68 Katharine Hepburn Quotes

Katharine Hepburn quotes

1. Acting is one of the lesser skills man can possess. Honestly, Shirley Temple was doing it when she was four years old!

2. Acting is the perfect idiot's profession.

3. As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.

4. Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn't interest you, don't do it - I would have made a terrible mother.

5. Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.

6. Drive on. We'll sweep up the blood later!

7. Enemies are so stimulating.

8. I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition.

9. I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.

   Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.

10. I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret if you have any sense, and if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid.

11. I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.

12. I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they're good or there because they're lucky.

13. If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

14. If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.

15. If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

16. I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for people.

17. It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.

18. It's a rather rude gesture, but at least it's clear what you mean.

19. It's life isn't it? You plow ahead and make a hit. And you plow on and someone passes you. Then someone passes them. Time levels.

20. Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

21. Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around.

22. Living wasn't easy for you, was it? You couldn't enter your own life, but you could be someone else. You weren't you then; you were safe.

23. Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.

24. Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

25. My greatest strength is common sense. I'm really a standard brand - like Campbell's tomato soup or Baker's chocolate.

26. Not everyone is lucky enough to understand how delicious it is to suffer.

27. Only the really plain people know about love - the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.

28. Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.

29. Barbara Walters: So, Kate, do you even own a skirt? Katharine Hepburn: I own one, Barbara. I shall wear it to your funeral.

30. Someone asked someone who was about my age: 'How are you?' The answer was, 'Fine. If you don't ask for details.'

31. Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

32. The average Hollywood film star's ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

33. To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

34. We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change.

35. When I started out, I didn't have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.

36. Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer?

37. Without discipline, there's no life at all.

1. People who want to be famous are really loners. Or they should be.

2. I'm what is known as gradually disintegrating. I don't fear the next world, or anything. I don't fear hell, and I don't look forward to heaven.

3. You give because you love and cannot help giving.

4. It's a bore - B-O-R-E - when you find you've begun to rot.

5. Our Constitution was not intended to be used by ... any group to foist its personal religious beliefs on the rest of us.

6. The only time I am ever miserable is when I do something just for the money.

7. You don't pick who you fall in love with. There are so few people to love. It's hard for one adult to even like another. Almost impossible.

8. Life is full of censorship. I cant spit in your eye.

9. I could peel you like a pear and god himself would see the justice in it.

10. It is the plain women who know about love; the beautiful women are too busy being fascinating.

11. Acting is a nice childish profession - pretending you're someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

12. Who is Katharine Hepburn? It took me a long time to create that creature.

13. You politicians remain professional because the voters remain amateur.

14. People think that I'm tough and strong and that I kicked my way through everything. But they are wrong. The truth is that when I was young I was adorable and a trembling wreck.

15. Nobody owes anybody anything; it's up to each individual to set high standards for himself or herself, and to set about working hard and creating a solid future.

16. The calla lilies are in bloom again.

17. My father, a surgeon and urologist, studied sex professionally all his life. Before he died at 82, he told me he hadn't come to any conclusions about it at all.

18. Show me an actress who isn't a personality and I'll show you a woman who isn't a star.

19. What in the world would we do without our libraries?

20. I don't think that work ever really destroyed anybody. I think that lack of work destroys them a hell of a lot more.

21. Vitality! That's the pursuit of life, isn't it?

22. The lack of work destroys people.

23. I would have been a terrible mother because I'm basically a very selfish human being. Not that that has stopped most people going off and having children.

24. It's either some kind of electricity or some kind of energy. I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, I've got it.

25. Life is very hard, isn't it? It does kill you, after all.

26. Everyone thought I was bold and fearless and even arrogant, but inside I was always quaking.

27. I don't believe in marriage. It's bloody impractical. 'To love, honor, and obey.' If it weren't, you wouldn't have to sign a contract.

28. Wouldn't it be great if people could get to live suddenly as often as they die suddenly?

29. I have always lived my life exactly as I wanted. I've tried to please no one but myself... but I'm entirely content. I can sit back in my old age and not regret a single moment, not wish to change a single thing. It's what I wish for you...a life with no regrets.

30. Dressing up is a bore. At a certain age, you decorate yourself to attract the opposite sex, and at a certain age, I did that. But I'm past that age.

31. People have grown fond of me, like some old building.