A lot of quotations pages on the web feature grand and beautiful quotations by prominent historical people (such as Aristotle, Galileo Galilei, and Albert Einstein), and while those are cool and interesting, there are enough of them. This page, by contrast, collects quotes from movies, TV series, computer games, and music that I like.
Books
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
"The influence of faith on our criminal laws comes at a remarkable price. Consider the case of drugs. As it happens, there are many substances - many of them naturally occurring - the consumption of which leads to transient states of inordinate pleasure. Occasionally, it is true, they lead to transient states of misery as well, but there is no doubt that pleasure is the norm, otherwise human beings would not have felt the continual desire to take such substances for millennia. Of course, pleasure is precisely the problem with these substance, since pleasure and piety have always had an uneasy relationship.
When one looks at our drug laws - indeed, at our vice laws altogether - the only organizing principle that appears to make sense of them is that anything which might radically eclipse prayer or procreative sexuality as a source of pleasure has been outlawed. In particular, any drug (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, marijuana, etc.) to which spiritual or religious significance has been ascribed by its users has been prohibited. Concerns about the health of our citizens, or about their productivity, are red herrings in this debate, as the legality of alcohol and cigarettes attests."
"Given the requisite beliefs about 'honor,' a man will be desperate to kill his daughter upon learning that she was raped. The same angel of compassion can be expected to visit her brothers as well. Such killings are not at all uncommon in places like Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. In these parts of the world, a girl of any age who gets raped has brought shame upon her family. Luckily, this shame is not indelible and can be readily expunged with her blood. The subsequent ritual is inevitably a low-tech affair, as none of these societies have devised a system for administering lethal injections for the crime of bringing shame upon one's family. The girl either has her throat cut, or she is dowsed with gasoline and set on fire, or she is shot. The jail sentences for these men, if they are prosecuted at all, are invariably short. Many are considered heroes in their communities."
"Three million souls can be starved and murdered in the Congo, and our Argus-eyed media scarcely blink. When a princess dies in a car accident, however, a quarter of the Earth's population falls prostrate with grief. Perhaps we are unable to feel what we must feel in order to change our world."
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke
"Such unnecessary appurtenances as nails and teeth had vanished. Hair was confined to the head; not a trace was left on the body. The features that would most have surprised a man of the dawn ages was, perhaps, the disappearance of the navel. Its inexplicable absence would have given him much food for thought, and at first sight he would also have been baffled by the problem of distinguishing male from female. He might even have been tempted to assume that there was no longer any difference, which would have been a grave error. In the appropriate circumstances, there was no doubt about the masculinity of any male in Diaspar. It was merely that his equipment was now more neatly packaged when not required; internal stowage had vastly improved upon Nature's original inelegant and indeed downright hazardous arrangements."
Movies
2001: A Space Odyssey
"The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error."
HAL 9000.
"I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do."
HAL 9000.
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
HAL 9000.
Colossus: The Forbin Project
"From the multiplication tables to calculus in less than an hour. [...] It's like five years at Caltech in less than fifteen seconds!
Deadline Iraq
"What possesses me to cover wars… ? In a nut-shell: It sure as hell beats covering city hall."
Don North.
"You know, you're watching dogs, you know, tear intestines out of… out of dead people, and you're thinking to yourself, ‘you know, that's nature, but, you know, nature's a cruel bitch’."
Rob Curtis.
"Every time you cover a war, you hope that this time you may get that story that is so horrible, that is so terrible, that maybe people will think twice next time we have a choice between war or negotiation."
Don North.
"With large-caliber weapons, people don't just get red spots and collapse; they come apart."
Craig White.
Johnny Mnemonic
"I need a computer!"
Johnny.
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
"Your focus determines your reality."
Qui-Gon Jinn.
The Matrix
"You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously you are mistaken. This company is one of the top software companies in the world, because every single employee understands that they are part of a whole. Thus if an employee has a problem, the company has a problem. The time has come to make a choice, Mr. Anderson. Either you choose to be at your desk on time from this day forth, or you choose to find yourself another job. Do I make myself clear?"
Mr. Rhineheart, Neo's boss.
"As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Anderson. It seems that you've been living two lives: In one life, you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias ‘Neo’, and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not. I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. Anderson. You're here because we need your help. We know that you've been contacted by a certain individual, a man who calls himself ‘Morpheus’. Now, whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant. He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive. My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you, but I believe you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice."
Agent Smith, talking to Neo.
"I know Kung Fu."
Neo, after receiving hours of combat training.
