Don Cheadle Quotes

I want to see somebody go to jail over the financial crisis and not just black, brown and poor whites over humbles and minor drug beefs.

I think it’s intoxicating when somebody is so unapologetically who they are.

I understand what's it like to work all week and on Friday night just want to go and leave your brain at the door, buy some popcorn and be thrilled by something.

Every time I've learned something, I've realized there are a hundred more things I don't know about the thing I just learned.

Living by example - that's always a better teacher than trying to preach.

Speak up when you're supposed to, as opposed to trying to write prescriptions for the way people should live.

It's important to keep the people who know you well around you. It helps center you.

We're really trying to give people the ability to go into a darkened room and have a couple hours of just pure enjoyment.

When I'm the person in front of the microphone, and I'm the person in the light, I want to reflect and refract the light onto places where they need the attention, where I don't need it.

If you look up and no one who's around you has been around you for the past 20 years, and they're all new people, I think that's a problem.

One truth that I know for sure, for me anyway, is that the more you know, the more you realize that you don't know.

The best thing that I learned from the best directors that I worked with is that the best answer wins. They are ego-less when it comes to doing the most important thing.

You should do what you're supposed to do and hope that that ripples out.

I think we should all be more concerned about the environment and the effects of global warming. It will be pointless to talk about all the issues that divide us when it's 300 degrees outside.

I pray that our leaders stop pointing fingers and playing the blame game and seek a real solution for the good of the planet and all who inhabit it.

One thing that you consistently see everywhere is that the poor and the under-represented are always the ones who are going to suffer the most and get the short end of the stick.

Water is an issue, and, clearly, what's happening with the filth in our environment and the levels of carbon monoxide in our atmosphere are the really scary issues right now, the very troubling ones.

I imagine it was much different in the 1970s. That was the Renaissance for black actors, albeit in blaxploitation movies. There was a much greater preponderance of work then than there is now.

It's great to be in a film that's able to have people really want to become socially conscious, to walk out of the theatre and want to do something.

I think having good family and friends really helps to ground you.

I've never been a part of a film before that offers such a platform into real issues, that raises social awareness and has the potential to change things.

Is there a way to discuss climate change without politics or religion getting in the way?

I prefer film to TV because of the amount of time film affords you that TV doesn't (though theater is probably my favorite and the scariest place of all).

I hate it when, by page 30, I know what the lead's going to do and then what the bad guy's gonna do. Mostly it's just scripts by the numbers where nothing's surprising, nothing's interesting.

Yeah! I went to the set of Monuments Men.

We're always trailing, as far as the amount of roles that are written for us and the films that are being made that have black characters in them. I don't know if that's going to change.

I've been doing this since I was 10 years old, inhabiting different people and playing different roles.

I want to be a part of great things.

I don't like movies that are trying to preach and trying to tell you how to feel.

But most scripts are terrible. Most projects are bad, that's just kind of the way it is. And I'm not really attracted to those.

I think if you were to look at my resume in total you would see a lot of things that are kind of all over the map.

It's much easier to cry or be angry, but to really laugh and genuinely be buoyant and laugh. That's hard if you don't really feel that way.

So often when Black men have to play roles on TV, we're either the noble savage or we're completely a savage, and there's no nuance.

I used to record but just in my own studio or in my friend's back when I toyed with the idea of being a rapper.

People have always been obsessed by celebrities. There are just more outlets and opportunities to make a living exploiting that obsession nowadays.

If anyone ever said biopic I would say, "It's not a biopic." We're fighting uphill against the weight of history. I was like, why don't we just call it historical fiction?

It is the least represented among us who will be the most affected first. We have a moral responsibility to protect them.

We're trying to do what Miles Davis would have wanted us to do, which is approach it as artists with his life as the canvas.

I was about to write that in the future I would chose my words more carefully but I'm sure I won't.

I think that it's much more important to do than to say. And you learn that a lot from your kids, who are watching you, you know?