Top 100 Quotes About John Wayne: Famous Quotes & Sayings About John Wayne

#1. A lot of people ... kind of make heroes that are separate from us, people who are, you know, like ... John Wayne and Errol Flynn and, you know, Denzel Washington ... people who are different, who are larger than life.

Walter Mosley

#2. John Wayne treated me fine, but that macho stuff turns me off. It's not real.

Tab Hunter

#3. John Wayne is as tough as an old nut and as soft as a yellow ribbon.

Elizabeth Taylor

#4. You'll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you'll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we'll have a lot more of them. And they'll be fought by babies like the babies upstairs.

Kurt Vonnegut

#5. I don't want any romantics to go into the military. I'm not a pacifist. I think we need a military, and the better one we have, the better off we are. I don't want kids going in there thinking that it's John Wayne on Iwo Jima. That's not healthy.

Karl Marlantes

#6. John Wayne never ever disappointed his fans, because he was a cowboy.

Vinnie Jones

#7. I'm just glad that the whole John Wayne persona of a man is sort of old school now, because I'd never be able to do that. If that was the going rate today, I wouldn't be working.

Matthew Perry

#8. My daddy, he was somewhere between God and John Wayne.

Hank Williams Jr.

#9. 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

#10. Growing up in Texas and Oklahoma, Ben Johnson was more famous than John Wayne to some of us. I knew him. I worked with him on a low budget film years ago, and we'd sit around at night while waiting for a shot.

Bill Paxton

#11. I could do John Wayne, Jack Benny, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and entertain my friends. But I never seriously considered it as a career choice.

Phil Hartman

#12. John Wayne was the meanest, nastiest man with the worst attitude that I ever worked with.

Jill Haworth

#13. His Charles Bronson-like demeanour together with his Clint Eastwood stare and his John Wayne swagger, created from a diet of westerns and Eighties TV mixed with a lifetime of planning, organising, managing, and leading, were now gelled together with the battle-hardened soldier he had become.

Connor Fitzgerald

#14. I just love westerns. One of my favourite actors is John Wayne, probably one of the most underrated actors there's ever been. He's quite an incredible actor.

Ray Winstone

#15. I never have really become accustomed to the 'John.' Nobody ever really calls me John ... I've always been Duke or Marion or John Wayne. It's a name that goes well together, and it's like one word - John Wayne.

John Wayne

#16. My favorite actors when I was a kid were in their '60s. Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne.

Joseph Bologna

#17. A "name" no longer carries a film. People used to go to the cinema to see a "John Wayne film." And you don't have that thing happening now except in the rock world, which has taken the event out of movies.

Elizabeth Taylor

#18. John Wayne never wore Lycra.

Ron Kauk

#19. I can't go to bed with John Wayne, so I do the next best thing: I go to bed with my girlfriend, who once met the great man. That's how much I love westerns.

Clive Sinclair

#20. With apologies to Judy Garland and Cole Porter, all the world does NOT love a clown. John Wayne Gacy might have been the final nail in the coffin in terms of anyone associating clowns with funny (if a bunch of clowns die, do they all fit into one coffin?)

Christopher Lombardo

#21. John Wayne was one of the greatest ambassadors for the United States that ever lived.

Maureen O'Hara

#22. When you're a young boy, you're looking at older men for role modelling. Before I loved De Niro, I loved Clint Eastwood; I loved John Wayne. And James Bond.

Ben Mendelsohn

#23. I am the living death, a Memorial Day on wheels. I am your Yankee Doodle Dandy, your John Wayne come home, your Fourth of July firecracker exploding in the grave.

Ron Kovic

#24. I saw Ben Stiller's movie Walter Mitty [2013]; it's very beautiful. You look at some of the movies John Ford did with John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, and then look at Remington and Ansel Adams, and I think you see a connection, certainly in the imagery of the West.

Owen Wilson

#25. A mangled corpse in the middle of a blood-drenched floor. Berserk FBI field agents drawing guns and shooting to kill. A little kung fu, a little John Wayne, and a few casual threats.
So far, I thought, my nerves jangling, just one more night on the job.

Jim Butcher

#26. 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

#27. If I was white I would have been like John Wayne ... I feel like a tragic hero in a Shakespeare play

Tupac Shakur

#28. I made 'Rio Bravo' with John Wayne. It worked out pretty well and we both liked it, so a few years later we decided to make it again. Worked out pretty good that time, too.

Howard Hawks

#29. Although it wasn't that easy to do, it was wonderful working with John Wayne.