"Do not try and bend the spoon; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon. Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends; it is only yourself."
A boy with a spoon, talking to Neo.
"Have you ever stood and stared at it, marveled at its beauty, its genius? Billions of people just living out their lives, oblivious. Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered. Where everyone would be happy. There was a disaster. No one would accept the program, entire crops were lost. Some believe that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this; the peak of your civilization. I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you, it really became our civilization, which is of course what this is all about. Evolution, Morpheus, evolution. Like the dinosaur. Look out that window. You've had your time. The future is our world, Morpheus, the future is our time."
Agent Smith, talking to Morpheus.
"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed, and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague. And we are the cure."
Agent Smith, talking to Morpheus.
"Would you please remove any metallic items you're carrying; keys, loose change…"
Security guard's request to Neo, after the metal detector goes off.
"Holy shit!"
Security guard's reaction to Neo opening his coat and revealing his stash of weapons.
"I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and control, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there, is a choice I leave to you."
Neo.
The Matrix Reloaded
"You do not truly know someone until you fight them."
Seraph, after fighting Neo.
"I'm interested in one thing, Neo; the future. And believe me, I know, the only way to get there is together."
The Oracle.
"I love French wine like I love the French language; I have sampled every language, French is my favorite, fantastic language. Especially to curse with. Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d'enculé de ta mère! [Translation: Name of God of whore of bloody shit of bitch of cunt of your fucking mother.] You see, it's like wiping your ass with silk, I love it."
Merovingian.
"All of our lives we have fought this war. Tonight I believe we can end it. Tonight is not an accident. There are no accidents. We have not come here by chance. I do not believe in chance. When I see three objectives, three captains, three ships, I do not see coincidence. I see providence, I see purpose. I believe it is our fate to be here. It is our destiny. I believe this night holds for each and every one of us, the very meaning of our lives."
Morpheus.
"I want everything!"
"Would that include a bullet from this gun?"
Smith and Morpheus.
"The first Matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect. It was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being, thus I redesigned it, based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature. However, I was again frustrated by failure. I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me because it required a lesser mind, or perhaps, a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus the answer was stumbled upon by another. An intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of the Matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother."
The Architect.
"Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness."
The Architect.
Series
Family Guy
"You know, mother, life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're going to get. Your life, however, is more like a box of active grenades!"
Stewie Griffin.
"Dear MacGyver: Enclosed is a rubber band, a paper clip, and a drinking straw. Please save my dog."
Peter Griffin, in a letter to MacGyver.
"Alright, if we want the cops to take us seriously, we're going to have to waste a hostage. But who?"
"Excuse me, shouldn't that be ‘whom’?"
"Ok, you!"
A robber and Peter Griffin, in a bank.
"All this time spent keeping people from having sex. Now I know how the Catholic Church feels."
Stewie Griffin.
"When I stick this army guy with the sharp bayonet up my nose, it tickles my brain. Ha ha, hahaha… Oww! Oooh… Now I don't know math…"
Chris Griffin.
"You know, my hooligan friend, I've been wracking my brain in a thus far fruitless attempt to resolve our recent unpleasantness. Then it dawned on me. Your cruelty merely stems from some deep-seeded inner pain. So the obvious remedy is a healthy dose of outer pain!"
Stewie Griffin.
"Don't worry, I've got an idea. An idea so smart my head would explode if I even began to know what I was talking about."
Peter Griffin.
"Go Lois! Pummel him with your powerful fists of female fury. And then when he's weary, emasculate him with your incessant nagging."
Stewie Griffin, shouting to Lois as she's fighting a man.
"And in other news, Lando Griffin, a popular student at a local high school, was killed last night when his motorcycle careened off Dead Man's Curve. Police were baffled when no body was found at the scene, but they decided it was best not to ask questions and just let everyone get on with their lives."
Tom Tucker.
"I walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table. I looked with a grimace at the questionable meal Lois had placed in front of me. Of course I'd never tell her how disgusted I was with her cooking, but somehow I think she knew. Lois had always been full of energy and life, but lately I had begun to grow more aware of her aging. The bright, exuberant eyes that I had fallen in love with were now beginning to grow dull and listless with the long fatigue of a weary life. [Lois knocks Peter unconscious.] I woke several hours later in a daze."
Peter Griffin, narrating his own life out loud.
"If you squeeze me, I make bad people go away!"
Petie the pistol, a talking gun.
Futurama
"Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you."
Fry, playing on an arcade machine.
"I'm the luckiest guy in the whole future."
Fry.
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
Bender, on numerous occasions.
