“My house was bugged. They couldn’t find any information on me being a subversive because I happen to love America; I just don’t like some of the things the government is doing.”

I fight for other people better than I fight for myself.

In essence, I’m a sophisticated cotton picker.

I’m a dirt person. I trust the dirt. I don’t trust diamonds and gold.

I see them in my audience all the time, with the fur coat, a woman whose hand is always out front, or the two fingers are on the cheek to show her diamond. I don’t have anything against that.

When the people who are responsible for our country ask you a direct question, I expect them to accept a direct answer, not to be blackballed because you are telling the truth.

My recipe for life is not being afraid of myself, afraid of what I think or of my opinions.

Aging has a wonderful beauty and we should have respect for that.

We’re not thought of in terms of color because we are entertainers. We are there to entertain you not because we are black, white, pink, or green or gay or straight or because we are Catholic or Protestant.

Relationships can be rather uncomfortable for her. But, as Eartha Kitt, it’s fine. I can accept and reject any time I want to. Do I ever reject? Not really. Although people think I do!

In the ’50s, critics used to say I had a ‘dangerous’ act.

I have a great need for affection from an audience. I don’t know whether this is because I had such a tough life when I was a child.

I was a street dancer.

Innocence is one of the most exciting things in the world.

Maybe subconsciously I feel I was meant to work hard for a living.

Eartha Mae is very shy. She’s scared to be seen, scared of rejection and even afraid of affection.

Orson Welles was one of these people who was defying everything the doctors told him he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He was really enjoying himself when he was eating what he wanted to eat.

Retreat is a response to the call of the heart-that call which beckons us toward reality, to the truth of our being, to that which is truly sane, really real and liberating …

The true heart of all human beings is the lover of what is.

I just want to do whatever makes me happy…Like being totally conscious. Laughing is, like, my favorite thing to do. Being with friends, having fun…being a bit daft.

Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all life’s greatest tests alone.

Living is a form of not being sure, not know what next or how… The artists never entirely knows.

To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.

Men who have sacrifice their well-being, and even their lives, for the cause of truth or the public good, are, from an empirical point of view – which scorn (“fait fi”, Fr.) virtue and altruism – regarded as insane or fools; but, from a moral standpoint, they are heros who do honour (“qui honorent”, Fr.) humanity.

I was just thinking about not getting picked on for being black and not being hungry.