All Quotes

"Go on your way, father, rejoicing that with every step you may recall your valour."

"Men of Macedon, we're going home."

"May all those who come here after us know when they see this altar, that titans were once here."

"Don't leave me Hephaestion!"

"My poor, poor, ill-fated son."

"No one, not my vilest enemy, has ever spoken like you to me!"

"Cleitus spoke true. I am a tyrant."

"Damn your sorceress soul! Keeping me like one of your snakes! I told you not! I told you not!"

"(of Bucephalus) Who would want such a beast? I already have a wife!"

"A king isn't born, Alexander, he is made. By steel and by suffering. A king must know how to hurt those he loves. It's lonely. Ask Heracles. Ask any of them. Fate is cruel. No man or woman can be too powerful or too beautiful without disaster befalling. They laugh when you rise too high and crush everything you've built with a whim. What glory they give in the end, they take away. They... They make of us slaves."

"It was a Iron Age. Blood-feuds. Fathers feared their son's treachery and would eat them."

"You dream of glory Alexander. Your mother encourages you. But there's no glory without suffering and this she will not allow."

"All your life, beware of women. They are far more dangerous than men."

"(enraged at Alexander) Get out of my palace! You're exiled, you bastard! Banished from the land. You're not welcome here! You're no son of mine!"

"All greatness comes from loss. Even you the gods will one day judge harshly."

"None will tell you this but your father: Men hate the gods! The only reason we worship any of them is because we fear worse. The Titans."

"There's only one thing better than winning a battle, son, and that's the taste of a new woman! You'll find it far sweeter than self pity."

"I'll marry the girl if I want and I'll have as many sons as I want and there's nothing you or your harpie mother can do about it!"

"By Ares chains he's got balls. I mean give the man his due, Parmenion. And lads, feast tonight for tomorrow we will dine in Hades."

"Pay attention lad, your father's still watching over you!"

"I'll toast to Bagoas. And the 30,000 beautiful Persian boys were training to fight in this great army. And to memory of Phillip, had he lived to see his Macedonians transformed into such a pretty army."

"Herakles did it by himself. Did you conquer Asia by yourself, Alexander? I mean, who planned the Asian invasion while you were being spanked on your bottom by my sister Lanike? Was it not your father? Or is his blood no longer good enough?"

"What freedom is this to bow before you?"

"Doesn't your great pride fear the gods any longer."

"I don't serve your purpose?! What was I serving when I saved your puppy-life at Gaugamela?! Were you Zeus' boy?! What if I left you to die in the dust there? You think we'd be forced now to mate with brown apes?!!!"

"Evil tyrant you are! Evil tyrant you've become Alexander."

"What about poor Parmenion?!"

"Hear what I say, guess what, false king!"

"It was said later that Alexander was never defeated, except by Hephaistion's thighs."

"All men reach and fall..."

"Alexander once said to me that we are most alone when we are with the myths."

"He was a god, Cadmus, or as close as anything I've ever seen. Tyrant, they yell so easily. I laugh; no tyrant ever gave back so much. What do they know of the world, these school boys? It takes strong men to rule. Alexander was more; he was Prometheus, a friend to man. He changed the world."

"Before him there were tribes, after him all was possible. There was suddenly a sense the world could be ruled by one king and be better for all. Eighteen great Alexandrias he built across this world."

"It was an empire, not of land and gold, but of the mind. It was a Hellenic civilization, open to all."

"Did such a man as Alexander exist? Of course not! We idolize him; make him better than he was."

"It was mad; 40,000 of us against 250,000 barbarians!"

"In Egypt and oracle in the desert had declared Alexander the true son of Zeus. It was a myth, of course. At least it started as a myth. I was there; I saw his eyes."

"(when asked if he has found his home) More and more I think it will be Alexandria."

"I never believed in his dream. None of us did. That’s the truth of his life. The dreamers exhaust us. They must die before they kill us with their blasted dreams."

"The truth is we did kill him... By silence we consented. What, by Ares, did we have to look forward to but to be discarded in the end, like Cleitus?"

"By the tenth of June, a month short of his 33rd year, Alexander's great heart finally gave up, and, as he vowed, he joined Hephaistion."

"But in his short life he achieved without doubt, the mythic glory of his ancestor Achilles, and more."

"Within hours, we were fighting like jackals for his corpse."

"(final words of the film) His tragedy was one of increasing loneliness and impatience with those who could not understand. And if his desire to unite Greek and barbarian ended in failure... what failure! His failure towered over other men's successes. I've lived... I've lived a long life, Cadmos. But the glory and the memory of man will always belong to the ones who follow their great visions. And the greatest of these is the one they now... call "Megas Alexandros" - the greatest Alexander of them all."

"My king, I'm a fightin' man. I like no belly-aching, I won't tolerate it in any of my units."

"I lost many a man. Young ones, never been with a woman. Some died of disease. Some were butchered in Scythia by the banks of the Oxus. Some died good. Some just didn’t get no luck. But they died. Forty thousand I come over with eight years ago. And we march after you more than 10,000 miles. In the rain and in the sun, we fought for you. Some of us 50 battles we’ve been in. And we killed many a barbarian. And now, when I look around, how many of them faces do I see?"

"All you desire! The world is yours! Take it..."

"(Of Philip) He calls me a barbarian! He makes a mockery of Dionysus every night."

"In my womb I carried my avenger!"

"You will be nineteen this summer and the girls already say you don't like them, you like Hephaistion more. I understand it is natural for a young man."