Fred Astaire
The hardest job kids face today is learning good manners without seeing any.Collection: Learning
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.
I just put my feet in the air and move them around.
I have no desire to prove anything by dancing. I have never used it as an outlet or a means of expressing myself. I just dance. I just put my feet in the air and move them around.
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.
Disco is just jitterbug.
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.
Dancing is a sweat job.
Do it big, do it right, and do it with style.Collection: Dance
Some people seem to think that good dancers are born, but all the good dancers I have known are taught or trained.Collection: Dance
If it doesn't look easy it is that we have not tried hard enough yet.Collection: Looks
Dancing is a vertical interpretation of a horizontal intention.Collection: Dancing
I have no desire to prove anything by dancing ... I just dance.Collection: Dancing
Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.Collection: Technology
If we followed our own advice, we'd be successful.Collection: Successful
For ballroom dancing, remember that your partners have their own distinctive styles also. Cultivate flexibility. Be able to adapt your style to that of your partner. In doing so, you are not surrendering your individuality, but blending it with that of your partner.Collection: Dancing
I just put my feet in the ground and move them around.Collection: Motivational
I don't make love by kissing, I make love by dancing.Collection: Kissing
If your gonna go down, go down swinging!Collection: Life
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.Collection: Trying
Be yourself-but don't be conspicuous.Collection: Being Yourself
It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.Collection: Dance
If the dance is right, there shouldn't be a single superfluous movement.Collection: Dance
Chance is the fool's name for FateCollection: Fate
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.Collection: Dance
I just told my agent to forget all other projects for me. I was waiting for Audrey Hepburn. She asked for me, and I was ready. This could be the last and only opportunity I’d have to work with the great and lovely Audrey Hepburn and I was not missing it. Period.Collection: Opportunity
Why didn't you tell me I was in love with you?Collection: Love You
In dealing with a girl or a horse, one lets nature take its courseCollection: Girl
Either the camera will dance, or I will.Collection: Cameras
And that love that wrinkles your nose touches my foolish heart.Collection: Heart
Of course, Ginger was able to accomplish sex through dance. We told more through our movements instead of the big clinch. We did it all in the dance.Collection: Dance
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Fashion
When working on my choreography I am not always receptive to outside suggestions or opinions. I believe that if you have something in mind in the way of a creation, such as a new dance, a sequence, or an effect, you are certain to come up with inaccurate criticism and damaging results if you go around asking for opinions.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Dance
I have never had anything that I can remember in the business - and that includes all the movies and the stage shows and everything - that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like some of the small-time vaudeville, because we weren't going on and getting better. Aside from that, I didn't dislike anything.Collection: Get Better
Oh, God! That boy moves in a very exceptional way. That's the greatest dancer of the century.Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Nice
But I do nothing that I don't like, such as "inventing" up to the arty or "down" to the corny. I happen to relish a certain type of corn. What I think is the really dangerous approach is the "let's be artistic" attitude. I know that artistry just happens.Collection: Attitude
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.Collection: Running
Slippery stages were the terror of my life.Collection: Dance
People think I was born in top hat and tails.Collection: Thinking
The unpadded shoulders, the three-buttoned long and boxy coat, the too-short, thin pants, and the thin ties with striped buttoned shirts in dark colors-well, I suppose this may go very well with some personalities but it's not for me. To me, all such look like TV producers. Maybe they want to.Collection: Dark
I don't remember anybody ever pointing me out as a dancing prodigy, but I played a not bad second base.Collection: Dancing
I don't like top hats, white ties, and tails.Collection: White
I'm just a hoofer with a spare set of tails.Collection: Dance
We attend to his later performances as a dramatic actor with respect, but watching the nondancing, nonsinging Astaire is like watching a grounded skylark.Collection: Respect
I had some ballet training but didn't like it. It was like a game to me.Collection: Games
Oh, there's no such thing as my favorite performance. I can't sit here today and look back, and say, Top Hat was better than Easter Parade or any of the others. I just don't look back, period. When I finish with a project, I say 'all right, that's that. What's next?'Collection: Easter
Do it big, do it right and do it with style.Collection: Dance