AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes
{{Short description|List of culturally impactful quotations from American cinema}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2012}}
{{AFI 100 Years... series}}
Part of the American Film Institute's 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes is a list of the top 100 quotations in American cinema.{{cite web |title=AFI 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes: The 100 Greatest Movie Quotes Of All Time |url=https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movie-quotes/ |publisher=American Film Institute}} The American Film Institute revealed the list on June 21, 2005, in a three-hour television program on CBS. The program was hosted by Pierce Brosnan and had commentary from many Hollywood actors and filmmakers. A jury consisting of 1,500 film artists, critics, and historians selected "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", spoken by Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in the 1939 American Civil War epic Gone with the Wind, as the most memorable American movie quotation of all time.
Criteria
Jurors were asked to consider the following criteria in making their selections:
- Movie quotation: A statement, phrase or brief exchange of dialogue spoken in an American film.{{efn|AFI defines an American film as an English language motion picture with significant creative and/or financial production elements from the United States. Additionally, only quotations from feature-length American films released before January 1, 2004, were considered. AFI defines a feature-length film as a motion picture of narrative format that is typically over 60 minutes in length.}} Lyrics from songs are not eligible.
- Cultural impact: Movie quotations that viewers use in their own lives and situations; circulating through popular culture, they become part of the national lexicon.
- Legacy: Movie quotations that viewers use to evoke the memory of a treasured film, thus ensuring and enlivening its historical legacy.
The list
The table below reproduces the quotes as the AFI published them.
{{cite web |url=https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movie-quotes/ |title=AFI's List of Nominated Quotes |publisher=American Film Institute |access-date=22 December 2019}}
| class="wikitable sortable" style="font-size:1.00em; line-height:1.5em;"
!Rank !Quotation !Character !Actor/Actress !Film !Year |
| 1
| "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." |1939 |
| 2
| "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse." | {{sortname|The|Godfather|The Godfather}} |1972 |
| 3
| "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am."{{efn|Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta repeats Brando's speech in Raging Bull.}} |Terry Malloy |1954 |
| 4
| "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."{{efn|The ballot entry for this quote included the word "got," which was removed from the AFI web page at some point.}} |1939 |
| 5
| "Here's looking at you, kid." |Rick Blaine |1942 |
| 6
| Sudden Impact{{efn|Often misattributed to Dirty Harry.}} |1983 |
| 7
| "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." |Norma Desmond |1950 |
| 8
| "May the Force be with you." |1977 |
| 9
| "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night." |Margo Channing |1950 |
| 10
|1976 |
| 11
| "What we've got here is failure to communicate."{{efn|Paul Newman repeats the line later in the film, mocking the prison warden, though he says "a failure", rather than simply "failure." Also heard quoted in this form.}} |Captain |1967 |
| 12
| "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." |Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore |1979 |
| 13
| "Love means never having to say you're sorry." |Jennifer Cavalleri, |1970 |
| 14
|"The stuff that dreams are made of."{{efn|name="Note1"|This paraphrases a line from The Tempest by William Shakespeare: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" (often misquoted as "made of")}} | {{sortname|The|Maltese Falcon|The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)}} |1941 |
| 15
| "E.T. phone home." |E.T. |1982 |
| 16
| "They call me Mister Tibbs!" |Virgil Tibbs |1967 |
| 17
| "Rosebud." |1941 |
| 18
| "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" |Arthur "Cody" Jarrett |1949 |
| 19
| "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" | Network |1976 |
| 20
| "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." |Rick Blaine |1942 |
| 21
| "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti." | {{sortname|The|Silence of the Lambs|The Silence of the Lambs (film)}} |1991 |
| 22
| "Bond. James Bond." |Sean Connery{{efn|name="JamesBond_SeanConnery"|Also George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig.}} | Dr. No{{efn|name="Bond_JamesBond"|Appears in some form in a total of 25 films; Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die.}} |1962 |
| 23
