"Thank you all for coming in a little early this morning. I know yesterday was pretty bad, and I wish I could say that today is going to be less so, but that isn't going to be the case. Now, I'm supposed to read this statement to you all here, but why don't you just read it on your own time, and I'll just tell you what the fuck is going on here. I've been here all night, meeting with the Executive Committee, and the decision has been made to unwind a considerable position of the firm's holdings in several key asset classes. The crux of it is, in the firm's thinking, the party's over as of this morning. There's going to be considerable turmoil in markets for the foreseeable future, and they believe it is better that this turmoil begins with us. As a result, the firm has decided to liquidate its majority position of fixed-income MBS … today. These are your packets; you will see what accounts you're responsible for today. I'm sure it hasn't taken you long to understand the implications of this sale on your relationships with your counterparties and, as a result, on your careers. I have expressed this reality to the Executive Committee, and they understand. As a result, if you achieve a 93% sale of your assets, you will receive a $1.4 million one-off bonus. If the floor, as a whole, achieves a 93% sale, you will get an additional $1.3 million apiece. For those of you who have never been through this before, this is what the beginning of a fire sale looks like. I cannot begin to tell you how important the first hour and a half is going to be. I want you to hit every bite you can find: dealers, brokers, clients, your mother if she's buying. And no swaps; it's outgoing only, today. Obviously, this is not going down the way that any of us would have hoped, but … the ground is shifting below our feet. And, apparently, there's no other way out."

"I'll do it, John, but not because of your little speech. But because I need the money. Hard to believe after all these years, but I... I need the money."

"So you think we might have put a few people out of business today. That it's all for naught. You've been doing that every day for almost forty years, Sam. And if this is all for naught, then so is everything out there. [points to the skyline of New York City] It's just money; it's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong. And it's certainly no different today than it's ever been. 1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987—Jesus, didn't that fucker fuck me up good—92, 97, 2000 and whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over; we can't help ourselves. And you and I can't control it or stop it, or even slow it, or even ever-so-slightly alter it. We just react. And we make a lot of money if we get it right. And we get left by the side of the road if we get it wrong. And there have always been and there always will be the same percentage of winners and losers, happy fuckers and sad suckers, fat cats and starving dogs in this world. Yeah, there may be more of us today than there's ever been, but the percentages—they stay exactly the same."

"Look at these people. Wandering around with absolutely no idea what's about to happen."

"I run Risk Management. I don't really see how that's a natural place to start cutting jobs."

"There are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat. Now, I don't cheat. And although I like to think we have some pretty smart people in this building, it sure is a hell of a lot easier to just be first."

"Do you know I built a bridge once? ... I was an engineer by trade... It went from Dilles Bottom, Ohio to Moundsville, West Virginia. It spanned nine hundred and twelve feet above the Ohio River. Twelve thousand people used this thing a day. And it cut out thirty-five miles of driving each way between Wheeling and New Martinsville. That's a combined 847,000 miles of driving a day. Or 25,410,000 miles a month. And 304,920,000 miles a year. Saved. Now I completed that project in 1986, that's twenty-two years ago. So over the life of that one bridge, that's 6,708,240,000 miles that haven't had to be driven. At, what, let's say fifty miles an hour. So that's, what, 134,165,800 hours, or 559,020 days. So that one little bridge has saved the people of those communities a combined 1,531 years of their lives not wasted in a fucking car. One thousand five hundred and thirty-one years."

"You know, the feeling that people experience when they stand on the edge like this isn't the fear of falling—it's the fear that they might jump."

"Hey, Eric? Don't beat yourself too much about this stuff, all right? Some people like taking the long way home. Who the fuck knows?"

"[Telling Seth he's likely going to be laid off] Listen, nothing I'm gonna say is going to make you feel any better. It's just going to suck for a while, and then you'll be fine."

"Please, speak as you might to a young child or a Golden Retriever. It wasn't brains that got me here, I can assure you that."

"Penelope Ann Miller - Kate Sullivan"

"Piper Laurie - Bea Sullivan"

"Gregory Peck - Andrew Jorgensen"

"There's no deal to be made with predators. You kill it or it kills you."

"Danny DeVito - Lawrence "Larry the Liquidator" Garfield"

"Dean Jones - Bill Cole"

