Top 50 Quotes From The Hunt for Red October

Capt. Bart Mancuso: All back full.
Lt. Cmdr. Thompson: Captain...
Capt. Bart Mancuso: I said, all back full!
Lt. Cmdr. Thompson: Back full, aye.
[the Dallas reverses, churning the water]
Seaman Jones: Captain, we're cavitating, he can hear us!
Capt. Bart Mancuso: Conn, aye. All right, Ryan, we just unzipped our fly. Mr. Thompson! Open the outer doors, firing point procedures. Now if that bastard so much as twitches, I'm going to blow him straight to Mars.

Admiral: This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.

Capt. Bart Mancuso: How did you know that his next turn would be to starboard?
Jack: I didn't. I had a 50/50 chance. I needed a break. Sorry.
Capt. Bart Mancuso: That's all right, Mr Ryan. My Morse is so rusty, I could be sending him dimensions on Playmate of the Month.

Captain: We will pass through the American patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to their rock'n'roll while we conduct missile drills. Then, and when we are finished, the only sound they will hear is our laughter, while we sail to Havana, where the sun is warm, and so is the comradeship. A great day, comrades. We sail into history.

Admiral: Now, understand, Commander, that torpedo did not self-destruct. You heard it hit the hull. And I...
[showing him his identification]
Admiral: ... was never here.

Skip: When I was twelve, I helped my daddy build a bomb shelter in our basement because some fool parked a dozen warheads 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Well, this thing could park a coupla hundred warheads off Washington and New York and no one would know anything about it till it was all over.

Capt. Bart Mancuso: [Ramius comments in Russian to Borodin that Mancuso is a "buckaroo". Ryan laughs] What's so funny?
Jack: Ah, the Captain seems to think you're some kind of... cowboy.
Captain: [spoken "You parle ruski"] You speak Russian.
Jack: [in Russian] A little. It is wise to study the ways of ones adversary. Don't you think?
Captain: [in English] It is.

[to himself, just before being lowered off a helicopter]
Jack: Next time, Jack, write a goddamn memo.

Ambassador: It seems that the initial reports that one of our submarines was missing were not completely accurate. The submarine in question... is commanded by Captain Marko Ramius. Apparently, he's suffered a kind of mental or nervous breakdown. Just before he sailed, he posted a letter to Admiral Yuri Padorin, in which he announced his intention to... to fire his missiles on the United States.
Jeffrey: Why didn't you tell me this the last time we met?
Ambassador: In my position, I am sometimes compromised by the fact that Moscow does not always tell me everything.

[Jack Ryan, in US Navy Commander uniform, exits after meeting the Admiral and Captain of the carrier]
Admiral: You think he's crazy?
Captain: Certifiable. And no matter what his credentials, I don't care for him wearing the uniform.
Admiral: You see that ring on his finger? The Academy, Class of '72. A Marine.
Captain: You're kidding! How did you...
Admiral: Greer told me. Summer of his third year, he and his squad went down in a chopper accident in the Med. Bad - pilot, crew killed. That kid spent ten months in traction, another year learning to walk again. Did his fourth year from the hospital. Now it's up to you, Charlie, but you might consider cuttin' the kid a little slack.

Capt. Bart Mancuso: [after hearing Jones's findings] Have I got this straight, Jonesy? A $40 million computer tells you you're chasing an earthquake, but you don't believe, and you come up with this on your own?
Seaman Jones: Yes, sir.
Capt. Bart Mancuso: Including all the navigation maps?
Seaman Jones: Sir, I-I've got all the...
Capt. Bart Mancuso: Relax, Jonesy. You sold me.

Seaman Jones: Conn, sonar! Crazy Ivan!
Capt. Bart Mancuso: All stop! Quick quiet!
[the ships engines are shut down completely]
Beaumont: What's goin' on?
Seaman Jones: Russian captains sometime turn suddenly to see if anyone's behind them. We call it "Crazy Ivan." The only thing you can do is go dead. Shut everything down and make like a hole in the water.
Beaumont: So what's the catch?
Seaman Jones: The catch is, a boat this big doesn't exactly stop on a dime... and if we're too close, we'll drift right into the back of him.

Jeffrey: I can't ask any of these characters to go. One, they don't believe in it. Two, they'd never stake their reputation on a hunch. Whereas you...
Jack: ...are expendable.
Jeffrey: Something like that.

Seaman Jones: [Jonesy is teaching Beaumont] Hear it now?
Beaumont: [resigned] No.
Seaman Jones: Beaumont, at Caltech we used to do this in our sleep! You hear it now?
Beaumont: Wait a minute...
Seaman Jones: Uh oh...
Beaumont: Disparaged surface clutter...
Seaman Jones: Yeeeesssss?
Beaumont: I should go to SAPS?
Seaman Jones: Correct! Seaman Beaumont, Signal Algorithmic Processing System. Give it a week and you'll be teaching at Caltech. So, like Beethoven on the computer, you have laboured to produce... a biologic.
Beaumont: A what?
Seaman Jones: A whale, Seaman Beaumont, a whale. A marine mammal that knows a hell of a lot more about sonar than you do. Train her around to 269 and let's try it again?

