Top 25 James Earl Jones Quotes

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I consider myself a novice film actor.

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, you know.

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

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

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

There haven’t been enough profound things written about what being black means and what a black character is. Nobody knows.

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

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.

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

There’s nothing I would retire for, so I won’t retire.

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.

We children learned responsibility automatically.

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.