I leave you the best Quotes by Sidney Poitier , Actor born in Miami (Florida, United States) on February 20, 1927. Shortly after his birth his parents moved to The Bahamas, where he grew up and lived.
As a teenager to access better opportunities for the future, he returned to Miami, suffering for the first time the harassment of racists and deciding to leave New York to start a new life and where, later, enlisted the army as medical assistant.
After the war he wanted to dedicate himself to the world of interpretation, becoming, over the years, a renowned American actor, director, writer and diplomat.
Poitier's repercussion goes beyond being the first African-American actor to win the Oscar for his performance in the movie"The Lilies of the Valley." It broke ethnic stereotypes and made social consciousness of the racial problems that existed at the time.
Top 75 phrases from Sidney Poitier
1-"Much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness."
2-"In my case, the body of work represents itself... I think my work has been representative of me as a man."
3-"Just get up every morning being a better person than when I went to bed."
4-"I lived in a country where I could not live where I wanted to live. He lived in a country where he could not go where he wanted to eat. I lived in a country where I could not get a job, except those reserved for people of my color or caste."
5-"So, I'm fine with myself, with the story, my job, who I am and who I was."
6-"Since I could not act on the things I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no."
7-"Jackie Robinson is a true legend."
8-"Mine was an easy ride compared to Jackie Robinson's."
9-"To be compared to Jackie Robinson in a huge compliment, but I do not think it's necessarily deserved."
10-"I had learned something from the Miami people who had visited, so I knew what to expect."
11-"My autobiography was simply the story of my life."
12-"He was not the type of main actor who demanded eight, ten, twelve dashes a month."
13-"I come from a large family. I have seen family life and I know how wonderful, how nutritious and how wonderful it can be."
14-"I never had the opportunity to question the color, therefore, I only saw myself as what it was... a human being."
15-"I wanted to explore the values that are at work, sustaining my life".
16-"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 would amount to the representation of 18 million people."
17-"But I always had the ability to say no. That's how I called my own shots."
18-"The ride has been incredible from the start."
19-"So it's been kind of a long way, but it's been quite a good trip."
20-"I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values".
21-"If you remind me of doing some good things, and if my presence here has awakened some good energies, that's enough."
22-"We all suffer from the concern that our partner exists in perfection."
23-"History will lead to the final judgment."
24-"As a man, I have been representative of the values to which I attach great importance. And the values I attach so much importance to are transferring the lives of my parents."
25-"So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept any obligation. This was a way of behaving, to take myself."
26- "My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colony where class and race were very important."
"But my father was also a remarkable man, a good person, an individual of principles, a man of integrity."
28-"I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively in the life of my father."
29-"A good action here, a good action there, a good thought here, a good comment there, everything added to my career in one way or another."
30-"There is no racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness. It's everywhere."
31-"If you apply reason and logic to my career, you will not get very far."
32-"I had two papers for which I undertook."
33-"I will always be chasing you... Glory."
34-"In America it is difficult to be your own man."
35-"I'll stop writing."
36-"My wife collects trinkets".
37-"I've always been an apprentice because I did not know anything."
38-"I was born prematurely. Many thought I was lost, but my mother insisted on my life."
39-"I do not read novels often."
40-"I could not adapt to racism in Florida."
41-"In general, they tend to despise human behavior more than human creatures."
42-"I still have most of my hair, my gut is not hanging from my belt, and I still have all my teeth."
43-"I would not change a single thing, because a change alters every moment that follows."
44-"Sometimes I like the photographs that photographers take of me."
45-"My father was a great husband."
46-"I know how easy it is for one to stay within moral, ethical, and legal limits through the skillful use of words and, therefore, to turn, dodge, contour, or bend a truth utterly out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions."
"I'm not a library."
"I can not understand it in three minutes."
49-"They offer me work these days."
50-"When I decided to become an actor, I had set myself a standard."
51-"My father was a father par excellence."
52-"I always wanted to be someone better the next day than I was the day before."
53-"I knew what it felt like to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching images of myself, not me, but black people, that were uncomfortable."
54-"An appreciable number of directors have switched to low-cost films, allowing them to be satisfied with a more modest return."
55-"I had to satisfy the action fans, the romantic fans, the intellectual fans. It was a big load."
56-"The impact of the black audience is being expressed. They want movies to be more expressive. Hollywood has finally received that message."
57-"I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else's vision of me."
58- "I'm a good person".
59- "I've never been as described as Florida described me."
60-"I learned to listen to the silence. That's the kind of life I lived: simple. I learned to see things in the people around me, in my mother, father, brothers and sisters."
"I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled at her, then the best of it."
62-"I'm not a very religious person, but I think there's a unity with everything. And because there is this unity, it is possible that my mother is the main reason for my life."
63-" My mother was the most amazing person. She taught me to be kind to other women. She believed in the family. I was with my father from the first day they met. Everything I am, she taught me."
"I was fortunate enough to have been elevated up to a certain point before entering the race. I had other opinions of what a human being is, so I could never see racism as the big question. Racism was horrendous, but there were other aspects of life":
"I swore I'd never make a movie that did not adequately reflect my father's name."
"I want my great-granddaughter to have a pretty good understanding of the world in which I lived for 81 years and also the world before I entered it."
"I did not encounter racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was very different from the kind of horrendous oppression that blacks in Miami were suffering when I moved there at age 15. I found in Florida an antihuman place."
68-"The fight against racism has not only been my career, it has been my life".
69-"Dear President Roosevelt, my name is Sidney Poitier and I would like to return to Bahamas, but I do not have enough money. I miss my mother and my father."
"The kind of papers I've done were the kind of jobs we African-Americans wanted to do. We wanted to interpret teachers, doctors, lawyers, scientists."
71-"The presence in the movies of people like Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Samuel Jackson, Wesley Jackson or James Earl Jones is evidence that something is changing."
71-"When you become as old as me, you become very possessive with what you consider most important, and in my case that is the time."
73-"My favorite movie? White House".