Sammy Davis, Jr. Quotes

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.

You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear.

I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills and brought my grandmother from Harlem to live in it with me.

What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent.

You have to be able to look back at your life and say, "Yeah, that was fun."

If you want to be the best, baby, you've got to work harder than anybody else.

My mother was born in San Juan. So I'm Puerto Rican, Jewish, colored and married to a white woman. When I move into a neighborhood, people start running four ways at the same time.

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.

Wishing, hoping and regretting are the most common and dangerous tactics for evading the present.

May was young and beautiful, we were legally married, but she was caught in the prison of my skin.

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.

Alcohol gives you infinite patience for stupidity.

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.

My handicap? Man, I am a one-eyed, black Jew! That's my handicap!

You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.

Real success is not on the stage, but off the stage as a human being, and how you get along with your fellow man.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

After I decided to become a Jew, only then did I learn that the Jews don't have all the money. When I found out Rockefeller and Ford were goyim, I almost resigned.

Talk about handicap - I'm a one-eyed Negro Jew.

Savor the moments that are warm and special and giggly.

Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to get insulted.

My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a man's thinking.

Sinatra is the essence of vocal style. This man has an innate quality of knowing what is good musically. You can sum that up best by saying that he has musical integrity. Even when he does a bad song, there's a good quality in the presentation.

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.

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.

Imitations only better the original.

Ten million dollars after I'd become a star I was deeply in debt.

Though I love the luxury of the Waldorf Towers, room service there doesn't do soul food.

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.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Elvis eleven.

Marilyn and I were rumored to be an item. We were friends. Nothing more. Marilyn was one of the sweetest creatures that ever lived.

Reality is never as bad as a nightmare, as the mental tortures we inflict on ourselves.

Sober up, and you see and hear everything you'd been able to avoid hearing before.

I had more clothes than I had closets, more cars than garage space, but no money.

I wasn't anything special as a father. But I loved them and they knew it.

When Liza Minelli was a child, she used to sit on my lap and call me Uncle Sammy.

A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made.

Once I get outside my house in the morning, I'm on.

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.

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.

In terms of addiction, there is nothing more powerful than men's toys.

My home has always been show business.

When you lose a lover it's like getting a bad haircut. It grows back in time.

There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.

We can't answer King's assassination with violence. That would be the worst tribute we could pay him.

I have a respect for Elvis and my friendship. It ain't my business what he did in private. The only thing I want to know is, 'Was he my friend?', 'Did I enjoy him as a performer?', 'Did he give the world of entertainment something?' - and the answer is YES on all accounts. The other jazz just don't matter.

I didn't hate being 60 as much as I had 50.

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.

There are certain romances that belong in certain cities, in a certain atmosphere, in a certain time.

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.