Of course, Smith’s ability to use his words to make people feel good is what propelled him and his friend DJ Jazzy Jeff to music stardom with songs like “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” a song that won them the very first Grammy for rap music–ever–in 1989. (He eventually won more Grammys as a solo rapper.) The fame led him to the long-running sitcom that would change the direction of his life: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It was the first time he’d ever acted, but the show was a hit. Due in part to the series’ success, Smith moved to the big screen in 1993’s Six Degrees of Separation. Ending Fresh Prince in part to focus on movies, he took on blockbusters like Independence Day, Men in Black and Bad Boys. Soon, Smith started to reach for more serious roles. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of boxer MuhammedAli in the film Ali, and nominated again for The Pursuit of Happyness based on stockbroker Chris Gardner’s period of homelessness with his young son. This year, the 53-year-old earned his third nomination for his role as Richard Williams, dad of tennis superstars Serena and Venus Williams, in the film King Richard. He’s already scored a SAG award for his performance in the film. Smith is clearly a busy and talented guy, but as you’ll see below, one of most under-appreciated skills is talking: The man gives good quote, whether he’s waxing philosophical on sports, showbiz, success, relationships, parenting, goal-setting or more. In fact, we believe his list of bon mots here qualifies him to launch a side hustle as a motivational speaker if he’s ever so moved. In the meantime, before checking him out at the 2022 Oscars on Sunday, March 27, check out these 50 quotes from Will Smith.
Will Smith Quotes
- “Fail early. Fail often. Fail forward.”
- “I don’t want to be an icon, I want to be an idea. I want to represent possibilities…I want to represent magic.”
- “Two plus two only equals four if you accept that two plus two equals four. Two plus two is gonna be what I want it to be.”
- “You have to seek failure. Failure is where all of the lessons are.”
- “Fear kills your ability to see beauty. You have to get beyond fear, back to a comfortable space before you can even start looking around.”
- “The question isn’t, can you handle the situation? The question is, can you handle your mind? Can you manage the thoughts and emotions that are trying to poison your progress?”
- “Always say yes, and listen to your girlfriend.”
- “Don’t expect to be present for my success if you are absent during my struggle.”
- “Our concept is, as young as possible, give them as much control over their lives as possible and the concept of punishment, our experience has been—it has a little too much of a negative quality…so when they do things—and you know, Jaden, he’s done things—you can do anything you want as long as you can explain to me why that was the right thing to do for your life.”
- “Up until this point in my life, I had used comedy to attract women. And now I was being objectified. It was wonderful.”
- “She shaved her head bald in the middle of her ‘Whip My Hair’ tour. I was like, ‘Oh, s**t.’ I’m looking at that girl and I’m like, ‘Got it. I understand. You will not have this trouble out of me ever again….for me, it was that soldier that was pushing and wasn’t paying any attention whatsoever to what was going on emotionally with this beautiful little creature in front of me. That was the first part of the collapsing of my father’s suit that I was wearing that wasn’t mine.”
- “I feel that the greatest gift that I can give my children is the freedom to be who they are…As a parent, if it’s an oak tree, I want it to grow as an oak tree. I’m not going to try to force it to be an apple tree.”
- “[In DjangoUnchained] Django wasn’t the lead and like, I need to play the lead. I thought it was brilliant. Just not for me.”
- “I’m human viagra. I’m Willagra. I’m a sex machine now. I’m raring to go every second of the day. My wife’s loving it.”
- “And it’s just the spiral when it starts going the other way. It’s like, sometimes you just have to get out the way and wait until the downward spiral stops.”
- “Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. Do not misunderstand me danger is very real, but fear is a choice.”
- “I decided that I would never walk into a room and do anything other than inspire, uplift, and enlighten people—help people be the greater versions of themselves.”
- “I ran into Steven Spielberg at a party, and I jokingly asked him why he never hired me for his movies. Steven said, ‘Oh, you’re too big for my movies.’”
