“If living means bowing down to the likes of you bastards, I'd rather die on my feet with my head held high.”
Mugen Quotes
2 quotes from Samurai Champloo, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.
No school, no lineage, no technique anyone can name: a fighting style invented on the spot out of breakdancing, which the series treats as a political position rather than a quirk.
“But there's one thing that I do understand. I don't care how many damn dogs you got. It don't amount to jack if they ain't tough enough to bark when they're out alone.”
Read as swagger, and it is, but the metaphor is doing precise work. The men opposite have numbers and a hierarchy; Mugen is describing why that is a weakness rather than a strength, in the only vocabulary he has. It is also, uncomfortably for him, a description of the arrangement he has entered into with Fuu and Jin, which the series will spend the rest of its run testing.
Read Mugen's story from the start
Every line above is a fragment. The manga is where the fragments come from, and the print edition is the one this site checks its quotes against.
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Said in the first episode, to the men who are about to execute him, and it establishes the only rule the character keeps. Mugen has no school, no lineage and no technique anyone can name; his fighting is invented on the spot out of breakdancing, and the series treats that as a political position rather than a quirk. Everything he refuses to do for the next twenty-five episodes is refused on these terms.