"I am on the hill-top, and must go down into the valley; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps, there will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for my boy is the last of the Mohicans."

"Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?"

"In short, the magnifying influence of fear began to set at naught the calculations of reason, and to render those who should have remembered their manhood, the slaves of the basest passions."

"It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practiced native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty; and it would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe."

"Few men exhibit greater diversity, or, if we may so express it, greater antithesis of character than the native warrior of North America. In war, he is daring, boastful, cunning, ruthless, self-denying, and self-devoted; in peace, just, generous, hospitable, revengeful, superstitious, modest, and commonly chaste."

"It is probable a true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of that reason of which we so much boast."

"There is an uneasy desire among a vast many well-disposed persons to get the fruits of the Christian Faith, without troubling themselves about the Faith itself. This is done under the sanction of Peace Societies, Temperance and Moral Reform Societies, in which the end is too often mistaken for the means. When the Almighty sent His Son on earth, it was to point out the way in which all this was to be brought about, by means of the Church; but men have so frittered away that body of divine organization, through their divisions and subdivisions, all arising from human conceit, that it is no longer regarded as the agency it was so obviously intended to be, and various contrivances are to be employed as substitutes for that which proceeded directly from the Son of God!"

"I was really intimidated, but then the acting kicks in. We have a similar fire, so he doesn't intimidate me in that way; I can get really angry, I can get in your face too."

"I had the opportunity to fly with a Top Gun pilot and land on the USS Nimitz, 240 miles at sea. We landed the F-14 tomcat on the carrier and I was given a tour and was able to shake hands with all the sailors and marines. As we were flying back to Miramar, Maverick (his call name) said to me, “Let’s pretend there is a bogey on our tail.” He immediately went into evasive maneuvers, spinning one way and then the other, hitting up to seven Gs! After about ten minutes, I was about ready to hurl, but I thought, “If I do, he is going to tell all the other Top Gun pilots,” so I said to Maverick in my headset, “Maverick, we lost him!” Maverick laughed and said, “I know what you mean.”"

"When you are fighting, good against evil, when the good guys are taking on the bad guys and winning, then I think that’s good … unfortunately in our society, in reality, that’s not always the case."

"Many people want and need someone to identify with, a man who is self-reliant, stands on his own two feet, and is not afraid to face adversity. They want to believe in me, just as I believed in John Wayne when I was a boy."

"Sometimes the things we want most are the hardest to get. That means you need to be even more determined to succeed. That's what it takes to be a winner. You have to want it bad enough to stick with it no matter how tough things get."

"I would not want to be a politician... Let me tell you this: If I was campaigning, and I go against my opponent and he started attacking my character, and I leap over the table and choke him unconscious, would that help my campaign?"

"I'm aware of the made up declarations about me that have recently begun to appear on the Internet and in emails as "Chuck Norris facts." I've seen some of them. Some are funny. Some are pretty far out. Being more a student of the Wild West than the wild world of the Internet, I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It's quite surprising. I do know that boys will be boys, and I neither take offense nor take these things too seriously. Who knows, maybe these made up one-liners will prompt young people to seek out the real facts as found in my recent autobiographical book, "Against All Odds?" They may even be interested enough to check out my novels set in the Old West, "The Justice Riders," released this month. I'm very proud of these literary efforts."

"Men are like steel — when they lose their temper, they lose their worth."