"You are now dead. Thank you for using Stop'n'Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008."
Suicide booth's automated message playing at end of use.
"Well, this place has everything except the only thing I care about; a TV."
Fry, commenting on his new apartment.
"Got milk? Then you're a human and must be killed."
Advertisement sign on Chapek 9, a planet inhabited by human-hating robots.
"Well, that activates my hilarity unit."
Bender.
"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long the grasshopper kept burying acorn for winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorn and also he got a race car. Is any of this getting through to you?"
Fry, telling a nonsense story.
"I'm sorry Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."
"Oh. What's it called now?"
"Urectum."
Professor Farnshworth and Fry.
"But suppose we sent a crew to plant an explosive precisely on the fault line between this mass of coffee grounds and this deposit of America Online floppy disks?"
Professor Farnsworth, making a suggestion on how to get rid of a great ball of garbage hurling towards the Earth.
"But this is HDTV. It's got better resolution than the real world!"
Fry.
"The alien mothership is in orbit here. If we can hit that bull's eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."
Zapp Brannigan, explaining how to deal with an alien invasion of the Earth.
"So, a plan to assassinate a weird-looking alien with scissors. How very neutral of you. That was almost the perfect crime. But you forgot one thing; rock crushes scissors. But… paper covers rock. And scissors cuts paper! Kif, we have a conundrum. Search them for paper, and bring me a rock."
Zapp Brannigan, speaking to Leela who's delivering a pair of scissors to DOOP (Democratic Order of Planets).
"Finally, I have a good claw. See? Three human females, a number, and a king giving himself brain surgery."
Zoidberg, playing poker.
"Oh my various gods!"
Leela's ex-boss.
"Everyone's always in favor of saving Hitler's brain. But when you put it in the body of a great white shark, ooooo, suddenly you've gone too far."
Professor Farnsworth.
"Fry, you half-mad, half-insane maniac! Be reasonable!"
Professor Farnsworth.
"Wow, you guys run numbers?"
"Well, nothing fancy, you know, ones and zeros mostly."
Bender and Clamps.
"Blackmail is such an ugly word. I prefer extortion. The x makes it sound cool."
Bender.
"Just as I suspected. These robots were buried in improperly shielded coffins. Their programming leaked into the castle's wiring through this old, abandoned modem, allowing them to project themselves as holograms."
Professor Farnsworth, describing robot ghosts.
"Think intergalactically, act interplanetarily."
Banner on one of the environmentalists' star ship.
"Fine, I've got a toast. To captain Bender; he's the best… at being a big jerk who's stupid and his big, ugly face is as dumb as a butt."
Fry, giving a toast to Bender.
"You're twice the ‘the’ he ever was!"
Bender.
"Is there anything religion can do to help me find my friend?"
"Well, we could join together in prayer."
"Uh-huh… But is there anything useful we can do?"
"No."
Fry and a priest from the First Amalgamated Church.
"Look… I miss Bender almost half as much as you do, but you can't bring him back this way. It's hopeless."
"You can't give up hope just because it's hopeless! You gotta hope even more, and cover your ears, and go ‘blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah’!"
Fry and Leela in a shop, outfitting themselves for an expedition to the Himalayas.
"I nominate that guy. Not just because he has a suit, but because he knows about business and stuff and he has a tie."
Fry.
"Don't be a fool, you idiot!"
"I'll be whatever I want to do."
Mom and Fry.
"I am Melllvar! Seer of the Tapes, Knower of the Episodes! Tremble before my encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek!"
Melllvar.
"Forget it, I'm not going. I have my reasons. Shut up, all of you! My hip hurts. I'm in the middle of cooking a turkey. I have warranty cards to fill out. I am not just making excuses. Alright, I'll go."
Professor Farnsworth, arguing with himself when asked to go to a global warming conference in Kyoto.
"I'm telling you, the Y2K computer's got him. We'll face burning roads, rivers exploding, calculators transforming into SCUD missiles… There's nothing we can do."
Fry's father, concerned about where Fry is. (Obviously, he was frozen in cryostorage to awake in the year 3000. Obviously.)
"You can shove your apology into the bottom of your one-way digestive system."
Mr. Blob, in response to an apology given by Dwight Conrad and Cubert Farnsworth.
"Hey, wait! I'm having one of those things! You know, a headache with pictures."
"An idea?"
Fry and Leela.
"Oh, we should print up T-shirts. And F-shirts for our friends with two arms on the same side."
Leela's father.
"Like everything else in life, pumping is just a primitive, degenerate form of bending."
