Sidney Poitier Quotes

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

My father was the quintessential husband and dad.

I sometimes like the pictures photographers take of me.

Jackie Robinson is a true legend.

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

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

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.

The journey has been incredible from its beginning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I had two roles for which I compromised.

Every new fashion is a form of rebellion.

I defend myself by improving myself.

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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'm going to quit writing.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.

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.

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