Sidney Poitier Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I am an optimist. I believe the future is bright. I think people who see life painted in dark colors are the ones who do not take ownership.
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Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
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My dad wasn't the biggest role model, but he was a great musician and I loved him very much. He was a character.
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I do expect a lot from myself, but it's also a balance of being... positive and also pushing yourself.
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I've always been acutely aware of differences and the way you are supposed to act if you want to be popular.
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The concept of power we admire is power over someone else.
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Women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. If you are friendly to them, they get out of hand, and if you keep your distance, they resent it.
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Somebody must have sense enough to meet hate with love. Somebody must have sense enough to meet physical force with soul force. If we will but try this way, we will be able to change these conditions and yet at the same time win the hearts and souls of those who have kept these conditions alive a way as old as the insights of Jesus of Nazareth, as modern as the techniques of Mohandas K. Gandhi. There is another way.
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Think of the poorest person you know and see if your next act will be of any use to him.
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The most important word in the language of the working class is "solidarity."
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Clearly people should meet an acceptable threshold of appropriateness! But I think that for many women in the public eye, it just seems that the burden is so heavy. We're doing a job that is not a celebrity job or an entertainment or fashion job.... In a professional setting, treat us as professionals.... And it takes a lot of time. I've often laughed with my male colleagues, like, "What did you do? You took a shower, you combed your hair, you put your clothes on. I couldn't do that."
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'Crash' is a movie about the racial tension that still exists in America. A lot of us pretend that we don't have preconceived notions and stereotypical ideals about each other, but we do. And we wanted to create a movie about people whose lives crash into each others' accidentally.
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...Baltimore. It's imperfect. Boy, is it imperfect. And there are parts of its past that make you wince. It's not all marble steps and waitresses calling you 'hon,' you know. Racial strife in the sixties, the riots during the Civil War. F. Scott Fitzgerald said it was civilized and gay, rotted and polite. The terms are slightly anachronistic now, but I think he was essentially right.
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There are so many things that kept forcing metal back down to the underground. It survives everywhere on the planet.
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Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.
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The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately... you usually don't use it at all. It uses you.
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There is not racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness. It's everywhere.