Bender.
"The Fountain of Aging? Hmm… It is just a legend. Still, they called the tooth fairy a legend, and now it's head of the FBI."
Professor Farnsworth.
"Buddha! Zeus! God! One of you guys, do something!"
Professor Farnsworth.
"Astonishing! I must have created a parallel universe!"
"Bouldercrap! I created your universe! All you created was my fist parallel to your face!"
Professor Farnsworth arguing with another Farnsworth in a parallel universe.
Games
American McGee's Alice
"Doors have locks, locks need keys, which you don't have. Let's hope the doors are open."
Cat
"Only a few find the way; some don't recognize it when they do; some don't ever want to."
Cat
"52 Pickup is a staple of juvenile humor. But when the deck slices and dices, it's no laughing matter."
Cat
"Here's a riddle. When is a croquet mallet like a billy club? I'll tell you: Whenever you want it to be."
Cat
Crash Bandicoot 3
"Defeated again! This is not fair! Maybe I should retire to a nice, big beach, with a nice, big drink, and a woman with nice, big bags of ice for my head."
Dr. N. Cortex.
Deus Ex
"You can't fight ideas with bullets."
Leo Gold, NSF colonel.
"Are you sure you pressed the right button?"
"I do not make mistakes of that kind."
"Your hand might have slipped."
"No. I wanted orange. It gave me lemon-lime."
"The machine would not make a mistake… "
"It's the maintenance man. He knows I like orange."
"So you think the staff has some kind of plot… "
"Yes. They do it on purpose."
Anna Navarre and Gunther Hermann.
"It's about time they implemented some of this stuff."
JC Denton on nanotechnology.
"Too bad you do not have cochlear implants like I do; you could listen for sonic transducers and not get your head blown off."
Anna Navarre.
"A system organized around the weakest qualities of individuals will produce these same qualities in its leaders."
Isaac, bartender of the Lucky Money club.
"Bravery is not a function of firepower."
JC Denton.
"UNATCO never trusted its augmented agents. Any mech can be stopped in its tracks with a secret killphrase."
"Kill-somethings were standard issue, I gather."
Jaime Reyes and JC Denton.
"Two words: New York City."
Random MJ12 soldier.
"You take another step forward, and here I am again, like your own reflection repeated in a hall of mirrors."
"That makes me one ugly son-of-a-bitch."
Walton Simons and JC Denton.
Half-Life 2
"I find it helpful at times like these to remind myself that our true enemy is Instinct. Instinct was our mother when we were an infant species. Instinct coddled us and kept us safe in those hardscrabble years when we hardened our sticks and cooked our first meals above a meager fire and started at the shadows that leapt upon the cavern's wall.
But inseparable from Instinct is its dark twin, Superstition. Instinct is inextricably bound to unreasoning impulses, and today we see its clear nature. Instinct has just become aware of its irrelevance, and like a cornered beast, it will not go down without a bloody fight. Instinct would inflict a fatal injury on our species. Instinct creates its own oppressors, and bids us rise up against them. Instinct tells us that the unknown is a threat, rather than an opportunity. Instinct slyly and covertly compels us away from change and progress. Instinct, therefore, must be expunged. It must be fought tooth and nail, beginning with the basest of human urges: The urge to reproduce."
Dr. Wallace Breen.
Max Payne
"They were all dead. The final gunshot was an exclamation mark to everything that had led to this point. I released my finger from the trigger. And then it was over."
Max Payne's famous first words (or last, depending on how you view it).
"Gognitti was a high-strung whiner on the verge of breaking apart like an overamped energizer bunny."
Max Payne about Vincent Gognitti. (This holds especially true for Vinnie in Max Payne 2.)
"The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Weapon statistics hanging in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Endless repetition of the act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves. The paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step. I was in a computer game. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of."
Max Payne in one of his nightmares.
"You know what I'm talking about. In all the cool action movies — and I'm talking about the coolest of the cool — it always seems like time slows down in the middle of the action. You know, you can see the bullets flying through the air. The hero dodging in slow motion. Oh man, it would be so cool to be able to do that. Bullet time, that's what they call it. Bullet time… yeah… would be so cool."
Random thug.
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
"I'm not a violent man by nature, but it pisses me off more than anything when they do that. It's an insult, that's what it is! We're trying to clean the place, they should have more sense than to bleed on the floor."
Random cleaner, after killing a man.
"Firing a gun is a binary choice."
Max Payne.
