The Treasure of the Sierra Madre quotes

View Quote Gold Hat: Hola, senor. We are Federales. You know, the mounted police.
Dobbs: If you're the police, where are your badges?
Gold Hat: Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!
Dobbs: You'd better not come any closer.
Gold Hat: We aren't trying to do you any harm. Why don't you try to be a little more polite? Give us your gun and we'll leave you in peace.
Dobbs: I need my gun myself.
Gold Hat: Oh, throw that ol' iron over here. We'll pick it up and go on our way.
Dobbs: You go on your way without my gun and go quick!
[Dobbs fires a warning shot with his rifle at Gold Hat, piercing a big hole in the top of the bandit's hat]
Gold Hat: Look here, amigo. You got the wrong idea. We don't wanna get your gun fer nothin'. We wanna buy it. Look. I have a gold watch with a gold chain, made in your own country. The watch and the chain - they worth at least two hundred pesos - I 'change it fer yer gun. Y'better take it, thatsa good bizness for you!!
Dobbs: You keep your watch. I'll keep my gun!
Gold Hat: O, you keep it? You will keep it?? We won't get it?? I'LL SHOW YOU!!!
[Howard aims and blasts the gold watch] Note: the bolded line is ranked #36 in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 movie quotations in American cinema.

View Quote Dobbs: Do you believe what that old man who was doin' all the talkin' at the Oso Negro said the other night about gold changin' a man's soul so that he ain't the same kind of a guy that he was before findin' it?
Curtin: Guess that all depends on the man.
Dobbs: That's exactly what I say. Gold don't carry any curse with it. It all depends on whether or not the guy who finds it is the right guy. The way I see it, gold can be as much of a blessing as a curse.

View Quote Curtin: Well Howard, what next, I wonder?
Howard: Well, I'm all fixed as far as I'm concerned as a medicine man. I'll have three meals a day, five if I want 'em, and a roof over my head, and a drink every now and then to warm me up. I'll be worshipped and fed and treated like a high priest for telling people things they want to hear. Good medicine men are born, not made. Come and see me some time, my boy. Even you will take off your hat when you see how respected I am. Why only the day before yesterday, they wanted to make me their Legislature - their whole Legislature. I don't know what that means but it must be the highest honor they can bestow. Yeah, I'm all fixed for the rest of my natural life. How about yourself? What do you aim to do?
Curtin: I haven't got any idea.
Howard: Oh, you're young yet. You've got plenty of time to make three or four fortunes for yourself.
Curtin: You know, the worst ain't so bad when it finally happens. Not half as bad as you figure it will be before it's happened. I'm no worse off than I was in Tampico. All I'm out is a couple hundred bucks when you come right down to it. Not very much compared to what Dobbsie lost.
Howard: Any special place you're bent on goin'?
Curtin: Naw, all the places are the same to me.
Howard: Tell you what. You can keep my share of what the burros and the hides'll bring if you use the money to buy a ticket to Dallas. See Cody's widow. Better than writin'. And besides, it's July and the fruit harvest. How about it?
Curtin: It's a deal.

View Quote Gold Hat: [to Dobbs] Hey, do I know you from some place? Maybe I know you?...Are you alone?...I know who you are! You're the guy in the hole - the one who wouldn't give us the rifle - hah, hah, hah, hah.

View Quote Cody: I simply couldn't resist the desire to sit around and jaw with an American.
Dobbs: We're full up. No vacancies. Understand? And in case I don't make myself clear, I think you'd be doin' yourself a favor by packin' up and gettin' out of here tomorrow morning. Go back where you came from. Take our blessings with ya. [Howard hands Cody a plate for grub]...Help yourself. We don't mind 'cause we don't let guys starve to death. Tonight you're our guest. But tomorrow morning, look out - no trespassin' around here. Ya know - beware the dogs. Get it?

View Quote Dobbs: So you could fall on me from behind, sneak up, and shoot me in the back?
Curtin: All right, I'll go first.
Dobbs: And wait for me on the trail and ambush me?
Curtin: Why wouldn't I do it right here and now if I meant to kill you?
Dobbs: I'll tell you why. 'Cause you're yella. You haven't got nerve enough to pull the trigger while I'm lookin' you straight in the eye.
Curtin: If you think like that, there's nothing to do but to tie you up every night.
Dobbs: [He laughs] I'll tell you what. I'll make you a little bet. Three times thirty-five is a hundred and five. I'll bet ya a hundred and five thousand dollars you go to sleep before I do.