Robert Duvall

#30. The guy you see on the screen isn't really me. I'm Duke Morrison, and I never was and never will be a film personality like JOHN WAYNE . I know him well. I'm one of his closest students. I have to be. I made a living out of him.

John Wayne

#31. John Wayne was a consummate gentleman. Bigger than life.

Jennifer O'Neill

#32. I always wanted to be an actor. I always wanted to be John Wayne.

Bill Engvall

#33. Why thank you, little lady,' Dan answers, sounding more like John Wayne than me. He flexes his muscles. 'Let me strap on my manly board and show you what I can really do.

Leslea Wahl

#34. I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made.

Michael Eric Dyson

#35. I'd like to be the John Wayne of the '90s. Not in terms of being the macho guy, but as a solid male leading character. Making an action-adventure comedy that kids can see with their families is a natural extension of what I did in wrestling.

Hulk Hogan

#36. My father was a sort of John Wayne Texan who'd worked as a cowboy when he was young. He'd participated in rattlesnake round-ups and swum with copperheads.

Edmund White

#37. Yakima Canutt was famously John Wayne's stunt double, and in the Western movie 'Stagecoach,' there is a fantastic scene where there are some horses thundering along, pulling a carriage. He climbs out onto the horses and drops down underneath them, so he's being dragged along, and then he lets go.

Steve Truglia

#38. Sure I was glad to see John Wayne win the Oscar I'm always glad to see the fat lady win the Cadillac on TV, too.

Robert Mitchum

#39. I guess John Wayne would be one. I just respected the way he acted.

A. J. Foyt

#40. That's what the movies do. They don't entertain us, they don't send the message: 'We care.' They give us lines to say, they assign us parts: John Wayne, Theda Bara, Shirley Temple, take your pick.

Connie Willis

#41. I've never been typed. John Wayne played 'that guy' all the time - mostly because that's all he could do. Gable played Gable parts, and Bob Taylor played Bob Taylor parts, whether he was in armor or a full-dress suit. I resisted that.

Robert Preston

#42. My dad was very much a John Wayne kind of guy, but he was also a great guy, great sense of humor, a real dedicated dad. I don't think he ever missed a hockey game I was in.

Denis Leary

#43. 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

#44. We're a nation of celebrity and hero worshipers, so much so that we make heroes out of those who aren't, such as John Wayne: a patriotic, red-blooded, two-fisted American who spent the Second World War in the trenches on the movie lots of Hollywood.

Vincent Bugliosi

#45. Acting is about listening and reacting. John Wayne was right: Acting is just reacting. You don't have to do much - as long as you stay out of the way of others. That's why it works.

Anthony Hopkins

#46. Hassan and I were stunned. Dazed. John Wayne didn't really speak Farsi

Khaled Hosseini

#47. Sassenach," he said against my shoulder, a moment later. "Mm?" "Who in God's name is John Wayne?" "You are," I said. "Go to sleep.

Diana Gabaldon

#48. No sooner than I did take it seriously, I had million-selling hits and movies with John Wayne.

Frankie Avalon

#49. When I was a kid going to the movies, we'd go because Bogart was in the movie, or Cagney, or John Wayne. We didn't know what the story was about or anything.

Dennis Farina

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

Khaled Hosseini

#51. I love Westerns. I really love John Wayne. Frank Capra, any of his movies I love.

Rob Zombie

#52. If John Wayne were alive, he'd be rolling over in his grave!

Ernest Borgnine

#53. Cole turned his bride to hug her from behind, nuzzling her neck.
-I'll have you in my bed next. I'm going to make love to you so thoroughly that, tomorrow? You'll walk like John Wayne.

Debra Anastasia

#54. I never went to a John Wayne movie to find a philosophy to live by or to absorb a profound message. I went for the simple pleasure of spending a couple of hours seeing the bad guys lose.

Mike Royko

#55. Two of my biggest heroes were my father and John Wayne.

Johnny Ramone

#56. People don't assume John Wayne shoots people and rides a horse on weekends.

Sylvia Kristel

#57. Love John Wayne. I love his cowboy movies especially, which makes sense I guess. Rio Bravo may be my favorite.

Chris Kyle

#58. 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

#59. Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too.

Michele Bachmann

#60. 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

#61. The buried code of many American films has become: If I kill you, I have won and you have lost. The instinctive ethical code of traditional Hollywood, the code by which characters like James Stewart, John Wayne and Henry Fonda lived, has been lost.

