Top 161 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Newman

George Roy Hill, Redford, and I have been looking for a script to do together for 13 years. We haven't been able to find one that we liked enough for the three of us to be in it together.

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

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

I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.

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.

Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.

I'm not able to work anymore as an actor and still at the level I would want to... you start to lose your memory. You start to lose your confidence. You start to lose your invention. So, that's pretty much a closed book for me.

Newman's second law: Just when things look darkest, they go black.

So you wound up with Apollo. If he's sometimes hard to swallow. Use this.

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.

There are places you go, and they say, 'Take off your dark glasses so we can see your beautiful blue eyes.' And you just want to... you just want to... I dunno, um... thump them.

People stay married because they want to, not because the doors are locked.

Show me a good loser and I will show you a loser.

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.

Every time we get into an argument about cooking or laundering shirts, she shakes her Oscar at me, and I'm dead in the water. It would be a great equalizer now after 33 years.

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.

The Sixties - I had to have my foot in everything then. I'm doing the same thing now but through an intermediary. You know. The food company. Maybe that's the way to go about it. You go right straight into the inferno, and when you get older, you pull back.

What is the difference between a truly creative artist and an interpretive artist? I have not concluded anything about that, but it's fair to ask the question.

If you don't have enemies, you don't have character.

You only grow when you are alone.

It's kind of like those little electric bumper cars where you drive around and see if you can hit the other guy. That's exactly what the country is like now. You no longer have the sense of community. Of loyalty. It's lost its sense of group. It has nothing to do with leadership.

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

Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.

Who's to say who's an expert?

To be an actor you have to be a child.

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

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?

Choose between yesterday and tomorrow.

There are two Newman's laws. The first one is "It is useless to put on your brakes when you're upside down." The second is "Just when things look darkest, they go black.

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

A man can only be judged by his actions, and not by his good intentions or his beliefs.

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

The embarrassing thing is that my salad dressing is out-grossing my films.

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.

I'm like a good cheese. I'm just getting mouldy enough to be interesting.

I check my pulse and if I can find it, I know I've got a chance

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

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

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

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.

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.

If you have no enemies, you have no character. Taking a stand always creates opposition.

On adultery: "Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home?

I think it's very desirable to be an individual and a free thinker.

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

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.

There really is no such thing as a sick child; there are children who happen to be sick. Think about it, and you will understand the magic of the Camps

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

Husbands and wives should have separate interests, cultivate different sets of friends and not impose on the other... You can't spend a lifetime breathing down each other's necks... We are very, very different people and yet somehow we fed off those varied differences and instead of separating us, it has made the whole bond a lot stronger.

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.

Dreams without movement are delusions, escapes, kid’s play. You have to put your feet into your dreams if they’re ever going to be reality. The dreamers we know and love today are the ones who worked the hardest

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

The problem with getting older is you still remember how things used to be.

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?

Sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.

I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me.

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

The best gift you can give yourself is the gift of possibility.

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.

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.