How about best speeches/monologues?

I went to Scotland once. I remember it much as one recalls a dream.

Or a nightmare.

I was on a budget flight to Norway, when a storm hit and forced us to ditch in Glasgow, Prestwick.
I was stranded. And it's so hilly up there that you can't get any signal on your cellphone.

It looked bad.

It looked like I was going to have to spend the night in Glasgow.

The cabin crew suggested we all go out and club it.

I had no option, it was that or one of their B&Bs.

I figured it would be safer on the streets.

For the first time ever, I saw the Scotch in their natural habitat, and it weren't pretty.

I'd see them huddling in stations before, being loud, but this time I was surrounded.

Everywhere I went it felt like they were watching me.

Fish-white flesh puckered by the Highland breeze, tight eyes peering out for fresh meat, screeching, booze-soaked voices hollering out for a taxi to take them halfway up the road to the next all-night watering-hole.

A shatter of glass. A round of applause. A sixteen-year-old mother of three vomiting in an open sewer, bairns looking on chewing on potato-cakes.

I ain't never going back. Not never.

I love that show.


My pick:


The world is full of complainers. But the fact is, nothing comes a guarantee.


I don't care if you're the Pope of Rome, President of the United States, or even Man of Year--something can always go wrong.



And go ahead, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help--watch him fly.


Now in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else--that's the theory, anyway.


What I know about is Texas. And down here... you're on your own.

Sonny: So what country do you want to go to?

Sal: Wyoming.

Sonny: Sal, Wyoming's not a country.

Sonny: I'm robbing a bank because they got money here. That's why I'm robbing it.

TV Anchorman: No, what I mean is why do you feel you have to steal for money? Couldn't you get a job?

Sonny: Uh, no. Doing what? You know if you want a job you've got to be a member of a union. See, and if you got no union card you don't get a job.

TV Anchorman: What about non-union occupations?

Sonny: What's wrong with this guy? What do you mean non-union, like what? A bank teller? You know how much a bank teller makes a week? Not much. A hundred and fifteen to start, right? Now are you going to live on that? A got a wife and a couple of kids, how am I going to live on that? What do you make a week?

TV Anchorman: Well I'm here to talk to you Sonny...

Sonny: Well I'm talking to you. We're entertainment, right? What do you got for us?

TV Anchorman: Well what do you want to get for it? Do you expect to be paid because--

Sonny: No, I don't want to be paid, I don't need to be paid. Look, I'm here with my partner and nine other people, see. And we're dying, man. You know? You're going to see our brains on the sidewalk, they're going to spill our guts out. Now are you going to show that on television? Have all your housewives look at that? Instead of As The World Turns? I mean what do you got for me? I want something for that.

TV Anchorman: Sonny, you could give up?

Sonny: Give up? Right. Have you ever been in prison?

TV Anchorman: No!

Sonny: No! Well let's talk about something you ****ing know about, okay? How much do you make a week? That's what I want to hear. Are you going to talk to me about that?

Leon: I mean, how do they expect you to get uncrazy if you're asleep all the time?

Sonny: Attica! Attica!

patting down FBI man

Sheldon: I wouldn't like to kill you. I will if I have to.

Sonny: It's your job, right? You know, the guy who kills me, I hope he does it 'cause he hates my guts. Not 'cause it's his job.

wow I cannot believe no one has said Pulp Fiction Yet, if any movie has great speeches/monologues is Pulp.

*LANGUAGE MAY OFFEND*

Jules: What country are you from?
Brett: What?
Jules: I never heard of What. They speak English in What?
Brett: What?
Jules: What does Marcellus Wallace look like?
Brett: What?
Jules: [pointing his gun] Say "what" again. SAY "WHAT" AGAIN! I dare you, I double dare you, mother****er! Say "what" one more ******* time!
Brett: He's b-b-black...
Jules: Go on.
Brett: He's bald...
Jules: Does he look like a bitch?
Brett: What?
[Jules shoots Brett in shoulder]
Jules: DOES HE LOOK LIKE A BITCH?
Brett: NO!
Jules: Then why you trying to **** him like a bitch, Brett?
Brett: I didn't!
Jules: Yes you did. Yes you did, Brett. You tried to **** him. And Marcellus Wallace don't like to be ****ed by anybody, except Mrs. Wallace.

Vincent: I've got a threshold, Jules, I've got a threshold for the abuse that I'll take and right now I'm a racecar, man, and you got me in the red. I'm just saying, I'm just SAYING it's ****ing dangerous to have a racecar in the ****ing red, that's all. I might blow.
Jules: Oh, you ready to blow? Well I'm a mushroom-cloud-laying mother****er, mother****er! Every time my fingers touch brain I'm Superfly TNT, I'm the Guns of the Navarone. IN FACT, what the **** am I doing in the back? You the mother****er should be on brain detail! We ****ing switching, I'm washing the windows and you picking up this ******'s skull!

Vincent: Bacon tastes gooood. Pork chops taste gooood.
Jules: Hey, sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie but I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy mother****ers. Pigs sleep and root in ****. That's a filthy animal. I ain't eat nothin' that ain't got enough sense to disregard its own faeces.
Vincent: How about a dog? Dogs eat their own feces.
Jules: I don't eat dog either.
Vincent: Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?
Jules: I wouldn't go so far as to call a dog filthy but they're definitely dirty. But, a dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.
Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, it'd cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?
Jules: Well we gotta be talkin' about one charmin' mother****in' pig. I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?

Jules: The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

Vincent: And you know what they call a... a... a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules: They don't call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
Vincent: No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn't know what the **** a Quarter Pounder is.
Jules: Then what do they call it?
Vincent: They call it a "Royale" with cheese.
Jules: A "Royale" with cheese! What do they call a Big Mac?
Vincent: A Big Mac's a Big Mac, but they call it "le Big-Mac".
Jules: "Le Big-Mac"! Ha ha ha ha! What do they call a Whopper?
Vincent: I dunno, I didn't go into Burger King.


Cheers, yay for my first post!

Four come to mind:

Billy Bigelow's aptly named "Soliloquy" in Carousel (1956). You may have to be a father--especially the father of a daughter--to really appreciate this. "You can have fun with a son / But you've got to be a father to a girl...."/

Jack Nicholson's rant against women after his three witchy lovers conjure up a storm that blows him down main street into the church in The Witches of Eastwick (1987). This bit finally won me over as a Nicholson fan.

James Cagney's finger-snapping rapid-fire calling out of lengthy and detailed instructions (all shot in one take) as he attempts to change in a couple of hours a card-carrying Young Communist from East Berlin into the titled suave European son-in-law for his boss at Coca-Cola in One, Two, Three (1961).

Eddie Albert's equally rapid and revealing spiel, sprinkled with amazing alliteration, as the deeply disturbed Mr. Future in Captain Newman, M.D. It's a long and extremely difficult bit of dialogue and soliloquy from an air force officer whose mind snaps because of the men he's ordered to their deaths during WWII.

Again, not a monologue

I don’t know if this was mentioned yet, but here’s one of the greatest political campaign speeches in movie history. It’s said during a high school student council election but could easily apply to American politics writ large:

Mark