High Noon

High Noon Quotes

A marshall, personally compelled to face a returning deadly enemy, finds that his own town refuses to help him.

Helen: You're a good-looking boy: you've big, broad shoulders. But he's a man. And it takes more than big, broad shoulders to make a man.
Martin: You risk your skin catching killers and the juries turn them loose so they can come back and shoot at you again. If you're honest you're poor your whole life and in the end you wind up dying all alone on some dirty street. For what? For nothing. For a tin star.
Martin: People gotta talk themselves into law and order before they do anything about it. Maybe because down deep they don't care. They just don't care.
Helen: What kind of woman are you? How can you leave him like this? Does the sound of guns frighten you that much?
Amy: I've heard guns. My father and my brother were killed by guns. They were on the right side but that didn't help them any when the shooting started. My brother was nineteen. I watched him die. That's when I became a Quaker. I don't care who's right or who's wrong. There's got to be some better way for people to live. Will knows how I feel about it.
Judge: This is just a dirty little village in the middle of nowhere. Nothing that happens here is really important.
Helen: I don't understand you. No matter what you say. If Kane was my man, I'd never leave him like this. I'd get a gun. I'd fight.
Amy: Why don't you?
Helen: He is not my man. He's yours.
Helen: Kane will be a dead man in half an hour and nobody's gonna do anything about it. And when he dies, this town dies too. I can feel it. I am all alone in the world. I have to make a living. So I'm going someplace else. That's all.
Hotel Clerk: You're Mrs. Kane, ain't you?
Amy: Yes.
Hotel Clerk: You're leaving on the noon train?
Amy: Yes.
Hotel Clerk: But your husband ain't?
Amy: No, why?
Hotel Clerk: No reason, but it's mighty interesting. Now, me, I wouldn't leave this town at noon for all the tea in China. No, sir, it's going to be quite a sight to see!
[to Deputy Harvey Pell]
Joe: I knew you had guts but I never figured you for brains. It takes a pretty smart man to know when to back away.
[when his Deputy Sheriff, his last hope of help, deserts him]
Will: Go on home to your kids, Herb.
Dr. Mahin, Minister: The commandments say 'Thou shalt not kill,' but we hire men to go out and do it for us. The right and the wrong seem pretty clear here. But if you're asking me to tell my people to go out and kill and maybe get themselves killed, I'm sorry. I don't know what to say. I'm sorry.
Amy: Don't try to be a hero! You don't have to be a hero, not for me!
Deputy Sheriff Herb Baker: [when Herb volunteer's to be Will's first and only Deputy Sheriff for posse, Herb remarks to Will] I'll be back in ten minutes, loaded for bear.
Will: I've got to, that's the whole thing.
Will: Stay at the hotel until it's over.
Amy: No, I won't be here when it's over. You're asking me to wait an hour to find out if I'm going to be a wife or a widow. I say it's too long to wait! I won't do it!
Will: Amy!
Amy: I mean it! If you won't go with me now, I'll be on that train when it leaves here.
Will: [initially leaving town] This is crazy, I don't even have any guns.
[to his wife]
Sam: Well, whaddya want? Do you want me to get killed? Do you want to be a widow, is that what you want?
Will: [Sees a teenage boy loafing near a storefront] Johnny, why aren't you in church?
Johnny - Town Boy: Why aren't you?
[Will raises his hand as if to slap the boy for being disrespectful]
Will: Don't shove me Harv. I'm tired of being shoved.
Joe: I've got no use for Kane, but he's got guts.
Bar Patron: You're mighty broadminded, Joe.

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