Lawrence of Arabia

T.E. Lawrence:
Do you think I'm just anyone? Do you?

Sherif Ali:
There is the railway. And that is the desert. From here until we reach the other side, no water but what we carry with us. For the camels, no water at all. If the camels die, we die. And in twenty days they will start to die.

T.E. Lawrence:
There's no time to waste, then, is there?

T.E. Lawrence:
My friends, we have been foolish. Auda will not come to Aqaba. Not for money...

Auda abu Tayi:
No.

T.E. Lawrence:
...for Feisal...

Auda abu Tayi:
No!

T.E. Lawrence:
...nor to drive away the Turks. He will come... because it is his pleasure.

Auda abu Tayi:
Thy mother mated with a scorpion.

Club Secretary:
I say, Lawrence. You are a clown!

T.E. Lawrence:
We can't all be lion tamers.

General Allenby:
I thought I was a hard man, sir.

Prince Feisal:
You are merely a general. I must be a king.

T.E. Lawrence:
I pray that I may never see the desert again. Hear me, God.

T.E. Lawrence:
I killed two people. One was... yesterday? He was just a boy and I led him into quicksand. The other was... well, before Aqaba. I had to execute him with my pistol, and there was something about it that I didn't like.

General Allenby:
That's to be expected.

T.E. Lawrence:
No, something else.

General Allenby:
Well, then let it be a lesson.

T.E. Lawrence:
No... something else.

General Allenby:
What then?

T.E. Lawrence:
I enjoyed it.

General Murray:
I can't make out whether you're a bloody madman or just half-witted.

T.E. Lawrence:
I have the same problem, sir.

General Allenby:
I'm promoting you Major.

T.E. Lawrence:
I don't think that's a very good idea.

Sherif Ali:
What is your name?

T.E. Lawrence:
My name is for my friends. None of my friends is a murderer!

Colonel Brighton:
Damn it Lawrence! Who do you take your orders from?

T.E. Lawrence:
I cannot fiddle but I can make a great state of a small city.

Jackson Bentley:
Yes, it was my privilege to know him and to make him known to the world. He was a poet, a scholar and a mighty warrior.

Jackson Bentley:
He was also the most shameless exhibitionist since Barnum & Bailey.

Sherif Ali:
It is their payment, Colonel.

Colonel Brighton:
Payment?

Sherif Ali:
Truly, are not British soldiers paid?

Colonel Brighton:
They don't go home when they've been paid!

Sherif Ali:
They are not free to!

Mr. Dryden:
A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.

Prince Feisal:
Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men: courage, and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace, and the vices of peace are the vices of old men: mistrust and caution.

T.E. Lawrence:
Michael George Hartley, this is a nasty, dark little room.

Hartley:
That's right.

T.E. Lawrence:
We are not happy in it.

Hartley:
It's better than a nasty, dark little trench.

T.E. Lawrence:
Then you're an ignoble fellow.

Hartley:
That's right.

William Potter:
Ooh! It damn well 'urts!

T.E. Lawrence:
Certainly it hurts.

T.E. Lawrence:
The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

Sherif Ali:
Have you no fear, English?

T.E. Lawrence:
My fear is my concern.

Prince Feisal:
With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable.

Colonel Brighton:
Look, sir, we can't just do nothing.

General Allenby:
Why not? It's usually best.

T.E. Lawrence:
So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are.

T.E. Lawrence:
It's my manner, sir.

General Murray:
Your manner?

T.E. Lawrence:
Yes. It looks insubordinate, but it isn't really.

Colonel Brighton:
Are you badly hurt?

T.E. Lawrence:
I'm not hurt at all. Didn't you know? They can only kill me with a golden bullet.

T.E. Lawrence:
Nothing is written.

Sherif Ali:
Truly, for some men nothing is written unless THEY write it.

Prince Feisal:
No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees. There is nothing in the desert and no man needs nothing.

Prince Feisal:
Which is why my father made this war upon the Turks. My father, Mr Lawrence, not the English. But my father is old and I... I long for the vanished gardens of Cordoba. However, before the gardens must come the fighting.

T.E. Lawrence:
My lord, I think... I think your book is right. 'The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped' and on this ocean the Bedu go where they please and strike where they please. This is the way the Bedu have always fought. You're famed throughout the world for fighting in this way and this is the way you should fight now!

