Quotes About Tough Guys

“Isn't that petty?"
"Anna, you have not yet seen pettiness. When a couple of tough guys like the general and Lugala Tsu decide to confront each other, vistas of pettiness open up that you and I can barely comprehend.”

— Eleanor Arnason

“Tough guys toughen up when faced with adversity. So he flexes his gag reflex and steps inside.”

— Bradley Sands

“The rest of the family tree had a root system soggy with alcohol ... One aunt had fallen asleep with her face in the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner; another's fondness for Coors was so unwavering that I can still remember the musky smell of the beer and the coldness of the cans. Most of the men drank the way all Texas men drank, or so I believed, which meant that they were tough guys who could hold their liquor until they couldn't anymore
a capacity that often led to some cloudy version of doom, be it financial ruin or suicide or the lesser betrayal of simple estrangement. Both social drinkers, my parents had eluded these tragic endings; in the postwar Texas of suburbs and cocktails, their drinking was routine but undramatic.”

— Gail Caldwell

“What's important is that you stay true to yourself. Because when you enter the real world, the most valuable thing you can bring is all your you-ness. The world doesn't need any more hot chicks or tough guys or smooth talkers - the world needs more you. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.”

— Bo Burnham

“I have a weakness for tough guys who read.”

— Lisa Lutz

“Is there a definition of a truly good person? ... Many say that "Nice guys finish last", that "kindness is weakness", and so on. To those of you who are told "Your too nice" or you tell yourself that. That is something to hold on to! So many people say "screw it" I can't be walked on or treated this way. So they become what they think is "tough" ,"smarter" or it's just easier. It's really not. Because even though you think you get "respect" you had to sacrifice the good part of who you are for it.”

— Monique Reza

“And they were relieved they found me alive, well and none the worse for wear. They cared and they didn't mind who knew it, not the hotel staff and customer onlookers, the police or the paramedics. Tough guys or not, I was one of them. I wasn't Ms. Townsend anymore. I was Sadie, Rock Chick. How great was that?”

— Kristen Ashley

“You're convincing these big, tough football players to wear what was essentially women's lingerie. There was a little bit of a Jedi mind trick that needed to take place. The product really spoke for itself once guys felt it and touched it.”

— Kevin Plank

“I always see guys get all, like, flexed on other people, trying to show off that they are tough, and it is just, like, no girl really likes that.”

— Kreayshawn

“There are no tough guys in wrestling.”

— Randy Savage

“Movies portray men as tough guys.”

— Geoffrey Canada

“Gay guys love women who are tough, who are survivors. They always call me a diva. And I am a survivor; I've pulled through everything and I've not become bitter about it.”

— Samantha Fox

“I think one of the reasons I've had success in hip-hop is that I can bring out vulnerability in people who are generally seen as tough guys. To me, when a hip-hop musician always plays tough, I find it annoying because I know they're not really like that - there's something deeper and vulnerable. There has to be, because they're human beings.”

— Skylar Grey

“For Padilla the shared act of smoking was basically a staging of loneliness: the tough guys, the talkers, the quick to forget and the long to remember, lost themselves for an instant, the length of time it took the cigarette to burn, an instant in which time was frozen and yet all times in Spanish history were concentrated, all the cruelty and the broken dreams, and in that "night of the soul" the smokers recognized each other, unsurprised, and embraced. The spirals of smoke were the embrace.”

— Roberto Bolaño

“Business is tough; you need tough guys.”

— Carlos Ghosn

“All girls like guys who are tough. Obviously, riding a motorcycle - I don't want to say that there's a bad boy quality - but there's definitely a tough and macho thing about a guy who rides a motorcycles and that element of danger. That's really sexy.”

— Marisa Miller

“One is wearing a uniform of green-and-gray camouflage, as if he were hunting deer in the woods. The other is wearing a uniform of brown-and-beige camouflage, as if he were hunting insurgents in the desert. These two clowns are standing in the driveway of a suburban home, about fifteen minutes from downtown, in a well-developed city of a million people, and they're wearing camouflage. The sad and scary thing about this image is that these guys have no idea how stupid they look. Instead, they're proud, arrogant. They're on display, tough guys fighting bad guys. One of their brethren has been hit, wounded, fallen in the line of duty, and they're pissed about it. They scowl at the neighbors across the street. One wrong word, and they might start shooting. Their fingers are on the triggers.”

— John Grisham

“I play tough guys in movies and behaved like one in front of the press because I thought that was what a man did.”

— Tom Sizemore

“After doing two years in prison, trust me, I've seen a lot of tough guys pray. They're not just praying for themselves; they're praying for their family and the people they've let down.”

— Ja Rule

“We couldn't generalize on the people. Some of them were known to be tough guys and they didn't say much, but some of them were kind of soft-headed, but they did that. That was an East German film.”

— James Stockdale

“Look, I play all these tough guys and thugs and strong, complex characters. In real life, I am a cringing, neurotic Jewish mess. Can't I for once play that on stage?”

— Jason Isaacs

“This makes it tough to find a lot of solid material on him because so much of his work got discounted as irrelevant. Most of it just ends up buried in pseudo-science books. Pretty much the only place you can find him is lumped in with guys like Edgar Cayce or Immanuel Velikovsky. He believed in telepathy, shared dreaming, race memories, all that kind of stuff. The idea that people's minds can all connect on some extra-sensory level.”

— Peter Clines

“The hockey I was raised on, the hockey I understand, the hockey that my dad taught me about when I was a boy was intrinsically connected with fighting. I grew up in a house where we revered tough guys.”

