Quotes

I never trust a man that doesn't drink.

[at Harvard in 1974, on being asked whether then-President Richard Nixon ever advised him on the making of his films] No, they've all been successful.

[on presenting the Best Picture Oscar in 1979] Oscar and I have something in common. Oscar first came to the Hollywood scene in 1928. So did I. We're both a little weatherbeaten, but we're still here and plan to be around for a whole lot longer.

When people say a John Wayne picture got bad reviews, I always wonder if they know it's a redundant sentence, but hell, I don't care. People like my pictures and that's all that counts.

[When asked if he believed in God] There must be some higher power or how else does all this stuff work?

[Time Magazine interview, 1969] I would like to be remembered, well . . . the Mexicans have a phrase, "Feo fuerte y formal". Which means he was ugly, strong and had dignity.

[poem, "The Sky", he read on his 1969 Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967) appearance] The sky is blue, the grass is green. Get off your ass and join the Marines.

[upon accepting his Oscar for True Grit (1969)] If I'd known this was all it would take, I'd have put that eyepatch on 40 years ago.

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.

[on Native Americans, from May 1971 "Playboy" interview] I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them, if that's what you're asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

When I started, I knew I was no actor and I went to work on this Wayne thing. It was as deliberate a projection as you'll ever see. I figured I needed a gimmick, so I dreamed up the drawl, the squint and a way of moving meant to suggest that I wasn't looking for trouble but would just as soon throw a bottle at your head as not. I practiced in front of a mirror.

Communism is quite obviously still a threat. Yes, they are human beings, with a right to their point of view . . .

[on being asked about his "phony hair" at Harvard in 1974] It's not phony. It's real hair. Of course, it's not mine, but it's real.

I never had a goddamn artistic problem in my life, never, and I've worked with the best of them. John Ford isn't exactly a bum, is he? Yet he never gave me any manure about art. He just made movies and that's what I do.

God-damn, I'm the stuff men are made of!

I was overwhelmed by the feeling of friendship, comradeship, and brotherhood . . . DeMolay will always hold a deep spot in my heart.

[on the Oscars] You can't eat awards -- nor, more to the point, drink 'em.

I made up my mind that I was going to play a real man to the best of my ability. I felt many of the western stars of the twenties and thirties were too goddamn perfect. They never drank or smoked. They never wanted to go to bed with a beautiful girl. They never had a fight. A heavy might throw a chair at them, and they just looked surprised and didn't fight in this spirit. They were too goddamn sweet and pure to be dirty fighters. Well, I wanted to be a dirty fighter if that was the only way to fight back. If someone throws a chair at you, hell, you pick up a chair and belt him right back. I was trying to play a man who gets dirty, who sweats sometimes, who enjoys kissing a gal he likes, who gets angry, who fights clean whenever possible but will fight dirty if he has to. You could say I made the western hero a roughneck.

[on America] I can tell you why I love her. I have a lust for her dignity. I look at her wonderfully classic face, and I see hidden in it a sense of humor that I love. I think of wonderful, exciting, decent things when I look at her . . .

Courage is being scared to death - and saddling up anyway.

I stick to simple themes. Love. Hate. No nuances. I stay away from psychoanalyst's couch scenes. Couches are good for one thing.

Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West - the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it.

I am a demonstrative man, a baby picker-upper, a hugger and a kisser - that's my nature.

I don't act . . . I react.

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 . . .

There's been a lot of stories about how I got to be called Duke. One was that I played the part of a duke in a school play--which I never did. Sometimes, they even said I was descended from royalty! It was all a lot of rubbish. Hell, the truth is that I was named after a dog!

Westerns are closer to art than anything else in the motion picture business.

We must always look to the future. Tomorrow - the time that gives a man just one more chance - is one of the many things that I feel are wonderful in life. So's a good horse under you. Or the only campfire for miles around. Or a quiet night and a nice soft hunk of ground to sleep on. A mother meeting her first-born. The sound of a kid calling you dad for the first time. There's a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to 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.

