Sidney Poitier Quotes

Living consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the moment.

You don't have to become something you're not to be better than you were.

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

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

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.

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

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

I am the me I choose to be.

You don't have to become something that you aren't to become better than you are.

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.

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?

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.

I set my star so high that I would constantly be in motion toward it.

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

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

So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.

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

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

When you walk with someone, something unspoken happens. Either you match their pace or they match yours.

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.

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.

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

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 have always been a learner because I knew nothing.

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

There is not racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness. It's everywhere.

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

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

So it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Every new fashion is a form of rebellion.

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.

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

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.

But I always had the ability to say no. That's how I called my own shots.

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 wouldn't change a single thing, because one change alters every moment that follows it.

To be compared to Jackie Robinson is an enormous compliment, but I don't think it's necessarily deserved.

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

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.

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

The older we get the less afraid we are.