Sidney Poitier Quotes
Quotations and aphorisms by Sidney Poitier:
I was not the kind of a principal player that was so in demand that eight or 10 or 12 scripts came per month.
~Sidney Poitier
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I don't very often read novels.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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Jackie Robinson is a true legend.
~Sidney Poitier
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When I set out to become an actor, I had set myself a standard.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's.
~Sidney Poitier
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I had to satisfy the action fans, the romantic fans, the intellectual fans. It was a terrific burden.
~Sidney Poitier
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But I always had the ability to say no. That's how I called my own shots.
~Sidney Poitier
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My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.
~Sidney Poitier
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My autobiography was simply the story of my life.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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There is not racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness. It's everywhere.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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So it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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I'm a good person.
~Sidney Poitier
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Generally, I tend to despise human behavior rather than human creatures.
~Sidney Poitier
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I had learned something of Miami from people who had visited there, so I knew what to expect.
~Sidney Poitier
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In my case, the body of work stands for itself... I think my work has been representative of me as a man.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values.
~Sidney Poitier
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My wife collects knickknacks.
~Sidney Poitier
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I'm going to quit writing.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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I had two roles for which I compromised.
~Sidney Poitier
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The journey has been incredible from its beginning.
~Sidney Poitier
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I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was... a human being.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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My father was the quintessential husband and dad.
~Sidney Poitier
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But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person, a principled individual, a man of integrity.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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I sometimes like the pictures photographers take of me.
~Sidney Poitier
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I wanted to look at them because I feel, internally, that I am an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary life.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists... in the loved one, perfection.
~Sidney Poitier
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I wanted to explore the values that are at work, underpinning my life.
~Sidney Poitier
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In America, it is difficult to be your own man.
~Sidney Poitier
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I wouldn't change a single thing, because one change alters every moment that follows it.
~Sidney Poitier
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I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida. It was so blatant... I had never been so described as Florida described me.
~Sidney Poitier
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To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed.
~Sidney Poitier
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If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you're not going to get very far. You simply won't.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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I cannot be understood in three minutes.
~Sidney Poitier
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If the screen does not make room for me in the structure of their screenplay, I'll step out. I'll step back. I'd step back. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it.
~Sidney Poitier
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I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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I come from a great family. I've seen family life and I know how wonderful, how nurturing, and how wonderful it can be.
~Sidney Poitier
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An appreciable number of directors have shifted to lower-cost films, allowing them to be satisfied with a more modest return.
~Sidney Poitier
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So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.
~Sidney Poitier
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I'm not a library.
~Sidney Poitier
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History passes the final judgment.
~Sidney Poitier
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I get offered work these days.
~Sidney Poitier
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Since I couldn't actuate the things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no.
~Sidney Poitier
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To be compared to Jackie Robinson is an enormous compliment, but I don't think it's necessarily deserved.
~Sidney Poitier
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I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else's vision of me.
~Sidney Poitier
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If I'm remembered for having done a few good things, and if my presence here has sparked some good energies, that's plenty.
~Sidney Poitier
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I was born two months early, and everyone had given up on me. But my mother insisted on my life.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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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.
~Sidney Poitier
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So I'm OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was.
~Sidney Poitier
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I always wanted to be someone better the next day than I was the day before.
~Sidney Poitier
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I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida.
~Sidney Poitier
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My father was very big on marriage.
~Sidney Poitier
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I'll always be chasing you... Glory.
~Sidney Poitier
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