I do not want the government to take away my human dignity and insure me anything more than a normal security. I don't want handouts.

I don't think a fella should be able to sit on his backside and receive welfare. I'd like to know why well-educated idiots keep apologizing for lazy and complaining people who think the world owes them a living. I'd like to know why they make excuses for cowards who spit in the faces of the police and then run behind the judicial sob sisters. I can't understand these people who carry placards to save the life of some criminal, yet have no thought for the innocent victim.

I want to play a real man in all my films, and I define manhood simply: men should be tough, fair, and courageous, never petty, never looking for a fight, but never backing down from one either.

I don't want ever to appear in a film that would embarrass a viewer. A man can take his wife, mother, and his daughter to one of my movies and never be ashamed or embarrassed for going.

I am an old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness, flag-waving patriot.

You can't whine and bellyache because somebody else got a good break and you didn't.

I think that the loud roar of irresponsible liberalism . . . is being quieted down by a reasoning public. I think the pendulum is swinging back. We're remembering that the past can't be so bad. We built a nation on it. We have to look to tomorrow.

Very few of the so-called liberals are open-minded . . . they shout you down and won't let you speak if you disagree with them.

Some people tell me everything isn't black and white. But I say why the hell not?

High Noon (1952) was the most un-American thing I have ever seen in my whole life. The last thing in the picture is ol' Coop [Gary Cooper] putting the United States marshal's badge under his foot and stepping on it. I'll never regret having run [screenwriter Carl Foreman] out of this country.

God, how I hate solemn funerals. When I die, take me into a room and burn me. Then my family and a few good friends should get together, have a few good belts, and talk about the crazy old time we all had together.

I've always had deep faith that there is a Supreme Being, there has to be. To me that's just a normal thing to have that kind of faith. The fact that He's let me stick me around a little longer, or She's let me stick around a little longer, certainly goes great with me -- and I want to hang around as long as I'm healthy and not in anybody's way.

I have tried to live my life so that my family would love me and my friends respect me. The others can do whatever the hell they please.

My problem is that I'm not a handsome man like Cary Grant, who will be handsome at 65. I may be able to do a few more man-woman things before it's too late, but then what? I never want to play silly old men chasing young girls, as some of the stars are doing. I have to be a director - I've waited all these years to be one. The Alamo (1960) will tell what my future is.

[on The Green Berets (1968)] When I saw what our boys are going through - hell - and how the morale was holding up, and the job they were doing, I just knew they had to make this picture.

I'm quite sure that the concept of a government-run reservation would have an ill effect on anyone. But that seems to be what the socialists are working for now - to have everyone cared for from cradle to grave.

This may come as a surprise to you, but I wasn't alive when reservations were created - even if I do look that old. I have no idea what the best method of dealing with the Indians in the 1800s would have been. Our forefathers evidently thought they were doing the right thing.

I'm not going to give you those I-was-a-poor-boy-and-I-pulled-myself-up-by-my-bootstraps-stories, but I've gone without a meal or two in my lifetime, and I still don't expect the government to turn over any of its territory to me. Hard times aren't something I can blame my fellow citizens for. Years ago, I didn't have all the opportunities, either. But you can't whine and bellyache 'cause somebody else got a good break and you didn't, like these Indians are. We'll all be on a reservation soon if the socialists keep subsidizing groups like them with our tax money.

Look, I'm sure there have been inequalities. If those inequalities are presently affecting any of the Indians now alive, they have a right to a court hearing. But what happened 100 years ago in our country can't be blamed on us today.

[asked whether the Native American Indians should be allowed to camp on their land at Alcatraz] Well, I don't know of anybody else who wants it. The fellas who were taken off it sure don't want to go back there, including the guards. So as far as I am concerned, I think we ought to make a deal with the Indians. They should pay as much for Alcatraz as we paid them for Manhattan. I hope they haven't been careless with their wampum.

[on Superman (1978) star Christopher Reeve after meeting him at the 1979 Academy Awards] This is our new man. He's taking over.

I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to the point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.