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I see the quote "Life is hard. It's harder when you're stupid." being atributed to a Sir Charles Panther, who seems to use it as a tagline in several book reviews on Amazon dot com, digging a little further back it was used by John Wayne in "Sands of Iwo Jima"
Christine
Semper Foo Foo
Comments
What I could find
I ran across it during a Google search for something else entirely, and the only attribuation I could find is the one for Sir Charles Panther. I liked it, so I used it.
KJT
Sir Charles Panther
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
The John Wayne quote - sources differ
(Sorry in advance for this... But, the suggestion that substantially the same quote could be attributed to two people intrigued me, and I had to go do some digging... Here's what I found... Unscientific as my search was.)
The first source I found had the quote as: "Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid." Not quite the same wording. Probably didn't get the play of Sir Charles. Either way, it's true. First attribution found
I found another source that said the Duke's quote used "Tough" and "Tougher".
Yet another reference Reference had: "Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid." A change in punctuation. This source had the "Tough/Tougher" quote as well. This site includes the semi-colon as well. I found quite a number of other sites with this wording as well.
Doing a search of IMDB on quotes from "Sands of Iwo Jima" and found "Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid."
I suspect the "sentiment" has been around a LONG time. Sir Charles is attributed with the quote above - as punctuated above. I see nothing wrong with Karen's tag line... But, I do agree that the Duke said something substantially the same.
Annette
Just a line
Even if John Wayne did deliver the line, shouldn't the screen writer get the credit anyway? Of course De Niro did write, "You looking at me?" The screenplay just called for him to stare into a mirror; that would have been good too but seldom quoted.
My great-great uncle (my grandmother denies that he was all that good) wrote, "Close Cover Before Striking", but never gets an attribution.
Joy, Jan
Indeed...
The first bit is usually "Life is tough." The second part varies widely, from "It's tougher if you're stupid," to "But it's even tougher..." and so on. They seem to be produced from memory, and I can't recall ever having seen the film, as I despise John Wayne, and loathe his movies. Yes, all of them.
Oddly enough, my paternal grandfather knew him when he was a beach bum in Newport Beach (in Orange County), California, and wasn't terribly impressed back then.
Harry Brown wrote the original script for "Sands of Iwo Jima", later revised by James Edward Grant. It was written as a "puff piece" for the US Marine Corps, based on the famous but heavily-staged photograph of US Marines raising the US flag atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcVvzhU_wzE - Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJPJPpQiD1M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI0zqpslmXI - Flag raising
The Marines still admire the film, and the US Stryker mobile gun platform is probably named after the John Wayne character.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
High Noon
Will Hollywood ever have the guts to take on Big John in a tell all film?
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Not Staged
It's an oft-repeated myth that it was staged, but it's not true. The famous picture was taken of the the raising of the larger flag, which was ordered by Colonel Chandler Johnson in order to replace a smaller flag. The photographer, Joe Rosenthal, had nothing to do with it, and he stated so in his biography. The flag was raised on Mt. Suribachi to raise moral during the battle, which cost the lives of 6,825 Americans, more than the total or the combined wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
I thought it was cute too
Thats why I looked it up, to see what other bits of wisdom were attributed to Sir Charles.
Based on the sentiments above it would seem one could take a story here, change the punctuation or maybe a character's last name and repost it as their own right?
Not exactly
Individual phrases or even sentences could be copied - But, if it could be determined that you copied "a substantial portion" of some such work (and such work were not in the public domain) and presented it as your work, you could get in trouble... And cause trouble for the host, if they didn't take action when it were prooved.
But the basic story lines - how many times have the story told in "Romeo and Juliet" been re-used? Or many other classic stories for that matter - even without attribution.
The first person to say something doesn't necessarily get the credit (as mentioned, Wayne didn't WRITE the line, he just said it)... Occasionally lines get attributed to someone, and he/she never actually said it... Like the supposedly famous line by Bogart "Play it again, Sam"...
Annette
Putdowns like "stupid"
are always easy.
Puddin'
-----------
The tongue like a sharp knife...
It kills without drawing blood.
--- Buddha
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
And a sentence that short...
...probably couldn't pass copyright muster.
Variations on "Life is hard" and "Life is tough" abound.
The art of the macho, hateful putdown is widely practiced, quite often peppered with "stupid," "idiot," "moron," and the like.
Putting the two together doesn't take too much creativity, and Wayne *also* calls at least one soldier an idiot in the film, as I found the clip on YouTube.
It's this thoughtless, even cruel, belligerence that endears John Wanye to many on the Right-wing, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O' Reilly, and the many imitators of the John Wayne "schtick."
Puddin'
-----------------
I don't want to see this country to go
that way. You know what happened to the
Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them.
Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all
know that, so was Socrates."
--- Richard Milhous Nixon
Why should Blacks be heard? They're
twelve percent of the population.
Who the hell cares?
--- Rush Limbaugh
Most of these feminists are radical,
frustrated lesbians, many of them,
and man-haters, and failures in their
relationships with men, and who have
declared war on the male gender. The
Biblical condemnation of feminism has
to do with its radical philosophy and
goals. That's the bottom line.
--- Jerry Falwell
We should invade their countries,
kill their leaders and convert them
to Christianity."
--- Ann Coulter
Oh, you're one of the sodomites. You
should get AIDS and die, you pig! Why
don't you see if you can sue me, you
piece of garbage?
--- Michael Savage
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Oh I get it now
So small indescretions are okay but whole stories are off limits and need to be fully credited?
Now someone please help me, we've established that we can overlook a comma and grab it all up to the period, is that the limit? What about a run-on sentance? or can we say go as far as a whole drabble?
Folks, this is all tongue in cheek. I really do believe in attributing credit to its originator.
In the case of "Life is tough" (or hard, whatever)I pointed out an earlier reference to the jist or the spirit of the expression, changing a word to another that is synonymous does not make it a new and original, is it then either a misquote or a deliberate rip off? Or what about continuing to give credit to one person when knowing it came from an earlier source?
In the case of "Life is hard" no doubt it was the words of a script writer though who knows maybe the words of John himself, in either case the common practice for a quote from a movie is to attibute it to who said it and in what movie, it gives the words relevance.
Shades of grey, little white lies?
No, you don't
Nobody else cares about this. To use another phrase (unattributed, sorry) "Tempest in a teapot."
KJT
Sir Charles Panther
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin