Best Movie Quotes

Here are five of the best movie quotes ever, along with our insights into what make them such great quotes.

Although film is by nature a visual medium, ever since the advent of sound pictures in the 1920s, movie dialogue has been central to the storytelling capabilities of the art form. Good dialogue can make an average, been-there-done-that movie exceptional. Moreover, the best movie dialogue often comes in the form of a highly quotable snappy one-liner.

The best movie quotes are the ones that immortalize themselves in pop culture to the point where even those who haven't seen the film know the line. These lines of dialogue succinctly sum up not just the feel of the film they're in but also, like tiny time capsules, aspects of the cultural zeitgeist of the time.

Here are five of the best movie quotes, in no particular order, to come from American cinema, along with a brief description of the importance of each, that every student of American pop culture should know.

"Greetings and Salutations!" --Heathers 1988

The early pinnacle of Gen-X sarcasm, 1988's Heathers is most notable for launching the careers of both Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. A macabre ultra-black satirical comedy, the film tells the story of a high-school clique gone horribly wrong.

Slater's slacker opening to Ryder's jaded popular princess is both sardonic and seductive. It paves the way for both the film's dark trip down the path of gleeful teenaged self-destruction and the early 90's penchant for irony and rejection of the earnestness of the 1980s. Heathers opened the door for a near-decade's worth of half-humorous high school angst, influencing lesser movies such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Clueless.

"Conan, what is best in life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women." -- Conan the Barbarian 1982

Every American wanting to understand the cultural phenomenon that was Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s really must see John Milius's 1982 epic masterpiece of sword-and-sorcery cinema. Based on the novellas by Robert E. Howard, Conan made Ah-nuld into a household name.

The film is surprisingly artful for its ultra-cheesy subject matter, telling the story of Conan's rise to greatness from humble beginnings, eventually taking revenge for the murder of his family against the villainous Thulsa Doom (an awesomely be-wigged James Earl Jones). The movie is best appreciated knowing the future political career of Schwarzenegger. One can't help but imagine Governor Schwarzenegger repeating this line to himself in the mirror before giving a press conference.

"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster by your side, kid." -- Star Wars 1977

While most people know Star Wars for the main storyline involving Luke Skywalker and his father Anakin, the best movie quotes from the films actually come from Harrison Ford's Han Solo. The dashingly flippant anti-hero fueled the nascent lustful fantasies of every nerdish girl and who escaped the heat of the late seventies summertime in an air-conditioned movie theater.

Wearing snug trousers and an enticingly low-slung holster for his blaster, Han's snappy one-liners make for the coolest references to the Star Wars universe. This particular line demonstrates both the pragmatic nature of the character and the rejection of 70s-style mysticism in favor of embracing the coming technology of the 1980s.

"Plastics." -- The Graduate 1967

Perhaps the most jaded coming-of-age story ever told, The Graduate follows Benjamin Braddock (an achingly young Dustin Hoffman) as a disaffected college grad without the slightest idea what to do with his life. While the most famous line from this film is probably Hoffman's awkward, blushing question about whether or not Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson is trying to seduce him, it's the useless advice offered by his father's friend about pursuing a career in plastics that best sums up the film.

Hoffman's character represents all of the Baby Boomers, who at the time stood on the other side of perhaps the greatest generation gap to ever exist. In advising the disaffected graduate take up manufacturing plastics, the older man demonstrates his utter cluelessness in the face of alienation. "Plastic" here is not just a reference to objects of cheap lightweight trash destined to spend eternity in a landfill but also to the culture that would consider the creation of such objects a good thing. Benjamin Braddock rejects both.

"Ever since I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster." -- Goodfellas 1990

Martin Scorsese's 1990 epic masterpiece (for which he was robbed --robbed!-- of the Best Director Oscar) far surpasses Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy in terms of supplying some of the best movie quotes. Lively and brisk where the Godfather films are rigid and formal, Goodfellas tells the story not of a mafia kingpin but of low-level, working-class gangsters.

When Ray Liotta's Henry Hill starts reminiscing for Scorsese's audience, he's weaving a modern-day romance that will lead not just to the main character's downfall but also directly to angsty, thoughtful yet overly self-centered gangsters such as HBO's Tony Soprano, who sprang up in pop culture several years later. Liotta sings for us just as the real Hill sang for the F.B.I., and one of the more visually arresting pieces of American cinema unfolds before us.

So there you have it, five of the best movie quotes to ever appear in American cinema and the cultural contexts that make them so great. Like all such lists it's just a starting-off point for potential debate, and also fairly incomplete and arbitrary besides. Most moviegoers will find plenty to argue with in any list of this nature. However, the arguments are half the fun!

In any case, using these quotes as examples, and knowing what makes the best movie quotes so great, you can easily spark conversation at parties, use movie quotes in presentations, and generally just show off your pop culture knowledge. Next time you go to the movies, keep an ear open for pithy one-liners that might become the best movie quotes of the future. True movie buffs delight in mining the riches of movie dialogue for the best quotes, and now you can, too.

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