"You cannot live to please everyone else. You have to edify, educate and fulfill your own dreams and destiny."
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Quote collection
Viola Davis quotes (page 1 of 9)
172 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"They say the two most important days in a person's life were the day you were born and the day you discover why you were born."
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"Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you."
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"When your passion and drive are bigger than your fears, you just dive."
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"There's not one woman in America who does not care about her hair, but we give it way too much value. We deprive ourselves of things, we use it to destroy each other, we'll look at a child and judge a mother and her sense of motherhood by the way the child's hair looks. I am not going to traumatize my child about her hair. I want her to love her hair."
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"You can't be hesitant about who you are."
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"When you pray, God puts people in your life to lead you when you cannot lead yourself."
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"Tyler Perry's 'Madea Goes to Jail!' Which, I have to tell you, of everything that I've ever done in my career, that's the only thing that's perked up the ears of my nieces and nephews. That is it, that's done it for them. That made me a bona fide star in their eyes!"
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"Let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there."
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"I’m a black woman who is from Central Falls, Rhode Island. I’m dark skinned. I’m quirky. I’m shy. I’m strong. I’m guarded. I’m weak at times. I’m sensual. I’m not overtly sexual. I am so many things in so many ways and I will never see myself on screen. And the reason I will never see myself up on screen is because that does not translate with being black."
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"As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty."
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"I don’t want anyone putting any limits on me."
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"I was like, 'What is this?' Until I found out it was stress related. That's how I internalized it. I don't do that anymore. My favorite saying in the world is, 'The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.' I am telling you, I have spent so much of my life not feeling comfortable in my skin. I am just so not there anymore."
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"I don't have any time to stay up all night worrying about what someone who doesn't love me has to say about me."
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"I want my work to reflect my level of gifts and talent"
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"All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous."
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"At the end of the day, nobody can tell you how to tackle failure or how to handle change. The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes."
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"The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity."
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"But the biggest beauty advice I've given my daughter is every morning I say, "Genesis, what are the two best parts of you?" And she says "my brain and my heart." And I say, "You've gotta remember that, Genesis. You've gotta remember that you're not what you look like," you know? I think that's the best beauty advice I could give her."
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"And that's what people want to see when they go to the theater. I believe at the end of the day, they want to see themselves - parts of their lives they can recognize. And I feel if I can achieve that, it's pretty spectacular."
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