- Virgil: Teacher only reverted to type under provocation. He... he spoke like a slavemaster in the old days of our servitude when we were conditioned to mechanical obedience. He, uh, he uttered a negative, uh, imperative.
- Caesar: Could you put that into words which even Caesar could understand?
- Virgil: Uh, he said, "No, Aldo, no!"
- [first lines]
- Title Card: North America, 2670 A.D.
- The Lawgiver: In the beginning God created beast and man so that both might live in friendship and share dominion over a world of peace. But in the fullness of time evil men betrayed God's trust and in disobedience to His holy word waged bloody wars, not only against their own kind, but against the apes, whom they reduced to slavery. Then God in his wrath sent the world a saviour, miraculously born of two apes who descended on Earth from Earth's own future and man was afraid for both parent apes possessed the power of speech
- Mendez: If we shoot, we'll break twelve years of peace!
- Governor Kolp: Yes, it has been rather boring hasn't it?
- Governor Kolp: So speech makes them human?
- Soldier: Speech makes them intelligent. And intelligence makes them not human, but humane.
- Caesar: Ah, if only my mother and father, whom I was too young to remember... If only they'd lived, perhaps they would have taught me if it was right to kill evil so that good shall prevail.
- MacDonald: But you know, Caesar, history shows...
- Caesar: Oh no, no, no. That is human history, not ape history. Ape, never kills ape.
- Crowd: [chanting] APE HAS KILLED APE!
- MacDonald: If we appear to be lacking in gratitude, Caesar, what have we to be grateful for? If you mean to set us free, then free us completely.
- Caesar: What do you mean?
- MacDonald: We are not your children, Caesar. We have a destiny too... as equals.. respecting each other, living together with love.
- Caesar: Love? The human way is violence and death.
- Virgil: Aldo wasn't human... was he, Caesar?
- Caesar: Virgil. You are a good and wise ape.
- Lisa: And you, Caesar, are a good and wise king.
- Mandemus: I really don't hold withknowing the future, even my own, which is short. I mean, if we knew for a fact there was an afterlife, and that the afterlife was bliss eternal, we'd all commit suicide in order to be able to enjoy it.
- The Lawgiver: Yet in the aftermath of Caesar's victory, the surface of the world was ravaged by the vilest war in human history. The great cities of the world split asunder and were flattened.
- MacDonald: Aldo, you can't do this! You're acting against Caesar's orders!
- General Aldo: [reclining on Caesar's throne] Caesar is not here.
- Mandemus: What do you want?
- General Aldo: Guns! Guns!
- Mandemus: What will you do with them?
- General Aldo: We shall do with them what we will!
- Mandemus: Do what you will is the devil's law!
- Mandemus: There. Every weapon is back in its proper place. Caesar, I want to ask a favor. This armory's been my home for 27 years.
- Caesar: You may live in it for the rest of your days.
- Mandemus: But I don't want to live in it. Oh, no. Now that the danger is over... I wanna see it destroyed, blown up.
- Virgil: The greatest danger of all is that danger never ends.
- Caesar: And so, Mandemus... we must be patient and wait.