Top 120 Quotes & Sayings by Joe Morton - Page 2

I didn't play basketball because I'd learned how to ice skate.

In the case of Papa Pope, certainly he's making his daughter's world and the world of the republic a much better place.

There's nothing better than an educated actor - not only educated in his craft but educated in the world.

My whole career has been a landmark. So I don't think about the pressure too much. I just go out and do, because I believe in it.

We've all grown up with 'Ozzie and Harriet,' 'Father Knows Best,' 'Eight Is Enough.' White families have always represented the universal family.

Dick Gregory used every syllable, every metaphor, every joke, every march, every incarceration, every hour of his life, to embarrass this country into providing a more perfect, perfect union.

My tendency is to be quiet and to stay focused and in character. Not the entire time, but certainly to stay focused while I'm on set.

I don't think you can play a villain with a negative point of view.

With any villain, you have to see things from their point of view and understand that they think what they're doing will make the world a better place.

I don't know of any actor in any television show that I have ever seen who's given monologue after monologue in a television series.

'Turn Me Loose' was Off-Broadway, and now we are making a concerted effort to figure out how to get it to on Broadway.

One of the beauties of working in Shondaland is that they make an effort to get to know who you are, so they're not giving you something that's going to be so far out of your comfort zone.

Television has been really good to me in terms of the roles I've been able to get on TV as opposed to the roles I've gotten in film and in theater.

To work for Shonda Rhimes is heaven. It's been amazing.

I don't watch a lot of television, which sounds strange for someone who works in TV.

I think it might be interesting to give an Emmy to an outstanding background performance in either a comedy or drama series.

My father was in the service. His job was to integrate the Armed Forces overseas. So that meant we showed up at military bases in Okinawa or Germany, racially unannounced. That made me, in that particular society if you will, the outsider.

Most of my career I purposely spent doing good guys.

I love doing theater. Despite the fact that out of theater, film, and TV, theater is the hardest thing to do. It's the least paid, and we all have these bills that we have to pay.

When it comes to certain portions of our history, we've just forgotten it all.

Part of the decision I made was to move very fluidly from one medium to the other, and so it has stayed as part of who I am. I don't know if I have a preference.

I've never liked much of reality television, mostly because it involves humiliation.

'Paycheck,' I thought, was a really, really good idea. I never got an opportunity, unfortunately, to read the novel, but I loved the idea of how to deal with intellectual properties. I just don't know that we necessarily got to the heart of that particular idea. I think it became more of a chase movie than anything else.

I make it a habit of never trying to judge what an audience might think, only because all points of view are too close, because we're doing it every day, I think that the actor's point of view is sometimes too close to what the material actually is.

In my opinion, it would be a lot better for the culture - meaning the culture of America - if there was more diversity in terms of storyline. In terms of the kind of content that you see about Americans of African descent on the screen.

With Trump, because of the kind of seemingly violent way that he talks about things and because he's on Twitter almost every single morning, I think it brings down the respect that we have for the White House and for the Oval Office in particular, so the expectation is anything can happen, and that becomes the norm, which is unfortunate.

You don't have the opportunity to win an Emmy unless you're given the opportunity to play certain kinds of roles.

Without mentioning any names, there was a film that was being done, and I ran into the producer on the plane. It was a book that I really, really loved, and I said, 'I'd love to be a part of this.' And they made it clear that that was not going to be possible - for no particular reason other than that there was just no part for a black person.

Republicans in the South... are trying to find ways, not so much to block black and brown people from voting, but to block black and brown people from getting people they want elected, which is a far more subtle thing to do.

Being back on stage in New York, off-Broadway - I mean, that's an actor's dream.

When you give your children certain life lessons, and they come and ask you for additional advice, you say to yourself, 'I've done my job,' and you'll continue to do your job.

I have lots of hopes for black actors in general, whether they be on TV or on stage or in movies, and that is that we move beyond the tokenism of what it means to be black in a particular set of circumstances.

I know who Dick Gregory is; I knew what his accomplishments are. I certainly knew him as a comedian and an activist.

Dick Gregory will be greatly missed. Humbly, and in his stead, 'Turn Me Loose' carries on to be his voice and his inspiration for all who wish to laugh at the absurdity of racism and be enlightened by his spirit of justice.

I think many villains have the burden of not being very human.

Because of 'Terminator 2,' you get not pigeonholed but circled as one of those guys who can understand their way through a movie like that and hold it down.

What you find with really good directors is that they kind of leave you alone. They've hired you because they know the kind of work you do and the sense of how you'd approach it. So usually, they'll just stand back and maybe give you a nudge once in a while in terms of something specific they might want in a particular scene.

I've played good guys for most of my career, and when I came out to California, I thought, 'I really would like to find some wonderfully intelligent bad guy to play.'

I think the greatest lesson that power has to teach us is, once you've had it, once you are a part of it, you're never free.

I started off at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island, and started doing theater in Manhattan in 1969.

My father was in the military; he was a captain. His service was to quote-unquote integrate the Armed Forces overseas.

I suppose I prefer kind of epic dramas like, oh, I don't know... 'Lawrence Of Arabia' or 'Apocalypse Now'; those are the movies that I have a tendency to be most fond of.

We live in a world where racism hasn't changed at all. It's that old thing of, you know, the more things change, the more things remain the same.

I think that, unfortunately, it appears that Donald Trump is trampling all over the Constitution.

If you can keep a character fresh and alive for, let's say, six months, working eight nights a week, then you can do anything. You have honed your technique and your skills to such a degree by that point that you are ready to take on all kinds of challenges.

It's important to know, whether you're pro or anti the current president and what he's doing, that he's doing what he thinks is for the betterment of the country because his interest is to make this country a better place.

If we're still talking about the same thing 40 or 50 years later, then that means we're not doing anything about it.

I think every villain basically thinks that he or she is doing something to make his world, or the world in general, a better place.

I think the responsibility that any actor has is to bring some truth to the work.

I think theater is the strongest place to find what's missing in entertainment. Unfortunately, it pays the least.

When I first saw Dick Gregory on television, growing up in Queens, it was startling and amazing, because nobody else was doing what he was doing.

It's funny: We have so many shows and so many channels and so many things to occupy people as entertainment, especially with a show like 'Scandal,' which is clearly a hit, with a lot of heat around it - but every once in a while, people will say, 'What are you doing?' and I'll say 'Scandal,' and they'll have no idea what I'm talking about.

For all of the diversity in 'Scandal,' no one else would be sitting in a room wearing a T-shirt and chains and call a Southern white Republican president a 'boy.' And it's those kinds of things that Rowan has the freedom to say that nobody else could say within the confines of the show.

The argument for '12 Years a Slave' was that - yes, it's a beautiful film. Beautifully shot, beautifully acted. It's a real story, and these stories should be told. The problem is, if they're the only stories being told, then it makes Americans of African descent - it puts them into that victim category. And that was my problem with the movie.

I don't live on the West Coast, so when I come out to work, I rent a house.

When I started, black people were either victims or they were the perpetrators; they were the boogie men who jumped out of the bushes and did terrible things to you.

If someone wants to give me the lead in anyone of those films, and deal with those other complications, terrific, Im ready for them.

I would love to play the villain, but again, it sort of what happens in this industry.

The advice that I usually give to young actors is that if you can create a character for the stage and keep that character fresh for at least 6 months that means you're doing the show eight times a week.

I think people believe that I give ant aura of someone who has both feet on the ground.