Fortune favors the prepared.

I'm a storyteller - that's the chief function of a director. And they're moving pictures, let's make 'em move!

You can't fix a bad script after you start shooting. The problems on the page only get bigger as they move to the big screen.

When you've got some talent, your job is to use it.

A good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes.

The western is the simplest form of drama - a gun, death.

There's action only if there is danger.

John Wayne represents more force, more power, than anybody else on the screen.

I think girls who insult people are very attractive.

I guarantee you that two directors that are any good can take the same story, change the name of the characters, change the name of the town, and make an entirely different picture.

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.

diplomacy, n.: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

A world without music is only filled with sounds in the air

Know yourself. Be authentic. Have courage.

In the decades following the Revolution, America changed so much and so rapidly that Americans not only became used to change, but came to expected and prize it.

A day with a sage will save you a thousand of study.

Your world and everything in it is a reflection of your own mental attitude toward yourself.

Faith is never identical with piety even if it were the purest and finest.

The only person I ever hurt was myself and even that I did to the minimum. If you can do that and you're still functioning, you're the luckiest person in the world.

Every scarecrow has a secret ambition to terrorize.

I do believe that the original sources of all religions should be taught, because with that we will find our similarities, not just our differences.