The Imitation Game (2014) quotes

Director
Morten Tyldum.

Cast
Benedict Cumberbatch.
Keira Knightley.
Matthew Goode.

During World War II, the English mathematical genius Alan Turing tries to crack the German Enigma code with help from fellow mathematicians.

 

Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.
– Christopher Morcom

Of course machines can’t think as people do. A machine is different from a person. Hence, they think differently. The interesting question is, just because something, uh… thinks differently from you, does that mean it’s not thinking? Well, we allow for humans to have such divergences from one another. You like strawberries, I hate ice-skating, you cry at sad films, I am allergic to pollen. What is the point of… different tastes, different… preferences, if not, to say that our brains work differently, that we think differently? And if we can say that about one another, then why can’t we say the same thing for brains… built of copper and wire, steel?
– Alan Turing

I know it’s not ordinary. But who ever loved ordinary?
– Joan Clarke

Are you paying attention? Good. If you are not listening carefully, you will miss things. Important things. I will not pause, I will not repeat myself, and you will not interrupt me. You think that because you’re sitting where you are, and I am sitting where I am, that you are in control of what is about to happen. You’re mistaken. I am in control, because I know things that you do not know.
– Alan Turing
What I will need from you now is a commitment. You will listen closely, and you will not judge me until I am finished. If you cannot commit to this, then please leave the room. But if you choose to stay, remember you chose to be here. What happens from this moment forward is not my responsibility. It’s yours. Pay attention.
– Alan Turing

I like solving problems, Commander. And Enigma is the most difficult problem in the world.
– Alan Turing
Enigma isn’t difficult, it’s impossible. The Americans, the Russians, the French, the Germans, everyone thinks Enigma is unbreakable.
– Commander Denniston
Good. Let me try and we’ll know for sure, won’t we?
– Alan Turing

Advice about keeping secrets: it’s a lot easier if you don’t know them in the first place.
– Alan Turing

Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes… hollow.
– Alan Turing

Are you paying attention? Good. If you’re not listening carefully you will miss things. Important things. I will not pause, I will not repeat myself, and you will not interrupt me. If you think that because you’re sitting where you are and I am sitting where I am that you are in control of what is about to happen, you ‘re mistaken. I am in control, because I know things that you do not know.
– Alan Turing

When people talk to each other, they never say what they mean.
– Alan Turing
They say something else and you’re expected to just know what they mean.
– Alan Turing

If you run the wires across the plugboard matrix diagonally, you’ll eliminate rotor positions 500 times faster.
– Hugh Alexander
This is actually not an entirely terrible idea.
– Alan Turing
That’s Alan for “thank you.”
– Joan Clarke

You got what you wanted. A husband, a job… a normal life.
– Alan Turing
No one normal could have done that. Do you know, this morning… I was on a train that went through a city that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you. I bought a ticket from a man who would likely be dead if it wasn’t for you. I read up on my work… a whole field of scientific inquiry that only exists because of you. And while you wish you could have been normal… I can promise you I do not. The world is an infinitely better place precisely because you weren’t.
– Joan Clarke
You really think that?
– Alan Turing

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
– Alan Turing

I think, that sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of, who do the things no one… can imagine.
– Joan Clarke