Top 90 Lauren Bacall Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “Generally women are better than men – they have more character. I prefer men for some things, obviously, but women have a greater sense of honor and are more willing to take a chance with their lives.”

— Lauren Bacall

52. “From my own self-analysis, which I seldom indulge in, I am what I am.”

— Lauren Bacall

53. “His attention span was not long, shall we say?”

— Lauren Bacall

54. “I’m not a sedentary person. I’ve always been active.”

— Lauren Bacall

55. “I find that through the sad times, work is what made my continuing, not breaking down, possible. In work, I was always someone else and I subconsciously reveled in that.”

— Lauren Bacall

56. “My mother was the greatest example to me of anyone I’ve ever known. She didn’t have an easy life. I adored her. She worked hard all her life, and she was the one who set my values. She was quite an amazing woman, although she wasn’t tough at all.”

— Lauren Bacall

57. “Let’s face it: I want it all – just like you and everybody else. It may not be in the cards, but the prospect is so dazzling that I have to try.”

— Lauren Bacall

58. “When you talk about a great actor, you’re not talking about Tom Cruise.”

— Lauren Bacall

59. “I don’t sit around thinking that I’d like to have another husband; only another man would make me think that way.”

— Lauren Bacall

60. “I think I’m damn lucky. I’m lucky that my kids are all straight, that they haven’t ended up in jail, that they’re all worthwhile human beings, thank God. Their lives are happy; they have happy partners, wives, husbands.”

— Lauren Bacall

61. “After the age of 30 in the movie profession, you’re pretty well over as far as the casting people are concerned.”

— Lauren Bacall

62. “Actors today go into TV, which I don’t consider has a lot to do with acting.”

— Lauren Bacall

63. “I fairly often have thought how lucky I was. I knew everybody because I was married to Bogie, and that 25-year difference was the most fantastic thing for me to have in my life.”

— Lauren Bacall

64. “Half of life’s problems disappear when one’s head is healthy.”

— Lauren Bacall

65. “All actors are terrified – they just learn how to control it.”

— Lauren Bacall

66. “My every dream and hope, and far beyond, were to be realized. I couldn’t have wished for a man as incredibly good as this man was. And even so I didn’t realize every quality of Bogie’s on that day. He was to surprise and delight me continually in the ensuing years.”

— Lauren Bacall

67. “They think actors are freaks – that we’re a lot of drunks who party all the time and never work. Well, I for one work my tail off.”

— Lauren Bacall

68. “Isn’t hope an incredible, a wonderfully demented thing?”

— Lauren Bacall

69. “I called my business manager in California and said, ‘Sell all of my stock’ – what little of it I had – and it’s the only smart financial move I ever made.”

— Lauren Bacall

70. “I hope I’m thought of as not just a showbiz personality, but as someone who has lived a life and who has hopefully made a contribution to something along the way – someone who is a human being as well as an actress.”

— Lauren Bacall

71. “I finally felt that I came into my own when I went on the stage.”

— Lauren Bacall

72. “When a woman reaches twenty-six in America, she’s on the slide. It’s downhill all the way from then on. It doesn’t give you a tremendous feeling of confidence and well-being.”

— Lauren Bacall

73. “How long an actress lives professionally depends on her stamina, the extent of her masochism, her imagination, and her yearning for recognition or approval.”

— Lauren Bacall

74. “But the amazing thing about life, I’ve finally discovered, is that you really don’t learn from past mistakes. You do logically, reasonably, but emotionally not for a second.”

— Lauren Bacall

75. “No, I’m afraid they might slip and hit a nerve and I’d end up with one side of my face hanging down or something. I’ll just stick with this one for a while and take my chances. I’ll be brave.”

— Lauren Bacall

76. “The first time anything happens to you – your first love, your first success – the second one is never the same.”

— Lauren Bacall

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

77. “You can’t always be a leading lady.”

— Lauren Bacall

78. “Remember what Bogie and my mother both used to say: ‘Character is the most important thing. All that matters is character!’”

— Lauren Bacall

79. “Howard Hawks said he’d like to put me in a film with Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart. I thought, “Cary Grant-terrific! Humphrey Bogart-yucch.””

— Lauren Bacall

80. “Childhood anxieties, childhood fears, never disappear entirely. They fade, but not away.”

— Lauren Bacall

81. “I don’t consider myself a great actress. I’m just trying to stay alive, actually. I think I’m good, and I’ve learned a lot, certainly, mostly in the theater. I’ve been sloughed off movies for years. But what can you do? That’s life.”

— Lauren Bacall

82. “How many women do we know who were continually kissed by Clark Gable, William Powell, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy and Fredric March? Only one: Myrna Loy.”

— Lauren Bacall

83. “Acting is a life of rejection.”

— Lauren Bacall

84. “I remember my oldest son, Steve, saying to me once, ‘I don’t ever remember seeing you with an apron on.’ And I thought, that’s right, honey, you did not. That was his concept of what a mother should be.”

— Lauren Bacall

85. “The best thing about dreams is that youth holds on to them.”

— Lauren Bacall

86. “I believe in the truth, and I believe in saying what you think. Why not? Do you have to go around whispering all the time or playing a game with people? I just don’t believe in that. So I’m not the most adored person on the face of the earth. You have to know this. There are a lot of people who don’t like me at all, I’m very sure of that. But I wasn’t put on earth to be liked. I have my own reasons for being and my own sense of what is important and what isn’t, and I’m not going to change that.”

— Lauren Bacall

87. “God if the press ever quoted anyone correctly it would be brilliant.”

— Lauren Bacall

88. “Facing a situation head on was the only way to deal with anything. I learned the lesson early.”

— Lauren Bacall

89. “Young people, even in Hollywood, ask me, ‘Were you really married to Humphrey Bogart?’ ‘Well, yes, I think I was,’ I reply.”

— Lauren Bacall

90. “I am not a wealthy woman. I wish to hell I was, but I never had a wealthy man.”

— Lauren Bacall

91. “In Hollywood, an equitable divorce settlement means each party getting fifty percent of publicity.”

— Lauren Bacall

92. “Actors today go into TV, which I don’t consider has a lot to do with acting. They only think of stardom. If you photograph well, that’s enough. I have a terrible time distinguishing one from another. Girls wear their hair the same, and are much too anorexic-looking.”

— Lauren Bacall

93. “There is always the fear that a wonder of the world can’t live up to expectations. Not so. The Taj Mahal was breathtakingly beautiful – if anything, better even than I’d been told. Beauty like that is too dazzling to be imagined.”

— Lauren Bacall

94. “To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.”

— Lauren Bacall