Thomas Jeffrey Hanks is an American actor and filmmaker. Known for both his comedic and dramatic roles, he is one of the most popular and recognizable film stars worldwide and is regarded as an American cultural icon. Hanks’s films have grossed more than $4.9 billion in North America and more than $9.96 billion worldwide, making him the fourth-highest-grossing actor in North America. These Tom Hanks quotes will motivate you.
Best Tom Hanks Quotes
- “The only way you can truly control how you are seen is by being honest all the time.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “If I stopped having passion, I’d be done.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “We are still in the position of waking up and having a choice. Do I make the world better today somehow, or do I not bother?” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Never give up because you never know what the tide will bring in the next day.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “I think it’s better to feel good than to look good.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“A hero is somebody who voluntarily walks into the unknown.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “I understand the concept of optimism. But I think with me what you get is a lack of cynicism.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Help publicly. Help privately. Help make sense where sense has gone missing. Help science to solve and faith to soothe. Help, and you will abolish apathy-the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “If things were easy to find, they wouldn’t be worth finding.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Dear God, thank you for my life. I forgot how big and wonderful it is.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “There’s no substitute for a great love who says, ‘No matter what’s wrong with you, you’re welcome at this table.'” ~ Tom Hanks
- “I am who I am, and I think I have a good nature, by and large. But if someone takes advantage of that good nature, well then, you know, I’m not that nice a guy.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together … and I knew it.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“If you’re funny, if there’s something that makes you laugh, then every day’s going to be okay.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope… I stayed alive. I kept breathing. And one day my logic was proven all wrong because the tide came in, and gave me a sail. And now, here I am. Im back… Because now i know what I have to do now. I have to keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Believing is seeing and seeing is believing.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Reading a script is usually as exciting as reading a boilerplate legal document, so when you read one that makes you feel as if you’re seeing the movie, you know it’s something different.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “And then it was like, wait, you can go to college and study theater? And act in plays? This is almost a racket, you know. And then when the opportunity came along to do it professionally, I thought I’d won the lottery.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “The desert, when the sun comes up…I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“I try not to lie to people – the only way to control the way you’re perceived is to tell the truth.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “We are all God’s animated cartoons.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Eating everything you want is not that much fun. When you live a life with no boundaries, there’s less joy. If you can eat anything you want to, what’s the fun in eating anything you want to?” ~ Tom Hanks
- “You have to adhere to a philosophy that the life unexamined is not worth living, because otherwise you’re just living from day to day and you don’t have any real sense of yourself or where you are.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“Mama always said, dying was a part of life. I sure wish it wasn’t.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Human beings do things for a reason, even if sometimes it’s the wrong reason.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “A story has the opportunity to enlighten us, because as we connect the extraordinary moments on film with the ordinary moments of our lives, we ask ourselves, “What am I going to do the next time I’m scared? What would it be like to say goodbye to my family for the last time?”” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Tweeting is like sending out cool telegrams to your friends once a week.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “In the 1998 Oscars, I found myself in the bathroom in a stall, next to Tom Selleck. So I leaned over and I said ‘looks like we’re a couple of peeing Toms.’ His angry silence is something I’ll never forget.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Every job requires a certain riding of a horse.” ~ Tom Hanks Quotes
- “The reason most of us go to the movies is to be involved in someone else’s moral dilemma.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Hold the mirror up to nature. Human behavior is worthy of examination and celebration.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Shake it off and move on.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“Repertory theater is all about being part of the whole, one of the many colors in this vast palette.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Truth is, I’ll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “I think 80 percent of the population are really great, caring people who will help you and tell you the truth. That’s just the way it is. And I think 20 percent of the population are crooks and liars. It’s just a fact.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “You don’t necessarily go in to talk to the person to try to find some secret key to the lock.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“College isn’t necessary for everybody and it’s only from what you put into it what you go there for.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “I will entertain anything; it doesn’t matter. You know, it’s not obviously about the price, it’s not about who, it’s kind of about when and what. It’s material, that’s all.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “It’s not a mid-life crisis. It’s a mid-life disaster. A mid-life crisis is when you wake up with everything and you go “I have everything but I’m still unhappy.”” ~ Tom Hanks
- “If you can feel like a good man in your 40s, you can feel like a better man in your 50s, a Superman in your 60s, and maybe a Spider-Man in your 70s.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“My wife and I, we met making a movie. This is not just our job, it’s our life. It’s what we do naturally whether we’re working together or not.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Without question, we make choices – and those choices have consequences. So can you control your own destiny? To a degree, certainly. Must you have faith in serendipity? Without question, you’d better. Otherwise you’re foolish.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “In your mid-30s, it’s time to start playing guys of compromise. And as you get older, men of bitter compromise.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “The average movie set is the least political arena on Earth. Nobody bothers talking about politics because, one, we all love the job so much. You don’t talk about current events. You talk about old show business stories and whether or not there’s gonna be French onion dip at the craft services table that day.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“Larger-than-life characters make up about .01 percent of the world’s population.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “The “Toy Story” films accomplish what timeless classics aim for – innocent characters who face an endless trail of adventures.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “It’s difficult to say no sometimes. I often hear, “They’ll really take care of you,” or “Someone else is going to take the role if you don’t play it.” Some of the best advice I ever received was to always ask myself: Am I going to kill myself if somebody else takes this role? The answer is almost always no.” ~ Tom Hanks Quotes
- “I have high blood sugars, and Type 2 diabetes is not going to kill me. But I just have to eat right, and exercise, and lose weight, and watch what I eat, and I will be fine for the rest of my life.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“But actors with political views are a dime a dozen.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “My favorite traditional Christmas movie that I like to watch is All Quiet on the Western Front. It’s just not December without that movie in my house.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “That’s what’s nice about directing a film and having it done: There’s nothing more I can do about it. It’s done. That’s it. All I can do is let it go and hope that people are kind to it.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “If you look at romantic comedies as pieces of commerce, the audience is looking for wish fulfillment.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “I was never intimidated by change. I was like an army brat who had lived all around the world.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “My work is really a blast. When it stops being a blast, then it ain’t no fun no more!” ~ Tom Hanks
- “There’s such an advantage to being involved in the day-to-day details of each other’s lives. It’s a marvelous fabric to exist in.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “Let’s not pretend there isn’t a huge industry driven by the choices made by editors and writers who decide what a story is.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “When you try to bring a story to life, it starts in your head and you see possibilities for it, but it’s just one damn thing after another.” ~ Tom Hanks
-
“Mama always had a way of explaining things so I could understand them.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “The power of the individual is as powerful as the universe is infinite.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “The most accurate representation of how I feel is that I’m incredibly lucky to be working in this structure where people get paid millions to read the news on TV. And, yes, it is insane. And there is nothing I can say beyond acknowledging my immense good fortune and being aware that I’m blessed, and aware that it isn’t going to last forever.” ~ Tom Hanks
- “I’ve made quite a number of movies like Castaway and a few others where I’m the only guy in the movie and the only place to be is right next to the camera in costume ready to go in order to get it. The years, and more specifically probably the four months prior to beginning shooting, is where the big preparation is that the director does because I knew we were going to get on the set. And the good news is, if you’re the boss, if it ain’t good, you don’t use it. You just cut it out.” ~ Tom Hanks
