300 quotes

View Quote We're in for one wild night.

View Quote Spartans! Push!

View Quote Spartans! Prepare for glory!

View Quote [Response to Daxos, an Arcadian, saying their choices were to retreat, surrender, or die] Well, that's an easy choice for us, Arcadian. Spartans never retreat! Spartans never surrender!

View Quote No retreat, no surrender. That is Spartan law. And by Spartan law, we will stand and fight ... and die. A new age has begun: an age of freedom! And all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend it!

View Quote [After dropping his helmet and his shield whilst being asked to submit] You there, Ephialtes: may you live forever. A Spartan insult: may he live with the guilt of his actions for all of time and never receive the glorious death on the battlefield that all Spartans desire.

View Quote [Dying words] My Queen! My wife! My love.

View Quote The old ones say that we Spartans are descended from Hercules himself. Taught never to retreat, never to surrender. Taught that death in the battlefield in service of Sparta is the greatest glory he could achieve in his life.

View Quote At age 7, as is customary in Sparta, the boy was taken from his mother and plunged into a world of violence, manufactured by 300 years of Spartan warrior society to create the finest soldiers the world has ever known. The agoge, as it's called, forces the boy to fight, starves him, forces him to steal ... and if necessary, to kill.

View Quote And so the boy, given up for dead, returns to his people, to sacred Sparta a king. Our king, Leonidas! It's been more than 30 years since the wolf and the winter cold. Now, as then, a beast approaches, patient and confident, savouring the meal to come. This beast is made of men and horses, swords and spears. An army of slaves vast beyond imagining, ready to devour tiny Greece, ready to snub out the world's one hope for reason and justice. A beast approaches, and it was King Leonidas himself who provoked it.

View Quote [Narrating: as Leonidas bids farewell to his wife] "Goodbye, my love". He doesn't say it. There's no room for softness, not in Sparta. No place for weakness. Only the hard and strong may call themselves Spartans. Only the hard. Only the strong.

View Quote We march. For our lands, for our families, for our freedoms, we march.

View Quote [As the Persian ships are struck by a thunderstorm] Zeus stabs the sky with thunderbolts and batters the Persian ships with hurricane wind! Glorious. Only one among us keeps his Spartan reserve. Only he ... only our King.

View Quote We do what we were trained to do. What we were bred to do. What we were born to do.

View Quote [Regarding Captain Artemis] Upon seeing the headless body of his own young son, the captain breaks rank. He goes wild, blood-drunk. The captain's cries of pain at the loss of his young son are more frightening to the enemy than the deepest battle drums. It takes three men to restrain him and bring him back to our own. The day is ours ... no songs are sung.