Wyatt Earp (1848 – 1929)
Officer of the law, gambler and saloon keeper in the Wild West.
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Mind me now, Mannen, put up those guns and go on home.
We had no YMCA's. [To biographer Stuart Lake, when asked late in life why he'd spent so much time in saloons.]
You damned dirty cur thief, you have been threatening our lives, and I know it. I think I should be justified shooting you down any place I should meet you, but if you are anxious to make a fight, I will go anywhere on earth to make a fight with you, even over to the San Simon among your own crowd.
[Wyatt] Earp is a man who never smiled or laughed. He was the most fearless man I ever saw. . . . He is an honest man. All officers here who were associated with him declare that he is honest, and would have decided according to his belief in the face of an arsenal. -Dick Cogdell
I was tired of being threatened by Ike Clanton and his gang. I believed from what they had said to others and to me, and from their movements, that they intended to assassinate me the first chance they had, and I thought if I had to fight for my life against them, I had better make them face me in an open fight.
Wyatt Earp was a wonderful officer. He was game to the last ditch and apparently afraid of nothing. The cowmen all respected him and seemed to recognize his superiority and authority at such times as he had to use it. -Jimmy Cairns
In a gun fight... You need to take your time in a hurry
Fast is fine but accuracy is final. You must learn to be slow in a hurry
I did not intend to fight unless it became necessary in self defense, and in the performance of official duty. When Billy Clanton and Frank McLowry drew their pistolsl I knew it was a fight for life, and I drew and fired in defense of my own life and the lives of my brothers and Doc Holliday.
I think you came here to make a fight with me, and if you did, you can have one here right now.
I am a friend of Doc Holliday, because when I was city marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, he came to my rescue and saved my life, when I was surrounded by desperados.
The fight has now commenced, go to fighting or get away!
Wyatt Earp is one of the few men I personally knew in the West in the early days, whom I regarded as absolutely destitute of physical fear. I have often remarked, and I am not alone in my conclustions, that what goes for courage in a man is generally the fear of what others will think of him-- in other words, personal bravery is largely made up of self-respect, egotism, and an apprehension of the opinions of others. Wyatt Earp's daring and apparent recklessness in time of danger is wholly characteristic; personal fear doesn't enter into the equation, and when everything is said and done, I believe he values his own opinion of himself more than that of others, and it is his own good report that he seeks to preserve. . . . He never at any time in his career resorted to the pistol excepting in cases where such a course was absolutely necessary. Wyatt could scrap with his fists, and had often taken all the fight out of bad men, as they were called, with no other weapons than those provided by nature. -Bat Masterson
Remember this, all of you. Nothing counts so much as blood. The rest are just strangers.
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