James Earl Jones Quotes

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.

The world is filled with violence. Because criminals carry guns, we decent law-abiding citizens should also have guns. Otherwise, they will win and the decent people will lose.

There is not enough magic in a bloodline to forge an instant, irrevocable bond.

Stuttering is painful. In Sunday school, I'd try to read my lessons, and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.

If you expect someone else to guide you, you'll be lost.

Once you begin to explain or excuse all events on racial grounds, you begin to indulge in the perilous mythology of race.

In the wintertime, in the snow country, citrus fruit was so rare, and if you got one, it was better than ambrosia.

When I read great literature, great drama, speeches, or sermons, I feel that the human mind has not achieved anything greater than the ability to share feelings and thoughts through language.

In our resolve to build a better world... we seek to summon what Abraham Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

Don't you try and go through life worried if someone had liked you or not. You best make sure that they are doing right by you.

So in my junior year, I switched to the drama department.

I found my voice in books.

Trying to make someone fall in love with you is about as pointless as trying to control who you fall in love with.

You don't build a bond without being present.

Speech is a very important aspect of being human. A whisper doesn't cut it.

There is a very fine line between love and nausea.

Love was just a word to me. Until you came along and gave it meaning.

The goal wasn't to be a millionaire or to be a Hollywood star. That was not the goal. The goal was something about - the goal was to find the goal, but I knew where it was.

You weren't going to the theatre to change the world, but you had a chance to affect the world, the thinking and the feelings of the world.

No one asked me to be an actor, so no one owed me. There was no entitlement.

I was as content Off-Broadway as I was in a big Hollywood movie, and, I just try to be content wherever I am, you know.

Writing can give full meaning to characters and avoid pure stereotype.

Love is just love, it can never be explained.

I really think I ambled through a lot of my life, or ambled from one thing to the other.

I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas.

So by the time I got to Michigan I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.

Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn't have the anxiety that we'd starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know? And our own hogs, and our own cows and stuff, you know.

I knew real show business from my father, who had been an actor since he left the world of boxing.

More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather.

I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.

Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy.

People who lusted after Marilyn Monroe had no idea she stuttered. It is the secret of her sexiness, actually.

I was an adopted child of my grandparents, and I don’t know how I can ever express my gratitude for that because my parents would have been a mess.

My youngest uncle Randy and I were the first members of our entire family to ever go to college.

I agree with my father, Albert Einstein, don't believe every quote you read on the internet.

My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being.

Your own need to be shines out of any dream or creation you imagine.

I mean, my people were very, very simple. They were peasant people, you know?

My voice is for hire. My endorsement is not for hire. I will do a voice-over, but I cannot endorse without making a different kind of commitment. My politics are very personal and subjective.

The last thing I want to be is a rich black superstar. I just want to act.

Just so you know, there's a space that only you can fill. Just so you know, I loved you then, I guess I always will.

Actors never discuss future plans.

Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers.

I consider myself a novice film actor.

We used to be "shiftless and lazy," now we're "fearsome and awesome." I think the black man should take pride in that.

I do not know if it is true that all actors want to direct and all directors want to act, but in 1972 I tried directing and decided I had better stick to acting.

The one constant in life is baseball

I love doing commercials! Usually, they have enough money that they can take time and photograph it well.

I love to see actors' work. I love to surf channels late at night and accidentally run into movies I hadn't seen before. It makes me very proud of the profession.

So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know?