Batou

• ...No matter how far a jackass travels, it wont come back a horse.
• Even presuming they went off at their most lethal range, you think two grenades are going to off an armored cyborg? You insult me.
• >addressing the cowering Yakuza boss.<
• When talking fails, it's time for violence.
• When you're neither right nor wrong it's time to beat the drums and attack.
• Just as luck appears in three, so does misfortune. Because you don't want to see it, you don't see it coming. Even if you notice it, you don't say anything. Even if you're told, you don't listen. Then boom, the end comes!

Major Motoko Kusanagi

• We weep for the blood of a bird, but not for the blood of a fish. Blessed are those with a voice. If the dolls also had voices,I bet they would have screamed, "I didn't want to become human."
• "Who can gaze into the mirror without becoming evil? The mirror does not reflect evil, but creates it."(Based on Friedrich Nietzsche's quote: "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee")
• "Let a person walk alone with few wishes, committing no wrong, like elephants in the forest" (Based on a Buddhist Poem)

Togusa

• [With his head between his hands, looking to the floor after a grenade explodes near him] All I could see... were my wife and daughter's faces.

Dialogue

Togusa: How great is the sum of thy thoughts? If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand.

Batou: Psalms 139, Old Testament. The way you spout these spontaneous exotic references, I'd say your own external memory's pretty twisted.

Togusa: His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced. Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks.

Batou: Now you're quoting Milton, but we are not Satan.

Batou: What's up?

Togusa: Narrow, dark stairs. What's the plan?

Batou: We'll take turns, I'll lead.

Togusa: No, I'll lead. You're so damned big, I can't cover you! [walks up the stairs, hereby forcing the lead]

Lin: We got loyalty even in my line.

Batou: There's loyalty that protects secrets and loyalty that protects the truth. You cannot serve both masters, so which loyalty is yours?

Other

• Section 9 Department Chief Aramaki: I ordered you to conduct an investigation. I never said skip the paperwork and act like vigilantes. I certainly don't recall ordering you to barge into any Yakuza office. This isn't the jungle and you're not Special Forces hit men.

• [first title cards]: In a future time when most human thought has been accelerated by artificial intelligence and external memory can be shared on a universal matrix, Batou, an agent of the elite Section 9 Security Force and a being so artificially modified as to be essentially cyborg, is assigned, along with his mostly human partner, Togusa, to investigate a series of gruesome murders.