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.

One day, my youngest uncle - the other one who was first to go to college, Randy - and I were sitting out on the front porch. And he was brilliant. He ended up - he just retired from Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas.

So in my sophomore year, I took a senior anatomy class. I thought anatomy - being the thing that I should be most interested in - and if I could hack, as we called it, a senior class, I would continue. I didn't hack the senior class.

When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting, which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that.

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.

The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again.

If you live in an oppressive society, you've got to be resilient. You can't let each little thing crush you. You have take every encounter and make yourself larger, rather than allow yourself to be diminished by it.

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.

I found my voice in books.

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

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

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

You don't build a bond without being present.

My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.

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.

A man's got to take care of his family. You live in my house, you sleep your behind on my bedclothes, you put my food in your belly because you are my son; you are my flesh and blood, not because I like you. It is my duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to you.

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

Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn't know what to do with us.

You sang in church, you know, and you didn't act at all. You tried not to act, you tried to tell the truth. The idea of being a troubadour on the road singing for your supper was very disturbing to him.

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.

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

It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don’t acknowledge that family is important and it has to be people who are present, you know and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children.

The inclusiveness of the Drama League luncheon is one of the most exciting things about it. I get to see old friends and meet new friends. Of course I can't tell who anybody is if they're under the age of 75. So my old friends become my new friends.

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.

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