Clockwork Orange

From BillionQuotes

A Clockwork Orange, a book by Anthony Burgess, later made into a film in the 1970's.

• "Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"

• "What's it going to be then, eh?" (Repeated)

• "Well, well, well, well. If it isn't fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thy globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou."

• "Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name -A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?'"

• "'Not to speak like that. No! no more droogie,' And he launched a bloshy tolchock right on my cluve, so that all red red nose-krovvy started to drip drip drip."

• “We study the problem. We’ve been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but we get no further with our studies. You’ve got a good home here, good loving parents. You’ve got not too bad of a brain! Is it some devil that crawls inside of you?”
  • P.R. Deltoid, Alex's "Post-Correction Adviser" (Probation Officer)

• “Choice. The boy has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.”
  • Prison chaplain

• "There was a man. . .a writer of subversive literature."
  • Minister of the Interior

• “Padre, these are subtleties. We’re not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime--and. . .with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian: ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thought even of killing a fly! Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works.”
  • Minister of the Interior

• “The common people will let it go. Oh yes, they’ll sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be led, sir, driven, pushed!”
  • Mr. Alexander

• P.R. Deltoid: I've just come from the hospital; your victim has died.

Alex: You try to frighten me. Admit so, sir. This is some new form of torture. Say it, Brother Sir. P.R. Deltoid: It'll be your own torture. I hope to God it'll torture you to madness.

• "A lot of idiots you are, selling your own birthright for a saucer of cold porridge! The thrill of theft! Of violence! The urge to live easy! Well, I ask you what is it worth when we have undeniable truth, yes, incontrovertible evidence that Hell exists."
  • Prison chaplain

• "If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."
  • Prison Chaplain

• "Excellent. He's enterprising, aggressive, outgoing, young, bold, vicious. He'll do...He's perfect. I want his records sent to me. This vicious young hoodlum will be transformed out of all recognition."
  • Minister of the Interior

Alex

• No time for the old in-out, love. I've just come to read the meter.
• "Come with uncle," I said, "and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited."
• There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.
• The Durango 95 purred away real horrorshow, a nice warm vibratey feeling all through your guttiwuts.
• Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?
• Minister: "As I was saying, Alex, you can be instrumental in changing the public verdict. Do you understand, Alex? Have I made myself clear?"

Alex: "As an unmuddied lake, Fred. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can rely on me, Fred."

• "The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence."
• "Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!"
  • (While listening to Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony)

• "Initiative comes to thems that wait."
• "What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultraviolence."

• "We were all feeling a bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it being a night of no small energy expenditure, O my brothers and only friends."

• You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise God!
• "It’s funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen."

• "Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep for ever, and ever and ever."

• I was cured, all right! (last line of the film)

---

---