The Best Fullmetal Alchemist Quotes, Every Line Checked

Brotherhood is unusually careful about who gets to say the big lines. The philosophy goes to the people who paid for it, the comedy goes to characters the story is about to hurt, and the villains argue in the vocabulary of family and administration rather than menace. Twelve lines follow, each checked against Wikiquote's episode transcription rather than lifted from a list, each linked to the fuller commentary on the speaker's page.

“Will you sit in that chair wallowing in self-pity, or will you stand up and seize the chance the military can give you?” — Roy Mustang

Mustang recruiting a twelve-year-old, which is the sentence's real content. The offer is genuine and the framing is a lever, and the series spends sixty episodes auditing which of those was doing the work.

“Stand up and walk. Keep moving forward. You've got two good legs. So get up and use them. You're strong enough to make your own path.” — Edward Elric

The line most often lifted for a poster, said by a boy who has just watched what alchemy costs. The instruction is literal before it is inspirational: he still has legs, and the person he is talking to does not.

“I can't feel the rain hitting my face. That's something I miss...all the time. I wanna get my body back soon, Brother. I just wanna be human again.” — Alphonse Elric

Alphonse naming the specific loss rather than the general one. Not immortality, not power, not the body as an idea. Rain on a face.

“Did you hear what I said? My dear little Elysia's about to turn three!” — Maes Hughes

Hughes interrupting a war story to talk about his daughter's birthday, in the register of a man who has decided that being tedious about his family is a fair price. The series is about to use this against the audience.

“Yeah, I'm fine... except... it's a terrible day for rain.” — Roy Mustang

Six words that carry a funeral. The character who fights with fire is describing the one weather condition that disarms him, and using it to explain a wet face.

“God. Hear me. Two human souls have just been returned to you. Please accept them into your loving arms.” — Scar

A prayer said over people the speaker has just killed, in the same devotional register he uses for everything else. Scar is the series' most consistent argument that faith and slaughter share a grammar.

“I may not have the protection of your Ultimate Shield, but I clearly see your weakness with my Ultimate Eye. Now then, Greed. How many times do I have to kill you before you stay dead?” — King Bradley

Bradley declining to credit a deity for a life he knows was assembled. The head of state of Amestris was, by his creator's own count, the twelfth candidate for the job.

“I'll do what you say... after I get rid of you!” — Amuro Ray

The definition that lets the series put its greediest character in the sympathetic column without rewriting him. Avarice defined this broadly is just the ordinary condition of wanting.

“I myself have never believed in fate or God. If they exist, perhaps this is their way of divine justice or providence.” — King Bradley

The family vocabulary is not a metaphor. Father made the homunculi by extracting his own sins, so son and piece of my soul describe one manufacturing step.

“But why?! I just wanted to understand... this world's knowledge! I wanted to experience it, free! I just wanted to be FREE! FREE TO KNOW!” — Father

The absent father telling Edward the unflattering true thing about burning down the family house. Nobody else in the series is willing to.

“Edward... Use my life for the toll. Use me to save Alphonse. I've got just enough life left.” — Van Hohenheim

A rhapsody about ball bearings, delivered in her first substantial scene, and the series never treats it as a joke afterwards.

“It's their choice. They choose their own path.” — Riza Hawkeye

Izumi's greeting to a former student who has taken a military commission, which is the one condition she set. The affection and the verdict arrive in the same sentence.

Every Fullmetal Alchemist line on the site sits on the series page with its commentary; what the ending itself produced is collected in Fullmetal Alchemist quotes after the end. For where to start, and the 2003 series question, see the watch order, and the ending is unpacked in the ending explained.