Top 140 Bette Davis Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Good actors I’ve worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.”

— Bette Davis

102. “I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.”

— Bette Davis

103. “I’ve always liked men better than women.”

— Bette Davis

104. “You mustn’t miss the moment. There’s only one first sailing into Rio harbor.”

— Bette Davis

105. “I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.”

— Bette Davis

106. “It is my last wish to be burried sitting up.”

— Bette Davis

107. “I will not retire while I’ve still got my legs and my make-up box.”

— Bette Davis

108. “I went back to work because someone had to pay for the groceries.”

— Bette Davis

109. “I never said anything that was unprintable. Never said anything just for the sake of being startling.”

— Bette Davis

110. “As a female I think it’s a terrible hindrance in business. I think it’s a terrible hindrance for any female to have a lot of intelligence in private life, but I think in business sometimes it’s even worse because there’s deep resentment.”

— Bette Davis

111. “They say that in Hollywood one can’t be honest, but I think honesty counts in Hollywood just as much as it does anywhere else. I think it’s just too much trouble to be dishonest and keep up with yourself.”

— Bette Davis

112. “I’ve lost my faith in science.”

— Bette Davis

113. “Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn’t do much for women, though we do have an advantage: make-up.”

— Bette Davis

114. “The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are everyone’s concern and like vampires they suck our life’s blood.”

— Bette Davis

115. “The real actor – like any real artistj- has a direct line to the collective heart.”

— Bette Davis

116. “May each of my grandsons know, at an early age, what his life’s ambition is – and may he be successful in his pursuit of that goal.”

— Bette Davis

117. “I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don’t remember ever having seen one weep.”

— Bette Davis

118. “With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn’t consider dying.”

— Bette Davis

119. “I don’t think of myself as a character actress – that’s become a phrase which means you’ve had it.”

— Bette Davis

120. “Actually, I think business women are better women at home, if you want to know the truth because you do understand what goes into a day’s work out in the world, a very nerve-racking affair.”

— Bette Davis

121. “I was never very interested in boys – and there were plenty of them – vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.”

— Bette Davis

122. “The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can’t get work in the movies.”

— Bette Davis

123. “I’d marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he’d be dead within a year.”

— Bette Davis

124. “One can be respected with the truth in Hollywood just as much as anywhere else you know or else I wouldn’t have had a career.”

— Bette Davis

125. “Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes.”

— Bette Davis

126. “Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times – almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about me was probably what made me successful. I’ve seen some very talented actors go into analysis and really lose it.”

— Bette Davis

127. “Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I’m afraid it did.”

— Bette Davis

128. “I believe one should be a woman at home.”

— Bette Davis

129. “I don’t think in business it matters whether you’re a man or a woman if you can do your job and have a brain.”

— Bette Davis

130. “I don’t take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.”

— Bette Davis

131. “I think it’s just too much trouble to be dishonest and keep up with yourself.”

— Bette Davis

132. “One can make more enemies as a female with a brain I think.”

— Bette Davis

133. “The world’s all full of thoughts about wars and space, and tragedies to the world. That’s what writers are thinking about because that’s what the world is thinking about.”

— Bette Davis

134. “We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.”

— Bette Davis

135. “Anything cruel I do is mental, not physical.”

— Bette Davis

136. “People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.”

— Bette Davis

137. “I will never be below the title.”

— Bette Davis

138. “I think men have got to change an awful lot. They still prefer the little woman.”

— Bette Davis

139. “One nurse told me to say please when I asked her to do something. She should consider herself luck to be in one piece today.”

— Bette Davis

140. “Daddy in his infinite knowledge always saw the roots and not the flowers. He took all the watches of the world apart and never knew what time it was.”

— Bette Davis

141. “I would rather have a go at something I feel, and be hurt, than always be protecting myself – that way one does not really live.”

— Bette Davis

142. “I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.”

— Bette Davis

143. “I gave her a look that would exterminate lice.”

— Bette Davis