The Godfather Part II (1974)

Lee Strasberg: Hyman Roth

Photos 

Quotes 

• [about the unrest in Cuba] 

  Michael Corleone : I saw a strange thing today. Some rebels were being arrested. One of them pulled the pin on a grenade. He took himself and the captain of the command with him. Now, soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren't.

  Hyman Roth : What does that tell you?

  Michael Corleone : They could win.

• Hyman Roth : There was this kid I grew up with; he was younger than me. Sorta looked up to me, you know. We did our first work together, worked our way out of the street. Things were good, we made the most of it. During Prohibition, we ran molasses into Canada... made a fortune, your father, too. As much as anyone, I loved him and trusted him. Later on he had an idea to build a city out of a desert stop-over for GI's on the way to the West Coast. That kid's name was Moe Greene, and the city he invented was Las Vegas. This was a great man, a man of vision and guts. And there isn't even a plaque, or a signpost or a statue of him in that town! Someone put a bullet through his eye. No one knows who gave the order. When I heard it, I wasn't angry; I knew Moe, I knew he was head-strong, talking loud, saying stupid things. So when he turned up dead, I let it go. And I said to myself, this is the business we've chosen; I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!

• Hyman Roth : I'd give four million just to be able to take a piss without it hurting

• Hyman Roth : I'm going in to take a nap. When I wake, if the money's on the table, I'll know I have a partner. If it isn't, I'll know I don't.

• Hyman Roth : If I could only live to see it, to be there with you. What I wouldn't give for twenty more years! Here we are, protected, free to make our profits without Kefauver, the goddamn Justice Department and the F.B.I. ninety miles away, in partnership with a friendly government. Ninety miles! It's nothing! Just one small step, looking for a man who wants to be President of the United States, and having the cash to make it possible. Michael, we're bigger than U.S. Steel.

• Hyman Roth : Good health is the most important thing. More than success, more than money, more than power.

• Hyman Roth : [his last words]  I'm a retired investor living on a pension. I came home to vote in the Presidential Election because they wouldn't give me an absentee ballot.

  [Seconds later, Rocco walks up to Roth and shoots him in the stomach, killing him] 

• Hyman Roth : I loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919.

• Hyman Roth : I want all of you to enjoy your cake, so... enjoy.

• Hyman Roth : What I am saying is, we have now what we have always needed, real partnership with the government.

• Hyman Roth : I want my own doctor. Fly him in from Miami. I don't trust a doctor can't speak English.

• [When asked by reporters why he has decided to move to Israel] 

  Hyman Roth : I am a retired investor on a pension, and I wished to live there as a Jew in the twilight of my life.

• Hyman Roth : Stupid thugs. People behaving like that with guns.

• Hyman Roth : This is the business we've chosen.