Top 100 Bette Davis Quotes
#1. Success is built on disappointment, and disappointment is inherent in all success.
Bette Davis
#2. The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies.
Bette Davis
#3. As a female I think it's a terrible hindrance in business. I think it's a terrible hindrance for any female to have a lot of intelligence in private life, but I think in business sometimes it's even worse because there's deep resentment.
Bette Davis
#4. Actually, I think business women are better women at home, if you want to know the truth because you do understand what goes into a day's work out in the world, a very nerve-racking affair.
Bette Davis
#5. Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.
Bette Davis
#6. I may not have been wearing a mink coat, but I was traveling with a dog. That should have made you think I was an actress!
Bette Davis
#7. I am a woman meant for a man, but I never found a man who could compete.
Bette Davis
#8. If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it.
Bette Davis
#9. I was thought to be 'stuck up.' I wasn't. I was just sure of myself. This is and always has been an unforgivable quality to the unsure.
Bette Davis
#10. There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.
Bette Davis
#12. Some young Hollywood starlets remind me of my grandmother's old farmhouse
all painted up nice on the front side, a big swing on the backside, and nothing whatsoever in the attic.
Bette Davis
#13. What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and where legs are more important than talent.
Bette Davis
#14. The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency.
Bette Davis
#15. The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead.
Bette Davis
#16. Mother of three; divorcee; American. Twenty years experience as an actress in motion pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumour would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway). References upon request.
Bette Davis
#17. If everybody likes you, you are not a very interesting person.
Bette Davis
#18. [On gay men:] Let me say, a more artistic, appreciative group of people for the arts does not exist ... They are more knowledgeable, more loving of the arts. They make the average male look stupid.
Bette Davis
#20. It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies.
Bette Davis
#21. I think men have got to change an awful lot. They still prefer the little woman.
Bette Davis
#23. I don't take the movies seriously, and anyone who does is in for a headache.
Bette Davis
#24. From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.
Bette Davis
#26. There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.
Bette Davis
#27. I never wished I'd been a man. I always felt like a woman and wanted to be a woman. I wanted to be fulfilled professionally and personally, as a woman. There are some who might say I had penis envy, but I only had penis admiration.
Bette Davis
#28. Playing our parts. Yes, we all have to do that and from childhood on, I have found that my own character has been much harder to play worthily and far harder at times to comprehend than any of the roles I have portrayed.
Bette Davis
#29. I wouldnt piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire
Bette Davis
#30. I think I'll have a large order of prognosis negative.
Bette Davis
#32. I've always liked men better than women.
Bette Davis
#33. I don't think of myself as a character actress - that's become a phrase which means you've had it.
Bette Davis
#34. There is a certain ecstasy in wanting things you can't get.
Bette Davis
#35. I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable ... I suppose I'm larger than life.
Bette Davis
#36. When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.
Bette Davis
#37. You can lose everything
but you can't lose your talent!
Bette Davis
#38. Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times - almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about me was probably what made me successful. I've seen some very talented actors go into analysis and really lose it.
Bette Davis
#39. My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.
Bette Davis
#40. You know what nostalgia is, don't you? It's basically a matter of recalling the fun without reliving the pain.
Bette Davis
#41. You've got to know someone pretty well to hate them.
Bette Davis
#42. I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.
Bette Davis
#44. Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.
Bette Davis
#46. I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.
Bette Davis
#47. I believe one should be a woman at home.
Bette Davis
#48. Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they're phonies.
Bette Davis
#49. I was never very interested in boys - and there were plenty of them - vying with one another to see how many famous women they would get into the hay.
Bette Davis
#51. In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.
Bette Davis
#52. I do not regret one professional enemy I have made. Any actor who doesn't dare to make an enemy should get out of the business.
Bette Davis
#54. I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my makeup box.
Bette Davis
#55. With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying.
Bette Davis
#56. If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.
Bette Davis
#57. If everyone likes you, you're not doing it right.
Bette Davis
#58. Evil people you never forget them. And that's the aim of any actress-never to be forgotten.
Bette Davis
#59. I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.
Bette Davis
#60. One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake.
Bette Davis
#61. I was so uncomfortable at a party recently when the conversation droned on about women who are constantly getting married. I was on the edge of my chair, close to squirming in embarrassment because I myself was guilty of four husbands. I finally leaned forward and squeaked, 'But one died!
Bette Davis
#63. Being called very, very difficult is the beginning of success. Until you're called very, very difficult you're really nobody at all.
Bette Davis
#64. Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.
Bette Davis
#65. I don't think in business it matters whether you're a man or a woman if you can do your job and have a brain.
Bette Davis
#66. Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life.
Bette Davis
#67. Dramatic art in her opinion is knowing how to fill a sweater.
Bette Davis
#68. This became a credo of mine ... attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
Bette Davis
#69. One can be respected with the truth in Hollywood just as much as anywhere else you know or else I wouldn't have had a career.
Bette Davis
#70. Today everyone is a star - they're all billed as 'starring' or 'also starring'. In my day, we earned that recognition.
Bette Davis
#71. The secret of marriage is: separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms.
Bette Davis
#72. If men found out how to give birth to children they'll never propose again.
Bette Davis
#73. Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone- but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, to yielding.
Bette Davis
#74. I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
Bette Davis
#75. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
Bette Davis
#77. Almost as many inhumanities are committed in the name of love as in the name of religion.
Bette Davis
#78. I'de luv to kiss ya but I just washed my hair.
Bette Davis
#79. I guess I'm larger than life. That's my problem.
Bette Davis
#80. We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.
Bette Davis
#81. I'd like ta kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.
Bette Davis
#82. There may be a heaven, but if Joan Crawford is there, I'm not going.
Bette Davis
#83. I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.
Bette Davis
#84. Temperament is something that is an integral part of the artist. Not temper, temperament. There is a vast difference.
Bette Davis
#85. I was the Marlon Brando of my generation.
Bette Davis
#86. People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.
Bette Davis
#87. A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
Bette Davis
#88. It's a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her.
Bette Davis
#89. I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.
Bette Davis
#90. I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year.
Bette Davis
#91. Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars. - Now, Voyager
Bette Davis
#92. Once the love bug wears off, as it inevitably does, you are shocked to discover that you really didn't know the object of your affections at all. We know this to be so, even as we repeat the same mistake over and over and over.
Bette Davis
#93. Among the reasons marriages fail, sex ranks no higher than fourth, behind money, having only one bathroom, and an inability to communicate, reasons one, two and three.
Bette Davis
#94. Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.
Bette Davis
#95. I sent my flowers across the hall to Mrs Nixon but her husband remembered what a Democrat I am and sent them back.
Bette Davis
#96. The only way you can become a legend is in your coffin
Bette Davis
#97. Technicolor makes me look like death warmed over.
Bette Davis
#98. It's a very independent male creature that lives alone, and a lot of independent females who live alone. It's all very sad but it's much easier for both sexes to do it this way nowadays.
Bette Davis
#99. She's the original good time who was had by all.
Bette Davis
#100. Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes.
Bette Davis
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