59+ Best Jaws Quotes: Exclusive Selection

Jaws is a 1975 American thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley’s 1974 novel of the same name. Profoundly inspirational Jaws quotes will fire up your brain and encourage you to look at life differently while making you laugh.

If you’re searching for profound movie quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of profound Scream quotes, amazing Neverending Story quotes and top Old School quotes.

Famous Jaws Quotes

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. Peter Benchley

The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future. Peter Benchley

The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. Peter Benchley

There’s nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That’s their instinct. But this fish doesn’t run from anything. He doesn’t fear. Peter Benchley

Intellectually, they knew a great deal. Practically, they chose to know almost nothing. Peter Benchley

Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They’re beautiful God, how beautiful they are! They’re like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They’re as graceful as any bird. They’re as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses except for hunger they respond to. There are more than two hundred and fifty species of shark, and everyone is different from every other one. Peter Benchley

What are you doing out there? These are your people; go and talk to them. Chief Martin Brody

He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime, an unwilling whore. Peter Benchley

You yell Barracuda, everybody says Huh? What? You yell Shark, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July. Mayor Larry Vaughn

The great fish moved silently through the night water. Peter Benchley

Odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high. Peter Benchley

The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future. It’s depressing if you spend too much time reliving old joys. You think you’ll never have anything as good again. Peter Benchley

You’re gonna need a bigger boat. Chief Martin Brody

Look, Chief, you can’t go off half cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn’t evil. It’s not a murderer. It’s just obeying its own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy. Peter Benchley

I’m chief of police, I can do anything. Chief Martin Brody

Come up fish. Come to Quint. Peter Benchley

The great fish moved silently through the night water. Peter Benchley

The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future. It’s depressing if you spend too much time reliving the old joys. You think you’ll never have anything as good again. Peter Benchley

Why don’t we show Mr. Hooper our accident? Chief Martin Brody

Sharks are like ax murderers, Martin. People react to them with their guts. There’s something crazy and evil and uncontrollable about them. Peter Benchley

I don’t think either one of you are familiar with our problems! Mayor Larry Vaughn

What had once seemed shallow and tedious now loomed in memory like paradise. Peter Benchley

Suppose you fell over with this fish. Is there anything you could do? Sure. Pray. Peter Benchley

The fish was an enemy. It had come upon the community and killed two men, a woman, and a child. The people of Amity would demand the death of the fish. They would need to see it dead before they could feel secure enough to resume their normal lives. Peter Benchley

I don’t think you appreciate the gut reaction people have to these things Martin, it’s all psychological. Mayor Larry Vaughn

Suppose you fell over with this fish. Is there anything you could do? Sure. Pray. It’d be like falling out of an airplane without a parachute and hoping you’ll land in a haystack. The only thing that’d save you would be God, and since He pushed you overboard in the first place, I wouldn’t give a nickel for your chances. Peter Benchley

Here’s to swimmin with bow legged women. Quint

Hooper ladled chum, which sounded to Brody, every time it hit the water, like diarrhea. Peter Benchley

You have city hands, Mr. Hooper. You been countin’ money all your life. Quint

The young man was tall and slim. He wore sandals and a bathing suit and a short sleeved shirt with an alligator emblem stitched to the left breast, which caused Brody to take an instant, instinctive dislike to the man. In his adolescence Brody had thought of those shirts as badges of wealth and position. All the summer people wore them. Brody badgered his mother until she bought him one a two dollar shirt with a six dollar lizard on it, she said. Peter Benchley

You got any better suggestions?! Matt Hooper

God isn’t going to scribble across the sky. The shark is gone. Peter Benchley

Do you want a pretzel? Matt Hooper

The boy’s last only thought was that he had been punched in the stomach. The breath was driven from him in a sudden rush. He had no time to cry out, nor, had he had the time, would he have known what to cry, for he could not see the fish. The fish’s head drove the raft out of the water. The jaws smashed together, engulfing head, arms, shoulders, trunk, pelvis, and most of the raft. Nearly half the fish had come clear of the water, and it slid forward and down in a belly-flopping motion, grinding the mass of flesh and bone and rubber. The boy’s legs were severed at the hips, and they sank, spinning slowly, to the bottom. Peter Benchley

