best quotations

All real Americans love the sting of battle.
-PATTON



Greed is good. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
---OLIVER STONE



Of course I'm happy. That shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.
---Bob Dylan

It has served us well, this myth of Christ
---Pope Leo x (Giovanni de' Medici)

Surely you can't be serious.
I am serious... and don't call me Shirley
---AIRPLANE

I must pause for one fast second and say a fast word about oral contraception. I was involved in an extremely good example of oral contraception two weeks ago. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, and she said "No".
---Woody Allen





Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged. But keep your day job.
---Thomas A. Edison



If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.
— "A Nation at Risk" (1983)





Never marry a man who has no friends. I am always amazed at the number of men I have counseled who have no friends.
---Father Pat Connor



In the second year of the great civil war, when the Irish brigades marched through the streets, New york was a city full of tribes. War chiefs, rich and poor. It wasn't a city really, It was more a furnace where cities someday might be forged.
---GANGS OF NEW YORK


For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing.
---George F. Will




Crack that whip
Give the past the slip
-DEVO





Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works.


Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind.
---WALLSTREET

And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
From the Oliver Stone film Wall Street 1980
Read by Michael Douglas


Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. You not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.
---C. S. Lewis Grief


San Francisco in 1966 was what the whole young and popular world would be doing Saturday nights if the Nazis had won the war. It was the Sixth Reich.
---FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS


Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
---Thomas Jefferson

... These guys are proud of what they did. They did Dealey Plaza! They took out the President of the United States! That's entertainment!

FERRIE Oh man, why don't you stop. This is too fuckin' big for you! Who did Kennedy? It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma. Even the shooters don't fuckin' know! Don't you get it yet? I can't be talking like this. They're gonna kill me. I'm gonna die! (he sits down, cracking, sobbing) I don't know what happened. All I wanted in the world was to be a Catholic priest - live in a monastery, study ancient Latin manuscripts, pray, serve God. But I had this one terrible, fatal weakness. They defrocked me. And then I started to lose everything.
---JFK

JIM GARRISON ... some story ... the whole thing. It's like it never happened.
DONALD SOUTHERN It never did.

---JFK




Kilgore (Robert Duval) stands there, hands on hips, looking at the burning jungle in the distance.

KILGORE
You smell that? Do you smell that?

LANCE
What?

KILGORE
(pointing to trees)
Napalm, son. Nothing else in the
world smells like that.
(crouches down)
I love the smell of napalm in the
morning. You know, one time we
had a hill bombed for twelve
hours...and when it was all over,
I walked up. We didn't find one
of them, not one stinking dink
body. The smell, you know that
gasoline smell? The whole hill-
smelled like-victory.

He looks of nostalgically. A shell comes in and HITS in the background. Willard and the soldiers react; Kilgore ignores it.

KILGORE
Someday this war's gonna end.

---APOCALYPSE NOW



This strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry, its divided aims.
---Matthew Arnold


For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
---John Maynard Keynes





A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
---H. L. Mencken


EISENHOWER
The conjunction of an immense military
establishment and a large arms industry is new
in the American experience. The total influence
- economic, political, even spiritual - is felt
in every city, every statehouse, every office of
the Federal Government ... In the councils of
government we must guard against the acquisition
of unwarranted influence, whether sought or
unsought, by the military industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of
misplaced power exists and will persist ... We
must never let the weight of this combination
endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted ...

Badges? We ain't got no badges.
We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges.


But, I'm funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to fuckin' amuse you?
---GOODFELLAS


Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country

My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.. .
Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him,
that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.


Butch: What're you looking at, friend?
Vincent: I ain't your friend, palooka.
Butch: What did you say?
Vincent: I think you heard me just fine, punchy.

What we got here is failure to communicate
--COOL HAND LUKE


I'm so rich, I wish I had a dime for every dime I had.
---ARTHUR

Butch: What're you looking at, friend?
Vincent: I ain't your friend, palooka.
Butch: What did you say?
Vincent: I think you heard me just fine punchy.
---PULP FICTION


Badges? We ain't got no badges.
We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges.
---THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE 1948

It's his ship now, his command. He's in charge, the boss, the head man, top dog, big cheese, head honcho, number one
---AIRPLANE

The spider spinning his web for the unwary fly.
The blood is the life, Mr. Renfield
---DRACULA 1931

But, I'm funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh? I'm here to fuckin' amuse you?
---GOODFELLAS

It's a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.

Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your daughter... 's wedding... on the day of your daughter's wedding. And I hope their first child will be a masculine child.

Someday, and that day may never come,
I'll call upon you to do a service for me.

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country

My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.. .
Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him,
that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.
I'm so rich, I wish I had a dime for every dime I had.

---THE GODFATHER




Paternalism is the restriction of freedom for the good of the person restricted.
---George F will


Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
Men, all this stuff you've heard about America not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war is a lot of horse dung. Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.
---PATTON (GEORGE C. SCOTT)


Hamburgers. The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast
---PULP FICTION


The world is full of complainers.
But the fact is, nothing comes with
a guarantee. I don't care if you're
the Pope of Rome, President of the
United States, or even Man of the
Year--something can always go wrong.
And go ahead, complain, tell your
problems to your neighbor, ask for
help--watch him fly. Now in Russia,
they got it mapped out so that
everyone pulls for everyone else--
that's the theory, anyway. But what
I know about is Texas..and down here
you're on your own.

---BLOOD SIMPLE



I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.

---SCARFACE