Quotes By Sammy Davis Jr.

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

Bogart could have been color blind. He got to know a man before he decided if he liked him or not.

Being in public with May and the children was too heavy. I was irreversibly tuned in to everyone around us.

You don't swing where you sleep.

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.

I don't have many easy songs.

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

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

Would it be better if I'd married a Negro woman? Would they treat my child any better? Erect fewer barriers?

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

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

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

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.

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

During three decades, along all the highways of my youth, Frank had always been there for me.

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

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

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

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.

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.

Everything Michael Jackson does on stage is exactly right.

To appear on the stage drunk, to have them leave there and remember me making drunken mistakes, that was death.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

You can be in this business 50 years and still not know anything about it.