The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp Quotes

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: What is your first name, Miss Cannon?

'Johnny' Cannon: Angela.

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: What a lovely name. It comes from Angel, doesn't it?

'Johnny' Cannon: I think it stinks. My friends call me Johnny.

Clive Candy: I often thought, a fellow like me dies - special knowledge, all to waste. Well, am I dead? Does my knowledge count for nothing, eh? Experience? Skill? You tell me!

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: It is a different knowledge they need now, Clive. The enemy is different, so you have to be different, too.

Clive Candy: Are you mad? I know what war is!

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I don't agree.

Clive Candy: You...!

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I read your broadcast up to the point where you describe the collapse of France. You commented on Nazi methods--foul fighting, bombing refugees, machine-gunning hospitals, lifeboats, lightships, bailed-out pilots--by saying that you despised them, that you would be ashamed to fight on their side and that you would sooner accept defeat than victory if it could only be won by those methods.

Clive Candy: So I would!

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: Clive! If you let yourself be defeated by them, just because you are too fair to hit back the same way they hit at you, there won't be any methods *but* Nazi methods! If you preach the Rules of the Game while they use every foul and filthy trick against you, they will laugh at you! They'll think you're weak, decadent! I thought so myself in 1919!

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: [he pats Clive's shoulder] You mustn't mind me, an old alien, saying all this. But who can describe hydrophobia better than one who has been bitten - and is now immune.

Hoppy: I was awfully sorry to hear about your leg.

[Looks down]

Hoppy: Jumping Jehosaphat! They're both there!

Clive Candy: What the hell did you think I was standing on?

Hoppy: They told me in Bloemfontein that they cut off your left leg.

Clive Candy: [Examines leg] Can't have, old boy. I'd have known about it.

Van Zijl: The Germans know how to make them talk.

Clive Candy: Well if they are, they're cracking. It's a sure sign. Nobody starts to fight foul until he sees he can't win any other way.

Clive Candy: Until now, Germany has used her arms with honor.

[pause, smiles]

Clive Candy: I admit he said nothing about her legs.

Frau Von Kalteneck: Theo knows only two English expressions: "very much" and "not very much." Right, Theo?

Theo: Very much.

Clive Candy: The Kaiser spoke - and the Prince of Wales spoke ...

Edith Hunter: Spoke about what?

Clive Candy: Nobody could remember.

Barbara Wynne: We must go, darling, we have the Bishop for lunch.

Clive Candy: I hope he's tender.

Colonel Betteridge: Can't imagine anything more awful than to be a prisoner of war in England.

Mr. Wynne: Was the cooking good?

Theo: [pause] It was English cooking.

Clive Candy: Well sir, I have a friend ...

Colonel Betteridge: Good. Not everybody can say that. Continue!

[repeated line]

Clive Candy: War starts at midnight!

Clive Candy: I heard all that in the last war! They fought foul then - and who won it?

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I don't think you won it. We lost it -but you lost something, too. You forgot to learn the moral. Because victory was yours, you failed to learn your lesson twenty years ago and now you have to pay the school fees again. Some of you will learn quicker than the others, some of you will never learn it - because you've been educated to be a gentleman and a sportsman, in peace and in war. But Clive!

[tenderly]

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: Dear old Clive - this is not a gentleman's war. This time you're fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain - Nazism. And if you lose, there won't be a return match next year... perhaps not even for a hundred years.

Murdoch: Anything wrong, sir?

Clive Candy: Murdoch, the war is over. The Germans have accepted the terms of the armistice; hostilities cease at 10 O'clock. It's nearly that now. Murdoch, do you know what this means?

Murdoch: I do, sir. Peace. We can go home. Everybody can go home.

Clive Candy: For me, Murdoch, it means more than that; it means that right is might after all. The Germans have shelled hospitals, bombed open towns, sunk neutral ships, used poison gas, and we won -- clean fighting, honest soldiering have won. God bless you, Murdoch.

Murdoch: Sir.

B.B.C. Official: General, I'm afraid we've been having a little trouble about your broadcast.

Clive Candy: Well, I'm used to trouble - I'm a soldier.

B.B.C. Official: Yes. The authorities think that's it's a little ill-timed and might be better postponed.

Clive Candy: Think it's 'a little ill-timed'? Who's been saying that?

B.B.C. Official: Well general, you know, in times of war...

Clive Candy: Don't talk to me about war!

B.B.C. Official: No, of course, that would be... grotesque...

Aunt Margaret: [Candy has returned from the opera] See any one there you knew?

Clive Candy: I met Hoppy and Sybil Gilpin, they're married.

Aunt Margaret: Hm, a very suitable match: he has money, she has land and neither of them has any brains.

Spud Wilson: You say war starts at midnight, how do you know the enemy says so too?

Clive Candy: But, my dear fellow, that was agreed, wasn't it?

Spud Wilson: Agreed my foot! How many agreements have been kept by the enemy since this war started? We agree to keep to the rules of the game and they go on kicking us in the pants!

Clive Candy: I've been serving my country for 44 years. What was your position before this one, sir, eh?

B.B.C. Official: A lawyer.

Clive Candy: A lawyer? Well, I was a soldier. And before that I suppose you were at college, and I was a soldier. And I was a soldier when you were a baby. And before you were born, sir, when you were nothing but a toss-up between a girl's and a boy's name, I was a soldier then.