— Jay Baruchel

“Hollywood wants guys who can act tough - Hollywood don't want tough guys.”

— Danny Trejo

“Tough guys don't dance. You had better believe it.”

— Norman Mailer

“He reached out, opened the glove compartment, and took out a gun. It was a Smith & Wesson .38 five-shot special. It looked a lot like my gun.
"I stopped by your apartment this morning and picked this up for you," Ranger said. "I found it in the cookie jar."
"Tough guys always keep their gun in the cookie jar."
"Name one."
"Rockford."
Ranger grinned. "I stand corrected.”

— Janet Evanovich

“She saw it over and over again in her male patients, she said-it could probably qualify as an epidemic among American men: this stubborn reluctance to embrace our wholeness-this stoic denial that we had come from our mothers as well as our fathers. It was sad, really-tragic. So wasteful of human lives, as our wars and drive-by shootings kept proving to us; all one had to do was turn on CNN or CBS News. And yet, it was comic, too-the lengths most men went to to prove that they were tough guys.”

— Wally Lamb

“Real tough guys don't swear, they just do.”

— Deb Caletti

“You can lose a game but, I see guys every week including myself, you lose a game, it's a tough loss, you're down, two weeks later you forgot about it. You know it's amazing how down you were, but all of the sudden you're like it never happened.”

— Brett Favre

“In my experience, growing up in Brooklyn and all that, the real tough guys didn't act tough. They didn't talk tough. They were tough, you know? I think about these politicians who try to pose as tough guys - it makes me laugh.”

— Pete Hamill

“People think of Jews as the Woody Allen stereotype, the nebbishy kind of thing, but that's not the kind of Jews I know. I know plenty of Israelis and plenty of tough guys that are Jewish. So, I think it makes sense that Jews play metal.”

— Scott Ian

“The Sandinistas are a tough bunch of guys, with a fabulous amount of Soviet Bloc equipment and Soviet Bloc advisers.”

— Elliott Abrams

“The idea that every time you do a film you're supposed to be tortured confuses me. I mean, guys who say, 'Oh, it's really tough, my character is really suffering' -come on. For us, even in the rotten ones we've had a good time. I don't think you have to suffer.”

— George Clooney

“Although America loved its tough guys, they weren't ready to vote for leaders who exhibited no compassion for the downtrodden and miserable, for on any given day they might constitute a majority.”

— David Baldacci

“Truly tough guys never say they're tough.”

— Dean Koontz

“Mob guys had muscle, and where in hell do you think employers got the tough guys when they wanted to break a strike?”

— Jimmy Hoffa

“All those tough guys who want to scare the world into seeing them as men ... who don't know how to be a man with a woman, only abrute or a boy, who fill up the divorce courts; all those corporate raiders and rain-forest burners and war starters who want more in hopes that will make them feel better; ... are suffering from Father Hunger. They go through their puberty rituals day after day for a lifetime, waiting for a father to anoint them and say "Attaboy," to treat them as good enough to be considered a man.”

— Frank Pittman

“I can think of so many tough guys that by definition it's their job to be tough and they're all in chapel. That's such a misconception and it's kind of gone out the window. Guys feel more comfortable going to chapel. I remember when I first started, guys were nervous about it and it was kind of a secret. There was still that stigma that came with it, but it's definitely been removed and (the faith movement) is definitely growing.”

— Matt Cullen

“Typical of most French guys in our league with a visor on, running around and playing tough and not back anything up.”

— Sean Avery

“I'm actually a softie. Tough guys get killed too early ... I've got a full head of hair and don't wear eyeglasses.”

— Mickey Spillane

“For the choke, there are no "tough guys". With an arm lock he can be tough and resist the pain. With the choke he just passes out, goes to sleep.”

— Helio Gracie

“I would have to say that in this sort of feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct, kind of old fashion tough guys, run some risk ... This guy is very much an old fashioned masculine, muscular guy, and there are political risks associated with that. Maybe it shouldn't be, but that's how it is.”

— Brit Hume

“A coach can't be concerned with the poor ballplayer. If the player can't make it, he's got to be out right away. It's a very tough aspect of coaching, and in this aspect I was weak. Also, some guys get fat on coaching, they get healthy and strong, but other guys get ulcers.”

— John McNally

“It is pretty tough for a goalie when you look at it. You're always the last line of defense. If you let a goal in, you can't go to the bench and hide between the guys or anything”

— Kirk McLean

“I don't mind being called tough, since I find in this racket it's the tough guys who lead the survivors.”

— Curtis LeMay

“A good name for a gang would be The Uneducated Idiot Tough Guys.”

— Demetri Martin

“The toughest guys have the biggest hearts. The biggest hearts - because they have to be tough to protect it.”

— DMX

“That Elvis, man, he is all there is. There ain't no more. Everything starts and ends with him. He wrote the book. But for him, I'd be selling encyclopedias right now. There have been a lotta tough guys. There have been pretenders. And there have been contenders. But there is only one king.”

— Bruce Springsteen

“Boxer guys are very tough and they play a very tough game, but its a game. Karate guys, tae kwon doe guys, kickboxers or judo guys, they are very tough guys and a lot of heart and a lot of training, but its very specifically as a sport. It's not a fight. A fight is everything goes.”

— Rickson Gracie

“I mean, nobody's ever thrown a big rock at me or my friends, but we're all pretty tough guys and could probably handle it.”

— Zach Braff