Pop Culture Quotes

Pop Culture Quotes is an ongoing public interest project that shares quotes from the famous (and the infamous).

Untitled

You're standing right now with nine delegates from 100 gangs. And there's over a hundred more. That's 20,000 hardcore members. Forty-thousand, counting affiliates, and twenty-thousand more, not organized, but ready to fight: 60,000 soldiers! Now, there ain't but 20,000 police in the whole town. Can you dig it?

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By: Roger Hill
Characters: Cyrus
From: The Warriors
Genres: Cult Cinema

Context:
Gang overlord Cyrus says this to a sea of gang members meeting for a sort of "peace summit" in The Bronx, at the beginning of the Walter Hill film The Warriors. He called the conference in an attempt to unite all the gangs in the area.

Untitled

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'

Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"

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By: Peter Finch
Characters: Howard Beale
From: Network
Genres: Cult Cinema

Untitled

We use the guillotine in this country [France]. I have always imagined that the blade, coming down, causes no more than a slight tickling sensation on the back of the neck. It is only a guess, of course... I hope none of you ever finds out for certain.

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By: Jacques Marin
Characters: Police Inspector Edouard Grandpierre
From: Charade

Context:
Inspector Grandpierre (played by Jacques Marin) said that line to Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) and Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn), while investigating the murder of the mysterious Charles Lampert in Stanley Donen's classic whodunit Charade.