Top 135 Davis Quotes

Miles Davis is a major influence of mine in terms of the way that I am as a bandleader.

Angela Davis’s legacy as a freedom fighter made her an enemy of the state under the increasingly neoliberal regimes of Nixon, Reagan and J. Edgar Hoover because she understood that the struggle for freedom was not only a struggle for political and individual rights but also for economic rights.

I love Viola Davis.

I wanted to go to the underdog team – I wanted to build something somewhere like a lot of the other guys who stayed home at Maryland, like Vernon Davis and players like that. I wanted to stay home and do it in front of my family and my friends… Those thing matter to me.

I think I called myself an entertainer on my son’s birth certificate. That sounds a bit Sammy Davis Jr. or Brian Conley, the sort of guy you just drop into a room and let them ‘entertain.’

Some of my best childhood memories are of watching Terrell Davis with my dad. I used to hang out when I was, like, 4 and 5 years old and play Power Rangers in the locker room with him and Shannon Sharpe and Rod Smith. And I loved Terrell. He was awesome.

When I look back on my nine years with the Raiders, what comes to mind first is my great association with Al Davis. If it had not been for him I may not have done the things I did once I left Houston. I may not have even kept playing if it weren’t for Al. I respected him highly.

I was very impressed with Davis Guggenheim’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ He’s inspired me as one of the newer, cutting-edge documentary filmmakers. I see those films, and I’m just instinctively drawn to them.

I am a leader. Leaders always get heat. They’re always going against the grain. Jimi Hendrix got heat; Bob Marley got heat; Miles Davis got heat. Every great artist got heat. Heat means you’re doing something right.

I keep saying that, if Samuel L. Jackson and Bette Davis could have a baby, it would be Taraji P. Henson. To me, she’s one of the greatest character actors of our generation, let alone leading ladies. She’s just phenomenal in everything she does.

We had a poster of the Davis Cup in 1986. It was in Prague, the Czech Republic against Sweden, and we went to watch, so I got the poster. You couldn’t get all the posters. You were lucky if you got one.

No one cares about the Davis Cup. How many people know I won five Davis Cups and seven majors, but that I rarely played the Australian Open?

In 1999, I just came out of putting out the song ‘Vivrant Thing’ and ‘Breathe and Stop’ off the ‘Amplified’ album. Clive Davis signed me to Arista.

I think that the work that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford did was truly extraordinary, and that’s their legacy. Not the other petty stuff.

I think there’s no reason the Davis Cup couldn’t be as powerful and popular and profitable as any of the four majors are today, given some changes.

Miles Davis himself, I discovered him when I was 15, and he rocked my world.

I’m a big Geena Davis fan. I have a Geena Davis-signed baseball, which is funny because I don’t get signatures from most baseball players I meet.

One of my favorite movies is Bette Davis in ‘All About Eve,’ and it is shocking there was no pressure on her to be likable.

Not only did I have to face the great Steve Davis for 10 years, Stephen Hendry came along, who attacked the balls. He was such an incredible potter with self-belief.

‘Quick Change’ was my first real movie. It was an interesting audition process because there were no lines in the script. Bill Murray’s character would say something, and Geena Davis and Randy Quaid would say something, and then it would just say, ‘The cabbie speaks.’ How do you audition for that?

I am a music freak. My tastes run the gamut from Willie Nelson to Metallica to Miles Davis.

I had teammates like Chris Davis. Manny Machado was really young and such a good kid. Seeing his development, it’s ridiculous. He’s going to get bigger. He’s going to get stronger. He’s going to get even better.

I had a Stuart Davis poster growing up.

If I want to hear a voice, Lana Del Rey is very soothing, and I could just listen to her on repeat, but my real go-to that’s been very consistent for at least the past ten years is Miles Davis.

I can speak of actors that I love. I love Cate Blanchett, Viola Davis, her tenacity. I love Charlize Theron. She’s so surprising and so exhilarating, the kinds of projects she takes on. Marion Cotillard as well.

