Top 25 Greatest Quotes from The Shawshank Redemption
I watched The Shawshank Redemption for about the fifth or sixth time last night, and I still love it. What a good movie. That ending never fails to pump me up.
I’ve decided that the best part of the movie is the script. It ranks right up there with Pulp Fiction, Casablanca, and Annie Hall as my favorite scripts ever. There are so many brilliant moments in the script.
This got me thinking. What exactly are the best moments of this exceptional script?
After several hours of combing through the movie and pulling out the best moments, it is my pleasure to present what I believe are the greatest quotes from the script.
Let it be known that this post is a SPOILER WARNING! If you haven’t seen Shawshank, don’t read this post. In fact, don’t read anything else about the movie. Just go see it as soon possible, it’s a mighty fine movie.
Without further ado, I present my twenty-five favorite quotes and exchanges from The Shawshank Redemption.
(n) = narration
25.
Red (n): I must admit, I didn’t think much of Andy first time I laid eyes on him. Looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over.
24.
Andy: How could you be so obtuse?
23.
Board member: Do you feel you’ve been rehabilitated?
Red: Rehabilitated? Well now, let me see. You know, I don’t have any idea what that means.
Board member: Well, it means that you’re ready to rejoin society…
Red: I know what you think it means, sonny. To me it’s just a made up word. Politicians word, so young fellows like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job. What do you really want to know. Am I sorry for what I did?
Board member: Well, are you?
Red: There’s not a day goes by that I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here and because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then, a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. Try and talk some sense into him. Tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone, and this old man is all that is left. I gotta live with that. Rehabilitated? That’s just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. ‘Cause, to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit
22.
Warden: Lord, it’s a miracle! A man up and vanished like a fart in the wind.
21.
Red: It’s just shitty pipe dreams. I mean, Mexico is way the hell down there, and you’re in here.
20.
District Attorney: And that, also, is very convenient. Isn’t it, Mr. Dufresne?
Andy: Since I am innocent of this crime, sir, I find it decidedly inconvenient that the gun was never found.
19.
Red: I’m telling you, these walls are funny. First you hate them. Then you get used to them. Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized.
18.
Red (n): I could see why some of the boys took him for snobby. He had a quiet way about him. A walk and a talk that just wasn’t normal around here. He strolled like a man in a park without a care or a worry in the world, like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place. Yeah, I think it would be fair to say I liked Andy from the start.
17.
Red (n): Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes, really. Pressure and time.
16.
Red: Only guilty man in Shawshank.
15.
Heywood: Count of Monte Crisco.
Floyd: It’s Cristo, you dumb shit.
Heywood: By Alexan-dree Dumm-ass. Dumbass?
Andy: Dumm-ass? Dumas. You know what that’s about? You’ll like that, it’s about a prison break.
Red: We ought to file that under educational too, oughtn’t we?
14.
Red (n): And that’s how it came to pass that on the second last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of ‘49 wound up sitting in a row at ten o’clock in the morning drinking icy cold Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.
Captain Hadley: Drink up while it’s cold, ladies.
Red (n): The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous. We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Andy, he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer.
Heywood: Hey, want a cold one Andy?
Andy: No thanks, I gave up drinking.
Red (n): You could argue he’d done it to curry favor with the guards or maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me? I think he just did it to feel normal again, if only for a short while.
13.
Andy: You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?
Red: No.
Andy: They say it has no memory. That’s where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory.
12.
Red: They send you here for life, that’s exactly what they’re taking.
11.
Andy: So you don’t forget… forget that there are places in the world that aren’t made out of stone. That there’s something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch. It’s yours.
Red: What are you talking about?
Andy: Hope.
Red: Hope? Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. It’s got no use on the inside. You better get used to that idea.
Andy: Like Brooks did?
10.
Andy: I understand you’re a man who knows how to get things.
Red: I’m known to locate certain things from time to time.
9.
Red (n): Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone. I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty when they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.
8.
Brooks: Easy peezy Japanesey.
7.
The Warden: Salvation lies within.
6.
Red (n): Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit-smelling foulness I can’t even imagine. Or maybe I just don’t want to. 500 yards. That’s the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.
5.
Red: This is wear she does that shit with her hair.
4.
Red (n): I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away. And for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.
3.
Red: Same ol’ shit, different day.
2.
