Will Smith is one of the rare artists to have achieved success in TV, music and movies.
Starting in the 80s as a rapper under the name The Fresh Prince, he experienced modest success but really rose to fame and stardom with the TV series The Fresh Prince OF Bel-Air.
As the TV series was coming to an end Will Smith started starring in movies and went on to star in a number of Hollywood blockbusters such as Independence Day, Men in Black, Ali, Bad Boys and The Pursuit Of Happyness – which is one of the most inspirational movies that you must watch!
Smith has grown from a TV star to a Hollywood A-Lister and is the only actor to have 8 consecutive movies to earn more than $100 million at the box office.
Through his acting and entertainment Will Smith has inspired millions of people throughout the world and below are 77 of the best Will Smith quotes on success, fear, life and the pursuit of happiness. Enjoy!
77 Will Smith Quotes
1. “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.” – Will Smith
2. “Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there.” – Will Smith
3. “I’ve always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous insane obsessiveness for practice and preparation.” – Will Smith
4. “The first step is you have to say that you can.” – Will Smith
5. “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%.” – Will Smith
6. “Life is dangerous and you’re not gonna live a life without risk.” – Will Smith
7. “In my mind, I’ve always been an A-list Hollywood superstar. Y’all just didn’t know yet.” – Will Smith
8. “I don’t know what my calling is, but I want to be here for a bigger reason. I strive to be like the greatest people who have ever lived.” – Will Smith
9. “Whatever your dream is, every extra penny you have needs to be going to that.” – Will Smith
10. “I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of the class.” – Will Smith
11. “Greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, elusive, god-like feature that only the special among us will ever taste, it’s something that truly exists in all of us.” – Will Smith
12. “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.” – Will Smith
13. “I wake up every morning believing today is going to be better than yesterday.” – Will Smith
14. “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.” – Will Smith
15. “There’s no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from plan A.” – Will Smith
16. “If you don’t fight for what you want, don’t cry for what you lost.” – Will Smith
17. “Stop letting people who do so little for you control so much of your mind, feelings and emotions.” – Will Smith
18. “If you’re absent during my struggle don’t expect to be present during my success.” – Will Smith
19. “If you’re not making someone else’s life better, than you are wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other people’s lives better.” – Will Smith
20. “Don’t chase people. Be yourself, do your own thing and work hard. The right people – the ones who really belong in your life – will come to you. And stay.” – Will Smith
21. “The separation of talent and skill is one of the greatest misunderstood concepts for people who are trying to excel, who have dreams, who want to do things. Talent you have naturally. Skill is only developed by hours and hours and hours of beating on your craft.” – Will Smith
22. “I never viewed myself as particularly talented. Where I excel is ridiculous, sickening, work ethic. You know, while the other guy’s sleeping, I’m working.” – Will Smith
23. “Being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity.” – Will Smith
24. “Smiling is the best way to face every problem, to crush every fear and to hide every pain.” – Will Smith
25. “99% is the same as zero. If you are gonna do 99, go ahead and stay home.” – Will Smith
26. “I want to be the person that is the first person there and the last person to leave. That’s who I want to be, because I think the road to success is through commitment, and through the strength to drive through that commitment when it gets hard. And it is going to get hard and you’re going to want to quit sometimes, but it’ll be colored by who you are, and more by who you want to be.” – Will Smith
27. “Look at your 5 closest friends. Those 5 friends are who you are. If you don’t like who you are then you know what you have to do.” – Will Smith
28. “10 ways to love: listen, speak, give, pray, answer, share, enjoy, trust, forgive, promise.” – Will Smith
29. “Let your smile change the world. Don’t let the world change your smile.” – Will Smith
30. “You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t say ‘I’m going to build the biggest, baddest, greatest wall that’s every been built.’ You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m going to lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid.’ You do that every single day. And soon you have a wall.” – Will Smith
31. “Sometimes you have to forget what’s gone, appreciate what still remains, and look forward to what’s coming next.” – Will Smith
32. “Don’t ever let someone tell you that you can’t do something. You got a dream, you gotta protect it. When people can’t do something themselves, they are going to tell you that you can’t do it. You want something, go get it. Period.” – Will Smith
33. “I want to do good. I want the world to be better because I was here. I want my life, I want my work, my family, I want it to mean something. It’s like if you are not making someone else’s life better, then you’re wasting your time. Your life will become better by making other lives better.” – Will Smith
34. “The first step before anyone else in the world believes it is you have to believe it.” – Will Smith
35. “I know who I am, I know what I believe, and that’s all I need to know.” – Will Smith
36. “I want to represent the idea that you really can make what you want…believe I can create whatever I want to create.” – Will Smith
37. “The keys to life are running and reading. When you’re running, there’s a little person that talks to you and says, “Oh I’m tired. My lung’s about to pop. I’m so hurt. There’s no way I can possibly continue.” You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you’re running. You will how to not quit when things get hard in your life. For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There’s no new problem you could have–with your parents, with school, with a bully. There’s no new problem that someone hasn’t already had and written about it in a book.” – Will Smith
38. “I believe you need to be educated on what you want to do in life, but I don’t believe you necessarily need college to get there.” – Will Smith
