Citizen Kane quotes

View Quote Newsreel Narrator: ...Alone in his never-finished, already decaying pleasure palace, aloof, seldom visited, never photographed, an emperor of new strength continued to direct his failing empire, varyingly attempted to sway as he once did the destinies of a nation that had ceased to listen to him, ceased to trust him. Then last week, as it must to all men, death came to Charles Foster Kane.

View Quote Newsreel Narrator: [at beginning of news reel on Charles Foster Kane's death] Legendary was Xanadu where Kubla Khan decreed his stately pleasure dome. Today, almost as legendary is Florida's Xanadu, world's largest private pleasure ground. Here, on the deserts of the Gulf Coast, a private mountain was commissioned and successfully built. One hundred thousand trees, twenty thousand tons of marble are the ingredients of Xanadu's mountain. Contents of Xanadu's palace: paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace - a collection of everything so big it can never be catalogued or appraised, enough for ten museums - the loot of the world. Xanadu's livestock: the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, the beast of the field and jungle. Two of each, the biggest private zoo since Noah. Like the pharaohs, Xanadu's landlord leaves many stones to mark his grave. Since the pyramids, Xanadu is the costliest monument a man has built to himself. Here in Xanadu last week, Xanadu's landlord was laid to rest, a potent figure of our century, America's Kubla Khan - Charles Foster Kane.

View Quote Newsreel Narrator: Kane helped to change the world, but Kane's world now is history. The great yellow journalist himself lived to be history. Outlived his power to make it...

View Quote Politician: The words of Charles Foster Kane are a menace to every working man in this land. He is today what he has always been - and always will be - a Fascist!

View Quote Rawlston: It isn't enough to tell us what a man did. You've got to tell us who he was.

View Quote Rawlston: Maybe he told us all about himself on his deathbed...Yeah, maybe he didn't...All we saw on that screen was a big American...One of the biggest...But how is he any different from Ford? Or Hearst for that matter? Or John Doe...I'll tell ya, it comes from a man's dying words...What were they?...You don't read the papers...When Charles Foster Kane died, he said just one word -...Rosebud, just that one word, but who is she...What was it?...Here's a man that could have been president, who was as loved and hated and as talked about as any man in our time. But when he comes to die, he's got something on his mind called 'Rosebud.' Now what does that mean?...A racehorse he bet on once...Yeah, that didn't come in...All right, but what was the race?

View Quote Raymond: [last lines] Throw that junk in.

View Quote Rosebud... Opening line; his last word as he dies.

View Quote Susan: [referring to Xanadu] Oh, a person could go crazy in this dump with nobody to talk to, nobody to have any fun with...49,000 acres of nothin' but scenery and statues. I'm lonesome.

View Quote Susan: Love! You don't love anybody! Me or anybody else! You want to be loved - that's all you want! I'm Charles Foster Kane. Whatever you want - just name it and it's yours! Only love me! Don't expect me to love you.

View Quote Walter Parks Thatcher: [Quoting from Kane's letter] "Sorry but I'm not interested in gold mines, oil wells, shipping or real estate...One item on your list intrigues me, the New York Inquirer, a little newspaper I understand we acquired in a foreclosure proceeding. Please don't sell it. I'm coming back to America to take charge. I think it would be fun to run a newspaper." I think it would be fun to run a newspaper. Grrr.

View Quote Walter Parks Thatcher: Mr. Charles Foster Kane, in every essence of his social beliefs, and by the dangerous manner in which he has persistently attacked the American traditions of private property, initiative, and opportunity for advancement, is in fact, nothing more or less than a Communist!

View Quote
[referring to Kane's 'Declaration of Principles'] I'd like to keep that particular piece of paper myself. I have a hunch it might turn out to be something pretty important, a do****ent...like the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, and my first report card at school.

View Quote Bernstein: There's a lot of statues in Europe you haven't bought yet.
Charles: You can't blame me. They've been making statues for some two thousand years, and I've only been collecting for five.

View Quote Charles Foster Kane III: Mother, is Pop governor yet?
Emily: Not yet, Junior.