Success Quote by Sammy Davis, Jr.

Davis is smuggling a moral yardstick into a business built to reward spectacle. The line works because it flips the normal economy of showbiz: the stage is where you’re measured, applauded, ranked; offstage is where you’re supposed to disappear. He insists the real accounting happens precisely where the spotlight doesn’t reach, turning fame into something like a stress test for character rather than proof of it.

The phrasing matters. “Real success” implies a counterfeit version everyone’s been selling him, and “as a human being” is pointedly plain, almost defensive. That simplicity is the subtext: Davis had to argue for his full humanity in public, not just his talent. As a Black and Jewish performer navigating mid-century America, he moved through rooms where he could be celebrated onstage and diminished off it. The quote carries the sting of that contradiction. It’s not abstract virtue; it’s a survival lesson from someone who knew applause doesn’t equal respect.

“How you get along with your fellow man” sounds old-fashioned until you hear the challenge inside it: power doesn’t excuse cruelty, celebrity doesn’t license selfishness, and charisma doesn’t substitute for decency. Davis frames ethics as social practice, not private self-image. Success is relational: who you were to the people around you, especially when you didn’t need anything from them.

In a culture that still treats fame as a moral credential, Davis offers a quieter metric: what kind of person the performance left behind.