The Dark Knight — Movie Quotes

Spoken during the Joker's shifting, unreliable accounts of how he got his scars, as he presses a blade into a victim's mouth.

The film's signature line and the distillation of its antagonist: violence delivered as comedy, terror framed as a punchline. It became one of the most quoted lines in modern blockbuster cinema and the film's marketing signature.

Delivered in the same scarred-mouth monologue, immediately after 'Why so serious?'

The stated goal of the Joker's project in miniature: forcing his own grin onto other people, whether through a knife or through the moral collapse he engineers in them.

Said early, over dinner, by a confident Dent defending the idea of emergency authority in a crisis; it returns with devastating irony after his fall.

The thematic backbone of the entire film — a line about how quickly moral standing shifts under pressure — and one that Dent unknowingly speaks as a prophecy about himself, and about Batman's fate at the ending.

Spoken in Gordon's closing narration, explaining to his son why the police must hunt Batman as the vigilante disappears into the night.

The formulation of the film's closing bargain: Batman accepts blame he did not earn so that Dent's legend — and the hope built on it — can survive. Heroism is redefined as being willing to be hated.