- Mr. Bernstein: Old age. It's the only disease, Mr. Thompson, that you don't look forward to being cured of.
- Jedediah Leland: I can remember everything. That's my curse, young man. It's the greatest curse that's ever been inflicted on the human race: memory.
- Mr. Bernstein: A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.
- Susan Alexander Kane: I don't know many people.
- Kane: I know too many people. I guess we're both lonely.
- Kane: You know, Mr. Thatcher, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.
- Walter Parks Thatcher: Don't you think you are?
- Kane: I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.
- Walter Parks Thatcher: What would you like to have been?
- Kane: Everything you hate.
- Female reporter: If you could've found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that would've explained everything.
- Jerry Thompson: No, I don't think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything... I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a... piece in a jigsaw puzzle... a missing piece.
- Jedediah Leland: That's all he ever wanted out of life... was love. That's the tragedy of Charles Foster Kane. You see, he just didn't have any to give.
- Mr. Bernstein: There's a lot of statues in Europe you haven't bought yet.
- Kane: You can't blame me. They've been making statues for some two thousand years, and I've only been collecting for five.
- Kane: [his answer to being blackmailed] There's only one person in the world who's going to decide what I'm going to do and that's me...
- Jerry Thompson: He made an awful lot of money.
- Mr. Bernstein: Well, it's no trick to make a lot of money... if all you want is to make a lot of money.
- Kane: You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars *next* year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... sixty years.
- Jedediah Leland: You don't care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love 'em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way, according to your rules.
- Kane: Hello, Jedediah.
- Jedediah Leland: Hello, Charlie. I didn't know we were speaking...
- Kane: Sure, we're speaking, Jedediah: you're fired.
- Emily Monroe Norton Kane: He happens to be the president, Charles, not you.
- Kane: That's a mistake that will be corrected one of these days.
- [Susan is leaving Kane]
- Kane: [pleading] Don't go, Susan. You mustn't go. You can't do this to me.
- Susan Alexander Kane: I see. So it's *you* who this is being done to. It's not me at all. Not how I feel. Not what it means to me.
- [Susan laughs]
- Susan Alexander Kane: I can't do this to you?
- [Susan smiles coldly]
- Susan Alexander Kane: Oh, yes I can.
- Mr. Bernstein: [on Kane finishing Leland's critical review of Susan's opera singing] Everybody knows that story, Mr. Leland. But why did he do it? How could a man write a notice like that?
- Jedediah Leland: You just don't know Charlie. He thought that by finishing that notice he could show me he was an honest man. He was always trying to prove something. The whole thing about Susie being an opera singer, that was trying to prove something. You know what the headline was the day before the election, "Candidate Kane found in love nest with quote, singer, unquote." He was gonna take the quotes off the singer.
- [last lines]
- Raymond: [to the cleaning crew who are disposing of Kane's property] Throw that junk in.
- [one of the men throws said junk, a sled, into the incinerator, the camera zooming in to show the word ROSEBUD emblazoned on it]
- Kane: Mr. Carter, here's a three-column headline in the Chronicle. Why hasn't the Inquirer a three-column headline?
- Herbert Carter: The news wasn't big enough.
- Kane: Mr. Carter, if the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough.
- Mr. Bernstein: That's right, Mr. Kane.
- Walter Parks Thatcher: You're too old to be calling me Mr. Thatcher, Charles.
- Kane: You're too old to be called anything else.
- Mr. Bernstein: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Switzerland... he was thrown out of a lot of colleges.
- Walter Parks Thatcher: [Quoting from Kane's letter] I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.
- [Repeats the same line but with more aggravation in his voice]
- Walter Parks Thatcher: I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.
- [Looks directly into the camera]
- Walter Parks Thatcher: Arggh!
- Kane: Are we going to declare war on Spain, or are we not?
- Jedediah Leland: The Inquirer already has.
- Kane: [jokingly] You long-faced, overdressed anarchist!
- Jedediah Leland: I am *not* overdressed!
- Kane: You are too! Mr. Bernstein, look at his necktie!
- Kane: [to Thatcher] The trouble is, you don't realize you're talking to two people. As Charles Foster Kane, who has eighty-two thousand six hundred thirty-four shares of Public Transit Preferred. You see, I do have a general idea of my holdings. I sympathize with you. Charles Foster Kane is a scoundrel. His paper should be run out of town. A committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of on thousand dollars. On the other hand, I am the publisher of the Inquirer! As such, it's my duty - and I'll let you in on a little secret, it's also my pleasure - to see to it that decent, hard-working people in this community aren't robbed blind by a pack of money-mad pirates just because - they haven't anybody to look after their interests.
- Kane: This gentleman was saying...
- James W. Gettys: I am not a gentleman. I don't even know what a gentleman is.
- Mr. Bernstein: Isn't it wonderful? Such a party.
- Jedediah Leland: Yeah.
- Mr. Bernstein: What's the matter?
- Jedediah Leland: Bernstein, these men who are now with the Inquirer, who were with the Chronicle until yesterday...
- [Jedediah pauses]
- Jedediah Leland: Bernstein, Bernstein, these men who were with the Chronicle, weren't they just as devoted to the Chronicle policies as they are now to our policies?
- Mr. Bernstein: Sure they are just like anybody else. They got work to do, they do it. Only they happen to be the best men in the business.
- Jedediah Leland: Do we stand for the same things the Chronicle stands for, Mr. Bernstein?
- Mr. Bernstein: Certainly not. Listen, Mr. Kane will change them to his kind of newspapermen in a week.
- Jedediah Leland: There's always a chance, of course, that they will change Mr. Kane without his knowing it.
- James W. Gettys: You're the greatest fool I've ever known, Kane. If it was anybody else, I'd say what's going to happen to you would be a lesson to you. Only you're going to need more than one lesson. And you're going to get more than one lesson.
- Kane: Read the cable.
- Mr. Bernstein: "Girls delightful in Cuba. Stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery, but don't feel right spending your money. Stop. There is no war in Cuba, signed Wheeler." Any answer?
- Kane: Yes. "Dear Wheeler: you provide the prose poems. I'll provide the war."
- Jedediah Leland: [about Kane's "Declaration of Principles"] I'd like to keep that particular piece of paper myself. I have a hunch it might turn out to be something pretty important. A document...
- Mr. Bernstein: Sure!
- Jedediah Leland: ...like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and my first report card at school.
- Mr. Bernstein: Well, it's no trick to make a lot of money if all you want is to make a lot of money.
- Mr. Bernstein: President's niece, huh? Before Mr. Kane's through with her, she'll be a president's wife.
- Interviewer in 1935 Newsreel: Mr. Kane, how did you find business conditions in Europe?
- Kane: How did I find business conditions in Europe? With great difficulty.
- Kane's Father: I'm sorry Mr Thatcher. What that kid needs is a good thrashing!
- Mary Kane: That's what you think, is it Jim?
- Kane's Father: Yes!
- Mary Kane: That's why he's going to be brought up where you can't get at him.
- Newsreel Narrator: [at beginning of news reel on Charles Foster Kane's death] In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.
- Kane: We have no secrets from our readers. Mr. Thatcher is one of our most devoted readers, Mr. Bernstein. He knows what's wrong with every issue since I've taken charge.
- Mr. Bernstein: [to Leland] Mr. Kane is finishing the review you started - he's writing a bad notice. I guess that'll show you.