The Ninth Configuration (1980)

Stacy Keach: Col. Vincent Kane

Photos 

Quotes 

• Col. Vincent Kane : In order for life to have appeared spontaneously on earth, there first had to be hundreds of millions of protein molecules of the ninth configuration. But given the size of the planet Earth, do you know how long it would have taken for just one of these protein molecules to appear entirely by chance? Roughly ten to the two hundred and forty-third power billions of years. And I find that far, far more fantastic than simply believing in God.

• Colonel Kane : Maybe we're just fish out of water.

  Col. Richard Fell : What was that?

  Colonel Kane : I just think about sickness, cancer in children, earthquakes, war, painful death. Death, just death. If these things are just part of our natural environment why do we think of them as evil? Why do they horrify us so?... unless we were meant for someplace else.

• [Captain Cutshaw stomps in wearing scuba flippers] 

  Captain Cutshaw : Take me to the beach.

  Colonel Kane : It's night, and it's raining.

  Captain Cutshaw : I see you're determined to start an argument.

• Colonel Kane : You're convinced that God is dead because there's evil in the world.

  Captain Cutshaw : Correct.

  Colonel Kane : Then why don't you think He's alive because of the goodness in the world?

• Colonel Kane : Why are you teaching the dogs Shakespeare?

  Lt. Frankie Reno : Someone's got to do it.

• Colonel Kane : [Reading the back of a St. Christopher medal aloud]  "I am a Buddhist. In case of emergency, call a lama."

• Captain Cutshaw : Can you prove there's a foot?

  Colonel Kane : There are some arguments from reason.

  Captain Cutshaw : Are those the things we use to justify dropping atomic bombs on Japan?

• Colonel Kane : What do you see?

  Captain Cutshaw : An old woman in funny clothes throwing poison darts at a buffalo.

  Col. Richard Fell : Bison.

• Capt. Fairbanks : I am Dr. Franz VonPaulie.

  Colonel Kane : Why do you do that to the wall?

  Capt. Fairbanks : Because I am convinced that we can walk through walls. Not only me... Anyone. Cops, People. People in Nashville. I tried to exert the full force of my mind on all the atoms of my body, so that they will mix, rearrange and fit exactly all the holes in that wall. Then I tried the laboratory method... I tried to walk through it. through the wall. Just like a few minutes ago when I took a running bash, and I failed horrible.

  [smashes wall with sledge hammer] 

  Capt. Fairbanks : I am punishing the atoms. I am making an example of them. An object lesson, a thing... So when the other atoms see what's coming, they'll let me pass through. Independent snots! Shape up or ship out!