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Jeffrey Goines: There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion.
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L.J. Washington: I don't really come from outer space.
Jeffrey Goines: Oh. L. J. Washington. He doesn't really come from outer space.
L.J. Washington: Don't mock me my friend. It's a condition of mental divergence. I find myself on the planet Ogo, part of an intellectual elite, preparing to subjugate the barbarian hordes on Pluto. But even though this is a totally convincing reality for me in every way, nevertheless Ogo is actually a construct of my psyche. I am mentally divergent, in that I am escaping certain unnamed realities that plague my life here. When I stop going there, I will be well. Are you also divergent, friend?
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Jeffrey Goines: Telephone call? Telephone call? That's communication with the outside world. Doctor's *discretion*. Nuh-uh. Look, hey - all of these nuts could just make phone calls, they could spread insanity, oozing through telephone cables, oozing into the ears of all these poor sane people, infecting them. Wackos everywhere, plague of madness.
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Jeffrey Goines: There was this guy, and he was always requesting shows that had already played. Yes. No. You have to tell her before. He couldn't quite grasp the idea that the charge nurse couldn't make it be yesterday. She couldn't turn back time, thank you, Einstein! Now, *he* was nuts! *He* was a fruitcake, Jim!
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[James Cole found a spider and knows he's got to take it with him, let's it crawl over his hand while deciding what to do with it]
Jeffrey Goines: You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules. Take germs, for example.
James Cole: Germs?
Jeffrey Goines: Uh-huh. In the eighteenth century, no such thing, nada, nothing. No one ever imagined such a thing. No sane person, anyway. Ah! Ah! Along comes this doctor, uh, uh, uh, Semmelweis, Semmelweis. Semmelweis comes along. He's trying to convince people, well, other doctors mainly, that's there's these teeny tiny invisible bad things called germs that get into your body and make you sick. Ah? He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy? Crazy? Teeny, tiny, invisible? What do you call it? Uh-uh, germs? Huh? What? Now, cut to the 20th century. Last week, as a matter of fact, before I got dragged into this hellhole. I go in to order a burger in this fast food joint, and the guy drops it on the floor. Jim, he picks it up, he wipes it off, he hands it to me like it's all OK. "What about the germs?" I say. He says, "I don't believe in germs. Germs is just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soaps." Now he's crazy, right? See?
[James Cole finally takes the spider into his mouth, Jeffrey Goines is either too deep into his talk or unimpressed by this and continues his talk as if nothing happened]
Jeffrey Goines: Ah! Ah! There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion. You... you... you believe in germs, right?
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James Cole: Look at them. They're just asking for it. Maybe the human race deserves to be wiped out.
Jeffrey Goines: Wiping out the human race? That's a great idea. That's great. But more of a long-term thing. I mean, first we have to focus on more immediate goals.
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Dr. Kathryn Railly: Cassandra in Greek legend, you recall, was condemned to know the future but to be disbelieved when she foretold it. Hence the agony of foreknowledge combined with the impotence to do anything about it.
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James Cole: Oh, wouldn't it be great if I *was* crazy? Then the world would be okay.
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Dr. Owen Fletcher: Kathryn, you're a rational person. You're a trained psychiatrist. You know the difference between what's real and what's not.
Dr. Kathryn Railly: And what we say is the truth is what everybody accepts. Right, Owen? I mean, psychiatry: it's the latest religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who's crazy or not. I'm in trouble here. I'm losing my faith.
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Jeffrey Goines: Sorry. Uh, sorry. I, I, I got a little agitated. The thought of, uh, escape had crossed my mind, and then suddenly - suddenly - suddenly I felt like bending the fucking bars back, and ripping out the goddamn window frames and eating them - yes, *eating* them! Leaping, leaping, leaping! Colonics for everyone! All right! You dumbasses. I'm a mental patient. I'm *supposed* to act out! Wait'll you morons find out who I am! My father's gonna be really upset, and when my father gets upset, the ground SHAKES! My father is God! I worship my father!
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Jeffrey Goines: You are a total nutcase, completely deranged, delusional, paranoid. Your thought process is all fucked up. Your information train is jammed, man!
