Best 78 quotes of Sidney Poitier on MyQuotes

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

Every new fashion is a form of rebellion.

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.

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.

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

History passes the final judgment

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

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 cannot be understood in three minutes.

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

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

I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

Jackie Robinson is a true legend.