Sammy Davis, Jr.

I'd learned a lot in the Army. I knew that above all things in the world I had to become so big, so strong that people and their hatred could never touch me.

I believed in Bobby Kennedy. Campaigning for him was an attempt to give back something to this country that has given me so much.

I was so opposed to the war in Vietnam that I initially refused President Nixon's urgings for me to go there.

If you want to get known as a singer you hire five sexy chicks and let them fight over you onstage and for the cameras. That's publicity, man.

Though I love the luxury of the Waldorf Towers, room service there doesn't do soul food.

With an ocean between you and your European friends, you have to keep them in your heart.

When Liza Minelli was a child, she used to sit on my lap and call me Uncle Sammy.

I didn't hate being 60 as much as I had 50.

The manic pursuit of success cost me everything I could love: my wife, my three children, some friends I would have liked to grow old with.

There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.

Would it be better if I'd married a Negro woman? Would they treat my child any better? Erect fewer barriers?

May was young and beautiful, we were legally married, but she was caught in the prison of my skin.

I have to be a star like another man has to breathe.

I go to temple a lot less than I would like because when I do, people still look at me as if they think it's a publicity stunt.

A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made.

There are certain romances that belong in certain cities, in a certain atmosphere, in a certain time.

Being in public with May and the children was too heavy. I was irreversibly tuned in to everyone around us.

I saw that my image was changing or fading. One of the reasons for taking a break from clubs was to be missed-not forgotten.

All I really had was my talent. Without that I wouldn't be welcome at the White House.

To appear on the stage drunk, to have them leave there and remember me making drunken mistakes, that was death.

During three decades, along all the highways of my youth, Frank had always been there for me.

Sober up, and you see and hear everything you'd been able to avoid hearing before.

The success of the Rat Pack or the Clan was due to the camaraderie, the three guys who work together and kid each other and love each other.

Reality is never as bad as a nightmare, as the mental tortures we inflict on ourselves.

Real success is not on the stage, but off the stage as a human being, and how you get along with your fellow man.