11 Best Cooper Quotes

We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.

Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.

Cooper: Hey TARS, what's your honesty parameter?
TARS: 90 percent.
Cooper: 90 percent?
TARS: Absolute honesty isn't always the most diplomatic nor the safest form of communication with emotional beings.
Cooper: Okay, 90 percent it is.

Once you're a parent, you're the ghost of your children's future.

TARS: [as Cooper repairs him] Settings. General settings. Security settings.
TARS: Honesty, new setting: ninety-five percent.
TARS: Confirmed. Additional settings.
Cooper: Humor, seventy-five percent.
TARS: Confirmed. Self destruct sequence in T minus 10, 9...
Cooper: Let's make that sixty percent.
TARS: Sixty percent, confirmed. Knock knock.
Cooper: You want fifty-five?

Cooper: You're ruling my son out for college now? The kid's fifteen.
Principal: Tom's score simply isn't high enough.
Cooper: What's your waistline? 32? With, what, a 33 inseam?
Principal: I'm not sure I see what you're getting at.
Cooper: You're telling me it takes two numbers to measure your own ass but only one to measure my son's future?

We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we've barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, that our destiny lies above us.

CASE: Endurance rotation is 67, 68 RPM.
Cooper: CASE, get ready to match our spin with the retro thrusters.
CASE: It's not possible.
Cooper: No. It's necessary.

Cooper: [whispering] Tell me something. Doctor Brand, and Edmonds...
TARS: Why are you whispering? They can't hear you.
Cooper: Doctor Brand and Edmonds, they close?
TARS: I wouldn't know.
Cooper: Is that a ninety percent wouldn't know, or ten percent wouldn't know?
TARS: I also have a discretion setting, Cooper.
Cooper: Ah. But not a poker face, huh?

Cooper: [to young Murph] Tell him Murph. Make him stay. Make... Make him stay Murph. Make him stay Murph! Don't let me leave, Murph! Don't, don't let me leave Murph! NO, NO, NO, NO!
Murph: It was you. You were my ghost.
TARS: Cooper... Cooper... Come in, Cooper.
Cooper: TARS?
TARS: Roger that.
Cooper: You survived!
TARS: Somewhere, in their fifth dimension, they... saved us.
Cooper: Who the hell is they? Why would they want to help us, huh?
TARS: I don't know, but they constructed this three-dimensional space inside of their five-dimensional reality to allow you to understand it.
Cooper: Well, it ain't working.
TARS: Yes it is! You've seen that time is represented here as a *physical* dimension! You've worked out that you *can* exert a force across space-time!
Cooper: Gravity. To send a message.
TARS: Affirmative.
Cooper: Gravity can cross the dimensions, including time.

Cooper: This world's a treasure, Don; but it's been telling us to leave for a while now.