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Part of the American Film Institute's 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes is a list of the top 100 quotations in American cinema.[1] The American Film Institute revealed the list on June 21, 2005, in a three-hour television program on CBS. The program was hosted by Pierce Brosnan and had commentary from many Hollywood actors and filmmakers. A jury consisting of 1,500 film artists, critics, and historians selected "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", spoken by Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in the 1939 American Civil War epic Gone with the Wind, as the most memorable American movie quotation of all time.
| 1998 | 100 Movies |
|---|---|
| 1999 | 100 Stars |
| 2000 | 100 Laughs |
| 2001 | 100 Thrills |
| 2002 | 100 Passions |
| 2003 | 100 Heroes & Villains |
| 2004 | 100 Songs |
| 2005 | 100 Movie Quotes |
| 2005 | 25 Scores |
| 2006 | 100 Cheers |
| 2006 | 25 Musicals |
| 2007 | 100 Movies (Updated) |
| 2008 | AFI's 10 Top 10 |
Jurors were asked to consider the following criteria in making their selections:
- Movie quotation: A statement, phrase or brief exchange of dialogue spoken in an American film.[a] Lyrics from songs are not eligible.
- Cultural impact: Movie quotations that viewers use in their own lives and situations; circulating through popular culture, they become part of the national lexicon.
- Legacy: Movie quotations that viewers use to evoke the memory of a treasured film, thus ensuring and enlivening its historical legacy.
The table below reproduces the quotes as the AFI published them.[2]
| Rank | Quotation | Character | Actor/Actress | Film | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." | Rhett Butler | Clark Gable | Gone with the Wind | 1939 |
| 2 | "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse." | Vito Corleone | Marlon Brando | The Godfather | 1972 |
| 3 | "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am."[b] | Terry Malloy | Marlon Brando | On the Waterfront | 1954 |
| 4 | "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."[c] | Dorothy Gale | Judy Garland | The Wizard of Oz | 1939 |
| 5 | "Here's looking at you, kid." | Rick Blaine | Humphrey Bogart | Casablanca | 1942 |
| 6 | "Go ahead, make my day." | Harry Callahan | Clint Eastwood | Sudden Impact[d] | 1983 |
| 7 | "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." | Norma Desmond | Gloria Swanson | Sunset Boulevard | 1950 |
| 8 | "May the Force be with you." | Han Solo | Harrison Ford | Star Wars | 1977 |
| 9 | "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night." | Margo Channing | Bette Davis | All About Eve | 1950 |
| 10 | "You talkin' to me?" | Travis Bickle | Robert De Niro | Taxi Driver | 1976 |
| 11 | "What we've got here is failure to communicate."[e] | Captain | Strother Martin | Cool Hand Luke | 1967 |
| 12 | "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." | Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore | Robert Duvall | Apocalypse Now | 1979 |
| 13 | "Love means never having to say you're sorry." | Jennifer Cavalleri, Oliver Barrett IV |
Ali MacGraw Ryan O'Neal |
Love Story | 1970 |
| 14 | "The stuff that dreams are made of."[f] | Sam Spade | Humphrey Bogart | The Maltese Falcon | 1941 |
| 15 | "E.T. phone home." | E.T. | Pat Welsh | E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial | 1982 |
| 16 | "They call me Mister Tibbs!" | Virgil Tibbs | Sidney Poitier | In the Heat of the Night | 1967 |
| 17 | "Rosebud." | Charles Foster Kane | Orson Welles | Citizen Kane | 1941 |
| 18 | "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" | Arthur "Cody" Jarrett | James Cagney | White Heat | 1949 |
| 19 | "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" | Howard Beale | Peter Finch | Network | 1976 |
| 20 | "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." | Rick Blaine | Humphrey Bogart | Casablanca | 1942 |
| 21 | "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti." | Hannibal Lecter | Anthony Hopkins | The Silence of the Lambs | 1991 |
| 22 | "Bond. James Bond." | James Bond | Sean Connery[g] | Dr. No[h] | 1962 |
| 23 | "There's no place like home."[i] | Dorothy Gale | Judy Garland | The Wizard of Oz | 1939 |
| 24 | "I am big! It's the pictures that got small." | Norma Desmond | Gloria Swanson | Sunset Boulevard | 1950 |
