Best 61 quotes of James Earl Jones on MyQuotes

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

Actors never discuss future plans.

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.

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.

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.

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

I consider myself a novice film actor.

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

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.

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.

I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle '60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater - which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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 was preparing myself for the theater, and... I got a little job here and a job there, but it wasn't going well, and I considered some time before the mid-60s that maybe I should consider something else.

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.

Love is just love, it can never be explained.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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 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.

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.

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

The one constant in life is baseball

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.