100 Best Movie Quotes of All Time (2026)

The most famous movie quotes of all time are short, instantly recognizable lines that have crossed over from film into everyday language — from “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” (Gone with the Wind, 1939) to “May the Force be with you” (Star Wars, 1977). This guide collects 100 of the best, organised by theme — love, life, death, war, family, friendship, sports, and comedy — with each line attributed to its film, character, and actor, and verified against the American Film Institute’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes canon. See also our broader collection of the best quotes of all time covering business, leadership, and life.

Top 10 Movie Quotes of All Time

1. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” — Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), 1939
2. “I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” — The Godfather, Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), 1972
3. “You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender.” — On the Waterfront, Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando), 1954
4. “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” — The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy (Judy Garland), 1939
5. “Here’s looking at you, kid.” — Casablanca, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), 1942
6. “Go ahead, make my day.” — Sudden Impact, Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood), 1983
7. “May the Force be with you.” — Star Wars, multiple characters, 1977
8. “You talkin’ to me?” — Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), 1976
9. “I’ll be back.” — The Terminator, The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), 1984
10. “My mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” — Forrest Gump, Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks), 1994

What Are the Best Movie Quotes by Genre?

The 100-entry guide below is organised by theme so you can jump straight to the genre that matters to you: Love, Life, Death, War, Home and Family, Friendship, Sports, Men, Women, and Humorous Movie Quotes. Each entry follows the format Film, Character (Actor), Year with attributions cross-checked against AFI and primary film sources.

The Full 100 — Best Movie Quotes by Genre

Obviously we'll all have our favorite movies and quotes from them. But here are 100 of the best movie quotes in my opinion. Hopefully you'll find one that you enjoy. Please leave a comment to share your own examples of great movie quotes with us and other readers.

Love

1. “Me? I’m scared of everything. I’m scared of what I saw, I’m scared of what I did, of who I am, and most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”

Dirty Dancing – Baby (Jennifer Grey)

2. “Listen to me, mister. You’re my knight in shining armor. Don’t forget it.”

On Golden Pond – Ethel (Katherine Hepburn)

3. “Don’t forget I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”

Notting Hill – Anna (Julia Roberts)

4. “There's a lot I don't understand about life. You meet thousands of people, and then you meet one person, and your life is changed forever.”

Love and Other Drugs – Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal)

5. "I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

When Harry Met Sally – Harry (Billy Crystal)

6. "It was like coming home, only to no home I’d ever known.  I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car, and I knew. It was like… magic."

Sleepless in Seattle – Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks)

7. “You stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far, I will find you.”

The Last of the Mohicans – Hawkeye (Daniel Day Lewis)

8. “Love is eternal. It has been the strongest motivation for human actions throughout history. Love is stronger than life.”

Laura – Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb)

9. “Love without faith is like religion without faith. It doesn’t amount to very much.”

Shanghai Express - Reverend Mr. Carmichael (Lawrence Grant)

10. “Sometimes, the only way to catch an uncatchable woman is to offer her a wedding ring.”

Big Fish – Ed Bloom (Albert Finney)

11. “You had me at hello.”

Jerry Maguire – Dorothy (Renée Zellweger)

12. “I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it.”

City of Angels – Seth (Nicolas Cage)

13. “Death cannot stop true love; it can only delay it a little while.”

The Princess Bride – Westley (Cary Elwes)

Life

14. "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Ferris Bueller's Day Off – Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick)

15. "Get busy living or get busy dying."

The Shawshank Redemption – Red (Morgan Freeman)

16. "My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

Forrest Gump – Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks)

17. “The worth of a life is not determined by a single failure or a solitary success.”

The Emperor’s Club – William Hundert (Kevin Kline)

18. “Yesterday’s gone and we can’t get it back.”

Lonesome Dove – Gus McCrae (Robert Duvall)

19. "Every man dies, but not every man really lives."

Braveheart – William Wallace (Mel Gibson)

20. "The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it".

The Lion King – Rafiki (Robert Guillaume)

21. "Life is not the amount of breaths you take. It's the moments that take your breath away.”

Hitch – Hitch (Will Smith)

22. “I figure life's a gift and I don't intend on wasting it. You don't know what hand you're gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you, to make each day count.”

Titanic – Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio)

23. “The old dreams were good dreams. They didn't work out, but I’m glad I had them.”

The Bridges of Madison County – Robert Kincaid (Clint Eastwood)

24. “Why are you trying so hard to fit in when you are born to stand out?”

What a Girl Wants – Ian Wallace (Oliver James)

Death

25. “Death – to blink for an exceptionally long period of time.”

Patch Adams – Patch Adams (Robin Williams)

26. “You can be mad as a mad dog at the way things went, you can swear and curse the fates. But when it comes to the end, you have to let go.”

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt)

27. “Dyin' ain't much of a living.”

The Outlaw Josey Wales – Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood)

28. “On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”

Fight Club – The Narrator (Edward Norton)

29. “When someone you love dies, you don't lose them all at once. You lose them in pieces over time, like how the mail stops coming.”