| "There's no place like home."{{efn|According to The Annotated Wizard of Oz, "[L. Frank] Baum [who quotes the phrase in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz] appears to be playing with the famous sentiment of John Howard Payne's 1823 song, 'Home, Sweet Home' [the melody of which, by Sir Henry Bishop, is played over several repetitions of the line]: 'Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.' ... Baum's irony was apparently lost on the makers of the famous movie. Arthur Freed, assistant to the producer Mervyn LeRoy, was responsible for making 'There's No Place Like Home' the theme of the 1939 MGM picture....He was adamant that Dorothy repeat 'There's No Place Like Home' when she clicks her heels together three times.'" Michael Patrick Hearn (Ed.), The Annotated Wizard of Oz, p. 77, n. 1.}} |1939 |
| 24
| "I am big! It's the pictures that got small." |Norma Desmond |1950 |
| 25
| "Show me the money!" |Rod Tidwell |1996 |
| 26
| "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"{{efn|Mae West paraphrased the line in her next film, I'm No Angel, as "Come up and see me sometime". Hence the line in She Done Him Wrong is often misquoted as "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"}} |Lady Lou |1933 |
| 27
| "I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!"{{efn|Sometimes claimed to be an ad lib.}} |"Ratso" Rizzo |1969 |
| 28
| "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'"{{efn|Often misquoted as "Play it again, Sam", including deliberately in the title of a 1972 Woody Allen film.}} |Ilsa Lund |1942 |
| 29
| "You can't handle the truth!" |Col. Nathan R. Jessup |1992 |
| 30
| "I want to be alone." |Grusinskaya |1932 |
| 31
| "After all, tomorrow is another day!" |1939 |
| 32
| "Round up the usual suspects." |Capt. Louis Renault |1942 |
| 33
| "I'll have what she's having." |Customer |1989 |
| 34
| "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow." |Marie "Slim" Browning |1944 |
| 35
| "You're gonna need a bigger boat."{{cite book|last=Baer|first=William|title=Classic American Films: Conversations with the Screenwriters|publisher=Greenwood|location=Westport, Connecticut|year=2008|isbn=978-0-313-34898-3 |pages=201–202}} Reportedly an ad lib. Commonly misheard as "We're gonna need a bigger boat," as for example at the Urban Dictionary. |Martin Brody | Jaws |1975 |
| 36
| "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"{{efn|Popularly misquoted as "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!", most likely from Blazing Saddles, in which the line is so worded.}} |Gold Hat | {{sortname|The|Treasure of the Sierra Madre|The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (film)}} |1948 |
| 37
| "I'll be back." | {{sortname|The|Terminator}} |1984 |
| 38
| "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."{{efn|An actual quotation from Lou Gehrig's retirement speech.}} | {{sortname|The|Pride of the Yankees}} |1942 |
| 39
| "If you build it, he will come."{{efn|Often misquoted as "If you build it, they will come."}} |Ray Liotta (voice) |1989 |
| 40
|"My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." |1994 |
| 41
| "We rob banks." |1967 |
| 42
| "Plastics." |Mr. Maguire | {{sortname|The|Graduate}} |1967 |
| 43
| "We'll always have Paris." |Rick Blaine |1942 |
| 44
| "I see dead people." |Cole Sear | {{sortname|The|Sixth Sense}} |1999 |
| 45
| "Stella! Hey, Stella!" |1951 |
| 46
| "Oh, Jerry, {{not a typo|don't let's}} ask for the moon. We have the stars." |Charlotte Vale |1942 |
| 47
| "Shane. Shane. Come back!" |Joey Starrett | Shane |1953 |
| 48
| "Well, nobody's perfect." |Osgood Fielding III |1959 |
| 49
| "It's alive! It's alive!" |1931 |
| 50
| "Houston, we have a problem."{{efn|The line is based on an actual message from Apollo 13. Astronaut Swigert said "Houston, we've had a problem here," then Lovell repeated "Houston, we've had a problem".}} |1995 |
| 51
| "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" |1971 |
| 52
| "You had me at 'hello.'" |Dorothy Boyd |1996 |
| 53
| "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know."{{efn|Often misquoted as "How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know." The time frame also varies ("yesterday," "once," etc.).}} |1930 |
| 54
| "There's no crying in baseball!" |Jimmy Dugan |1992 |
| 55
| "La-dee-da, la-dee-da." |Annie Hall |1977 |
| 56
| "A boy's best friend is his mother." | Psycho |1960 |
| 57
| "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."{{efn|The scene from the film in which this line appears is also excerpted in the movie's trailer, but in the trailer the sequence is edited so that Gekko's line occurs as simply "Greed is good." This shorter version of the line has become more popular – and more widely quoted – than the fuller version.}} |1987 |
| 58
| "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer."{{efn|This maxim is attributed to several military strategists, notably Sun-tzu, Chinese general.}} | {{sortname|The|Godfather Part II}} |1974 |
| 59
| "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again." |1939 |
| 60
| "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!"{{efn|Often misquoted as "Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten me into!"}} |Oliver |1933 |
| 61
| "Say 'hello' to my little friend!" | Scarface |1983 |
| 62
| "What a dump."{{efn|Although occurring in the 1949 film, this line did not become a widespread catchphrase until after the 1961 premiere of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. In the opening scene of that play, Martha quotes this line and then (since she has apparently forgotten) she asks George which of Bette Davis's films it is from.}} |Rosa Moline |1949 |
| 63
