The Time Machine (1960)

Rod Taylor: H. George Wells

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Quotes 

• George : What have you done? Thousands of years of building and rebuilding, creating and recreating so you can let it crumble to dust. A million years of sensitive men dying for their dreams... *For what*? So you can swim and dance and play.

• George : When I speak of time, gentlemen, I'm referring to the fourth dimension.

• George : I've got to tell it now, David, while I still remember it.

  Filby : Relax, try to relax. You've all the time in the world.

  George : You're right, David... That's exactly what I have... All the time in the world.

• Filby : Alright. Take your, take your journey on your contraption. What would you become?... A Greek, a Roman, one of the pharaohs?

  George : I prefer the future.

• Dr. Philip Hillyer : Well, the future's already there. It's irrevocable. It cannot be changed.

  George : I wonder... Now that's the most important question to which I hope to find an answer... Can man control his destiny? Can he change the shape of things to come?

• Filby : Why this preoccupation with time?

  George : Why not?

  Filby : Don't go simple on me, George.

  George : All right, if you want to know the truth, I don't much care for the time I was born into. It seems people aren't dying fast enough these days. They call upon science to invent new, more efficient weapons to depopulate the Earth.

• George : [after arriving at the year 802,701]  Nature tamed completely... and more bountiful than *ever* before. At last I'd found a paradise... But it would be no paradise if it belonged to me alone.

• George : [while time traveling]  The centuries rolled by... I put my trust in time, and waited for the rock to wear down around me.

• George : [having just departed 1917, the time machines starts rocking back and forth and side to side, George reaches for the back of the machine]  Suddenly in 1940, I began to be buffeted from side to side, my first thought was the machine had some mechanical defect or a cog had gone wrong.

  [George looks up through the skylight of his lab and sees barrage balloons appearing in the sky. He slowly stops the machine, stopping on June 19th, 1940 during the London Blitz. He sees several explosions in the sky amongst aircraft whizzing overhead. A brief scene of aerial combat is shown with two planes being shot down while George ponders in voice-over] 

  George : The last time I'd stopped was in 1917, 23 years ago... and the war with Germany was still raging, now in the air with... flying machines. Then I realized the truth of the matter; this was a new war.