Quotes By Sidney Poitier

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 don't very often read novels.

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

I cannot be understood in three minutes.

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

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.

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

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

Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's.

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.

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

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.

Jackie Robinson is a true legend.

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

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

My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.

I wanted to look at them because I feel, internally, that I am an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary life.

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

The journey has been incredible from its beginning.

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

My father was very big on marriage.

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

I'm going to quit writing.

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

Since I couldn't actuate the things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no.

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

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

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

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