The Professor Quotes in The Bourne Identity (2002)

The Professor: [the Professor's dying words] Look at this. Look at what they make you give.

The Professor: I work alone, like you. We always work alone.

Roger Thornhill: I don't like the games you play, Professor.

The Professor: War is hell, Mr. Thornhill. Even when it's a cold one.

Roger Thornhill: If you fellows can't lick the VanDamm's of this world without asking girls like her to bed down with them and fly away with them and probably never come back, perhaps you ought to start learning how to lose a few cold wars.

The Professor: I'm afraid we're already doing that.

The Professor: If I thought there was any chance of changing your mind, I'd talk about Miss Kendall, of whom you so obviously disapprove.

Roger Thornhill: Yes, for using sex like some people use a flyswatter.

The Professor: War is hell, Mr. Thornhill, even when it's a cold one.

Roger Thornhill: I don't think I caught your name.

The Professor: I don't think I pitched it.

Roger Thornhill: You're police, aren't you? Or is it FBI?

The Professor: FBI, CIA, ONI... we're all in the same alphabet soup.

The Professor: We ahh... we do nothing.

The Professor: Men, we've fought and won. But in winning we have lost something. In defending one law, we've come to despise all law. And if you go on like this, we'll destroy the very thing we fight for.

The Professor: Bonjour, mesdames et monsiuers. Yesterday we have learned the correct way how to boil water. Today we will learn the correct way how to crack an egg. Voilà! An egg. Now, an egg is not a stone; it is not made of wood, it is a living thing. It has a heart. So when we crack it, we must not torment it. We must be merciful and execute it quickly, like with the guillotine.

The Professor: [inspecting the students' soufflés] Too low. Too pale. Too heavy. Too low. Too *high*, you are exaggerating. Fair. So-so. Sloppy.

[he gets to the Baron]

The Professor: Mm. Superb. My dear Baron, you have not lost your touch.

[he looks at Sabrina's]

The Professor: Much too low.

Sabrina Fairchild: [looking at her soufflé] I don't know what happened.

Baron St. Fontanel: I will tell you what happened: you forgot to turn on the oven.

Sabrina Fairchild: Oh!

The Actress: I only said I knew, because you said you knew.

The Professor: I lied. Knowledge isn't truth. It's just mindless agreement. You agree with me, I agree with someone else - we all have knowledge. We haven't come any closer to the truth. You can never understand anything by agreeing, by making definitions. Only by turning over the possibilities. That's called thinking. If I say I know, I stop thinking. As long as I keep thinking, I come to understand. That way, I might approach some truth.

The Actress: But if you've finished it, and so much as you've studied it, you'd know how it all fits... how it all works. In fact, you'd know everything!

The Professor: Ha, ha. I'm an old man. I wouldn't survive the publicity.

The Professor: They will not take responsibility for their world. They want to put it all on the shoulders of a few and I tell you the weight of all those worlds...

The Professor: [giving lecture in classroom] Absolutely anything is possible: from interstellar communications to ze development of a functioning aphrodisiac. Now, let us first look...

Pondo Sinatra: [raising his hand and interrupting the professor] Uh, Professor Schmidt

The Professor: Ja, Herr Sinatra

Pondo Sinatra: What is an aphrodisiac?

The Professor: Ze word aphrodisiac comes from ze African root

[writing on the chalkboard]

The Professor: 'APHRO' meaning large penis, und ze Greek 'DISIAC' which means want it bad.

Guy Van Stratten: Why would a man want to escape from Poland?

The Professor: Because, the past few years, my country has offered its people a wide variety of incentives for moving elsewhere.

The Professor: Did you ever stop to think why cops are always famous for being dumb? Simple. Because they don't have to be anything else. Crooks aren't the worst people, they're just the stupidest. The fleas of the world.

Guy Van Stratten: And murder?

The Professor: My friend, after twenty thousand years, murder is still a business that's mainly in the hands of the amateurs.

[Roy walks up to the group and collapses]

The Professor: He's dead, and there's nothing we can do.

The Professor: He's impervious!

Alice: Unless we find his weak spot!

The Professor: [during wedding ceremony] Dear Lord, you know I'm not trained for this job...

Alice, The Professor's Assistant: [under their breath] You could say that again.

The Professor: Pull yourself together. Remorse is for the weak and weakness is the source of all evil on this Earth. There's a time coming - and it's gonna be sooner rather than later - when this will be understood by governments and individuals: that there can be no progress and no solutions until you make a rational decision to exterminate the weak.

[last lines]

The Professor: I myself have no future. But I am a force.

The Professor: [stands and raises his glass] To the destruction of what is.