Orson Welles movie quotes

View Quote I've always found it very... sanitary to be broke.

View Quote I never make up my mind about anything at all until it's over and done with.

View Quote That's how I found her, and from that moment on, I did not use my head very much, except to be thinking of her.

View Quote There's an old lady on Main Street last night picked up a shoe. The shoe had a foot in it. We're going to make you pay for that mess.

View Quote Listen, I got a position in this town, a reputation...somebody's gonna be ruined.

View Quote [about his wife's killer] I followed around after him...ate my heart out trying to catch him but I never did. That was the last killer that ever got out of my hands.

View Quote Something had happened, a thing which years ago had been the eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town. And now it came at last: George Amberson Minafer had got his comeuppance. He'd got it three times filled and running over. But those who had longed for it were not there to see it. And they never knew it, those who were still living had forgotten all about it, and all about him.

View Quote Against so homespun a background, the magnificence of the Ambersons was as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral.

View Quote In those days, they had time for everything: Time for sleigh rides, and balls, and assemblies, and cotillions, and open house on New Years, and all-day picnics in the woods, and even that prettiest of all vanished customs: the serenade.

View Quote For a time... I considered sparing your wretched little planet Cybertron, but now... you shall witness.... ITS DISMEMBERMENT!!!

View Quote Perhaps I misjudged you. Proceed, on your way to oblivion.

View Quote This is my command: you are to destroy the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. It is the one thing, the only thing, that can stand in my way.

View Quote Mr. Wilson: Do you know Germany, Mr. Rankin?
Professor Charles Rankin: I'm sorry, I...I have a way of making enemies when I'm on that subject. I get pretty unpopular.
Mr. Wilson: Well, we shall consider it the objective opinion of an objective historian.
Professor Charles Rankin: Historian? A psychiatrist could explain it better. The German sees himself as the innocent victim of world envy and hatred, conspired against, set upon by inferior peoples, inferior nations. He cannot admit to error, much less to wrongdoing, not the German. We chose to ignore Ethiopia and Spain, but we learned from our own casualty list the price of looking the other way. Men of truth everywhere have come to know for whom the bell tolled, but not the German. No! He still follows his warrior gods marching to Wagnerian strains, his eyes still fixed upon the fiery sword of Siegfried. And in those subterranean meeting places that you don't believe in, the German's dream world comes alive when he takes his place in shining armor beneath the banners of the Teutonic Knights. Mankind is waiting for the Messiah, but for the German, the Messiah is not the Prince of Peace. No, he's... another Barbarossa... another Hitler.
Mr. Wilson: Well, then you have no faith in the reforms that are being effected in Germany.
Professor Charles Rankin: I don't know, Mr. Wilson. I can't believe that people can be reformed except from within. The basic principles of equality and freedom never have and never will take root in Germany. The will to freedom has been voiced in every other tongue. "All men are created equal", liberte, egalite, fraternite - but in German...
Noah Longstreet: There's Marx. "Proletarians, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains."
Professor Charles Rankin: But Marx wasn't a German, Marx was a Jew.
Judge Longstreet: But, my dear Charles, if we concede your argument, there is no solution.
Professor Charles Rankin: Well, sir, once again, I differ.
Judge Longstreet: Well, what is it, then?
Professor Charles Rankin: Annihilation. Down to the last babe in arms.
Mary Longstreet: Oh, Charles, I can't imagine you're advocating a Carthaginian peace.
Professor Charles Rankin: Well, as an historian, I must remind you that the world hasn't had much trouble from Carthage in the past 2,000 years.

View Quote Mary Longstreet: Why are you packing? Are we going somewhere?
Professor Charles Rankin: We aren't, dearest. I am.
Mary Longstreet: What are you talking about?
Professor Charles Rankin: As a rule, men leave their wives because they don't love them, but...I must leave you because I do. Oh, you won't object once you know the kind of man you've married.
Mary Longstreet: But you are the man I've married, and that's all that matters. Darling, I meant it when I said for better or for worse. Even to...
Professor Charles Rankin: To killing Red?
Mary Longstreet: You couldn't have. It was an accident.
Professor Charles Rankin: No, I meant to kill him. Murder can be a chain, Mary, one link leading to another until it circles your neck. Red was digging at the grave of the man I killed. Yes, your little man.
Mary Longstreet: You killed him?
Professor Charles Rankin: With these hands. The same hands that have held you close to me. Now are you satisfied to let me go?