Back when Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin were doing roasts, they were all friends. They knew each other’s children, each other’s wives, each other’s families. It wasn’t about being disrespectful. It was about being funny.

Guys like Alvin Adams, Sweet D Walter Davis, Larry Nance, and Kyle Macy became my basketball heroes.

People like Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Marlene Dietrich and Sammy Davis Jr. all walked me down this path of entertainment.

I have a girl crush on Olivia Munn so much, especially on ‘Newsroom.’ And Cara Delevingne, but who doesn’t love her face? Viola Davis is my acting crush.

It started with ‘A League of Their Own.’ I mean, to me, if you played softball or baseball as a girl growing up, that is the staple movie, like, where girls are portrayed as athletes, and real, like, different, from Madonna, you know, to Geena Davis. I mean, I could quote that movie, every single line.

Chopin or Billy Eckstine or Miles Davis – that stuff helps me, more when I’ve already written and I need a little energy to keep editing.

I think one of my biggest influences is Bette Davis. I’ve seen almost every one of her films, and she’s been very inspiring to me.

Six months after I moved to L.A., I booked the ABC pilot ‘Commander-in-Chief’ with Geena Davis. I played her son.

I’ve really enjoyed B.R.P.D. since its first days when Guy Davis was an artist on the title, and if anyone is looking for an end of the world Cthulhu apocalypse title, Mignola and Arcudi and the artists who work the title do a fantastic job.

Miles Davis is one who writes songs when he plays.

Stand-up is my heart and now I get a chance to do that and the music altogether. That’s going to be great. I’m trying to be the Sammy Davis Jr. of 2005. I’m planning on going out with Cedric the Entertainer because he’s got that musical bone, too.

Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that’s wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.

I wanted the opportunity to work with Judy Davis and Simon Wincer.

It can be very thrilling being able to witness Viola Davis do her thing for hours and hours, but there are also no windows, and you’re just in a room for fourteen hours trying to keep it together.

Al Davis fires everybody.

It was never easy being Cicely Tyson. And it will not be easy being Octavia or Viola Davis.

You see some of the bigger guards, like Deron Williams and even Baron Davis back in the day. They would bump you with their shoulder and you were going to fall back.

Sammy Davis, Andy Williams, Tony Bennett… their records sell in the millions; when I do it, it just trickles. But for the composer and lyricist, there’s a tidy bit to be made that way, too, so I don’t really mind.

I don’t want to do many panel shows. I’m a comic actor, not a comedian. There would be something wrong in Steve Coogan or Julia Davis doing panel shows all the time.

I think that tennis has been in a place for many years without any change. Davis Cup and Fed Cup has always been a very exciting platform for players because it is such an individual sport, and we get to play a team competition. We love being part of a team.

Because of my register, Miles Davis’ trumpet playing has always been a big influence on my singing. I’ve always been intrigued by the way he can start anywhere and make it right.

See, we started out with a foundation of blues. But then we added people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the mix and gave rock n’ roll a much more complex structure. It made it possible to play more than three chords.

I was exposed to many kinds of music including rock and disco, classical and folk, Midtown and Miles Davis, Sly Stone and David Bowie.

I tried hard to create my own records when a lot of them belonged to Steve Davis, so to see someone else beat yours, you’d be lying if you said there wasn’t a twinge of regret there.

I’m not against Flash, and I love the work that people such as Joshua Davis do.

I was lucky enough to win the Davis Cup in my first year in 1999. I won my first slam at the U.S. Open in 2001 and became world No. 1 later that year. By the age of 20, I’d done it all.

I wanted to do what I was seeing Dorothy Dandridge doing, what I saw Marilyn Monroe do, what I saw Bette Davis do. I wanted to do that: to tell stories. I wanted to make people laugh, make people cry. I wanted to be a storyteller.

I don’t want to be just somebody short who happens to act. I hope my legacy will be Warwick Davis, Actor.

I grew up watching MTV, so it’s very surreal to me to think that there might be someone out there watching MTV, looking at us the way I used to look at Davis Madonna and Duran Duran videos.

