30 Movie Quotes Every '80s Kid Knows by Heart

1 | Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest

Faye Dunaway's performance as Joan Crawford, tyrannical movie star and mother in 1981's Mommie Dearest is one of the most terrifying and indelible screen performances ever. She tiptoes the line between over-the-top brilliance and ghoulish failure throughout. Her explosion of anger at her daughter for using wretchedly common wire hangers is a line that defined the careers of two actresses.

2 | Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back

If you think the line is "Luke, I am your father," you need to seek out those Star Wars trilogy DVDs on your shelf and have another look. But no matter what the precise wording was, the revelation that the ultimate villain in the galaxy was the father of its greatest hero sent shockwaves through movie audiences. Every shocking twist at the end of a movie has been chasing Darth Vader's (James Earl Jones) paternity confession ever since.

3 | Rumack in Airplane!

Picking out just one line from the famously joke-dense Airplane is a nearly impossible task. Or it would be if Leslie Nielsen's immaculate deadpan delivery in response to the prompt "Surely you can't be serious!" didn't make this line stand head and shoulders above the rest.

4 | E.T. in E.T. the Extra Terrestrial

What makes a line like "E.T. phone home" so great is how many different emotions it conjures up. The first time he says it, there's the wonder of this funny little alien creature talking. The second time he says it—after we all thought he was dead—it's just the most thrilling moment, inspiring equal parts excitement and tears. Steven Spielberg's movie depends on the audience forming a bond with E.T., and that one line truly seals it.

5 | Aurora in Terms of Endearment

The maternal panic and rage that Shirley MacLaine delivers as she berates the hospital staff to give her daughter (Debra Winger) painkillers while she's dying in the hospital runs counter to the film's reputation as a five-hanky weepie. In the expert hands of MacLaine (who won an Oscar for this performance), the moment is both funny and harrowing at the same time.

6 | Celie in The Color Purple

Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) finally stands up to the abusive Mister (Danny Glover) at the dinner table, holding a knife to his throat and cursing him. It's a long-awaited moment for Celie, as she takes back her power and promises nothing but ruin to the man who kept her down for so long.

7 | Jane in Broadcast News

Director James L. Brooks' comedic view of a changing TV news industry—shifting from grubby substance to flashy style—is stuffed with great lines. But this one, which has Holly Hunter responding to a put-down with sincere self pity, is at once delightfully funny and smartly cutting at the same time.

8 | Loretta in Moonstruck

Cher's absolute triumph culminated with an Academy Award, and also with the immortality of her signature line from the film. Cher fans, film fans, and even people who have never seen the movie know the sound of that slap, followed by her iconic "Snap out of it!" The poor, unsuspecting faces of wistful dreamers would never be safe again after Moonstruck.

9 | Papa Mousekewitz in An American Tail

Animation director Don Bluth was momentarily a rival to Disney in the late '80s with movies like An American Tail, which told the story of Russian Jews immigrating to the United States to escape the pogroms via the allegory of mice immigrating to the United States to escape the cats. On the boat crossing the ocean, Papa Mousekewitz (Nehemiah Persoff) sings of the promise of a golden, welcoming America, where they'll be finally safe from cats, and even the streets are paved with cheese.

10 | Ray in Field of Dreams

Yes, yes, the words you probably think of first when you think of Field of Dreams are, "If you build it, he will come." Those words, spoken by an unseen voice to Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), inspire him to plow under his Iowa cornfield and build a baseball field where the spirits of dead (often scandal-plagued) baseball players can return and play again. But the moment of truth for the movie comes at the very end, when Ray spots one player and recognizes him as his father. With the final words of the movie, Ray musters up the courage to ask his dad to play catch. Cue the waterworks.

11 | Doc in Back to the Future

After Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) completes his adventures back in 1955 and does indeed return back to the future, he meets his old pal Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) one last time before the closing credits. Doc has been to the future, and when he returns, his trusty DeLorean has undergone some upgrades. Few '80s films sent audiences screaming for the sequel more reliably than Back to the Future—with Doc and Marty and their flying car.

12 | Josh in Big

A child's wish made to an (admittedly creepy) isolated carnival game is what sets this 1988 Penny Marshall comedy into motion. When young Josh Baskin wakes up the morning after his wish, he's played by Tom Hanks, a kid in an adult's body. So many fun shenanigans follow, but it's that simple, plaintive, oh-so-relatable wish that lingers.

13 | Female Customer in When Harry Met Sally...

The most famous line in the Nora Ephron-penned, Rob Reiner-directed When Harry Met Sally is delivered not by Billy Crystal's softly chauvinistic Harry nor Meg Ryan's persnickety Sally. Instead, it comes from Reiner's mother, playing a customer in a diner scene who—after Sally gets finished demonstrating an incredibly convincing performance of how a woman might fake pleasure—simply turns to her waiter and requests what Sally's having. And thus one of the great one-liners in all of film comedy was born.

