Sammy Davis, Jr. famous quotes

What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Music #Education #Money

You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Humor #Commitment #Two

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

#Baby #Hard Work #Want

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

#Success #Congratulations #Real

Alcohol gives you infinite patience for stupidity.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Patience #Giving #Funny Sarcastic

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

#Grandmother #House #Hollywood

Ten million dollars after I'd become a star I was deeply in debt.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Stars #Debt #Dollars

I wasn't anything special as a father. But I loved them and they knew it.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Father #Fatherhood #Special

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Music #Stars #Men

A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Fathers Day #Baby #Men

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

#Reality #Nightmare #Mental Health

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Sexy #Fighting #Men

I've done some things I wish I could erase. . . . I invented mistakes. But the mistakes must be seen in context, and they must be weighed along with the positives.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Mistake #Wish #Done

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Guy #Lips #Fame

Wishing, hoping and regretting are the most common and dangerous tactics for evading the present.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Regret #Wish #Tactics

The civil rights movement wasn't easy for anybody.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Rights #Movement #Easy

There are certain romances that belong in certain cities, in a certain atmosphere, in a certain time.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Cities #Romance #Atmosphere

Once I get outside my house in the morning, I'm on.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Morning #House

Imitations only better the original.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Originality #Imitation

Everything Michael Jackson does on stage is exactly right.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Doe #Stage

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

#Three #Youth #Highways

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Kids #Guy #Working Together

You can be in this business 50 years and still not know anything about it.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Years #Stills

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,
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Fighting #Men #Thinking

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Goyim #Found #Jew

Savor the moments that are warm and special and giggly.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Special #Moments

You don’t swing where you sleep.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Sleep #Swings

There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Broadway #Dignity

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Names #Acting #Lines

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

#Mistake #Drunk #Remember

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Laughing #Sick #Lines

My home has always been show business.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Home #Show Business #Shows

Most orgies that you go to, I have found, most of it is sad. All that wildness, all those laughs were like the shining silver and gold paper on packages, but there was nothing inside.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Laughing #Shining #Gold

I didn't hate being 60 as much as I had 50.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Hate

I don't have many easy songs.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Song #Easy

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

#Stars #Average #Entertainment

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

#Beautiful #Skins #May

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

#Sweetest #Creatures

I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#War #President #Vietnam

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Wedding #Vegas #Offering

I go to temple a lot less than I would like because when I do, people still look at me as if they think it's a publicity stunt.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Thinking #People #Looks

I believed in Bobby Kennedy. Campaigning for him was an attempt to give back something to this country that has given me so much.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Country #Giving #Bobby Kennedy

When you lose a lover it's like getting a bad haircut. It grows back in time.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Shaving #Lovers #Grows

With an ocean between you and your European friends, you have to keep them in your heart.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Ocean #Heart #Europe

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Taking A Break #Fading #Clubs

Part of show business is magic. You don't know how it happens.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Magic #Shows #Show Business

I had more clothes than I had closets, more cars than garage space, but no money.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Money #Clothes #Space

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

#Recovery #Able #Hearing

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

#Luxury #Soul #Room Service

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

#Kings #Would Be #Answers

"The Entertainer" He did it all.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Tombstone #Entertainers

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Self Esteem #Mystery #Ultimate

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

#Uncles #Children #Lap

Tap dancing all started with the old clog waltz.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Dance #Dancing #Tap Dancing

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Strong #Army #People

I had traveled 10 states and played over 50 cities by the time I was 4.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Cities #America #States

Being in public with May and the children was too heavy. I was irreversibly tuned in to everyone around us.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Children #May #Heavy

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

#Men #Color #Blind

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

#Men #Black #Handicaps

Talk about handicap! I'm a one-eyed Negro Jew.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Handicaps #Jew

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Elvis eleven.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Eleven #Scales #Rate

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Giving #Answers #World

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Children #Wife #Cost

All I really had was my talent. Without that I wouldn't be welcome at the White House.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#White #House #Welcome

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

#Fun #Able #Looks

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.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Air #Done #Lines

The only person I ever hurt was myself and even that I did to the minimum. If you can do that and you're still functioning, you're the luckiest person in the world.
-- Sammy Davis, Jr.

#Hurt #Pain #World