Top 100 Sidney Poitier Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “When you walk with someone, something unspoken happens. Either you match their pace or they match yours.”

— Sidney Poitier

2. “I am the me I choose to be.”

— Sidney Poitier

3. “The journey has been incredible from its beginning.”

— Sidney Poitier

4. “So it’s been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.”

— Sidney Poitier

5. “You don’t have to become something you’re not to be better than you were.”

— Sidney Poitier

6. “To simply wake up every morning a better person than when I went to bed.”

— Sidney Poitier

7. “I have always been a learner because I knew nothing.”

— Sidney Poitier

8. “A good deed here, a good deed there, a good thought here, a good comment there, all added up to my career in one way or another.”

— Sidney Poitier

9. “A person doesn’t have to change who he is to become better.”

— Sidney Poitier

10. “Living consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the moment.”

— Sidney Poitier

11. “We’re all imperfect, and life is simply a perpetual, unending struggle against those imperfections.”

— Sidney Poitier

12. “I had chosen to use my work as a reflection of my values.”

— Sidney Poitier

13. “Marriage is no way of life for the weak, the selfish, or the insecure.”

— Sidney Poitier

14. “So much of life, it seems to me, is determined by pure randomness.”

— Sidney Poitier

15. “True ‘joy’ is the difference between just amusing ourselves to death and creating ‘meaningful’ pleasure.”

— Sidney Poitier

16. “My father was a certain kind of man – I saw how he treated my mother and his family and how he treated strangers. And I vowed I would never make a film that would not reflect properly on my father’s name.”

— Sidney Poitier

17. “As I entered this world, I would leave behind the nurturing of my family and my home, but in another sense I would take their protection with me. The lessons I had learned, the feelings of groundedness and belonging that have been woven into my character there, would be my companions on the journey.”

— Sidney Poitier

18. “If I’m remembered for having done a few good things and if my presence here has sparked some good energies, that’s plenty.”

— Sidney Poitier

19. “History passes the final judgment.”

— Sidney Poitier

20. “I do know that I’m responsible not for what happens, but for what I make of it.”

— Sidney Poitier

21. “I know how easy it is for one to stay well within moral, ethical, and legal bounds through the skillful use of words – and to thereby spin, sidestep, circumvent, or bend a truth completely out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions.”

— Sidney Poitier

22. “So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was. That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such a professional way, as if there ever is a reflection, it’s a positive one.”

— Sidney Poitier

23. “The older we get the less afraid we are.”

— Sidney Poitier

24. “So I’m OK with myself, with history, my work, who I am and who I was.”

— Sidney Poitier

25. “If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you’re not going to get very far. You simply won’t.”

— Sidney Poitier

26. “I always wanted to be someone better the next day than I was the day before.”

— Sidney Poitier

27. “Acting isn’t a game of “pretend.” It’s an exercise in being real.”

— Sidney Poitier

28. “Of all my father’s teachings, the most enduring was the one about the true measure of a man. That true measure was how well he provided for his children, and it stuck with me as if it were etched in my brain.”

— Sidney Poitier

29. “My mother was the most amazing person. She taught me to be kind to other women. She believed in family. She was with my father from the first day they met. All that I am, she taught me.”

— Sidney Poitier

30. “But I always had the ability to say no. That’s how I called my own shots.”

— Sidney Poitier

31. “I defend myself by improving myself.”

— Sidney Poitier

32. “We all have a capacity for love, for kindness, for passion. We also have a capacity for the opposite, but love is infinitely more effective in the world than hate, although they exist as equal opposites.”

— Sidney Poitier

33. “My autobiography was simply the story of my life.”

— Sidney Poitier

34. “I set my star so high that I would constantly be in motion toward it.”

— Sidney Poitier

35. “I was the only Black person on the set. It was unusual for me to be in a circumstance in which every move I made was tantamount to representation of 18 million people.”

— Sidney Poitier

36. “I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father’s life.”

— Sidney Poitier

37. “I’m telling you this so that if you ever are in the position of carrying a secret about something that you have done that makes you ashamed you will make the choice to confront yourself. It will take guts to admit that you have behaved in a way that prevents you from being your better self, and then choose to act differently. It.”

— Sidney Poitier

38. “I have a kind of respect – a worshipful attitude, even – for nature and the natural order and the cosmos and the seasons...”

— Sidney Poitier

39. “Forgiveness works two ways, in most instances. People have to forgive themselves too. The powerful have to forgive themselves for their behavior. That should be a sacred process.”

— Sidney Poitier

40. “If the image one holds of one’s self contains elements that don’t square with reality, one is best advised to let go of them, however difficult that may be.”

— Sidney Poitier

41. “Generally, I tend to despise human behavior rather than human creatures.”

— Sidney Poitier

42. “When I set out to become an actor, I had set myself a standard.”

— Sidney Poitier

43. “But there is one key ingredient that my wife has helped me to recognize over the years, and that is the importance of articulating love for one another on a daily basis. The words I love you, spoken in acknowledgment in the morning upon rising and before going to bed, or when sitting down to dine, make the most beautiful music recognized by human ears.”

— Sidney Poitier

44. “In America, it is difficult to be your own man.”

— Sidney Poitier

45. “Far as I can tell, I still have most of my hair, my gut is not hanging over my belt, and I still have all of my teeth.”

— Sidney Poitier

46. “If you are anxious about death, then you don’t have a sense of the oneness of things-you feel that after death, you will be no more.”

— Sidney Poitier

47. “I am not a hugely religious person, but I believe that there is a oneness with everything. And because there is this oneness, it is possible that my mother is the principal reason for my life.”

— Sidney Poitier

48. “If you apologize because you are afraid, then you are a child not a man.”

— Sidney Poitier

49. “Every new fashion is a form of rebellion.”

— Sidney Poitier

50. “I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled on her, then passed me the best of her.”

— Sidney Poitier