Daily Inspiration Quote by Sammy Davis, Jr.

Believing in Bobby Kennedy wasn’t a casual preference for Sammy Davis, Jr.; it was a wager with his own safety, reputation, and hard-won place in America. Davis frames campaigning as repayment, a deliberate choice of the language of gratitude: “give back” to “this country” that “has given me so much.” That phrasing is doing double duty. On the surface it’s civic-minded, a celebrity using his platform for public good. Underneath, it’s a careful negotiation with an audience that often treated him as a guest in the national house, not a full owner of it. Gratitude becomes both shield and passport.

The line lands in the charged mid-1960s, when Davis’s stardom didn’t exempt him from segregation-era backlash and when his interracial marriage triggered public hostility. Aligning with RFK, a politician associated with civil rights and anti-poverty campaigns, let Davis turn private vulnerability into public purpose. It also challenged the era’s unspoken rule that entertainers should smile, sing, and stay out of politics. He’s asserting that belonging isn’t just a legal status; it’s participation.

There’s poignancy in “attempt.” It acknowledges limits: a man who knows the country’s gifts came with strings, bruises, and conditional acceptance. Still, he insists on agency. This isn’t assimilation-by-apology; it’s patriotism with teeth, a performer refusing to be merely consumed by America and choosing, instead, to help shape it.