Quotes by 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.