View Quote Howard: Gold in Mexico? Why sure there is. Not ten days from here by rail and pack train, there's a mountain waiting for the right guy to come along, discover a treasure, and then tickle her until she lets him have it. The question is, are you the right guy?...Aw, real bonanzas are few and far between that take a lot of finding. Say, answer me this one, will ya? Why's gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce?
Man: I don't know. 'Cause it's scarce.
Howard: A thousand men, say, go searching for gold. After six months, one of 'em is lucky - one out of the thousand. His find represents not only his own labor but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's uh, six thousand months or five hundred years scrabbling over mountains, going hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the finding and the getting of it.
Man: Never thought of it just like that...
Howard: Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothin' except makin' jewelry with and gold teeth. Aw, gold's a devilish sort of a thing anyway. You start out to tell yourself you'll be satisfied with twenty-five thousand handsome smackers worth of it, 'so help me Lord and cross my heart.' Fine resolution. After months of sweatin' yourself dizzy and growing short on provisions and findin' nothin', you finally come down to fifteen thousand and then ten, finally you say, 'Lord, let me just find five thousand dollars worth and never ask for anything more the rest of my life.'...Here in this joint, it seems like a lot, but I tell you, if you was to make a real strike, you couldn't be dragged away. Not even the threat of miserable death'd keep you from trying to add ten thousand more. Ten you want to get twenty-five. Twenty-five you want to get fifty. Fifty, a hundred. Like roulette. One more turn, you know, always one more.
Dobbs: It wouldn't be that way with me. I swear it wouldn't. I'd take only what I set out to get, even if there was still a half a million dollars worth lying around waitin' to be picked up.
Howard: I've dug in Alaska and in Canada and Colorado. I was with the crowd in British Honduras where I made my fare back home and almost enough over to cure me of the fever I'd caught. I've dug in California and Australia, all over the world practically. Yeah, I know what gold does to men's souls.
Man: You talk as though you struck it rich sometime or other, Pop. How about it? Then what are you doin' in here, a down-and-outer?
Howard: That's gold, that's what it makes of us. Never knew a prospector yet that died rich. Make one fortune, you're sure to blow it in trying to find another. I'm no exception to the rule. Aw sure, I'm an odd old bone now, but say, don't you guys think the spirit's gone. I'm all set to shoulder a pickax and a shovel any time anybody's willing to share expenses. I'd rather go by myself. Going it alone's the best way. But you got to have a stomach for loneliness. Some guys go nutty with it. On the other hand, going with a partner or two is dangerous. Murder's always lurkin' about. Partners accusin' each other of all sorts of crimes. Aw, as long as there's no find, the noble brotherhood will last, but when the piles of gold begin to grow, that's when the trouble starts.
Curtin: Me, now, I wouldn't mind a little of that kind of trouble.
Dobbs: I think I'll go to sleep and dream about piles of gold gettin' bigger and bigger and bigger...

View Quote Dobbs: It don't look much different from sand...plain sand. It don't glitter - I thought it would glitter.
Howard: It'll glitter when it's refined. That's some other guy's job. All we gotta do is mine it and get it back there. You know, gold ain't like stones in a riverbed. It don't cry out to be picked up. You got to know how to recognize it. And the findin' ain't all. Not by a long shot. You got to know how to tickle her, so she'll come out laughin'. Yeah, it's mighty rich. It will pay good.
Curtin: How much?
Howard: Oh, about twenty ounces to the ton.

