Want some inspirational quotes from the first woman to produce a sitcom?
Well, we’ve got a bunch of quotes from Betty White, an American actress, comedian, author and animal rights advocate.
She’s now widely regarded as a pioneer of television, with an entertainment career lasting over 90 years.
She was also one of the first women to exert control in front of and behind the camera.
Let’s read some of her motivational quotes and learn from her brilliant ideas.
Read the full collection below.
And make sure to check out these Golden Girls quotes.
Best Betty White Quotes
1. “About being called a legend and I just laugh. Have I got them fooled.”
2. “You don’t luck into integrity. You work at it.”
3. “Wilderness is harder and harder to find these days on this beautiful planet, and we’re abusing our planet to the point of almost no return.”
4. “I really don’t care with whom you sleep. I just care what kind of decent human being you are.”
5. “I like double entendre because then the people who get it enjoy it, and the people who don’t get it don’t know about it.”
6. “The writers are the stars of every really successful sitcom.”
7. “If one has no sense of humor, one is in trouble.”
8. “I like those touches of chivalry that are fast disappearing. If I sound old-fashioned, it’s because I’m as old as I am! But it’s just polite.”
9. “Mind your own business, take care of your affairs, and don’t worry about other people so much.”
Famous Betty White Quotes
10. “Laughter keeps everyone feeling wonderful.”
11. “Sex without pain is like food without taste.”
12. “I think older women still have a full life.”
13. “Animal lover that I am, a cougar I am not.”
14. “A lady likes to be complimented on her looks, her eyes, her figure. But the personality comments are much appreciated.”
15. “It’s fun once in a while to do a serious part, but I really enjoy doing comedy because I love to laugh.”
16. “Get at least eight hours of beauty sleep, nine if you’re ugly.”
17. “Butterflies are like women—we may look pretty and delicate, but baby, we can fly through a hurricane.”
18. “I have no regrets at all. None. I consider myself to be the luckiest old broad on two feet.”
Note: Check out our collection of quotes about regrets.
19. “I’ve enjoyed the opposite sex a lot. Always have. Always will.”
Funny Betty White Quotes
20. “Why do people say grow some balls? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”
21. “I may be a senior, but so what? I’m still hot.”
22. “I’m a health nut. My favorite food is hot dogs with French fries. And my exercise: I have a two-story house and a very bad memory, so I’m up and down those stairs.”
23. I don’t need sleep. I just went to my hotel and had a cold hot dog and vodka on the rocks.”
24. “I’m a teenager trapped in an old body.”
25. “I have the backbone of an eel.”
26. “I like bawdy humor. I love bawdy humor, but not dirty humor.”
27. “I’m the luckiest broad on two feet, I’ll tell you that. They say once a woman passes 40 she doesn’t get any good parts, so I’m blessed.”
28. “If a guy’s that cute, you’ve got to tap that booty.”
29. “Does desire melt away with age? I’m waiting for that day to come.”
Also read: Marilyn Monroe Quotes
Betty White Quotes About Animals
30. “In my head, I’m the ultimate cougar. Animal lover that I am.”
31. “You can always tell about somebody by the way they put their hands on an animal.”
32. “I’m not into animal rights. I’m only into animal welfare and health. I’ve been with the Morris Animal Foundation since the ’70s. We’re a health organization. We fund campaign health studies for dogs, cats, lizards, and wildlife. I’ve worked with the L.A. Zoo for about the same length of time. I get my animal fixes!”
33. “People forget the good that zoos do. If it weren’t for zoos, we would have so many species that would be extinct today.”
34. “My mother and dad were big animal lovers, too. I just don’t know how I would have lived without animals around me. I’m fascinated by them – both domestic pets and the wild community. They just are the most interesting things in the world to me, and it’s made such a difference in my lifetime.”
35. “Animals don’t lie. Animals don’t criticize. If animals have moody days, they handle them better than humans do.”
36. “Take personal responsibility. A lot of people go, ‘Well, I’ll get a dog because I have a kid and a kid needs a dog.’ And it doesn’t work out for that dog and the dog is on the street.”
37. “I always wanted to be a zookeeper when I was growing up, and I’ve wound up a zookeeper!”
38. “You can’t ask for better than two things you love the most.”
39. “I have my golden retriever now, Pontiac. He’s a career-change guide dog from Guide Dogs for the Blind.”