"Ever played ‘Bullet-time’? No? You take an industrial size vice, a real big one, and you tie your lucky contender to one side, and a rod with a bullet mounted on its end on the other. You slowly tighten the vice, until the bullet bores through skin, guts and bone. Start with a non-lethal spot, work your way to the more vital areas."
Random cleaner.
"As surely as the bullet rips through the victim's flesh, organ and bone, it shatters the image of the man who presses the trigger."
Max Payne.
"There are no choices. Nothing but a straight line. The illusion comes afterwards, when you ask ‘why me?’ and ‘what if?’ When you look back, see the branches, like a pruned bonsai tree, or a forked lightning. If you had done something differently, it wouldn't be you, it would be someone else looking back, asking a different set of questions."
Max Payne.
"You are making me look incompetent by refusing to die."
Vladimir Lem.
MDK2
"Oh, I'm just too good for my own bad self. Hello, Earth. Who's your daddy? Why, yes, I am."
Scwang Scwing.
"Doctor, we're not getting through to him."
"Oh, nonsense. He's always been quite reasonable. Something is just blocking the signal. It's that ship!"
Max and Dr. Hawkins.
"Go straddle a torpedo while I figure out how to aim!"
Dr. Hawkins.
"You there! Alien interloper. Get off my ship!"
Dr. Hawkins.
No One Lives Forever: The Operative
"Bullets are not my favorite!"
Random thug when being shot at.
"I have posted photographs of agents Lawrie and Archer on the bulletin board. Study them carefully. If you fail to recognize the subjects, I'll assume something is wrong with your eyes and remove them for you. - D.V."
H.A.R.M. memo in Morocco. D.V. is, of course, Dmitrij Volkov.
"Our studies show that criminals drink three times as much alcohol as law-abiding citizens."
"So beer turns people into criminals?"
"A correlation doesn't imply causality. Just because criminals drink a lot of beer doesn't mean that beer causes crime. It's possible that people with criminal tendencies enjoy beer because it helps to soothe their conscience. Or perhaps criminal behavior is caused in part by a genetic predisposition that also, coincidentally, makes criminals like the taste of beer more than the average person. Who knows?"
"You're very knowledgeable about these things."
"Criminal sociology is a hobby of mine. I think it's important to understand not just the individual, psychological roots of one's behavior, but also the social circumstances that foster that behavior. Whether we like it or not, we are shaped by our environment."
"Surely you're not suggesting that individuals aren't accountable for their actions."
"Oh, no, of course not. Just because we are products of the societies we're born into doesn't absolve us of personal responsibility. Our religions and laws teach us what is right and what is wrong. Frequently, the right choice is the more difficult path to take. It requires sacrifice, self-discipline, patience… virtues that many of us find somewhat lacking in our natures."
"But what if you're born into a hedonistic culture?"
"Look across history. The reason hedonism is discouraged by most religions and governments is that it weakens a civilization. It breeds sloth, petulance, degeneracy, and selfishness. A divided nation is a fragile nation, waiting to be conquered. Unity is strength. Humans instinctively fashion order out of chaos. It is a natural, probably genetic impulse. Therefore, even an individual born into troubled times has the capacity, and even the duty, to behave in a manner that promotes unity, however difficult it may be."
"Then what about us?"
"I can only speak for myself. I am a product of a broken household, which introduced a general lack of self confidence in me at a very early age. These feelings of inadequacy blossomed into anger as I matured that the rigors of adolescence, with the teasing and abuse and awkwardness we must all endure, only exacerbated. But even though I've identified the source of my problems, I'm still too childish and petty to become a responsible, mature citizen."
"Well, admitting you have a problem is the first step, I suppose."
"I like to think so."
Conversation between two random thugs.
"Use more wood! It'll grow back eventually."
Tagline for Dumas Lumber Co.
No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way
"To: All Personnel
Addendum 90/C-4 of the Personal Hygiene & Fitness Manual (volume 7, page 3,483) stipulates a daily ration of 18 cigarettes per soldier. Exceeding this allowance is punishable by death, unless the cigarettes are stolen (which is punishable by torture and death) or given freely by a comrade (punishable by torture but not by death). Failure to meet the 18 cigarette quota is also punishable by death.
You are being watched."
Memo in Siberia.
Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters
"Try to avoid getting gruesomely killed, Captain."
Commander Hayes.
"We are on a peaceful mission through the Cosmos."
"Two aspects of your last statement defy the course of nature as I know it. First, ‘Peace’, as you call it, is an illusion. If you have ‘Peace’, you simply haven't seen the thing that's trying to kill you. Second, peaceful missions through the Cosmos rarely require weapons large enough to punch holes through a small moon."