View Quote Professor Charles Rankin: You're not much changed. Put you back in your old uniform, you'd look very much the same.
Konrad Meinike: Franz, I am a different man than before.
Professor Charles Rankin: I, too. I, too, am different, Konrad. You know how I gathered and destroyed every single item in Germany and Poland that might have served as a clue to my identity. Well, guess what I'll be doing at 6:00 tonight. Standing before a minister of the gospel with a woman's hand in mine, the daughter of a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, a famous liberal. The girl's even good to look at. Yes, the camouflage is perfect. Who would think to look for the notorious Franz Kindler in the sacred precincts of the Harper School, surrounded by the sons of America's first families? And I'll stay hidden... till the day when we strike again.
Konrad Meinike: Franz! There will be another war?
Professor Charles Rankin: Well, of course.

View Quote If there is any way of destroying hatred and all that goes with it, it's not through evil and hatred and cruelty, but through charity, love, understanding.

View Quote They say you can only get justice by shedding their last drop of blood. Isn't a lifetime behind prison bars enough for this mad act?...You hang these boys, it will mean that in this land of ours, a court of law could not help but bow down to public opinion.

View Quote In those years to come, you might find yourself asking if it wasn't the hand of god dropped these glasses... And if he didn't, who did?

View Quote Harry: [on the ferris wheel] What do you want me to do? Be reasonable. You didn't expect me to give myself up.
Martins: Why not?
Harry: 'It's a far, far better thing that I do.' The old limelight. The fall of the curtain. Oh, Holly, you and I aren't heroes. The world doesn't make any heroes outside of your stories.

View Quote Harry: [chuckling] Oh Holly, what fools we are, talking to each other this way. As though I would do anything to you, or you to me. You're just mixed up about things in general. Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't. Why should we? They talk about the people and the proletariat, I talk about the suckers and the mugs - it's the same thing. They have their five-year plans, so have I.
Martins: You used to believe in God.
Harry: Oh, I still do believe in God, old man. I believe in God and Mercy and all that. But the dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor devils. What do you believe in? Oh, if you ever get Anna out of this mess, be kind to her. You'll find she's worth it. I wish I had asked you to bring me some of those tablets from home. Holly, I would like to cut you in, old man. There’s nobody left in Vienna I can really trust, and we have always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message. I’ll meet you any place, any time. And when we do meet, old man, it is you I want to see, not the police. Remember that, won’t you? And don’t be so gloomy. After all, it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Note: The passage in bold was written by Orson Welles.

View Quote Martins: Have you ever seen any of your victims?
Harry: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. [gestures to people far below] Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays.
Martins: Lot of good your money'll do you in jail.
Harry: That jail's in another zone. There's no proof against me...besides you.
Martins: [holding onto the window ledge] I should be pretty easy to get rid of.
Harry: Pretty easy.
Martins: I wouldn't be too sure.
Harry: I carry a gun. You don't think they'd look for a bullet wound after you hit that ground.

View Quote It's true, you know. Accused men are attractive. Not that being accused makes any immediate change in a man's personal appearance. But if you've got the right eye for these things, you can pick out an accused man in the largest crowd. It's just something about them, something attractive.

View Quote To be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free.

View Quote Josef K.: I don't pretend to be a martyr, no.
Hastler: Not even a victim of society?
Josef K.: I am a member of society.
Hastler: Do you think you can persuade the court that you're not responsible by reason of lunacy?
Josef K.: I think that's what the court wants me to believe. Yes, that's the conspiracy: to persuade us all that the whole world is crazy, formless, meaningless, absurd. That's the dirty game. So I've lost my case. What of it? You, you're losing too. It's all lost, lost. So what? Does that sentence the entire universe to lunacy?

View Quote Deep among the lonely sun-baked hills of Texas, the great and weatherbeaten stone still stands. The Comanches called it Squaw's Head Rock. Time cannot change its impassive face, nor dim the legend of the wild young lovers who found Heaven and Hell in the shadows of the rock. For when the sun is low and the cold wind blows across the desert, there are those of Indian blood who still speak of Pearl Chavez, the half-breed girl from down along the border, and of the laughing outlaw with whom she here kept a final rendezvous, never to be seen again... And this is what the legend says: A flower, known nowhere else, grows from out of the desperate crags where Pearl vanished. Pearl, who was herself a wild flower, sprung from the hard clay - quick to blossom and early to die.