“The open steppe, a clear day, and a swift horse under you,” responded the officer after a little thought, “and a falcon on your wrist to start up hares.” One day in the pavilion at Karakorum he asked an officer of the Mongol guard what, in all the world, could bring the greatest happiness. In Lamb’s classic 1927 biography, Genghis Kahn: the Emperor of All Men, he gives his version of a legendary quotation by the great conqueror at the end of Chapter 11.
But it’s based on a passage in a book by one of Howard’s favorite writers, Harold Lamb. It’s not in the Conan stories written by the creator of the character, Robert Howard. John Milius, who directed Conan the Barbarian and co-wrote the screenplay with Oliver Stone, didn’t create Arnold’s famed catchphrase from whole cloth. General: “Wrong! Conan, what is best in life?”Ĭonan (Arnold): “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!”Ĭonan’s last seven words are sometimes quoted as “to hear the lamentation of the women,” because Arnold’s Austrian accent makes the word “their” sound like “deh.” But I’m pretty sure it’s “their women” given the inspiration for the movie quote. Warrior: “The open steppe, fleet horse, falcons at your wrist, wind in your hair!”
Here’s the dialog from that scene (which you can watch on YouTube):īarbarian General: “We won again. It’s also the first line he speaks in the film after a full twenty minutes of backstory recounting how Conan was captured as a boy by brutal barbarian raiders, used as a slave, then trained to be a vicious pit fighter and a warrior for his captors. Cheers!īarbarian General (actor Akio Mitamura): “Conan, what is best in life?”Ĭonan ( Arnold Schwarzenegger): “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!”įrom the film Conan the Barbarian (released in the US on May 14, 1982)Īrnold Schwarzenegger’s “crush your enemies” line in Conan the Barbarian became the first of his many famous movie quotations as an actor.
If want to subscribe to future posts, click on one of the subscription options at the top of the right sidebar. If you like this post, click here to see more. It’s easier to show you what that means than explain it, so below is an example based on a famous movie quote.
Basically, each post on features background information on a famous quotation followed by a set of quotes that are interesting or humorous uses, variations and take-offs on the main quotation. For readers of this website who may not know about my other quotation site,, here’s a post that will give you an idea of what you’ll find there.
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