The Captain and Fwiffo.
"Oh God... Please don't let me die today! Tomorrow would be so much better!"
Traditional Spathi prayer.
"Attention big, mean, hostile alien vessel hovering overhead in an obvious attack posture: This is Spathi Captain Fwiffo. I know you are going to torture me, so let's just get this over with right now. The coordinates of my homeworld, Spathiwa, are 241.6, 368.7 and the ultra-secret Spathi Cypher, which is known only by me and several billion other Spathi, is ‘Huffi-Muffi-Guffi.’"
Fwiffo, first meeting.
"Hi there friend! We come in peace and mean you no harm."
"Are you sure? Because your statement is often just a more polite way of saying ‘Attention, alien vessel: Identify yourself or be destroyed.’"
The Captain and Fwiffo.
"Blow up an Ur-Quan for me, Captain."
Commander Hayes.
"MISSION DESCRIPTION FOLLOWS: TRAVERSE SPACE RECORDING DATA, SEEK MATERIALS FOR REPLICATION, REPLICATE TO EXPAND SCOPE OF MISSION, CONTACT LIFE FORMS IN PEACEFUL MANNER. AFTER TEN REPLICATIONS, RETURN TO POINT OF ORIGIN. END OF MISSION DESCRIPTION. PRIORITY OVER-RIDE. NEW BEHAVIOR DICTATED. MUST BREAK TARGET INTO COMPONENT MATERIALS."
Slylandro probe.
"Hello, Hunam, what would you like to threaten me about today?"
Random Spathi Captain.
"We have Fwiffo on board. He can vouch for our good intentions!"
"If you held a weapon to Fwiffo's head, he would say anything you wanted him to say. In fact, if you held a vegetable to his head, he would probably say anything you wanted him to say."
The Captain and the Spathi High Council.
"One stormy day, a Zoq, a Fot, and a Pik were walking up a steep path, looking for something good to eat, when a bolt of lightning struck nearby. With a huge flash of light, the bolt of energy carved a strangely-shaped chunk of granite out of the cliff."
"It was a disk, with a hole in the middle! As the rock began to roll down the hill, toward the three terrified beings, some dry grass got caught in the hole, and since the rock was still hot, the grass caught on fire."
"When the rock finally got to the Zoq, the Fot, and the Pik, they simultaneously discovered the Wheel, Fire, and Religion, thus catapulting them on the road of progress."
"Which has led us to this day, Captian. Oh! How did the flaming wheel give religion to our culture, you ask?"
"I will explain. You see, when it got to the threesome, the flaming wheel was going at a pretty good clip, and it ran smack into the Zoq, killing him."
"The Fot and the Pik felt so bad — they really liked that Zoq! — that they decided the Zoq hadn't really died when the wheel flattened him; he had just gone to ‘a better place’."
"Presumably one without lethal flaming wheels."
Zoq-Fot-Pik.
"You have attacked us before, and we survived! You cannot defeat us. Submit!"
"We did. You did. Yes we can. No."
The Captain and a random Ur-Quan.
"What interesting things can you tell us about your culture?"
"Just off the top of my beak, I suppose I would say that our culture could be defined as the ultimate unification — or Oneness if you will — of the extradimensional convergent-chakra being-energies to form a togetherness self which both is and is not a culmination of the Now Essence."
"Do you refer to the Now Essence as an extension of the Cosmic Whole, or as a subset of the totality of Oneness?"
"An excellent question. The answer is in itself, an answer, containing the explanation you seek. And more! Let me say the revelation includes the mysteries of Pyramid Power which is merely a subset of the greater and more general Pointy Power. UFOs and FOs are significant, but their role should not be overplayed. I'm sorry, but I can be no more specific than that."
The Captain and a Pkunk.
StarCraft
"If it weren't for these damned neural implants, you'd be a smokin' crater by now."
Terran Marine.
"In case of a water landing, you may be used as a flotation device."
Terran Dropship.
"e equals m c… D'oh! Let me get my notepad."
Terran Science Vessel.
"Awaken my child, and embrace the glory that is your birthright. Know that I am the Overmind; the eternal will of the swarm, and that you have been created to serve me."
The Overmind.
"En Taro Adun!"
Protoss greeting.
"My path is set."
Protoss High Templar
"We burn!"
Protoss Archon
"We all look so different on this side! Break on through! It's beautiful! They should have sent a poet."
Protoss Archon.
"You can no more evade my wrath than you could your own shadow."
Protoss Dark Templar.
