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Daily Inspiration Quote by Kirk Douglas

"I guess I was a bad boy... Yes, yes, I've had lots of women in my life"

About this Quote

Kirk Douglas delivers confession the way old Hollywood liked its scandal: half-sincere, half-performative, and fully calibrated. "I guess" is the tell. It pretends to shrug off judgment while quietly inviting it, as if the speaker is both defendant and prosecutor. The ellipsis does more work than the words: a beat for the audience to lean in, a pause that suggests memory, regret, bragging, or all three.

"Bad boy" is a self-myth in two syllables. It infantilizes the wrongdoing (boys misbehave; men harm), sandblasting any sharper moral edges. Douglas isn't naming acts, just a persona, the kind the studio era sold as masculine charisma: appetite as vitality, conquest as proof of life. Then comes the pivot: "Yes, yes" - an impatient doubling that plays like a preemptive surrender to inevitable questions, or a soft dismissal of prudish scrutiny. It's also classic showmanship, a seasoned performer controlling tempo, making the admission feel routine rather than damning.

The second clause, "I've had lots of women in my life", slides from ethics to arithmetic. "Women" becomes a tally, not relationships; "in my life" adds a sentimental halo, suggesting these encounters were part of some grand narrative rather than a series of choices with consequences.

Context matters: Douglas belonged to a generation where male stars were insulated by power, publicists, and a culture that treated infidelity as legend. Read now, the line sits uneasily between candor and entitlement - an artifact of a time when the punchline was always that the man got away with it.

Quote Details

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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Douglas, Kirk. (2026, January 16). I guess I was a bad boy... Yes, yes, I've had lots of women in my life. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-guess-i-was-a-bad-boy-yes-yes-ive-had-lots-of-112449/

Chicago Style
Douglas, Kirk. "I guess I was a bad boy... Yes, yes, I've had lots of women in my life." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-guess-i-was-a-bad-boy-yes-yes-ive-had-lots-of-112449/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I guess I was a bad boy... Yes, yes, I've had lots of women in my life." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-guess-i-was-a-bad-boy-yes-yes-ive-had-lots-of-112449/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Kirk Douglas (born December 9, 1916) is a Actor from USA.

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