Phrases

-Challenge yourself; it’s the only path which leads to growth.

-How are we going to get rid of racism? Stop talking about it!

-How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time.

-You know, the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven, the guards asked two questions. Their answers determined whether they were able to enter or not. ‘Have you found joy in your life?’ ‘Has your life brought joy to others?’

-Never let pride be your guiding principle. Let your accomplishments speak for you.

-I hate the word homophobia. It’s not a phobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole.

-As long as you feel like a victim, you are one.

-Fatigue, discomfort, discouragement are merely symptoms of effort.

-If you want to see a miracle, be the miracle

-Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.

-I once heard a wise man say there are no perfect men. Only perfect intentions.

-I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice.

-Don’t be afraid of what you want. This is your time. The barriers are down.

-Forgiveness liberates the soul, it removes fear.

-Don’t be different just for different’s sake. If you see it differently, function that way. Follow your own muse, always.

-The highest power is the human mind. That’s where God came from and my belief in God is my belief in myself.

-You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you.

-I always tell my kids if you lay down, people will step over you. But if you keep scrambling, if you keep going, someone will always, always give you a hand. Always. But you gotta keep dancing, you gotta keep your feet moving.

-Donald Trump is the Honey Boo Boo of rich people.

-If your life turns out to be good and you have a tremendous amount of luck in your life, it’s a good thing to turn around and make it work for others.

-Very often, you know, you stop walking because you say, ‘Well, I’m tired of climbing this hill. I’m never going to get to the top.’ And you’re only two steps from the top.

-If you dream you’ve got to dream that it’s going to happen. Remember that. If you dream you have to imagine that it will actually happen.

-All you have to do is believe, then you will see everything.

-We humans are more concerned with having than with being.

-The trick to any profession is making it look easy.

-The best way to guarantee a loss is to quit.

Did you just call me old? I really prefer the word ‘experienced’.

-If you’re not living on the edge then you’re taking up a little too much space.

-I’m a firm believer that things happen as they should. The universe unfolds just as it’s supposed to.

-I’m making a great effort because sometimes life is not enjoyable. Sometimes it’s painful and sometimes it’s stressful, sometimes it’s agonizing even, so I think once you get around those humps: strive for pleasure and peace.

-Finding joy is probably tantamount to finding yourself and being comfortable in your own skin.

-Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen – that stillness becomes a radiance.

-Never give up the ganja.

-In the harshest place on Earth, … love finds a way.

-I am going to stop calling you a white man and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.

-I am God. So it’s easy to play him. They say God is in all things. So if God is in me, then I am in God. Therefore, I am God. God does not exist without me.

-You can’t take credit for talent; you can only take credit for using it.

-Attacking People With Disabilities is the Lowest Display of Power I Can Think Of

-Your best posture is your next posture.

-I don’t want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.

-You don’t know how much you appreciate your privacy until you don’t have it.

-Is listening important? I can’t think of a single walk of life where it wouldn’t be.

-If I stay at home, I’m not famous. I’m only famous when I’m out in the streets, so I don’t go out on the streets much.

-If you look back on your life and where you started from it’s like looking back down a mountain back to the desert floor. It’s like now I can’t believe I had whatever it takes or perceived whatever it took to get here.

-So if I believe in God, and I do, it’s because I think I’m God.

-Insanity is being shit on, beat down, coasting through life in a miserable existence when you have a caged lion locked inside and a key to release it.

-Audiences believe what you believe. It’s a matter of believing yourself. If I believe me, then you’ve got no choice. None at all.

-I’ve never had any intimate relationships with a dolphin.

-It’s what I learn from the great actors that I work with. Stillness. That’s all and that’s the hardest thing.

-It’s just the stupidest law possible… You’re just making criminals out of people who aren’t engaged in criminal activity. And we’re spending zillions of dollars trying to fight a war we can’t win! We could make zillions, just legalize it and tax it like we do liquor. It’s stupid.

-Still, it can be more effective to accomplish what you need to accomplish with the minimum effort. Watch Anthony Hopkins. He doesn’t appear to be doing anything. He is so still that you can’t see him working, but you are drawn into his character through his very stillness.