"This proud company, which has survived the death of its founder, numerous recessions, one major depression, and two world wars, is in imminent danger of self-destructing - on this day, in the town of its birth. There is the instrument of our destruction. I want you to look at him in all of his glory, Larry 'The Liquidator,' the entrepreneur of post-industrial America, playing God with other people's money. The Robber Barons of old at least left something tangible in their wake - a coal mine, a railroad, banks. This man leaves nothing. He creates nothing. He builds nothing. He runs nothing. And in his wake lies nothing but a blizzard of paper to cover the pain. Oh, if he said, 'I know how to run your business better than you', that would be something worth talking about. But he's not saying that. He's saying, 'I'm gonna kill you because at this particular moment in time, you're worth more dead than alive.' Well, maybe that's true, but it is also true that one day, this industry will turn. One day when the yen is weaker, the dollar is stronger, or, when we finally begin to rebuild our roads, our bridges, the infrastructure of our country, demand will skyrocket. And when those things happen, we will still be here, stronger because of our ordeal, stronger because we have survived. And the price of our stock will make his offer pale by comparison. God save us if we vote to take his paltry few dollars and run. God save this country if that is truly the wave of the future. We will then have become a nation that makes nothing but hamburgers, creates nothing but lawyers, and sells nothing but tax shelters. And if we are at that point in this country, where we kill something because at the moment it's worth more dead than alive - well, take a look around. Look at your neighbor. Look at your neighbor. You won't kill him, will you? No. It's called murder and it's illegal. Well, this too is murder - on a mass scale. Only on Wall Street, they call it 'maximizing share-holder value' and they call it 'legal.' And they substitute dollar bills where a conscience should be. Damn it! A business is worth more than the price of its stock. It's the place where we earn our living, where we meet our friends, dream our dreams. It is, in every sense, the very fabric that binds our society together. So let us now, at this meeting, say to every Garfield in the land, 'Here, we build things. We don't destroy them. Here, we care about more than the price of our stock! Here, we care about people.' Thank you."

"I love money. I love money more than I love the things it can buy. Does that surprise you? Money, it don't care whether I'm good or not. It don't care whether I snore or not. It don't care which god I pray to. There are only three things in this world with that kind of unconditional acceptance: dogs, doughnuts and money. Only money is better. You know why? Because it don't make you fat and it don't poop all over the living room floor. There's only one thing I like better. Other people's money."

"[circling a conference room] TRO? Temporary Restraining Order? Thank you very much. Some crew I've got. Seventeen lawyers on retainer, and you've managed to work it out so that, in a free market, in a so-called free country, I can't buy some some shit-ass stock every other asshole can buy. Congratulations, you're destroying the capitalist system! While everybody else in the world is embracing it, my boys and girls are fucking it up. You know what happens when capitalism gets fucked up? The communists come back! They come out of the bushes, don't kid yourselves, they're waiting in there. But maybe that's not so bad, 'cause you know what happens when the commies take over? The first thing they do is shoot all the lawyers! And if they miss any of you, I'll do it myself. Now, let's see if we can get this small-town judge to change his fucking mind!"

"R. D. Call - Arthur"

"[after Jorgenson's speech] Amen, and amen, and amen. You'll have to forgive me, I'm not familiar with the local custom. Where I come from, you always say 'Amen' after you hear a prayer. Because that's what you just heard - a prayer. Where I come from, that particular prayer is called 'The Prayer for the Dead.' You just heard The Prayer for the Dead, my fellow stockholders, and you didn't say, 'Amen.' This company is dead. I didn't kill it. Don't blame me. It was dead when I got here. It's too late for prayers. For even if the prayers were answered, and a miracle occurred, and the yen did this, and the dollar did that, and the infrastructure did the other thing, we would still be dead! You know why? Fiber optics. New technologies. Obsolescence. We're dead, alright. We're just not broke. And do you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow, but sure.You know, at one time, there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best god-damn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let's have the intelligence, let's have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future! 'Ah, but we can't,' goes the prayer. 'We can't because we have responsibility, a responsibility to our employees, to our community. What will happen to them?' I got two words for that - 'Who cares?' Care about them? Why? They didn't care about you. They sucked you dry. You have no responsibility to them. For the last ten years, this company bled your money. Did this community ever say, 'We know times are tough. We'll lower taxes, reduce water and sewer.' Check it out: You're paying twice what you did ten years ago. And our devoted employees, who have taken no increases for the past three years, are still making twice what they made ten years ago. And our stock - one-sixth of what it was ten years ago. 'Who cares?' I'll tell ya -- Me.I'm not your best friend. I'm your only friend. I don't make anything? I'm makin' you money. And lest we forget, that's the only reason any of you became stockholders in the first place. You wanna make money! You don't care if they manufacture wire and cable, fried chicken, or grow tangerines! You wanna make money! I'm the only friend you've got. I'm makin' you money. Take the money. Invest it somewhere else. Maybe, maybe you'll get lucky and it'll be used productively. And if it is, you'll create new jobs and provide a service for the economy and, God forbid, even make a few bucks for yourselves. And if anybody asks, tell 'em ya gave at the plant. And by the way, it pleases me that I'm called 'Larry the Liquidator.' You know why, fellow stockholders? Because at my funeral, you'll leave with a smile on your face and a few bucks in your pocket. Now that's a funeral worth having!"

"Tom Aldredge - Ozzie"

"Mo Gaffney - Harriet"

"Charlie Sheen - Bud "Buddy" Fox"

"Jason Clarke - New York Fed Chief"

"Oliver Stone - Investor"

"John Buffalo Mailer - Robby"

"Frank Langella - Louis Zabel"

"Austin Pendleton - Dr. Masters"

"Susan Sarandon - Jake's Mother"

"Carey Mulligan - Winnie Gekko"

"Eli Wallach - Julius Steinhardt"

"Josh Brolin - Bretton James"

"Michael Douglas - Gordon Gekko"

"Shia LaBeouf - Jacob "Jake" Moore"

"If it weren't for people who took risks, where would we be in this world?"

"Sylvia Miles - Realtor"

"Payback. Except I'm not in that business anymore - because the one thing I learned in jail is that money is not the prime asset in life. Time is."