| 25 | "Show me the money!" | Rod Tidwell | Cuba Gooding Jr. | Jerry Maguire | 1996 |
| 26 | "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"[j] | Lady Lou | Mae West | She Done Him Wrong | 1933 |
| 27 | "I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!"[k] | "Ratso" Rizzo | Dustin Hoffman | Midnight Cowboy | 1969 |
| 28 | "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'"[l] | Ilsa Lund | Ingrid Bergman | Casablanca | 1942 |
| 29 | "You can't handle the truth!" | Col. Nathan R. Jessup | Jack Nicholson | A Few Good Men | 1992 |
| 30 | "I want to be alone." | Grusinskaya | Greta Garbo | Grand Hotel | 1932 |
| 31 | "After all, tomorrow is another day!" | Scarlett O'Hara | Vivien Leigh | Gone with the Wind | 1939 |
| 32 | "Round up the usual suspects." | Capt. Louis Renault | Claude Rains | Casablanca | 1942 |
| 33 | "I'll have what she's having." | Customer | Estelle Reiner | When Harry Met Sally... | 1989 |
| 34 | "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow." | Marie "Slim" Browning | Lauren Bacall | To Have and Have Not | 1944 |
| 35 | "You're gonna need a bigger boat."[3] | Martin Brody | Roy Scheider | Jaws | 1975 |
| 36 | "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"[m] | Gold Hat | Alfonso Bedoya | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre | 1948 |
| 37 | "I'll be back." | The Terminator | Arnold Schwarzenegger | The Terminator | 1984 |
| 38 | "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."[n] | Lou Gehrig | Gary Cooper | The Pride of the Yankees | 1942 |
| 39 | "If you build it, he will come." | Shoeless Joe Jackson | Ray Liotta (voice) | Field of Dreams | 1989 |
| 40 | "My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." | Forrest Gump | Tom Hanks | Forrest Gump | 1994 |
| 41 | "We rob banks." | Clyde Barrow | Warren Beatty | Bonnie and Clyde | 1967 |
| 42 | "Plastics." | Mr. Maguire | Walter Brooke | The Graduate | 1967 |
| 43 | "We'll always have Paris." | Rick Blaine | Humphrey Bogart | Casablanca | 1942 |
| 44 | "I see dead people." | Cole Sear | Haley Joel Osment | The Sixth Sense | 1999 |
| 45 | "Stella! Hey, Stella!" | Stanley Kowalski | Marlon Brando | A Streetcar Named Desire | 1951 |
| 46 | "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." | Charlotte Vale | Bette Davis | Now, Voyager | 1942 |
| 47 | "Shane. Shane. Come back!" | Joey Starrett | Brandon deWilde | Shane | 1953 |
| 48 | "Well, nobody's perfect." | Osgood Fielding III | Joe E. Brown | Some Like It Hot | 1959 |
| 49 | "It's alive! It's alive!" | Henry Frankenstein | Colin Clive | Frankenstein | 1931 |
| 50 | "Houston, we have a problem."[o] | Jim Lovell | Tom Hanks | Apollo 13 | 1995 |
| 51 | "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" | Harry Callahan | Clint Eastwood | Dirty Harry | 1971 |
| 52 | "You had me at 'hello.'" | Dorothy Boyd | Renée Zellweger | Jerry Maguire | 1996 |
| 53 | "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know."[p] | Capt. Geoffrey T. Spaulding | Groucho Marx | Animal Crackers | 1930 |
| 54 | "There's no crying in baseball!" | Jimmy Dugan | Tom Hanks | A League of Their Own | 1992 |
| 55 | "La-dee-da, la-dee-da." | Annie Hall | Diane Keaton | Annie Hall | 1977 |
| 56 | "A boy's best friend is his mother." | Norman Bates | Anthony Perkins | Psycho | 1960 |
| 57 | "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good."[q] | Gordon Gekko | Michael Douglas | Wall Street | 1987 |
| 58 | "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer."[r] | Michael Corleone | Al Pacino | The Godfather Part II | 1974 |
| 59 | "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again." | Scarlett O'Hara | Vivien Leigh | Gone with the Wind | 1939 |
| 60 | "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!"[s] | Oliver | Oliver Hardy | Sons of the Desert | 1933 |
| 61 | "Say 'hello' to my little friend!" | Tony Montana | Al Pacino | Scarface | 1983 |
| 62 | "What a dump."[t] | Rosa Moline | Bette Davis | Beyond the Forest | 1949 |
| 63 | "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?" | Benjamin Braddock | Dustin Hoffman | The Graduate | 1967 |
| 64 | "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" | President Merkin Muffley | Peter Sellers | Dr. Strangelove | 1964 |
| 65 | "Elementary, my dear Watson."[u] | Sherlock Holmes | Basil Rathbone | The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | 1939 |
