James Earl Jones quotes

Born
January 17, 1931, Arkabutla, Mississippi, U.S.

Died
September 9, 2024.

Occupation
Actor.

James Earl Jones was an American actor. His career spanned more than 60 years.

Movies
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
The Lion King (1994)

We children learned responsibility automatically.
– James Earl Jones

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

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

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

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

I think self-criticism is sort of a given when you’re an actor. It’s also about being curious and not being flippant. Anyone who accepts being in this noble profession is automatically self-critical.
– James Earl Jones

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.
– James Earl Jones

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

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

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.
– James Earl Jones

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

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

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

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.
– James Earl Jones

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

I consider myself a novice film actor.
– James Earl Jones

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.
– James Earl Jones

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

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.
– James Earl Jones

Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy.
– James Earl Jones

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

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

There’s nothing I would retire for, so I won’t retire.
– James Earl Jones

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.
– James Earl Jones

You don’t build a bond without being present.
– James Earl Jones

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

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.
– James Earl Jones

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.
– James Earl Jones

Writing can give full meaning to characters and avoid pure stereotype.
– James Earl Jones

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.
– James Earl Jones

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

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.
– James Earl Jones

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.
– James Earl Jones

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