Ruth Elizabeth “Bette” Davis was an American actress with a career spanning more than 50 years and 100 acting credits. She was noted for playing unsympathetic, sardonic characters, and was famous for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical films, suspense horror, and occasional comedies, although her greater successes were in romantic dramas. A recipient of two Academy Awards, she was the first thespian to accrue ten nominations. These Bette Davis quotes will motivate you.
Best Bette Davis Quotes
- “It’s better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for someone you’re not. It’s a sign of your worth sometimes if you’re hated by the right people.” ~ Bette Davis
- “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good . . . Joan Crawford is dead. Good.” ~ Bette Davis
- “If everyone likes you, you’re not doing it right.” ~ Bette Davis
- “There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Getting old is not for sissies.” ~ Bette Davis
- “You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.” ~ Bette Davis
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“If everybody likes you, you’re pretty dull.” ~ Bette Davis
- “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
- “If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Life is the past, the present, and the perhaps.” ~ Bette Davis
- “There may be a heaven, but if Joan Crawford is there, I’m not going.” ~ Bette Davis
- “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
- “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
- “It’s true we don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone, but we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives. Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, Pain of love lasts a lifetime.” ~ Bette Davis
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“I want to die with my high heels on, still in action.” ~ Bette Davis
- “The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Your luck is how you treat people.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night! – As Margo Channing in All About Eve” ~ Bette Davis
- “If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent.” ~ Bette Davis
- “If everybody likes you, you are not a very interesting person.” ~ Bette Davis
- “You know what nostalgia is, don’t you? It’s basically a matter of recalling the fun without reliving the pain.” ~ Bette Davis
- “A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.” ~ Bette Davis
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“Success is built on disappointment, and disappointment is inherent in all success.” ~ Bette Davis
- “One begins to realize that one is getting old when the birthday candles weigh more than the cake.” ~ Bette Davis
- “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 Quotes
- “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
- “I have eyes like a bullfrog, a neck like an ostrich, and long, limp hair. You just have to be good to survive with that equipment.” ~ Bette Davis
- “I’m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.” ~ Bette Davis
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“There is a certain ecstasy in wanting things you can’t get.” ~ Bette Davis
- “You know what I’m going to have on my gravestone? ‘She did it the hard way.'” ~ Bette Davis
- “I am a woman meant for a man, but I never found a man who could compete.” ~ Bette Davis
- “I wouldn’t piss on Joan Crawford if she were on fire.” ~ Bette Davis
- “You should know me well enough by now to know I don’t ask for things I don’t think I can get.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Don’t you hate people who drink white wine? I mean, my dear, every alcoholic in town is getting falling-down drunk on white wine. They think they aren’t drunks because they only drink wine. Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they’re phonies.” ~ Bette Davis
- “To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.” ~ Bette Davis
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“One can make more enemies as a female with a brain, I think.” ~ Bette Davis
- “It’s a rare man who can stand being around an intelligent woman, let alone married to her.” ~ Bette Davis
- “I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable… I suppose I’m larger than life.” ~ Bette Davis
- “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
- “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
- “[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
- “You’ve got to know someone pretty well to hate them.” ~ Bette Davis
- “The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” ~ Bette Davis
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“Success only breeds a new goal” ~ Bette Davis
- “There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.” ~ Bette Davis
- “There’s only one way to work — like hell.” ~ Bette Davis
- “You can lose everything
but you can’t lose your talent!” ~ Bette Davis - “The secret of marriage is separate bedrooms and separate bathrooms.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Good actors I’ve worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Oh, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We’ve already got the stars.” ~ Bette Davis
- “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
- “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
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“Old age is no place for sissies.” ~ Bette Davis
- “She’s the original good time who was had by all.” ~ Bette Davis
- “People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: They pretend they are someone else.” ~ Bette Davis Quotes
- “Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it’s not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world.” ~ Bette Davis
- “People stood on their chairs, cheering and waving. And it was all for me! Waves of love flooded the stage and washed over me. I started to cry. The sweetness of such a moment is impossible to describe. One is both lover and beloved. … I’d found the one true, enduring romance of my life.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Without discipline and detachment, an actor is an emotional slob, spilling his insides out. This abandonment is having an unfortunate vogue. It is tasteless, formless, absurd. Without containment, there is no art. All this vomiting and wheezing and bursting at the seams is no more great acting than the convulsions of raving maniacs.” ~ Bette Davis
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“Home is where you go to when you’ve nowhere to go.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Never, never trust anyone who asks for white wine. It means they’re phonies.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Temperament is something that is an integral part of the artist. Not temper, temperament. There is a vast difference.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Strong women only marry weak men.” ~ Bette Davis
- “I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.” ~ Bette Davis
- “Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child. He needs guidance. If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child. A parent must also not be afraid to hang himself. If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.” ~ Bette Davis