You screw around with these tanks and they are going to blow up! Matt Hooper

A terrible, painful sadness clutched at Ellen. More than ever before, she felt that her life the best part of it, at least, the part that was fresh and fun was behind her. Recognizing the sensation made her feel guilty, for she read it as proof that she was an unsatisfactory mother, an unsatisfied wife. She hated her life, and hated herself for hating it. She thought of a line from a song Billy played on the stereo I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday. Peter Benchley

I don’t need this working class hero crap! Matt Hooper

With knowledge accumulated from dozens of expeditions and hundreds of dives and countless encounters with sharks of many kinds came the realization that I could never write Jaws today. I could never demonize an animal, especially not an animal that is much older and much more successful in its habitat than man is, has been, or ever will be, an animal that is vitally necessary for the balance of nature in the sea, and an animal that we may if we don’t change our destructive behaviors extinguish from the face of the earth. Peter Benchley

He ate the light. Matt Hooper

He awoke at five, to the whine of the television test pattern, turned off the set, and listened for the wind. It had moderated and seemed to be coming from a different quarter, but it still carried rain. He debated calling Quint, but thought, no, no use we’ll be going even if this blows up into a gale. He went upstairs and quietly dressed. Before he left the bedroom, he looked at Ellen, who had a frown on her sleeping face. I do love you, you know, he whispered, and he kissed her brow. He started down the stairs and then, impulsively, went and looked in the boys bedrooms. They were all asleep. Peter Benchley

This was no boat accident. Matt Hooper

God isn’t going to scribble across the sky, The shark is gone. Peter Benchley

The height and weight of the victim can only be estimated from the partial remains. Matt Hooper

Maybe. Maybe not. Look, the Latin name for this fish is Carcharodon carcharias, okay? The closest ancestor we can find for it is something called Carcharodon megalodon, a fish that existed maybe thirty or forty thousand years ago. We have fossil teeth from megalodon. They’re six inches long. That would put the fish at between eighty and a hundred feet. And the teeth are exactly like the teeth you see in great whites today. What I’m getting at is, suppose the two fish are really one species. What’s to say megalodon is really extinct? Why should it be? Peter Benchley

I’m not going to waste my time arguing with a man who’s lining up to be a hot lunch. Matt Hooper

The fish might well have disappeared already, but Brody wasn’t willing to gamble lives on the possibility the odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high. Peter Benchley

Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy. Matt Hooper

At first, the woman thought she had snagged her leg on a rock or a piece of floating wood. There was no initial pain, only one violent tug on her right leg. She reached down to touch her foot, treading water with her left leg to keep her head up, feeling in the blackness with her left hand. She could not find her foot. She reached higher on her leg, and then she was overcome by a rush of nausea and dizziness. Her groping fingers had found a nub of bone and tattered flesh. She knew that the warm, pulsing flow over her fingers in the chill water was her own blood. Peter Benchley

Well, this is not a boat accident! It wasn’t any propeller! It wasn’t any coral reef! And it wasn’t Jack the Ripper! It was a shark. Matt Hooper

Intellectually, they knew a great deal. Practically, they chose to know almost nothing. Peter Benchley

I pulled a tooth the size of a shot glass out of the wreck hull of a boat out there, and it was the tooth of a Great White. Matt Hooper

Hooper ladled chum, which sounded to Brody, every time it hit the water, like diarrhoea. Peter Benchley

Boys, oh boys! I think he’s come back for his noon feeding. Matt Hooper

At this point, if someone came in here and said he was Superman and he could piss that shark away from here, I’d say fine and dandy. I’d even hold his dick for him. Peter Benchley

I got no spit. Matt Hooper

In a way, sharks are like tornadoes they touch down here, but not there they wipe out this house but suddenly veer away and miss the house next door. Peter Benchley

Doctor, there is no need for me to come to Brisbane, when I have a great white shark right here. Matt Hooper