Memorable quotes for
Citizen Kane (1941) More at IMDbPro »

[first lines]
Charles Foster Kane: Rosebud.

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Female reporter: If you could've found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that would've explained everything.
Thompson: No, I don't think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece.

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Charles Foster Kane: You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.
Thatcher: Don't you think you are?
Charles Foster Kane: I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.
Thatcher: What would you like to have been?
Charles Foster Kane: Everything you hate.

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Charles Foster Kane: Hello Jedediah.
Leland: Hello, Charlie. I didn't know we were speaking...
Charles Foster Kane: Sure, we're speaking, Jedediah: you're fired.

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Charles Foster Kane: I always gagged on the silver spoon.

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[Quoting from Kane's letter]
Walter Parks Thatcher: I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.

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Bernstein: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Switzerland... he was thrown out of a lot of colleges.

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Emily: Really Charles, people will think-...
Charles Foster Kane: - -what I tell them to think.

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Bernstein: President's niece, huh? Before Mr. Kane's through with her, she'll be a president's wife.

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

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Bernstein: We never lost as much as we made.

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Charles Foster Kane: The news goes on for 24 hours a day.

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Charles Foster Kane: We have no secrets from our readers. Mr. Thatcher is one of our most devoted readers, Mr. Bernstein. He knows what's wrong with every issue since I've taken charge.

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Jedediah Leland: You still eating?
Charles Foster Kane: I'm still hungry.

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Charles Foster Kane: You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years.

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Leland: Bernstein, am I a stuffed shirt? Am I a horse-faced hypocrite? Am I a New England school marm?
Bernstein: Yes. If you thought I'd answer you any differently than what Mr. Kane tells you...

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Reporter: Mr. Kane, how did you find business conditions in Europe?
Charles Foster Kane: How did I find business conditions in Europe? With great difficulty.

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Charles Foster Kane: I run a couple of newspapers. What do you do?

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Charles Foster Kane: This gentleman was saying...
Boss Jim Gettys: I am not a gentleman. I don't even know what a gentleman is.

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Charles Foster Kane: Don't believe everything you hear on the radio.

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Bernstein: Old age. It's the only disease, Mr. Thompson, that you don't look forward to being cured of.

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Thompson: He made an awful lot of money.
Bernstein: Well, it's no trick to make a lot of money... if what you want to do is make a lot of money.

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Bernstein: A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.

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Emily: He happens to be the president, Charles, not you.
Charles Foster Kane: That's a mistake that will be corrected one of these days.

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Thatcher: You're too old to be calling me Mr. Thatcher, Charles.
Charles Foster Kane: You're too old to be called anything else.

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Charles Foster Kane: As Charles Foster Kane who owns eighty-two thousand, six hundred and thirty-four shares of public transit - you see, I do have a general idea of my holdings - I sympathize with you. Charles Foster Kane is a scoundrel. His paper should be run out of town. A committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of one thousand dollars.

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Charles Foster Kane: Read the cable.
Bernstein: "Girls delightful in Cuba. Stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery, but don't feel right spending your money. Stop. There is no war in Cuba, signed Wheeler." Any answer?
Charles Foster Kane: Yes. "Dear Wheeler: you provide the prose poems. I'll provide the war."

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Charles Foster Kane: Are we going to declare war on Spain, or are we not?
Jed Leland: The Inquirer already has.
Charles Foster Kane: You long-faced, overdressed anarchist.
Jed Leland: I am not overdressed.
Charles Foster Kane: You are too. Mr. Bernstein, look at his necktie.

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Susan: Forty-nine thousand acres of nothing but scenery and statues. I'm lonesome.

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Charles Foster Kane: I don't think there's one word that can describe a mans life.

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Reporter 1: What's that?
Reporter 2: Another Venus.
Reporter 1: Twenty-five thousand bucks. That's a lot of money to pay for a dame without a head.

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

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Charles Foster Kane: Don't worry about me, Gettys! Don't worry about me! I'm Charles Foster Kane! I'm no cheap, crooked politician, trying to save himself from the consequences of his crimes!
[Screams louder]
Charles Foster Kane: Gettys! I'm going to send you to Sing Sing! Sing Sing, Gettys! Sing Sing!

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Bernstein: [to Leland] Mr. Kane is finishing the review you started - he's writing a bad notice. I guess that'll show you.

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[Susan is leaving Kane]
Kane: [pleading] Don't go, Susan. You mustn't go. You can't do this to me.
Susan: I see. So it's YOU who this is being done to. It's not me at all. Not how I feel. Not what it means to me.
[laughs]
Susan: I can't do this to you?
[odd smile]
Susan: Oh, yes I can.

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[On Kane finishing Leland's bad review of Susan's opera singing]
Thompson: Everybody knows that story, Mr. Leland. But why did he do it? How could a man write a notice like that?
Leland: You just don't know Charlie. He thought that by finishing that notice he could show me he was an honest man. He was always trying to prove something. The whole thing about Susie being an opera singer, that was trying to prove something. You know what the headline was the day before the election, "Candidate Kane found in love nest with quote, singer, unquote." He was gonna take the quotes off the singer.

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Leland: That's all he ever wanted out of life... was love. That's the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn't have any to give.

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Kane, age eight: [talking about snowman] Maybe I'll make some teeth and whiskers...

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Charles Foster Kane: A toast, Jedediah: to Love on my own terms.

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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

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Charles Foster Kane: You can't buy a bag of peanuts in this town without someone writing a song about you.

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

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Stagecoach Driver / Hauler: There ain't no bedrooms in this joint, that's a newspaper building!
Bernstein: You're getting paid, Mister, for opinions or for hauling?

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[last lines]
Raymond: Throw that junk in.

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Reporter: [at beginning of news reel on Charles Foster Kane's death] In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.

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Leland: I suppose he had a private sort of greatness, but he kept it to himself.

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Charles Foster Kane: [His answer to being blackmailed] There's only one person in the world who's going to decide what I'm going to do and that's me...

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Susan: I don't know many people.
Charles Foster Kane: I know too many people. I guess we're both lonely.

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Leland: I can remember everything. That's my curse, young man. It's the greatest curse that's ever been inflicted on the human race: memory.

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Boss Jim Gettys: You're the greatest fool I've ever known, Kane. If it was anybody else, I'd say what's going to happen to you would be a lesson to you. Only you're going to need more than one lesson. And you're going to get more than one lesson.

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Leland: [about 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 document...
Bernstein: Sure!
Leland: ...like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and my first report card at school.

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Leland: You don't care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love 'em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way, according to your rules.

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Thompson: Sentimental fellow, aren't you?
Raymond: Hmmm... yes and no.

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