James Cagney famous quotes

06-24-2025

Perhaps people, and kids especially, are spoiled today, because all the kids today have cars, it seems. When I was young you were lucky to have a bike.
-- James Cagney

#Children #Kids #Car
My father was totally Irish, and so I went to Ireland once. I found it to be very much like New York, for it was a beautiful country, and both the women and men were good-looking.
-- James Cagney

#Beautiful #Country #New York
Learn your linesâ€¦ plant your feetâ€¦ look the other actor in the eyeâ€¦ say the wordsâ€¦ mean them.
-- James Cagney

#Mean #Eye #Feet
Outside of my family, the prime concern of my life has been nature and its order, and how we have been savagely altering that order.
-- James Cagney

#Nature #Order #My Family
Absorption in things other than self is the secret of a happy life.
-- James Cagney

#Happiness #Happy Life #Self
You dirty, double-crossing rat.
-- James Cagney

#Dirty #Double Standard #Rats
Find your mark, look the other fellow in the eye, and tell the truth.
-- James Cagney

#Eye #Looks #Telling The Truth
Once a song and dance man, always a song and dance man. Those few words tell as much about me professionally as there is to tell.
-- James Cagney

#Song #Men #Few Words
You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them... I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can.
-- James Cagney

#Psych #Acting #Audience
You know, the period of World War I and the Roaring Twenties were really just about the same as today. You worked, and you made a living if you could, and you tired to make the best of things. For an actor or a dancer, it was no different then than today. It was a struggle.
-- James Cagney

#War #Struggle #Tired
I never had the slightest difficulty with a fellow actor. Not until One, Two, Three. In that picture, Horst Buchholz tried all sorts of scene-stealing didoes. I came close to knocking him on his ass.
-- James Cagney

#Two #Three #Actors
I never said, 'MMMmmm, you dirty rat!
-- James Cagney

#Dirty #Rats #Said
There's not much to say about acting but this. Never settle back on your heels. Never relax. If you relax, the audience relaxes. And always mean everything you say.
-- James Cagney

#Mean #Never Settle #Relax
I`m sick of carrying guns and beating up women.
-- James Cagney

#Gun #Sick #Carrying Guns
My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.
-- James Cagney

#Dad #Stress #Ideas
Though I soon became typecast in Hollywood as a gangster and hoodlum, I was originally a dancer, an Irish hoofer, trained in vaudeville tap dance. I always leapt at the opportunity to dance in films later on.
-- James Cagney

#Dance #Opportunity #Hollywood
I got a part as a chorus girl in a show called Every Sailor and I had fun doing it. Mother didn't really approve of it, through.
-- James Cagney

#Girl #Mother #Fun
The Postman Always RingsTwice.
-- James Cagney

#Postman

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