Here are some of my favorite quotes from the Mass Effect series:
Tali'Zorah nar Rayya: How can you fight your own people?
Urdnott Wrex: Anyone who fights us is either stupid or on Saren's payroll. Killing the latter is business. Killing the former is a favor to the universe.
Krogan Mercenary: [to a Virtual Intelligence hologram] Tell me what I want to know, or I'll blast your virtual *** into actual dust!
Captain Kirrahe: You all know the mission, and what is at stake. I have come to trust each of you with my life. But I have also heard murmurs of discontent. I share your concerns. We are trained for espionage. We would be legends, but the records are sealed. Glory in battle is not our way. Think of our heroes: the Silent Step, who defeated a nation with a single shot, or the Ever Alert, who kept armies at bay with hidden facts. These giants do not seem to give us solace here, but they are not all that we are. Before the network, there was the Fleet! Before diplomacy, there were SOLDIERS! Our influence stopped the Rachni, but before that, we held the line! Our influence stopped the Krogan, but before that, we held the line! Our influence will stop Saren! In the battle today, we will hold the line!
Gunnery Chief: This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferrous slug. Feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an Everest-class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3 percent of light speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kilotomb bomb. That is three times the yield of the city buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-***** in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's First Law?
First Recruit: Sir! A object in motion stays in motion, sir!
Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot!
First Recruit: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!
Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jack***** know that space is empty. Once you fire this husk of metal, it keeps going till it hits something. That can be a ship, or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you're ruining someone's day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your **** targets! That is why you wait for the computer to give you a **** firing solution! That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it!" This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!
Second Recruit: Sir, yes sir!
Grunt: [upon seeing the Geth colossus on Tali's recruitment mission] Why I follow you, Shepard, big things!
Admiral Steven Hackett: Shepard, let me tell you something that I've learned the hard way. You can pay a soldier to fire a gun. You can pay him to charge the enemy and take a hill. But you can't pay him to believe.
Commander Shepard - Male: I don't follow, Sir.
Admiral Steven Hackett: When you went up against Sovereign, there was no good reason to believe you'd win. But your crew didn't seem to care. They went along anyway. Your trip through the Omega-4 relay? That was a suicide mission if there ever was one. Yet there your crew was, standing beside you, proud to serve. Why? Because they believed in YOU, their leader! That's what I need now. Where we're taking them is likely to get pretty hairy, and I know you're the one who will get us to the other side.
Tali'Zorah vas Normandy: So you're a real living prothean?
Javik: As opposed to a fake dead one?
[silence]
Tali'Zorah vas Normandy: Uh... okay.
Javik: Your "Joker" pilot insists I call myself "Prothy the Prothean." I insisted he allow me to throw him out the airlock.
