Gangs of New York quotes

View Quote Army Recruiter: [swearing in Irish immigrants as citizens at the harbor] That do****ent makes you a citizen, and this one makes you a private in the Union army. Now get out there and serve your country.

View Quote Jenny: [about Bill] When I was twelve years old, my mother was dead, and I was livin' in a doorway. He took me in. Took care of me, in his way. After they cut out the baby... well, he doesn't fancy girls that's scarred up. But you might as well know in your own mind that he never laid a hand on me until I asked him to.

View Quote Priest Vallon: Don't never look away.

View Quote Priest Vallon: The blood stays on the blade.

View Quote Walter 'Monk' Mcginn: I've got forty-four notches on my club. Do you know what they're for? They're to remind me what I owe God when I die. My father was killed in battle, too. In Ireland, in the streets, fighting those who would take as their privilege what could only be got and held by the decimation of a race. That war is a thousand years old and more. We never expected it to follow us here. It didn't. It was waiting for us when we landed. Your father tried to carve out a corner of this land for his tribe. That was him, that was his dead rabbits. I often wondered... if he had lived a bit longer, would he have wanted a bit more?

View Quote Walter 'Monk' McGinn: Well that was bloody Shakespearian. Do you know who Shakespeare was, boyo? The fella who wrote the King James Bible.

View Quote Amsterdam: Is there anyone in the five points you haven't ****ed?
Jenny: Yes! You!

View Quote Bill: At my challenge, by the ancient laws of combat, we are met at this chosen ground, to settle for good and all who holds sway over the five points: us natives, born rightwise to this fine land, or the foreign hordes defiling it.
Crowd: Yeah.
Priest Vallon: By the ancient laws of combat, I accept the challenge of the so called "natives." They plague our people at every turn, but from this day out, they shall plague us no more. For let it be known, that the hand that tries to strike us from this land shall be swiftly cut down.
Crowd: YEAH.

View Quote Bill: How old are you, Amsterdam?
Amsterdam: I'm not sure, sir. I never did quite figure it.
Bill: I'm forty-seven. Forty-seven years old. You know how come I stayed alive this long? Fear. A spectacle of fearsome acts. A man steals from me, I cut off his hands. If he offends me, I cut out his tongue. He rises up against me, I cut off his head, stick it on a pike. Raise it up high so all on the streets can see. That's what preserves the order of things. Fear.

View Quote Bill: I killed the last honorable man, 15 years ago. Since then it's... You seen his portrait downstairs?
Amsterdam: Mm-hmm.
Bill: 'S your mouth all glued-up with cunny juice? I asked you a question!
Amsterdam: [angrily] I said I seen it, sir.
Bill: [smiling] Oh, you got a murderous streak in you!

View Quote Bill: Is this it, Priest, the Pope's new army, a few crusty bitches and a hand full of rag tags?
Priest Vallon: Now, now, Bill, you swore this was a battle between warriors, not a bunch of Miss Nancies, so warriors is what I brought.

View Quote Bill: On the seventh day the Lord rested, but before that he did, he squatted over the side of England and what came out of him... was Ireland. No offense son.
Amsterdam: Nah, none taken, sir. I grew up here. All I ever knew of Ireland was from the talk of the others at the orphan asylum.
Bill: And which part of that excrementitious isle where your forebears spawned?
Amsterdam: I've been told Kerry, I lost proof of it in my language at the asylum.

View Quote Bill: You. Whatever your name is... what is your name?
Amsterdam: Amsterdam, sir.
Bill: Amsterdam, I'm New York. Don't you never come in here empty handed again, you gotta pay for the pleasure of my company.

View Quote Boss Tweed: Bill, I can't get a days work done for all the good citizens coming in here to harass me about crime in the Points. Some even go so far as to accuse Tammany of connivance in this so-called rampant criminality. What am I to do? I can't have this. Something has to be done.
Bill: What do you have in mind?
Boss Tweed: I don't know. I think maybe we should hang someone.
Bill: Who?
Boss Tweed: No one important, necessarily. Average men will do. Back alley amusers with no affiliations.
Bill: How many?
Boss Tweed: Three or four.
Bill: Which?
Boss Tweed: Four.

View Quote Boss Tweed: That's the building of our country right there, Mr. Cutting. Americans aborning.
Bill: I don't see no Americans. I see trespassers, Irish harps. Do a job for a nickel what a **** does for a dime and a white man used to get a quarter for. What have they done? Name one thing they've contributed.
Boss Tweed: Votes.
Bill: Votes, you say? They vote how the archbishop tells them, and who tells the archbishop? Their king in the pointy hat what sits on his throne in Rome.