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Jeffrey Goines: There's the television. It's all right there - all right there. Look, listen, kneel, pray. Commercials! We're not productive anymore. We don't make things anymore. It's all automated. What are we *for* then? We're consumers, Jim. Yeah. Okay, okay. Buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, if you don't, what are you then, I ask you? What? Mentally *ill*. Fact, Jim, fact - if you don't buy things - toilet paper, new cars, computerized yo-yos, electrically-operated sexual devices, stereo systems with brain-implanted headphones, screwdrivers with miniature built-in radar devices, voice-activated computers...
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Jeffrey Goines: Do you realize where he thinks he comes from?
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Jeffrey Goines: My father is God! I worship my father!
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Jeffrey Goines: When I was institutionalized, my brain was studied exhaustively in the guise of mental health. I was interrogated, I was x-rayed, I was examined *thoroughly*.
[turns head and coughs]
Jeffrey Goines: Then, they took everything about me and put it into a computer where they created this model of my mind. Yes! Using that model they managed to generate every thought I could possibly have in the next, say, 10 years. Which they then filtered through a probability matrix of some kind to - to determine everything I was gonna do in that period. So you see, she knew I was gonna lead the Army of the Twelve Monkeys into the pages of history before it ever even occurred to me. She knows everything I'm ever gonna do before I know it myself. How's that?
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James Cole: I'm here about some monkeys.
Jeffrey Goines: Monkeys?
James Cole: Monkeys. Yes. Twelve of them.
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James Cole: I'm looking for the Army of the Twelve Monkeys.
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James Cole: All I see are dead people.
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Jeffrey Goines: My father's going to be very upset when he hears about this! And when my father gets upset, the ground SHAKES!
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Jeffrey Goines: Who cares what psychiatrists write on walls?
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Wallace: Hey... is that the cops? I'm an innocent victim in here! I was attacked by a coked up whore and a - a fuckin' crazy dentist!
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Jeffrey Goines: ...and if you forget one thing, I will have you shaved, sterilized, and destroyed!
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James Cole: This is a place for crazy people. I'm not crazy.
Dr. Owen Fletcher: We don't use the term "crazy," Mr. Cole.
James Cole: Well, you've got some real nuts here.
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Dr. Kathryn Railly: If you don't turn yourself over to the police, they're going to, to kill you, then they're going to shoot me too because I'm going to be the accessory to murder.
James Cole: You're all gonna die.
Dr. Kathryn Railly: Nobody is going to die! You're not going to save the world, okay? You're delusional. You've made all this up out of bits and pieces in your head.
James Cole: No.
Dr. Kathryn Railly: Yes! Let me give you an example. You know Jeffrey Goines. You were both patients at County Hospital at the same time.
James Cole: Jeffrey Goines was a fruitcake!
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James Cole: She's not honey babe, she's a doctor. My psychiatrist. Understand?
Charlie the Hotel Clerk: Whatever gets it up for you, Jack.
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Jeffrey Goines: [sighs] Get out of my chair!
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Dr. Kathryn Railly: You had a bullet from World War I in your leg, James! How did it get there?
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James Cole: I am insane. And you are my insanity.
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Dr. Kathryn Railly: Wh-wh-where are we going?
James Cole: Philadelphia.
Dr. Kathryn Railly: That's more than a hundred miles! We can't...
James Cole: That's why I can't walk there.
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Dr. Leland Goines: My God, Jeffrey. You truly are insane.
Jeffrey Goines: No I'm not.
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[last lines]
Astrophysicist: You might say that *we're* the next endangered species - human beings.
Dr. Peters: I think you're right ma'am. I think you've hit the nail on the head.
Astrophysicist: Jones is my name.
[Shakes his hand]
Astrophysicist: I'm in insurance.
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Louie: Where'd they send you?
James Cole: 1990.
Louie: '90! How was it? Good drugs? Lots of pussy? Hey, Bob, you do the job? You find out the big info? Army of the 12 Monkeys?
James Cole: I was supposed to be 1996.
Louie: Science ain't an exact science with these clowns but, they're getting better. You're lucky you didn't end up in ancient Egypt!
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[first lines]
James Cole: Jose - psst! Jose, what's going on?
Jose: Bad news, man
James Cole: Volunteers?
Jose: Yeah. And they said your name.
[pause]
Jose: Hey, maybe they'll give you a pardon, man.
