Misattributed John Wayne Quotes

This life's hard, but it's harder if you're stupid. ~ George V. Higgins

It rankles me when somebody tries to force somebody to do something. ~ John Wayne

Cause even grown men need understanding. ~ John Wayne

We saw our first Western together, Rio Bravo with John Wayne, at the Cinema Park, across the street from my favorite bookstore. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Heck, I drank no more than John Wayne or Ward Bond or Spencer Tracy or Alan Ladd or Robert Walker. But it got me into a lot more trouble. ~ John Agar

I'm not the sort to back away from a fight. I don't believe in shrinking from anything. It's not my speed; I'm a guy who meets adversities head on. ~ John Wayne

Healthy, lusty sex is wonderful. ~ John Wayne

And so he plays his part; the sixth age shifts'... I usually have trouble with that phrase. ~ John Wayne

A man ought to do what he thinks is right ~ John Wayne

American voices, country voices, high-pitched and without mercy. He lies freezing, wondering if the bedsprings will give him away. For possibly the first time he is hearing America as it must sound to a non-American. Later he will recall that what surprised him most was the fanaticism, the reliance not just on flat force but on the rightness of what they planned to do ... he'd been told long ago to expect this sort of thing from Nazis, and especially from Japs - we were the ones who always played fair - but this pair outside the door now are as demoralizing as a close-up of John Wayne (the angle emphasizing how slanted his eyes are, funny you never noticed before) screaming BANZAI! ~ Thomas Pynchon

Thanking people is dangerous business. A name always slips your mind. ~ John Wayne

No I don't think that's possible. I think it ... after 14 years under truth serum had I committed the crime I would have known it. There's got to be something that would ... would click in my mind. I've had photo's of 21 of the victims and I've looked at them all over the years here and I've never recognized anyone of them. ~ John Wayne Gacy

I loved cowboy movies when I was a kid. When I was five years old, I was already wearing a cowboy hat and suit. When I grew up, I knew John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Kirk Douglas and so on. ~ Jackie Chan

See, heroes never die. John Wayne isn't dead, Elvis isn't dead. Otherwise you don't have a hero. You can't kill a hero. That's why I never let him get older. ~ Mickey Spillane

In all, I was in 16 movies, including 'The Bishop's Wife' with Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven; I was in 'Rio Grande' with John Wayne, 'Albuquerque' with Randall Scott, 'Blue Skies' with Bing Crosby and 'Hans Christian Anderson' with Danny Kaye. ~ Karolyn Grimes

Don't ever for a minute make the mistake of looking down your nose at westerns. They're art - the good ones, I mean. They deal in life and sudden death and primitive struggle, and with the basic emotions - love, hate, and anger - thrown in. We'll have westerns films as long as the cameras keep turning. The fascination that the Old West has will never die. And as long as people want to pay money to see me act, I'll keep on making westerns until the day I die. ~ John Wayne

Fire can be our friend. Whether it's toasting marshmallows of raining down on Charlie. ~ John Wayne

Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I'm not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be. ~ John Wayne

That is what has been said in the media and at the trial. To this day nobody has produced one. There is no written confession, there is no tape recorded confession, there is no police stenographer typed confession .It was in my appeal, and the court refused to look at it and the state refused to answer it. If they had nothin' to hide I can't understand why they can't produce one. ~ John Wayne Gacy

A man oughta do what he thinks is best. ~ John Wayne

I have found a certain type calls himself a Liberal ... Now I always thought I was a Liberal. I came up terribly surprised one time when I found out that I was a Right-Wing Conservative Extremist, when I listened to everybody's point of view that I ever met, and then decided how I should feel. But this so-called new Liberal group, Jesus, they never listen to your point of view ... ~ John Wayne

All my heroes, I guess, like John Wayne and all those guys, they drank and they smoked and did all the manly things. It was expected of you. And now abstinence in all kinds of forms is a part of living. It's a pretty - I don't smoke anymore, I quit that 42 years ago ~ Larry Hagman

