- Rorschach: I heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Life seems harsh, and cruel. Says he feels all alone in threatening world. Doctor says: "Treatment is simple. The great clown - Pagliacci - is in town. Go see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. "But doctor..." he says "I am Pagliacci." Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.
- Rorschach: None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with *ME*!
- Adrian Veidt: The Comedian was right. Humanity's savage nature will inevitably lead to global annihilation. So in order to save this planet, I have to trick it... with the greatest practical joke in human history.
- Dan Dreiberg: Killing millions?
- Adrian Veidt: To save billions. A necessary crime.
- Rorschach: You know we can't let you do that.
- Adrian Veidt: 'Do that', Rorschach? I'm not a comic book villain. Do you seriously think I would explain my master stroke to you if there were even the slightest possibility you could affect the outcome? I triggered it 35 minutes ago.
- Rorschach: [reading from journal] Rorschach's Journal. October 12th, 1985: Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll whisper "no."
- Rorschach: Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon. That's always been the difference between us, Daniel.
- Dr. Manhattan: She was pregnant. And you gunned her down.
- Edward Blake: That's right. And you know what, you watched me. You could've turned the gun into steam, the bullets into mercury, the bottle into goddamned snowflakes but you didn't, did you? You really don't give a damn about human beings. You're driftin' out of touch, Doc. God help us all.
- Rorschach: You see, Doctor, God didn't kill that little girl. Fate didn't butcher her and destiny didn't feed her to those dogs. If God saw what any of us did that night he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew... God doesn't make the world this way. We do.
- Jon Osterman: Will you smile? If I admit I was wrong?
- Laurie Juspeczyk: About what?
- Jon Osterman: Miracles. Events with astronomical odds of occurring, like oxygen turning into gold. I've longed to witness such an event, and yet I neglect that in human coupling, millions upon millions of cells compete to create life, for generation after generation until, finally, your mother loves a man, Edward Blake, the Comedian, a man she has every reason to hate, and out of that contradiction, against unfathomable odds, it's you - only you - that emerged. To distill so specific a form, from all that chaos. It's like turning air into gold. A miracle. And so... I was wrong. Now dry your eyes, and let's go home.
- Adrian Veidt: [Nixon finishes his speech on Veidt's TVs] Do you see? It's your super powers retreating from war. I've saved the Earth from hell. We both have. This is as much your victory as it is mine. Now we can return. Do what we were meant to.
- Rorschach: We were meant to exact justice! Everyone's gonna know what you've done...
- Adrian Veidt: Will they? By exposing me, you would sacrifice the peace so many died for today.
- Dan Dreiberg: Peace based on a lie.
- Adrian Veidt: But peace! Nonetheless.
- Jon Osterman: ...He's right. Exposing Adrian would only doom the world to Nuclear destruction again.
- Laurie Juspeczyk: No... we can't do this.
- Jon Osterman: On Mars, you taught me the value of life. If we hope to preserve it here, we must remain silent.
- Rorschach: Keep your own secrets...
- [the others look as Rorscach leaves, then Jon and Adrian make eye contact]
- Dan Dreiberg: Don't even think about it.
- [Goes after Rorscach]
- Dan Dreiberg: Rorscach! Wait.
- Rorschach: [Turns] Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon. That's always been the difference between us, Daniel.
- [Leaves the building]
- Adrian Veidt: I've made myself feel every death... see every innocent face I've murdered to save humanity.
- [Turns to Jon]
- Adrian Veidt: You understand, don't you?
- Jon Osterman: Without condoning... or condemning. I understand.
- Rorschach: [Outside, in the snow, Rorscach comes across a copy of Jon standing in the snow] Out of my way. People have to be told.
- Jon Osterman: You know I can't let you do that.
- Rorschach: Suddenly you discover humanity. Convenient.
- [Takes off his mask]
- Rorschach: If you'd cared from the start, none of this would've happened.
- Jon Osterman: I can change almost anything... but I can't change human nature.
- Rorschach: Of course, you must protect Veidt's new Utopia. One more body amongst foundations makes little difference. Well, what are you waiting for? Do it...
- [Jon hesitates]
- Rorschach: DO IT!
- [Jon makes Rorscach explode into a pile of blood]
- Dan Dreiberg: NOOOOOOOO!
- Edward Blake: Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.
- Adrian Veidt: It doesn't take a genius to see that the world has problems.
