Sammy Davis, Jr. Quotes

You always have two choices: your commitment versus your fear.

You have to be able to look back at your life and say, "Yeah, that was fun."

Wishing, hoping and regretting are the most common and dangerous tactics for evading the present.

My mother was born in San Juan. So I'm Puerto Rican, Jewish, colored and married to a white woman. When I move into a neighborhood, people start running four ways at the same time.

Real success is not on the stage, but off the stage as a human being, and how you get along with your fellow man.

If you want to be the best, baby, you've got to work harder than anybody else.

Talk about handicap - I'm a one-eyed Negro Jew.

What have I got? No looks, no money, no education. Just talent.

Savor the moments that are warm and special and giggly.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

Alcohol gives you infinite patience for stupidity.

My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight. It was the one way I might hope to affect a man's thinking.

Reality is never as bad as a nightmare, as the mental tortures we inflict on ourselves.

My handicap? Man, I am a one-eyed, black Jew! That's my handicap!

You name it and I've done it. I'd like to say I did it my way. But that line, I'm afraid, belongs to someone else.

After I decided to become a Jew, only then did I learn that the Jews don't have all the money. When I found out Rockefeller and Ford were goyim, I almost resigned.

Being a star has made it possible for me to get insulted in places where the average Negro could never hope to get insulted.

If you want to get known as a singer you hire five sexy chicks and let them fight over you onstage and for the cameras. That's publicity, man.

Imitations only better the original.

Sober up, and you see and hear everything you'd been able to avoid hearing before.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Elvis eleven.

A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made.

The success of the Rat Pack or the Clan was due to the camaraderie, the three guys who work together and kid each other and love each other.

Part of show business is magic. You don't know how it happens.

I had more clothes than I had closets, more cars than garage space, but no money.