These Jaws quotes will expose to you the selfish desires of people and the horrors of nature that will keep you awake on summer nights.
Jaws is a thriller movie based on Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel of the same name. It tells the story of the attempt of a police chief, a marine biologist, and a shark hunter to capture a killer shark.
On the surface, the movie may look like a typical man versus nature horror plot. But, it has a deeper meaning in that it exposes people’s selfishness and flaws.
In particular, it will show you what human greed is like and how it can affect the good of everyone.
It also contains the right amount of horror and laughable scenes. So, expectedly, it became one of the highest-grossing movies in American history.
So, if you are interested in Jaws, add this to your must-read list now.
Our collection will surely keep you on the edge of your seat and give you insights into life and humanity!
Continue reading below.
And don’t forget to check out these Jurassic Park quotes.
Best Jaws Quotes
1. “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” – Martin Brody
2. “The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future.” – Ellen Brody
3. “He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime.” – Martin Brody
4. “Other fish run from bigger things. That’s their instinct. But this fish doesn’t run from anything. He doesn’t fear.” – Harry Meadows
5. “What are you doing out there? These are your people. Go and talk to them.” – Martin Brody
6. “So 1100 men went into the water, 316 men come out, and the sharks took the rest—June the 29th, 1945.” – Quint
7. “It’s only an island if you look at it from the water.” – Martin Brody
8. “Well, this is not a boat accident, and it wasn’t any propeller, and it wasn’t any coral reef, and it wasn’t any Jack the Ripper! It was a shark.” – Matt Hooper
9. Martin Brody: “I used to hate the water.”
Matt Hooper: “I can’t imagine why!”
10. “You know, the thing about a shark, he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll’s eyes! When he comes at you, don’t seem to be living until he bites you, and those black eyes roll over white, and then, oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screaming.” – Quint
11. “One of the few advantages man has over other animals is the ability to choose the way to bring on his own death.” – Harry Meadows
12. “Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They’re beautiful. How beautiful they are! They’re like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They’re as graceful as any bird. They’re as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses, except for hunger, they respond to. There are more than 250 species of shark, and everyone is different from every other one.” – Matt Hooper
Famous Jaws Quotes
13. “I’m familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and bites you in the ass!” – Matt Hooper
14. “Smile, you son of a bitch!” – Martin Brody
15. “Not like going down the pond chasing bluegills or Tommy cats. This shark swallows you whole!” – Quint
16. “You go in the cage, cage goes in the water, you go in the water. Shark’s in the water, our shark.” – Quint
17. “You yell ‘Barracuda,’ everybody says, ‘Huh? What?’ You yell ‘shark,’ we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.” – Mayor Larry Vaughn
18. “I’m not going to waste my time arguing with a man who’s lining up to be a hot lunch.” – Matt Hooper
19. Mayor Larry Vaughn: “What kind of a shark did you say it was?”
Martin Hooper: “Carcharodon carcharias. A great white.”
20. “I’m chief of police. I can do anything.” – Martin Brody
21. “Look, Chief, you can’t go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn’t evil. It’s not a murderer. It’s just obeying its own instincts.” – Matt Hooper
22. “Now, fellas. This is not the time or the place to perform some kind of a half-assed autopsy on a fish!” – Mayor Larry Vaughn
23. “You have city hands, Mr. Hooper. You been counting money all your life.” – Quint
24. Ellen Brody: “Excuse me, but what are you talking about? Didn’t they catch the shark this afternoon? It was on the Cape station news.”
Matt Hooper: “They caught a shark, not the shark. Big difference. I could’ve proved it this afternoon by cutting that one open and examining his stomach contents. Also, his bite was too small.”
25. “Come up, fish. Come to Quint.” – Quint
26. Matt Hooper: “Show me the way to go home. I’m tired, and I want to go to bed.”
Matt Hooper, Quint, and Martin Brody: “I had a little drink about an hour ago, and it got right to my head. Wherever I may roam, by land or sea or foam.”
Jaws Quotes That Will Haunt Us Forever
27. “Sharks are like ax murderers, Martin. People react to them with their guts. There’s something crazy and evil and uncontrollable about them.” – Harry Meadows
28. Martin Brody: “This is a great white, Larry. A big one. Any shark expert in the world will tell you it’s a killer; it’s a man-eater!”
Matt Hooper: “Look, the situation is that apparently a great white shark has staked a claim in the waters off Amity Island, and he is going to continue to feed here as long as there is food in the water.”
Martin Brody: “And there’s no limit of what he’s going to do. I mean, we’ve already had three incidents. Two people were killed in a week, and it’s gonna happen again. It happened before, The Jersey Beach, 1916. Five people were killed.”
29. “Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.” – Quint
30. “Tiger shark’s like a garbage can. It’ll eat anything. Someone probably threw that in the river.” – Matt Hooper
31. “I pulled a tooth the size of a shot glass out of the wrecked hull of a boat out there, and it was the tooth of a great white.” – Matt Hooper
32. Quint: “Suppose you fell over with this fish. Is there anything you could do?”
Martin Brody: “Sure. Pray. It’d be like falling out of an airplane without a parachute and hoping you’ll land in a haystack. The only thing that’d save you would be God, and since He pushed you overboard in the first place, I wouldn’t give a nickel for your chances.”
