Tavis Smiley Quotes & Sayings

We're all cracked vessels, and we're always in process, I think, every one of us. — Tavis Smiley

Don't envy someone else's gift. Discover your own. — Tavis Smiley

Losing teaches you something — Tavis Smiley

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised. — Tavis Smiley

When it comes to the president, we have to respect him, we have to protect him, and we have to correct him. And in my career, since he'd been on the national stage at least, I've had - I've always respected the president. — Tavis Smiley

Sometimes rejection in life is really redirection. — Tavis Smiley

I love the fight. I don't - it's not a negative, it's a positive, and I love the challenge. There's that little part of me that I love proving someone wrong in that way when they have an image of me or something, or they think they have me figured out or they think I'm a certain way. — Tavis Smiley

This administration and these folk who run Washington are no more interested in our welfare and our well being than the man on the moon. And we have got to start taking our destiny into our hands. — Tavis Smiley

I can't count the number of people I've talked to over the course of my career who have said to me that the thing that they most regret is the one time they did something just for the money. — Tavis Smiley

I love my cross-sectioned, cross-cultural audience. Some of them are doing better than the average guy, but my audience has always been people who are struggling to stay in the middle class. — Tavis Smiley

There are enough bad films coming out of this town already without the process being more democratized. I'm a guy who loves democracy. I'm all for democratizing any process, but I think there is a price to pay for that. — Tavis Smiley

Fear, fear, breeds hopelessness. When you're afraid, you don't know what to believe in, you don't know what to hold on to. You're struggling to find something to believe in. — Tavis Smiley

I'm very musically curious and I love new experience. I'm an adventurer. Some people want to sort of stay in a safe zone and repeat the same things and give them more depth, and I want to do new things all the time — Tavis Smiley

We give you the facts. I told you information is power - knowledge is power. We can't be in an ideological battle to redeem the soul of this country if we don't have the facts. — Tavis Smiley

I'm talking about France and Germany and Italy and Spain - new friend Germany - and I love that story, how they lead the world in some things that the world needs leadership in. Amongst them we're the only ones without national healthcare. Can't go to a hospital and not worry about falling into bankruptcy. They go to university free. We're killing our students with debt. That scares me. — Tavis Smiley

I just find in our world that forgiveness is becoming more and more a difficult thing for us to do. — Tavis Smiley

Well, if that's the case, then it's not silly to see rejection as a gift whose contents and character may not be known until a later time. But that doesn't mean that the gift isn't real. It doesn't mean that the gift isn't precious. And it doesn't mean that the gift isn't helping us to subtly shift our thinking from willful expectation to grateful acceptance. We want our journey to be directed by God, not our adamant insistence that things go our way." "I may be guilty of that very tendency," I — Tavis Smiley

I thought our community should have a deep dialogue to make black America better. I believe if we make black America better, we make all of America better. — Tavis Smiley

What determines your altitude in life is your attitude. — Tavis Smiley

When you work for something, you appreciate it more. So what are y'all going to do with all the opportunities you inherited that you didn't have to work for? — Tavis Smiley

Troubled times do call for troubled songs, songs that unsettle our souls and our spirits unapologetically. — Tavis Smiley

I think the issue of women's choice is essential for a woman being able to have their lives - if they cannot control their own bodies by choosing if or when to have a child, then they cannot control their working life or anything around them. — Tavis Smiley

All he could think of was how all people require attention. All people require respect. All people require acknowledgment. All people require love. — Tavis Smiley

I refuse to despair in this moment. I refuse to allow myself to fall into the dark chambers of pessimism, because I think in any social revolution the one thing that keeps it going is hope, and when hope dies somehow the revolution degenerates into a kind of nihilistic philosophy which says you must engage in disruption for disruption's sake. ... I believe that the forces of goodwill, white and black, in this country can work together to bring about a resolution. ... We have the resources to do it. ... — Tavis Smiley

Poverty is not the stepchild of the Great Recession; poverty has always been a part of American life. — Tavis Smiley

Struggling to stay in the middle class, and I love that. That's me and my dad and my family. — Tavis Smiley

I fear that we are living in a society, living in a world where forgiving people is becoming more and more difficult to do. — Tavis Smiley

I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child. — Tavis Smiley

The storm came. Lives were washed away. Ancient pains resurfaced. Now it is time for a sea of change. — Tavis Smiley

The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave. — Tavis Smiley

White America has told Doc: We have created a space for you. We have allowed you to be the leader of your people for your cause. We have become comfortable seeing you in this space. This space has resulted in your receiving a Nobel Peace Prize. But that leadership and prize do not allow you to address issues outside your space. — Tavis Smiley

I think when I stop fighting, I die in a sense. — Tavis Smiley

The draft," he shouts, "is white people sending black people to make war on yellow people in order to defend the land they stole from red people. The draft must end: not tomorrow, not next week, but today. — Tavis Smiley

