Conan the Barbarian quotes

View Quote Mongol General: Hao! Dai ye! We won again! This is good, but what is best in life?
Mongol: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Mongol General: Wrong! Conan! What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

View Quote Conan: What gods do you pray to?
Subotai: [looks up] I pray to the Four Winds... and you?
Conan: To Crom... but I seldom pray to him, he doesn't listen.
Subotai: [chuckles] What good is he then?, Ah, it's just as I've always said.
Conan: He is strong!, If I die, I have to go before him, and he will ask me, "What is the Riddle of Steel?", If I don't know it, he will cast me out of Valhalla and laugh at me, That's Crom, strong on his mountain!
Subotai: Ah, my god is greater.
Conan: [chuckles] Crom laughs at your Four Winds, He laughs from his mountain.
Subotai: My god is stronger, He is the everlasting sky! Your god lives underneath him.

View Quote Khitan General: My fear is that my sons will never understand me... Hao! Dai ye! We won again! [Cheers] This is good. But what is best in life?
Khitan Warrior: The open steppe, a fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, and the wind in your hair.
Khitan General: Wrong! Conan, what is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!
Khitan General: [Cheers]...That is good.
(Note that this is actually a paraphrased quote from Genghis Khan)

View Quote Subotai: Food. Food! I have not eaten for days.
Conan: And who says you will?
Subotai: Give me food so I have strength when the wolves come. Let me die not in hunger, but in combat.
Conan: Who are you?
Subotai: I am Subotai - thief and archer. I am Hyrkanian, of the great order of Krelath.
Conan: So what are you doing here?
Subotai: [Holds up chains] Dinner for wolves. [They both laugh]

View Quote The Witch: They said you'd come... From the North, a man of great strength... A conqueror. A man who would some day be king by his own hands. One who would crush the snakes of the earth.
Conan: Snakes? Did you say snakes?
The Witch:... What is it you seek?
Conan: A standard. A symbol. Perhaps on a shield. Two snakes coming together... Facing each other! But they're one.
The Witch: With... With a sun and a moon below. Black Sun. Black Moon.
Conan: Yes...
The Witch:... There is a price, barbarian!

View Quote Thulsa Doom: You broke into my house, stole my property, murdered my servants, and my PETS! And that is what grieves me the most! You killed my snake. Thorgrim is beside himself with grief! He raised that snake from the time it was born.
Conan: You killed my mother! You killed my father, you killed my people! You took my father's sword!
Thulsa Doom: Ah. It must have been when I was younger. There was a time, boy, when I searched for steel, when steel meant more to me than gold or jewels.
Conan: The riddle... of steel?
Thulsa Doom: Yes! You know what it is, don't you, boy? Shall I tell you? It's the least I can do. Steel isn't strong boy, flesh is stronger! Look around you. There, on the rocks; that beautiful girl. [Points to a teenaged girl on a nearby cliff] Come to me, my child... [Beckons to her]
[The acolyte plunges from the rock to her death.]
Thulsa Doom: THAT is strength, boy! THAT is power! The strength and power of flesh! What is steel, compared to the hand that wields it? Look at the strength in your body, the desire in your heart, I gave you this! Such a waste... Contemplate this on the Tree of Woe. Crucify him!

View Quote Valeria: Two fools that laugh at death. [to Conan and Subotai]
Valeria: Do you know what horrors lie behind that wall? [to Conan]
Conan: No.
Valeria: Then you go first.

View Quote Fire and wind come from the sky, from the gods of the sky, but Crom is your god. Crom, and he lives in the earth. Once giants lived in the earth, Conan, and in the darkness of chaos, they fooled Crom, and they took from him the enigma of steel. Crom was angered, and the earth shook, and fire and wind struck down these giants, and they threw their bodies into the waters. But in their rage, the gods forgot the secret of steel and left it on the battlefield, and we who found it, are just men, not gods, not giants, just men. And the secret of steel has always carried with it a mystery. You must learn its riddle, Conan, you must learn its discipline, for no one, no one in this world can you trust, not men, not women, not beasts, this you can trust. [points to his sword]