Fred Astaire Quotes

The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.

Do it big, do it right, and do it with style.

Some people seem to think that good dancers are born, but all the good dancers I have known are taught or trained.

The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style.

Dancing is a vertical interpretation of a horizontal intention.

I have no desire to prove anything by dancing ... I just dance.

If it doesn't look easy it is that we have not tried hard enough yet.

And that love that wrinkles your nose touches my foolish heart.

When you're experimenting you have to try so many things before you choose what you want, and you may go days getting nothing but exhaustion.

I have no desire to prove anything by my work. I have never used it as an outlet or as a means of expressing myself. I just dance.

I just put my feet in the ground and move them around.

I don't make love by kissing, I make love by dancing.

Disco is just jitterbug.

If we followed our own advice, we'd be successful.

Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.

Why didn't you tell me I was in love with you?

If your gonna go down, go down swinging!

It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.

Be yourself-but don't be conspicuous.

There comes a day when people begin to say, 'Why doesn't that old duffer retire?' I want to get out while they're still saying Astaire is a hell of a dancer.

It's nice that all the composers have said that nobody interprets a lyric like Fred Astaire. But when it comes to selling records I was never worth anything particularly except as a collector's item.

If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement.

I often take a brand-new suit or hat and throw it up against the wall a few times to get that stiff, square newness out of it.

Dancing is a sweat job.

Chance is the fool's name for Fate

Oh, God! That boy moves in a very exceptional way. That's the greatest dancer of the century.

This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn't want to be tracked. It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.

Either the camera will dance, or I will.

I am bit sending messages with my feet. All I ever wanted was not to come up empty. I did it for the dough and the old applause.

I inherited the knowledge that sometimes (talents) not only skip a generation, but sometimes run screaming from it. Ironically, it was the singing non-ability that helped feed my love of laughter.

I don't remember anybody ever pointing me out as a dancing prodigy, but I played a not bad second base.

I don't want to be the oldest performer in captivity... I don't want to look like a little old man dancing out there.

People think I was born in top hat and tails.

Slippery stages were the terror of my life.

In dealing with a girl or a horse, one lets nature take its course

I don't like top hats, white ties, and tails.

I'm just a hoofer with a spare set of tails.

We attend to his later performances as a dramatic actor with respect, but watching the nondancing, nonsinging Astaire is like watching a grounded skylark.

I had some ballet training but didn't like it. It was like a game to me.

I am not sending messages with my feet. All I ever wanted was not to come up empty. I did it for the dough and the old applause.

Old age is like everything else to make a success of it you got to start young.