Captain Fantastic Quotes

Nai: Power to the people!

Bo: Stick it to the man!

Ben: When you have sex with a woman, be gentle and listen to her. Treat her with respect and dignity even if you don't love her.

Bo: I know.

Ben: Always tell the truth. Always take the high road.

Bo: I know.

Ben: Live each day like it could be your last. Drink it in. Be adventurous, be bold, but savour it. It goes fast.

Bo: I know.

Ben: Don't die.

Bo: I won't.

Ben: [about flirtatious girls] Go talk to them. We got time.

Bo: Ask her what she thinks of the working people creating an armed revolution against the exploiting classes and their state structures?

Ben: Well, Marxists can be just as genocidal as capitalists.

Bo: Or weather or not she's a dialectical materialist and accords primacy to the class struggle?

Ben: Avoid Marxism. Or telling her you're a Trotskyite.

Bo: Trotskyist. Only a Stalinist would call a Trotskyist a Trotskyite. And I'm not a Trotskyist anymore. I'm a Maoist.

Ben: Right. I forgot, sorry.

Ben: [stops the bus to lecture his moping children] We can't go to mommy's funeral. We have to do what we're told. Some fights, you can't win. The powerful control the lives of the powerless. That's the way the world works. It's unjust and it's unfair. But that's just too damn bad. We have to shut up and accept it.

[now turning around in his seat]

Ben: Well, fuck that!

[starts the bus back up and turns on loud bag pipe music]

Kids: [all cheering]

Rellian: What kind of crazy person celebrates Noam Chomsky's birthday like it's some kind of official holiday? Why can't we celebrate Christmas like the rest of the entire world?

Ben: You would prefer to celebrate a magical fictitious elf, instead of a living humanitarian who's done so much to promote human rights and understanding?

[first lines]

Ben: [family gathers around the slain deer] Today, the boy is dead. And in his place... is a man.

Bo: [rips off a bloody bite of the offered morsel]

Ben: [as kids study around the campfire] Vesp? How you getting along?

Vespyr: I just finished chapter 12, "The World on a String."

Ben: [wrestless look of uncertainty]

Vespyr: What?

Ben: Are you having any trouble with Quantum Entanglement? Planck length versus Planck time?

Vespyr: I'm fine.

Ben: Good. Then tomorrow after lunch, you can give a brief presentation on M-theory. Argue counterpoints with Bo and Rell vis-a-vis Witten and Dirac.

Ben: Mom needs to be in the hospital right now.

Vespyr: But you said hospitals are a great place to go if you're a healthy person and you want to die.

Zaja: You said Americans are under-educated and over-medicated.

Kielyr: You said the AMA are avaricious whores only too willing to spread their fat legs for big pharma.

Ben: All those things are true. But mom does not have enough of the neurotransmitter serotonin to conduct electrical signals in her brain.

Vespyr: Yes, thank you, Zaj.

Ben: Can unique be modified?

Kids: [in unison] No.

Nai: [in his froggy costume] We don't hate Nana and Grandpa, but the rest of their tribe are fascist capitalists.

Kielyr: You're just repeating whatever dad says.

Nai: [squinty-eyed] I'm writing down everything you say - in my mind.

Kielyr: Do you even know what a fascist is?

Nai: Violent nationalist militants, supported by big business, and they're totalitarian single-party dictators.

Ben: [Rellian is dangling from climbing rope] Rell? Can you flex your fingers? S-T-O-P. Stay calm, Think, Observe, and Plan.

Zaja: If you hit the rocks below you, you'll die from blunt force trauma. Or internal bleeding from massive bone fracturing. Or splenic flexure of the large intestine.

Ben: Yes, thank you, Zaj.

Nai: [from the back seat] What does rape mean?

Ben: When a person, usually a man, forces another person, usually a woman, to have sexual intercourse.

Nai: Oh.

Ben: Who's hungry?

Kids: Me! Me!

Nai: What's sexual intercourse?

Ben: When a man sticks his penis in a woman's vagina... Everyone keep their eyes peeled for deer.

Nai: Why would a man stick his penis in a woman's vagina?

Ben: Because it can give them both pleasure. And because the combination of a man's sperm and a woman's egg can create a baby and continue the human race.

Nai: But that's where she pees.

Ben: Pee comes not from the vagina, but from the urethra, which is within the outer labia. But generally speaking, yes, that is where she pees... Everyone keep your eyes open for game of any kind.

Ben: [walking to picnic benches after shoplifting] Where else can we improve?

Bo: Flawed exit strategy. Everyone went out the same doors. No one utilized the loading dock area at all. If it got blocked, we'd all be trapped.

Ben: Mm-hmm.

Vespyr: Inadequately planned extraction point. We probably shouldn't have all gone directly to the bus.

Kielyr: Predetermined pickups would have been much less risky.

Ben: On the plus side, mission: Free the food accomplished.

Harper: Children don't drink wine.

Ben: In France and other countries, children drink small amounts of wine all the time. It's a digestive. It's not crack.

Nai: What's crack?

Ben: Crack is a crystallized, highly addictive derivative of the stimulant cocaine. In the mid-1980s, it accelerated the decimation of inner-city neighborhoods. Crackheads, some of them kids just like you guys, were killing each other over nothing, over their Nikes.