-But I can say that life is good to me. Has been and is good. So I think my task is to be good to it. So how do you be good to life? You live it.

Actors cannot work against each other. It’s totally impossible.

-I like the character roles. Somewhere back there I really came to the conclusion in my mind that the difference between acting and stardom was major. And that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. If you remain an actor, they’re going to go and see the story you’re in.

-Look at, look, the Tea Partiers, who are controlling the Republican Party….Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term. What’s, what does that, what underlines that? ‘Screw the country. We’re going to whatever we do to get this black man, we can, we’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here… It is a racist thing.

-Write something insightful. Say Morgan Freeman said it. Win at internet.

-My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don’t get it, I can’t do it.

-The reason actors, artists, writers have agents is because we’ll do it for nothing. That’s a basic fact – you gotta do it.

-Freeman denied the claim that he was a “man of God”, saying that “the question of faith is whatever you actually believe is. We take a lot of what we’re talking about in science on faith; we posit a theory, and until it’s dis-proven we have faith that it’s true. If the mathematics work out, then it’s true, until it’s proven to be untrue.

-I’ve always been a fan of or desired to or responded to variety. I like variety in life, so variety in work is a must.

-Anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me finds me disagreeable.

-Marijuana prohibition is just the stupidest law possible….Jus t legalize it and tax it like we do liquor.

-That’s your job as the actor, to understand the human part of the character, to make it real.

-I don’t do comedy. I think if a situation is funny you just play it for real and if it’s funny, it’s funny.

-Is there a movie I think I should have won the Oscar for? Yeah. All of them.

-One universe, four forces, billions of galaxies. The precision and complexity of our world is enough to make even the famous cosmologist go just a little bit crazy. How does it all fit together? Is there a single, overarching design to the cosmos? And if we find it, will we glimpse the mind of God?

-These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.

-Was I always going to be here? No I was not. I was going to be homeless at one time, a taxi driver, truck driver, or any kind of job that would get me a crust of bread. You never know what’s going to happen.

-When I was a teenager, I began to settle into school because I’d discovered the extracurricular activities that interested me: music and theater.

-One day very soon, we’ll be asked: what did we do. And we will say: we did everything we could… we have to… because if we don’t there won’t be anyone left to ask. We have never faced a crisis this big, that we have never had better ideas to solve. This is our only home. We can choose today to make a world of difference.

-I think the best thing somebody ever did to me was my mother opening her legs and squirting me out.

-The public feels that if it’s on the Internet and you can access it, you deserve it. You haven’t committed any kind of crime. We may even have to rename piracy. But in any case, we have to confront it.

-I don’t get off on romantic parts. But I often think if I had had my dental work done early on, well, maybe.

-There is no such thing as homophobia. It is not a fear. It is you being an asshole.

-I always knew that someone was going to come at me with a script to play God. It’s just one of those things, the way your career is unfolding and all the talk about gravitas etc etc, so I had a strong feeling that someone was going to offer me the part of God. I was totally prepared to say, ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ unless it was a comedy.

-Everybody works the same, but the preparation very often may be different. You cannot work differently. You have to say the words that were written on the page, and you have to make your marks. That’s the work.

-I was lucky in that when the opportunity came, I was prepared to meet it.

-And some places you been before are so great that you don’t ever mind going back. Some places you been before you don’t ever want to go back, you know, like Montreal in the Winter.

-There’s no mystery to it. Nothing more complicated than learning lines and putting on a costume.

-Let me tell you what justice is. Justice is the law. And that man’s feeble attempt to lay down the principles of deceny.

-My earrings are worth just enough to buy me a coffin if I die in a strange place. That was the reason why sailors used to wear them.

-All my life, all my life that I can, as far back as I can remember, I saw my first movie when I was six years old. And since then I wanted to do that. I wanted to be a part of that.

-I don’t remember what my favourite comedy film is – truthfully! I saw Borat and I thought I was not going to be able to get out of the theatre because I was in so much pain from the laughter.

-When I was doing theater, I was very successful at believing that I was great, God’s gift to the theater.

