Sammy Davis, Jr. Quotes
"The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Civil rights)
"The manic pursuit of success cost me everything I could love: my wife, my three children, some friends I would have liked to grow old with."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Success, Wife, Children, Friends, Old, Pursuit)
"The one thing you don't want is that stale sound when you've done a line so much you can't find a fresh approach to it. Drop it."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Sound, Want)
"The success of the Rat Pack or the Clan was due to the camaraderie, the three guys who work together and kid each other and love each other."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Love, Success, Work)
"The ultimate mystery is one's own self."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Mystery, Self)
"There are certain romances that belong in certain cities, in a certain atmosphere, in a certain time."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Time, Cities)
"There are lines that I know are going to get a belly laugh, but after a few shows I get sick of hearing myself say them so I drop them."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Hearing)
"There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Dignity, Nothing)
"Though I love the luxury of the Waldorf Towers, room service there doesn't do soul food."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Food, Love, Soul, Luxury, Service)
"You don't swing where you sleep."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Sleep)
"We can't answer King's assassination with violence. That would be the worst tribute we could pay him."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Assassination, Tribute, Violence)
"When Liza Minelli was a child, she used to sit on my lap and call me Uncle Sammy."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
"With an ocean between you and your European friends, you have to keep them in your heart."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Heart, Friends, Ocean)
"Would it be better if I'd married a Negro woman? Would they treat my child any better? Erect fewer barriers?"
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Woman)
"You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Fear, Commitment)
"You can be in this business 50 years and still not know anything about it."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Business, Years)
"Sober up, and you see and hear everything you'd been able to avoid hearing before."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Hearing)
"What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Education, Money, Talent)
"To appear on the stage drunk, to have them leave there and remember me making drunken mistakes, that was death."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Death, Mistakes)
"I don't have many easy songs."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Songs)
"Reality is never as bad as a nightmare, as the mental tortures we inflict on ourselves."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Reality)
"A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Baby, Man)
"Alcohol gives you infinite patience for stupidity."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Alcohol, Infinite, Patience, Stupidity)
"All I really had was my talent. Without that I wouldn't be welcome at the White House."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Talent)
"Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to go and get insulted."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Hope, Being)
"Being in public with May and the children was too heavy. I was irreversibly tuned in to everyone around us."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Being, Children, May, Public)
"Bogart could have been color blind. He got to know a man before he decided if he liked him or not."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Blind, Man)
"During three decades, along all the highways of my youth, Frank had always been there for me."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Youth)
"Everything Michael Jackson does on stage is exactly right."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Right)
"Fame comes with its own standard. A guy who twitches his lips is just another guy with a lip twitch - unless he's Humphrey Bogart."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Fame)
"I believed in Bobby Kennedy. Campaigning for him was an attempt to give back something to this country that has given me so much."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Country)
"When you lose a lover it's like getting a bad haircut. It grows back in time."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Time)
"I didn't hate being 60 as much as I had 50."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Being, Hate)
"I go to temple a lot less than I would like because when I do, people still look at me as if they think it's a publicity stunt."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: People, Temple, Publicity)
"Marilyn and I were rumored to be an item. We were friends. Nothing more. Marilyn was one of the sweetest creatures that ever lived."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Friends, Nothing)
"Real success is not on the stage, but off the stage as a human being, and how you get along with your fellow man."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Success, Being, Man)
"Part of show business is magic. You don't know how it happens."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Business, Magic)
"My home has always been show business."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Business, Home)
"I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills and brought my grandmother from Harlem to live in it with me."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Hollywood)
"May was young and beautiful, we were legally married, but she was caught in the prison of my skin."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: May, Prison, Skin)
"I had more clothes than I had closets, more cars than garage space, but no money."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Money, Clothes, Space)
"If you want to get known as a singer you hire five sexy chicks and let them fight over you onstage and for the cameras. That's publicity, man."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Fight, Man, Publicity, Want)
"I'd learned a lot in the Army. I knew that above all things in the world I had to become so big, so strong that people and their hatred could never touch me."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: People, Army, Hatred, World)
"I wasn't anything special as a father. But I loved them and they knew it."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Father)
"I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: War, Nixon, President, Vietnam)
"I saw that my image was changing or fading. One of the reasons for taking a break from clubs was to be missed-not forgotten."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
"I have to be a star like another man has to breathe."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Man)
"I hadn't been in Vegas 20 minutes when I got word that the bookmakers were offering three to one that Frank wouldn't show for my wedding."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Wedding, Word)
"I had traveled 10 states and played over 50 cities by the time I was 4."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Time, Cities, states)
"Most orgies that you go to, I have found, most of it is sad. All that wildness, all those laughs were like the shining silver and gold paper on packages, but there was nothing inside."
- Sammy Davis, Jr.
(Related: Gold, Nothing)