Core Values
One of Evel's qualities was that he had great pride in his core values. Throughout his career (and later life), he would repeatedly talk about the importance of "keeping his word". He stated that although he knew he may not successfully make a jump or even survive the canyon jump, he followed through with each stunt because he gave his word that he would. Prior to the canyon jump, Knievel stated, "If someone says to you, 'that guy should have never jumped the canyon. You knew if he did, that he'd lose his life and that he was crazy.' Do me a favor. Tell him that you saw me here and regardless of what I was, that you knew me, and that I kept my word."
In the documentary Last of the Gladiators, Knievel discussed the crash of a 1970 Pepsi-Cola sponsored jump in Yakima, Washington. Knievel knew the jump was questionable, but stated, "I went ahead and did it anyway. When you give your word to somebody that you're going to do something, you've gotta do it." In the 1971 biopic, George Hamilton (as Evel) emphasizes in the opening monologue that a man does not go back on his word.
Knievel would regularly share his anti-drug message, as it was another one of his core values. Knievel would preach an anti-drug message to children and adults before each of his stunts. One organization that Knievel regularly slammed for being drug dealers was the Hells Angels. A near-riot erupted on March 3, 1971, at the Cow Palace when a tire-iron (or Coke can according to the Hells Angels) was thrown at Knievel during his stunt show, and Knievel and a majority of the spectators fought back, sending three of the fifteen Hells Angels to the hospital. The plot to his only motion picture as an actor, Viva Knievel!, centers around Evel foiling the attempts of drug lords smuggling narcotics into America from Mexico.
Read more about this topic: Evel Knievel
Famous quotes containing the words core and/or values:
“The threadbare trees, so poor and thin,
They are no wealthier than I;
But with as brave a core within
They rear their boughs to the October sky.
Poor knights they are which bravely wait
The charge of Winter’s cavalry,
Keeping a simple Roman state,
Discumbered of their Persian luxury.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction between our present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)