Betty White Quotes on Life
40. “If you’re walking with your lady on the sidewalk, I still like to see a man walking street-side, to protect the lady from traffic. I grew up with that, and I hate to see something like that get lost.” 41. “Being blessed with good health gives you the strength and loving what you do and—is a privilege that keeps you going. So I’m just happy as a lark.”
42. “A good friend of mine was Lucy Ball. Her mother and my mother were best friends.”
43. “Keep the other person’s well-being in mind when you feel an attack of soul-purging truth coming on.”
44. “Snow always inspires such awe in me. Just consider one tiny snowflake alone, so delicate, so fragile, so ethereal. And yet, let a billion of them come together through the majestic force of nature, they can screw up a whole city.”
45. “I’m so compulsive about stuff, I know if I had ever gotten pregnant, of course, that would have been my whole focus. But I didn’t choose to have children because I’m focused on my career. And I just don’t think, as compulsive as I am, that I could manage both.”
46. “I enjoy being busy, I really do. Remember, I’m the stub end of the railroad. I have no family, so I’m not taking busy time away from people that I should be spending it with. So I’m just relaxing and enjoying it.”
47. “I am still to this day starstruck. I look out at this audience and I see so many famous faces, but what really boggles my mind is that I actually know many of you. And I’ve worked with quite a few… maybe had a couple. And you know who you are.”
48. “I’ve worked with Morris Animal Foundation for more than 40 years now, and I’m so proud of all they’ve done to advance veterinary medicine for animals worldwide.”
49. “During the Depression, my dad made radios to sell to make extra money. Nobody had any money to buy the radios, so he would trade them for dogs. He built kennels in the backyard, and he cared for the dogs.”
Betty White Quotes on Love
50. “I not only knew Houdini, but we had a very lovely relationship. I really thought we had something going, and then the son of a gun disappeared.”
51. “I’ve always liked older men. They’re just more attractive to me. Of course, at my age, there aren’t many left!”
52. “It’s your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don’t take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver.”
53. “I was an only child and I had a mother and father who were just—there wasn’t a straight man in the house, and I mean that in a very nice way. They were fun, and we would laugh a lot.”
54. “I love Cadillacs and name them after birds.”
55. “I don’t care who anybody sleeps with. If a couple has been together all that time—and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones—I think it’s fine if they want to get married. I don’t know how people can get so anti-something.”
56. “I love words. Sudoku I don’t get into, I’m not into numbers that much, and there are people who are hooked on that. But crossword puzzles, I just can’t – if I get a puppy and I paper train him and I put the—if all of a sudden I’d open the paper and there’s a crossword puzzle—No, no, you can’t go on that, honey. I’ll take it.”
57. “Animals are near and dear to my heart, and I’ve devoted my life to trying to improve their lives.”
58. “Friendship takes time and energy if it’s going to work. You can luck into something great, but it doesn’t last if you don’t give it proper appreciation.”
59. “I’m not what you might call sexy, but I’m romantic. Let’s put it that way.”
Betty White Quotes on Getting Older
60. “My mother always used to say, “The older you get, the better you get. Unless you’re a banana.”
61. “The bottom line is, I’m blessed with good health. On top of that, I don’t go around thinking ‘Oh, I’m 90, I better do this, or I better do that.’ I’m just Betty. I’m the same Betty that I’ve always been. Take it or leave it.”
62. “Best thing about being in your 90s is you’re spoiled rotten. Everybody spoils you like mad, and they treat you with such respect because you’re old. Little do they know, you haven’t changed. You haven’t changed in [the brain]. You’re just 90 every place else … Now that I’m 91, as opposed to being 90, I’m much wiser. I’m much more aware, and I’m much sexier.”
63. “How do you feel about older women?”
64. “People have told me ‘Betty, Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with old friends.’ At my age, if I wanted to keep in touch with old friends. I’d need an Ouija board.”
65. “You’re never too old for anything.”
66. “I am the luckiest old broad on two feet if the truth were known. It’s – but it all goes back to Mary Tyler Moore, Golden Girls, all those actors love to take the credit. We couldn’t do it without the writers.”
67. “Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them. You know people who are already saying, ‘I’m going to be 30 – oh, what am I going to do?’ Well, use that decade! Use them all!”
68. “Retirement is not in my vocabulary. They aren’t going to get rid of me that way.”