I haven’t been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles?

As a child, I walked with my friends to Rosa Parks Elementary and then to Ben Franklin Middle School. I rode Muni to Galileo High School. And thanks to amazing teachers who believed in me and supported me along the way, I was able to matriculate to another public school: the University of California at Davis.

There’s a time when it was an event for a black person to be on television. Where black households would gather around, ‘Oh, you know, Sammy Davis is going to be on ‘All in the Family’ tonight! Let’s go check it out!’ It was a big, big thing.

Tattooing is my social life, too, so most of my time is taken up with that. People like Henry Lewis, Mike Davis at Everlasting Tattoo.

My dad loved jazz, so there was a little Miles Davis, Otis Redding, Donny Hathaway. My mum is French, so she’d listen to a lot of French music, but a lot of the music that actually formed my taste, I just found online.

I worked with Mrs. Davis for four years, and then she realized, as the material started getting harder, that I had never learned to read. I was just listening as she’d play the song, and I’d play it back. When that happened, she got very upset and stopped being my teacher.

The starting point of all great jazz has got to be format, a language that you can work within that, in some ways, is much tighter than the blues or even gospel. It’s all working towards the same destination – the difference being that Miles Davis flew there, and I’m still taking the subway.

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.

Greg Davis, Ron Randleman, David Bailiff, Paul Rhoads, Urban Meyer. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all of them as influences.

It’s funny, though, speaking of fathers and sons, because me and John Goodman played father and son, like, five or six years ago in the film ‘Death Sentence,’ and I got back with him again in ‘Inside Llewyn Davis.’

We’ve got to replace the statues of Jefferson Davis and JZ George in the U.S. Capitol, and the people of Mississippi ought to have a say in it.

If Miles Davis hadn’t died it would have been interesting to do an album with him, but there wasn’t much else that would have got me into the studio… although Herbie Hancock has just been in touch about doing something and that would be an interesting combination.

Everyone’s talking about Phil Davis and what he did in college. It’s an accomplishment to win an NCAA title. I don’t want to discredit that. But I believe if I would have wrestled him in college, I would have beat him.

When I was a kid, it was Bette Davis. She was my idol. I used to cut school and sit in the back of the theater; of course, I would have snuck in because I couldn’t afford a ticket.

My favourite performances are by actresses like Bette Davis in ‘All About Eve’ or Gena Rowlands in pretty much anything – performances that have nothing to do with age.

‘The Blacklist’ was really right place, right time. I read the script and met with Jon Bokenkamp, John Eisendrath, John Fox and John Davis, and we just hit it off. They understood that I was not so much trying to adapt to television, but adapt a cinematic style to the things that we were gonna do.

My dad is Jean-Paul Bourelly, a really prestige guitar player in Europe, and he toured with Miles Davis. I was always surrounded by the most prestige kind of musicians from Senegal, Trinidad, Poland, Nigeria, and all around the world.

It might sound strange now from where I’m standing as a world boxing champion, but I harboured serious thoughts, at the age of nine, of putting my whole life into snooker. I remember being fascinated by the game, watching the likes of Steve Davis, and thought I would do it.

You can’t replace Davis Cup with something else. Its love and lore won’t be surpassed any time soon.

I learn the techniques and then take what I need. I have the Essie Davis technique of acting. I’m an instinctive actress.

Having brought diversity to the air in the way that we have with Kerry Washington and Viola Davis toplining their shows, and then shows like ‘Fresh Off the Boat’ and ‘Black-ish,’ have been very important. I look forward to continuing in that vein.

I remember plastering the kitchen with Black Power pictures of Angela Davis.

I loss that fight to Phil Davis, but I’m not convinced on that fight. Because it wasn’t fair for me. I’d like to do another fight.

I did ‘Fences’ off-broadway at the Beacon Theater, so it’s amazing that Denzel Washington and Viola Davis brought it to Broadway.

One of the blessings I’ve had, really, for my entire career, is working with founders of companies, whether it was Bill Ziff at Ziff Davis or with Jerry Yang and David Filo at Yahoo.