System Shock 2
"Look at you, Hacker… A pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"
Shodan.
"That's the TriOptimum way!"
Protocol Droid.
"On most decks you'll find a quantum bio-reconstruction device. Xerxes shut them all down, but I've discretely put them back online. You'll need to interface with each machine locally to provide a quantum entanglement sample. Once you do that, the device will be able to rebuild your body essentially from scratch. It's not pleasant, but it's preferable to slow decomposition."
Dr. Janice Polito.
"Your corpse is useless to me."
Dr. Janice Polito.
"You might witness some strange phenomena. Your R-grade cyber rig has an experimental perception enhancement that can theoretically detect residual psychic emanations. These emanations traditionally come from the recently dead. Literature might call them ghosts. I call them self-hypnotic defects in the R-grade unit. Don't let it distract you from the job at hand."
Dr. Janice Polito.
"Whose idea was it to bring a 150 chimpanzees on board anyway? The interests of science? What about the interests of hygiene? Does anybody have any idea how much crap 150 lab monkeys make in a day? The poor chimps... they come onboard for the most historic mission of all time, and they end up being chopped into little pieces in the name of progress."
Grassi.
"What is a drop of rain compared to the storm? What is a thought compared to a mind? Our unity is full of wonder, which your tiny individualism cannot even conceive."
The Many.
"We do not know death, only change. We cannot kill each other without killing ourselves. Is your vision so small that you cannot see the grandeur of our way?"
The Many.
"Do you not trust the feelings of the flesh? Our biology yearns to join with yours. We welcome you to our mass. But you puzzle us. Why do you serve our mother? How can you choose cold metal over the splendor of the flesh? But you fear us. We hear your thoughts, and they rage for your brothers who you believe dead. But they are not. They sing in our symphony of life. We offer another chance to join us. If you choose to lie down with the machine, we will rend you apart, and put you separate from the joys of the mass."
The Many.
"Why do you go so slowly?! Do you think this is some kind of a game?"
Dr. Janice Polito.
Miscellaneous
Music
"Reach me, come closer, running back home.
Tell me your sorrow, now that I've gone.
How much you need me, now I've let go.
Tell me like always, how you are lost.Watch me, I'm weightless, though I'm on the ground.
See me, I'm flying, no longer around.
My boomerang,
my boomerang."
Cirrus - Boomerang.
"Every facet, every department of your mind is to be programmed by you, and unless you assume your rightful responsibility, and begin to program your own mind, the world will program it for you."
Evil Nine - Cake Hole.
"I met a boy, his name was Jay, he was so fine.
I met a girl, her name was Jane, she wanted to be mine.
I met a boy, his name was Jay, he was the one.
I met a girl, her name was Jane, she wanted to have fun.He had a vision of the things that I needed.
She understood how a woman should be treated.
I've got a decision, which one should I choose?
When it comes to Jay and Jane, there's just no way to lose."
La Rissa - I Do Both Jay and Jane.
I'll find a new life and hide, if I survive.
I'll find my own place in time, if I survive.
I'll learn to forget the crime, if I survive.
But I swear you're going down, if I survive!"
Hybrid - If I Survive.
"I'm playing the game,
the one that will take me to my end.
I'm waiting for the rain,
to wash up who I am."
Infected Mushroom - I Wish.
"And when I'm lost, you speak in sympathy,
and when I'm tired, you breathe life into me.
And when I'm hurt, you put your arms around me,
and when I'm cold, you find the warmth inside of me."
Solar Stone - Speak In Sympathy.
"I fear that the-the-the oh-oh-oh-only way to stop... those... possessed... by the Spirit of the Boh-Boh-Book is through the act of bodily-bodily... dismemberment. They they leave now... to avoid... this horror. For myself, I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I am seeing... the dark shadows, the dark shadows... moving in the, moving in the, moving in the woods."
The Shadow of the Beat - Scared Away.
"In me the scientist,
Always stuck on always trying this,
I try to live on science alone.
Analysis and freaky sensitivity,
we've gotta live on science alone.Yeah, uh, I am a scientist.
Yeah, uh, I am a scientist.
Yeah, uh, I am a scientist.
We've gotta live on science alone.Religiously I'm speaking on the science 'cause
we've gotta live on science alone.
I tell you what, mathematically I'm having it,
I wanna live on science alone."
Dandy Warhols - I Am a Scientist.
"There's no earthly way of knowing
which direction we are going.
There's no knowing where we're rowing,
or which way the river's flowing.
Is it raining? Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a-blowing?Not a speck of light is showing,
so the danger must be growing.
