All Ethel Waters Quotes
Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.
Ethel Waters
51% of people like this quote
Somehow, the things my mother wanted to do, the release in evangelism she sought with such frenzy, were transferred to me.
Ethel Waters
50% of people like this quote
I've never been able to feel that there is anything undignified about making your living by the sweat of your brow.
Ethel Waters
50% of people like this quote
Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.
Ethel Waters
50% of people like this quote
Mom never quit on me. My only regret is that she didn't live long enough to share some of the money and comforts my work in show business has brought me.
Ethel Waters
49% of people like this quote
When you dominate other people's emotions, the time has to come when you will have to pay, and heavily, for that privilege.
Ethel Waters
48% of people like this quote
Though I was excited about the Sojourner Truth play, it was not reassuring to think that my entire future might depend on the success of that one show.
Ethel Waters
48% of people like this quote
Nothing can beat the smell of dew and flowers and the odor that comes out of the earth when the sun goes down.
Ethel Waters
48% of people like this quote
The big compliment came from the beer drinkers who didn't know me. They wouldn't drink or move when I sang. If they had their glasses in mid-air, the glasses wouldn't come down.
Ethel Waters
47% of people like this quote
After years in white theaters I dreaded working in colored houses. The noise, the stomping, whistling, and cheering that hadn't annoyed me when I was young was now something I dreaded.
Ethel Waters
47% of people like this quote
Negroes are human beings with exactly the same faults and virtues as members of the other races.
Ethel Waters
47% of people like this quote
There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.
Ethel Waters
46% of people like this quote
I had always loved John Ford's pictures. And I came to love him, too, but I was frightened to death working for him. He used the shock treatment while directing me.
Ethel Waters
45% of people like this quote
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