Sherif Ali:
Does it surprise you, Mr Bentley? Surely, you know the Arabs are a barbarous people. Barbarous and cruel. Who but they! Who but they!

T.E. Lawrence:
No prisoners! No prisoners!

T.E. Lawrence:
No, they're still there, but they've no boots. Prisoners, sir. We took them prisoners; the entire garrison. No, that's not true. We killed some; too many really. I'll manage it better next time. There's been a lot of killing, one way or another. Cross my heart and hope to die, it's all perfectly true.

T.E. Lawrence:
The truth is: I'm an ordinary man. You might've told me that, Dryden.

Jackson Bentley:
What attracts you personally to the desert?

T.E. Lawrence:
It's clean.

Sherif Ali:
I do not understand this. Your father's name is Chapman...

T.E. Lawrence:
Ali, he didn't marry my mother.

Sherif Ali:
I see.

T.E. Lawrence:
I'm sorry.

Sherif Ali:
It seems to me that you are free to choose your own name, then.

Mr. Dryden:
Well. It seems we're to have a British waterworks with an Arab flag on it. Do you think it was worth it?

General Allenby:
Not my business. Thank God I'm a soldier.

Mr. Dryden:
Yes, sir. So you keep saying.

Prince Feisal:
But you know, Lieutenant, in the Arab city of Cordoba were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village?

T.E. Lawrence:
Yes, you were great.

Prince Feisal:
Nine centuries ago.

T.E. Lawrence:
Time to be great again, my lord.

Prince Feisal:
My friend Lawrence, if I may call him that. "My friend Lawrence". How many men will claim the right to use that phrase? How proudly! He longs for the greenness of his native land. He pines for the Gothic cottages of Surrey, is it not? Already in imagination, he catches trout and engages in all the activities of the English gentleman.

General Allenby:
That's me you're describing, sir, not Colonel Lawrence.

Prince Feisal:
You, I suspect, are chief architect of this compromise. What do you think?

Mr. Dryden:
Me, your Highness? On the whole, I wish I'd stayed in Tunbridge Wells.

T.E. Lawrence:
The best of them won't come for money; they'll come for me.

Auda abu Tayi:
It is Auda of the Howitat who speaks.

Sherif Ali:
It is Ali of the Harith who answers.

Auda abu Tayi:
Harith! Ali, does your father still steal?

Sherif Ali:
No. Does Auda take me for one of his own bastards?

Auda abu Tayi:
No, there is no resemblance. Alas, you resemble your father.

Sherif Ali:
Auda flatters me.

Auda abu Tayi:
You're easily flattered. I knew your father well.

Sherif Ali:
Did you know your own?

T.E. Lawrence:
The Law says the man must die... If he dies, would that content the Howitat?

Auda abu Tayi:
Yes.

Sherif Ali:
Sherif Ali. If none of lord Auda's men harms any of yours, will that content the Harith?

Sherif Ali:
Yes.

T.E. Lawrence:
Then I will execute the Law. I have no tribe and no one is offended.

Mr. Dryden:
Lawrence, only two kinds of creature get fun in the desert: Bedouins and gods, and you're neither. Take it from me, for ordinary men, it's a burning, fiery furnace.

T.E. Lawrence:
No, Dryden, it's going to be fun.

Mr. Dryden:
It is recognized that you have a funny sense of fun.

General Allenby:
I've got orders to obey, thank God. Not like that poor devil. He's riding the whirlwind.

Mr. Dryden:
Let's hope we're not.

Prince Feisal:
And I must do it because the Turks have European guns. But I fear to do it. Upon my soul I do. The English have a great hunger for desolate places. I fear they hunger for Arabia.

Turkish Bey:
I have been stationed in Dara for three and a half years. If I were posted to the dark side of the moon I could not be more isolated. You don't have the slightest idea what I'm talking about, do you?

T.E. Lawrence:
No, effendi.

Turkish Bey:
Do you? No. That would be too... lucky.

Turkish Bey:
Where did you get this wound?

T.E. Lawrence:
That is old, effendi.

Turkish Bey:
No, it is recent. You are a deserter. But from which army? Not that it matters at all. A man can't always be in uniform.

T.E. Lawrence:
There may be honor among thieves, but there's none in politicians.

Sherif Ali:
What are you looking for?

T.E. Lawrence:
Some way to announce myself.

Sherif Ali:
Be patient with him, God.