| "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?" |Benjamin Braddock | {{sortname|The|Graduate}} |1967 |
| 64
| "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" |President Merkin Muffley |1964 |
| 65
| "Elementary, my dear Watson."{{efn|This line, which does not appear in any of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, was first said onscreen in The Return of Sherlock Holmes. The line's first occurrence is in the stage play Sherlock Holmes, written entirely by William Gillette with Doyle's approval, for which Gilette listed Doyle as co-author.}} | {{sortname|The|Adventures of Sherlock Holmes|The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (film)}} |1939 |
| 66
| "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape." |George Taylor |1968 |
| 67
| "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." |Rick Blaine |1942 |
| 68
| "Here's Johnny!"{{efn|An ad-lib. The line is Ed McMahon's signature introduction of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.}} | {{sortname|The|Shining|The Shining (film)}} |1980 |
| 69
| "They're here!" |Carol Anne Freeling |1982 |
| 70
| "Is it safe?" |Dr. Christian Szell |1976 |
| 71
| "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!"{{efn|A longtime Jolson catchphrase also heard, with variations, in his earlier Vitaphone short film "A Plantation Act" (1926).}} |Jakie Rabinowitz/Jack Robin | {{sortname|The|Jazz Singer}} |1927 |
| 72
| "No wire hangers, ever!"{{efn|Usually misquoted as: "No more wire hangers, ever!"}} |1981 |
| 73
| "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" |Rico Bandello |1931 |
| 74
| "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." |Lawrence Walsh |1974 |
| 75
| "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." |1951 |
| 76
| "Hasta la vista, baby." |1991 |
| 77
| "Soylent Green is people!" |Det. Robert Thorn |1973 |
| 78
| "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." |1968 |
| 79
| Striker: "Surely you can't be serious." |Ted Striker and Dr. Rumack |Robert Hays and Leslie Nielsen |1980 |
| 80
| "Yo, Adrian!" | Rocky |1976 |
| 81
|1968 |
| 82
| "Toga! Toga!" |John "Bluto" Blutarsky | National Lampoon's Animal House |1978 |
| 83
| "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make." | Dracula |1931 |
| 84
| "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."{{efn|name="Note2"|Frequently heard as "...Twas beauty killed the beast"}} |1933 |
| 85
| "My precious." | {{sortname|The|Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers}} |2002 |
| 86
| "Attica! Attica!" |1975 |
| 87
| "Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" |Julian Marsh |1933 |
| 88
| "Listen to me, mister. You're my knight in shining armor. Don't you forget it. You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we're gonna go, go, go!" |Ethel Thayer |1981 |
| 89
| "Tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper." |1940 |
| 90
| "A martini. Shaken, not stirred."{{efn|Later, "Vodka Martini, shaken, not stirred." In the film You Only Live Twice, accidentally "Stirred, not shaken."}} |Sean Connery{{efn|name="JamesBond_SeanConnery"}} | Goldfinger{{efn|Appeared in multiple other films.}} |1964 |
| 91
| "Who's on first."{{efn|Although "Who's on first" appeared in numerous other Abbott and Costello films prior to 1945, the one featured in The Naughty Nineties is considered the best rendition of the sketch.}} |Dexter | {{sortname|The|Naughty Nineties}} |1945 |
| 92
| "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac...It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!" |Carl Spackler |1980 |
| 93
| "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!" |Mame Dennis |1958 |
| 94
| "I feel the need—the need for speed!" | Pete Mitchell and Nick Bradshaw |Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards | Top Gun |1986 |
| 95
| "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary." |John Keating |1989 |
| 96
| "Snap out of it!" |Loretta Castorini |Cher |1987 |
| 97
| "My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you.""During the 'Gay Nineties' period, George M. coined [this as] his famous curtain speech{{nbsp}}..." {{cite news |author= |title=Obituary: George M. Cohan, 64, Dies at Home Here |url=https://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0703.html |work=The New York Times |location=New York |date=6 Nov 1942 |access-date=29 Dec 2018 }} |1942 |
| 98
| "Nobody puts Baby in a corner." |Johnny Castle |1987 |
| 99
| "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!" |1939 |
| 100
| "I'm the king of the world!"Originally a quote by Muhammad Ali, who repeatedly {{cite web |title=yelled that sentence |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3IrlMHuFUg |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150221081136/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3IrlMHuFUg |archive-date=21 February 2015 |website=YouTube |publication-date=20 August 2013}}{{cbignore}} Soon after winning his first bout against Sonny Liston in 1964. |Jack Dawson | Titanic |1997 |
By the numbers
With six quotes, Casablanca is the most represented film. Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz are tied for second, with three each. Sunset Boulevard, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Graduate, and Jerry Maguire each have two quotes.