I went to UC Davis because I wanted to be a vet. It’s a great profession if it’s right for you, but it’s memorizing the bones and the muscles, and I am terrible at stuff like that. Also, there’s a lot of blood and gore involved.

Miles Davis, his parents migrated from Arkansas to Illinois, where he had the luxury of being able to practice for hours upon hours. He never would have been able to do that in the cotton country of Arkansas.

The only person I have regrets about is Miles Davis. He and I had become good friends after we did a photo shoot, and coincidentally, we kept running into each other at parties and stuff. I regret not having written a hit for Miles Davis.

At key crossroads in his life, Vernon Davis has continued to make a conscious choice to grow as a person and player. His determination through adversity since his childhood days is commendable.

I heard Mr. Wild Bill Davis. I heard him play in 1930 and he told me that it would take me fifteen years just to learn the pedals, the pedals of the organ and I got mad.

I always felt that Bette Davis was one of the great screen actresses who never really got her due – she won two Oscars, but the last was in 1938, and that was really before all the great work that she did.

Miles Davis would have this lineup of all these amazing musicians and one day would just say, ‘We’re done.’ After tons of great records and tickets sold, he said, ‘Now I’m going to grow my hair out and play my horn through a wah-wah pedal.’ Rather than play it safe, he went on.

I wanted very much to be Miles Davis when I was a boy, but without the practice. It just looked like an endless road.

I’m thankful enough or blessed enough to be able to say that Miles Davis was a friend when he was alive, and he was a wonderful mentor and really, really funny, you know.

I do read a lot of autobiographies and biographies but from people who are not in my field – older women, older artists, Miles Davis.

Pete Wilson deregulated energy as a pay out to Enron, and we blamed Gray Davis.

Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.

Bette Davis was a close friend. She loved to have a good time.

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis are larger than life. They just are. They sucked all the oxygen out of a room: they’re icons; they loom large in our imaginations. But the truth of the matter is both women were diminutive.

I prefer playing ATP tournaments and Davis Cup competition rather than Olympic Games.

I want to be known as a triple threat. I have aspirations to win an Oscar and a Grammy, and I also want to win a Tony. I want to be one of those guys like Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr. that crossed all those barriers of entertainment.

The platform we had in Dallas, the 1984 Republican platform, all the ideas we supported there – from tax policy, to foreign policy; from individual rights, to neighborhood security – are things that Jefferson Davis and his people believed in.

When people are overlooking somebody like Phil Davis, it’s a dangerous thing.

Music is my only guide. I don’t care if people pigeonhole me. Miles Davis is my hero. He covered Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson, and he didn’t give a hoot about what the purists said.

I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.

I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn’t play, it has a poignancy to it.

Ossie Davis was a man with great integrity, great honor and someone who I feel has done us all a great service just by being on the Earth.

I don’t want to be famous. I want to be secure. I don’t want the world. I just want a piece of it. I want people to remember Eric Davis.

Chris Paul is one of those guys growing up, I guess I looked up to. Deron Williams was one of those guys, Dwyane Wade, Baron Davis.

That’s why I enjoy Davis Cup, and I really enjoyed college tennis. It’s very special. You want to go out there and compete your hardest, because you don’t want to let anyone down. You want to absolutely give it your all for your team. And that’s sort of the mentality I’ve taken to pro tennis.

I’ve always thought that jazz needs to be heard by a wider audience in Puerto Rico. I want to put together a series of free concerts in the small towns – one with Miles Davis music, another with bebop, maybe Duke Ellington. I want younger people to see what is possible.

I was talking to a TV bigwig, and he said, ‘Nobody under 35 knows who Sammy Davis is.’ Well, you’ll hear angry denials of that from younger people.

I used to listen to a lot of music in my studio – all the time. But as far as the music that interplays with my work, what I’ve done and still do is keep a lyric book and song title. The material typically comes from Eartha Kitt, Betty Davis, Donna Summer, Whitney Houston.