Ambassador: There is another matter... one I'm reluctant to...
Dr. Jeffrey Pelt: Please.
Ambassador: One of our submarines, an Alfa, was last reported in the area of the Grand Banks. We have not heard from her for some time.
Dr. Jeffrey Pelt: Andrei, you've lost another submarine?

Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck... maybe even a "recreational vehicle." And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Captain: I suppose.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: No papers?
Captain: No papers, state to state.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Well then, in winter I will live in... Arizona. Actually, I think I will need two wives.
Captain: Oh, at least.

Jeffrey: Mr. Ambassador, you have nearly a hundred naval vessels operating in the North Atlantic right now. Your aircraft has dropped enough sonar buoys so that a man could walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland without getting his feet wet. Now, shall we dispense with the bull?
Ambassador: You make your point as delicately as ever, Mr. Pelt.

Jeffrey: Listen, I'm a politician, which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open.

Kamarov: Stop pissing, Yuri. Give me a stopwatch and a map, and I'll fly the Alps in a plane with no windows.
Yuri: If the map is accurate enough.

[last lines]
Captain: "... and the sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home." Christopher Columbus.
Jack: Welcome to the New World, Captain.

Poltical: [Reading from a book belonging to Ramius, quoting the Bible] And the seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a voice cried out from heaven, saying: "It is done." A man with your responsibilities reading about the end of the world. And what's this? "I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds."
Captain: It is an ancient Hindu text, quoted by an American.
Poltical: An American?
Captain: Mmm. He invented the atomic bomb, and was later accused of being a communist.

Captain: Before we sailed, I dispatched a letter to Admiral Padorin, in which I announced our intention... to defect.
Kamarov: In the name of God, why?
Captain: When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result, his men were well motivated.

Capt. Bart Mancuso: Hang on, Jonesy. If I can get you close enough... can you track this sucker?
Seaman Jones: Yes, sir. Now that I know what to listen for, I'll bag 'im.
Capt. Bart Mancuso: [smiling] Carry on.

Captain: You will go with the men in the life rafts. The officers and I will submerge beneath you and scuttle the ship.
Dr. Petrov: You will receive the Order of Lenin for this, Captain!

Captain: You're afraid of our fleet. Well, you should be. Personally, I'd give us one chance in three. More tea anyone?

Adm. Painter: What's his plan?
Jack: His plan?
Adm. Painter: Russians don't take a dump, son, without a plan.

Captain: Ryan, sit here.
Jack: I'm not a Naval officer! I'm with the CIA!
Captain: CIA?
Jack: I'm not an agent, I just write books for the CIA!
Captain: Whatever. Sit here and do exactly what I tell you.

Skip: [looking at photos of Red October which show the doors in the front and back of the sub] I'll be... this... this could be a caterpillar.
Jack: A what?
Skip: Uh, a caterpillar drive. Magneto hydrodynamic propulsion. You follow?
Jack: No.
Skip: It's like a... a jet engine for the water. Goes in the front, gets squirted out the back. Only it has no moving parts, so it's very, very quiet.
Jack: Like how quiet?
Skip: It's doubtful our sonar would even pick it up. And if it did, it'd sound like... whales humping or some kind of seismic anomaly. Anything but a submarine. We messed with this a couple years ago. Couldn't make it work. They really built this? This isn't a mock-up or anything?
Jack: She put to sea this morning.
Skip: When I was twelve, I helped my daddy build a bomb shelter in our basement because some fool parked a dozen warheads 90 miles off the coast of Florida. This thing could park a couple of hundred warheads off Washington and New York and no one would know anything about it until it was all over.

Captain: Re-verify our range to target... one ping only.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Captain, I - I - I just...
Captain: Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Aye, Captain.

Capt. Bart Mancuso: The hard part about playing chicken is knowin' when to flinch.

Captain: I miss the peace of fishing like when I was a boy. Forty years I've been at sea. A war at sea. A war with no battles, no monuments... only casualties. I widowed her the day I married her. My wife died while I was at sea, you know.

[Russian midshipmen see the Dallas jumping out of the water]
Russian: [in Russian] Captain's scared them out of the water!
[the Russians cheer]

[telling young Sonarman Beaumont about Jones's most embarrassing moment]
Watson: Seaman Jones here is into music in a big way, and he views this whole boat as his own personal, private stereo set. Well, one day he's got this piece of Pavarotti...
Seaman Jones: It was Paganini.
Watson: Whatever.
Seaman Jones: It was Paganini.
Watson: Look, this is my story, okay?
Seaman Jones: Then tell it right, COB. Pavarotti is a tenor, Paganini was a composer.
Watson: So anyway, he's got this music out in the water, and he's listening to it on his headsets, and he's just happy as a clam. And then all hell breaks loose. See, there's this whole slew of boats out in the water...
Seaman Jones: Including one WAY out at Pearl!
Watson: Including one way the hell out at Pearl. All of a sudden, they start hearing, Pavarotti...
Beaumont: Pavarotti!
Watson: Coming up their asses!

