Paul Newman Quotes

Once I started taking drama classes, I asked myself why I had ever wasted so much time on a football team.

I don't like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?

Of course I know Julie Andrews. She's the last of the really great broads.

I think Hollywood is in love with sequels. If it's successful once, just jazz it up and shoot it out there again. I think it's unfortunate.

A lot of people have dreams and never do anything about them. When you have ideas and dreams, you do something about it.

If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.

when u have no enemies ,you are characterless.

How many honest men do you know? Take the sinners away from the saints, you're lucky to end up with Abraham Lincoln.

The need is great and so are the opportunities to make a difference.

I started my career giving a clinic in bad acting in the film, "The Silver Chalice," and now I'm playing a crusty old man who's an animated automobile [in "Cars"]. That's a creative arc for you, isn't it?

I've been accused of being aloof. I'm not. I'm just wary.

I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it.

We are such spendthrifts with our lives, the trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I'm not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.

You can't stop being a citizen just because you have a Screen Actors' Guild card.

The only question I ever ask any woman is, 'what time is your husband coming home?'

The only way we can give our children the best education in the world and prepare them for the next century is by funding the programs that serve them.

Those with a moral deficit put on a good show, and sleep like a baby.

If you have no enemies, you have no character.

I'm a supporter of gay rights. And not a closet supporter either. From the time I was a kid, I have never been able to understand attacks upon the gay community. There are so many qualities that make up a human being ... by the time I get through with all the things that I really admire about people, what they do with their private parts is probably so low on the list that it is irrelevant.

It's been a privilege to be here.

Acting is like letting your pants down; you're exposed.

What we got here is a failure to communicate.

I picture my epitaph: 'Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown.

Newman's first law: It is useless to put on your brakes when you're upside down.

Almost everything I learned about being an actor came from those early years at the Actor's Studio.

I have vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals.

I will continue to get behind the wheel of a racing car as long as I am able. But that could all end tomorrow.

A man with no enemies is a man with no character.

When you see the right thing to do, you'd better do it.

The first time I remember women reacting to me was when we were filming Hud in Texas. Women were literally trying to climb through the transoms at the motel where I stayed. At first, it's flattering to the ego. At first. Then you realize that they're mixing me up with the roles I play - characters created by writers who have nothing to do with who I am.

You got to have two things to win. You got to have brains and you got to have balls. Now you've got too much of one and not enough of the other.

I would like it if people would think that beyond Newman, there's a spirit that takes action, a heart, and a talent that doesn't come from my blue eyes.

There are many ingredients that go into making a film. It baffles me, what works and what doesn't.

When the idea came up, (Newman's Own) I said, "Are you crazy? Stick my face on the label of salad dressing?" And then, of course, we got the whole idea of exploitation and how circular it is. Why not, really, go to the fullest length, and the silliest length, in exploiting yourself and turn the proceeds back to the community?

What could be better than to hold your hand out to people less fortunate than you are?

It's always darkest before it turns absolutely pitch black.

I want to acknowledge luck, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others.

Honey, Don't go shooting all the dogs 'cause one of them's got fleas

I think transitions are never that noticeable, but they are always on their way. It has to do with distance and accessibility. People call it mellowing, but I think it's how available you are toward other people, or how much you distance yourself.

You say somebody's guilty, everybody believes you. You say they're innocent, nobody cares.

From salad dressings all blessings flow.

I like racing but food and pictures are more thrilling. I can't give them up. In racing you can be certain, to the last thousandth of a second, that someone is the best, but with a film or a recipe, there is no way of knowing how all the ingredients will work out in the end. The best can turn out to be awful and the worst can be fantastic. Cooking is like performing and performing like cooking.

Being on President Nixon's enemies list was the highest single honor I've ever received. Who knows who's listening to me now and what government list I'm on?

Now then, if we were to go the lowest road and plaster my face on the bottle of oil and vinegar dressing just to line our pockets, it would sink. But to go the low road to get to the high road- shameless exploitation for charity, for the common good- now that's an idea worth the hustle, a reciprocal trade agreement.

[Getting the truth in the New York Post has been as] difficult as finding a good hamburger in Albania.

I'm a great believer in luck and the extraordinary role that plays in all of our lives.

I never ask my wife about my flaws. Instead I try to get her to ignore them and concentrate on my sense of humor. You don't want any woman to look under the carpet, guys, because there's lots of flaws underneath. Joanne believes my character in a film we did together, 'Mr. and Mrs. Bridge' comes closest to who I really am. I personally don't think there's one character who comes close ... but I learned a long time ago not to disagree on things that I don't have a solid opinion about.