Andy: I guess it comes down to a simple choice. Get busy living or get busy dying.
1.
Red (n): I find I’m so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
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beautiful quotes…similar to what I was thinking about earlier today. I may just have to go watch that movie
I’d highly recommend renting it or something. It’s a modern classic. One of my favorite movies ever.
nice quotes and very good movie.
Great compilation man! Such moving lines! Such a gush of energy reading them !!
Yes, certainly one of the most memorable, message-sending movies I have ever enjoyed (and like you somewhere around 5 times by this point). Quotes # 1 & 2 are clearly the essence of the film, and they sit atop the list correctly. You’re right though; a plethora of great, great quotes. Stephen King and the scriptwriter, Frank Darabont, both at work there I guess.
Well done on this.
The movie remains at # 1 in rating by IMDB voters - see their website.
thanks i used these photos in this web-cite… its awesome! good use of the best movie quotes ever!!!!
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good luck
a piece of art loved,loved and love to know hwo are the tvo italien sngers and name of the song. Thanky you
Best movie ever!
i did it as a film review 2010 for level 2 ncea
I am one of them, but I din’t escape as Andy did. Now, I wander: Why ?
Freedom (seems to me) could be diferent.
Quote 14 above is my favorite of the whole movie. The language used in the Shawshank Redemption is a brilliancy. There are people out there that think the script is the result of ordinary people sitting down at a typewriter or perhaps making casual suggestions over coffee in a meeting room. I cannot imagine anyone other than Ph.D. professors of English or high powered attorneys polishing this language for the final script. The language has to sound natural as if a convict said it… yet retain the polish of those who are expert with the fine shades of meaning that possible in the English language. The language used in the Shawshank Redemption illustrates the true richness of the English language.
They forgot one- where Andy says to Red, “On the outside I was an honest guy. I had to come to prison to become a crook.”
Get busy living or get busy dying.
Andy: Mr. Hadley. Do you trust your wife?
Captain Hadley: You’re gonna look real funny sucking my dick with no teeth.
Andy: I have no enemies here.
Red: Yeah? Wait a while. Word gets around. The Sisters have taken quite a likin’ to you. Especially Boggs.
Andy: I don’t suppose it would help if I told them that I’m not homosexual.
Red: Neither are they. You have to be human first. They don’t qualify.
To drive your point home, all of these quotes fit and yet there are several left out. “I’d like to think the last thing that went through his mind, other than a bullit…, “. #19 should be #3
[...] Here are some of my favorite quotes from the movie, taken from Listosaurus Rex: [...]
In quote #11 Red said that “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”
The best part of the movie for me is when Andy was able to show Red otherwise. My favorite quote is the one Andy wrote in a letter to Red:
“Remember, Red. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
I agree with Alena…you left out perhaps the best quote of the whole movie “Hope is a good thing…”
That just shows how great this movie is though..someone can come up with 25 greats memorable lines and forget the best one. I’m not the only person I know who thinks of this as the greatest movie of all time.
Good work! Like when Red could get the playing cards with naked ladies on the them! You go Red!!
Stephen King’s best work. Love the way the story ties alltogether in the climax.
Great list but I think Brooks’s letter should have been there. That’s my favorite (albeit saddest) quote in/ part of the movie.
#4, #9, and especially #23. I have this movie on dvd and still can’t help but watch it if I find it while channel surfing.
Can anybody explain the meaning of the term “boar washing bastards used by captain Hadley to describe the IRS in the roof scene
Phil, I think the phrase was ”ball-washing bastards” - perhaps Hadley viewed men who wash their balls as effeminate/’unmanly’? Let’s face it, he was a deeply disturbed (psychotic) character:) I guess the phrase could have some sort of particular meaning in the USA that I’m unaware of, but it’s not a familiar one (that I know of anyway) in the UK.
I just watched the film for possibly the 20th time, and was awed all over again. I know that the great actors the director and everyone else involved in making the film made it special, but ultimately it comes down to the story and the writing, and no contemporary writer even comes close to Stephen King.
[...] hope these twenty-five favorite quotes and exchanges from The Shawshank Redemption, resonate with you in some way and motivate you to find [...]
I visited the Shawshank Trail a few months ago, visited the prison, the bank, some of the streets, and the tree on the hill. Its a great place to see - about an hour north of Columbus, OH