Netflix’s The Witcher: 15 Best Quotes On The Show

The Witcher has finally released on Netflix, bringing to life one of the most popular fantasy series to take off in recent years. The stories of Geralt of Rivia are hardly new, the books having been released in the early 90s and translated into English starting in 2007. However, with the success of the hit video game series, audiences were excited to see The Witcher get its on-screen adaptation.

One reason the games received such acclaim was their high quality of writing. This brought an expectation that the writing of the TV show would be equally great. With that in mind, here are the ten best quotes from the show.

Updated March 31st, 2020 by Mariana Fernandes: The premiere of the second season of The Witcher seems further away than ever. That’s what happens when you have the chance to binge-watch an entire season – you have to wait for the next! But we sympathize with you. We can barely keep track of the number of times we re-watched Geralt of Rivia fight his battles. To make things a little easier, we packed this list with even more iconic lines from the show! And be warned – these are all T-shirt worthy, so you might want to order a few.

15 “Whatever you lack in talent, you make up for in confidence.”

Yennefer had one of the most impressive paths on the show. She’s the pinnacle of persistence and hard work, a source of inspiration for many viewers of the show. Sure, she’s not perfect. But that’s what makes her such an interesting character to begin with. Yennefer showed us that no matter where you came from, you can always rise above.

And the girl offers some sound advice too. There are plenty of quotable moments courtesy of the mage, but this is one of the best. She speaks the truth – for many, confidence is built by faking it until you make it. And those who appear confident in what they do always gain the trust of others, no matter what.

14 “If I Have To Choose Between One Evil And Another, Then I Prefer Not To Choose At All.”

One of the most perplexing things about Geralt is how hard he tries to make everyone around him believe that he is a heartless, emotionless garbage bag. But most of his actions and decisions throughout the show are the complete opposite of this. The Witcher himself is a true enigma, and we can’t wait to learn more about what lies beneath.

But this quote, in particular, is the best at depicting Geralt’s moral judgment. At the end of the day, he will not choose if choosing means opting between bad and worse. He won’t commit a crime just because it’s slightly less bad than the alternative. Geralt really wants us to believe he is the bad guy, but he consistently proves otherwise.

13 “You can’t outrun destiny just because you’re terrified of it.”

Destiny is probably up there with “hmmmm” in the most spoken words on The Witcher. The entire first season revolves around destiny, and how impossible it is to escape it. And we have to be honest – very few shows have the power to get the audience pondering so much about something we know nothing about.

This is perhaps the most profound quote, given to us by Mousesack. And it gets us thinking hard, too. If destiny truly exists, and we sort of know what it holds, can we actually run away from it? Can we keep it from happening if we’re scared? Well, if there’s something the show has taught, it’s that you can’t.

12 “In the face of the inevitable, good leaders should always choose mercy.”

Say what you want about Queen Calanthe, but the woman has enough wisdom about war and ruling to write a series of novels. Calanthe took it upon herself to raise Ciri to become the best Queen she could be, and this resulted in a handful of gems that the best monarchs wouldn’t be able to conjure if they wanted to.

Her words to her granddaughter when she’s about to offer her subjects poison to avoid a horrific and painful dead cut deeper than the army’s swords. They’re deep and ring true for anyone who’s ever been in such an ungrateful situation.

11 “Chaos is the same as it’s always been. Humans just adapted better.”

Oh Geralt, forever the…pessimist? A realist is probably the best word to describe him. And this man has some wisdom to share with everyone too. Even though The Witcher takes place in a completely different universe, where elves and mages and everything in between is possible, there are still similarities.

And the most pressing one is, without a shadow of a doubt, the way people handle chaos. It’s always been a part of our history. It will always come back. And it’s up to us to learn how to live with it – or perish.

10 “Evil is evil…Lesser, greater, milling. It’s all the same.”

In the first episode, “The End’s Beginning,” Geralt of Rivia is recruited by the mage Stregobor to kill a woman named Renfri who, having been born under the Black Sun, was cursed. Stregobor described her as a violent woman who robbed and murdered people on the road, saying that to kill her was the less evil.

Geralt responded with the characteristic quote above (adding in Stregobor’s name where the ellipsis is). This is the perfect summation of his beliefs. Evil is evil. This marks Geralt as more than just a killer for hire, but a hero whose morals are not for sale.

9 “Respect doesn’t make history.”

This line is part of an exchange between Geralt and the bard Jaskier (known as Dandelion in every other piece of English media in The Witcher franchise). Geralt is recruited to kill a devil that has been causing disturbances. It turns out the devil is actually a sylvan working to help protect some very important elves.

