As is always the case with these lists, the film capital has produced so many classic movies — and so many classic movie moments — over the past 100-plus years that it'd be hard for the AFI to completely screw up. Naturally, some selections are certain to cause involuntarily winces — how Guess Who's Coming to Dinner made the group's list of the Top 100 Greatest Movies remains a mystery. Furthermore, the voters have a bad habit of featuring a preponderance of more recent fare: If A Few Good Men's "You can't handle the truth!" and Top Gun's "I feel the need... the need for speed!" are truly among the top 100 quotes, then maybe it's time to return to the days of silent cinema.
But that's the beauty of these lists: They always make for engaging water cooler conversation. More importantly, they also allow discerning film fans searching for something beyond the next Mike Myers comedy plenty of worthy suggestions for their DVD rental run.
The 100 quotes selected by the AFI make up a fairly solid compendium, with many choice lines that will be familiar even to those who consider themselves only casual film fans. For the record, these were the Top 10 lines from the AFI list:
1. "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." — Clark Gable, Gone With the Wind (1939)
2. "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse." — 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." — Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront (1954)
4. "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." — Judy Garland, The Wizard of Oz (1939)
5. "Here's looking at you, kid." — Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca (1942)
6. "Go ahead, make my day." — Clint Eastwood, Sudden Impact (1983)
7. "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." — Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard (1950)
8. "May the Force be with you." — Harrison Ford, Star Wars (1977)
9. "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night." — Bette Davis, All About Eve (1950)
10. "You talking to me?" — Robert De Niro, Taxi Driver (1976)
These are certainly immortal quips, yet looking through the whole list of 100, I found others that have remained with me more than most of the ones topping their list. Perusing the list, I've determined that these 10 would have headed my ballot:
1. "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" — Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove (1964)
2. "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!" — Dustin Hoffman, Midnight Cowboy (1969)
3. "Round up the usual suspects." — Claude Rains, Casablanca (1942)
4. "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." — Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront (1954)
5. "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night." — Bette Davis, All About Eve (1950)
6. "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." — Robert Duvall, Apocalypse Now (1979)
7. "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast." — Robert Armstrong, King Kong (1933)
8. "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" — James Cagney, White Heat (1949)
9. "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!" — Alfonso Bedoya, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
10. "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." — Joe Mantell, Chinatown (1974)
The AFI's 100 only skims the surface of classic screenwriting (or, in some cases, classic improvising). What about the infinite lines that didn't make the cut? In the name of fair play, here are 40 more brilliant quotes, presented in alphabetical order according to title. As with the AFI, whose list included some brief exchanges rather than just one-liners, I've included a handful of memorable back-and-forths.
1. "What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end!" — Thelma Ritter, All About Eve (1950)
2. "Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand." — Hal Holbrook, All the President's Men (1976)
3. "We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed. But we're going back again in a couple of weeks." — Groucho Marx, Animal Crackers (1930)
4. "I don't want to move to a city [Los Angeles] where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light." — Woody Allen, Annie Hall (1977)
5. "The jockey was a very insulting fellow. He referred to my proboscis as an adscititious excrescence. I had to tweak his nose." — W.C. Fields, The Bank Dick (1940)
6. "The only thing standing between you and a watery grave is your wits, and that's not my idea of adequate protection." — Humphrey Bogart, Beat the Devil (1953)
7. "I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them long winter evenings." — Humphrey Bogart, The Big Sleep (1946)
8. "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die." — Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner (1982)
9. "You aren't too bright. I like that in a man." — Kathleen Turner, Body Heat (1981)
10. "To a new world of gods and monsters!" — Ernest Thesiger, Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
11. "The world is made for those who aren't cursed with self-awareness." — Susan Sarandon, Bull Durham (1988)
12. "I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair." — Bette Davis, Cabin In the Cotton (1932)
13. "What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?" "My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters." "The waters? What waters? We're in the desert!" "I was misinformed." — Claude Rains and Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca (1942)
14. "Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!" — Patricia Neal, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
15. "That's what I love about these high school girls. I keep getting older, they stay the same age." — Matthew McConaughney, Dazed and Confused (1993)
16. "C Energizers?" "D, motherfucker, D! Learn to speak English first, all right? D!" "How many you say?" "Twenty, motherfucker, 20!" "Motherfuck you!" — Steve Park and Bill Nunn, Do the Right Thing (1989)
17. "Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" — Sean Connery and Gert Frobe, Goldfinger (1964)
18. "Nietzsche said that the life we lived we're gonna live over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again." — Woody Allen, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
19. "People are just getting dumber, but more opinionated." — Lizan Mitchell, The Human Stain (2003)
20. "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it." — Humphrey Bogart, The Maltese Falcon (1941)
21. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." — Carleton Young, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
22. "Captain, it is I, Ensign Pulver, and I just threw your stinking palm tree overboard. Now, what's all this crud about no movie tonight?" — Jack Lemmon, Mister Roberts (1955)
23. "Over? Did you say, 'Over'? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" — John Belushi, National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). (Honorable mention from the same movie: "Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son." — John Vernon)
24. "Is this a great country or what?" — Michael Keaton, Night Shift (1982)
25. "The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges." — James Stewart, The Philadelphia Story (1940)
26. "Don't be stupid, be a smarty. Come and join the Nazi party!" — Mel Brooks, The Producers (1968)
27. "We all go a little mad sometimes." — Anthony Perkins, Psycho (1960)
28. "A bum-legged old man and a drunk. That's all you got?" "That's what I got." — Ward Bond and John Wayne, Rio Bravo (1959)
29. "Sometimes you just gotta say, 'What the fuck.'" — Curtis Armstrong, Risky Business (1983)
30. "I'd buy that for a dollar!" — S.D. Nemeth, RoboCop (1987)
31. "Look at that! Look how she moves. That's just like Jell-O on springs!" — Jack Lemmon, Some Like It Hot (1959)
32. "To you, I'm an atheist. To God, I'm the loyal opposition." — Woody Allen, Stardust Memories (1980)
33. "An intellectual carrot. The mind boggles!" — Douglas Spencer, The Thing From Another World (1951)
34. "In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, and they had 500 years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." — Orson Welles, The Third Man (1949)
35. "Heil Hitler!" "Heil myself." — Jack Riley and Tom Dugan, To Be or Not to Be (1942)
36. "Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passing." — William Walker, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
37. "He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?" — Marlene Dietrich, Touch of Evil (1958)
38. "It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." — Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven (1992)
39. "Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?" "Whaddaya got?" — Peggy Maley and Marlon Brando, The Wild One (1953)
40. "Wow, what knockers!" — Gene Wilder, Young Frankenstein (1974)
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