[the Russian Alpha submarine shoots a torpedo at the Red October]
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact, 20 seconds.
Captain: [to Ryan] What books?
Jack: [confused] Pardon me?
Captain: What books did you write?
Jack: I wrote a biography of, of Admiral Halsey, called "The Fighting Sailor", about, uh, naval combat tactics...
Captain: I know this book!
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact...
Captain: Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan...
Capt. Vasili Borodin: ...10 seconds.
Captain: ...Halsey acted stupidly.
[Ryan is dumbfounded that Ramius' mind is about book criticism, while they are about to be hit by a torpedo within a few seconds]
Capt. Vasili Borodin: 9, 8, 7, 6...
[Ryan looks worriedly at captain Mancuso]
Capt. Vasili Borodin: 5, 4, 3, 2...
[everyone prepares for the impact]
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Torpedo impact... now.
[the torpedo slams into the bow of Red October and breaks up harmlessly on impact. The Red October is unharmed. The broken shards of the torpedo drift away]
Capt. Bart Mancuso: I'll be damned.
Jack: What happened?
Capt. Bart Mancuso: Combat tactics, Mr. Ryan. By turning into the torpedo, the Captain closed the distance before it could arm itself.

[the Konovalov's own torpedo is about to strike the Konovalov]
Andrei: You arrogant ass. You've killed *us*!

Jack: [after a torpedo broke up harmlessly on the Red October's hull] What happened?
Capt. Bart Mancuso: Combat tactics, Mr. Ryan. By turning into the torpedo, the captain closed the distance before it could arm itself.
Jack: So that's it?
Captain: Not quite. Right now, Captain Tupolev is removing the safety features on all his weapons. He won't make the same mistake twice.

Lieutenant: [in Russian to shipmates after Ryan chokes on a Russian cigarette] He's turning green.

Jeffrey: It would be well for your government to consider that having your ships and ours, your aircraft and ours, in such proximity... is inherently DANGEROUS. Wars have begun that way, Mr. Ambassador.

Captain: It reminds me of the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin when the world trembled at the sound of our rockets. Now they will tremble again - at the sound of our silence. The order is: engage the silent drive.

Jeffrey: You slammed the door on the General pretty hard, didn't you?
Jack: That was not my intention.
Jeffrey: Oh, yes, it was! He was patronizing you, and you stomped on him! And in my opinion, he deserved it!

Capt. Vasili Borodin: I would like to have seen Montana.

Capt. Bart Mancuso: Central Intelligence Agency... Now, there's a contradiction in terms.

Captain: Once more, we play our dangerous game, a game of chess against our old adversary - The American Navy. For forty years, your fathers before you and your older brothers played this game and played it well. But today the game is different. We have the advantage.

[Shootout in the missile room]
Captain: Hey, Ryan, be careful what you shoot at. Most things in here don't react too well to bullets.
Jack: Right.
[Moves closer to enemy, who fires several shots at him]
Jack: *I* have to be careful what *I* shoot at?

Jack: Well... Ramius trained most of their officer corps, which would put him in a position to select men willing to help him. And he's not Russian. He's Lithuanian by birth, raised by his paternal grandfather, a fisherman. And he has no children, no ties to leave behind. And today is the first anniversary of his wife's death.
General: Oh, come on. You're just an analyst. What can you possibly know what goes on in his mind?
Jack: I know Ramius, General. He's nearly a legend in the submarine community. He's been a maverick his entire career. I actually met him once at an embassy dinner. Have you ever met Captain Ramius, General?

Jack: Where are we going, anyway?
Admiral: Briefing for Jeffrey Pelt, the President's National Security Advisor. Most of the Joint Chiefs will be there, along with a few other people.
Jack: Who's giving the briefing?
Admiral: You are.

Jack: [to himself, imitating Ramius] "Ryan, some things in here don't react well to bullets." Yeah, like me. I don't react well to bullets.

Helicopter: Fuel status says we turn back now.
Jack: Wait a minute. Fuel status? You have a reserve, don't you?
Helicopter: Yes, sir. I've got a ten minute reserve... but I'm not allowed to invade that except in time of war.
Jack: Listen, mister, if you don't get me on board that goddamn submarine, that just might be what you'll have! You got me? Now you have ten more minutes' worth of fuel, we stay here ten more minutes!

Watson: Y'know, I seen me a mermaid once. I even seen me a shark eat an octopus. But I ain't never seen no phantom Russian submarine.

Jack: [in the shower]
[imitating the Admiral]
Jack: "The average Ruskie, son, don't take a dump without a plan." Wait a minute. We don't have to figure out how to get the crew off the sub. He's already done that, he would have had to. All we gotta do is figure out what he's gonna do. So how's he gonna get the crew off the sub.
[later, shaving]
Jack: They have to want to get off. How do you get a crew to want to get off a submarine? How do you get a crew to want to get off a nuclear sub...
[eureka!]