33. “I just found out that a girl got killed here last week, and you knew it! You knew there was a shark out there! You knew it was dangerous! But you let people go swimming anyway? You knew all those things! But still, my boy is dead now, and there’s nothing you can do about it. My boy is dead. I wanted you to know that.” – Mrs. Kintner
34. “Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy.” – Matt Hooper
35. “Look, the Latin name for this fish is Carcharodon carcharias, okay? The closest ancestor we can find for it is something called Carcharodon megalodon, a fish that existed maybe 30 or 40 thousand years ago. We have fossil teeth from megalodon. They’re six inches long. That would put the fish at between 80 and 100 feet. And the teeth are exactly like the teeth you see in great whites today. What I’m getting at is, suppose the two fish are really one species. What’s to say megalodon is really extinct? Why should it be?” – Matt Hooper
Jaws Quotes That Are Worth Revisiting
36. “Food may well kill me, but it’s also what has made life such a pleasure.” – Harry Meadows
37. “Mr. Hooper, I’m not talking about pleasure boating or daily sailing. I’m talking about working for a living. I’m talking about sharking!” – Quint
38. “I don’t think you appreciate the gut reaction people have to these things. Martin, it’s all psychological.” – Mayor Larry Vaughn
Emotional Jaws Quotes to Keep In Our Memories
39. “Mary Ellen Moffit. She broke my heart.” – Matt Hooper
40. Ellen Brody: “What am I going to tell the kids?”
Martin Brody: “Tell them I’m going fishing.”
41. “Martin, Martin, my kids were on that beach too.” – Mayor Larry Vaughn
42. “I don’t think either one of you are familiar with our problems!” – Mayor Larry Vaughn
43. Martin Brody: “Give us a kiss.”
Son: “Why?”
Martin Brody: “‘Cause I need it.”
Interesting Jaws Quotes That’ll Teach You About Sharks
44. “Mr. Vaughan, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks, and that’s all.” – Matt Hooper
45. “God isn’t going to scribble across the sky. ‘The shark is gone.'” – Mayor Larry Vaughn
46. “Drowning! Isn’t it true that most people are attacked by sharks in three feet of water and about ten feet from the beach.” – Martin Brody
47. “The height and weight of the victim can only be estimated from the partial remains.” – Matt Hooper
48. “I value my neck a lot more than $3,000, Chief. I’ll find him for three, but I’ll catch him and kill him for ten. But you’ve gotta make up your minds. If you want to stay alive, then ante up. If you want to play it cheap, be on welfare the whole winter. I don’t want no volunteers. I don’t want no mates. There’s too many captains on this island. Ten thousand dollars for me by myself. For that, you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.” – Quint
Jaws Quotes for a Day Full of Laughter
49. “Well, if we’re looking for a shark, we’re not gonna find it on the land.” – Matt Hooper
50. “Here lies the body of Mary Lee, died at the age of 103. For 15 years, she kept her virginity. Not a bad record for this vicinity.” – Quint
51. “Hey, Hooper! Maybe you’re a big yahoo in the lab, but out here, you’re just supercargo!” – Quint
52. Mayor Larry Vaughn: “Any special questions?”
Mr. Denherder: “Uh, is that $3000 bounty on the shark in cash or check?”
Mrs. Taft: “I don’t think that’s funny. I don’t think that’s funny at all. I’m sorry.”
53. Michael Brody: “Aw, dad, the pond’s for old ladies.”
Martin Brody: “I know it is. But just do it for the old man, will you?”
54. “I want these paint-happy bastards hung up by their Buster Browns!” – Mayor Larry Vaughn
More Jaws Quotes to Read if You Loved the Book
55. “What had once seemed shallow and tedious now loomed in memory like paradise.” – Peter Benchley, Author
56. “Intellectually, they knew a great deal. Practically, they chose to know almost nothing.” – Peter Benchley, Author
57. “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.” – Peter Benchley, Author
58. “The fish might well have disappeared already, but Brody wasn’t willing to gamble lives on the possibility: the odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high.” – Peter Benchley, Author
59. “The great fish moved silently through the night water.” – Peter Benchley, Author
60. “The fish was an enemy. It had come upon the community and killed two men, a woman, and a child. The people of Amity would demand the death of the fish. They would need to see it dead before they could feel secure enough to resume their normal lives.” – Peter Benchley, Author
Did These Quotes Expose to You the Horrors of Men’s Selfish Nature?
Humans have the natural impulse and desire to own things and act for their own gain. Most of the time, we benefit from this because it is rooted in self-preservation and survival. But, since this desire is selfish and solely serves our interest, it is also a trait that can destroy other people’s lives.
In Jaws, we might initially think that the real enemy is the great white shark. But, as we learn more about the story, we can see how the victims’ deaths could have been avoided if Mayor Larry Vaughn was not a greedy capitalist. It is clear that the main horror of the story could have been controlled if the mayor had cared about his people first.
In many ways, watching Jaws is an excellent way to reflect on our actions and assess the real horrors behind something. Hopefully, these quotes were able to enlighten and encourage you to be kinder and more selfless.
Remember, it is us humans who determine how we live and die. So, make sure you live your life trying to be the best you can be!
