The Simpsons, season 6. While the line definitely can stand on its own as the most polished little gem in television history, the context is that Ralph Wiggum thinks he’s about to be given a prize when he’s called out about his academic performance by Principal Skinner.
Ralph Wiggum: ‘Me fail English? That’s unpossible.’
On the show Friends, the group is watching a home movie from when some of them went to prom. It shows Monica, who as an adolescent had a weight problem.
Someone makes a comment about her weight in the home movie, and she says that old adage about the camera adding ten pounds.
After a beat, Chandler replies, “so, how many cameras were on you?”
ETA: totally unrelated, but there’s always the classic Police Squad:
“Who are you? How did you get in here?”
“I’m a locksmith, and…I’m a locksmith.”
Perhaps not a contender for the greatest line in television history but the one I remember from the series Lost was, “Live together, die alone.” (And from Heroes, “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”)
That’s probably far from the greatest line in television history, but since we’ll never agree on what the best line is, a compilation of great ones is the way to go, and that’s one of the great ones.
The humour is in the perfect unadorned simplicity. Kramer tells Jerry that he’ll be a trendsetting pirate model in the ridiculous puffy shirt, and Jerry simply replies (and it has to written phonetically for proper effect): “But I don’t wanna be a pirate!”
IIRC, the “pirate” line was the original, and the “cowboy” and “Switzerland” ones were later copycats.
One more from Babylon 5’, which has many of them.
“No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow.”
There is more to it but I’m trying to keep to a single line. And while context may be important, I think this line can stand by itself, given past and present day life. Susan Ivonova was a very practical woman.
I’ve never watched Babylon 5 and that line means nothing to me. The real test is to recite the line to someone unfamiliar with the show.
A great line from the show, but I also would nominate:
“We would have come earlier, ma’am, but your husband wasn’t dead then.”
Another classic is this exchange:
The group are in a light plane that’s crashing:
“What do we do?”
“Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Depends, the adult diaper.”
But for my money, the greatest line is:
I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord. I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the Constellation of Kasterborous. I’m 903 years old and I’m the man who is gonna save your lives and all 6 billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?
Still counts. Wins the thread (so far) in my view.
Babylon 5:
“What do you want?”
“I’d like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I’d look up at your lifeless eyes and wave like this. Can you and your associates arrange it for me, Mr. Morden?”
Morden and Vir, In the Shadow of Z’ha’dum
You’d think a marine biologist would know a whale is a mammal. But no, George says “fish”, thus blowing his cover. He does save the golf ball-afflicted creature, so you have to give him credit for that.
This is the first thing I thought of, but the OP specified “scripted” lines.
Johnny Carson’s reply to Zha Zha Gabor.
Zha Zha: Would you like to pet my pussy?
Johnny: Sure. Move the cat.
That was the main topic of conversation on our 45 minute ride to school the next morning and was frequently brought up all that day.
My first thought. I guess I’ll go with:
“It’s a cookbook!”
Almost certainly apocryphal.
The Aunty Jack Show (in the losing credits of every episode)
Aunty Jack (Grahame Bond)
“If you don’t tune in next week, I’ll jump through your TV screen and rip your bloody arms off!”
Rest of cast:
“And she will too.”
I don’t know where it rates in the terms of “greatest”, but James Kirk’s real-world reality check to the young space castaway in “Charlie X” has always been one of my favorite lines in Star Trek.
There are a million things in this universe you can have and a million things you can’t have. It’s no fun facing that, but that’s the way things are.
If only it had really happened, it would have been funny.
Nope. It happened.
Zha Zha filed a lawsuit about a week or two later. With a god newspaper archive, you could probably find it, if you looked long enough.
I also remember sitting on my grandparent’s screened porch reading the paper while eating lunch one day that June or July that the lawsuit had been dismissed. (We used to come in from the fields to her house to eat lunch back then.)
There was also a Time magazine article during that time period that talked about the fireworks that showed up with Zha Zha appeared on the Tonight Show.
Note that no news source at the time would be so crass as to repeat the remarks. All of us knew what they were talking about though.
It really did happen.
Snopes says it’s false.