Top 35 James Earl Jones Quotes

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

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

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

I think stutterers are funny. And I know it’s rude and politically incorrect to laugh at stutterers. But I think it is okay because I know why they’re funny. They make people nervous. People think, when on earth are they going to get the word out, so they start laughing out of their own nervousness.

And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know.

And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race.

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

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.

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

I got out of the Army – in my world – I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors.

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.

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

When you are mute, you become a good listener – it’s all one-way. You appreciate the written word. You appreciate the sound.

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.

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

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.

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

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 loose.

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.

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

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

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.

I’d like to film a British commercial; they’re better than American ones.

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.

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

Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise: those guys have well-planned careers. I’m just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, ‘Okay, I’ll do that.’

You cannot be an actor like I am and not have been in some of the worst movies like I have. But I stand before you deeply honored, mighty grateful and just plain gobsmacked.

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.

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

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

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

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?

The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven’t gotten there yet.

You don’t build a bond without being present.