The Wisdom of James Earl Jones

??????????? The revered actor James Earl Jones died September 9th at 93 (New York Times obituary). As a child, he struggled with stuttering and was mostly mute through his years in school. Here are some notable quotes:

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

-?? Speech is a very important aspect of being human. A whisper doesn’t cut it.

-?? 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.

-?? I think stutterers are funny. And I know it’s rude and politically incorrect to laugh at stutterers. But I think it’s 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.

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

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

-?? If you live in an oppressive society, you’ve got to be resilient. You can’t let each little thing crush you. You have to take every encounter and make yourself larger, rather than allow yourself to be diminished by it.

-?? 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.

-?? Your own need to be shines out of any dream or creation you imagine.

-?? So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there were girls over in the drama school too, you know?

-?? I consider myself a novice film actor.

-?? Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise: those guys have well-planned careers. I’m just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, “Okay, I’ll do that.”

-?? 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.

From Marshall Memo 1054