109 Quotes by James Earl Jones

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We used to be “shiftless and lazy,” now we’re “fearsome and awesome.” I think the black man should take pride in that.

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