| 66 | "Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape." | George Taylor | Charlton Heston | Planet of the Apes | 1968 |
| 67 | "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." | Rick Blaine | Humphrey Bogart | Casablanca | 1942 |
| 68 | "Here's Johnny!"[v] | Jack Torrance | Jack Nicholson | The Shining | 1980 |
| 69 | "They're here!" | Carol Anne Freeling | Heather O'Rourke | Poltergeist | 1982 |
| 70 | "Is it safe?" | Dr. Christian Szell | Laurence Olivier | Marathon Man | 1976 |
| 71 | "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet!"[w] | Jakie Rabinowitz/Jack Robin | Al Jolson | The Jazz Singer | 1927 |
| 72 | "No wire hangers, ever!"[x] | Joan Crawford | Faye Dunaway | Mommie Dearest | 1981 |
| 73 | "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" | Rico Bandello | Edward G. Robinson | Little Caesar | 1931 |
| 74 | "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." | Lawrence Walsh | Joe Mantell | Chinatown | 1974 |
| 75 | "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." | Blanche DuBois | Vivien Leigh | A Streetcar Named Desire | 1951 |
| 76 | "Hasta la vista, baby." | The Terminator | Arnold Schwarzenegger | Terminator 2: Judgment Day | 1991 |
| 77 | "Soylent Green is people!" | Det. Robert Thorn | Charlton Heston | Soylent Green | 1973 |
| 78 | "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." | Dave Bowman | Keir Dullea | 2001: A Space Odyssey | 1968 |
| 79 | Striker: "Surely you can't be serious." Rumack: "I am serious … and don't call me Shirley." |
Ted Striker and Dr. Rumack | Robert Hays and Leslie Nielsen | Airplane! | 1980 |
| 80 | "Yo, Adrian!" | Rocky Balboa | Sylvester Stallone | Rocky | 1976 |
| 81 | "Hello, gorgeous." | Fanny Brice | Barbra Streisand | Funny Girl | 1968 |
| 82 | "Toga! Toga!" | John "Bluto" Blutarsky | John Belushi | National Lampoon's Animal House | 1978 |
| 83 | "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make." | Count Dracula | Bela Lugosi | Dracula | 1931 |
| 84 | "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."[y] | Carl Denham | Robert Armstrong | King Kong | 1933 |
| 85 | "My precious." | Gollum | Andy Serkis | The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers | 2002 |
| 86 | "Attica! Attica!" | Sonny Wortzik | Al Pacino | Dog Day Afternoon | 1975 |
| 87 | "Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've got to come back a star!" | Julian Marsh | Warner Baxter | 42nd Street | 1933 |
| 88 | "Listen to me, mister. You're my knight in shining armor. Don't you forget it. You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we're gonna go, go, go!" | Ethel Thayer | Katharine Hepburn | On Golden Pond | 1981 |
| 89 | "Tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win just one for the Gipper." | George Gipp | Ronald Reagan | Knute Rockne, All American | 1940 |
| 90 | "A martini. Shaken, not stirred."[z] | James Bond | Sean Connery[g] | Goldfinger[aa] | 1964 |
| 91 | "Who's on first."[ab] | Dexter | Bud Abbott | The Naughty Nineties | 1945 |
| 92 | "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac...It's in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!" | Carl Spackler | Bill Murray | Caddyshack | 1980 |
| 93 | "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!" | Mame Dennis | Rosalind Russell | Auntie Mame | 1958 |
| 94 | "I feel the need—the need for speed!" | Pete Mitchell and Nick Bradshaw | Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards | Top Gun | 1986 |
| 95 | "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary." | John Keating | Robin Williams | Dead Poets Society | 1989 |
| 96 | "Snap out of it!" | Loretta Castorini | Cher | Moonstruck | 1987 |
| 97 | "My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you."[4] | George M. Cohan | James Cagney | Yankee Doodle Dandy | 1942 |
| 98 | "Nobody puts Baby in a corner." | Johnny Castle | Patrick Swayze | Dirty Dancing | 1987 |
| 99 | "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!" | Wicked Witch of the West | Margaret Hamilton | The Wizard of Oz | 1939 |
| 100 | "I'm the king of the world!"[5] | Jack Dawson | Leonardo DiCaprio | Titanic | 1997 |
With six quotes, Casablanca is the most represented film. Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz are tied for second, with three each. Sunset Boulevard, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Graduate, and Jerry Maguire each have two quotes.