69. “I’m having the time of my life and the fact that I’m still working—how lucky can you get? I’m 90 years old and still able to work as much as I do. That’s a privilege.”
Betty White Quotes on Entertainment Industry
70. “The film industry gives you the opportunity to meet interesting people.”
71. “I am interested in a lot of things not just show business and my passion for animals. I try to keep current in what’s going on in the world. I do mental exercises. I don’t have any trouble memorizing lines because of the crossword puzzles I do every day to keep my mind a little limber. I don’t sit and vegetate.”
72. “I think that a show that is as successful as ‘The Golden Girls’ is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. If you don’t feel proud to be part of a show that has that kind of track record, then shame on you, because that’s a privilege.”
73. “If you get into a Broadway show, and it doesn’t work, you’re a failure. And if it does work, you may be stuck for who knows how long. It just doesn’t sound great to me!”
74. “Of course, nobody’s tearing my door down. If you’re successful you’re going to intimidate and scare off the people you’d like to spend time with. They’re not going to approach you. And the ones who do are often there because you are a celebrity.”
75. “When we started on television, there was that magic box in the corner of the room, and Oh my gosh look what it’s doing!”
76. “Why retire from something if you’re loving it so much and enjoying it so much, and you’re blessed with another group of people to work with like the gang on ‘Hot in Cleveland?’ Why would I think of retiring? What would I do with myself?”
77. “Long ago, I did a five-and-a-half-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week talk show for four years, early on, in Los Angeles—a local show. And when you are for that many hours with no script, you know, you get very comfortable, maybe overly comfortable with that small audience.”
78. “The audience today has heard every joke. They know every plot. They know where you’re going before you even start. That’s a tough audience to surprise, and a tough audience to write for. It’s much more competitive now because the audience is so much more—I want to say sophisticated.”
79. “I love straight-face comedy or relatively subtle comedy. And then I turn around, and I find myself doing very broad comedy, but it’s all fun, and you have to keep your sense of humor and not take yourself seriously.”
Betty White Quotes on Gratitude
80. “It’s been phenomenal, but everybody keeps congratulating me on my resurgence and my big comeback. I haven’t been away, guys. I’ve been working steadily for the last 63 years.”
Related: Greatest Work Ethic Quotes
81. “There’s no formula. Keep busy with your work and your life. You can’t become a professional mourner. It doesn’t help you or others. Replay the good times. Be grateful for the years you had.”
82. “So you may not be as fast on your feet, and the image in your mirror may be a little disappointing, but if you are still functioning and not in pain, gratitude should be the name of the game.”
83. “It is important that you not believe your own publicity. Be grateful for whatever praise you receive, but take it with a grain of salt.”
84. “I cannot stand the people who get wonderful starts in show business and who abuse it. Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen, for example, although there are plenty of others, too. They are the most blessed people in the world, and they don’t appreciate it.”
85. “Keep busy and don’t focus everything on you, that wears off pretty fast. It’s not hard to find things you’re interested in, but enjoy them and indulge them.”
86. “I know it sounds corny, but I try to see the funny side and the upside, not the downside. I get bored with people who complain about this or that. It’s such a waste of time.”
87. “You don’t fall off the planet once you pass a given age… You don’t lose any of your sense of humor. You don’t lose any of your zest for life, or your lust for life if you will.”
88. “I was blessed with a mother and father who said taste the good stuff now and realize how fortunate and how wonderful things are this minute because enough minutes are not wonderful that you have to save up all the good ones to make it balance out.”
89. “I’ve learned that actors are just a part of the process; it’s all about the writing. Golden Girls was pure gold: Once I read that script and saw the casting, I knew I had to be involved.”
Betty White Quotes on Truth and Reality
90. “You can lie to anyone in the world and even get away with it, perhaps, but when you are alone and look into your own eyes in the mirror, you can’t sidestep the truth. Always be sure you can meet those eyes directly.”
91. “My answer to anything under the sun, like ‘What have you not done in the business that you’ve always wanted to do?’ is ‘Robert Redford’.”
92. “When I pontificate, it sounds so, you know, Oh, well, she’s preaching. I’m not preaching, but I think maybe I learned it from my animal friends. Kindness and consideration of somebody besides yourself. I think that keeps you feeling young. I really do.”
93. “My philosophy for staying young is [to] act bubbly every day. Drink bubbly every birthday!”
