got into the race thing. I had other views of what a human is, so I was never able to see racism as the big question. Racism was horrendous, but there were other aspects to life.

I wouldn't change a single thing, because one change alters every moment that follows it.

You don't have to become something you're not to be better than you were.

Forgiveness works two ways, in most instances. People have to forgive themselves too. The powerful have to forgive themselves for their behavior. That should be a sacred process.

Acting isn't a game of "pretend." It's an exercise in being real.

I cannot be understood in three minutes.

When I set out to become an actor, I had set myself a standard.

I had learned something of Miami from people who had visited there, so I knew what to expect.

I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida.

I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was... a human being.

Jackie Robinson is a true legend.

Okay listen, you think I'm so inconsequential? Then try this on for size. All those who see unworthiness when they look at me and are given thereby to denying me value - to you I say, I'm not talking about being AS GOOD as you. I hereby declare myself BETTER than you.

I do know that I'm responsible not for what happens, but for what I make of it.

I think the way I want to think. I live the way I want to live.

I always wanted to be someone better the next day than I was the day before.

In America, it is difficult to be your own man.

I didn't run into racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was vastly different from the kind of horrendous oppression that black people in Miami were under when I moved there at 15. I found Florida an antihuman place.

I want my great-granddaughter to have a fairly good understanding of the world in which I lived for 81 years and also the world before I came into it - all the way back a hundred thousand years, to the beginning of our species.

Of all my father's teachings, the most enduring was the one about the true measure of a man. That true measure was how well he provided for his children, and it stuck with me as if it were etched in my brain.

The impact of the black audience is expressing itself. They look to films to be more expressive of their needs, their lives. Hollywood has gotten that message - finally.

I don't very often read novels.

I'll always be chasing you... Glory.

I am the me I choose to be.

The journey has been incredible from its beginning.

If you are anxious about death, then you don't have a sense of the oneness of things - you feel that after death, you will be no more.

I"ve learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me.

As I entered this world, I would leave behind the nurturing of my family and my home, but in another sense I would take their protection with me. The lessons I had learned, the feelings of groundedness and belonging that have been woven into my character there, would be my companions on the journey.

Marriage is no way of life for the weak, the selfish, or the insecure.

I defend myself by improving myself.

I had two roles for which I compromised.

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.

I was born two months early, and everyone had given up on me. But my mother insisted on my life.

I am not a hugely religious person, but I believe that there is a oneness with everything. And because there is this oneness, it is possible that my mother is the principal reason for my life.

I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else's vision of me.

I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida. It was so blatant... I had never been so described as Florida described me.

I have a kind of respect - a worshipful attitude, even - for nature and the natural order and the cosmos and the seasons.

I find myself, at this time in my life, no less challenged, no less plagued, no less intrigued by what I still don't know.

I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself - not me, but black people - that were uncomfortable.

There is not racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness. It's everywhere.

As a man, I've been representative of the values I hold dear. And the values I hold dear are carryovers from the lives of my parents.

I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.

To be compared to Jackie Robinson is an enormous compliment, but I don't think it's necessarily deserved.

I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values.

Far as I can tell, I still have most of my hair, my gut is not hanging over my belt, and I still have all of my teeth.

We're all imperfect, and life is simply a perpetual, unending struggle against those imperfections.

We suffer pain, we hang tight to hope, we nurture expectations, we are plagued occasionally by fears, we are haunted by defeats and unrealized hopes . . . The hoplessness of which I speak is not limited.

Every new fashion is a form of rebellion.

I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled on her, then passed me the best of her.

I was not the kind of a principal player that was so in demand that eight or 10 or 12 scripts came per month.

So I'm OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was.

I come from a great family. I've seen family life and I know how wonderful, how nurturing, and how wonderful it can be.

So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was. That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such a professional way, as if there ever is a reflection, it's a positive one.

I had to satisfy the action fans, the romantic fans, the intellectual fans. It was a terrific burden.

My father was a certain kind of man - I saw how he treated my mother and his family and how he treated strangers. And I vowed I would never make a film that would not reflect properly on my father's name.

As I've mentioned, a large part of my father's legacy is the lesson he taught his sons. He brought us together and said, 'The measure of a man is how well he provides for his children.

Racism is very painful. That's life. It never ends.

To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed.

But I always had the ability to say no. That's how I called my own shots.

Living consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the moment.

True 'joy' is the difference between just amusing ourselves to death and creating 'meaningful' pleasure.

I wanted to explore the values that are at work, underpinning my life.

My father was a tomato farmer. There is the phrase that says he or she worked their fingers to the bone, well, that's my dad. And he was a very good man.

We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists... in the loved one, perfection.

The older we get the less afraid we are.

If you apologize because you are afraid, then you are a child not a man.

Since I couldn't actuate the things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no.

Child psychologists have demonstrated that our minds are actually constructed by these thousands of tiny interactions during the first few years of life. We aren't just what we're taught. It's what we experience during those early years - a smile here, a jarring sound there - that creates the pathways and connections of the brain. We put our kids to fifteen years of quick-cut advertising, passive television watching, and sadistic video games, and we expect to see emerge a new generation of calm, compassionate, and engaged human beings?

When you walk with someone, something unspoken happens. Either you match their pace or they match yours.

So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.

Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's.

Accept that environment compromises values far more than values do their number on environment.

I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.

Generally, I tend to despise human behavior rather than human creatures.

My father was very big on marriage.

A good deed here, a good deed there, a good thought here, a good comment there, all added up to my career in one way or another.

My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.

But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person, a principled individual, a man of integrity.

In my case, the body of work stands for itself... I think my work has been representative of me as a man.

I'm going to quit writing.

So it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.

A person doesn't have to change who he is to become better.