Flint quotes from Black Sails

Flint

When the king brands us pirates, he doesn't mean to make us adversaries. He doesn't mean to make us criminals. He means to make us monsters. For that's the only way his God-fearing, tax-paying subjects can make sense of men who keep what is theirs and fear no one. When I say there's a war coming, I don't mean with the Scarborough; I don't mean with King George or England. Civilization is coming. And it means to exterminate us.

Flint

Now with this page securely in our possession, we can begin our hunt. And we will succeed no matter the cost. No matter the struggle, I will see that prize is yours. I'm not just gonna make you rich. I'm not just gonna make you strong. I'm gonna make you the princes of the New World.

Flint

What's coming our way can't be outrun. But with the money I strip from the Hulk, we could add fifty guns to the fort. We could build ships to defend our shores and train new man to sail them. We could work the land, grow crops, and raise cattle. Then whoever arrives on our shore first, be it England or Spain, will be in for a most unwelcome surprise. A nation of thieves.

Flint

If there is a be a war, that would be Whitehall's choice. I'd settle for a pardon, title on lands, and a governor I could trust. And so would most of the men out there. They're not animals. They're men starved of hope. Give that back to them, and who's to say what could happen?

Flint

Odysseus, on his journey home to Ithaca, was visited by a ghost. The ghost tells him that once he reaches his home, once he... slays all his enemies and sets his house in order, he must do one last thing before he can rest. The ghost tells him to pick up an oar and walk inland, and keep walking until somebody mistakes that oar for a shovel. For that would be the place that no man had ever been troubled by the sea. And that's where he'd find peace. In the end, that's all I want: to walk away from the sea and find some peace.

Flint

Nobody will believe it's possible until we show them. But when that day comes, you know what they'll say? They'll say that it was inevitable.

Flint

There's always doubt. No sane man would deny that. No good captain would acknowledge it.

Flint

This crew needs certainty, and I need their support to achieve an end which is in all our best interests. So we dance the dance. Never was there a Caesar who couldn't sing the tune.

Flint

They have a chance at something better than that, but it isn't going to happen unless someone makes it happen.

Flint

If I don't lie to them, who will? Everyone's lied to for their own good--every mother who tells their child that everything will be all right, every soldier who's told by his commander that courage will see them through.

Flint

If no one knows, then everyone wins. Absent their worst instincts, their pride, their greed, their suspicion, in the light of pure reason, who says no to this? They'll be rich men in a safe place rather than dead thieves on a long rope. I'm gonna deliver them. I'm gonna deliver them into something better.

Flint

Everyone is a monster to someone. Since you are so convinced that I am yours, I will be it.

Flint

This is getting more dangerous. The strong among us must stand together and face it. But the fools, the pretenders, they were never truly among us to begin with.

Flint

I can walk away from this fight if I just sign my name beneath a solemn oath never again to do violence against it. No. Not after all it has taken from me. I will do great violence against that thing. They say they will pardon us all, but I say that to offer to pardon something one fears is the act of a coward. To offer them in volume suggests that their fear of us is becoming unmanageable. That we have shown them what we are and it terrifies them.

Flint

They pledged to follow me when they thought I was alive. They turned when they thought I was gone. So I will come back from the dead and lay claim to what I am owed.