War & Peace Quote by Sammy Davis, Jr.

The Army, for Sammy Davis, Jr., wasn’t a patriotic finishing school; it was a pressure cooker that clarified the rules of American belonging. Drafted into an institution that promised unity while delivering segregation, Davis encountered a blunt fact: talent doesn’t neutralize racism, it just makes you more visible. The line turns that experience into a survival strategy, and it’s telling that the goal isn’t to be loved or understood, but to be untouchable.

“So big, so strong” isn’t only about muscles or bravado. It’s the language of performance and celebrity, of building a persona so luminous it functions like armor. Davis is describing the calculus many Black entertainers were forced to master in mid-century America: if the culture is determined to consume you, you try to control the terms of consumption. Become indispensable. Outshine the room. Turn every slight into fuel. The subtext is bleakly pragmatic: hatred may be irrational, but it’s predictable; you can’t cure it, so you try to outscale it.

The most revealing word is “touch.” Hatred isn’t framed as an argument to be refuted; it’s a contaminant, a hand reaching for you in public spaces - barracks, stages, hotels, neighborhoods - reminding you who is permitted softness. Davis’s sentence captures both the cost of that armor and the ambition behind it. Strength here is less a triumph than a necessity: an entertainer learning that emotional invulnerability can be as much a job requirement as singing on key.