Folk Hero Quotes

It's a character that I always found really likable. I'm fond of Zorro because he was a popular figure who worked for the people.

Johnny Cash was like Abraham Lincoln to me.

This Hollywood ain't no good, I would rather be like Robin Hood.

Wild Bill was a strange character. In person he was about six feet and one inch in height. He was a Plains-man in every sense of the word.

My Grandpa Tony was a legend in our family, and also in his own mind. There's no end to the tales of his exploits.

William Tell's son, Telly, who said as his father was pointing the bow and arrow at the apple on his head, There's gotta be an easier way to kill worms. Never got a dinner!

The Rough Riders brought honor to San Antonio by winning battles in Cuba throughout the summer of 1898, and Roosevelt became a Texas folk hero overnight.

Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.

I wouldn't call it ["Wild Bill Hickok"] an urban legend, but I guess I'd call it a rural legend that the cowboy was always soft-spoken, mild-spoken, well-mannered.

Walter [Hill] basically brought me into that ["Wild Bill Hickok"], and it was one of the great experiences. It was extraordinary stuff. He wrote this kind of American Shakespeare. But I played my part for four episodes, and the rest is history!

He [Will Rogers] was America's most complete human document. One-third humor. One-third humanitarian. One-third heart.

I'm not Catholic but the Virgin Mary fascinates me because she's like a folk hero.

Jesse [James] was known as a kind of Robin Hood character and also it was known that his exploits were somewhat dubious - however, he perpetuated this myth. Our film [The Assassination of Jesse James] really takes place at the end of all that, the last year of his life, at the end of all that celebrity.

I like 'Zorro.' I like people you can believe that don't have those stupid powers. That is the beauty of Zorro. He's just a guy working for the people, to save the people.

There's been about 75 movies about Jesse James, and I've seen about four of them. He's usually portrayed as this plucky rebel who's got no choice but to turn to crime, because the railway's hassling his mother. But he wasn't like that.

When I was five or six, I started dressing up like Davy Crockett.

I remember when Langston Hughes used to write a column in black newspapers around this character Jesse B. Semple. He always used that as a voice, sometimes in comic ways, of having everyday people's voice come through this common folk hero, who was an ordinary working guy. He would talk about anything from police brutality to the Korean War. Those kinds of expression and identification are no longer prevalent in our popular culture.

Will Rogers was an American hero - someone you could get your teeth into and love.

John Barleycorn was a hero bold, Of noble enterprise, For if you do but taste his blood, 'Twill make your courage rise, Twill make a man forget his wo; 'Twill heighten all his joy.