- Edward Blake: No, but it takes a room full of morons to think they're small enough for you to handle.
- Laurie Juspeczyk: Do you remember that crazy guy? What did he call himself... Captain Carnage. The one who used to pretend he was a supervillain just so he could get beaten up all the time?
- Dan Dreiberg: Yeah, he tried that on me once. I just walked away. He starts following me down the street in broad daylight, yelling 'Punish me! Punish me!' I'm just saying 'No! Get lost.'
- Laurie Juspeczyk: God. Whatever happened to him?
- Dan Dreiberg: Well, he pulled that on Rorschach, and Rorschach dropped him down an elevator shaft.
- [pause, then both laugh]
- Laurie Juspeczyk: Oh my god. That isn't even funny.
- Dan Dreiberg: [laughing] It is a *little* funny.
- Laurie Juspeczyk: The most powerful thing in the universe... still just a puppet.
- Jon Osterman: We are all puppets, Laurie. I'm just the puppet who can see the strings.
- Dan Dreiberg: What happened to us? What happened to the American Dream?
- Edward Blake: "What happened to the American Dream?" It came true! You're lookin' at it...
- Sally Jupiter: I'm 67 years old. Every day, the future looks a little bit darker. But the past... even the grimy parts of it... keep on getting brighter.
- [last lines]
- Rorschach: Rorschach's Journal: October 12th, 1985. Tonight, a comedian died in New York.
- Jon Osterman: Reassembling myself was the first trick I learned. It didn't kill Osterman... did you really think it would kill me? I have walked across the surface of the Sun. I have witnessed events so tiny and so fast they can hardly be said to have occurred at all. But you, Adrian, you're just a man. The world's smartest man poses no more threat to me than does its smartest termite.
- Jon Osterman: I am looking at the stars. They are so far away, and their light takes so long to reach us. All we ever see of stars is their old photographs.
- Edgar Jacobi: I have cancer.
- Rorschach: What kind of cancer?
- Edgar Jacobi: Well, you know the kind you eventually get better from?
- Rorschach: Yes.
- Edgar Jacobi: Well, that ain't the kind I got.
- Rorschach: We need to squeeze people.
- Dan Dreiberg: [sarcastic] Sure. We'll pick them out of a phone book.
- Rorschach: You forgot how we do things, Daniel. You've gotten too soft. Too trusting. Especially with women.
- Dan Dreiberg: No, listen, I am through with that! God, who do you think you are, Rorschach? You live off people while insulting them and nobody complains because they think you're a goddamn lunatic!
- Dan Dreiberg: [Rorschach approaches Dan, who sighs and turns to him] I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that, man.
- Rorschach: Daniel? You are a good friend.
- [extends his hand and Dan takes it]
- Detective Fine: [From outside Moloch's apartment] Rorschach! This is the police, we know you're in there.
- Rorschach: No! No!
- Detective Fine: [From outside Moloch's apartment] If there's anybody in there with you, send 'em out unharmed.
- Rorschach: No! No, no, no, no!
- Detective Fine: [From outside Moloch's apartment] Come out and make this a nice, clean surrender.
- Rorschach: Walked right into it! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Never surrender.
- Detective Fine: [From outside Moloch's apartment] Alright, I hope you're ready, hero.
- Rorschach: When you are.
- Dan Dreiberg: I'm not the one still hiding behind a mask.
- Rorschach: No. You're hiding in plain sight.
- Dr. Manhattan: [remembering Janey while on Mars] Janey accuses me of chasing jailbait. She bursts into angry tears, asking if it's because she's getting older. It's true. She's aging more noticeably every day - while I am standing still. I prefer the stillness here. I am tired of Earth. These people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives.
- Dr. Manhattan: They claim their labors are to build a heaven, yet their heaven is populated by horrors. Perhaps the world is not made. Perhaps nothing is made. A clock without a craftsman. It's too late. Always has been, always will be. Too late.
- Adrian Veidt: Dan. A world united in peace... there had to be sacrifice.
- Dan Dreiberg: No! You haven't idealized mankind but you've... you've deformed it! You mutilated it. That's your legacy. That's the real practical joke.
