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.”

“If everybody likes you, you're pretty dull.”

“There comes a time in every woman's life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.”

“When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.”

“I am just too much.”

“To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lovely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.”

“Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did.”

“Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child. Discipline is guidance. If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child.”

“I love my profession. I would never stop. Relax? I relax when I work. It's my life.”

“I have been uncompromising, peppery, intractable, monomaniacal, tactless, volatile, and oftentimes disagreeable… I suppose I'm larger than life.”

“Life is the past, the present and the perhaps.”

“May each of my grandsons know, at an early age, what his life's ambition is -- and may he be successful in his pursuit of that goal.”

“If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.”

“You should know me well enough by now to know I don't ask for things I don't think I can get.”

“Everybody has a heart. Except some people.”

“I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.”

“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.”

“You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation.”

“A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.”

“Men become much more attractive when they start looking older. But it doesn't do much for women, though we do have an advantage: make-up.”

“I'de luv to kiss ya but I just washed my hair.”

“Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.”

“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.”

“Getting old is not for sissies.”

“I will not retire while I've still got my legs and my makeup box.”

“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.”

“Success only breeds a new goal”

“To look back is to relax one's vigil.”

“I think Mr. Reagan has done very well under very difficult circumstances. He's had terrific problems physically and he's managed them very well. But my God, the witch hunt today! Is there any human being alive who hasn't done something bad in their youth - like maybe smoke marijuana once? And this man (Judge Ginsburg) found it necessary to admit it! My God! It would be like Mr. Jack Kennedy sitting down and listing all the women (he knew) before he got in.”

“In the beginning was the Word,' and you must not be tempted with a script just because you have a great part. You want a great role to play, but the whole - the whole - must be good. It'll never succeed if it's just the role you like.”

“My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.”

“Old age ain't no place for sissies.”