Chadwick Boseman quotes: powerful words from the late actor.
“Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you need to fulfill. Whatever you choose for a career path, remember the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose. As you commence to your paths, press on with pride and press on with purpose.”
“When you are deciding on the next steps, next jobs, next careers, further education, you should rather find purpose than a job or a career. Purpose crosses disciplines. Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason that you’re on the planet at this particular time in history. Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you are here to fulfill.”
“Sometimes you need to get knocked down before you can really figure out what your fight is and how you need to fight it.”
“Sometimes you need to feel the pain and sting of defeat to activate the real passion and purpose that God predestined inside of you.”
“In times of crisis, the wise build bridges while the foolish build barriers.”
“I don’t know what your future is, but if you are willing to take the harder way, the more complicated one, the one with more failures at first than successes, the one that’s ultimately proven to have more victory, more glory, then you will not regret it. This is your time.”
“Fearlessness means taking the first step, even if you don’t know where it will take you. It means being driven by a higher purpose, rather than by applause. It means knowing that you reveal your character when you stand apart more than when you stand with the crowd.”
“When completing a long climb one first experiences dizziness, disorientation and shortness of breathe due to the high altitude. But once you become accustomed to the climb, your mind opens up to the tranquility of the triumph. Often times, the mind is flooded with realizations that were, for some reason, harder to come to when you were at a lower elevation.”
“People don’t want to experience change; they just want to wake up, and it’s different.”
“What they don’t realize is the greatest conflict you will ever face will be the conflict with yourself.”
“I don’t care if they like me. I know who I am. I’ve got enough respect for myself.”
“I don’t think it matters what I believe, only what I do.”
“You can say you worked hard, but you can’t say you deserved it. You can say you wished for it and prayed for it, but you can’t say you made it happen.”
“You might have one thing in your head, but the things you’re doing don’t really lead down the right road, necessarily. When you’re young, you don’t want to hear that. You think you can do everything, be all things.”
“Sometimes your grades don’t give a real indication of what your greatness might be.”
“I was raised in a sort of village. I have a huge family, and I think there is strength in that. It helped me to deal with some of the complications of living in the South because I always felt like I belonged, no matter what.”
“I think you realize how much you need to have people that you love. It’s not as much about them loving you—it’s about you needing to love people.”
“The song ‘To be Young, Gifted & Black’ by Nina Simone speaks to the fact that you have the same dreams as other people, you have equal if not more talent at times, but you don’t have the same opportunities. You don’t have the same doors opened to you, the same nepotism, the same money or resources that can be put towards your dreams. And you a lot of times don’t have family members that have ever achieved the things that you want to do. When you aspire to do something that is outside of something the world would see you doing… ‘To Be Young, Gifted & Black’ is all of that. It’s to have everything, but then not quite be able to grasp it. And to be able to persevere through that.”
“To be young, gifted and black. We all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured. Yet you are young, gifted and black. We know what it’s like to be told there’s not a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for you to be featured on. We know what it’s like to be the tail and not the head. We know what it’s like to be beneath and not above. That is what we went to work with every day. Because we knew that we had something special that we wanted to give the world. That we could be full human beings in the roles that we were playing. That we could create a world that exemplified a world that we wanted to see.”
“Today, we don’t fight for just one life. We fight for all of them.”
“I’m not afraid to work.”
“I’m an artist. Artists don’t need permission to work. Regardless of whether I’m acting or not, I write. I write when I’m tired in fact, because I believe your most pure thoughts surface.”
“There’s nothing more stressful than your stomach growling. But interestingly enough, some of my best writing came when I was poor and hungry—living off water and oatmeal, mind clear.”
“I remember my first agent telling me—because they found me as an actor, but I was probably more interested in writing and maybe directing—they were like, ‘Well, you can’t do both things.’ And I was like, ‘I’m gonna show you.'”
“Nobody has to give me permission to write.”
“I love all types of music. Jazz, classical, blues, rock, hip-hop. I often write scripts to instrumentals like a hip-hop artist. Music inspires me to write.”
“I majored in directing. However, I did spend some time at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, so I am somewhat well-versed in African Studies.”
“I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else’s story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn’t have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don’t even have to be magical.”
“The only difference between a hero and the villain is that the villain chooses to use that power in a way that is selfish and hurts other people.”
“When they call you and say, ‘So you want to play Black Panther?’ If you know what Black Panther is, there’s no way in the world you’re going to say no because there’s a lot of opportunity for magic to happen.”
“I certainly wouldn’t be here if it were not for those men that I portrayed, because of what they did in their lives, and the door that it opened for me.”
“Receiving an award for playing a superhero is amazing, but it’s even greater to acknowledge the heroes that we have in real life.”
“Thank you God for not just winning. Thank you God for the trials and tribulations that you allow us to go through so we can appreciate these moments. So we can appreciate the joy that comes from winning.”
“Everybody is the hero in their own story, you know? Like, you should be the hero in your own story… you should see yourself conquering, you know, the dramatic action of whatever you’re trying to do. So when you get to crisis, you know how to deal with it. You should be able to do that. And there are people that come in and help you with your story, but you have to be the person who deals with the conflicts that are in place.”
“I feel that I’m living my purpose. But the thing about purpose is that it unfolds to you more and more everyday. You could be living in what was revealed to you at a particular time, and then you might get stagnated because there’s more that you’re supposed to do. It doesn’t just stop as you do one thing. I think it’s about being open to what you’re supposed to do at this moment and not getting stuck in the past. Purpose is not related to career. It’s related to what God put inside you that you’re supposed to give to the world.”
“The best advice about getting older? Just be thankful you’re not dead.”
“In my culture, death is not the end, it’s more of a stepping off point.”
“Inhale and exhale this moment, and thank God for the unique beauties and wonders of this day. Thank God for the unique beauties and wonders of the day. We should take advantage of every moment we can to enjoy the simplicity of God’s creation, whether it be clear skies and sun or clouded over with gloom.”
“You have to cherish things in a different way when you know the clock is ticking, you are under pressure.”
“Savor the taste of your triumphs today, don’t just swallow them all whole without digesting what is actually happening here. Look down over what you conquered and appreciate what God has brought you through.”
“Sometimes that’s the irony of life that during the most difficult moments you look back on it and you realized how much you enjoyed it—how much you could celebrate it.”
“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything You gave me.'”
“At this moment, most of you need some realizations because right now you have some big decisions to make. Right now, I urge you to—in your breath, in your eyes, in your consciousness—invest in the importance of this moment. And cherish it.”
Related: Denzel Washington quotes.
