"I drifted off thinking about happiness, birth, new life. But now I was haunted by a vision of — he was horrible! — a lone biker of the apocalypse; a man with all the powers of hell at his command. He turned day into night and laid to waste everything in his path. He was especially hard on the little things, the helpless and the gentle creatures. He left a scorched earth in his wake, befouling even the sweet desert breeze which crossed his brow. I didn't know where he came from or why. I didn't know if he was dream or vision, but I feared that I myself had unleashed him. He was the fury that would be as soon as Florence Arizona found her little Nathan gone!"

"At first I didn't believe it — that this woman, who looked as fertile as the Tennessee Valley, could not bear children. But the doctor explained that her insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase."

"I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn't easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House. I don't know. They say he's a decent man, so maybe his advisors are confused."

"Prison life is more structured than most men care for."

"If you believe the impossible, the incredible can come true."

"All his life, Ray Kinsella was searching for his dreams. Then one day, his dreams came looking for him."

"Go the distance."

"Ease his pain."

"If you build it, he will come."

"[To Moonlight Graham as he leaves the field] Hey, rookie! You were good."

"My father's name was John Kinsella. It's an Irish name. He was born in North Dakota in 1896 and never saw a big city until he came back from France in 1918. He settled in Chicago where he quickly learned to live and die with the White Sox. Died a little when they lost the 1919 World Series, died a lot the following summer when 8 members of the team were accused of throwing that series. He played in the minors for a year or two but nothing ever came of it. Moved to Brooklyn in '35, married mom in '38 and was already an old man working at the naval yards when I was born in 1952. My name's Ray Kinsella. Mom died when I was three and I suppose dad did the best he could. Instead of Mother Goose, I was put to bed at night with stories of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the great "Shoeless" Joe Jackson. Dad was a Yankees fan then so, of course, I rooted for Brooklyn. But in '58 the Dodgers moved away and we had to find other things to fight about. We did. And when it came time to go to college, I picked the farthest one away from home I could find. [Ray is seen on the University of California, Berkeley campus] This of course drove him right up the wall which, I suppose, was the point. Officially my major was English but, really, it was the '60s. I marched, I smoked some grass, I tried to like sitar music, and I met Annie. The only thing we had in common was that she came from Iowa and I had once heard of Iowa. After graduation we moved to the mid-west and stayed with her family as long as we could; almost a full afternoon. Annie and I got married in June of '74. Dad died that fall. A few years later, Karen was born. She smelled weird but, we loved her anyway. Then Annie got the crazy idea that she could talk me into buying a farm. I'm 36 years old, I love my family, I love baseball and I'm about to become a farmer. But until I heard the voice, I'd never done a crazy thing in my whole life."

"The Voice - Himself (per end credits)"

"Timothy Busfield - Mark"

"Burt Lancaster - Dr. Archibald 'Moonlight' Graham"

"James Earl Jones - Terence Mann (This character was derived from that of J. D. Salinger as portrayed in the story Shoeless Joe.)"

"Ray Liotta - Shoeless Joe Jackson"

"Gaby Hoffmann - Karin Kinsella"

"Amy Madigan - Annie Kinsella"

"Kevin Costner - Ray Kinsella"

"Pamela Stephenson - Mademoiselle Rimbaud"

"Gregory Hines - Flavius Josephus"

"Ron Carey - Swiftus Lazarus"

"Ten million years in the making. The truth, the whole truth, and everything, but the truth!"

"Cloris Leachman - Madame Defarge"

"Harvey Korman - Count de Monet"

"Madeline Kahn - Empress Nympho"

"Dom DeLuise - Emperor Nero"

"IN MEL WE TRVST"

"Mel Brooks - Moses, Comicus, Tomas de Torquemada, Louis XVI of France and Jacques le Garçon de Pisse"

"A little something to offend everyone..."

"Orson Welles - Narrator"

"Brooks casts his comedic eye at humanity's past and... seems to view our story as one of big guys keeping little guys down. To quote the film's most famous line: "It's good to be the king." ...King Louis XVI (Brooks) goes clay pigeon shooting with peasants, where a man is thrown in prison for saying the lower classes "ain't so bad" and where the Roman Senate angrily shouts "F**k the poor!" Brooks doesn't merely lampoon economic injustices. Sexism, racism, anti-Semitism and human cruelty in general are all satirized... If there is a running theme in Brooks' view of major historical events..., it is that people with money and power have great lives. For people without those things — or who belong to marginalized groups in general — life stinks. ..the genius of "History of the World" is that it manages to subtly convey Brooks' social critiques in the packaging of a zany Borscht Belt comedy. If climate change and pollution destroy the human race, and an alien civilization was to find just one work of art to understand the human condition, I can't think of anything better than "History of the World." This is not being said in jest. "History of the World" captures one of the greatest joys of human existence — the ability to laugh — even as it recounts some of the most important events in our collective story. Perhaps most significantly, it chronicles the stupidity and selfishness that will have led to our downfall."

"Mel Brook's History of the World - Part I shows its stripes right from the opening scene. In this Dawn of Man episode, apelike creatures rise up from the mud, learning to stand erect and reaching nobly toward the heavens. Then they begin bumping, grinding, rutting, gyrating and otherwise slipping back to the slime from whence they came. The movie, like these primitives, delights in being lowdown. Even by prehistoric standards, Mr. Brooks's latest comedy is especially crude... There are loads of familiarly funny gags in the film... But the movie is so sour that its humor is often undermined, because so many of the jokes are either mean-spirited or scatological, or both. Women are either explicitly predatory or stupidly decorative, and homosexuals are made fun of regularly. Bathroom jokes are everywhere. Flamboyantly bad taste, which Mr. Brooks raised to the level of supreme wit in his Springtime for Hitler number in The Producers, is this time just bad. A musical number about the Spanish Inquisition, with Mr. Brooks playing a torturer who merrily abuses Jews, is about as crashingly unfunny as a musical number can be...In Rome, we... watch a gladiator on an unemployment line, being asked... Did you kill last week? Did you try to kill last week?... As a waiter at the Last Supper, Mr. Brooks is seen asking the apostles whether they'd like separate checks. As Moses, addressed by the Lord, he mutters: Yes, I hear you, I hear you. A deaf man could hear you!"

"Andrew Sachs - Gerard"

"John Hurt - Jesus Christ"

"Charlie Callas - Soothsayer"

"Barry Levinson - Column Salesman"

"Hugh Hefner - Roman outside Temple of Eros"

"Paul Mazursky - Roman officer"

"Mary-Margaret Humes - Miriam"

"Bea Arthur - Dole office clerk"

"Sid Caesar - Chief Caveman"

"Shecky Greene - Marcus Vindictus"

"Andreas Voutsinas - Béarnaise"

"Spike Milligan - Monsieur Rimbaud"

"James Booth - Velasquez"

"Frank Welker - Narrator (voice)"

"Jorge Bolio - Pablito"

"Roberto Dumont as Ferraro"

"Carlos Bravo y Fernández - Don Luis Obispo"