MacGyver quotes from MacGyver

Egg whites are good for a lot of things. Lemon meringue pie, angel food cake, and... plugging up radiators.

For the past seven years I have done nothing but travel around the world getting shot up, locked up, blown up... and all I have to show for it are a couple of empty rolls of duct tape.

[voice-over narration] Most people come to Southern California for the sunshine. But, there are others who burn easily so they stay in the shadows. Anthony Braddock was one of them. Tony Braddock was a professional chemist. He'd worked himself out of a career with British Intelligence and into building bombs for anyone who'd pay him. Maybe he wasn't the kind of guy you'd want your kids to grow up to be, but one of his bombs got me out of prison in Morocco. So when he called early on a quiet Sunday afternoon and said he was in trouble, I had to make good on my IOU.

It's kinda interesting how you can put one thing with another and cook up the right formula for stayin' out of trouble. My old high school physics and chemistry classes come in real handy sometimes. Not to mention the fact that when you're in a squeeze, necessity always seems to come through as the true mother of invention.

[voice-over narration] When I was a little kid, I used to think ships were like magic. Sailing in from strange places carrying mysterious cargo. This ship was from the People's Republic of China and the cargo was kinda special. A single treasure, literally beyond price. It'd been on display during the voyage and its security had been the responsibility of the Chinese government. Now, it was going to be ours; Pete Thornton's and mine.

Like most kids growin' up in Minnesota, I could skate before I could walk. So when my old coach sent a call for help, I jumped at the chance to come home and coach his team through the state championship playoffs. The Raiders had fought hard to find themselves in this best of three final against the Waverly Hawks. All I had to do was keep them on track. Hockey was the easy part. The hard part was the team's key player. Number 17, Derek Kirby. He was the team's biggest asset and my biggest problem. And as usual, right there at home in the penalty box.

[voice-over narration] Some people spend their lives trying to move up in the world. My friend, Jack Dalton, was at the top of that list. A dreamer who wakes up every morning with a new idea that will rocket him to the top of the economical ladder. The trouble is, because he was always in such a big hurry to get there, he'd take the kind of shortcuts that would drop him a rung lower. Living in this neighborhood was the result of his last shortcut.

[voice-over narration] Maybe I was tired. At least that's what I kept telling myself. I'd been following these two for a week. They'd landed clerk jobs with a government contractor three months ago. A week later, they were stealing top secret documents that kept them in Limos, parties, and very mean company.

There's a fine line in nature that divides the hunter from the hunted. The trick was to turn the situation around. The tools I had available were nature, Karen's coat, and the tranquilizer darts in her backpack. The first thing I had to do was to give them something to shoot at that wasn't me.

You never know where life's gonna take you. This is especially true when you've got a friend like Penny Parker. So, I wasn't too surprised when she called one day and told me she had inherited a mansion.

[in a voice-over narration as he's shown driving along rural highways and half-listening to Penny Parker's joyful excited long-winded chatter about how she'd inherited the old Parker House] There was a long story behind the way Penny came into her inheritance, and she was in no hurry to shorten it. In high-school geometry class, I'd learned that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but when telling a story, Penny always takes the scenic route.

[voice-over narration] My hometown had grown a whole lot in the years since I'd been back. But comin' home was still like reaching into a grab-bag full of memories, some of them good, some of them not so good. And you could never be sure which memory you were gonna come up with. The decisions we make shape our lives. When I was a kid, I made a bad decision about a gun and my life was never the same. Now I was back, 25 years later, to follow up on a promise. One I had to keep, no matter how much it hurt.

[voice-over narration] Technology has just about taking over everything in the world today. But no matter how computerized and mechanized things get, people are still the most important part of any operation - and the weakest link.

I was ready for a lazy week of serious scuba diving off the Grand Keys. A Spanish galleon load with treasure had gone down over 4 centuries ago, and I was gonna spend my vacation lookin' for it. But, Pete Thorton had another idea. It also involved treasure hunting, but he told me I could leave my Hawaiian shirt at home.

When Pete Thornton established a stress-relief program for Phoenix Foundation employees, I thought it was a pretty good idea. The four men I was going to meet worked in high-pressure Phoenix positions throughout the country. My job was to take them over Mount Cascade on a 5-day hike. They'd have a chance to blow-off some steam and just forget about their jobs. And me? Well it was just something I liked to do.