Sidney Poitier

“A person doesn't have to change who he is to become better.”

“Child psychologists have demonstrated that our minds are actually constructed by these thousands of tiny interactions during the first few years of life. We aren't just what we're taught. It...”

“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.”

“I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida.”

“I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida. It was so blatant... I had never been so described as Florida described me.”

“An appreciable number of directors have shifted to lower-cost films, allowing them to be satisfied with a more modest return.”

“I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.”

“My autobiography was simply the story of my life.”

“So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was. That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such...”

“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.”

“Far as I can tell, I still have most of my hair, my gut is not hanging over my belt, and I still have all of my teeth.”

“I know how easy it is for one to stay well within moral, ethical, and legal bounds through the skillful use of words - and to thereby spin, sidestep, circumvent, or bend a truth completely o...”

“To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed.”

“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. R...”

“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.”

“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.”

“I lived in a country where I couldn't live where I wanted to live. I lived in a country where I couldn't go where I wanted to eat. I lived in a country where I couldn't get a job, except for...”

“I'll always be chasing you... Glory.”

“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.”

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