"You are about to enter another dimension."
The Twilight Zone - Movie Quotes
Memorable Quotes
You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead—your next stop, the Twilight Zone!
— Rod Serling (Narrator)
Context:
This quote, in slightly varied forms, served as the opening narration for most episodes from Season 2 through 5, accompanying the now-famous theme music and surreal title sequence.
Meaning:
This iconic opening narration, used from the second season onward, perfectly encapsulates the series' premise. It's not just a catchphrase; it's a mission statement, promising viewers a journey into the abstract and the psychological. It establishes that the stories will explore the inner landscapes of human consciousness as much as outer space or supernatural realms.
The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices... to be found only in the minds of men.
— Rod Serling (Narrator)
Context:
This is from the closing narration of the Season 1 episode, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." After residents of a suburban street descend into paranoid violence, suspecting each other of being invading aliens, it's revealed that aliens were indeed watching, but their plan was simply to let humans destroy themselves.
Meaning:
This quote delivers the powerful, central message of its episode: the greatest threat to humanity is humanity itself. It argues that internal flaws like prejudice and suspicion are more destructive weapons than any physical arsenal, capable of tearing society apart from within.
That's not fair. That's not fair at all! There was time now. There was all the time I needed! That's not fair!
— Henry Bemis
Context:
Spoken by actor Burgess Meredith in the Season 1 episode "Time Enough at Last." Bemis, a bookworm who survives a nuclear blast, is overjoyed to find himself surrounded by the ruins of a library with endless time to read, only to have his thick glasses slip off and shatter on the ground.
Meaning:
This quote is the heartbreaking cry of a man whose lifelong dream is realized and then instantly, cruelly snatched away. It embodies the series' theme of cosmic irony, highlighting the indifferent, often cruel, nature of fate in the Twilight Zone.
All the Dachaus must remain standing... They are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard... And the moment we forget this... then we become the gravediggers.
— Rod Serling (Narrator)
Context:
From the closing narration of the Season 3 episode "Deaths-Head Revisited." In the episode, a former Nazi Captain revisits the Dachau concentration camp and is tormented by the ghosts of his victims, who put him on trial and sentence him to insanity.
Meaning:
This is one of Serling's most direct and powerful moral statements in the series, a plea against forgetting the horrors of the Holocaust. It argues that remembrance, however painful, is essential to prevent such atrocities from happening again.