T.E. Lawrence:
That's all right. We're not particular.

T.E. Lawrence:
A thousand Arabs means a thousand knives, delivered anywhere day or night. It means a thousand camels. That means a thousand packs of high explosives and a thousand crack rifles. We can cross Arabia while Johnny Turk is still turning round, and smash his railways. And while he's mending them, I'll smash them somewhere else. In thirteen weeks, I can have Arabia in chaos.

Jackson Bentley:
You answered without saying anything. That's politics.

General Allenby:
You acted without orders, you know.

T.E. Lawrence:
Shouldn't officers use their initiative at all times?

General Allenby:
Not really. It's awfully dangerous.

T.E. Lawrence:
Aqaba is over there; it's only a matter of going.

We are going to be great again ! That wasn’t Ronald Reagan who say’s That first . It was King Faisal of Saudi Arabia saying it to Lawrence of Arabia .

Potter:
[trying to copy Lawrence's snuffing a match with his fingers] Oooh! It damn well hurts.

Lawrence:
Certainly it hurts.

Potter:
Well, what's the trick, then?

Lawrence:
The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.

Murray:
If you're insubordinate with me, Lawrence, I shall have you put under arrest.

Lawrence:
It's my manner, sir.

Murray:
Your what?

Lawrence:
My manner, sir; it looks insubordinate but it isn't, really.

Murray:
You know, I can't make out whether you're bloody bad-mannered or just half-witted.

Lawrence:
I have the same problem, sir.

Feisal:
In the Arab city of Cordova, there were two miles of public lighting in the streets when London was a village...

Lawrence:
Yes, you were great.

Feisal:
...nine centuries ago...

Lawrence:
Time to be great again, my Lord.

Feisal:
...which is why my father made this war upon the Turks. My father, Mr. Lawrence, not the English. Now my father is old. And I, I long for the vanished gardens of Cordova. However, before the gardens must come fighting.

Sherif Ali:
[Ali shoots Tafas dead while riding his camel. He stops his camel and jumps down to examine Tafas' body] He is dead.

T.E. Lawrence:
Yes... why?

Sherif Ali:
This is my well. [mentioning the well Lawrence and Tafas are resting at]

T.E. Lawrence:
I have drunk from it.

Sherif Ali:
You are welcome.

T.E. Lawrence:
He was my friend.

Sherif Ali:
That? [mentioning Tafas]

T.E. Lawrence:
Yes, that.

Sherif Ali:
[Ali walks towards Lawrence and grabs Tafas' revolver lying on the sand] Yours?

T.E. Lawrence:
No, his.

Sherif Ali:
[Ali tucks the revolver into his waist and walks towards the well] His? [mentioning the tin cup near the well]

T.E. Lawrence:
Mine.

Sherif Ali:
Then I will use it. [pulls some water out of well]

Sherif Ali:
... your friend... was a Hazimi of the Beni Salem.

T.E. Lawrence:
I know.

Sherif Ali:
[Ali salutes Lawrence and drinks his water]I am Ali ibn el Kharish.

T.E. Lawrence:
I have heard of you.

Sherif Ali:
So... What was a Hazimi doing here?

T.E. Lawrence:
He was taking me to help Prince Feisal.

Sherif Ali:
You've been sent from Cairo?

T.E. Lawrence:
Yes.

Sherif Ali:
I have been in Cairo for my schooling. I can both read and write... my Lord Feisal already has an Englishman.

T.E. Lawrence:
Yes.

Sherif Ali:
What is your name?

T.E. Lawrence:
My name is for my friend. [Ali walks away] None of my friends is a murderer.

Sherif Ali:
You are angry, English. [Ali climbs his camel] He was nothing. The well is everything... The Hazimi may not drink at our wells. He knew that... Salaam.

T.E. Lawrence:
We do not work this thing for Feisal.

Auda abu Tayi:
No? For the English, then?

T.E. Lawrence:
For the Arabs.

Auda abu Tayi:
The Arabs? The Howitat, Ajili, Rala, Beni Saha; these I know, I have even heard of the Harith, but the Arabs? What tribe is that?

Auda abu Tayi:
Thy mother mated with a scorpion.

Lawrence:
Look Ali, if any of your Bedouin arrived in Cairo and said, 'We've taken Aqaba,' the generals would laugh.

Ali:
I see. In Cairo, you will put off these funny clothes. You will wear trousers and tell stories of our quaintness and barbarity. And then they will believe you.