Simon Birch – Joe Wenteworth (Jim Carrey)

30. “Don't you be afraid, sweetheart. Death is just a part of life, something we're all destined to do.”

Forrest Gump – Mrs. Gump (Sally Field)

31. “If the rich could hire others to die for them we, the poor, would all make a nice living.”

Fiddler on the Roof – Mordcha (Shimen Ruskin)

32. “Honey, we all got to go sometime, reason or no reason. Dying’s as natural as living. The man who's too afraid to die is too afraid to live.”

The Misfits – Gay Langland (Clark Gable)

33. “A chap can’t pick the way he’ll die, or we’d all do better at it.”

Island in the Sun - Colonel Whittingham (John Williams)

34. “There is a time for everything – a time for being born and a time for coming of age. There is a time for death, too.”

I Remember Mama – Katrin (Barbara Bel Geddes)

War

35. “It is well to dream of glorious war in a snug armchair at home, but it is a very different thing to see it first-hand.”

Barry Lyndon – Narrator (Michael Hordern)

36. “War is young men dying and old men talking.”

Troy – Odysseus (Sean Bean)

37. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

Black Hawk Down – Screen Title

38. “Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

Patton – General George Patton (George C. Scott)

39. “War is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought.”

Dr. Strangelove – Brig. Gen. Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden)

40. “And what are you? So full of hate you want to go out and fight everybody! Because you’ve been whipped and chased by hounds. Well that might not be living, but it sure as hell ain’t dying. And dying’s been what these white boys have been doing for going on three years now! Dying by the thousands! Dying for you, fool! I know, ’cause I dug the graves. And all this time I keep askin’ myself, when, O Lord, when it’s gonna be our time?”

Glory – Sgt. Major John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman)

41. “We who have seen war, will never stop seeing it. In the silence of the night, we will always hear the screams.”

We Were Soldiers – Joe Galloway (Barry Pepper)

42. “When I get home people will ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? Why? You some kinda war junkie?" I won't say a god damn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you, and that's it. That's all it is.”

Black Hawk Down – ‘Hoot’ (Eric Bana)

43. “Every man who wages war believes God is on his side. I'll warrant God should often wonder who is on his.”

Cromwell – Oliver Cromwell (Richard Harris)

44. “The blight of war does not end when hostilities cease.”

The Birth of a Nation – Screen Title

45. “In my humble opinion, in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself.”

Crimson Tide – Lieutenant Commander Ron Hunter (Denzel Washington)

46. “You still think it's beautiful to die for your country. The first bombardment taught us better. When it comes to dying for country, it's better not to die at all.”

All Quiet on the Western Front – Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres)

47. “Peace is harder won than war.”

The Whistleblower – Bill Hynes (Liam Cunningham)

Home and Family

48. “A man who doesn't spend time with his family cannot be a real man.”

The God Father - Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando)

49. “The only thing permanent in life is family.”

Eat Pray Love – Landlady (Lucia Guzzardi)

50. “You’ll see when you move out. It just sort of happens one day and it’s just gone. And you can never get it back. It’s like you get homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. Maybe that’s all family really is, a group of people who miss the same imaginary place.”

Garden State – Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff)

51. “The best thing parents can do for their kids is just love each other.”

My Life - Anya Stasiuk (Romy Rosemont)

52. “In families there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.”

The Prince of Tides – Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte)

53. “It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.”

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt)

54. “I never realize how much I like being home unless I’ve been somewhere really different for awhile.”

Juno – Juno (Ellen Page)

55. “Why do we always expect home to stay the same. Nothing else does.”

Hearts in Atlantis – Bobby Garfield (Anton Yelchin)

56. "I just love a house with pictures. It do make a home."

Driving Miss Daisy – Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman)

57. “A child has to belong to somewhere.”

Hugo – Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen)

Friendship

58. "Remember George, no man is a failure who has friends."

It’s A Wonderful Life – Clarence (in book inscription)

59. "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve."

Stand By Me – The Writer (Richard Dreyfus)

60. “Oh, you're the best friends anybody ever had. And it's funny, but I feel as if I'd known you all the time, but I couldn't have, could I?”

The Wizard of Oz – Dorothy (Judy Garland)

61. "It’s an insane world but in it there is one sanity, the loyalty of old friends."

Ben-Hur – Messala (Stephen Boyd)

62. “Good friends are one of life's blessings. Don't give them up without a fight.”

Harriet the Spy – Ole Golly (Rosie O'Donnell)

63. “You’ve not been very lucky with your relatives, have you? All the more reason to be choosy with your friends.”

Kidnapped – Alan Breck (Michael Caine)

64. "Friendship is much more lasting than love.”

Mildred Pierce – Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford)

65. “Only a true friend would be that truly honest.”

Shrek - Donkey (Eddie Murphy)

66. “It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.”

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris)

67. “I have a dream too, but it’s about singing and dancing and making people happy. It’s the kind of dream that gets better the more people you share it with. And I found a whole group of friends who have the same dream, and that makes us sort of like a family.”

The Muppet Movie - Kermit the Frog (Jim Henson)

68. “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Casablanca - Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart)

Sports

69. “It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”

A League of Their Own - Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks)

70. "I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure."

