My father was a certain kind of man - I saw how he treated my mother and his family and how he treated strangers. And I vowed I would never make a film that would not reflect properly on my father's name.
— Sidney Poitier
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.
I am not a hugely religious person, but I believe that there is a oneness with everything. And because there is this oneness, it is possible that my mother is the principal reason for my life.
I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida. It was so blatant... I had never been so described as Florida described me.
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 had to satisfy the action fans, the romantic fans, the intellectual fans. It was a terrific burden.
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 cannot be understood in three minutes.
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 those put aside for people of my colour or caste.
Generally, I tend to despise human behavior rather than human creatures.
I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida.
My wife collects knickknacks.
I'd seen my father. He was a poor man, and I watched him do astonishing things.
I'll always be chasing you... Glory.
If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you're not going to get very far. You simply won't.
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.
My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.
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.
If I'm remembered for having done a few good things, and if my presence here has sparked some good energies, that's plenty.
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.
I'm a good person.
I did not go into the film business to be symbolized as someone else's vision of me.
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.
When I set out to become an actor, I had set myself a standard.
I get offered work these days.
I sometimes like the pictures photographers take of 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 don't very often read novels.
I'm going to quit writing.
I had two roles for which I compromised.
So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.
There is not racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness. It's everywhere.
I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.
Since I couldn't actuate the things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no.
I want my great-granddaughter to have a fairly good understanding of the world in which I lived for 81 years and also the world before I came into it - all the way back a hundred thousand years, to the beginning of our species.
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.
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.
If the screen does not make room for me in the structure of their screenplay, I'll step out. I'll step back. I'd step back. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it.
An appreciable number of directors have shifted to lower-cost films, allowing them to be satisfied with a more modest return.
My father was the quintessential husband and dad.
I'm not a library.
My father was very big on marriage.
I wouldn't change a single thing, because one change alters every moment that follows it.
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 out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions.
I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.
I was born two months early, and everyone had given up on me. But my mother insisted on my life.
In America, it is difficult to be your own man.
The journey has been incredible from its beginning.
So it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.
But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person, a principled individual, a man of integrity.