Rick Blaine (Casablanca) is the character with the most quotes (four); Dorothy Gale (The Wizard of Oz), Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry and Sudden Impact), James Bond (Dr. No and Goldfinger), Norma Desmond (Sunset Boulevard), Scarlett O'Hara (Gone with the Wind), and The Terminator (The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day) have two quotes each.
With five, Humphrey Bogart is the actor with the most quotes (four from Casablanca and one from The Maltese Falcon). Al Pacino, Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Tom Hanks, and Vivien Leigh have three apiece, while Jack Nicholson, Judy Garland, Gloria Swanson, Dustin Hoffman, Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, James Cagney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger have two each. Sean Connery also has two entries, but his two quotes are shared with five other actors.{{efn|name="JamesBond_SeanConnery"}} As well as the five quotes spoken by Bogart, two other quotes on the list (from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and To Have and Have Not) were spoken to him, by Alfonso Bedoya and Lauren Bacall, respectively. Further, "Round up the usual suspects." was spoken in his presence and for his character's benefit by Claude Rains, and "Play it, Sam." is often mistakenly attributed to him; he actually said, "You played it for her, you can play it for me. ... If she can stand it, I can! Play it!"
The line "My precious", from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, is the only quote from a movie released in the 21st century and the only one by a CGI character.
Quotations by decade:
- 1920s: 1
- 1930s: 16
- 1940s: 17
- 1950s: 9
- 1960s: 13
- 1970s: 16
- 1980s: 17
- 1990s: 10
- 2000s: 1
Top years:
- 1942: 9
- 1939: 7
- 1967: 5
- 1933: 4
- 1976: 4
Misquotes
{{See also|List of movie misquotes}}
A number of the entries are frequently misquoted. The following have become well-known but are incorrect:
- #4: "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
- #7: "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille."
- #9: "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride."
- #26: "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"
- #28: "Play it again, Sam."
- #35: "We're gonna need a bigger boat."
- #36: "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!"
- #39: "If you build it, they will come."
- #40: "Life is like a box of chocolates."
- #47: "Come back, Shane."
- #50: "Houston, we've got a problem."
- #51: "Do you feel lucky, punk?"
- #57: "Greed is good."
- #63: "Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?"
Real-life sources
A number of the quotes are drawn from real-world events and sources:
Opening and closing lines
Only "Rosebud," from Citizen Kane, and "Hello, gorgeous," from Funny Girl, are the opening lines of a film. Twelve quotes are closing lines:
| class="wikitable sortable"
!width="5%"|Rank !width="35%"|Quotation !width="15%"|Character !width="15%"|Actor/Actress !width="25%"|Film !width="5%"|Year |
| 7
| "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." | Norma Desmond | 1950 |
| 14
| "The stuff that dreams are made of."{{efn|name="Note1"}} | {{sortname|The|Maltese Falcon|The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)}} | 1941 |
| 20
| "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." | Rick Blaine | Humphrey Bogart | 1942 |
| 23
| "There's no place like home." (also said earlier in the movie) | 1939 |
| 31
| "After all, tomorrow is another day!" | 1939 |
| 46
| "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." | Charlotte Vale | 1942 |
| 47
| "Shane. Shane. Come back!" | Joey Starrett | Shane | 1953 |
| 48
| "Well, nobody's perfect." | Osgood Fielding III | 1959 |
| 73
| "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" | Rico Bandello |1931 |
| 74
| "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." | Lawrence Walsh | 1974 |
| 77
| "Soylent Green is people!" | Det. Robert Thorn | 1973 |
| 84
| "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."{{efn|name="Note2"}} | 1933 |
See also
Notes
{{notelist}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20050917110512/http://www.afi.com/Docs/tvevents/pdf/quotes400.pdf List of the 400 nominees (Archived)]
Category:2005 in American cinema
Category:June 2005 in the United States
Category:AFI 100 Years... series