Rick Blaine (Casablanca) is the character with the most quotes (four); Dorothy Gale (The Wizard of Oz), Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry and Sudden Impact), James Bond (Dr. No and Goldfinger), Norma Desmond (Sunset Boulevard), Scarlett O'Hara (Gone with the Wind), and The Terminator (The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day) have two quotes each.
With five, Humphrey Bogart is the actor with the most quotes (four from Casablanca and one from The Maltese Falcon). Al Pacino, Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Tom Hanks, and Vivien Leigh have three apiece, while Jack Nicholson, Judy Garland, Gloria Swanson, Dustin Hoffman, Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, James Cagney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger have two each. Sean Connery also has two entries, but his two quotes are shared with five other actors.[g] As well as the five quotes spoken by Bogart, two other quotes on the list (from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and To Have and Have Not) were spoken to him, by Alfonso Bedoya and Lauren Bacall, respectively. Further, "Round up the usual suspects." was spoken in his presence and for his character's benefit by Claude Rains, and "Play it, Sam." is often mistakenly attributed to him; he actually said, "You played it for her, you can play it for me. ... If she can stand it, I can! Play it!"
The line "My precious", from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, is the only quote from a movie released in the 21st century and the only one by a CGI character.
Quotations by decade:
- 1920s: 1
- 1930s: 16
- 1940s: 17
- 1950s: 9
- 1960s: 13
- 1970s: 16
- 1980s: 17
- 1990s: 10
- 2000s: 1
Top years:
- 1942: 9
- 1939: 7
- 1967: 5
- 1933: 4
- 1976: 4
A number of the entries are frequently misquoted. The following have become well-known but are incorrect:
- #4: "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
- #7: "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille."
- #9: "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy ride."
- #26: "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"
- #28: "Play it again, Sam."
- #35: "We're gonna need a bigger boat."
- #36: "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!"
- #39: "If you build it, they will come."
- #40: "Life is like a box of chocolates."
- #47: "Come back, Shane."
- #50: "Houston, we've got a problem."
- #51: "Do you feel lucky, punk?"
- #57: "Greed is good."
- #63: "Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?"
