Schindler's List Quotes

Oskar Schindler: I could have got more out. I could have got more. I don't know. If I'd just... I could have got more.
Itzhak Stern: Oskar, there are eleven hundred people who are alive because of you. Look at them.
Oskar Schindler: If I'd made more money... I threw away so much money. You have no idea. If I'd just...

Itzhak Stern: There will be generations because of what you did.
Oskar Schindler: I didn't do enough!
Itzhak Stern: You did so much.
[Schindler looks at his car]
Oskar Schindler: This car. Goeth would have bought this car. Why did I keep the car? Ten people right there. Ten people. Ten more people.

[removing Nazi pin from lapel]
Oskar Schindler: This pin. Two people. This is gold. Two more people. He would have given me two for it, at least one. One more person. A person, Stern. For this.
[sobbing]
Oskar Schindler: I could have gotten one more person... and I didn't! And I... I didn't!

Oskar Schindler: Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't.
Amon Goeth: You think that's power?
Oskar Schindler: That's what the Emperor said. A man steals something, he's brought in before the Emperor, he throws himself down on the ground. He begs for his life, he knows he's going to die. And the Emperor...

pardons him. This worthless man, he lets him go.
Amon Goeth: I think you are drunk.
Oskar Schindler: That's power, Amon. That is power.

[Addressing his workers at the end of the war in 1945]
Oskar Schindler: The unconditional surrender of Germany has just been announced. At midnight tonight, the war is over. Tomorrow you'll begin the process of looking for survivors of your families. In most cases... you won't find them. After six long years of murder, victims are being mourned throughout the world. We've

survived. Many of you have come up to me and thanked me. Thank yourselves. Thank your fearless Stern, and others among you who worried about you and faced death at every moment. I am a member of the Nazi Party. I'm a munitions manufacturer. I'm a profiteer of slave labor. I am... a criminal. At midnight, you'll be free and I'll be hunted. I shall remain with you until five minutes after midnight,

after which time - and I hope you'll forgive me - I have to flee.
[He addresses the factory's SS guards]
Oskar Schindler: I know you have received orders from our commandant, which he has received from his superiors, to dispose of the population of this camp. Now would be the time to do it. Here they are; they're all here. This is your opportunity. Or, you could

leave, and return to your families as men instead of murderers.
[the guards gradually exit; he addresses the workers again]
Oskar Schindler: In memory of the countless victims among your people, I ask us to observe three minutes of silence.

Oskar Schindler: In every business I tried, I can see now, it wasn't me that failed. Something was missing. Even if I'd known what it was, there's nothing I could have done about it because you can't create this thing. And it makes all the difference in the world between success and failure.
Emilie Schindler: Luck?
Oskar Schindler:

[Schindler kisses his wife's hand and smiles] War.

Oskar Schindler: How are you doing, Rabbi?
Rabbi Menasha Lewartow: Good, Herr Direktor.
Oskar Schindler: The sun is going down.
Rabbi Menasha Lewartow: Yes it is.
Oskar Schindler: What day is it? Friday? It is Friday, isn't it?
Rabbi Menasha Lewartow: Is it?

Oskar Schindler: What's the matter with you? You should be preparing for the Sabbath, shouldn't you. I've got some wine in my office. Come.

Amon Goeth: Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history and you are part of it. Six hundred years ago, when elsewhere they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Casimir the Great - so called - told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They

settled. They took hold. They prospered in business, science, education, the arts. They came with nothing. And they flourished. For six centuries there has been a Jewish Krakow. By this evening those six centuries will be a rumor. They never happened. Today is history.

Helen Hirsch: My first day here, he beat me because I threw out the bones from dinner. He came down at midnight and asked for them. And I asked him, I don't know how, I could never ask him now, I said, "Why are you beating me?" He said, "The reason I beat you now is because you ask why I beat you."
Oskar Schindler: I am sorry for your troubles, Helen.

Helen Hirsch: I have accepted them.
Oskar Schindler: Accepted them?
Helen Hirsch: One day, he will shoot me.
Oskar Schindler: No, he won't shoot you.
Helen Hirsch: He will. I see things. We were on the roof on Monday, young Lisiek and I and we saw the Herr Kommandant come out of the

house on the patio right there below us and he drew his gun and shot a woman who was passing by. Just a woman with a bundle, just shot her through the throat. She was just a woman on her way somewhere, she was no faster or slower or fatter or thinner than anyone else and I couldn't guess what had she done. The more you see of the Herr Kommandant the more you see there are no set rules you can live

by, you cannot say to yourself, "If I follow these rules, I will be safe."
Oskar Schindler: He won't shoot you because he enjoys you too much. He enjoys you so much he won't even let you wear the star. He doesn't want anyone to know it's a Jew he's enjoying. He shot the woman from the steps because she meant nothing to him. She was just one of a series neither offending him

or pleasing him.

Oskar Schindler: What are you doing? These are mine. These are my workers. They should be on my train. They're skilled munitions workers. They're essential. Essential girls!
[shows the guard Danka Dresner's hand]
Oskar Schindler: Their fingers polish the inside of shell metal casings. How else am I to polish the inside of a 45 millimeter shell

casing? You tell me. You tell me!
S.S. Guard: [to the girls he has been herding away from their parents] Back on the train!

Reiter: I'm a graduate of Civil Engineering from the University of Milan.
Amon Goeth: Ah, an educated Jew... like Karl Marx himself. Unterscharfuehrer!
Hujar: Jawohl?
Amon Goeth: Shoot her.
Reiter: Herr Kommandant! I'm only trying to do my job!
Amon Goeth: Ja,

I'm doing mine.

Amon Goeth: Oskar, there's a clerical error here at the bottom of the last page.
Oskar Schindler: No, there's one more name I want to put there. I'll never find a maid as well trained as her at Brinnlitz. They are all country girls.
Amon Goeth: [referring to Helen] No. No.
Oskar Schindler: One hand of 21. If

you win, I pay you 7400 Reichmarks. Hit a natural and I make it 14800. If I win, the girl goes on my list.
Amon Goeth: I can't wager Helen in a card game.
Oskar Schindler: Why not?
Amon Goeth: Wouldn't be right.
Oskar Schindler: She's going to Auschwitz on Number Two anyway. What difference does it

make?
Amon Goeth: She's not going to Auschwitz. I'd never do that to her. No, I want her to come back to Vienna with me. I want her to come to work for me there. I want to grow old with her.
Oskar Schindler: Are you mad? Amon, you can't take her to Vienna with you.
Amon Goeth: No, of course I can't. That's what I'd like to do.

What I can do, if I'm any sort of a man, is the next most merciful thing. I should take her into the woods and shoot her painlessly in the back of the head. What was it you said for a natural 21? Was it 14800?

[Stern brings a report to Schindler at lunchtime]
Oskar Schindler: I could try to read this or I could eat my lunch while it's still hot. We're doing well?
Itzhak Stern: Yes.
Oskar Schindler: Better this month than last?
Itzhak Stern: Yes.
Oskar Schindler: Any reason to think

next month will be worse?
Itzhak Stern: The war could end.