Columbo (TV Series)

The Conspirators (1978)

Clive Revill: Joe Devlin

Photos 

Quotes 

• Joe Devlin : You see, at a very early age I decided to be me own master and the servant of no one, and that left two promising possibilities: either to be a king or a poet. Now, as Ireland had her fill of kings, I clearly saw I had to educate meself to a way of words, so I took to drink immediately, fell in love at every opportunity, and avoided the schoolroom like the plague. I advise you to do the same.

• Joe Devlin : Justice for the many. Justice for the free. Let each man be paid in full. That's just enough for me.

• Joe Devlin : Do you know these lines, Lieutenant? They're by Lewis Carroll: "You can charge me with murder, or want of sense - we are all of us weak at times - but the slightest approach to a false pretense was never among my crimes."

• Joe Devlin : The limerick is furtive and mean. You must keep her in close quarantine, Or she sneaks to the slums, And promptly becomes, Disorderly, drunk and obscene.

• Joe Devlin : Politics makes liars of us all, Lieutenant.

• Joe Devlin : [to Columbo]  Japan sends televisions. Ireland sends whiskey. D'you care for a nip?

• Joe Devlin : Here's to friendship, ripe and long. Here's to voices raised in song. Here's to a long and thirsty night. Here's to the stuff that makes it right.

• Joe Devlin : A famous German philosopher named Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once wrote that the essence of tragedy isn't the conflicts between right and wrong - it's the conflicts of right and right.

• Joe Devlin : We execute traitors, Mr. Pauley. Didn't you know that?

• Joe Devlin : Justice for the many, Justice for the free Let each man be paid in full That's just enough for me.

• Joe Devlin : Here's to friendship ripe and long Here's to voices raised in song Here's to a long and thirsty night Here's to the stuff that makes it right.