After the elves spare both Geralt and Jaskier, the bard immediately begins composing a song that distorts the truth. Geralt asks “where’s your newfound respect?” Jaskier, who has gained respect for the elves, makes it clear his priority is helping Geralt make history.

8 “There is not a person alive who does not look in the mirror and see some deformity…except or us.”

This is a great line about how the mages of the series can alter their appearance to achieve perfect beauty. This works particularly well as the character Yennefer is prone to obsess over her deformities, trying to kill herself the first time she ever sees her own hunchbacked reflection in a mirror by slashing her own wrists with shards of the mirror after she punches it.

Beauty is superficial, as the mages point out by making it everlasting and something they conjure with their craft. It is also one of the things people obsess over the most.

7 “I love the way you just sit in a corner and brood.”

This is not a particularly deep line, but it is a great bit of character dialogue. It is illustrative of the way Jaskier thinks. Spotting Geralt, he uses this brooding line.

As he approaches, Jaskier adds an even funnier remark–and one that’s more or less impossible to argue with: “Come on. You don’t want to keep a man with bread in his pants waiting.” Truly, a man of infinite wit, it is a good thing Jaskier is there to offer such commentary–and to make sure all within earshot toss a coin to their witcher.

6 “I bow to no law made by men who never bore a child.”

This is a line spoken by Queen Calanthe, the Lioness of Cintra. Calanthe is a strong woman who has no intention of being ruled by the court’s weak-willed men determined to limit her with their patriarchal notions.

There is another element at work here. One of the ongoing themes of the series is that powerful women are denied the right to control their own reproductive agency, either as sorceresses who are rendered barren, or as noblewomen and queen whose lives demand they birth sons and heirs, or else women whose children are taken by “Destiny” due to the Law of Surprise.

5 “But a promise made must be honored. As true for a commoner as it is for a queen.”

Geralt tells this to Queen Calanthe after she tries to deny fate and the promise her husband made to the knight Duny. Duny had saved the life of Calanthe’s husband, asking in return only that he be given the boon of the Law of Surprise. The surprise, it turned out, was that Calanthe was pregnant and her daughter would be pledged in marriage to Duny–a pledge Calanthe tried to break.

Not breaking a promise is not particularly groundbreaking, but keeping one’s word is the foundation of honor, and is part of what secures the contracts between royals and commonfolk. A leader who can’t be trusted cannot remain leader long.

4 “I hate to break it to you, but that ship has sailed, wrecked, and sunk to the bottom of the ocean.”

A knight traveling with Yennefer tells her he would not sully her honor by presuming to enter her tent. Thankfully, Jaskier is there to disabuse the knight of any notions that Yennefer has any notion of honor or chastity left to her.

Clearly, the bard does not hate to break it to the knight that the ship sailed and capsized on the ocean floor. For all the humor, though, this line is a beautiful set-up to more dramatic events in the episode “Rare Species.” Geralt, who is among who bedded Yennefer, tries to fix their relationship, while Jaskier works to prove himself a friend worthy of Geralt. By the episode’s end, all three are emotionally wrecked.

3 “States rise and fall like the tide.”

This comment from Geralt is profoundly deep. Both he and Yennefer are longer lived than the average person, having had their bodies modified to become a witcher and a sorceress respectively. Each has likely seen states rise and fall–they’ve certainly seen kings and queens do so.

No nation is guaranteed to last. If the people of a land go hungry and suffer while a monarch is bloated with wealth it will collapse from within, while outside forces can also overthrow a nation as armies invade. Nations are as prone to change as the tide.

2 “They took my choice. I want it back.”

This is a great line that works on multiple levels. Yennefer has been sterilized by those who taught her how to be a sorceress. Her solution is to kill a green dragon and cut out its heart to use in a spell to restore her fertility. Geralt tells her it won’t work and that she’d be a terrible mother. She responds that whether she wants to be a mother or not, she wants to be able to choose.

Tragically, some choices, once taken away, can never be regained. The symbolism is not subtle, but it is powerful.

1 “We have to cling to something. If we don’t, the world descends into chaos.”

While Geralt is having a fever dream after being bitten by a ghoul, his mother appears to him and tells him these words, claiming the family live by a code. It is interesting on a few levels, as Geralt is a man who clearly lives by a code, but his mother is also a sorceress, a woman who literally uses chaos to perform her magic.

Whether this is a hallucination or a memory, it is nice to get a revelation about what it is that makes Geralt such a morally focused and grounded character.

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