- Rorschach: [voiceover] Rorschach's journal, October 13th, 1985. 8:30 PM. Meeting with Dreiberg left bad taste in mouth. A flabby failure who sits whimpering in his basement. Why are so few of us left active, healthy, and without personality disorders? The first Nite Owl runs an auto repair shop. The first Silk Spectre is a bloated, aging whore, dying in a California rest resort. Dollar Bill got his cape stuck in a revolving door where he got gunned down. Silhouette, murdered: a victim of her own indecent lifestyle. Mothman's in an asylum in Maine. Even Adrian Veidt. Possible homosexual? Must investigate further. Only two names remain on my list. Both share private quarters at Rockefeller Military Research Center. I shall go to them. I shall go tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
- Adrian Veidt: You wanna know my past? Okay. Happily. It's a matter of public record that by seventeen both my parents were dead, leaving me alone. I guess you could say I've always been alone. I mean, they say I'm the smartest man in the world, but the truth is I've often felt stupid at being unable to relate to anybody. Well... anyone living, that is. The only person with whom I felt any kinship died three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Alexander of Macedonia. His vision of a United world, well... it was unprecedented. I wanted... needed to match his accomplishments, and so I resolved to apply antiquity's teachings to our world today, and so began my path to conquest. Conquest not of men, but of the evils that beset them. Fossil Fuels. Oil. Nuclear Power. Like a drug, and you, gentlemen, along with foreign interests, are the pushers.
- Lee Iacocca: Now listen.
- Adrian Veidt: No. You listen. The world will survive. And it deserves more than you've been able to provide. So let's cut to it, shall we? Privately I'm worth more than all of your corporations combined, I could buy and sell you three times over, which is something you should factor into your decision should you choose to make our disagreement public. I think you know the way out.
- Adrian Veidt's Assistant: The toy people wanna talk to you about some new villains for the Ozymandias line. Seems all the old villains are dead.
- Lee Iacocca: Mr Veidt?
- Adrian Veidt: I think I have some ideas.
- Janet Black: Doctor Manhattan as you know the Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face analogizing humankind's proximity to extinction, midnight representing the threat of nuclear war. As of now it stands at four minutes to midnight. Would you agree that we are that close to annihilation?
- Jon Osterman: My father was a watch maker. He abandoned it when Einstein discovered time is relative. I would only agree that a symbolic clock is as nourishing to the intellect as a photograph of oxygen to a drowning man.
- Jon Osterman: What is this? Another ultimate weapon?
- Adrian Veidt: Yes. You could say that.
- [Veidt turns on TVs with remote]
- Edward Blake: God damn I love working on American soil, Dan. Ain't had this much fun since Woodward and Bernstein.
- Dan Dreiberg: How long can we keep this up?
- Edward Blake: Congress is pushing through some new bill that's gonna outlaw masks. Our days are numbered. Till then it's like you always say, we're society's only protection.
- Dan Dreiberg: From what?
- Edward Blake: You kidding me? From themselves.
- Edward Blake: So now Moloch's back in town and you got your knickers all in a twist... you really think it matters if you catch him?
- Rorschach: Justice matters!
- Edward Blake: Justice? Justice is coming to all of us, no matter what the fuck we do. You know, mankind's been trying to kill each other off since the beginning of time. Now, we finally have the power to finish the job. Ain't nothing gonna matter once those nukes start flying; we'll all be dust. And Ozymandias here will be the smartest man on the cinder.
- Wally Weaver: You see, at the time I was misquoted. I never said 'The Super-man exists and he is American', what I said was '*God* exists and he is American'. Now if you begin to feel an intense and crushing feeling of religious terror at the concept, don't be alarmed. That indicates only that you are still sane.
- Big Figure: He's dead, Rorschach. While everyone's distracted, we thought we'd bring you a little housewarming gift. Something from the machine shop.
- Fat Thug: Hey, Boss, you notice? None of that "small world, tall order" crap, cause he knows once we slice open his lock, he's next on the block.
- Rorschach: Fat chance.
- Laurie Juspeczyk: [after rolling down the cab window] I'm sorry. I invited you out to dinner to catch up and have a few laughs... but there don't seem to be many laughs around these days.
- Dan Dreiberg: What do you expect? The Comedian's dead.
- Rorschach: [after knocking out and then electrocuting a thug against a toilet] Hm. Never disposed of sewage with a toilet before. Obvious, really.
- Rorschach: Once a man has seen society's black underbelly, he can never turn his back on it. Never pretend, like you do, that it doesn't exist.
- [Laurie and Dan are breaking Rorschach out of prison]
- Rorschach: Need to visit men's room.
- Laurie Juspeczyk: Oh, Christ!