Quote of the Day: John Wayne on Wit & Attitude

Late November has a way of tightening the screws: shorter days, fuller calendars, higher stakes. When life feels heavier, it’s tempting to blame the season, the economy, or the people around us. But the blunt frontier wisdom of “Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid” cuts through the fog with a challenge: don’t add avoidable weight to an already demanding world.

John Wayne isn’t sneering at intelligence here, he’s talking about the kind of “stupid” that shows up as incuriosity, impulsiveness, and the refusal to learn. Life will still deliver setbacks, delays, and surprises. Yet so much suffering is self-inflicted: ignoring feedback, repeating the same mistake, reacting before thinking, and calling it “bad luck.”

The practical takeaway is agency. You can’t control every storm, but you can control whether you keep walking into the rain without a coat. Replace “stupid” with “unexamined.” Ask: What am I pretending not to see? What decision am I delaying because it’s uncomfortable? A little reflection turns chaos into a plan. That’s how you build resilience, not by becoming tougher, but by becoming clearer.

John Wayne earned his authority the hard way: a defining career spanning more than a hundred films, iconic roles that shaped American cinema, and production work that demanded discipline behind the camera as much as presence in front of it.

Today, pick one recurring problem, money, health, a strained relationship, a cluttered schedule, and write the “stupid tax” you’ve been paying in one sentence. Then take one corrective action in under ten minutes: make the call, set the boundary, create the reminder, or gather the missing information. May your next step be wiser, lighter, and unmistakably yours.