All Quotes

"A very large part of the population of Wales was English-speaking, and the English-speaking part had a contribution just as big, if not bigger, to make towards Welsh cultural life than the Welsh-speaking part. A great deal of the literature of which Welshmen were proud and a great deal of the poetry for which this generation would be noted had been written in English by Welshmen."

"There is only one hope for mankind, and that hope still remains in this little island. It is from here that we tell the world where to go and how to go there, but we must not follow behind the anarchy of American competitive capitalism which is unable to restrain itself at all, as is seen in the stockpiling that is now going on, and which denies to the economy of Great Britain even the means of carrying on our civil production."

"There is only one hope for mankind — and that is democratic Socialism."

"[I]t is seriously suggested that before this nation has shown its capacity to manage democratic institutions peacefully we should allow it to rearm. I say to America and the people of the world that we are not yet feeling safe enough to allow another German rearmament to take place."

"The Communist Party is the sworn inveterate enemy of the Socialist and Democratic Parties. When it associates with them, it does so as a preliminary to destroying them. There is an old German aphorism which says: "To cast an enemy out it is first necessary to embrace him." That is what the Communists mean when they ask for co-operation and alliance with the Socialists... The Communist does not look upon a Socialist as an ally in a common cause. He looks upon him as a dupe, as a temporary convenience, and as something to be thrust ruthlessly to one side when he has served his purpose."

"I am not anti-American...but I do not believe that the American nation has the experience, sagacity, or the self-restraint necessary for world leadership at this time. They are engaged in the most tremendous rearmament programme the world has ever seen, and I cannot see any sense in it, and no one has yet tried to put any sense in it. ... When are we going to have some sense of national pride and tell the United States that she cannot have Great Britain on any terms? The Americans would understand us. They like plain speaking. Why do we not speak plainly to them?"

"Now that we are engaged once more in policy-making it is essential that we should keep clear before us that one of the central principles of Socialism is the substitution of public for private ownership. There is no way round this."

"[L]ife would indeed be easy if it were always clear what our duty is. Usually there is a conflict of duties as there is of loyalties. In order to serve one you often have to abandon the others. I remember a man saying to me during the last war that he had no use for rebels. Then I asked him how he would describe a German living in Germany and working for the defeat of the Nazis? Judged by conventional standards, the man was a rebel and a traitor. But judged in the wider context of humanity he was a hero. All you can really say here is that a man ought not to betray his first loyalty. The fact is that few people do. The problem is one of deciding which is the first loyalty from among a number of competing ones. And the higher the intelligence, the wider the knowledge, the keener the imagination, then the more loyalties there will be competing for our allegiance, and of course, the deeper the spiritual struggle involved in sorting them out."

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."

"For the Jew, the immediacy of his remote past is an intimate reality. He is living among places whose names are enshrined in his racial literature and they make sweet music to his ears. From Dan to Beersheba, he can now make a journey – Nazareth, Galilee, Jerusalem, all these and so many more belong to him in a special sense, for they whisper in his blood, and evoke memories of a time that was, before he was compelled to seek shelter in reluctant lands. When therefore the Arab says that the Jew should find a home anywhere except in Palestine he asks something the Jew cannot concede without mutilating his racial personality beyond endurance. It is no answer to say that many centuries have passed into history since the Jew was at home in Palestine. If he had been permitted the security of a safe home elsewhere, the answer might do. But, as we know, it was not so."

"It is not necessary to spend time in formal greetings. Our presence is itself sufficient to show our support for the Chinese people’s revolution. As Mr Attlee has already said, the Labour movement’s reaction to the Chinese Revolution followed the example it set after the first world war when it rallied to the support of the Russian Revolution. It follows naturally that the struggle of the British workers in their own country against the forces of capitalism causes them to sympathise immediately with the struggles of the workers in other countries."

"The day of imperial power is over. We are ashamed of our imperial past in Great Britain, and you have a lot to be ashamed of, too."

"I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a kind of desiccated calculating-machine who must not in any way permit himself to be swayed by indignation. If he sees suffering, privation or injustice, he must not allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of the lack of proper education or of absence of self-control. He must speak in calm and objective accents and talk about a dying child in the same way as he would about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine."

"Damn it all, you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver."

"If the Labour Party is not going to be a Socialist Party, I don't want to lead it."

"Nasser's a thug. He needs to be taught a lesson."

"Bevan described the proposal for a free trade market for Europe as a "will-of-the-wisp" which they were expected to spend their time following in Westminster. The whole idea was purely a nineteenth-century conception."

"Oh you English are SO superior aren't you? Well, would you like to know where you'd be without US the good old U.S. of A. to protect you? I'll tell you. The smallest fucking province in the Russian Empire, that's where! So DON'T call me stupid, lady. Just THANK me! ...If it wasn't for us, you'd all be speaking German, singing, "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!""

"[On finding George has moved the jewels, forestalling his and Wanda's attempted double-cross] Okay...Okay... DISAPPOINTED!!! Son of a bitch! What do you have to do in this life to make people trust you?!?!...People are always takin' advantage of me."

"You English! You think you're so superior, don't you? Well you're the filth of the planet! A bunch of pompous, badly dressed, poverty stricken, sexually repressed football hooligans!"

"[repeated] Don't call me stupid."

"Oh look, it's K-K-Ken! C-C-Coming to k-k-kill me! How you gonna c-c-catch me, K-K-Ken?"

"[to Otto] To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people. I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs!"

"[to Otto] Even if you were my brother, I'd still want to fuck you."

