Cooper quotes from Interstellar (2014)

Cooper

Once you're a parent, you're the ghost of your children's future.

Cooper

We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.

Cooper

Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.

Cooper

We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we've barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, because our destiny lies above us.

Cooper

I don't care much for this -- pretending we're back where we started. I wanna know where we are. Where we're going.

Dad, why did you and mom name me after something that's bad?

Cooper

Well, we didn't.

Murphy's law?

Cooper

Murphy's law doesn't mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever can happen will happen.

Cooper

You're ruling out college for my son now? He's 15.

Tom's score simply isn't high enough.

Cooper

What's your waist line? What 32, 33 inseam?

I'm not sure I see what you're getting at.

Cooper

You're telling me it takes two numbers to measure your own ass but only one to measure my son's future?

Cooper

You don't believe we went to the Moon?

I believe it was a brilliant piece of propaganda, that the Soviets bankrupted themselves pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines...

Cooper

Useless machines?

..and if we don't want to repeat of the excess and wastefulness of the 20th Century then we need to teach our kids about this planet, not tales of leaving it.

Cooper

You know, one of those useless machines they used to make was called an MRI, and if we had one of those left the doctors would have been able to find the cyst in my wife's brain, before she died instead of afterwards, and then she would've been the one sitting here, listening to this instead of me. Which would've been a good thing because she was always the ... calmer one.

We must confront the reality that nothing in our solar system can help us.

Cooper

Now you need to tell me what your plan is to save the world.

We're not meant to save the world. We're meant to leave it, and this is the mission you were trained for.

Cooper

I've got kids, Professor.

Then get out there and save them. We must reach far beyond our own lifespans. We must think not as individuals but as a species. We must confront the reality of interstellar travel.

Cooper

It is hard leaving everything... my kids, your father...

We're gonna be spending a lot of time together.

Cooper

We should learn to talk.

And when not to? … Just being honest.

Cooper

I don't think you need to be that honest. Hey TARS, what’s your honesty Parameter?

TARS

Ninety percent.

Cooper

Ninety percent?

TARS

Absolute honesty isn’t always the most diplomatic, nor the safest form of communication with emotional beings.

Cooper

Okay. Ninety percent it is, Dr. Brand.

The lost communications came through.

How?

The relay on this side cached them. Years of basic data, no real surprises. Miller's site has kept pinging thumbs up, as has Mann... but Edmunds went down three years ago.

Transmitter failure?

Maybe. He was sending thumbs up right till it went dark.

Miller still looks good? [Doyle nods, and Romilly begins drawing on a whiteboard] She's coming up fast ... with one complication: the planet is much closer to Gargantua than we thought.

Cooper

Gargantua?

A very large black hole. Miller's and Dr. Mann's planets orbit it.

And Miller's is right on the horizon?

A basketball on the hoop. Landing there takes us dangerously close. A black hole that big has a huge gravitational pull.

Cooper

Look, I can swing around that neutron star and decelerate—

It's not that, it's time. That gravity will slow our clock compared to Earth. Drastically.

Cooper

How bad?

Every hour we spend down there will be maybe... seven years back on Earth.

Cooper

Jesus...

That's relativity, folks.

Cooper

Ready?

CASE

Yup.

Cooper

Don't say much, do you?

CASE

TARS talks plenty for both of us.

Cooper

We wanna get down fast, don't we?

Actually we want to get there in one piece.

Cooper

Hang on.

I told you to leave me.

Cooper

And I told you to get your ass back here! Difference is, only one of us was thinking about the mission—

Cooper, you were thinking about getting home — I was trying to do the right thing!

Cooper

Tell that to Doyle. [pause] How long to drain, CASE?

CASE

Forty-five to an hour.

Cooper

The stuff of life, huh? What's this gonna cost us, Brand?

A lot. Decades.

Cooper

What happened to Miller?

Judging by the wreckage, she was broken up by a wave shortly after impact.

Cooper

How could the wreckage still be together after all these years?

Because of the time slippage. On this planet's time, she landed here just hours ago. She might have died only minutes ago.