- “While the other guy’s sleeping, I’m working. When the other guy’s eating, I’m working. While the other guy is making love, I mean, I’m making love too, but I’m working really hard at it.”
- “I’m a student of patterns. At heart, I’m a physicist.”
- “EddieMurphy is funnier than I’ll ever be, Denzel [Washington] is more powerful than I’ll ever be. I think that my strength is I can do everything well.”
- “Make a choice and decide what it’s going to be, who you’re going to be and how you’re going to do it. From that point, the universe is going to get out of your way. For me, I want to represent possibilities and the idea that you really can make what you want. I feel very strongly that we are who we choose to be.”
- “You gotta take a shot. You gotta live at the edge of your capabilities.”
- “Dream building—life building—is an athletic event.”
- “We spend money that we do not have, on things we do not need, to impress people who do not care.”
- “I never did anything for money. It was never about money. My experience is when people do things for money, you make bad decisions.”
- “Being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity.”
- “I have no idea what my limits are. I believe that if I set my mind to it, within the next 15 years, I would be the President of the United States.”
- “There’s nothing you’ve ever been successful at that you didn’t work on every day.”
- “The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel. Talent you have naturally. Skill is developed [out] of hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.”
- “You might be [outshining me in many ways]. But if we get on a treadmill, there are two things: you’re getting off first or I’m going to die. It’s that simple, right?”
- “There was probably a 12 year point where I didn’t take a drink or go out on the weekends. I was so set on my goal that I created a serious circle of protection and elevation because I refused to do anything that wasn’t in my best interest. It’s hugely important that if you have a dream, you have to dedicate your life to it and every hour of every day has to be dedicated to bringing it into fruition.”
- “To see that look on someone’s face, to catch people and their anticipation, that’s the reason to make entertainment.”
- “When you take those ends and you bend it into a circle, it’s birth, life, death and rebirth; so you have to be prepared. When you lose something, your mother dies, you lose your house, you have to understand that nature has it no other way.”
- “God placed the best things on the other side of terror, on the other side of fear are the best things in life.”
- “It’s difficult to take the first step when you look how big the task is. The task is never huge to me, it always one brick.”
- “I know who I am. I know what I believe–and that’s all I need to know. So from there, you do what you need to do. And I think what happens is we make this situation more complex. You know, the normal among us make it more complex than it has to be.”
- “Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.”
- “If you don’t have a goal or a purpose for your relationship and pretty much anything, if you don’t have a purpose, you can really get lost in the murk of the journey.”
- “Stop letting people who do so little for you control so much of your mind, feelings and emotions.”
- “I always feel like I’m looking for something, but I don’t really know what it is. I can tell when I’m near it, and I’m pretty sure I’ll know when I find it. But until then, I’ma just keep looking.”
- “I think my general disposition on life is finding what’s funny about it. When something happens, the first thing in my mind is, ‘What’s funny about it?’”
- “I love the World Cup. We all come together to explore our diversity while at the same time reveling in our oneness.”
- “I work really hard to develop a successful relationship. So I always look at things in terms of relationships. When I think of race relations in this country now, there’s a thing that happens before things are cleaned up. There’s a darkness before the dawn.”
- “There’s no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from plan A.”
- “I love living, I think it’s infectious. It’s something you can’t create and I think the camera can feel that I’m happy doing what I do and it’s something that gets inside of people.”
- “I never viewed myself as particularly talented. Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening, work ethic.”
- “I really believe that a man and a woman together, raising a family, is the purest form of happiness we can experience.”
- “If you’re not willing to work hard, let someone else do it. I’d rather be with someone who does a horrible job, but gives 110% than with someone who does a good job and gives 60 percent.”
- “You only got one life and this is how I want to live mine—traveling the world, meeting amazing people, and celebrating every precious moment.” Next, 55 of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Most Inspiring Motivational Quotes
