### Author:  [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/1 "2007-03-21T21:24:30Z")
Inspired by [this blog entry](http://www.fmft.net/archives/000828.html) - Captain Oates’ “I am just going outside & may be some time.” - can Dopers come up with any similarly great parting - not necessarily last - words?
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### Author:  [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/2 "2007-03-21T22:08:41Z")
This is a true story. Words have been changed to reflect the forgetfulness of the author.
The setting: The American Civil War
Grunt Jim: “Captain, we should move camp. Confederate snipers are close.”
Commander: “Nonsense, those confederate bumpkins couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn…”
\
Grunt Jim: “…”
Army Doctor: “He’s dead, Jim”
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### Author:  [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/3 "2007-03-21T22:42:38Z")
“Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home.” -Eric Cartman (Dual finger waving and pointing required.)
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### Author:  [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/4 "2007-03-21T22:46:45Z")
“You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”
- Davy Crockett
(He showed them!)
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/5 "2007-03-21T22:47:21Z")
[QUOTE=Autolycus]
This is a true story. Words have been changed to reflect the forgetfulness of the author.
[/QUOTE]
“They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” Gen. John Sedgwick.
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/6 "2007-03-21T23:01:20Z")
**So long and thanks for all the fish**. It’s a message from the dolphins who left Earth right before it was blown up. From \*\*The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. \*\*
My supervisor actually sent this out to the home company on the day our station shut down. It was his way of saying we’re smarter than you and are getting out before it all blows up in your face. We were, and it did.
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### Author:  [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/7 "2007-03-21T23:08:45Z")
I was talking to my friend Vince at a drunken fraternity party. He told me of a friend of his whose last words to him were, “ **Don’t get yourself killed**.” Vince left the party at that point. Instead of taking his own car, he grabbed a Corvette owned by a fraternity brother. He was going pretty fast when he ran a stop sign at the edge of campus and crashed into a bartender going home after work. Both men were killed. I couldn’t sleep, so I went outside to see what all the flashing lights were about. The bodies were gone by then, but a cop told me what happened and who had died.
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### Author:  [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/8 "2007-03-21T23:11:16Z")
My late husband’s last words to me were “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
No. I didn’t kill him. [trying to decide which emoticon would be appropriate here]
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/9 "2007-03-21T23:21:36Z")
“Am I dying or is it my birthday?”
Lady Nancy Astor (on all the people gathered around her bedside)
“Let’s see how lucky I am…”
Actor Jon Eric Hexum, before fatally shooting himself in the head with a blank (I’ve read variants, but they’re always roughly the same)
“I am about to die. Or I am going to die. Either expression is used.”
Fr. Dominique Bouhours (1628-1702), Jesuit priest and grammarian (really was)
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
My late husband’s last words to me were “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
[/QUOTE]
My father was a literature teacher and renowned for his oratory. He was flown to Utah and to Oregon to give Masonic eulogies because of his eloquence and his deep voice. The eloquent old man’s last words, addressed to me (on a night when our plumbing was frozen and there was only one flush left in the toilet) were:
[QUOTE=Daddy Sampiro]
You need to take a dump in this before I flush it?
[/QUOTE]
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### Author:  [@anamnesis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anamnesis)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/10 "2007-03-21T23:33:06Z")
What a great thread. I dunno if I can think of any particularly famous ones, but a favorite immediately springs to mind:
_(slowly)_ “I fix, Hogarth. You, stay … I, go. No following.” - The Iron Giant
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### Author:  [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/11 "2007-03-21T23:48:00Z")
What, no one’s mentioned “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn”?
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### Author:  [@YellowTail](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YellowTail)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2007, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/12 "2007-03-21T23:49:35Z")
There’s one I’ve heard but can’t remember who said it. A staunch athiest on his deathbed was asked to renounce Satan and accept Christ as his saviour. His reply was something like, “Father, now is not the time to make enemies.”
Google didn’t turn up anything. Anyone know who this was and what the actual quote is?
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### Author:  [@Alistair\_McCello](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alistair_McCello)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2007, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/13 "2007-03-22T14:02:35Z")
> [@](#):
>
> “Father, now is not the time to make enemies.”
Those were supposedly Voltaire’s last words, though I cannot speak for the validity of that claim.
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### Author:  [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2007, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/14 "2007-03-22T14:10:27Z")
“Indians, what indians?”
Custer _may_ have said this
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2007, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/15 "2007-03-22T14:13:46Z")
“Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”
-attributed to a dying Oscar Wilde
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### Author:  [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2007, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/16 "2007-03-22T14:16:28Z")
And just before that, Wilde reputedly said “I am dying beyond my means”.
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### Author:  [@John\_Carter\_of\_Mars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Carter_of_Mars)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2007, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/17 "2007-03-22T14:20:17Z")
So the ex-wife has all her shit loaded in the car, leaving for the last time. She starts the car, then gets back out to yell at me across the driveway:
“The only thing you’re worth a damn at doesn’t pay anything.”
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### Author:  [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2007, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/18 "2007-03-22T15:17:12Z")
Not exactly parting words, but shortly before his death, Oscar Wilde remarked, “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or other of us has got to go.”
Noted western character Doc Holliday died of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, CO. He woke up and asked for a glass of whiskey. After drinking it, he said, “This is funny” and died.
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [March 22, 2007, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/19 "2007-03-22T17:41:53Z")
Orson Welles: “One more french fry with mayo isn’t gonna kill me.”
John F. Kennedy: “What’s that in the bushes?”
Anna Nicole Smith: “What the hell ever happened to Sugar Pie? Oooh… I wonder what the red ones do…”
Isadora Duncan: “These new scarves are to die for.”
Adolf Hitler:“And send this memo to Truman… Harry-stop-Best two out of three?-stop- Eva put that down…”
Saddam Hussein: “This isn’t a fucking surprise party!”
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [March 23, 2007, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-famous-parting-words/396923/20 "2007-03-23T02:09:40Z")
In a speech to students at Washington and Lee University in 1956, former Vice President Alben W. Barkley, an old-school orator, said “I would rather be a servant in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the seats of the mighty.”
While the crowd applauded, Barkley collapsed and died.
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