Nai: They killed each other for Nike? The Greek winged-goddess of victory?

Harper: I'm sorry it doesn't live up to your high standards!

Ben: I tell the truth to my kids. I don't lie to my kids.

Harper: Protecting children from certain concepts that they are too young to understand is not lying to them!

Harper: Ben, you sound so ridiculous.

Ben: Is knowing how to set a broken bone or how to treat a severe burn ridiculous? Knowing how to navigate by the stars in total darkness, that's ridiculous? How to identify edible plants, how to make clothes from animal skins, how to survive in the forest with nothing but a knife? That's ridiculous to you?

Bo: We're just back in the states because of my dad's sabbatical. He's writing a book on Dr. Spock.

Claire: Oh, I love Star Trek.

Ellen: [intercepting Bo & Claire on their way to a tryst] It's almost midnight. I sincerely hope you two lovebirds haven't been doing what I think you've been doing.

Bo: [talking rapidly] I know what you think. But I know that your daughter has taught me many things just now. She has broadened my mind, she has helped me grow. When we just kissed for the first time just then, it... The endorphins that your daughter sent through my body were like dolphins swimming through my bloodstream. The way she has opened me up, she has penetrated deep inside of me, and I know that I have penetrated deep, deep inside of your daughter. And... but not-not like that. I would love to when... When it's necessary for... I, I want kids someday. Not right now, of course.

Bo: [turning to speechless Claire] But when you're ready, when I'm ready, because I think this should be a shared decision. This is a decision that we should make together. But when you are ready, I will be ready. I am ready for you, if you will have me... Claire... What's your last name?

Ben: [to passers-by as he stands naked in the doorway of his bus] It's just a penis. Every man has one. We're all animals of the earth.

Nai: [waiting at the picnic table] Clothes when we eat!

Ben: [commandeering the eulogy from the minister] First of all, Leslie practiced Buddhism, which to her was a philosophy and not an organized religion. In fact, Leslie abhorred all organized religions. To her, they were the most dangerous fairy tales ever invented, designed to elicit blind obedience, and strike fear into the hearts of the innocent and the uninformed. To her, the only thing worse than death would have been the knowledge that her rotting flesh was to be trapped for all eternity inside a big box, and buried in the middle of a fucking golf course. Although the absurdity of being eulogized by someone that didn't even know her has exactly the kind of comedic flourish that Leslie would have cherished. If nothing else, she had a sense of humor. I want to read something to all of you, so you'll know what I mean.

[pulling out a piece of paper]

Ben: Leslie's last will and testament. And I quote, "in the event of my death, I, Leslie Abigail Cash, as a Buddhist, wish to be cremated. My funeral, such as it is, shall be a celebration of the life cycle, with music and dancing. After, it is my expressed desire that my ashes shall be taken to a nondescript location, preferably public and heavily populated. At which point my ashes, promptly and unceremoniously, are to be flushed down the nearest toilet." End quote. Now that's comedy.

Bo: I just want to go to college.

Ben: You speak six languages. You have high math, theoretical physics! This is what I'm talking about! What the hell are these people going to teach you?

Bo: I know nothing! I know nothing! I am a freak because of you! You made us freaks! And mom knew that! She understood! Unless it comes out of a fucking book, I don't know anything about anything!

Rellian: We want to complete the mission.

Ben: No. There is no mission.

Nai: Mission: Rescue dad and mommy.

Vespyr: Mom wanted to be cremated.

Rellian: And we want to honor her wishes.

Nai: And flush her down the toilet.

[last lines]

Ben: [packing lunches] Okay, eat your breakfast. The school bus will be here in 15 minutes.

[kids gathered around a normal kitchen table]

Ben: When you have sex with a woman, be gentle and listen to her. Treat her with respect and dignity, even if you don't love her.

Bo: I know.

Ben: Always tell the truth. Always take the high road.

Bo: I know.

Ben: Live each day like it could be your last. Drink it in. Be adventurous, be bold, but savor it. It goes fast.

Bo: I know.

Ben: Don't die.

Bo: I won't.

Kielyr: Okay, you can think that, but we don't make fun of people. Right, Dad?

Ben: That's right. We don't make fun of people.

Vespyr: Except Christians.

Kielyr: What's a bordello?

Ben: A whorehouse... What are you reading?

Kielyr: Lolita?

Ben: I didn't assign that book.

Kielyr: I'm skipping ahead.

Ben: And?

Kielyr: It's interesting.

Rellian: Interesting!

Bo: Illegal word!

Zaja: Dad, Kielyr said interesting!

Ben: Interesting is a non-word. You know you're supposed to avoid it... Be specific.

Kielyr: It's disturbing.

Ben: More specific.

Kielyr: Can I just read?

Ben: After you give us your analysis thus far.

Kielyr: There's this old man who loves this girl, and she's only 12 years old.

Ben: That's the plot.

Kielyr: Because it's written from his perspective, you sort of understand and sympathize with him. Which is kind of amazing because he's essentially a child molester. But his love for her is beautiful. But it's also sort of a trick because it's so wrong. You know, he's old, and he basically rapes her. So it makes me feel... I hate him. And somehow I feel sorry for him at the same time.

Ben: Well done.