Top 140 Bette Davis Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.”

— Bette Davis

52. “I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director.”

— Bette Davis

53. “Some young Hollywood starlets remind me of my grandmother’s old farmhouse – all painted up nice on the front side, a big swing on the backside, and nothing whatsoever in the attic.”

— Bette Davis

54. “If Hollywood didn’t work out, I was prepared to be the best secretary in the world.”

— Bette Davis

55. “The out-of-work actor wears out more than shoe leather. The very sensibilities that make him an artist are shattered by the disregard he is shown as a human being.”

— Bette Davis

56. “Home is where you go to when you’ve nowhere to go.”

— Bette Davis

57. “You’ve got to know someone pretty well to hate them.”

— Bette Davis

58. “I think I showed my restraint by not pulling her hair out by the roots.”

— Bette Davis

59. “Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they’re phonies.”

— Bette Davis

60. “Strong women only marry weak men.”

— Bette Davis

61. “I didn’t forget your breakfast. I didn’t bring your breakfast. Because you didn’t eat your din-din.”

— Bette Davis

62. “Your luck is how you treat people.”

— Bette Davis

63. “If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it.”

— Bette Davis

64. “I’ve been lucky. I’ll be lucky again.”

— Bette Davis

65. “Women are the essential part of the theater but the writers are not writing about women. I think they’re too perplexed about the whole female situation probably.”

— Bette Davis

66. “The male ego with few exceptions is elephantine to start with.”

— Bette Davis

67. “Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.”

— Bette Davis

68. “I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.”

— Bette Davis

69. “The only way you can become a legend is in your coffin.”

— Bette Davis

70. “Temperament is something that is an integral part of the artist. Not temper, temperament. There is a vast difference.”

— Bette Davis

71. “To look back is to relax one’s vigil.”

— Bette Davis

72. “You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.”

— Bette Davis

73. “You know what nostalgia is, don’t you? It’s basically a matter of recalling the fun without reliving the pain.”

— Bette Davis

74. “Oh, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We’ve already got the stars.”

— Bette Davis

75. “Technicolor makes me look like death warmed over.”

— Bette Davis

76. “Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn’t know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.”

— Bette Davis

77. “It’s a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her.”

— Bette Davis

78. “At 50, I thought proudly: Here we are, half century! Being 60 was fairly frightening. You want to know how I spent my 70th birthday? I put on a completely black face, a fuzzy black Afro wig, wore black clothes and hung a black wreath on my door.”

— Bette Davis

79. “Old Age Ain’t For Sissies. Taken from a Bette Davis quote.”

— Bette Davis

80. “In this rat-race everybody’s guilty till proved innocent!”

— Bette Davis

81. “There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.”

— Bette Davis

82. “I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn’t dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.”

— Bette Davis

83. “Evil people you never forget them. And that’s the aim of any actress-never to be forgotten.”

— Bette Davis

84. “The real female should be partly male and the real male should be partly female anyway.”

— Bette Davis

85. “Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life.”

— Bette Davis

86. “Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater.”

— Bette Davis

87. “Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.”

— Bette Davis

88. “If men found out how to give birth to children they’ll never propose again.”

— Bette Davis

89. “Among the reasons marriages fail, sex ranks no higher than fourth, behind money, having only one bathroom, and an inability to communicate, reasons one, two and three.”

— Bette Davis

90. “Gay Liberation? I ain’t against it, it’s just that there’s nothing in it for me.”

— Bette Davis

91. “When someone says, “Happy birthday and many happy returns of the day,” I usually say, “If God takes up my option.” In the motion picture business there were once options, usually yearly. If taken up, your contract was extended for another year by the studio. It is appalling to realize that God has taken up my option for seventy-eight years.”

— Bette Davis

92. “Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it’s not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.”

— Bette Davis

93. “I’d luv to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.”

— Bette Davis

94. “It’s a very independent male creature that lives alone, and a lot of independent females who live alone. It’s all very sad but it’s much easier for both sexes to do it this way nowadays.”

— Bette Davis

95. “I am a woman meant for a man, but I never found a man who could compete.”

— Bette Davis

96. “Playing our parts. Yes, we all have to do that and from childhood on, I have found that my own character has been much harder to play worthily and far harder at times to comprehend than any of the roles I have portrayed.”

— Bette Davis

97. “I may not have been wearing a mink coat, but I was traveling with a dog. That should have made you think I was an actress!”

— Bette Davis

98. “What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.”

— Bette Davis

99. “I have been at war from the beginning. I’ve never looked back before. I’ve never had the time and it has always seemed so dangerous. To look back is to relax one’s vigil.”

— Bette Davis

100. “Almost as many inhumanities are committed in the name of love as in the name of religion.”

— Bette Davis