Monkey D. Luffy Quotes

The opening declaration supplies a goal before its means. Confidence begins an undertaking whose practical demands remain unanswered. Luffy's certainty gives the story direction; it cannot supply the people and decisions needed to fulfill the ambition.

The first clause is the load-bearing one and it is almost never quoted. Asked to justify an enormous ambition, he declines to justify it — no destiny, no debt to a dead mentor, no wrong to right. He wants to, and he considers that a complete answer. Every other major character in this series carries a reason: Zoro has a promise, Nami has a village, Sanji has a rescue, Robin has a question. He alone has a preference, and the story treats a preference as sufficient grounds for a story serialized since 1997. That is unusual and it is the source of his gravitational pull on everyone else, because a person who needs no reason cannot be argued out of anything.

Zoro has made his ambition a condition of joining and held Luffy answerable for losing it. The compliment accepts an obligation; it does not prove that captain and swordsman will never want incompatible things.

Shouted by a small boy at a pirate captain about to leave, and the interesting part is what it is answering. He has just been told he will never make it, and the reply does not argue the point: it accepts the terms and sets a date. Read against the version of this speech he gives as an adult, almost nothing has been revised. The plan was complete before he had a crew, a ship, or a reason to be believed.

The object under dispute is a flag. Wapol has come back to reclaim his former kingdom and is determined to bring down a piece of cloth. Drum Island spent an arc establishing what that particular flag cost: it belonged to a quack doctor with a fatal illness who raised Chopper, told Dalton that his dream would come true even if he disappeared, and died. A Jolly Roger in this series is what a life converts into when the person is gone. Wapol is attacking a grave marker and does not know it, and Luffy is the only one present who could not possibly explain why that is worse than losing.

Five words, one of which is a made-up superhero name, and it is a declaration of war on a world government by a teenager with no state, no fleet and no plan for the morning after. What it commits him to is the rest of the series. He does not weigh any of it. The flag comes down because Robin was asked to say what she wanted out loud and the government's answer was that she should not have been born.

Before the fruit, fifteen pages earlier, he gave Shanks the same answer: if he never goes over the side, being an anchor does not count. Back then it was a boast about balance from a boy who had just stabbed himself under the eye to prove he was tough, and Shanks, having already laughed at the pirate ambition, let it pass. Now a villager is telling him the condition is permanent, and the answer comes back with its clauses swapped and its logic intact. What has altered is not his position but the price of holding it. On folio 11 a bad swimmer could still learn; on folio 26 a rubber boy cannot, and he has decided the fix is to never once need to. The crew he later assembles is a standing arrangement for pulling him out of the water, and the people who join inherit that job without being asked. A boy made a promise about footing, and everyone he ever meets pays the installments.

Sulking at the bar, a boy about to test the theory on a man who has killed fifty-six people: that is the speaker, and the chapter spends its remaining thirty pages taking the sentence apart. He tries it two pages later. The result is a boot on his head, a kidnapping and a rescue by the friend he called a disgrace, at the price of that friend's arm. The quieter problem is that he never follows the rule he states. The flashback on folio 43 shows what started the fight, and it was not an insult to Luffy: the bandit chief said pirates are all talk, and the boy went for him over Shanks's name. On folio 47 Shanks says it plainly, you stood up for me. Standing up for someone else is what the chapter respects. The maxim about standing up for oneself is a thing Luffy says; Shanks's rule is a thing Luffy does.

Alone in a small boat, Luffy turns his ambition into a recruitment problem. The number is easy to name; the responsibility is harder. Earlier in the chapter, Shanks's first mate explains that a captain carries the crew's safety. Shanks later saves Luffy at the cost of an arm. Those scenes give the departure a standard more demanding than collecting enough strong people. The child who needed rescue now wants a position that will make other lives his concern. Chapter 3 puts a person where the number was. Luffy considers Zoro despite Koby's warnings, watches his treatment of a child's ruined gift, and hears why he was imprisoned. His eventual decision follows evidence of character, not merely the prisoner's frightening reputation. Recruiting begins with deciding whose conduct deserves trust. Luffy still punches Helmeppo before announcing his decision. Koby warns him about antagonizing the Navy. Loyalty arrives together with danger. Choosing a good companion has not settled how responsibly he will lead one.

Alvida gets the word first, on folio 63, with an order attached: worthless, now shine her shoes. Eight pages on a boy in a straw hat uses it again, and Koby, after one protest about frankness, says that he is right. The obvious account has Luffy inspiring the cabin boy with the speech about dying in the attempt; the order of events says otherwise. The insult comes first, Koby accepts it, and only then does he ask why Luffy went to sea, so the speech answers a question the insult made him ask. What separates the two uses of the word is what follows them. Alvida's is followed by an order. Luffy's is followed by a laugh, and the laugh is the difference, because a verdict with no instruction attached is one the listener has to act on himself. Koby does, three pages later, by asking whether he can join the Navy; asked whether he can do it, Luffy says he would not know.

By folio 78 an iron mace has landed on his skull and he has reported that it did not hurt. The trouble is casting, not wording. Dying in the attempt is a real price, and the chapter hands the sentence to the one person present whom Alvida's mace cannot touch: the boy who says it is made of rubber, and the boy who hears it is not. The whirlpool on folio 60 could have drowned him, and he said so; the mace cannot. Koby is the one who replays the line to himself on folio 77, with the mace's owner waiting for his answer; on this afternoon the risk is real for him and theoretical for its author. The creed's continuation on the next page is a question about whether he is deluding himself, the only line in the speech that costs him anything. The sentence is fine. Its speaker is the person present least placed to say it.