Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Accept that environment compromises values far more than values do their number on environment.
I was born two months early, and everyone had given up on me. But my mother insisted on my life.
But my dad also was a remarkable man, a good person, a principled individual, a man of integrity.
I decided in my life that I would do nothing that did not reflect positively on my father's life.
We're all imperfect, and life is simply a perpetual, unending struggle against those imperfections.
I had to satisfy the action fans, the romantic fans, the intellectual fans. It was a terrific burden.
I never had an occasion to question color, therefore, I only saw myself as what I was... a human being.
When you walk with someone, something unspoken happens. Either you match their pace or they match yours.
True 'joy' is the difference between just amusing ourselves to death and creating 'meaningful' pleasure.
To be compared to Jackie Robinson is an enormous compliment, but I don't think it's necessarily deserved.
In my case, the body of work stands for itself... I think my work has been representative of me as a man.
If you apply reason and logic to this career of mine, you're not going to get very far. You simply won't.
I was not the kind of a principal player that was so in demand that eight or 10 or 12 scripts came per month.
My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.
I wanted to look at them because I feel, internally, that I am an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary life.
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.
I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida. It was so blatant... I had never been so described as Florida described me.
I come from a great family. I've seen family life and I know how wonderful, how nurturing, and how wonderful it can be.
I have a kind of respect - a worshipful attitude, even - for nature and the natural order and the cosmos and the seasons.
I find myself, at this time in my life, no less challenged, no less plagued, no less intrigued by what I still don't know.
If I'm remembered for having done a few good things and if my presence here has sparked some good energies, that's plenty.
If I'm remembered for having done a few good things, and if my presence here has sparked some good energies, that's plenty.
An appreciable number of directors have shifted to lower-cost films, allowing them to be satisfied with a more modest return.
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.
As a man, I've been representative of the values I hold dear. And the values I hold dear are carryovers from the lives of my parents.
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.
Living consciously involves being genuine; it involves listening and responding to others honestly and openly; it involves being in the moment.
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.
I learned to hear silence. That's the kind of life I lived: simple. I learned to see things in people around me, in my mom, dad, brothers and sisters.
My father was a tomato farmer. There is the phrase that says he or she worked their fingers to the bone, well, that's my dad. And he was a very good man.
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.
I knew what it was to be uncomfortable in a movie theater watching unfolding on the screen images of myself - not me, but black people - that were uncomfortable.
If the screen does not make room for me in the structure of their screenplay, I'll step out. I'll step back. I'd step back. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it.
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.
The impact of the black audience is expressing itself. They look to films to be more expressive of their needs, their lives. Hollywood has gotten that message - finally.
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.
As I've mentioned, a large part of my father's legacy is the lesson he taught his sons. He brought us together and said, 'The measure of a man is how well he provides for his children.
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.
I would like to grow less afraid of dying. I am infinitely less afraid today than I was 15 or 25 years ago. I was most afraid of dying when I was 33, because I come from a Catholic family.
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.
We suffer pain, we hang tight to hope, we nurture expectations, we are plagued occasionally by fears, we are haunted by defeats and unrealized hopes . . . The hoplessness of which I speak is not limited.
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.
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.
I want my great-granddaughter to have a fairly good understanding of the world in which I lived for 81 years and also the world before I came into it - all the way back a hundred thousand years, to the beginning of our species.
I lived in a country where I couldn't live where I wanted to live. I lived in a country where I couldn't go where I wanted to eat. I lived in a country where I couldn't get a job, except for those put aside for people of my colour or caste.
I didn't run into racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was vastly different from the kind of horrendous oppression that black people in Miami were under when I moved there at 15. I found Florida an antihuman place.
I was fortunate enough to have been raised to a certain point before I got into the race thing. I had other views of what a human is, so I was never able to see racism as the big question. Racism was horrendous, but there were other aspects to life.
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.
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.
Okay listen, you think I'm so inconsequential? Then try this on for size. All those who see unworthiness when they look at me and are given thereby to denying me value - to you I say, I'm not talking about being AS GOOD as you. I hereby declare myself BETTER than you.