"[to Otto] I knew you'd come along and fuck it up! I was dealing with something delicate. I'm setting up a guy who's important to us, who'll tell me where the loot is and if you'll be arrested, and you come loping in like Rambo without a jock strap and you dangle him out a fifth-floor window! Now, was that smart? Was it shrewd? Was it good tactics? Or was it stupid?"

"John Cleese - Archie Leach"

"Jamie Lee Curtis - Wanda Gershwitz"

"Kevin Kline - Otto"

"Michael Palin - Ken Pile"

"Maria Aitken - Wendy"

"Tom Georgeson - Georges Thomason"

"You think you're big time? You're gonna fuckin' DIE big time!"

"Somebody’s pullin’ me close to the ground. I can sense, but I can’t see. I ain’t panicked, I been here before. Same as when I got popped on 104th Street. Don’t take me to no hospital, please. Fuckin’ emergency rooms don’t save nobody. Sons of bitches always pop you at midnight when all they got is a Chinese intern with a dull spoon. Look at these suckers scramblin' around. What for? My Puerto Rican ass ain't supposed to have made it this far. Most of my crew got washed a long time ago. Don't worry. My heart, it don't ever quit. I ain't ready to check out. Seems like I just got out of the joint. Stood up in front of that judge, and told him what was who."

"Your Honor with all due respect, past and present, and without further to-do. Let me ensure this court that I am through walkin’ on the wild side. That’s all I’ve been tryin’ to tell you. I have been sick with the social ills known in the ghetto. But my time in the sterling correction facilities of Green Haven and Sing Sing have not been in vain. I’ve been cured! Born again, like the Watergaters. I know you heard this rap before. Your Honor, I mean it. This is the truth. I changed. I changed, and it didn’t take no thirty years like Your Honor thought, but only five. That’s right, sir, five years. And look at me. Completely rehabilitated, reinvigorated, reassimilated and finally going to be relocated, and I want to thank a lot of people for that. I look over there and I see that man there, Mr Norwalk. I want to thank you, sir, for making the tapes in an illegal fashion. I would like to thank the Court Of Appeals, for reversing you, Your Honour. And I want to thank Almighty God without whom no case gets tossed."

"No favor. I owe you. Favor gonna kill you faster than a bullet."

"Here’s me back on the street. Third Sunday in August. Old Timer’s Day in the barrio. Nothin’ left. Like them old cowboy movies, only instead of tumbleweed and cow dung we got stripped car wrecks and dog shit."

"I’M RELOADED! Come on in here, motherfuckers! Come on, I’m waitin’ for ya! You ain’t comin’ in? I’m comin’ out! You’re up against it now, motherfuckers! I’m gonna blow your fuckin’ brains out! You think you’re big time? You’re gonna fuckin’ die big time! You ready? Here comes the pain!"

"Oh, Jesus. Jesus Christ, look at you. You said they were friends, Guajiro. But there ain’t no friends in this shit business."

"Times have changed. What happened to the miniskirts? Where’s all that marijuana? Now everything is platforms, cocaine, and dances I don’t dance. What a man gotta come to when he loses five years."

"This guy, this counsellor in Lewisburg, Mr Seawald, once said to me: “Charlie, you run out of steam. You can’t sprint all the way. You gotta stop sometime. You can’t buck it forever. It catches up to you. It gets you. You don’t get reformed, you just run out of wind.”"

"Okay, Benny Blanco from the Bronx. The chick Steffie belongs to the club. Now if I ever, I mean if I ever, see you here again you die, just like that."

"Dumb move, man. Dumb move. But it’s like them old reflexes comin’ back. I know what’s supposed to happen now. Benny’s gotta go down. And if I don’t do it, they’re gonna say: “Carlito, he’s flaky, man. Slacked-out. A used-to-be bad guy. Joint got to Carlito.” The street is watchin’. She is watchin’ all the time."

"Guys went down, yeah, but it ain’t like, you know, you just decide one day and that’s it. No. You just do what you gotta do to survive. Somehow, you know, you just end up where you are."

"Dave is my friend, Gail. I owe him. That’s who I am, That’s what I am, right or wrong. I can’t change that!"

"You ain’t a lawyer no more, Dave. You’re a gangster now. You’re on the other side. Whole new ball game. You can’t learn about it at school, and you can’t have a late start."

"When you can’t see the angles no more, you’re in trouble, baby. You’re in trouble."

"The dream don't come no closer by itself. We gotta run after it now."

"[last words of the movie] Sorry, boys, all the stitches in the world can’t sew me together again... Lay down. Lay down. Gonna stretch me out in Fernandez Funeral Home on 109th street... Always knew I’d make a stop there, but a lot later than a whole gang of people thought. Last of the Mo-Rican’s. Well, maybe not the last. Gail’s gonna be a good mom. New, improved Carlito Brigante. Hope she uses the money to get out. No room in this city for big hearts like hers... Sorry, baby, I tried the best I could. Honest. Can’t come with me on this trip, though... Gettin’ the shakes now. Last call for drinks. Bar’s closin’ down. Sun’s out. Where we goin’ for breakfast? Don’t wanna go far... Rough night. Tired, baby... Tired..."

"Hey, look, relax. You’re not dealing so he can’t have anything on you. That’s not possible. This is the way this guy is. He’s on a goddamn fishing exhibition."

"Fuck you and your self-righteous code of the goddamned street. Did it pull you out of a thirty-year stint in five years? Did it? No, I did. Did it get you acquitted four fucking times? No, it didn't, I did. So fuck you, fuck the streets, your whole goddamn world is this big, and there's only one rule - you save your own ass."