When a man gives his opinion, he’s a man.
When a woman gives her opinion, she’s a bitch.
– Bette Davis
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
A sure way to lose happiness, I found, is to want it at the expense of everything else.
– Bette Davis
If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
– 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
There was more good acting at Hollywood parties than ever appeared on the screen.
– Bette Davis
I’m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived.
– Bette Davis
Getting old ain’t for sissies.
– Bette Davis
Until you’re known in my profession as a monster, you’re not a star.
– Bette Davis
The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he’s dead.
– 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
If everybody likes you, you’re pretty dull.
– Bette Davis
There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of
champagne.
– 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
I will not retire while I’ve still got my legs and my make-up box.
– Bette Davis
Psychoanalysis. Almost went three times – almost. Then I decided what was peculiar about
me was probably what made me successful. I’ve seen some very talented actors go into
analysis and really lose it.
– Bette Davis
If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
This became a credo of mine: Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.
– Bette Davis
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
We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.
– Bette Davis
She has slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie.
– Bette Davis, on Joan Crawford
Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation.
– Bette Davis
I wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire.
– Bette Davis, on Joan Crawford
Does success turn you into a monster? Most of them were monsters before they ever became
successful.
– Bette Davis
Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it’s because I’m not a bitch. Maybe that’s why
Joan Crawford always plays ladies.
– Bette Davis
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.
– Bette Davis
Everybody has a heart. Except some people.
– Bette Davis
I would advise any woman against having an affair with a married man believing he will ever
leave his wife, no matter how often he says his wife does not understand him. Love is not as
necessary to a man’s happiness as it is to a woman’s. If her marriage is satisfactory, a
woman will seldom stray. A man can be totally contented and still be out howling at the
moon.
– Bette Davis
Acting should be bigger than life. Scripts should be bigger than life. It should ALL be bigger
than life.
– 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
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
If Hollywood didn’t work out, I was prepared to be the best secretary in the world.
– Bette Davis
Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism.
– Bette Davis
I certainly would have given anything to have worked with John Wayne. He’s the most
attractive man who ever walked the earth, I think.
– Bette Davis, on John Wayne
You know what I’m going to have on my gravestone? “She did it the hard way.”
– 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
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone – but not the complete
structure. It is much too pliable, to yielding.
– Bette Davis
Gay Liberation? I ain’t against it, it’s just that there’s nothing in it for me.
– Bette Davis
The weak are the most treacherous of us all. They come to the strong and drain them. They
are bottomless. They are insatiable. They are always parched and always bitter. They are
everyone’s concern and like vampires they suck our life’s blood.
– Bette Davis
The act of sex, gratifying as it may be, is God’s joke on humanity. It is man’s last desperate
stand at superintendency.
– Bette Davis
What a fool I was to come to Hollywood where they only understand platinum blondes and
where legs are more important than talent.
– Bette Davis
Success only breeds a new goal.
– Bette Davis
You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your
expectation.
– 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
Technicolor makes me look like death warmed over.
– 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
Pleasure of love lasts but a moment, pain of love lasts a lifetime.
– Bette Davis
Today everyone is a star – they’re all billed as “starring” or “also starring.” In my day, we
earned that recognition.
– Bette Davis
I survived because I was tougher than anybody else.
– Bette Davis
I never did pal around with actresses. Their talk usually bored me to tears.
– Bette Davis
I’ve no time for broads who want to rule the world alone. Without men, who’d do up the
zipper on the back of your dress?
– Bette Davis
Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I’m afraid it did.
– 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 the Marlon Brando of my generation.
– Bette Davis
From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to
do something about it.
– Bette Davis
People often become actresses because of something they dislike about themselves: they
pretend they are someone else.
– Bette Davis
I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad
director.
– Bette Davis