Mel Brooks Quotations

Mel Brooks is an American actor, director, and screenwriter.

12 Chairs

Chorus: "Hope for the best. Expect the worst. / Life is a play. We're unrehearsed."

Jim "The Waco Kid" (Gene Wilder): "My name is Jim, most people call me... Jim."
Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): "Mornin', ma'am! And isn't it a lovely mornin'?"
Old Woman: "Up yours, nigger!"
Jim "The Waco Kid" (Gene Wilder) [consoling Bart afterwards]: "What did you expect? 'Welcome, sonny'? 'Make yourself at home'? 'Marry my daughter'? You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers... these are people of the land... the common clay of the New West. You know – morons."
Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): "Excuse me while I whip this out."
Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): "Where the white women at?"
Railway Worker : "You shifty nigger! They said you was hung!"
Sheriff Bart : "And they was right!"
Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little) (Waking up a drunk Jim in jail): "Are we awake?"
Jim "The Waco Kid" (Gene Wilder): "We don't know. Are we black?"
Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): "Yes we are."
Jim "The Waco Kid" (Gene Wilder): "Then we're awake, but we're very puzzled."
Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): "Since I am your host and you are my guest what are your hobbies? What do you like to do in your free time?"
Jim "The Waco Kid" (Gene Wilder): "Oh you know, play chess...screw."
Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little): "Well let's play chess!"

Josephus (Gregory Hines): "I'm Josephus, and I'm the main course over at the Colosseum!"
Count de Monet (Harvey Korman) [consistently mispronounced as "money"]: "Bearnaise, do we have any of those delicious raisins left?"
Bearnaise (Andréas Voutsinas) : "You ate yours. These are mine."
Count de Monet: "Au contraire, they are mine! I paid for them! Hand them over!"
Bearnaise [sotto voce, mimicking]: "'I paid for them! They're mine!'" [Blows a raspberry]
Count de Monet: "Don't be saucy with me, Bearnaise."
Count de Monet: "It is said that the people are revolting"
King Louis XVI (Mel Brooks): "You said it. They stink on ice."
Impoverished Paris Street Merchant (Jack Carter): "Rats, rats for sale. Get your rats. Good for rat stew, rat soup, or the ever-popular ratatouille."
Other Street Merchant:"Nothing, I have absolutely nothing for sale!"
King Louis XVI [prior to his arrest]: "It's good to be the king. (Also used in Robin Hood- Men In Tights and The Producers [Musical])"
Tomás de Torquemada: "It's better to lose your skullcap than your skull."
Moses (Mel Brooks): "God has given us these fifteen- (after dropping one of the tablets)Oy. Ten-ten commandments!"
Revolutionary Leader(Cloris Leachman):And now, let us end this meeting on a high note. (Proceeds to sing a sharp high note, followed by the rest of the revolutionaries.
Jail Inmates: Eighty fff....Eighty fff....Eighty fff....Eighty fff....Eighty Six!

Ahchoo (Dave Chappelle): "Man, white men can't jump!!"
King Richard (Patrick Stewart): "From this day forward, all toilets in this kingdom shall be known as...'John's'!"
Little John: "Let's face it - you've got to be a man to wear tights!"
Man In Front of Castle: "Hey Abbot!"
Townspeople: A black sheriff?
Blinkin: He's Black?!
Ahchoo: Why not? It worked in Blazing Saddles.
Robin Hood: Watch my back!
Achoo: Yo' back just got punched twice.
Will Scarlet Blinkin, fix your boobs, you look like a bleeding Picasso.
Blinkin Aaahhhh, you lost your arms in battle, but you grew some nice boobs (Blinkin gropes the Venus De Milo statue left behind after creditors take away Loxley Castle)
Robin Hood: Because unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with a English accent.
Sheriff of Rotingham King illegal forest to pig wild kill in it a is!

Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): "I see your schwartz is as big as mine."
Radar Officer (Michael Winslow): "I've lost the sweeps, the bleeps, and the creeps!" [Explains via vocal sound effects]
Dark Helmet [aside to Colonel Sandurz]: "That's not all he's lost."
Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): "What? You went over my helmet?"
President Skroob (Mel Brooks): "What the hell, it works on Star Trek!"
Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): "What's the matter Colonel Sandurz... chicken?!"

Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): "I knew it, I'm surrounded by Assholes." (This follows everyone on the bridge announcing that their last name is "Asshole.")
Lonestar (Bill Pullman): "That's all we needed, a Druish Princess!"
Mel Brooks in the director's Commentary : "I'm both proud and ashamed of that line"
Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis): "So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb."

Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): "That's it, baby, when you've got it, flaunt it, flaunt it!"
Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): "I'm wearing a cardboard belt!"
Stormtrooper Mel (Mel Brooks): "Don't be stupid, be a smarty / Come and join the Nazi Party!"
LSD as Adolf Hitler (Dick Shawn): "Heil Baby!"
Lead Tenor Stormtrooper (John Barrowman): "Springtime, for Hitler, and Germany / Winter, for Poland and France!"
Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): "How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right?"
Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder): "Actors are not animals! They're human beings!"
Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel): "They are? Have you ever eaten with one?"

Igor (Marty Feldman): "My grandfather used to work for your grandfather. Of course the rates have gone up."
Igor (Marty Feldman) (limping off): "Walk this way" - and Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) limps off after him.
Dr. Frankenstein: (Gene Wilder): "Igor, would you give me a hand with the bags?"
Igor: (Marty Feldman): "[doing a Groucho Marx] Certainly, you take the blonde and I'll take the one in the turban."
Igor: (Marty Feldman): "Sed-a..."
Inga: (Teri Garr): "Sed-a..."
Igor: (Marty Feldman): "Dirty word! He said a dirty word!"
Dr. Frankenstein "Damn your eyes!"
Igor (pointing at his lazy eye) "Too late!"

As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.

[explaining that Paul Revere was Anti-Semitic] He was scared they were moving into the neighborhood. "They're coming, they're coming. The Yiddish, they're coming"

It's Wheird, there's an H in there. Gotta hit that H otherwise they think I'm some sort of a kook!

[on ancient poetry] Nog Nog! Mkellen bebog! V'luch Matuch Maluch M'tog!
- Translation: Beans Beans! The musical fruits! The more you eat...

Excuse me, is this England? (while in a Hitler costume, after crash landing in England at the height of the Battle of Britian)

Mel is sensual with me. He treats me like an uncle - a dirty uncle. He's an earthy man and very moral underneath. He has traditional values.
- Madeline Kahn, reported in Paul D. Zimmerman, (February 17, 1975) "The Mad Mad Mel Brooks", Newsweek