‘You can run, but you’ll only die tired.’ was supposedly said by Boba Fett. I can’t remember hearing Boba Fett talking, much less that line. In my head, I hear Clint Eastwood saying it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear it in Star Wars. Is there another source for this quote?
My (dim) recollection is that I started hearing it in the late 70’s/early 80’s wrt Vietnam and snipers.
One source attributes it as a Unit Motto, for the JFK Special Warfare Center Sniper School.
I have never heard this before and am certain it was never said by anyone in Star Wars. Watched it 19 times when it first came out.
Fett only has a handful of lines in the movies, and that isn’t one of them. He only had four lines in The Empire Strikes Back, and none in Return of the Jedi (except for his scream when he fell into the Sarlacc pit):
- “As you wish.”
- “What if he doesn’t survive? He’s worth a lot to me.”
- “He’s no good to me dead.”
- “Put Captain Solo in the cargo hold.”
It’s possible that he said something like that in an Expanded Universe novel or comic book (or, more recently, in The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett), but I can’t remember.
Yeah “Run and you’ll only die tired” is a phrase I remember seeing on military patches in the 80s at gun shows.
So, the link below indicates that Fett did, indeed, use the phrase, in a Star Wars e-novella, A Practical Man, written by Karen Traviss, and published in 2006. Given the above cites that indicate the phrase seems to older than that, my guess is that the author of the novella borrowed it for Fett.
It’s older than Boba Fett. I saw it as a tee shirt maybe in the 70s and definitely by the 80s.
You do know Star Wars came out in 1977? (Although it is true that it was not in Star Wars. It’s just that your given chronology is no evidence.)
Though, Boba Fett wasn’t in the original film. His first appearance was in an animated segment of the infamous TV special The Star Wars Holiday Special, which had its one and only authorized airing in November of '78. Fett’s first appearance in the films was in The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.
Either way, to your point, a t-shirt seen in the late '70s or (particularly) the early '80s could certainly have had a Boba Fett quote on it, though, as noted above, Fett never uttered that phrase on film.
You know, I was confusing Boba Fett with the alien who tries to take Han Solo in the cantina and gets blasted for his efforts.
And of course, if you watch a modern copy of the movies, you won’t even hear any of the original dialogue, as Temuera Morrison’s voice was dubbed over the original voice actor in the 2004 remaster.
Poor Greedo. 
He shot first, you know. runs away
That’s a load of maclunkey.