The best thing you can give yourselves ... is the gift of possibility. And the best thing you can give each other is the pledge to go on protecting that gift in each other as long as you live.

I respect generosity in people, and I respect it in companies too, I don't look at it as philanthropy; I see it as an investment in the community.

Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.

I just hope when my body goes, or when my mind does, I have the guts to end it the way Hemingway did. I don't want anybody wiping drool off my chin.

While progress should never come to a halt, there are many places it should never come to at all.

I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried - who tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out.

Make sure you live life, which means don't do things where you court celebrity, and give something positive back to our society.

I changed my life today. What did you do?

The star of oil and vinegar and the oil and vinegar of the stars.

Sweet Bird of Youth": "The big difference between people is not between the rich and the poor, the good and the evil. The biggest of all differences between people is between those who have had pleasure in love and those who haven't.

Winning isn't everything ... it's just all there is.

I have an extraordinary attention span. I manage to juggle two or three different ideas at the same time, and that's probably, if I have a gift, that's probably the best gift that's given me.

For some players, luck itself is an art

To be an actor you have to be a child.

It seems to me that the older I get, the more running around I do with less satisfaction, just spinning my wheels.

The concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has less, or someone who isn't hurting holds his hand out to someone who is, is simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some institutions and some people. I'm bewildered by it. You can only put away so much stuff in your closet.

Choose between yesterday and tomorrow.

I'd done some acting in high school. Then I went to Kenyon College and got thrown in jail and kicked off the football team. Since I was determined not to study very much, I majored in theater the last two years. Got my degree in speech; they didn't actually have a degree in theater. I graduated at two o'clock in the afternoon, and at three-thirty I was on the train for Williams Bay, Wisconsin, for summer stock, and then I did winter stock.

We've polluted the stratosphere with these chlorine and bromine compounds, and because it's now colder, and because we have this change in the climate, we're getting more ozone loss than we would have gotten in a normal year.

You can't be as old as I am without waking up with a surprised look on your face every morning: 'Holy Christ, whaddya know - I'm still around!' It's absolutely amazing that I survived all the booze and smoking and the cars and the career.

Well, the nice thing about animation, you don't even really have to account for yourself. All of the physical stuff that you work on as an actor, you just throw away.

Natural law. Sons are put on this earth to trouble their fathers.

Our marriage works because we each carry clubs of equal weight and size.

" I was rather discouraged when I discovered that Paul and Hotch had no marketing survey, no business plan, no budget, no organized strategy for the introduction of the sauce. When asked about this lack of preparation, the haphazard nature of their business, Paul said, 'Me in this business is just part of life's great folly. Stay loose, men, keep 'em off balance.'"

In the early days of films, the movie star in this country replaced royalty. They've been demoted since then but they're still treated as beings larger than life.

A feud should live a full and colorful life, and then it should die a natural death and be forgotten.

There are three rules for running a business; fortunately, we don't know any of them.

I had no natural gift to be anything - not an athlete, not an actor, not a writer, not a director, a painter of garden porches - not anything. So I've worked really hard, because nothing ever came easily to me.

No sense in being a grifter if it's the same as being a citizen.

Fill the moment and find variety.

At the beginning of your career, it's 'Who is Paul Newman?' and then it's 'Get me Paul Newman.' Then it's 'Get me a young Paul Newman.' Then it's 'Who is Paul Newman?'

Acting isn't really a creative profession. It's an interpretative one.

From the very beginning, we bucked tradition. When the experts said that something was "always done" in a certain way, we'd do it our way, which was sometimes the very opposite.

The spaghetti sauce is a good thing to think about. Morning, noon, and night, think about the spaghetti sauce. Think about hustling other people to buy the spaghetti sauce.

I'm a very competitive person. I always have been. And it's hard to be competitive about something as amorphous as acting. But you can be competitive on the track, because the rules are very simple and the declaration of the winner is very concise.

There are a lot of drivers who can carry a car. It doesn't happen very often very successfully. I think it takes a certain amount of sensible bravery. It's no good to be brave and just keep crashing.

The characters I have the least in common with are the ones I have the greatest success with. The further a role is from my own experience, the more I try to deepen it.

People like to do what they used to do after they've stopped being able to do it.

The Alexander Technique helped a long-standing back problem and to get a good night's sleep after many years of tossing and turning.

I cannot bear to look at a film that I made before 1990. Maybe 1985. There's no sense even trying to explain it. I really just can't watch myself. I see all the machinery at work and it just drives me nuts, so I don't look at anything.

It's really important to be attentive to the people who have less - who are less fortunate than you are.