14 | Mrs. White in Clue

The laugh-a-minute film version of the popular board game Clue featured a pitch-perfect cast—Tim Curry, Lesley Ann Warren, Martin Mull, Eileen Brennan, Michael McKean, Christopher Lloyd—but it was the great Madeline Kahn who sent the film into immortality with her stammering monologue about her white-hot hatred for Yvette the maid (Colleen Camp).

15 | Hartman in Full Metal Jacket

Character actor R. Lee Ermey spends the first half of Stanley Kubrick's nightmare vision of the Vietnam War barking a ludicrous string of orders and profane invective to the soldiers he's training. When he finally pushes one particular private (Vincent D'Onofrio) over the edge to the point where he's threatening armed retaliation, Ermey's recourse isn't to back down but to dial up the abuse. Not a great idea, as it turns out.

16 | Alex in Fatal Attraction

Glenn Close plays a woman who carries on an affair with a married Michael Douglas, only to have him back off and get distant on her—which she responds to with violent obsession. Close's performance works hard to balance the "crazy ex-girlfriend" tropes; her delivery on the above quote is as much righteous as it is threatening.

17 | Venkman in Ghostbusters

Director Ivan Reitman's film about a quartet of spectral exterminators in 1980s New York culminates in a jailbreak of ghoulies from their containment facility. The result? Chaos, panic, the living communing with the dead, and, as Bill Murray's Peter Venkman hyperbolically sums it up, all laws of nature and reality upended. Dogs and cats! Together!

18 | Jack in The Shining

Odds are long that you'll meet someone who's seen Stanley Kubrick's The Shining and hasn't at least once attempted to pull off Jack Nicholson's signature delivery. The line comes when he's halfway through chopping down the bathroom door, trying to murder his wife and son. Not sure how Johnny Carson must've felt about the association.

19 | Brian in The Breakfast Club

The final voiceover monologue from Brian the brain (Anthony Michael Hall) is the perfect encapsulation of aggrieved teenage angst. These five disparate teens spend a Saturday afternoon in the school library and discover they all have common ground (mostly hating their parents!)—and, in a final kiss-off to the principal, the lesson they learn is that adults will never truly understand them.

20 | Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Pop culture's most famous truant teen takes time away from joy-riding around Chicago in his friend's dad's car and lip-synching in a parade to turn to the audience and offer a nickel's worth of free advice. You can thank Ferris (Matthew Broderick) for every "life comes at you fast" tweet you come across.

21 | The Terminator in The Terminator

Just three little words that don't normally sound like a threat unless they're spoken by a six-foot-two wall of Austrian muscle who's just teleported in from the future on a merciless quest to murder a soon-to-be mom. Arnold Schwarzenegger's flat, emotionless affect was the perfect ominous delivery. And as a bonus, it turns out he was right, if five Terminator sequels and counting is any indication.

22 | Maverick in Top Gun

Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards as flyboy pals at their elite Navy training program are the central friendship of one of the biggest hits of the '80s. Together, they gave Top Gun exactly what it needed, besides its massive box-office haul and movie-star appeal: a catchphrase that would soar long past the end of the '80s, right into the danger zone (that's what we call the '90s).

23 | Tony Montana in Scarface

The line has been imitated, duplicated, borrowed, riffed on, and parodied for decades now. Al Pacino as cocaine kingpin Tony Montana introduces his enemies to his "little friend," which is obviously his machine gun. Carnage, plus hundreds of dorm room posters, followed.

24 | Santa Claus in A Christmas Story

The repeated warning to young Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) in the enduring Christmas classic gets funnier every time it's repeated. All the bespectacled young boy wanted was an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot, range model air rifle. Too bad every adult in his life—up to and including a mall Santa—told him it was too dangerous.

25 | Johnny in Dirty Dancing

With those words, Patrick Swayze rescues Jennifer Grey from her overprotective father and whisks her onto the dance floor to wow those uptight Catskills types with some expertly choreographed moves.

26 | Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride

You might find it rather inconceivable that this is the most memorable line from The Princess Bride, a film practically overflowing with hilarious quotables. But Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya is brilliantly committed and ferocious as Inigo confronts the six-fingered man who slew his dad.

27 | Carol Anne in Poltergeist

A line like this is only memorable if it's delivered in the perfect circumstance by the perfect character. In other words, a little girl (Heather O'Rourke) staring at static on the TV—the only one who knows that the malevolent spirits haunting the house are here to play. It's a supremely creepy moment in one of the decade's signature horror movies.

28 | Ronnie in The Fly

Jeff Goldblum steadily transforming into a human fly over the course of this David Cronenberg film is both disgusting and terrifying. Thankfully, we don't have to worry about which reaction is the appropriate one, because Ronnie (Geena Davis) says it straight out—be afraid.

29 | Gordon Gekko in Wall Street

Michael Douglas won an Academy Award for playing Gordon Gekko, avatar of 1980s corporate greed. The performance is of the decade's signature creations, and his monstrously simple ethos—often paraphrased as the even simpler "greed is good"—has echoed through the subsequent years.