There were movies to go see at the Gem, which has long since been torn down; science fiction movies like Gog with Richard Egan and westerns with Audie Murphy (Teddy saw every movie Audie Murphy made at least three times; he believed Murphy was almost a god) and war movies with John Wayne. There were games and endless bolted meals, lawns to mow, places to run to, walls to pitch pennies against, people to clap you on the back. And now I sit here trying to look through an IBM keyboard and see that time, trying to recall the best and the worst of that green and brown summer, and I can almost feel the skinny, scabbed boy still buried in this advancing body and hear those sounds. But ~ Stephen King

My main object in making a motion picture is entertainment. If at the same time I can strike a blow for liberty, then I'll stick one in. ~ John Wayne

I'm an American actor. I work with my clothes on. I have to. Riding a horse can be pretty tough on your legs and elsewheres. ~ John Wayne

I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that's the way I am. ~ John Wayne

Seen better fights than this at a prayer meeting. ~ John Wayne

Did I ever tell you my father's last words to me?
'Careful son, I don't think the safety is on'.
Before that. ~ John Wayne

We love WWII because the cause was so obviously just, because you can't be a good person and say you wouldn't fight against an evil like that. It was so black and white on our side, and on our side so few died. (Our side meaning the lantern-jawed John Wayne Greatest Generation constantly canonized soldiers who strode in late to the graveyard that was Europe. Compared to Jewish, Russian, Roma, and other casualties, our losses were minimal.) We felt so strong. In some ways I think we're always trying to recapture that feeling of being a country of superheroes. With every war we invoke that one, we hope it will be that good.
-from her blog ~ Catherynne M Valente

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday. ~ John Wayne

No. Of all the people who worked for PDM since most of it was sub contracted work, they were all young tradesmen. This is what the state would like for you to believe. But we have very little use for inexperienced teenagers. So they were mostly used for summer..for fillers. It doesn't make sense to use a tradesman to do cleanup work on a job when your paying a tradesman $15 an hour and you can hire a young man or boy at say $7 or $8 an hour to sweep up after the contractors outta there. ~ John Wayne Gacy

When I was a sophomore at USC, I was a socialist, pretty much to the left. But not when I left the university. I quickly got wise. I'd read about what had happened to Russia in 1917 when the Communists took over. ~ John Wayne

Sometimes I feel like John Wayne. ~ Claire Denis

I think women secretly yearn for the return of John Wayne and don't even know it. ~ Troy Duffy

I remember when my father was dying, I remember listening to Bjork, and listening to John Coltrane, and these things, and I don't know why but music has the power to transcend your physical being and take you up just a little bit. ~ Wayne Coyne

I'm a greedy old man. Life's been good to me, and I want some more of it. ~ John Wayne

Nothing is so discouraging to an actor than to have to work for long hours upon hours in brightly lighted interior sets. ~ John Wayne

A clown can get away with murder. ~ John Wayne Gacy

The efficacy of fashion turns on the self's perception of itself either as a nought or at least as lacking something, and its perception or misperception of the splendid wholeness of public figures as evidenced by even the most carelessly worn badges of their substantiality - when in truth the selves of Jackie Onassis and Wallis Simpson and John Wayne are probably more insubstantial than most. Question: ~ Walker Percy

But don't get me wrong. As far as a man and a woman is concerned, I'm awfully happy there's a thing called sex. It's an extra something God gave us. I see no reason why it shouldn't be in pictures. Healthy, lusty sex is wonderful. ~ John Wayne

You're not swimming in glory until you find someone to swim with you. Glory isn't glory if you don't have someone to share it with. It's just pride and bullshit on your own.
Unbelievable. Will Jones wasn't only one badass cowboy; he pretty much could have been the love child of John Wayne and Yoda. ~ Nicole Williams

Why Hollywood has killed so many movie stars with cigarette smoking, with the romanticization of it from John Wayne to Humphrey Bogart, all those people had cancer, died of it, and sold cigarettes their whole career. ~ Chris Hayes

Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.'
'John Lennon,' I say with a sigh. 'My mother is a huge fan.'
'So then you must know that every day, in every way, it's getting better. ~ Jamie Kain

My name is John Wayne. When I was a kid I had ring worm. Hell, I was more worm than boy for a couple of years. ~ John Wayne