-That’s really just the worst part of life really, you get bracketed somewhere and the next thing you know people are saying, ‘No. No. That’s not the type. Get me so and so.’ I’m not a type. I’m an actor.

-The odds are lousy that I actually said something attributed to me.

-I think you take a job, you owe it as much passion as the job itself demands. And most jobs demand that you be totally committed.

-I know people are saying they like you. I’m not being insulted or pushed around or anything. People are coming up because they like me. Nevertheless, I can’t be everybody’s…none of us can. I hate saying no to people.

-The better the actor, usually the safer you feel working with.

-I was raised in Mississippi, so heat and humidity is my bread and butter. It keeps me going. I can’t stand cold weather.

-Marketing only really works with word of mouth.

-I think one of the things when you’re casting children is you’re also casting their parents.

-And that if you become a star, people are going to go to see you. If you remain an actor, they’re going to go and see the story you’re in.

-Most of the time it’s the role. Sometimes it’s the story and sometimes it just the paycheck. It’s the little movies that come out as stories or the fact that I have work to go out, you know what I’m saying, you can only be out so long without work, you start getting antsy.

-Every job’s a challenge. The challenge is to do it and make it look right, like you belong there – wherever that is.

-And finding the hat, I always like to find the hat. And then props just dress the set. It’s all fabulous.

-As you grow in this business, you learn how to do more with less.

-I don’t do cold. My reaction to cold is drastic. I’m a southern boy.

-I don’t think that anyone learns anything. Well, I mean, you do always learn something if you have your eyes and ears open. You do learn something from every outing, every time that you go for it. But for me what actors do is interact and that’s why you have to do that.

-People need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.

-Dr. Martin Luther King is not a black hero. He is an American hero.

-The best way to confront, or deal with, technological innovation is to keep moving technologically.

-I’ve been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It’s boring.

-If you get called on to help somebody pull focus to some good cause, that’s good use of your fame. I don’t try to avoid that.

-Give me something interesting to play and I’m happy.

-I believe it doesn’t really matter where you work as long as you work. Keep sharpening your teeth.

-You can make anything into a play for the simple reason that the human mind is one of the best writers in the business. So, if you’ve got a writer who’s clever enough to give you enough clues, you will fill out every blank spot in a play, every single one.

-I don’t have anybody telling me what to say. I have people who would suggest, maybe, that I shouldn’t do this, that or the other, but that’s strictly up to me.

-Your job is always the same if it’s a juggernaut or if it’s just one of these little jewels of a film that’s gonna wind up at the Laemmle or something, so your job doesn’t change whatsoever… give it your best shot.

-Being blind is as simple as closing your eyes. The blind don’t act any different than you or I. You never see a blind person going around saying, ‘I’m blind.’ So if you want to play blind just close your eyes and keep them closed and fare thee well.

-They’re talking about kids who have grand mal seizures, and they’ve discovered that marijuana eases that down to where these children can have a life. That right there, to me, says, ‘Legalize it across the board!’

-So we say, oh, my goodness; we think we’ve found another Earth-like planet. We will start trying to figure out how to get there. And I have this strong belief that whatever we think we can do, whatever we can dream, we can do.

-If you’re playing somebody who is not you, then you can imagine that you are that person. You can feel like he feels, move like he moves, look like he looks – in your own mind.

-Somebody once said to me after I’d done “Deep Impact,” “What is it like to play a Black president,” and I said, “I didn’t play a Black president. I played a president. I just happened to be Black. There’s a difference.

-If we don’t save the oceans, if we don’t do something about what we’re doing to the oceans, as well as the planet at large, we’re going to be really sorry.

-Once you’ve gotten the job, there’s nothing to it. If you’re an actor, you’re an actor. Doing it is not the hard part. The hard part is getting to do it.

-Let me be the first to tell you, drinking alcohol is the worst thing to do in cold weather. Hot soup is the best because the process of digesting food helps to warm you up.

-Just that working with Clint again is like coming home.

-It [love about acting] is all about role playing – the same thing you do when you’re a kid, when you play with dolls or toys and make up stories. I never grew out of it.