Chariots of Fire – Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson)

71. “Fear is not what's important, it's how you deal with it. It would be like asking a marathon runner if they feel pain. It's not a matter of whether you feel it, it's how you manage it.”

War Photographer – James Nachtwey (himself)

72. “A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without one, you'll never be enough with one.”

Cool Runnings - Irwin Blitzer (John Candy)

73. "Being perfect is not about that scoreboard out there. It's not about winning. It's about you and your relationship with yourself, your family and your friends. Being perfect is about being able to look your friends in the eye and know that you didnt let them down because you told them the truth. And that truth is you did everything you could. There wasnt one more thing you could've done. Can you live in that moment as best you can, with clear eyes, and love in your heart, with joy in your heart? If you can do that gentleman, you're perfect."

Friday Night Lights – Coach Gaines (Billy Bob Thorton)

74. "I don't care what the scoreboard says at the end of the game, in my book we're gonna be winners."

Hoosiers – Coach Dale (Gene Hackman)

75. "I love baseball. You know it doesn't have to mean anything, it's just beautiful to watch."

Zelig – Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen)

76. “Football is about controlling that anger, harnessing that aggression into a team effort to achieve perfection!”

Remember the Titans – Coach Boone (Denzel Washington)

77. “And I say to you gentlemen that this college is a failure. The trouble is we're neglecting football for education.”

Horse Feathers – Professor Wagstaff (Groucho Marx)

78. “Oh, it's a fine game, football - noble game. Originated in England in 1823…It moved to America where someone took advantage of a loophole in the rules, and invented a little formation called the Flying Wedge. So many young men were maimed and killed by this clever maneuver that President Roosevelt - Theodore Roosevelt - had to call the colleges together and ask them to make the game less brutal. He was, of course, defeated in the next election.”

Trouble Along the Way – Steve Williams (John Wayne)

79. “There's a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball, be the ball.”

Caddyshack – Ty Webb (Chevy Chase)

Men

80. “All a man needs in this life is someone to love. If you can’t give him that, give him something to hope for. If you can’t give him that, give him something to do.”

Flight of the Phoenix – Liddle (Scott Michael Campbell)

81. “Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they’re rather stupid.”

Mary Poppins – Mrs. Banks (Glynis Johns)

82. “Truly, for some men, nothing is written unless they write it.”

Lawrence of Arabia – Sherif Ali (Omar Sharif)

83. “A guy can change anything - his face, his home, his family, his girlfriend, his religion, his God. But there's one thing he can't change, he can't change his passion.”

The Secret in Their Eyes – Pablo Sandoval (Guillermo Francella)

84. “Everything I ever learnt as a small boy came from my father, and I never found anything he ever told me to be wrong or worthless. The simple lessons he taught me are as sharp and clear in my mind as if I had heard them only yesterday.”

How Green Was My Valley – Huw Morgan (Irving Pichel)

Women

85. "Every woman is a mystery to be solved."

Don Juan DeMarco - Don Juan DeMarco (Johnny Depp)

86. "The man is the head but the woman is the neck. She can turn the head any way she wants."

My Big Fat Greek Wedding - Maria Portokalos (Lainie Kazan)

87. "All women are wonders because they reduce all men to the obvious."

Out of the Past - Leonard Eels (Ken Niles)

88. “Beautiful women are invisible…we never actually see the person. We see the beautiful shell. We are blocked by the beauty barrier….We are so dazzled by the outside that we never make it inside.”

Elegy – George O’Hearn (Dennis Hopper)

89. "The key to a woman's heart is an unexpected gift at an unexpected time."

Finding Forrester - William Forrester (Sean Connery)

Humorous Movie Quotes

90. “I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time."

Monty Python and the Holy Grail – French Soldier (John Cleese)

91. “There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.”

Austin Powers in Goldmember – Nigel Powers (Michael Caine)

92. “You look so good with blond hair and black roots, it’s like not even funny.”

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion – Michele (Lisa Kudrow)

93. “All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work.”

Sgt. Bilko – Sergeant Ernest Bilko (Steve Martin)

94. “If I dressed like that, I'd have to kick my own ass.”

Happy Gilmore – Happy Gilmore (Adam Sandler)

95. “When women go wrong, men go right after them.”

She Done Him Wrong – Lady Lou (Mae West)

96. “I think most Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.”

So I Married an Axe Murderer – Charlie Mackenzie (Mike Myers)

97. “I was married. My husband cheated on me left and right. One day he tells me it's my fault he saw other women. So I picked up a knife, and told him it was his fault I was stabbing him.”

Living Out Loud – Liz Bailey (Queen Latifah)?

98. “There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?”

Airplane – Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty)

99. “Which reminds me of the time an Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman, a Vicar, a Rabbi and a Priest all go into a bar and the barman looks up and says 'Is this a joke?'”

Keeping Mum – Rev. Walter Goodfellow (Rowan Atkinson)

100. “If I'm not back in five minutes, just wait longer.”

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective – Ace Ventura (Jim Carrey)

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