The Best Code Geass Quotes, Every Line Checked

Code Geass is an argument conducted by people who all believe they are the reasonable one, which is why its best lines are rarely the loudest. Twelve follow, checked against Wikiquote's episode transcription and arranged so the argument is legible: what power is for, who is allowed to use it, and what the people running the machine tell themselves. Each links to the fuller commentary on the speaker's page.

“the only ones who should kill are those who are prepared to be killed!” — Lelouch Lamperouge

The rule the protagonist writes for himself in the first episode, and the one the series spends fifty more testing to destruction. It is a licence disguised as a restraint.

“If being powerless is so terribly wrong, then does having power make you right? Do you find vengeance evil? What's your value of friendship? Is it justice?” — Lelouch Lamperouge

Two questions rather than a thesis, which is unusual for this character. He is arguing with the version of himself that is about to win.

“Do you hear me, Zero? I don't care about your past nor who you are underneath that mask. I beg you, join us in creating the special zone of freedom.” — Euphemia li Britannia

The princess asking to be dealt with as a person rather than a position, addressed to a masked man who has already decided what she represents.

“I order you to love me!” — Euphemia li Britannia

Four words that cause a massacre. The series' cruellest structural joke is that the only Geass command anyone regrets is the one meant kindly.

“Lelouch, do you know why snow is white? It's because it has forgotten what color it once was...” — C.C.

C.C. explaining snow, which is as close as she comes to explaining herself. Immortality here is described as forgetting rather than enduring.

“How strange. A child who's wrapped himself in lies desires the truth from others.” — Charles zi Britannia

The emperor identifying his son's central contradiction in one sentence, which is the family's only real inheritance: they are all extremely good at seeing through each other.

“Welcome, Zero! I figured you would show up here as soon as you heard about the air raid. Now…join us for your welcome soirée. Care for a dance?” — Cornelia li Britannia

Cornelia reading the trap and setting one of her own, in the vocabulary of a court function. The Empire's proposition is that conquest and etiquette are the same instinct.

“There is no such thing as objective information, Zero. Journalism is, after all, a human creation.” — Diethard Ried

The Black Knights win as much airtime as ground, and this is the man who makes that literal, without embarrassment.

“C.C., your mind is so quiet! It's the only one I can't read! You really are the best there is!” — Mao

The Geass that made him is a curse dressed as an advantage. The one silence available to Mao belongs to the woman who gave it to him.

“Nations aren't dirt, and they're not systems. They're people.” — Schneizel el Britannia

Schneizel, briefly, sounding like the only adult in the story. Read it beside what he proposes later and it becomes the setup rather than the position.

“Masks will vanish, then everyone can be exactly who they're supposed to be.” — Marianne vi Britannia

Ragnarok as grief with a mechanism attached, offered by a woman murdered in front of her children. The objection is not that it would fail.

“Lelouch, you have no right to seize control of the world. You of all people, who took the name Zero then bent the will of so many in order to serve your own.” — Nunnally vi Britannia

The sister the whole project was justified by, refusing the justification to his face. It is the only argument in the series he cannot out-talk.

Every Code Geass line on the site sits with its commentary on the series page, and the ending, including what Zero Requiem actually costs, is unpacked in the ending explained.