Most-quoted character in The Stranger (1946): in 9 of its 16 quotes
Most scenes with: Mary Longstreet (3), Professor Charles Rankin (2)
She has the facts now, but she won't accept them. They're too horrible for her to acknowledge. Not so much that Rankin could be Kindler, but that she could ever have given her love to such a creature. But we have one ally, her subconscious. It knows what the truth is and it's struggling to be heard. The will to truth within your daughter is much too strong to be denied.
Mr. Wilson Oh, blast all this discussion! What good are words? I'm sick of words. Hang the repercussions and the responsibility! If I fail, I'm responsible. Leave the cell door open. Let him escape. Let him! It's our only chance! Let them threaten me with the bottom pits of hell and still I insist! This obscenity must be destroyed! Do you hear me? Destroyed!
Mr. Wilson Well, who but a Nazi would deny that Karl Marx was a German because he was a Jew?
Mr. Wilson In prison, in Czechoslovakia, a war criminal was awaiting execution. This was Konrad Meinike, one time executive officer for Franz Kindler. He was an obscenity on the face of the earth. The stench of burning flesh was in his clothes. But we gave him his freedom on the chance that he might lead me to Kindler. He led me here, Mrs. Rankin. And here, I lost him. Until yesterday. Your dog, Red, found him for me. But unfortunately, Meinike was dead and buried. Now, in all the world, there is only one person who can identify Franz Kindler. That person is the one who knows, knows definitely, who Meinike came to Harper to see.
Mr. Wilson Do you know Germany, Mr. 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.
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.
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...
There's Marx. "Proletarians, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains."
But Marx wasn't a German, Marx was a Jew.
But, my dear Charles, if we concede your argument, there is no solution.
Well, sir, once again, I differ.
Well, what is it, then?
Annihilation. Down to the last babe in arms.
Oh, Charles, I can't imagine you're advocating a Carthaginian peace.
Well, as an historian, I must remind you that the world hasn't had much trouble from Carthage in the past 2,000 years.
Mr. Wilson Forepaw's muddy. No mud on hind. Dry leaves mixed with the mud. Red must have been digging somewhere in the woods.
Have you any idea what for, Mr. Wilson?
Mr. Wilson A body, I think. Meinike's.
Mr. Wilson, I've never... I've never so much as even seen a Nazi.
Mr. Wilson Well, you might without your realizing it. They look like other people and act like other people - when it's to their benefit.
Why do you want me to look at these horrors?
Mr. Wilson All this you're seeing, it's all the product of one mind. The mind of a man named Franz Kindler. Franz Kindler. Yes, he was the most brilliant of the younger minds from the Nazi party. It was Kindler who conceived the theory of genocide, mass depopulation of conquered countries. So that regardless of who won the war, Germany would emerge the strongest nation in Western Europe, biologically speaking.
Mr. Wilson Look out the window. Look!
Well, that's... that's an old trick, Mr. Wilson, a very poor trick.
Mr. Wilson Tricks. That's all you know is tricks. I don't need any tricks! And no matter what happens to me, tricks won't do you any good. You're finished, Herr Franz Kindler.
Mr. Wilson The citizens of Harper, they've come after you. The plain, little, ordinary people, the ones you've been laughing at, Herr Franz Kindler! Well, you can't fool them anymore. Oh, sure, you can kill me, Mary, half the people down there, but there's no escape. You had a world and it closed in on you till there was only Harper. That closed in on you and there was only this room! And this room, too, is closing in on you! It's not true, the things they say I did. It was all their idea.
I followed orders.
Mr. Wilson You gave the orders.
I only did my duty. Don't send me back to them. I can't face them. I'm not a criminal.
Mr. Wilson You are.
