Paul Newman Quotes

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.

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.

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

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.

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

[Getting the truth in the New York Post has been as] difficult as finding a good hamburger in Albania.

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.

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

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.

What we got here is a failure to communicate.

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

It's born of sheer laziness. My signature dishes are salads, hamburgers and popcorn. That's not the kind of stuff that gets you an entry in the distinguished book of culinary records. Being known for great soufflé is one thing but a good hamburger? What would they say? "Yeah, he really knew how to put the cheese on."

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

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.

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.

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.

So you wound up with Apollo/If he's sometimes hard to swallow/Use this.

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

You discover a lot of things on your feet and if you don't have any rehearsal, then anything that happens on the screen is by accident.

Fill the moment and find variety.

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.

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.

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.

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

For some players, luck itself is an art

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

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.

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

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

Hollywood is a changing world these days. This is one of the things that ought to be changed.

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

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

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?

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.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so curious about me that they would want to read that I wear underwear shorts with green polka dots on them.

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

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

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

I can eat fifty eggs.

I will continue to get behind the wheel of a racing car as long as I am able. But that could all end tomorrow.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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