"Two millennia ago...in his conquest of the known world, Alexander the Great slaughtered more than one million human beings. Three centuries later, purely out of jealousy, Gaius Germanicus, "Caligula", murdered his own sister, impregnated with his own child."

"The concept of identical environment construction allows each of us to head confidently into each moment with all the secure knowledge it has been lived before."

"...intrinsically, humans, as creatures of the Earth were drawn inherently always back to one thing—war. And thus we seek to correct not the symptom but the disease itself. We have sought to shrug off individuality, replacing it with conformity. Replacing it... with sameness... with unity, allowing each man, woman, and child in this great society to lead identical lives."

"It's my job to know what you're thinking."

"I told you I'd make my career with you, Preston."

"Mind the uniform, cleric. I plan to be wearing it for a long time... (moments before being killed by Preston)"

"You ask him for it. (in response to the interrogator's question: "What, would you say, is the easiest way to get a weapon away from a Grammaton Cleric?")"

"Cleric, I can only hope one day to be as uncompromising as you."

"You clean, we'll sweep."

"It's just a vestigial word for a feeling you've never felt. - After Cleric Preston claims to be sorry"

"I assume you dream Preston?"

"But I being poor, have only my dreams, I have spread my dreams under your feet, tread softly because you tread on my dreams. (reading Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven - W.B. Yeats)"

"...without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock ticking."

"Its circular. You exist to continue your existence. What's the point?"

"I pay it gladly."

"I didn't feel anything."

"Tetragrammaton. There's nothing we can't do."

"Then you know what I'm going to do now?"

"Look at you! [Pause, then to himself] Look at you..."

"[After being taunted by DuPont, who is really Father] No. Not without incident."

"...a single inescapable fact—that mankind united with infinitely greater purpose in pursuit of war...than he ever did in pursuit of peace."

"In the first years of the 21st century, a third World War broke out. Those of us who survived knew mankind could never survive a fourth; that our own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So we have created a new arm of the law: The Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of man's inhumanity to man - his ability to feel."

"Prozium - The great nepenthe. Opiate of our masses. Glue of our great society. Salve and salvation, it has delivered us from pathos, from sorrow, the deepest chasms of melancholy and hate. With it, we anesthetize grief, annihilate jealousy, obliterate rage. Those sister impulses towards joy, love, and elation are anesthetized in stride, we accept as fair sacrifice. For we embrace Prozium in its unifying fullness and all that it has done to make us great."

"Libria, I congratulate you. At last peace reigns in the heart of man. At last war is but a word whose meaning fades from our understanding. At last, we are whole. Librians, there is a disease in the heart of man. Its symptom is hate. Its symptom is anger. Its symptom is rage. Its symptom is war. The disease is human emotion. But Libria, I congratulate you, for there is a cure for this disease. At the cost of the dizzying highs of human emotion, we have suppressed its abysmal lows. And you, as a society, have embraced this cure: Prozium. Now we are at peace with ourselves and human kind is one. War is gone. Hate, a memory. We are our own conscience now, and it is this conscience that guides us to rate EC-10, for emotional content, all those things that might tempt us to feel, again, and destroy them. Librians, you have won. Against all odds, and your own natures. You, have, survived."

"The Gun Kata. Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element. The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents while keeping the defender clear of the statistically traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%. The difference of a 63% increase to lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly."

"You really should learn to knock."

"A nearly unforgivable lapse, Cleric. I trust you'll be more vigilant in the future."

"Be careful, Preston. You're treading on my dreams."

"It's not the message that is important but our obedience to it."

"[about Brandt] Take him to the Hall of Destruction for summary judgment and combustion."

"We have a network that's larger than you could ever imagine. Instant word comes that Father is dead, that the Council is leaderless. Bombs that have already been planted will be set off at Prozium clinics and factories around Libria. If we can succeed in disrupting the supply for even one day—one day—our cause will be won by human nature itself."

"I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue — rich in irony, and most satirical. It is set deep in a possible future, so none of these events have yet occurred, but they may. Be warned, lest you end as I. In this tale, I am a fake god by occupation and a magician by inclination. Merlin is my hero. I am the puppet master. I manipulate many of the characters and events that you see. But I am invented, too, for your entertainment and amusement. And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? [chuckles] Is God in show business, too?"

"Into a world of eternal life, he brought the gift of death."

"I have seen the future and it doesn't work."

"Beyond 1984, Beyond 2001, Beyond Love, Beyond Death."

"For the finale of my 1974 film Zardoz, I wanted to shoot a scene of Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling in which they age and die. This involved shooting with a fixed camera, so that we could take them out, age their clothes and faces, put them back in, shoot them a bit more, then take them out and age them further, until eventually they were skeletons that, in turn, crumbled away. This process took an entire day. Then, the camera assistant unloaded the camera and accidentally exposed the film to the light. This meant we had to spend another whole day shooting it. I also had to restrain Connery from killing the assistant – who soon afterwards changed his name and moved to Los Angeles. I spied him in a cafe in LA one day. “Is Sean in town?” he asked, with a quivering voice."

"Um, it was the 70’s, and I was doing a lot of drugs. Frankly, even I’m not entirely sure what parts of the movie are about."

"[A] genuinely quirky movie, a trip into a future that seems ruled by perpetually stoned set decorators ... The movie is an exercise in self-indulgence (if often an interesting one) by Boorman, who more or less had carte blanche to do a personal project after his immensely successful Deliverance."

"We seal ourselves herewith into this place of learning. Death is banished for ever. I direct that the Tabernacle erase from us all memories of its construction, so we can never destroy it if we should ever crave for death. Here, man and the sum of his knowledge will never die, but go forward to perfection."

"It's an ark. A ship. A spaceship. All this technology was for travel to the distant stars."

"[after Zed shoots the crystal] You have destroyed us. You found the flaw in the crystal. We are gone. You... are alone."

"You have penetrated me. There is no escape. You are within me. Come into my centre... Come into the centre of the crystal."

"Refraction of light. Infinite."

"Sleep was necessary for man when his waking and unconscious lives were separated. As eternals achieved total consciousness, sleep became obsolete, and second level meditation took its place."