Memorable quotes for
The Great Escape (1963) More at IMDbPro »

Bartlett: One has to ask some very strange things in the job I have.

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Sedgwick: Danny, do you speak Russian?
Danny: A little, but only one sentence.
Sedgwick: Well, let me have it, mate.
Danny: Ya vas lyublyu.
Sedgwick: Ya ya vas...
Danny: Lyublyu.
Sedgwick: Lyubliu? Ya vas lyubliu. Ya vas lyublyu. What's it mean?
Danny: I love you.
Sedgwick: Love you. What bloody good is that?
Danny: I don't know, I wasn't going to use it myself.

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Colin: Afraid this tea's pathetic. Must have used these wretched leaves about twenty times. It's not that I mind so much. Tea without milk is so uncivilized.

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Hilts: I'm going... out.

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MacDonald: Oh my God, they found Tom.

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Sedgwick: It's all right. It's all right, mate. We're just having a friendly little argument.

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Hilts: I haven't seen Berlin yet, from the ground or from the air, and I plan on doing both before the war is over.

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Von Luger: Are all American officers so ill-mannered?
Hilts: Yeah, about 99 percent.
Von Luger: Then perhaps while you are with us you will have a chance to learn some. Ten days isolation, Hilts.
Hilts: CAPTAIN Hilts.
Von Luger: Twenty days.
Hilts: Right. Oh, uh, you'll still be here when I get out?
Von Luger: [visibly annoyed] Cooler!

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Hilts: How many you taking out?
Bartlett: Two hundred and fifty.
Hilts: Two hundred and fifty?
Bartlett: Yeh.
Hilts: You're crazy. You oughta be locked up. You, too. Two hundred and fifty guys just walkin' down the road, just like that?

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Hilts: Wait a minute. You aren't seriously suggesting that if I get through the wire... and case everything out there... and don't get picked up... to turn myself in and get thrown back in the cooler for a couple of months so you can get the information you need?
Bartlett: Yes.

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Colin: Thank you for getting me out.

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Von Luger: It looks, after all, as if you will see Berlin before I do.

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Bartlett: Hilts, how do you breathe?
Hilts: Oh, we got a steel rod with hinges on it. We'll shove it up and make air holes as we go along.
[to Ramsey]
Hilts: G'night, sir.
[Walks out]
MacDonald: Why didn't anyone think of that before? It's so stupid, it's positively brilliant!
[face falls]
MacDonald: Oh, but it'll bring every goon in the camp down on top of us!
Bartlett: I don't know. Perhaps we're being too clever. If we stop all the breakouts, it will only convince the goons we must be tunneling.
Ramsey: I hope it works. If it doesn't, those two will be in the cooler for an awfully long time.
[cut to Hilts and Ives being escorted back to the cooler covered in dirt]

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Bartlett: [of the Americans' vodka] In the three years, seven months and two weeks that I've been in the bag, that's the most extraordinary stuff I've ever tasted. It's shattering!
MacDonald: Well, I think it's rather good... Well, with your permission, sir, I think I'll all on kives. Er, call on Ives.

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Hilts: Hold on to yourself, Bartlett. You're twenty feet short.
Bartlett: What do you mean, twenty feet short?
Hilts: You're twenty feet short of the woods. The hole is right here in open. The guard is between us and the lights.

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Bartlett: What about the goon towers?
Hilts: That's a chance you're gonna have to take. But they're gonna be watching the compound, not the woods.

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Ramsey: Colonel Von Luger, it is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape. If they cannot escape, then it is their sworn duty to cause the enemy to use an inordinate number of troops to guard them, and their sworn duty to harass the enemy to the best of their ability.

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Sergeant-Hauptmann Strachwitz: What are you doing over here by the wire?
Hilts: Well, like I told Max here, I was trying to get my...
German Soldier: [Voice] Achtung!
[Von Luger enters]
Von Luger: What were you doing by the wire?
Hilts: Well, like I told Max... I was trying to cut my way through your wire because I want to get out.

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Ramsey: Roger's idea was to get back at the enemy the hardest way he could, mess up the works. From what we've heard here, I think he did exactly that.
Hendley: Do you think it was worth the price?
Ramsey: Depends on your point of view, Hendley.

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Sergeant-Hauptmann Strachwitz: I will not take action against you, now. This is the first day here and there has been much stupidity and carelessness... on both sides!

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Hendley: Come on, Roger. We all know the score here, at least... most of us do. Your idea of this escape is to... start another front, to foul up the Germans behind the lines. All right, that's fine, that's fine. But once we get passed that barbed wire, once we have them looking all over Germany for us, that mission is accomplished. Afterwards, we have some ideas of our own.
Bartlett: You mean getting home? Back to your family and children?
Hendley: That's right.
Bartlett: Good God, man. Do you really believe I haven't thought about that, too?

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Bartlett: Not Colin. He'd be an appalling hazard to the whole escape. That must be my decision.
Hendley: You want to talk about hazards? Let talk about hazards. Lets talk about you. You're the biggest hazard we have. The Gestapo has you marked. No one has said you can't go.
Bartlett: That's true, and I have thought about the Gestapo. But if you're asking me how a far a commanding officer is allowed to go, or dare go, or should be permitted to play God, I can't answer you.

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Colin: Tea?
Hendley: I only drank tea once - in a hospital.

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Sergeant-Hauptmann Strachwitz: Your name?
Archibald 'Archie' Ives, 'The Mole': Ives.
[Strachwitz looks through his prisoner profiles]
Sergeant-Hauptmann Strachwitz: Ives... Ives... Oh, yes. Archibald Ives. Scot. The photograph doesn't do justice.
Archibald 'Archie' Ives, 'The Mole': I'd like to see one of you under similar circumstances.

