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.