94. “Having been around for as long as I have, there are no secrets left. I am an avid crossword puzzle addict, and although I am known for my animal health and welfare work, people might be surprised to hear I am a nature nut as well!”
95. “My mother also taught me that if you lie to anybody on the planet, don’t lie to that person reflected in the mirror. Always be able to meet your own eyes and know that you’re telling the truth.”
96. “All creatures must learn to coexist. That’s why the brown bear and the field mouse can share their lives in harmony. Of course, they can’t mate, or the mice would explode.”
97. “I always tape my Christmas show in advance. That way I can spend the season of joy and goodwill with my only sister in Florida. She’s kinda a creep, but she’s got a pool.”
98. “Gravity has taken over. So there’s not much I can do about it … My problem with [plastic surgery] is you’ll go to a women’s press conference or something like that, and old friends will come up and I kind of don’t recognize them. I recognize the voice, but I don’t—all of a sudden, there’s this whole new face that I don’t know who that is.”
99. “I think a lot of people like hidden-camera shows where they think they’re spying on somebody who doesn’t know they’re looking at them. And nobody takes it seriously – you either enjoy it and get a laugh out of the reactions or not.”
Betty White Quotes on Being Optimistic and Decision Making
100. “I had to make a major decision with myself because I just don’t think you can do both: try to have a baby career and raise it and have a baby and raise it. And to try to do justice to either one. It was a very conscious decision on my part not to have children – which I have never regretted.”
101. “A lot of people think this is a goodie-two-shoes talking. But we do have a tendency to complain rather than celebrating who we are. I learned at my mother’s knee it’s better to appreciate what’s happening… I think we kind of talk ourselves into the negative sometimes.”
102. “You don’t say the hurtful thing even if you’re irritated or upset, because that sticks around, or that just chips off a little of the other guy’s self-esteem.”
103. “Don’t take yourself too seriously. You can lie to others—not that I would—but you cannot lie to yourself.”
104. “Avoid tweeting any photos of your private parts.”
105. “I just make it my business to get along with people, so I can have fun. It’s that simple.”
106. “Well, I mean, if a joke or humor is bawdy, it’s got to be funny enough to warrant it. You can’t just have it bawdy or dirty just for the sake of being that—it’s got to be funny.”
107. “I think I’ve been spoiled enough, don’t you think? Might as well quit while I’m ahead! But I’m not going to quit, that’s for sure.”
108. “Everybody needs a passion. That’s what keeps life interesting. If you live without passion, you can go through life without leaving any footprints.”
109.“I am still to this day star-struck. I look out at this audience and I see so many famous faces, but what really boggles my mind is that I actually know many of you. And I’ve worked with quite a few… maybe had a couple… and you know who you are.”
Betty White Quotes on Daily Pursuit
110. “I didn’t know what Facebook was, and now that I do know what it is, I have to say, it sounds like a huge waste of time.”
111. “I’m wearing a put-together from a little shop that I favor called the back of my closet.”
112. “I don’t seem to require a lot of sleep. I just – if I get four, five good hours, I’m fine. But sleeping is sort of dull. There’s a lot of other good stuff that you can do without just lying down and closing your eyes.”
113. “I’m in the middle of my sixth book, which is about animals at the Los Angeles Zoo.”
114. “Facebook just sounds like a drag, in my day seeing pictures of people’s vacations was considered a punishment.”
115. “I’m not a big cook. I only go in the kitchen to feed my dog.”
116. “I’m in the acting business. That’s the ego business.”
117. “Humor is like music. It’s a rhythm, and you just kind of get the rhythm of it, and you have to know not to let the beat go too long, but to leave a beat in there for it to gel, you know.”
118. “Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don’t get that laugh, there’s something wrong.”
119. “Can’t an old person take a nap without everyone making a fuss about it?”
120. “Oh I don’t much believe in the meantime, life happens in real-time.”
Did You Get Inspired by These Quotes From Betty White?
Betty Marion White Ludden’s career began over 80 years ago in 1939, shortly after her graduation from high school.
She found work as a radio personality in Los Angeles before transitioning to television under the guidance of disk jockey Al Jarvis.
She was awarded eight Emmy Awards in various categories, three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Grammy Award, and the honorary title, Mayor of Hollywood in 1955. We learn from her that age doesn’t matter for as long as you are happy, and you enjoy what you’re doing in life.
What is your favorite quote from Betty White? Leave your thoughts and opinions in the comment section below.