James Cole: [sarcastic] Yeah, that's why none of the volunteers come back. They all get a pardon.
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Dr. Kathryn Railly: What is the matter with your leg?
James Cole: Got shot.
Dr. Kathryn Railly: Shot! Who shot you?
James Cole: I don't know. It was some kind of war. Never mind. You wouldn't believe me anyway.
-
[first lines]
Title Card: ...5 billion people will die from a deadly virus in 1997... /... The survivors will abandon the surface of he planet... /... Once again the animals will rule the world... / - Excerpts from interview with clinically diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, April 12, 1990 - Baltimore County Hospital.
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Jeffrey Goines: All the doors are locked too. They're protecting the people on the outside from us from the people on the outside who are as crazy as us.
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Raspy Voice: Why would I pull out my teeth, Bob? That's a no no.
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James Cole: [handful of bloody teeth] This is how they find us, by our teeth.
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James Cole: I want the future to be unknown. I want to become a whole person.
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Geologist: [after James Cole informs the scientists that he was sent to the wrong year] What did you do with you time Cole? Did you waste it on drugs? Women?
James Cole: They forced me to take drugs!
Microbiologist: Forced you? Why would someone force you to take drugs?
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James Cole: [In 1990, James is being interviewed by a panel of mental health doctors and trying to explain the situation] 1996 is the past too, listen to me!
[the panel of doctors look at James with skeptical expressions]
James Cole: What I...
[James realizing this isn't going very well]
James Cole: ... what I need to do is make a telephone call. I can straighten this all out if I can make a telephone call.
Dr. Owen Fletcher: [Very skeptical] Who would you call? Who would straighten everything out?
James Cole: The scientists. They'll want to know they sent me to the wrong time.
[Dr Fletcher just nods]
James Cole: I can leave a voice mail message that they monitor from the present.
[Panel has mixed facial expressions]
James Cole: Can I just make one telephone call please?
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[while driving, they hear a news report about a police mobilization]
Dr. Kathryn Railly: [tartly] Does that disturb you?
James Cole: No. I thought it was about us. I thought maybe they'd captured us and arrested me.
[Kathryn looks at him and he gives a small smile]
James Cole: Just a joke.
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James Cole: I remember being afraid for that little boy. All alone, down that well, not knowing if anybody's going to get him out. First time I was ever really afraid when I was a kid.
Dr. Kathryn Railly: What do you mean, when you were a kid?
James Cole: Never mind. It's just a prank, a hoax. That boy's hiding in a barn.
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Jeffrey Goines: Why don't we forget about my psychiatrist and concentrate on the task at hand?
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bumper sticker: [on the car Cole and Railly have stolen] LOVE ANIMALS, DON'T EAT THEM!
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Dr. Kathryn Railly: He's sick. He thinks he comes from the future. He's been living in a carefully constructed fantasy world and that world is starting to disintegrate. He needs help!
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female voice: [over PA] Today at 07:00 there are socialization classes according to paragraphs 23A and 96A of chapter six of the permanent emergency decree.
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Poet: Yet among the myriad microwaves, the infrared messages, the gigabytes of ones and zeros we find words, bytesized now, tying you even in silence, lurking in some vague electricity, but if we but listen we hear the solitary voice of that poet telling us
[beep beep beep - Railly's pager]
Poet: , "Yesterday this day's madness did prepare, tomorrow's silence, triumph of despair. Drink! For you know not from whenst you came nor why. Drink! For you know not why you go nor where."
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James Cole: So now it's not about the virus at all. It's about following orders, doing what you're told.
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Dr. Kathryn Railly: [Kathryn has just sent a voice message to the phone number James had] James! It's okay! We're crazy! I left a message to the carpet cleaning company saying, 'Feel free to conduct an investigation at second avenue at the secret headquarters of the twelve monkeys. There the ones who are going to do it. I can't do anything more now, I have to go, have a Merry Christmas.'
James Cole: [He mirrors what she says] ... secret headquarters of the twelve monkeys. There the ones who are going to do it. I can't do anything more now, I have to go, have a Merry Christmas.
Dr. Kathryn Railly: [Confused, as she gestures to the phone booths] T-there's no way you could have heard me f...
James Cole: They got your message.
12 Monkeys Quotes
Extended Reading
