Dr. Edward Morbius Quotes in Forbidden Planet (1956)

Robby: Morbius. Morbius!

Dr. Edward Morbius: What?

Robby: Something is approaching from the southwest. It is now quite close.

[they run to the windows and look out, but see nothing]

Commander John J. Adams: Could Robby be wrong?

Dr. Edward Morbius: No. Never.

[an invisible force rips down the trees; Morbius closes the steel shutters over the windows]

Dr. Edward Morbius: I feel sorry for you, young man.

Commander John J. Adams: Feel sorry for your daughter, Morbius.

Altaira: It's listening.

[the monster pounds on the steel shielding, denting it]

Dr. Edward Morbius: Alta, go into my study.

Commander John J. Adams: You still refuse to face the truth.

Dr. Edward Morbius: What truth?

Commander John J. Adams: Morbius, that thing out there - it's *you*.

Dr. Edward Morbius: You're insane. How else would you have led it here, where Alta must see you torn to pieces?

Commander John J. Adams: You still think she's immune? She's joined herself to me, body and soul!

Altaira: Yes, and whatever comes, forever.

Dr. Edward Morbius: Say it's a lie. Shout, let it hear you out there! Tell it you don't love this man!

Altaira: Not even if I could.

[the steel shielding begins to break]

Dr. Edward Morbius: Stop it, Robby! Don't let it in! Kill it, Robby!

[Robby shorts out]

Commander John J. Adams: It's no use. He knows it's your other self.

[steel shielding breaks; they run]

Dr. Edward Morbius: Guilty! Guilty! My evil self is at that door, and I have no power to stop it!

Dr. Edward Morbius: Altaira, I specifically asked you not to join us for lunch.

Altaira: Lunch is over. You didn't say anything about not coming in for coffee. Well, you didn't, did you?

Dr. Edward Morbius: The fool, the meddling idiot! As though his ape's brain could contain the secrets of the Krell!

Altaira: [shocked] Father, he's *dead*!

Dr. Edward Morbius: He was warned, and now he's paid! Let him be buried with the other victims of human greed and folly!

Altaira: [coldly] Morbius. You wanted me to make a choice. Now you've chosen for me.

Dr. Edward Morbius: Alta?

Altaira: [to Commander Adams] I'm ready to go with you, darling.

[She runs up the stairs]

Dr. Edward Morbius: Altaira! No!

Dr. Edward Morbius: In times long past, this planet was the home of a mighty, noble race of beings who called themselves the Krell. Ethically and technologically they were a million years ahead of humankind, for in unlocking the mysteries of nature they had conquered even their baser selves, and when in the course of eons they had abolished sickness and insanity, crime and all injustice, they turned, still in high benevolence, upwards towards space. Then, having reached the heights, this all-but-divine race perished in a single night, and nothing was preserved above ground.

Dr. Edward Morbius: One cannot behold the face of the gorgon and live!

Dr. Edward Morbius: ...No doctor, not even though I were the mad scientist of the tape thriller...

Commander John J. Adams: Whatever you know in here, your other self knows out there.

Dr. Edward Morbius: [angrily] I'm not a monster, you...

Commander John J. Adams: [grappling with Morbius] We're all part monsters in our subconscious, so we have laws and religion!

Commander John J. Adams: What is the Id?

Dr. Edward Morbius: [frustrated] Id, Id, Id, Id, Id!

[calming down]

Dr. Edward Morbius: It's a... It's an obsolete term. I'm afraid once used to describe the elementary basis of the subconscious mind.

Commander John J. Adams: [to himself] Monsters from the Id...

Dr. Edward Morbius: Huh?

Commander John J. Adams: Monsters from the subconscious. Of course. That's what Doc meant. Morbius. The big machine, 8,000 miles of klystron relays, enough power for a whole population of creative geniuses, operated by remote control. Morbius, operated by the electromagnetic impulses of individual Krell brains.

Dr. Edward Morbius: To what purpose?

Commander John J. Adams: In return, that ultimate machine would instantaneously project solid matter to any point on the planet, In any shape or color they might imagine. For *any* purpose, Morbius! Creation by mere thought.

Dr. Edward Morbius: Why haven't I seen this all along?

Commander John J. Adams: But like you, the Krell forgot one deadly danger - their own subconscious hate and lust for destruction.

Dr. Edward Morbius: The beast. The mindless primitive! Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning.

Commander John J. Adams: And so those mindless beasts of the subconscious had access to a machine that could never be shut down. The secret devil of every soul on the planet all set free at once to loot and maim. And take revenge, Morbius, and kill!

Dr. Edward Morbius: My poor Krell. After a million years of shining sanity, they could hardly have understood what power was destroying them.

[pause]

Dr. Edward Morbius: Yes, young man, all very convincing, but for one obvious fallacy. The last Krell died 2,000 centuries ago. But today, as we all know, there is still at large on this planet a living monster.

Commander John J. Adams: Your mind refuses to face the conclusion.

Dr. Edward Morbius: What do you mean?

Dr. Edward Morbius: How ironic that a simple scholar, with no ambition, beyond a modest measure of seclusion, should out of the clear sky, find himself besieged by an army of fellow creatures, all grimly determined to be of service.

Dr. Edward Morbius: [Commander Adams has just unwittingly activated the Krell self destruct mechanism at Dr. Morbius' instruction] In 24 hours you must be 100 million miles out in space. Krell furnaces... chain reaction... they cannot be reversed.

Doc Ostrow: The total potential here must be nothing less than astronomical.

Dr. Edward Morbius: Nothing less. The number 10 raised almost literally to the power of infinity.

Dr. Edward Morbius: Yes, a single machine, a cube 20 miles on each side.

Dr. Edward Morbius: Do you understand the mechanism, Robby?

Robby: Yes, Morbius. A simple blaster.

Commander John J. Adams: Dr. Morbius, just what were the symptoms of all those other deaths, the unnatural ones I mean.

Dr. Edward Morbius: The symptoms were striking Commander. One by one in spite of every safeguard my co-workers were torn literally limb from limb.

Commander John J. Adams: By what?

Dr. Edward Morbius: By some devilish thing that never once showed itself.

Commander John J. Adams: And the Bellerophon?

Dr. Edward Morbius: Vaporized as the three remaining survivors tried to take her off.

Commander John J. Adams: And yet in all these 19 years you personally have never again been bothered by this planetary force?

Dr. Edward Morbius: Only in nightmares of those times. And yet always in my mind I seem to feel the creature is lurking somewhere close at hand, sly and irresistible and only waiting to be reinvoked for murder.

Dr. Edward Morbius: My poor Krell.

Dr. Edward Morbius: [as his invisible Id approaches] Stop! No further! I deny you, I give you up!

[Morbius crumbles under the force of the Id]