A number of the quotes are drawn from real-world events and sources:
| Rank | Quotation | Film | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 38 | "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth." | The Pride of the Yankees | An actual quotation from Lou Gehrig's retirement speech[6] |
| 50 | "Houston, we have a problem." | Apollo 13 | The actual message from the Apollo 13 mission was "Houston, we've had a problem"[7] |
| 68 | "Here's Johnny!" | The Shining | The line is Ed McMahon's signature introduction of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.[8] |
| 97 | "My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My sister thanks you. And I thank you." | Yankee Doodle Dandy | George M. Cohan's curtain speech[9] |
Only "Rosebud," from Citizen Kane, and "Hello, gorgeous," from Funny Girl, are the opening lines of a film. Twelve quotes are closing lines:
| Rank | Quotation | Character | Actor/Actress | Film | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." | Norma Desmond | Gloria Swanson | Sunset Boulevard | 1950 |
| 14 | "The stuff that dreams are made of."[f] | Sam Spade | Humphrey Bogart | The Maltese Falcon | 1941 |
| 20 | "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." | Rick Blaine | Humphrey Bogart | Casablanca | 1942 |
| 23 | "There's no place like home." (also said earlier in the movie) | Dorothy Gale | Judy Garland | The Wizard of Oz | 1939 |
| 31 | "After all, tomorrow is another day!" | Scarlett O'Hara | Vivien Leigh | Gone with the Wind | 1939 |
| 46 | "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." | Charlotte Vale | Bette Davis | Now, Voyager | 1942 |
| 47 | "Shane. Shane. Come back!" | Joey Starrett | Brandon deWilde | Shane | 1953 |
| 48 | "Well, nobody's perfect." | Osgood Fielding III | Joe E. Brown | Some Like It Hot | 1959 |
| 73 | "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" | Rico Bandello | Edward G. Robinson | Little Caesar | 1931 |
| 74 | "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." | Lawrence Walsh | Joe Mantell | Chinatown | 1974 |
| 77 | "Soylent Green is people!" | Det. Robert Thorn | Charlton Heston | Soylent Green | 1973 |
| 84 | "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."[y] | Carl Denham | Robert Armstrong | King Kong | 1933 |
- AFI defines an American film as an English language motion picture with significant creative and/or financial production elements from the United States. Additionally, only quotations from feature-length American films released before January 1, 2004, were considered. AFI defines a feature-length film as a motion picture of narrative format that is typically over 60 minutes in length.
- Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta repeats Brando's speech in Raging Bull.
- Often misattributed to Dirty Harry.
- Paul Newman repeats the line later in the film, mocking the prison warden, though he says "a failure", rather than simply "failure." Also heard quoted in this form.
- This paraphrases a line from The Tempest by William Shakespeare: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" (often misquoted as "made of")
- Also George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig.
- Appears in some form in a total of 25 films; Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die.
- According to The Annotated Wizard of Oz, "[L. Frank] Baum [who quotes the phrase in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz] appears to be playing with the famous sentiment of John Howard Payne's 1823 song, 'Home, Sweet Home' [the melody of which, by Sir Henry Bishop, is played over several repetitions of the line]: 'Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.' ... Baum's irony was apparently lost on the makers of the famous movie. Arthur Freed, assistant to the producer Mervyn LeRoy, was responsible for making 'There's No Place Like Home' the theme of the 1939 MGM picture....He was adamant that Dorothy repeat 'There's No Place Like Home' when she clicks her heels together three times.'" Michael Patrick Hearn (Ed.), The Annotated Wizard of Oz, p. 77, n. 1.
- Mae West paraphrased the line in her next film, I'm No Angel, as "Come up and see me sometime". Hence the line in She Done Him Wrong is often misquoted as "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"
- Often misquoted as "Play it again, Sam", including in the title of a 1972 Woody Allen film.
- Popularly misquoted as "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!", most likely from Blazing Saddles, in which the line is so worded.
- An actual quotation from Lou Gehrig's retirement speech.
- This maxim is attributed to several military strategists, notably Sun-tzu, Chinese general.
- Although occurring in the 1949 film, this line did not become a widespread catchphrase until after the 1961 premiere of Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. In the opening scene of that play, Martha quotes this line and then (since she has apparently forgotten) she asks George which of Bette Davis's films it is from.
- This line, which does not appear in any of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, was first said onscreen in The Return of Sherlock Holmes. The line's first occurrence is in the stage play Sherlock Holmes, written entirely by William Gillette with Doyle's approval, for which Gilette listed Doyle as co-author.
- An ad-lib. The line is Ed McMahon's signature introduction of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.
- A longtime Jolson catchphrase also heard, with variations, in his earlier Vitaphone short film "A Plantation Act" (1926).
- Although "Who's on first" appeared in numerous other Abbott and Costello films prior to 1945, the one featured in The Naughty Nineties is considered the best rendition of the sketch.
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