Sidney Poitier Quotes

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work,” he said. “I want to achieve it by not dying.” But

We fight good wars in medical laboratories, endlessly seeking to cure the scourges of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and mental illness. We fight good wars when we devote time, energy, and money to relieve the suffering of hungry people around the world. We fight good wars when we come to the aid of those struck by the overwhelming forces of capricious nature: fire, flood, drought, hurricanes, and earthquakes. We fight good wars when we refuse to allow injustice to be done to others. We fight good wars when we oppose hate, bigotry, and ignorance.

They have never found that area within themselves where they can be peaceful with who they are, what they are, and where they are.

It’s the way of all ancient stories. The young man must go “down” in order to find the right path for going “up.” Call it the “time of ashes.” In some African tribes the young boys must cover their faces with ashes before their initiation into manhood. In certain Nordic cultures the young boys used to sit down in the ashes by the fire in the center of the lodge house until they were ready to take on their adult role. And everybody knows about Cinderella, the girl who had to tend to the cinders and do all the other lowly chores until her true identity became known.

"I don't mean to be like some old guy from the olden days who says, "I walked thirty miles to school every morning, so you kids should too." That's a statement born of envy and resentment. What I'm saying is something quite different. What I'm saying is that by having very little, I had it good. Children need a sense of pulling their own weight, of contributing to the family in some way, and some sense of the family's interdependence. They take pride in knowing that they're contributing. They learn responsibility and discipline through meaningful work. The values developed within a family that operates on those principles then extend to the society at large. By not being quite so indulged and "protected" from reality by overflowing abundance, children see the bonds that connect them to others."

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

How we see ourselves, how we see each other,” she said, “should be determined by us and not by people who generally don’t like us; people who pass laws certifying us as less than human. Too many of us see each other as ‘they’ see us,” she continued. “Time for that shit to stop. We’re going to have to decide for ourselves what we are and what we’re not. Create our own image of ourselves. And nurture it and feed it till it can stand on its own.

And though she was devout in her faith, she wasn’t married to church doctrine, nor do I think that she actually recognized the fundamental differences between Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, and how the division came about. I don’t think she was aware that the king of England wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, and the Roman Catholic Church would not give him permission to get rid of his wife to do that. So he set up his own Anglican Catholicism. I’m pretty sure she didn’t know because my mother was not that versed a person. In fact, that was history I wouldn’t know much about until many years later.

Your home is here. And your home is endangered. Consequently, so are you. Without this home, you or perhaps your children or grandchildren will die. Clearly, your destiny now rests in your own hands. But as Franklyn and Montaro have both told you, the seeds of a solution are already in your hands. The longer you do not act, the weaker the better self in each of you becomes, and the harder your struggle grows against the relentless pulls of greed, selfishness, and the addictive lust for power, which breeds wars and indifference to the sufferings of fellow human beings.

a man the South African government evidently thought too dangerous to be free, but also by then too prominent to be killed.

If the image one holds of one's self contains elements that don't square with reality, one is best advised to let go of them, however difficult that may be.

As a chief justice of the United States once said, blacks were three-fifths of a human, and only a full human being should have rights, the implication being that three-fifths of a human being was something fit to function only as a beast of burden. Well, that is a distortion exposing the enemies of logic and reason, and among them are mass hysteria, hate, prejudice, and ignorance.

There is a certain anger; it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage — self-destructive, destroy-the-world rage — and its flame burns because the world is so unjust.

A tiny bit of myself is lost when my friends are gone. A tiny bit of myself was lost when my brothers, all but one, passed away.

Progress then and now comes from the collision of powerful forces within the hearts of those who strive for it.