The 5 Most Famous Movie Quotes that Were Never Said

A good quote can live on forever, long past whatever it's original source was. We all have famous quotes stored in our collective consciousness. Whether they're from something as lofty as Shakespeare ("All the world's a stage") or something as common place as a TV advertisement ("Where's the beef?") they stick with us. They get passed along and are known even to those of us who have no idea where they first came from. And sometimes the version we all know isn't what it originally was. In fact some of the most famous movie quotes of all time can't be found in the movies they were supposed to have come from. Here's a list of possibly the most often misquoted lines from the movies.

5) "Greed is good." - Wall Street (1987)

Gordon Gecko, the perfect name for a cold blooded Wall Street sleaze. Played even more perfectly by Michael Douglas. This is the quote everybody thinks of when they think of this movie, even if they've never seen it. Unfortunately he didn't say this. It's understandable why this is the version people tend to stick with though, because it's short and punchy. The real version was part of a much longer speech which, while quite great, didn't lend itself to easily regurgitated sound bites. The relevant part of the speech was actually "greed, for lack of a better word, is good." True to his Wall Street roots he had to tack on some quick qualifiers just so nobody can be 100% sure of what he does or doesn't mean.

4) "Do you feel lucky punk?" - Dirty Harry (1971)

Despite what people may think, the classic Clint Eastwood character Dirty Harry was not a man of few words. This misquote is used often in place of a much longer taunting little monologue that Harry breaks out when he has his trusty .357 magnum pointed at a bad guy. There's a whole thing how Harry isn't sure if he fired off all his shots or not. Then he poses the following question to the unlucky sap on the ground "You've got yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well do you punk?" However as we'll see throughout the list people don't like to have to regurgitate who swaths of dialog. So this was boiled down to a much more succinct version which Harry never actually said.

3) "Play it again Sam." - Casablanca (1942)

One of history's truly perfect movies and a the home of a plethora of wonderful quotes. "Here's looking at you kid" and "this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship," amongst others, also live on in our collective memory. This particular one however can't be credited to the brilliant script the way that all the rest can. The closest Bogart comes to actually saying this is when he tells Sam the piano player "you played it for her, you can play it for me... if she can stand it I can. Play it!" Granted the misquoted version is snappier and part of the problem is that the misquoted version is often quoted in other movies. Woody Allen even used it as a title for his 1972 comedy, just reinforcing this version all the more.

2) "Me Tarzan, you Jane." - Tarzan the Ape Man (1932)

This is the boiling down of the first real bonding moment between Tarzan and Jane, played by Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan. The scene is really just a back and forth between the two of them with each one pointing at themselves and then the other while saying the appropriate name. However since the hand gestures of pointing back and forth don't always flow well with easy going conversation the "me" and "you" were stuck in. In reality the misquote doesn't even make sense if we stop and think about it for a moment. Tarzan has been raised by apes, he has no concept of the English language. Therefore he'd have no basis to use the words "me" or "you." Which is of course why he doesn't actually use them in the movie itself.

1) "Luke I am your father." - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

This is the big one, etched in our minds with the booming voice of James Earl Jones. This is the one that we've all said any time we came across something that made our voice sound deeper than it usually is. It's the all time classic line and the second most quoted Star Wars line after "May the force be with you." And the black suited baddie Darth Vader didn't say it. As we've seen throughout the list, it's another example of a conversation boiled down to one line. The actual line that Vader said to Luke (after chopping off his hand just to be sure he had the whiny farm boy's attention) was "No, I am your father." Powerful stuff... but without the context of the previous few lines about how Obi-wan Kenobi never told Luke about his father and so on then it doesn't make total sense on it's own. The desire to want the entirety of this monumental film moment to be squeezed into a single line is what gave birth to this ever persistent misquote.