39. “Fail early, fail often and fail forward. Failing is a massive part of being successful. You have to get comfortable with failure. You have to actively seek failure. Failure is where all of the lessons are. Failure is where growth is, where adaptation is. Successful people fail a lot. They fail a whole lot more than they succeed, they extract the lessons from the failure and they use the energy and the wisdom to come around to the phase of success. You got to take a shot and live at the edge of your capabilities. You have to live where you’re almost certain you’re going to fail. That’s the reason for practice. Practice is controlled failure. Failure actually helps you to recognize the areas where you need to evolve so fail early, fail often and fail forward.” – Will Smith
40. “God placed the best things on the other side of terror, on the other side of fear are the best things in life.” – Will Smith
41. “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.” – Will Smith
42. “I don’t want to be an icon, I want to be an idea. I want to represent possibilities. There’s a redemptive power that making a choice has. Rather than making it feel like you’re an effect to all the things that are happening. 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 me.” – Will Smith
43. “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.” – Will Smith
44. “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.” – Will Smith
45. “I never did anything for money. It was never about money. My experience is when people do things for money, you make bad decisions.” – Will Smith
46. “The way to improve lives is to improve yourself. With that, every morning when I get out of bed I think, ‘I haven’t fixed everything in the world yet so there’s always something to do.’” – Will Smith
47. “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.” – Will Smith
48. “Don’t compare yourself to others. That’s when you start to lose confidence in yourself.” – Will Smith
49. “Haters are the people who will broadcast your failures and whisper your success.” – Will Smith
50. “There is no pain worse than not achieving a dream when it is your fault. If God did not want you to have it, that is one thing. But if you do not get what you desire because you are lazy, there is no pain worse than that.” – Will Smith
51. “The central idea of love is not even a relationship commitment, the first thing is a personal commitment to be the best version of yourself with or without that person that you’re with. You have to every single day-mind, body, and spirit-wake up with a commitment to be better.” – Will Smith
52. “When you look around at the six people that you spend the most time with, that’s who you are. I think that in making those decisions in who you are going to be married to, who your friends are going to be, those are really huge, critical, life decisions. Who gets to talk to you everyday, is almost like the food that you eat. It is a very huge critical situation to choose who the people are that you are spending your life with, spending your time with and who you are choosing to give your love and everything to.” – Will Smith
53. “You can create whatever you want. You just have to know what you want and take the opportunities as they come your way. We are who we choose to be.” – Will Smith
54. “Believing in yourself is the first step to accomplishing any goal. If you think you’re going to fail, you probably will.” – Will Smith
55. “I’m motivated by fear. Fear of fear. I hate being scared to do something. And I think what developed in my early days was the attitude that I started attacking things that I was scared of.” – Will Smith
56. “Something hurts, lean in. You just lean into that point until it loses its power over you. There’s a certain amount of suffering that you have to be willing to sustain if you want to have a good life. And the real trick is to be able to sustain it with your heart open and still be loving.” – Will Smith
57. “There’s no easy way around it, no matter how talented you are … your talent is going to fail you if you’re not skilled. If you don’t study, if you don’t work really hard and dedicate yourself to being better every single day, you ‘ll never be able to communicate with people your artistry the way that you want!” – Will Smith
58. “The person that works the hardest wins.” – Will Smith
59. “I’d rather live my life knowing that I’m not perfect than spend my whole life pretending to be.” – Will Smith
60. “The road to success is through commitment.” – Will Smith
61. “The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple.” – Will Smith
62. “You’ll never achieve 100 percent if 99 percent is okay.” – Will Smith
63. “Marriage is the hardest thing you will ever do. The secret is removing divorce as
an option. Anybody who gives themselves that option will get a divorce.” – Will Smith
64. “The greatest dreams are always unrealistic.” – Will Smith
65. “There’s nothing you’ve ever been successful at that you didn’t work on every day.” – Will Smith
66. “The things that have been most valuable to me I did not learn in school. Traditional education is based on facts and figures and passing tests – not on a comprehension of the material and its application to your life.” – Will Smith
67. “When I say I am going to run three miles, I run five. With that mentality, it is actually difficult to lose.” – Will Smith
68. “Your words and thoughts have physical power.” – Will Smith
69. “Those who say I can, and those who say I can’t – are both usually right.” – Will Smith
70. “I believe that I can create whatever I want to create. If I can put my head on it right, study it, learn the patterns, and – it’s hard to put into words, it’s real metaphysical, esoteric nonsense, but I feel very strongly that we are who we choose to be.” – Will Smith
71. “Be magic choose and believe that you can do anything you set your mind to believe. We are who we choose to be.” – Will Smith
72. “Our thoughts, our feelings, our dreams, our ideas, are physical in the universe.” – Will Smith
73. “There’s a certain delusional quality that all successful people have to have. You have to believe that something different than what has happened for the last 50 million years of history – you have to believe that something different can happen.” – Will Smith
74. “The guy who’s willing to hustle the most is gonna be the guy that just gets that loose ball.” – Will Smith
75. “The way I like to measure greatness is… How many people can you make want to be better?” – Will Smith
76. “I refuse to accept anything less than 100% of what I can achieve.” – Will Smith
77. “Begin each day as if it were on purpose.” – Will Smith
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