James Cromwell Quotes

You have to be concerned with yourself because if you're not on it all the time, nobody else is going to be.

I pay my own bills. I feel my own pain.

I can't tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I've got a good bead on myself.

If you don't look after yourself, no one else will.

The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done - that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.

There are actresses who build themselves, and then there are actresses who are built by others. I want to build myself.

If I'd made it right away as an actor, I would've stopped at a certain level and stayed there, probably as a character actor.

What the majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered, stop being indulged, stop being chauffeured, stop being catered to. In the final analysis, it is not what you do for you children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.

We demand entire freedom of action and then expect the government in some miraculous way to save us from the consequences of our own acts.... Self-government means self-reliance.

Sometimes I'll watch an old movie on television and, once in a while, one of mine, such as April Showers, will come on and I'll watch it. And you know something? I'm always amazed at what a lousy actress I was. I guess in the old days we just got by on glamour.

Well, I'm a character actor, and actually throughout my life I've... I have relatively speaking played few heroic leads, but I've done it.

He who would be well taken care of must take care of himself.

Therefore, be ye lamps unto yourselves, be ye a refuge to yourselves. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp; hold fast as a refuge to the truth. Look not for refuge to anyone besides yourselves.

Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.

I was born a character actor. I was never really a leading man type.

You live and you learn, man. I've learned you can't wait on anybody. You have to raise your awareness yourself.

I've always thought you should concentrate on paddling your own canoe.

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own.

The fighter (like the writer) must stand alone. If he loses he cannot call an executive conference and throw off on a vice president or the assistant sales manager. He is consequently resented by fractional characters who cannot live outside an organization.

It is a poor, unwise and very imbecile people who cannot take care of themselves.

The hand you hold the longest is your own.

I've always said, rather glibly, that the message of my career has been about individualism, about getting to know yourself and taking responsibility, not just for what you do, but what you think.

Dustin Hoffman said this one time, that if he hadn't made it as a film star, he would still be happy as a character actor because he was a character actor because of his face from day one, so he would always work in the theater.

No one will take care of you if you don't take care of yourself.

Stay busy and take care of your own business.