Top 100 Paul Newman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A man with no enemies is a man with no character.”

— Paul Newman

2. “It’s always darkest before it turns absolutely pitch black.”

— Paul Newman

3. “You only grow when you are alone.”

— Paul Newman

4. “I check my pulse and if I can find it, I know I’ve got a chance.”

— Paul Newman

5. “A man can only be judged by his actions, and not by his good intentions or his beliefs.”

— Paul Newman

6. “The best gift you can give yourself is the gift of possibility.”

— Paul Newman

7. “If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”

— Paul Newman

8. “We all die. It’s just a question of when.”

— Paul Newman

9. “For some players, luck itself is an art.”

— Paul Newman

10. “A dollar won is twice as sweet as a dollar earned.”

— Paul Newman

11. “Admit it. I’m the best you ever seen, Fats. I’m the best there is. And even if you beat me, I’m still the best.”

— Paul Newman

12. “Choose between yesterday and tomorrow.”

— Paul Newman

13. “I’d like to be remembered as a guy who tried – who tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn’t complacent, who doesn’t cop out.”

— Paul Newman

14. “Natural law. Sons are put on this earth to trouble their fathers.”

— Paul Newman

15. “I want to acknowledge luck, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others.”

— Paul Newman

16. “Dreams without movement are delusions, escapes, kid’s play. You have to put your feet into your dreams if they’re ever going to be reality. The dreamers we know and love today are the ones who worked the hardest.”

— Paul Newman

17. “If you don’t have enemies, you don’t have character.”

— Paul Newman

18. “While progress should never come to a halt, there are many places it should never come to at all.”

— Paul Newman

19. “What we got here is a failure to communicate.”

— Paul Newman

20. “I changed my life today. What did you do?”

— Paul Newman

21. “A lot of people have dreams and never do anything about them. When you have ideas and dreams, you do something about it.”

— Paul Newman

22. “I have vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals.”

— Paul Newman

23. “You got to have two things to win. You got to have brains and you got to have balls. Now you’ve got too much of one and not enough of the other.”

— Paul Newman

24. “In racing, the fastest person wins. It is very simple.”

— Paul Newman

25. “I will continue to get behind the wheel of a racing car as long as I am able. But that could all end tomorrow.”

— Paul Newman

26. “I don’t like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?”

— Paul Newman

27. “When you see the right thing to do, you’d better do it.”

— Paul Newman

28. “I would like it if people would think that beyond Newman, there’s a spirit that takes action, a heart, and a talent that doesn’t come from my blue eyes.”

— Paul Newman

29. “I’m like a good cheese. I’m just getting mouldy enough to be interesting.”

— Paul Newman

30. “Honey, Don’t go shooting all the dogs ’cause one of them’s got fleas.”

— Paul Newman

31. “There really is no such thing as a sick child; there are children who happen to be sick. Think about it, and you will understand the magic of the Camps.”

— Paul Newman

32. “It happens to everybody, horses, dogs, men. Nobody gets out of life alive.”

— Paul Newman

33. “Where the hell are the singing cats?”

— Paul Newman

34. “The accusation is always on the first page, and the retraction on page 19.”

— Paul Newman

35. “Those with a moral deficit put on a good show, and sleep like a baby.”

— Paul Newman

36. “Being on President Nixon’s enemies list was the highest single honor I’ve ever received. Who knows who’s listening to me now and what government list I’m on?”

— Paul Newman

37. “The need is great and so are the opportunities to make a difference.”

— Paul Newman

38. “The embarrassing thing is that my salad dressing is out-grossing my films.”

— Paul Newman

39. “The problem with getting older is you still remember how things used to be.”

— Paul Newman

40. “The only question I ever ask any woman is, ‘what time is your husband coming home?’”

— Paul Newman

41. “It’s been a privilege to be here.”

— Paul Newman

42. “You can’t be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: ‘Holy Christ, whaddya know – I’m still around!’ It’s absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.”

— Paul Newman

43. “I can eat fifty eggs.”

— Paul Newman

44. “Acting isn’t really a creative profession. It’s an interpretative one.”

— Paul Newman

45. “Men experience many passions in a lifetime. One passion drives away the one before it.”

— Paul Newman

46. “Watching something is nothing like doing it.”

— Paul Newman

47. “I have taken roads that I wished I had not traveled on. And I’m traveling on some pretty exciting ones, too. Just hope when you get to that great racetrack in the sky, that the balance will tip slightly into those things that you’d be proud of.”

— Paul Newman

48. “I have an extraordinary attention span. I manage to juggle two or three different ideas at the same time, and that’s probably, if I have a gift, that’s probably the best gift that’s given me.”

— Paul Newman

49. “I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.”

— Paul Newman

50. “No sense in being a grifter if it’s the same as being a citizen.”

— Paul Newman