A Quote by Vincent Bugliosi

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

Quote Topics

American Celebrity Hero Hero Worship Heroes Hollywood John Lots Make Movie Much Nation Out Patriotic Red Second Second World War Spent Those Trenches Two War Wayne World World War World War I

Quote Author

Vincent Bugliosi
American - Author
August 18, 1934 - June 6, 2015

The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knowns. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.

Daniel J. Boorstin

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

Since those who believe they need a hero/celebrity outnumber the actual heroes/celebrities, people feel safe and comfortably justified in numbers, committing egregious crimes in the name of the greater social ego. Ironically diminishing their own true hero-celebrity nature in the process.

Lauryn Hill

John loved celebrity. We attended an American Film Institute dinner honoring James Cagney, and the room was filled with famous actors like Mae West, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne and Steve McQueen. John was like a kid in a candy store.

May Pang

The Japanese couldn't have been all bad during World War II. Look at all the movies Hollywood was able to make on account of them. The Indians weren't the only bad guys. Thanks to the Japanese and Geronimo, John Wayne became a millionaire.

Pat Morita

We need to build a beautiful granite and bronze monument in our nation's capital to honor American heroes, unsung American heroes. And those unsung American heroes are the rich.

Bernard Goldberg

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

Johnny Ramone

Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out.

Ryan Cabrera

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

Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest.

Ty Cobb

We [with John Logan] started talking about The Searchers, and then he went on to tell me a story about when he first met John Wayne, and he said, "Hey, you be me and I'll be Wayne," and I said, "No, let me be Wayne!" Anyway, it was a very pleasant conversation, it was clear to him that I was a big movie fan, and by the time I got home, there was a phone call, asking if I'd mind doing one scene in the movie [The Aviator].

Brent Spiner

You're not going to be able to look like anyone else, no matter how hard you try, unless you're a mimic, then you're not acting, you're just mimicking. You can't go on being John Wayne, that's John Wayne. So you're not going to steal from John Wayne. I'm not going to steal from John Wayne and you're not going to come back and say 'Didn't you get that from the circus?' You know. But he is one of those people who instructs me, whom I look up to - whom I think is one of the masters of his craft that I am so enamoured of.

Morgan Freeman

I wish heroes didn't exist. Whenever we need a hero, it's because there's a problem that needs to be solved; it's because two groups of people, or two countries, are hurting one another, so a hero is needed to save us. If everyone were at peace, if everyone were happy, why would we need heroes? The world is better off without heroes.

Jet Li

In a nation of celebrity worshipers, amid followers of the cult of personality, individual modesty becomes a heroic quality. I find heroism in the acceptance of anonymity, in the studied resistance to the normal American tropism toward the limelight.

Shana Alexander

Of all the jaw-droppingly beautiful women who've become genuine movie stars, none has had a longer film career (62 years), has been filmed in Technicolor more often (34 times), has had a more versatile group of leading men (from John Wayne to John Candy) or has spent more time held captive on a pirate ship than our TCM Star of the Month for July, the magnificent red-headed Maureen O'Hara.