I grew. Going outside my comfort zone is a big one for me. — Tavis Smiley

Take your focus off how others see you. Cease being obsessed with the need to impress your friends and your foes. Keep your concern on the vision you see in the mirror. Don't allow the approval of others to obstruct your view of you. — Tavis Smiley

We think of - there are too many wars, of course, in the world as we speak, but my read on this suggests to me that water is going to be the resource into the future that we're really - that countries, nations, are going to be fighting for control over. — Tavis Smiley

Regardless of your race, religion or political affiliation, never hesitate to question those in authority. — Tavis Smiley

I use the phrase "fellow citizen" all the time when referring to the - people always say, "The American people, the American people." I prefer the phrase fellow citizen because there's a power in that, there's a responsibility, there's a duty in using that phrase fellow citizen. — Tavis Smiley

I wanted to be a theater actress, and initially, I wanted to work in musical theater — Tavis Smiley

[In a blogosphere] everybody has an opinion now, but I don't really freaking care about - all opinions ain't created equal, because everybody can go out there and express themselves and hide behind some character we don't know who you really are, a bunch of cowards. — Tavis Smiley

Live just because or live your life for a cause — Tavis Smiley

Poverty and wealth inequality are a form of instability into the future. — Tavis Smiley

I think a lot of people who go to drama school have this ease with the text and they all have five monologues that they know by heart, and I never had that. I've done Chekov and I've done Moliere and I've done classic stuff — Tavis Smiley

We believe that when you make Black America better - you make all of America better. — Tavis Smiley

Since time immemorial wise people have been saying that all comparisons are odious. When we compare, we set up a winner-loser dynamic. If my crisis is greater than yours, then yours is belittled and insignificant. I say that's nonsense. Each crisis has its own power, its own unique reality. — Tavis Smiley

How do you grow up in the shadow of a guy - I want to talk about the movie in a second - but how do you grow up in the shadow of a guy who really is a legend in his own time? — Tavis Smiley

We - again, the, the, the, the bastardization and the demonization over the last few years of teachers and of unions and of collective bargaining, that is not the answer. — Tavis Smiley

Jamestown changed the world in many ways, but perhaps it shaped our nation most profoundly the day Africans arrived. I can't think of a more relevant place to talk about the issues facing our community today than the place where African culture became American culture. — Tavis Smiley

I feel like I've been successful after being done with the film is when I see it, if I'm embarrassed, if I'm slightly mortified, and if I feel super-vulnerable, I think I did something. — Tavis Smiley

My role on television is one of helping people reexamine the assumptions that they hold. I regard Dr. King. You would never hear me get up and speak without in some way, shape or form, referencing, Dr. King. — Tavis Smiley

This country is going to implode, or put another way, it's going to get crushed under the weight of poverty. You can't have one percent of the people who own and control more wealth than the other 90 percent of the population. — Tavis Smiley

It's hard these days to have a conversation, at least it is for me, about [Truman]Capote without "Good Night, and Good Luck" coming up in the same conversation. — Tavis Smiley

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. Doc — Tavis Smiley

I learned early on that it's heartbreaking to - there's the editor that comes in, and then they have to craft the movie together, and sometimes you give a whole performance that's just been cut up, and maybe it's better for it, absolutely, but you still have to deal with the loss of that. — Tavis Smiley

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness. — Tavis Smiley

Leonard Pitts, Jr. is the most insightful and inspiring columnist of his generation. — Tavis Smiley

I think that what started out as a European Union originally was probably a really wonderful and world-changing idea, the idea of a kind of cooperation and interdependence between countries. But the idea that individualization would work on common ground, not on conflict, not against each other, but to find how each benefitted from the other I thought was an incredibly hopeful and positive possibility. — Tavis Smiley

When I'm at the premiere and I see the film in its entirety, I forget plot, I forget the story, I forget what my character goes through, because I really do just let it go. — Tavis Smiley

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. — Tavis Smiley

This is not a skill problem, this is a will problem. Does America have the will to make education a priority? We know the things that work. Why don't we scale up those things that do work. — Tavis Smiley

Competition's always been a product of American lifestyle — Tavis Smiley

If you don't have courage, you can't practice any of the other virtues. — Tavis Smiley

For me, like when you've put yourself out there emotionally, physically, and you've really put yourself on the line, for me, that means I've really done something. — Tavis Smiley

My personal assessment is that Dr. King is the greatest American we have ever produced. I can argue for Lincoln, I can argue for FDR, but for my money, King is the greatest American we have ever produced. His only weapon was love. He transforms a nation, transforms the world with one weapon and that of course being again the weapon of love. So that for me, King is the quintessential example of everything that I could ever want to be in my lifetime. — Tavis Smiley

In some states, not even 50 percent of black boys finish high school. — Tavis Smiley

To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me. — Tavis Smiley

The data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category.. — Tavis Smiley

I think, for most of us is that once you get to a certain place in your career you're not having to elbow and knock people around and audition for parts. — Tavis Smiley