Have Gun - Will Travel Quotes

Dr. Avatar: Then perhaps you know what these are?
Paladin: Yes. They are used to measure what Lombroso has termed the stigmata of degeneracy - certain cranial abnormalities, a low sensitivity to pain, primitive instincts found in cannibals, cave dwellers, apes, animals and habitual murderers - in short, the mark of Cain.
Dr. Avatar: And that is why I have come back to America.
Paladin: Oh. A shortage of murderers in Europe this year?
Dr. Avatar: There's never a shortage of wife killers - murders of passion, momentary rage, that sort of thing. My interest is in the habitual murderer. The man who kills 10, 20, 30 people. For him it is not circumstance, or unrequited love, or even small prejudice that drives him to kill. No sir. With him it is constitution. He cannot help himself. And that is the mark of Cain.
Paladin: And that is what you hope to find in the wild west?
Dr. Avatar: Well, sir, in the words of Lacassagne, societies get the criminals they deserve.
Paladin: And what will you do with one if you catch him?
Dr. Avatar: I shall make a detailed record of his skull measurements and his reflexes. Ah my. The James boys. The Daltons. Cherokee Bill, Jake Trueblood, Tom Horn! The very names come rolling off the tongue like thunder. How long I've dreamt of meeting some of them face to face.
Paladin: The only one of that bunch that's left alive is Jake Trueblood and you don't want him.
Dr. Avatar: Why not? He's on my list. He's practically the head of it.
Paladin: Jake's not a murderer. He's never killed anyone. Except in a fair fight.
Dr. Avatar: Perhaps so, but after 20 or 30 times would you

TV Show: Have Gun - Will Travel
General Largo Ortega: Who overcomes by force have overcome but half his foe. Maybe Shelley was right.
Paladin: I think perhaps he was. But I think it was Milton.

TV Show: Have Gun - Will Travel
Marshal Jim Buell: They won't understand.
Paladin: They understand. And I understand. 23 years of intimacy with the misery and madness of men, wrappping bodies in ponchos and kicking dust over the blood, telling a wife you just shot her husband or a father that his son must hang and telling yourself the law will be done no matter what the personal pain, anguish. I understand that 23 years of anguish, torture can twist a man. The ironic thing, marshal, is that only the very best survive long enough to break.

TV Show: Have Gun - Will Travel
Mike O'Hare: A gunfighter.
Paladin: I don't care for that term.
Mike O'Hare: Well, what do you know. A sensitive gunfighter.

TV Show: Have Gun - Will Travel
Paladin: An empty gun can tell a man a lot of things.

TV Show: Have Gun - Will Travel
Sarah: Do you know how old I am? I'm 28. Twelve years like a stone he could kick, if his meal wasn't hot enough, or his bed wasn't made, or if there was a 10-cent piece missing that I couldn't account for. But he could come home drunk, he could gamble the food away, he could fall down on the porch and get sick all over his fancy gold braid.

TV Show: Have Gun - Will Travel