Roger Ebert

#62. Making a martial arts film in English to me is the same as John Wayne speaking Chinese in a western

Ang Lee

#63. This dazzling, unput-downable debut novel proves beyond a doubt that Dan Wells has the gift. His teenage protagonist is as chilling as he is endearing. More John Wayne Cleaver, please.

F. Paul Wilson

#64. I asked him a number of questions and I got some very interesting answers. Ken's heroes, according to Christopher, would be people like John Wayne, of course.

Stacy Keach

#65. When you get old the worst thing is you lose so many friends. Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne. People who I loved to work with.

Kirk Douglas

#66. Thanks to the Japanese and Geronimo, John Wayne became a millionaire.

Pat Morita

#67. In the John Wayne movies, the Indians were savages that were trying to scalp you. That culture has really suffered because of the stereotype you see in those westerns.

Ricky Schroder

#68. Men still assume I must be like the girl I played in 'Emmanuelle.' John Wayne was never accused of killing people during his free time, but I'm forever stuck with the image of 'Emmanuelle.' The truth is, I should have got an Oscar for that role because I'm nothing like that woman.

Sylvia Kristel

#69. The more film I watch, the more John Ford looks like a giant. His politics aren't so good, and you have to learn to accept John Wayne as an actor, but he's a poet in black and white.

Jonathan Lethem

#70. Robert Mitchum sounded different from John Wayne, and John Wayne sounded different from Clark Gable.

Billy West

#71. I'm like John Wayne. I only play good guys. Describing his cameo role on a TV series.

Oliver North

#72. John Wayne represents more force, more power than anyone else on the screen.

Howard Hawks

#73. I grew up loving the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns.

Ben Mendelsohn

#74. I remember playing John Wayne Gacy, serial killer, very sick, neurotic, screwed-up guy. You know what? There's a part of me there, too, and you explore that.

Brian Dennehy

#75. Of the two 'True Grits,' the John Wayne version one is better.

Caroline Lawrence

#76. I think women secretly yearn for the return of John Wayne and don't even know it.

Troy Duffy

#77. The Duke [John Wayne] was a massive figure. He looked like a heavy piece of hauled lumber, and it didn't seem like any man could stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

Bob Dylan

#78. Oh, I loved John Wayne. He was just so charming and easy to work with.

Judy Geeson

#79. I grew up with the television product being old Western serials like Roy Rogers, and John Wayne and Gary Cooper, and many others were my favorites when I was a young person going to films.

Steve Kanaly

#80. I play John Wayne in every part regardless of the character, and I've been doing okay, haven't I?

John Wayne

#81. One-eyed Reuben 'Rooster' Cogburn is the role that finally delivered John Wayne his Oscar.

Clive Sinclair

#82. You know for years before the notion of sequels, actors were the franchise. John Wayne would rarely do sequels, but he kind of played the same guy with a different name in every movie. I have no problem with using actors as franchises. And that's what is fun to do.

Joel Silver

#83. There is a basic rule about tanks, and you should know it: The only man who ever beat a tank was John Wayne. And he was in another tank.

Kurt Vonnegut

#84. So I live in Los Angeles, and it's kind of a goofy place. They have an airport named after John Wayne. That ought to explain it. It has a charming kind of superstitious innocence.

George Carlin

#85. 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

#86. In sum, The Green Berets was a reasonable commercial success, but a critical disaster that convinced most of the moviegoing audience under the age of thirty never to see a John Wayne movie.

Scott Eyman

#87. John Wayne is not just an actor, and a very fine actor - John Wayne is the United States of America.

Maureen O'Hara

#88. With John Wayne, we argued all the time and we made four pictures.

Kirk Douglas

#89. No cowboys for Canada. Canada got Mounties instead - Dudley Do-Right, not John Wayne. It's a mind-set of "Here I come to save the day" versus "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.

Sarah Vowell

#90. Sometimes I feel like John Wayne.

Claire Denis

#91. I guess when it comes to this privileged White racist feminist movement they respect someone who treats them rough: John Wayne. Frank Sinatra. Phillip Roth.

Ishmael Reed

#92. Everybody that I was in school with had an uncle or father in the law, and I started to realize that I was going to end up writing briefs for about ten years for these fellows who I thought I was smarter than. And I was kind of losing my feeling for that.

John Wayne

#93. I was sure I'd set the world on fire, and it was hard for a young feller like me to realize the truth - that I hadn't set the world on fire, and I was totally unprepared to handle the consequences if 'The Big Trail' had been a success and launched me as a star.

John Wayne

#94. You're going to think I'm being corny, but this is how I really feel: I hope my family and my friends will be able to say that I was an honest, kind and fairly decent man.

John Wayne