"[to Emily] Well, you're a good woman. You've done the morally right thing. God save us all from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half."

"No one gets moral unless they're trying to get something or get out of something."

"I don't want to know what's good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about the truth. I just want to know the momentary fact about things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual, it's sensual, it's alive. My idea of living sensual facts are you, a home, a country, a world, a universe. In that order. I want to know what I am, not what I should be."

"I'm not sentimental about war. I see nothing noble in widows."

"Dayton Lummis - Eddington"

"Joe Maross - Pete"

"Hugh Marlowe - Rev. Philip Garrison"

"John McIntire - Rev. John Pengilly"

"Edward Andrews - George F. Babbitt"

"Patti Page - Sister Rachel"

"Dean Jagger - William L. Morgan"

"Arthur Kennedy - Jim Lefferts"

"Jean Simmons - Sharon Falconer"

"Burt Lancaster - Elmer Gantry"

"Tell 'em, Gantry... save 'em from sin... lead 'em to salvation... tell 'em about everything - but not about your whiskey and your women!"

"You're all sinners... You'll all burn in hell!"

"If there was a dollar to be made - Gantry would make it... If there was a soul to be saved - Gantry would save it..."

"Clean-up man: Mister, I've been converted five times. Billy Sunday, Reverend Biederwolf, Gypsy Smith, and twice by Sister Falconer. I get terrible drunk, and then I get good and saved. Both of them done me a powerful lot of good - gettin' drunk and gettin' saved. Well, good night."

"Lady in red on Christmas Eve: That's the trouble with this stinking world. Nobody loves nobody."

"George Babbitt: Besides, I'm for a free press, for free enterprise... and for whatever the hell the other freedoms are!"

"Sister Sharon Falconer: But tonight is a thousand years away."

"Oh, he gave me special instructions back of the pulpit Christmas Eve. He got to howlin' "Repent! Repent!" and I got to moanin' "Save me! Save me!" and the first thing I know he rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man's footsteps!"

"As long as I got a foot, I'll kick booze. And, as long as I got a fist, I'll punch it. And, as long as I got a tooth, I'll bite it. And, when I'm old and gray and toothless and bootless, I'll gum it till I go to heaven and booze goes to hell."

"I was accosted by three painted women. Your streets are made unsafe by shameless, diseased hussies, rapacious pick-pockets, and insidious opium-smokers."

"I have here in my pocket - and thank heaven you can't see them - lewd, dirty, obscene, and I'm ashamed to say this: French postcards. They were sold to me in front of your own innocent high school by a man with a black beard... a foreigner."

"Sin. Sin, Sin. You're all sinners. You're all doomed to perdition. You're all goin' to the painful, stinkin', scaldin', everlastin' tortures of a fiery hell, created by God for sinners, unless, unless, unless you repent."

"You think, uh, religion is for suckers and easy marks and molly-coddlers, eh? You think Jesus was some kind of a sissy, hey? Well, let me tell you, Jesus wouldn't be afraid to walk into this joint or any other speakeasy to preach the gospel. Jesus had guts. He wasn't afraid of the whole Roman army. [Pointing to a picture] Think that quarterback's hot stuff? Well, let me tell you, Jesus would have made the best little All-American quarterback in the history of football. Jesus was a real fighter - the best little scrapper, pound for pound, you ever saw. And why, gentlemen? Love, gentlemen. Jesus had love in both fists! And what is love? Love is the mornin' and the evenin' star. It shines on the cradle of the Babe. Hear ye, sinners. Love is the inspiration of poets and philosophers. Love is the voice of music. I'm talkin' about divine love - not carnal love."

"Bill Baldwin - Sports announcer"

"Ted Beniades - Bartender"

"Angelique Pettyjohn - Go-Go dancer"

"Iris Adrian - Waitress"

"Billie Bird - Chamber maid"

"Carole Shelley - Gwendolyn Pigeon"

"Monica Evans - Cecily Pigeon"

"Larry Haines - Speed"

"David Sheiner - Roy"

"Herb Edelman - Murray"

"John Fiedler - Vinnie"

"Jack Lemmon - Felix Ungar"

"Walter Matthau - Oscar Madison"

"Janet Margolin - Louise"

"Woody Allen - Virgil Starkwell"

"Mike O'Dowd - Michael Sullivan"

"Louise Lasser - Kay Lewis"

"Henry Leff - Father Starkwell"

"Dan Frazer - Julius Epstein the Psychiatrist"

"Ethel Sokolow - Mother Starkwell"

"Grace Bauer - Farm House Lady"