Top 33 Sidney Poitier Quotes

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 learned to hear silence. That’s the kind of life I lived: simple. I learned to see things in people around me, in my mom, dad, brothers and sisters.

So it’s been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.

My mother was the most amazing person. She taught me to be kind to other women. She believed in family. She was with my father from the first day they met. All that I am, she taught me.

In my case, the body of work stands for itself… I think my work has been representative of me as a man.

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

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

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

My father was a tomato farmer. There is the phrase that says he or she worked their fingers to the bone, well, that’s my dad. And he was a very good man.

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.

Jackie Robinson is a true legend.

In America, it is difficult to be your own man.

I had two roles for which I compromised.

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

My autobiography was simply the story of my life.

I don’t very often read novels.

I’m going to quit writing.

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

I was fortunate enough to have been raised to a certain point before I got into the race thing. I had other views of what a human is, so I was never able to see racism as the big question. Racism was horrendous, but there were other aspects to life.

So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.

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

I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself – not me, but black people – that were uncomfortable.

I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else’s vision of me.

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

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

I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.

I didn’t run into racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was vastly different from the kind of horrendous oppression that black people in Miami were under when I moved there at 15. I found Florida an antihuman place.

My father was very big on marriage.

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.

History passes the final judgment.

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

I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled on her, then passed me the best of her.

My wife collects knickknacks.