I believe, from reading biographies, that the great musicians have also been great cooks: Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach. I think I’ve worked out why this is – unsociable hours, plus general creativity.

Everything that I got, it’s special. I mean, I had the silver medal from Rio. Also was one of my best week ever on tour, playing for my country in Rio. Davis Cup, it’s also special for me and for my country.

When I was a kid in Adelaide, I dreamed of becoming No. 1 in the world, winning a grand slam and the Davis Cup for Australia.

I would absolutely love to do something with Viola Davis or Meryl Streep. I just think both of those women fall so deep into their characters that you are no longer looking at the actresses, you are looking at the characters they embraced.

My father constantly reminded me that he named me after Angela Yvonne Davis, a scholar and activist who was well known for her work in tandem with the Black Panther Party. That felt like a purposeful, beckoning call to engage in strategic resistance and to fight for the oppressed.

Miles Davis was a master. In every phase of his career, he understood that this music was a tribute to the African muse.

I personally knew and worked with Sammy Davis, Jr. Sammy hired me to open for him at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas when I was a 19-year-old standup comedian, and that’s where my fascination with his incredible story began.

There are loads of actresses that modelled. They just weren’t famous. There weren’t a lot that were really known as models that became actresses, but there are hordes of them that did modelling before such as Anjelica Huston, Jessica Lange, Sharon Stone, Demi Moore and Geena Davis. There are loads of ’em.

When you’re 8 years old, and you’ve become subconsciously familiar with the layout and design of Black Sparrow books, and you know the difference between Miles Davis and John Coltrane, something is bound to stick.

I could never understand the attraction of Bette Davis. I always preferred Jane Russell.

I’ve grown up with jazz – the Joe Hendersons, Oliver Nelsons, Miles Davis and stuff – but I was also listening to, like, Slipknot, Korn, and Rage Against the Machine. There was all of that weaved – interweaved – in there, and being from L.A., you tend to know your musical history.

Everybody makes a big deal about small ball. Well, I’ve guarded Anthony Davis every time I’ve played him, since he first came into the league.

There are plenty of writers, past and present, from Shakespeare to Henry James to Lydia Davis, who test the limits of coherence and put pressure on current notions of accessible (and acceptable) narrative methods. To thrive and change and grow, any art needs this kind of pressure.

I am always available for selection for Davis Cup. If TA select me, then great. If TA does not select me, then there’s not too much I can do.

Nobody can really dominate like Stephen Hendry or Steve Davis. The players are just too good for that.

We all know what Al Davis means to the NFL, what he means to the Oakland Raiders. He is the Oakland Raiders.

It is like a Davis Cup or a Federation Cup match in that way but instead of cheering for your country you are rooting for your local team.It really makes it fun for the crowds and gives fans a different look at tennis.

I first heard Miles Davis as a student, when I was struck by his extraordinary musicianship, and his work did affect some of the sounds of Simply Red. He was one of the reasons I chose to have a muted trumpet on ‘Holding Back the Years.’

Even as a kid, I was more enchanted watching Bette Davis than Errol Flynn.

I don’t remember too much about Britain’s Davis Cup win in 2015 but I remember thinking what an unbelievable run.

I’ve been close to Bette Davis for thirty-eight years – and I have the cigarette burns to prove it.

Davis Cup means almost everything to me.

Davis Cup helped me a lot. Being in that great atmosphere and having the chance to hit with top 50 guys everyday, being on the practice courts, that gave me a lot of confidence.

I used to be friends with Miles Davis. He didn’t like many folks. I lived across the street from him.

I love music, and a lot of it. Jazz is probably on the top with guys like Miles Davis. But I even enjoy music from the ’60s and ’70s.

I think there’s no reason the Davis Cup couldn’t be as powerful and popular and profitable as any of the four majors are today, given some changes.

My favorite moment was in Game 6 when Bill Walton tapped a missed Sixers shot toward the backcourt and Johnny Davis ran it down as the clock expired. We were NBA champions!

I may be paralyzed from the waist down, but unlike Gray Davis, I’m not paralyzed from the neck up.