Charles Van Doren: They gave me the answers. Mark Van Doren: They gave you the answers... they gave YOU the answers? Charles Van Doren: Well, no... no, at first they'd ask me questions they already knew I knew the answers to. We ran through those, an...
Congressman Derounian: I'm happy that you've made the statement. But I cannot agree with most of my colleagues. See, I don't think an adult of your intelligence should be commended for simply, at long last, telling the truth.
Mark Van Doren: I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm an old man, it's all a little difficult for me to comprehend! Charles Van Doren: It's television, Dad. It's... it's just... just television... Mark Van Doren: You make it sound like you didn't have a choice! Ch...
Herbie Stemple: You know why they call them Indians? Because Columbus thought he was in India. They're "Indians" because some white guy got lost.
Mark Van Doren: Sixty-four thousand dollars for a question, I hope they are asking you the meaning of life.
Charles Van Doren: I've stood on the shoulders of life and I've never gotten down into the dirt to build, to erect a foundation of my own. I've flown too high on borrowed wings. Everything came too easy.
Mark Van Doren: Your name is mine!
[At a poker game] Dick Goodwin: I know you're lying. Charles Van Doren: Bluffing. The word is bluffing.
Dick Goodwin: 21 is rigged and I can prove it... I have Enright cold and that means I have you. Kitner: Really? Dick Goodwin: Really. Kitner: Then how come you're the one who's sweating?
Toby Stempel: I know what you're gonna accomplish, I just don't know what he's gonna accomplish. Herbie Stemple: You want to know what? If I do nothing else I will convince them that Herbert Stemple knows what won the God-damned Academy Award for bes...
[to a reporter outside the committee hearing] Herbie Stemple: You know what the problem with you bums is? You never leave a guy alone unless you're leaving him alone.
Student At Book Party: Professor Van Doren, I took your course at Columbia - "Hawthorne, Original Sin, and the American Experience". Well, as silly as it sounds, it changed my life. Mark Van Doren: Was it the Hawthorne or the sin?
Dick Goodwin: Hey, you don't have to be a genius to connect the dots. Charles Van Doren: Well, don't connect them through me. Dick Goodwin: Hey, don't treat me like some member of your goddamn fan club. Are you telling me everybody got the answers bu...
[while Dan Enright is testifying] Dick Goodwin: I thought we were gonna get television. The truth is... television is gonna get us.
Charles Van Doren: Dad, I can't simply just tell them the truth. Mark Van Doren: Can't tell them the truth? Why on earth not? Charles Van Doren: Because it's complicated. Mark Van Doren: Complicated?
Herbie Stemple: I love my wife, but it's like living with a plague of locusts.
Mark Van Doren: What these books have conclusively proven is that the diffence between men and women is exactly 38 pages. Man 1: Can I quote you, Mark? Mark Van Doren: Not before I quote me. Dorothy Van Doren: His own quotes are his greatest pleasure...
Mark Van Doren: Cheating on a quiz show? That's sort of like plagiarizing a comic strip.
