Quotes

[ Ambassador Tarentino, played by Louis Calhern, speaking :] This means war!

[ Chicolini, played by Chico Marx, speaking :] Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?

[ Rufus T. Firefly, played by Groucho Marx, speaking :] Will you marry me? Did he leave you any money? Answer the second question first.

[ Professor Wagstaff, played by Groucho Marx, speaking :]

[ Groucho Marx speaking after a woman says, “I don’t like this innuendo” :] That’s what I always say. Love flies out the door when money comes innuendo.

[ Groucho Marx speaking :] Come, Kapellmeister, let the violas throb! My regiment leaves at dawn.

[ Groucho Marx, replying to the comment, “You’re awfully shy for a lawyer” :] You bet I’m shy. I’m a shyster lawyer.

[ Groucho Marx speaking :] Do you suppose I could buy back my introduction to you?

[ Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding, played by Groucho Marx, singing :] Hello, I must be going.

[ Mrs. Whitehead, played by Margaret Irving, speaking :] Why, that’s bigamy.

[ Line repeatedly spoken by Chico Marx when Groucho Marx refers to a viaduct:] Why a duck?

[ Hammer, played by Groucho Marx, speaking :] I’ll meet you tonight under the moon. Oh, I can see you now, you and the moon. You wear a necktie so I’ll know you.

[Our objective is to prevent] the annexation of the nations of our America by the unruly and brutal North which despises them. I have lived in the bowels of the beast and I know it from the inside.

[ Hammer, played by Groucho Marx, speaking :] Three years ago I came to Florida without a nickel in my pocket. And now I’ve got a nickel in my pocket.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,

Hell hath no limits nor is circumscribed

Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.

[ “Last words” :] Money can’t buy life.

It is from Italy that we launch through the world this violently upsetting incendiary manifesto of ours. With it, today, we establish Futurism , because we want to free this land from its smelly gangrene of professors, archaeologists, ciceroni , and antiquarians. For too long Italy has been a dealer in secondhand clothes. We mean to free her from the numberless museums that cover her like so many graveyards.

We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace .

All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism; in no circumstance should they be allowed to spread unchecked.

Many people think it is impossible for the guerrilla to exist long in the enemy’s realm. Such a belief reveals a lack of understanding of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water and the latter to the fish that swim in it.

The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.

But then there comes that moment rare

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming. . . . This all sounds very strenuous and serious. But now that I have wrestled with it, it’s no longer so. I feel happy—deep down.

Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.

If nothing else is left, one must scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.

[ Remark after arriving in New York, N.Y., 21 Feb. 1938 :] Where I am, there is Germany.

Out of the experience of an extraordinary human disaster that lasted too long, must be born a society of which all humanity will be proud. . . . Never, never, and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

The extermination camps, in endeavoring to turn man into a beast, intimated that it is not life alone which makes him man.

Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu .

Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard .

And a rose, she lived as roses do, the space of a morn.

Tel qu’en Lui-Même enfin l’éternité le change .

What I want is to draw inspiration only from the truth. . . . My qualifications for this important role include a large head, an enormous nose, disappointment in love, and expectations of ill health.

Hating England is a form of self-defense. That kind of nationalism is nothing more than a local manifestation of a concern for human rights.

And nowhere, surely, should we discover more painful and absolute sacrifice. . . . The queen bids farewell to freedom, the light of day. . . . The workers give five or six years of their life, and shall never know love, or the joys of maternity.

Since a prince is constrained by necessity to know well how to use the beast, among [the beasts] he must choose the fox and the lion; because the lion does not defend itself from traps, the fox does not defend itself from the wolves. One therefore needs to be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to dismay the wolves.

From this springs a dispute: whether it is better to be loved than feared or the reverse. It is answered that one would want to be both; but, because it is difficult to force them together whenever one has to do without either of the two, it is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

Many have imagined for themselves republics and principalities that no one has ever seen or known to be in reality. Because how one ought to live is so far removed from how one lives that he who lets go of what is done for that which one ought to do sooner learns ruin than his own preservation.

Nothing is more difficult to transact, nor more dubious to succeed, nor more dangerous to manage, than to make oneself chief to introduce new orders. Because the introducer has for enemies all those whom the old orders benefit, and has for lukewarm defenders all those who might benefit by the new orders.

A prince must not have any objective nor any thought, nor take up any art, other than the art of war and its ordering and discipline; because it is the only art that pertains to him who commands. And it is of such virtue that not only does it maintain those who were born princes, but many times makes men rise to that rank from private station.

Men must either be caressed or extinguished; because they avenge themselves of light offenses, but of the grave ones they cannot. So the offense one does to a man must be such that one not fear vengeance for it.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.

Marcela loved me during fifteen months and three thousand dollars; nothing more.

It is better to fall from above the clouds than from the third floor.