Quotes About James Cagney

#1. I want people to say at the end of my day, you know, like I used to say about Sidney Poitier and James Cagney and Joan Crawford and Red Skelton and those guys and Bill Cosby. They did quality and substance. You always remember them.

Bernie Mac

#2. The old movie stars like Bogart, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, they weren't this gorgeous, striking six-foot man who's rippled with muscles.

Jack Huston

#3. In the movies, Bette Davis lights two cigarettes and hands the second one to James Cagney. It was just so glamorous and romantic.

Loni Anderson

#4. James Cagney, Steve McQueen, I loved all those guys. I grew up loving the movies but had no desire to be in them.

Mark Wahlberg

#5. Follow the wisdom of the great actor, James Cagney, you hit your mark, you look the other guy in the eye, and you tell the truth.

Larry Merchant

#6. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, and I think they force you to watch every James Cagney movie.

Jimmy Fallon

#7. A James Cagney love scene is one where he lets the other guy live.

Bob Hope

#8. Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on.

James Cagney

#9. Once a song and dance man, always a song and dance man. Those few words tell as much about me professionally as there is to tell.

James Cagney

#10. You dirty, double-crossing rat.

James Cagney

#11. I'm sick of carrying guns and beating up women.

James Cagney

#12. My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.

James Cagney

#13. War is an unmitigated evil. But it certainly does one good thing. It drives away fear and brings bravery to the surface.

Mahatma Gandhi

#14. The French were like spoiled young girls -- they preferred to be surrounded by pretty things at all times.

Joanna Shupe

#15. I don't believe in the inner journey. Real life is lived outdoors.

Marty Rubin

#16. You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.

James Cagney

#17. Outside of my family, the prime concern of my life has been nature and its order, and how we have been savagely altering that order.

James Cagney

#18. You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them ... I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can.

James Cagney

#19. There's not much to say about acting but this. Never settle back on your heels. Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes. And always mean everything you say.

James Cagney

#20. You dirty rat...

James Cagney

#21. I got a part as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn't really approve of it, through.

James Cagney

#22. William Goldman's Marathon Man was a novel that taught me about suspense. I was maybe 16 years old when I read it and I remember thinking, "You could put a gun to my head and I wouldn't put this book down." I loved that feeling - and want to give it others.

Harlan Coben

#23. My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.

James Cagney

#24. The Postman Always RingsTwice.

James Cagney

#25. Learn your lines ... plant your feet ... look the other actor in the eye ... say the words ... mean them.

James Cagney

#26. Time, so complain'd of, Who to no one man Shows partiality, Brings round to all men Some undimm'd hours.

Matthew Arnold

#27. I never said, 'MMMmmm, you dirty rat!

James Cagney

#28. Persevere with a positive attitude - Michael Jordan

Sharon Hughson

#29. Find your mark, look the other fellow in the eye, and tell the truth.

James Cagney

#30. Nothing is so pleasant ... as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and dissertation, but it is a trifle tedious to hear another person display theirs.

Ouida

#31. Absorption in things other than self is the secret of a happy life.

James Cagney

#32. You can't doubt so much, Psyche

Francesca Lia Block

#33. I hate the word superstar". I have never been able to think in those terms. They are overstatements. You don't hear them speak of Shakespeare as a superpoet. You don't hear them call Michelangelo a superpainter. They only apply the word to this mundane market

James Cagney

#34. Perhaps people, and kids especially, are spoiled today, because all the kids today have cars, it seems. When I was young you were lucky to have a bike.

James Cagney

#35. I never had the slightest difficulty with a fellow actor. Not until One, Two, Three. In that picture, Horst Buchholz tried all sorts of scene-stealing didoes. I came close to knocking him on his ass.

James Cagney

#36. I've been thinking so much about writing as a gift to readers - and how newness of subject (place or topic or person) is one of the biggest gifts at our disposal.

Leslie Jamison

#37. If the Church has no the authority to tell its members that they may not engage in homosexual practices, then it has no authority at all. And if we accept the argument of the hypocrites of homosexuality that their sin is not a sin, we have destroyed ourselves.

Orson Scott Card