Auda:
In ten days. You will cross Sinai?

Lawrence:
Why not? Moses did.

Auda:
And you will take the children?

Lawrence:
Moses did.

Auda:
Moses was a prophet and beloved of God.

Lawrence:
We've taken Aqaba.

Brighton:
Taken Aqaba? Who has?

Lawrence:
We have. Our side in this war has. The wogs have. We have...

Brighton:
You mean the Turks have gone?

Lawrence:
No, they're still there but they've no boots. Prisoners, sir. We took them prisoners, the entire garrison. No that's not true. We killed some, too many really. I'll manage it better next time. There's been a lot of killing, one way or another. Cross my heart and hope to die, it's all perfectly true.

Brighton:
It isn't possible.

Lawrence:
Yes it is. I did it.

Lawrence:
I killed two people, I mean two Arabs. One was a boy. That was yesterday. I led him into a quicksand. The other was a man. That was before Aqaba anyway. I had to execute him with my pistol. There was something about it I didn't like.

Allenby:
Well, naturally.

Lawrence:
No, something else.

Allenby:
I see. Well that's all right. Let it be a warning.

Lawrence:
No, something else.

Allenby:
What then?

Lawrence:
I enjoyed it.

Bentley:
Watch out for Allenby. He's a slim customer.

Feisal:
Excuse me?

Bentley:
A clever man.

Feisal:
'Slim customer.' It's very good. I will certainly watch out for him. You are being very sympathetic, Mr. Bentley.

Bentley:
Your Highness. We Americans were once a colonial people, and we naturally feel sympathetic to any people anywhere who are struggling for their freedom.

Feisal:
Very gratifying.

Bentley:
Also, my interests are the same as yours. You want your story told. I badly want a story to tell.

Feisal:
Since starting this campaign four months ago, we have lost 37 wounded, 156 dead. Do you remark at this proportion between our dead and wounded?

Bentley:
Yeah. Four times as many.

Feisal:
That's because those too badly wounded to bring away we ourselves kill. We leave no wounded for the Turks.

Bentley:
You mean...

Feisal:
I mean we leave no wounded for the Turks. In their eyes, we are not soldiers, but rebels. And rebels, wounded or whole, are not protected by the Geneva Code and are treated harshly.

Bentley:
How harshly?

Feisal:
More harshly than I hope you can imagine.

Bentley:
It's very simple, sir. I'm looking for a hero...certain influential men back home believe that the time has come for America to lend her weight to the patriotic struggle against Germany, uh, and Turkey. Now I've been sent to find material which will show our people that this war is, uh...

Feisal:
Enjoyable?

Bentley:
Oh, hardly that, sir. But to show them its more adventurous aspects.

Feisal:
And you are looking for a figure who will draw your country towards war.

Bentley:
All right. Yes.

Feisal:
Lawrence is your man.

Bentley:
What, in your opinion, do these people hope to gain from this war?

Lawrence:
They hope to gain their freedom. Freedom.

Bentley:
They hope to gain their freedom. There's one born every minute.

Lawrence:
They're gonna get it, Mr. Bentley. I'm going to give it to them.

Bentley:
What is it, Major Lawrence, that attracts you personally to the desert?

Lawrence:
It's clean.

Bentley:
Well, now, that's a very illuminating answer.

Brighton:
[speaking about Lawrence and the Arabs] They think he's a kind of prophet.

Allenby:
They do or he does?

This honors the unworthy.

Feisal:
I think you are another of these desert-loving English: Doughty, Stanhope, Gordon of Khartoum. No Arab loves the desert. We love water and green trees, there is nothing in the desert. No man needs nothing.

Feisal:
"In this country, Mr. Bentley, the man who gives victory in battle is prized beyond every other man..."

Auda Abu Tayi:
(To Lawrence) Dine with Auda, English. Dine with him. (To Harith Envoy) It is my pleasure, that you should dine with me... in WADI RUM!

Auda Abu Tayi:
I am Auda Abu Tayi! Does Auda serve? (Tribesmen in tent shout no, turns to ask those gathered outside) DOES AUDA SERVE?!? (Crowd yells angrily no)... I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because *I* am a river to my people! (Audas tribesmen cheer)

Dryden:
Big things have small beginnings.

Dryden:
On the whole, I wish I’d stayed in Tunbridge Wells.