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[the German camp commandant explains why so many incorrigible Allied prisoners were placed in the place Stalag]
Von Luger: We have in effect put all our rotten eggs in one basket. And we intend to watch this basket carefully.

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POW: What the hell have you got in there, a piano?
Sedgewick: Oh, that's very funny, mate.
POW: Sedgewick, you won't get this thing through.
Sedgewick: [pulling his trunk into the tunnel] I'll cope!

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[on some materials he's using for escape clothes]
Bartlett: Where in God's name did you get these?
Griffith 'Tailor': Hendley.
Bartlett: Well, where did he get them?
Griffith 'Tailor': Well, I asked him that.
Bartlett: What did he say?
Griffith 'Tailor': "Don't ask."

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Bartlett: Virgil, isn't it?
Hilts: Hilts. Just make it Hilts.

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Sergeant-Hauptmann Strachwitz: [Danny and Sedgewick are trying to sneak out with a group of Russian prisoners] Halt!
[walks over to Sedgewick]
Sergeant-Hauptmann Strachwitz: Out!
[pause]
Sergeant-Hauptmann Strachwitz: OUT!
Danny: [No, No! Comrade!] Nyet, nyet! Tovarich!
Sergeant-Hauptmann Strachwitz: Oh, he's your friend.
Danny: [Comrade!] Tovarich!
Sergeant-Hauptmann Strachwitz: And who vouches for you, Lieutenant Willenski? Come on out, Sedgewick.
Danny: [hands coat back to Russian prisoner and steps out of line] Spasiba.
[thanks]

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Lt. Cmdr. Eric 'Dispersal' Ashley-Pitt: [watching Hilts be brought back into camp] I didn't think he'd get caught so soon.
Bartlett: He wasn't caught.

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Colin: I can't see a bloody thing!

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Hendley: Colin's not a blind man as long as he's with me. And he's going with me!

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Colin: You know, he's right. he's right. I really shouldn't go. My eyes have been getting worse and worse. I think they call it progressive Myopia. I can see things up here.
[looks at pin]
Colin: yes I can see it well, but, you're just a blur.
Hendley: I know. Ah, Hell, we'll make it in great shape. Colin, do you have any tea?
Colin: Yes, of course.
Hendley: Let's have some.
Colin: Splendid.

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[repeated line]
Colin: Splendid!

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Ramsey: Did the Gestapo give you a rough time?
Bartlett: Not nearly as rough as I now intend to give them.

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[gathering wood to shore up the tunnels, Hilts removes the wooden slats from bunk beds in the sleeping area of the prisoner barracks, holding a stack of them, and walks carefully out into the hallway]
Flight Lt. Denys Cavendish "The Surveyor": [passes Hilts in the hallway on his way to his bunk bed] Five gold rings. Four calling birds - bloody singing, I've never worked so hard in all my life. Hi, Hilts!
Hilts: [turns and tries to warn him] Say, Cavendish...
Flight Lt. Denys Cavendish "The Surveyor": Four calling birds, three French hens, two turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear - Alley-oop!
[Cavendish climbs to the top bunk, and vaults onto the unsupported mattress, which collapses under his weight through the bed frame, as well as the two beneath it. Hilts approaches the doorway and sees Cavendish on the floor]
Hilts: Never mind.
[Leaves]

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Bartlett: It's possible for one man to get out through the wire, even get away, but there are in fact a considerable number of people besides yourself in this camp who are trying to escape.
Hilts: I appreciate that.
[pauses, looks at Bartlett]
Hilts: Something's coming. I can feel it, and it's coming right around the corner at me, Squadron Leader!

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Sorren: Roger, who's going to handle security for this lot?
Bartlett: You are.

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Herr Kuhn: We have reason to believe this prisoner is the mastermind behind numerous criminal escape attempts.
Von Luger: [sarcastically] Squadron Leader Bartlett has been three months in your care! And the Gestapo has only "reason to believe"!

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Herr Kuhn: [to Bartlett] Squadron Leader Bartlett, if you escape again, and are captured, you will be SHOT!
Herr Kuhn: [to Von Luger] Heil Hitler!

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Steinach: Herr Bartlett-!
[Bartlett turns around and says something in German]
Steinach: Your German is good. And I hear, also, your French. Your arms...
[pulls a gun]
Steinach: UP!
[Bartlett surrenders]

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[the Gestapo have captured Bartlett and MacDonald]
Preissen: Ah, Herr Bartlett. And Herr MacDonald. We are together again. You're going to wish you had never put us to so much trouble!

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Flight Lt. Denys Cavendish "The Surveyor": [Hilts has just taken some boards out of all the beds and Denys walks in after singing] 5 golds rings, 4 calling birds, bloody singing, hi Hilts.
Hilts: Denys, wait...
Flight Lt. Denys Cavendish "The Surveyor": 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves and a partridge, alley-oop!
[jumps on to bed and falls through all three]
Hilts: [sees that Denys has fallen through bed] Never mind.

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[first title card]
Title Card: This is a true story. Although the characters are composites of real men, and time and place have been compressed, every detail of the escape is the way it really happened.

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Goff: [Sedgewick has just descended into the tunnel entrance] Was that Sedgewick with his steamer trunk?
POW: Who else?
Goff: I wish he was back in Australia with his kangaroos.

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Ramsey: [in the first meeting with Von Luger is informed of the large amount of resources being used to guard the prisoners] Well, it's rather nice to know that you're wanted.

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Hilts: Hendley:
[Tasting the moonshine, speaks in a raspy voice]
Hilts: Wow! Hilts:
[tasting the moonshine, speaks in a hoarse tone]
Hilts: Wow! Goff:
[Tasting the moonshine, is wracked with coughing and weakly says while still coughing]
Hilts: ... wow...

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