Alexander (film)

Alexander is a film directed by Oliver Stone and based on the life of Alexander the Great. The screenplay is by Christopher Kyle, Laeta Kalogridis and Oliver Stone.

Alexander

• (Of his father Phillip)This is the man who is going to take you from Greece to Persia?! He can't even make it from one couch to the next.

• You've all honored your country and your ancestors and now we come to this most distant place in Asia where across from us Darius has at last gathered a vast army, but look again at this horde and ask yourselves, who is this great king who pays assassins in gold coins to murder my father, our king in a most despicable and cowardly manner? Who is this great king Darius who enslaves his own men to fight? Who is this king but a king of air? These men do not fight for their homes. They fight because this king tells them they must. And when they fight, they will melt away like the air, because they know no loyalty to a king of slaves! But we are not here today as slaves. We are here today... as Macedonian free men! And all their arms, their numbers, their chariots and their fine horses will mean nothing in the hands of slaves. Some of you, perhaps myself, will not live to see the sun set over these mountains today, for I will be in the very thick of battle with you. But remember this, the greatest honor a man can achieve is to live with great courage, and to die gloriously in battle for his home. I say to you what every warrior has known since the beginning of time: conquer your fear and I promise you you will conquer death! Someday I promise you, your sons and grandsons will look into your eyes. And when they ask you why you fought so bravely at Gaugamela, you will answer, with all the strength of your great, great hearts: "I was here this day at Gaugamela...for the freedom...and glory...of Greece!" Zeus be with us!

• It's a high ransom she charges for nine months lodging in the womb.

• In the end, all that matters is what you've done.

• When I was a child my mother thought me divine and my father weak... which one am I Hephaistion? Weak or divine?

• Were we gods we'd breach these walls to the Eastern Ocean.

• Each land, each boundary I cross, I strip away another illusion. I sense death will be the last. Yet still I push, harder and harder to reach this..."home." Where has our eagle gone? We must go on Ptolemy, until we find an end.

• Aristotle be damned! By Zeus and by all the gods, what makes you so much better than them, Cassander! Better than you really are! In you and those like you is this.

• What disturbs me most is not your lack of respect for my judgment, but your contempt for a world far older than ours.

• You break my heart, you men...afraid!? Of course you have fears, we all have fears. Because noone has ever come this far before.

• Yes, you're right Crateros. I should have sent you veterans home sooner, and I will. The first of your shall be the Silver Shields, and then every man who has served seven years. Respected, rich, LOVED! You'll be treated by you wives and children as heroes for the rest of your lives. And enjoy a peaceful death. But you dream Crateros! Your simplicity long ended when you took Persian mistresses and children and you thickened your holdings with plunder and jewels... Because you have fallen in love with all the things in life that destroy men! Do you not see? And you, as well as I, know, that as the years decline, and the memories stale, and all your great victories fade, it will always be remembered, you left your king in Asia! Because I will go on...with my Asians!

• Men of Macedon, we're going home.

• May all those who come here after us know when they see this altar, that titans were once here.

Philip

• A king isn't born, Alexander, he is made. By steel and by suffering. A king must know how to hurt those he loves. It's lonely. Ask Heracles. Ask any of them. Fate is cruel. No man or woman can be too powerful or too beautiful without disaster befalling. They laugh when you rise too high and crush everything you've built with a whim. What glory they give in the end, they take away. They... They make of us slaves.

• There's only one thing better than winning a battle, son, and that's the taste of a new woman! You'll find it far sweeter than self pity.

Cleitus

• Herakles did it by himself. Did you conquer Asia by yourself, Alexander? I mean, who planned the Asian invasion while you were being spanked on your bottom by my sister Lanike? Was it not your father? Or is his blood no longer good enough?

• Pay attention lad, your father's still watching over you!

• I don't serve your purpose?! What was I serving when I saved your puppy-life at Gaugamela?! Were you Zeus' boy?! What if I left you to die in the dust there? You think we'd be forced now to mate with brown apes?!!!

Ptolemy

• It was said later that Alexander was never defeated, except by Hephaistion's thighs.

• Back, and to the left! ~ Macedonian Soldier

• All men reach and fall...

• Alexander used to say that we are most alone when we are with the myths.

• He was a god, Cadmos, or as close as anything I've ever seen.

• His tragedy was one of increasing loneliness and impatience with those who could not understand. And if his desire to unite Greek and barbarian ended in failure... what failure! His failure towered over other men's successes. I've lived... I've lived a long life, Cadmos. But the glory and the memory of man will always belong to the ones who follow their great visions. And the greatest of these is the one they now... call "Megas Alexandros" - the greatest Alexander of them all.

Olympias

• All you desire in the world is yours! Take it...

• In my womb I carried my avenger!

• You will be nineteen this summer and the girls already say you don't like them, you like Hephaistion more. I understand it is natural for a young man.

• Alexander, the world is yours. Take it!

• Their skin is water. And their tongue is fire. She is your friend.

• Look at you! Look at you! You are everything he (Philip) was not. He was coarse, you are refined. He was general, you are a king. He could not rule himself...and you, shall rule the world.

Hephaistion

• I found it in Egypt. The man who sold it to me said it came from a time when man worshipped sun and stars. I'll always think of you as the sun, Alexander and I pray your dream will shine on all men. I wish you a son.

• You're everything I care for and by the sweet breath of Aphrodite I'm so jealous of losing you to this world you want so badly.

• The generals question your obsession with Darius... they say it was never meant for you to be King of Asia.

• Sometimes expecting the best of people can be a flaw.