Christopher Columbus Quotes in Carry on Columbus (1992)

Nina the Model: Well I'm off to Italy next week. Michelangelo wants to do me up on the ceiling.

Christopher Columbus: Well you mind you hang onto something while you're up there!

Christopher Columbus: [a slave presents the Chief and Columbus with cigars] What do you make of it?

Mordecai Mendoza: Some kind of vegetable? Looks like old dried cabbage.

[Columbus takes a bite]

Mordecai Mendoza: What does it taste like?

Christopher Columbus: Horse shit.

Mordecai Mendoza: Is it cooked?

Christopher Columbus: If it is they should shoot the cook.

[the slave lights the Chief's cigar]

Christopher Columbus: Well I'll be damned! Look at that. They cook it while you're eating it.

Mordecai Mendoza: So try it cooked.

[the slave lights Columbus' cigar. He has a puff]

Mordecai Mendoza: What's it taste like now?

Christopher Columbus: Still tastes like horse shit.

Father Perez: I see you're a scholar, my son, as well as a traveler.

Christopher Columbus: Certainly a traveler, Father. I've sailed as far north as Iceland, as far south as Guinea, and eastward to the Golden Horn.

Father Perez: But that is to have reached the limits of the World.

Christopher Columbus: Of the known world? Yes, Father, but the actual world... not by a thousand leagues.

Father Perez: How can you say that - never having seen it?

Christopher Columbus: Have you ever seen Heaven or Hell?

Father Perez: We have sound reasons for believing they exist.

Christopher Columbus: I have sound reasons too.

Father Perez: What are they?

Christopher Columbus: The same as yours, Father, and revelations to which I can add cosmography and mathematics.

Christopher Columbus: [as he and Diego observe a native smoking tobacco] Doesn't that prove how backward they are? You never see a civilized man do that.

Reginald: [while trying to escape, Reginald is found by Christopher Columbus and the Neanderthals]

Reginald: Alright, boys. We can do this the easy way,

Reginald: [holds his cane in a threatening manner]

Reginald: or the hard way.

Christopher Columbus: [Columbus brandishes his sword and the Neanderthals raise their giant bones]

Reginald: [scared] I guess it's gonna be the hard way.

Christopher Columbus: [In Italian] E' tutto finito.

Christopher Columbus: [to the Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor] I recall our blessed Lord said: here is a new commandment I give to you. That you love one another as I loved you. Surely it is not blasphemy to take that message to the shores of Africa or across the ocean sea.

Christopher Columbus: You said my faith would light my way, yet all I see before me is a sea of darkness. Why your highness has God forsaken me?

Christopher Columbus: [to the prostitute who tried to mug him] Stick to your profession, beware the Genoese, and shun the Devil!

Christopher Columbus: All my life I feel I've been chasing the sun, and at last I feel I'm going to catch it.

Christopher Columbus: And so Father, the ship sails east from Spain over a long and tedious route and finally, after much travel, it lands in the Indies. Now, just suppose it were possible to reach the Indies by traveling in the opposite direction. West instead of east. And just suppose the route was shorter and more direct.

Monk: Impossible. Impossible.

Christopher Columbus: Why?

Monk: I'll show you why. Only madmen would sail on the alchemy. You would sail right off the end of the earth into a dark abyss. Boom. No more ship.

Christopher Columbus: But suppose Father, that there were no end of the earth, no dark abyss. Here,

[Picks up an orange]

Christopher Columbus: Suppose this is Spain and suppose these are the Indies. And suppose instead of traveling east, the ship travels west to around the earth and in half the time, lands in the Indies.

Monk: Possible. Possible. Buono. Buono.