Are the fires of hell a-glowing?
Is the grisly Reaper mowing?
Yes! The danger must be growing,
for the rowers keep on rowing.
And they're certainly not showing
any signs that they are slowing!"
Pendulum - Through the Loop (sampled from Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory).
"I see you found my underground.
Help yourself to guns and ammo.
Nothing here has ever seen the lights of day,
I leave it in my head."
Timo Maas feat. Brian Molko - First Day.
"Every time I look at you,
I'm breathing silence.
Try to reach you, you're too far away,
oh God, I need you.
Your heart is cold and out of love,
like a frozen crystal.
I can't breathe without you in my life.
You're my paradise."
Aura - Breathing Silence.
"You think you've got all the answers.
Are you too young to see, too young to realize?
Living your life with your own truth.
Do you really see, do you really know?There are two worlds:
Your world, and my world.I can't see what goes on inside your mind,
your love is a mystery.
Please understand, reach out and follow me
into the truth, into my world."
Labworks - Two Worlds.
"Every face I see is cold as ice,
everything I touch is pain.
Ever since I lost imagination.
Like a stream that flows into the sea,
I am lost for all eternity.
Ever since you took your life away from me.Sometimes, the sound of good bye is louder than any drum beat."
Armin van Buuren - The Sound Of Goodbye.
"Travelling somewhere, could be anywhere.
There's a coldness in the air, but I don't care.
We drift deeper, life goes on,
we drift deeper into the sound."
Motorcycle - As The Rush Comes
"Razzle dazzle, call it what you want.
To me it don't matter, it's where I belong.
It's a matter of distinction, a real fine line
between an orgy of destruction and a wonderful time."
Deep Purple - Razzle Dazzle.
"Can't hear a thing, but I see your lips are moving.
I'm working on my thinking and I think that it's improving.
I'm gonna get the blame so I might as well deliver
if only I can swim across this weird human river."
Deep Purple - Razzle Dazzle.
"I'll meet you in the sky tonight and we will trace some undiscovered stars.
We'll go beyond the universe, beyond all understanding, hey, it's not that far.
But it's alright, I feel safe in your hands."
Deep Purple - Rapture of the Deep.
People
"Håvard's ultimate question isn't whether or not there's life after death, but whether or not there are computers."
Aleksander Hay Magnussen.
"It's funny that supporting zero users satisfies you."
Alex Spurling, about the fact that Håvard's web site is easily browsed in text-only browsers (compared to numerous corporate web sites).
"Why don't you just… stop?"
Håvard Torsnes, about Håvard's stuttering problem.
"Yesterday I converted a potato to a mashed potato. But I'm not sure if it was religious or not."
Tor Hogne Nordmark Paulsen, when asked if he'd ever converted someone to atheism.
"Internal CSS sounds like something I'd take to the clinic."
Andy Ball.
"I hate when I want to view some text and it has to fade in and out 30 times spin around in a circle and then make a loud bang noise."
Bill Criswell, commenting on Flash.
"One of my favorite future interfaces is to say ‘Computer, where are my car keys?’ and have the system reply by shining a spotlight on the keys."
Jakob Nielsen, in Readers' Comments on 3D User Interfaces.
"One thing you as a geek are remarkably good at is learning from your mistakes. When you write a line of code that causes your compiler to barf, you don't just call the whole deal off — you go back and look at the code and try to figure out what went wrong. Likewise a rejection doesn't need to be a disaster. Go back and look at what happened with a view to making it better next time. Chances are your next woo-pitching expedition will be more successful. So don't freeze up, or you'll never debug the process!"
Eric Steven Raymond in Sex Tips For Geeks, Avoiding the Curse of Oversensitivity.
"I'm so bored my stomach acid is becoming basic."
Alexander Krivács Schrøder, while bored.
"What's the point of knowledge if you cannot help others with it?"
"Mockery?"
Alexander Krivács Schrøder and Trevor Morris.
"grls cant ninja, lol"
Jan Tore Johnsen, commenting on the movie Ultraviolet, the female protagonist of which kicks serious ass (poor spelling added for n00bic effect).
"I like your tactics. They are similar to mine."
Even Alander. For some reason it's incredibly funny if read slowly, seriously, and with a Russian accent.
Antiquity
"…quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." […a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand.]
(Lucius Annaeus) Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC–65 AD)
"Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god but a great rock and the sun a hot rock."
Anaxagoras (500 BC–428 BC)
"Ubi dubium, ibi libertas." [Where there is doubt there is liberty.]
Latin motto