View Quote Dobbs: I was just thinkin' what a bonehead play that old jackass made when he put all his goods in our keeping...Figured to let us do his sweatin' for him, did he? We'll show him...Oh man, can't you see? It's all ours. We don't go back to Durango at all, savvy? Not at all...Don't be such a sap. Where did you ever grow up? All right, to make it clear to a dumbhead like you - we take all his goods and go straight up north and leave the old jackass flat.
Curtin: You aren't serious are you? You don't really mean what you're saying?
Dobbs: Fred C. Dobbs don't say nothin' he don't mean.
Curtin: As long as I'm here and can do anything about it, you won't touch a single grain of the old man's goods.
Dobbs: I know exactly what you mean. You want to take it all for yourself and cut me out.
Curtin: No, Dobbs. I'm on the level with the old man. Just as I'd be on the level with you if you weren't here.
Dobbs: Get off your soapbox, will you? You only sound foolish out here in this wilderness. I know you for what you are. For a long time, I've had my suspicions about you and now I know I've been right.
Curtin: What suspicions are you talking about?
Dobbs: Oh, you're not puttin' anything over on me. I see right through you. For a long time, you've had it in your mind to bump me off at the first good opportunity and bury me out here in the bush like a dog. So's you could take not only the old man's goods but mine in the bargain. And when you get to Durango safely, you'll have a big laugh, won't ya, thinkin' how dumb the old man and I were?
[Dobbs draws his gun on Curtin]
Dobbs: Was I right or was I? You and your Sunday school talk about protectin' people's goods. You. Come on, stand up and take it like a man.
[Curtin fights Dobbs, disarming him]
Curtin: [drawing his own gun] The cards are dealt the other way now, Dobbs.

View Quote Train conductor: Big boulder on the track so train stop. Bandits get big surprise because soldiers on the train waiting for them - not many passengers got killed.

View Quote Dobbs: [about Howard] He's too old to take along with us, of course. We'd have to pack him on our backs.
Curtin: You can't tell about some of those old guys. It's surprising sometimes how tough they are. I don't know what gold looks like in the ground. I've only seen it in jewelry store windows and people's mouths. Do you know anything about prospectin'?
Dobbs: Eh, not much, when you come right down to it.
Curtin: We might have real use for an experienced guy like that old-timer.
Dobbs: Let's go hunt him up right away.

View Quote Curtin: There's no use makin' hogs of ourselves.
Dobbs: Hog, am I? Maybe you don't know it, but I'd be within my rights if I demanded half again as much as you get.
Curtin: How come?
Dobbs: There's no denying I put up the lion's share of the cash, is there?
Howard: I think it would be wise not to put things strictly on a money basis.
[Curtin uses the scales to weigh out a portion of his gold dust (with interest) to repay Dobbs for his bigger share]
Dobbs: [flinging the dust away into the fire] I just don't like being called a hog, that's all.

View Quote Dobbs: Don't get the idea you two are putting anything over on me.
Howard: Take it easy, Dobbs.
Dobbs: I know what your game is.
Howard: Well, you know more than I do.
Dobbs: Why am I elected to go to the village? Why me instead of you and Curtin? Oh, don't think I don't see through that! You two have thrown together against me. The two days I'd be gone would give you plenty of time to discover where my goods are, wouldn't it?
Howard: Why don't you take your goods along with you?
Dobbs: And run the risk of having them taken from me by bandits?
Howard: If you was to run into bandits, you'd be out of luck anyway. They'd kill you for the shoes on your feet.
Dobbs: Oh, so that's it! Everything's clear now. You're hopin' bandits'll get me. That would save you a lot of trouble, wouldn't it? And your consciences wouldn't bother you none neither.
Howard: All right, Dobbs. Forget about it.

View Quote Dobbs: You know what I'm thinkin'. I'm thinkin' we ought to give up. Leave the whole outfit - everything behind and go back to civilization.
Howard: What's that you say? Go back? Ha, ha. Well, tell my old grandmother! I've got two very elegant bedfellows who kick at the first drop of rain and hide in the closet when thunder rumbles. My, my, my, what great prospectors, two shoe clerks readin' a magazine about prospectin' for gold in the land of the midnight sun, south of the border, or west of the Rockies, ha, ha, ha...
Dobbs: [picking up a rock] Shut your trap! Shut up or I'll smash your head flat.
Howard: Go ahead, go ahead, throw it. If you did, you'd never leave this wilderness alive. Without me, you two would die here more miserable than rats.
Curtin: [to Dobbs] Aw, leave him alone. Can't you see the old man's nuts?
Howard: Let me tell you something, my two fine bedfellows, you're so dumb, there's nothin' to compare ya with, you're dumber than the dumbest jackass. Look at each other, will ya? Did you ever see anything like yourself for bein' dumb specimens. You're so dumb, you don't even see the riches you're treadin' on with your own feet. Yeah, don't expect to find nuggets of molten gold. It's rich but not that rich. And here ain't the place to dig. It comes from someplace further up. Up there, up there's where we've got to go. UP THERE!

View Quote Cody: I thought perhaps I was among civilized men who wouldn't begrudge me a little fresh water.
Dobbs: WHO'S NOT CIVILIZED?! [punches Cody]