CASE

The data Doyle collected was just the initial status, echoing endlessly.

Cooper

We're not prepared for this, Brand. You're a bunch of eggheads without the survival skills of a boy-scout troop.

We got this far on our brains, farther than any humans in history...

Cooper

No, not far enough. And we're stuck here till there won't be anyone left on Earth to save—

I'm counting every second, same as you, Cooper.

Cooper

Don't you have some clever way we jump into a black hole and get back the years? [Brand shakes her head] Don't you shake your head at me!

Time is relative, it can stretch and squeeze, but it can't run backwards. The only thing that can move across dimensions like time is gravity.

Cooper

The beings that led us here ... they communicate through gravity ... Could they be talking to us from the future?

Maybe.

Cooper

Well, if they can—

Look, Cooper, they're creatures of at least five dimensions, to them the past might be a canyon they can climb into and the future a mountain they can climb up... but to us it's not, okay? I'm sorry, Cooper. I screwed up. But you know about relativity.

Cooper

My daughter was ten. I couldn't explain Einstein's theories before I left.

Could you tell her you were going to save the world?

Cooper

No. I wasn't much of a parent, but I understood the most important thing — let your kids feel safe. Which rules out telling ten-year-old that the world's ending.

Cooper

We no longer have the fuel to visit both prospects, so, we have to choose.

But how? They’re both promising. Edmunds’ data is better, but Dr. Mann is the one still transmitting, so…

We’ve no reason to suspect Endmunds’s data would have soured. His world has key elements to sustain human life.

Cooper

As does Dr. Mann’s.

Cooper, this is my field. And I really believe Edmunds’ is the better prospect.

Cooper

Why?

Gargantua, that’s why. Look at Miller’s planet. Hydrocarbons, organics, yes, but no life. Sterile. We’ll find the same thing on Mann’s.

Because of the black hole?

Murphy’s Law. Whatever can happen will happen. Accident is the first building block of evolution. But when you’re orbiting a black hole not enough can happen. It sucks in asteroids and comets, other events which would otherwise reach you. We need to go further afield.

Cooper

You once said that Dr. Mann was the best of us.

He’s remarkable, we’re only here because of him.

Cooper

And yet here he is. He’s on the ground, and he’s sending a very unambiguous message, telling us to come to his planet.

Granted, but Edmunds’ data is more promising.

We should vote.

Cooper

Well, if we vote, there’s something you should know. Brand? He has a right to know.

That has nothing to do with it.

What does?

Cooper

She’s in love with Wolf Edmunds.

Is that true?

Yes. And that makes me want to follow my heart. But maybe we’ve spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory.

Cooper

You’re a scientist, Brand.

So listen to me when I say that love isn’t something we invented. It’s observable, powerful. It has to mean something.

Cooper

Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child rearing…

We love people who have died. Where’s the social utility in that?

Cooper

None

Maybe it means something more, something we can’t yet understand. May it’s some evidence, something artifact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive. I’m drawn across the universe to someone I haven’t seen in a decade, who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can’t understand it yet. [Stays quiet.] All right, Cooper, yes, the tiniest possibility of seeing Wolf again excites me. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

Cooper

Honestly, Amelia, it might. [Brand leaves] TARS, chart a course for Dr. Mann’s.

Cooper

Humour 75%.

TARS

Confirmed. Self destruct sequence in T minus 10… 9…

Cooper

Let's make that 60%.

TARS

60%, confirmed. Knock, knock.

Cooper

You want fifty-five?

TARS

Cooper, there's no point in using our fuel to chase-

Cooper

Analyze the Endurance's spin.

Cooper, what are you doing?!

Cooper

Docking.

CASE

This is not possible.

Cooper

No. It's necessary.

Cooper

What's your trust setting, TARS?

TARS

Lower than yours, apparently.

TARS

Cooper, what if she never came back for it?

Cooper

She will. She will.

TARS

How do you know?

Cooper

Because I gave it to her.

Nobody believed me, but I knew you'd come back.

Cooper

How?

...Because my dad promised me.