Top 57 Quotes & Sayings by Vidal Sassoon

The essence is, what can we do next? And will it be good?

You either create something and you keep it a secret and you die with it, or you can benefit the craft.

Realizing our society as it is, without theology dogmatically telling us how we should react to it, and being humane toward that society, that is all that we're sure of.

Hair excited me. As the old ways - backcombing, rollers and rigidity - went out of the window, I started to feel the possibilities in front of my eyes.

You must always do what you feel is right.

A working woman could save a few shillings a week, and then every five weeks she'd come in and we'd cut her hair. She could shampoo it under the shower, swing it and dry it off or just let it dry by itself. It changed the lives of many young girls who'd never had the opportunity to be styled like that before.

Most people have excellent necks. Now they cover them with curtains, which is kind of ridiculous. But there are some beautiful necklines that you can cut into and create wonderful backs, as well as bone structure for the face.

There were so many pretty girls coming into the salon as clients, and others working in the salon. And I thought, 'Hmm. This is rather nice.'

Women were going back to work, they were assuming their own power. They didn't have time to sit under the dryer.

Everything about morality and obligations I owe to football.

You never argued with my mother. You couldn't win.

I don't sort of sit in a chair and pompously feel proud of myself about all the things we might have accomplished.

If you have a sense of style and purpose and will you don't want to compromise.

I came home after a year and although my profession was only hairdressing, I knew I could change it.

Capri on the Amalfi Coast in Italy is my ultimate holiday destination.

Judaism is important to me from a tribal point of view.

My mother had a premonition and she felt that hairdressing would be very very good for me.

Hairdressing in general hasn't been given the kudos it deserves. It's not recognised by enough people as a worthy craft.

I got a telegraph from my mother who said that my step-father had had a heart attack, come home and earn a living. So I went back to England and the only thing I knew to earn any cash was through hairdressing.

My greatest regret is selling my company.

For nine years I worked to change what was hairdressing then into a geometric art form with color, perm without setting which had never been done before.

It's okay saying sorry, but when you are drunk you say what you really feel.

I just consider being one of the luckiest people in the sense that creativity came to me and it flowed.

'The Pianist' is a movie I could watch over and over again.

I'm a great jazz fan.

I'll never forget one morning I walked in and I had a hell of a bruise - it had been a difficult night the night before - and a client said to me, 'Good God, Vidal, what happened to your face?' And I said, 'Oh, nothing, madam, I just fell over a hairpin.'

When I was about 10 I ran away to see my father. He couldn't have cared less. He just took me back as soon as he could.

During the late '20s my father left us. My mother was in a complete hole with no money, and we were evicted.

It was my mother's idea. Her feeling was that I didn't have the intelligence to pick a trade myself.

Hairdressers are a wonderful breed. You work one-on-one with another human being and the object is to make them feel so much better and to look at themselves with a twinkle in their eye.

I was all about my thoughts, my work, my inspiration. I was always in hair.

I was born in 1928 and by 1931 the Depression was beginning to mount.

Bring out the eyes.

We learned to put discipline in the haircuts by using actual geometry, actual architectural shapes and bone structure. The cut had to be perfect and layered beautifully, so that when a woman shook it, it just fell back in.

So I was shampooing at 14. But I've always thought that had I the opportunity for an education, I would have been an architect. There's no question about it.

My mother left me for seven years in an orphanage.

To me hair dressing means shape. It's very important that the foundations should be right.

If you get hold of a head of hair on somebody you've never seen before, cut beautiful shapes, cut beautiful architectural angles and she walks out looking so different - I think that's masterful.

Like most ghetto kids I knew it was important to be 'somebody' so I became a good soccer player, because excelling at a sport seemed to make you special.

If you don't look good, we don't look good.

I kept thinking I would be spending my life up to my elbows in shampoo.

Mary Quant is my favourite fashion designer.

It's hard to give advice. There are so many people, how do you give major advice to a group of people, it's very presumptuous.

From my point of view, there is a tremendous amount to be said for secular humanism.

Hair is another name for sex.

Take good advice, make sure it is good advice, then do it your way.

When the doubters tell you it can't be done and all kind of tragedies will come your way, I say nonsense. If you can get to the very root of who you are and make something happen from it, my sense tells me you are going to surprise yourself.

If you just do something, then you're a five-year wonder and, goodbye, you're gone. But if people feel it's worthwhile, not only do they copy but they want to learn how to do it To me, that's what it's all about. If someone were to ask me, 'What's the number one thing, in essence, that you left behind?' It was the teaching of others so that they could take my work and take it further.

If someone were to ask me, 'What's the number one thing, in essence, that you left behind?'... it was the teaching of others, so that they could take my work and take it further.

If you look good, we look good.

It's not recognized by enough people as a worthy craft.

Beauty is.. The passionate and positive expression of the complete self.

I think that as good architecture enhances a city, a good cut enhances the definition and expression of a face.

As stylists, we're groundshakers and daymakers. I was always in hair.

For me the working of hair is architecture with a human element.

My idea was to cut shape into the hair, to use it like fabric and take away everything that was superfluous.

To sculpt a head of hair with scissors is an art form. It's in pursuit of art.