Interstellar (2014)
Matthew McConaughey: Cooper
Photos
Quotes
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Cooper : We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.
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Cooper : Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.
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Cooper : Once you're a parent, you're the ghost of your children's future.
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Cooper : We've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we've just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we've barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, that our destiny lies above us.
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TARS : [as Cooper repairs him] Settings. General settings. Security settings.
TARS : Honesty, new setting: ninety-five percent.
TARS : Confirmed. Additional settings.
Cooper : Humor, seventy-five percent.
TARS : Confirmed. Self destruct sequence in T minus 10, 9...
Cooper : Let's make that sixty percent.
TARS : Sixty percent, confirmed. Knock knock.
Cooper : You want fifty-five?
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Cooper : You're ruling my son out for college now? The kid's fifteen.
Principal : Tom's score simply isn't high enough.
Cooper : What's your waistline? 32? With, what, a 33 inseam?
Principal : I'm not sure I see what you're getting at.
Cooper : You're telling me it takes two numbers to measure your own ass but only one to measure my son's future?
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Cooper : [whispering] Tell me something. Doctor Brand, and Edmonds...
TARS : Why are you whispering? They can't hear you.
Cooper : Doctor Brand and Edmonds, they close?
TARS : I wouldn't know.
Cooper : Is that a ninety percent wouldn't know, or ten percent wouldn't know?
TARS : I also have a discretion setting, Cooper.
Cooper : Ah. But not a poker face, huh?
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Cooper : You're a scientist, Brand.
Brand : So listen to me when I say that love isn't something that we invented. It's... observable, powerful. It has to mean something.
Cooper : Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child rearing...
Brand : We love people who have died. Where's the social utility in that?
Cooper : None.
Brand : Maybe it means something more - something we can't yet understand. Maybe it's some evidence, some artefact of a higher dimension that we can't consciously perceive. I'm drawn across the universe to someone I haven't seen in a decade, who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can't understand it. All right Cooper. Yes. The tiniest possibility of seeing Wolf again excites me. That doesn't mean I'm wrong.
Cooper : Honestly, Amelia... it might.
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Cooper : This world's a treasure, Don; but it's been telling us to leave for a while now.
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Cooper : [to young Murph] Tell him Murph. Make him stay. Make... Make him stay Murph. Make him stay Murph! Don't let me leave, Murph! Don't, don't let me leave Murph! NO, NO, NO, NO!
Murph : It was you. You were my ghost.
TARS : Cooper... Cooper... Come in, Cooper.
Cooper : TARS?
TARS : Roger that.
Cooper : You survived!
TARS : Somewhere, in their fifth dimension, they... saved us.
Cooper : Who the hell is they? Why would they want to help us, huh?
TARS : I don't know, but they constructed this three-dimensional space inside of their five-dimensional reality to allow you to understand it.
Cooper : Well, it ain't working.
TARS : Yes it is! You've seen that time is represented here as a *physical* dimension! You've worked out that you *can* exert a force across space-time!
Cooper : Gravity. To send a message.
TARS : Affirmative.
Cooper : Gravity can cross the dimensions, including time.
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Cooper : You don't believe we went to the Moon?
Ms. Kelly : I believe it was a brilliant piece of propaganda, that the Soviets bankrupted themselves, pouring resources into rockets and other useless machines...
Cooper : Useless machines?
Ms. Kelly : And if we don't want to repeat of the excess and wastefulness of the 20th Century then we need to teach our kids about this planet, not tales of leaving it.
Cooper : You know, one of those useless machines they used to make was called an MRI, and if we had any of those left the doctors would have been able to find the cyst in my wife's brain, *before* she died instead of after, and then she would've been the one sitting here, listening to this instead of me, which would've been a good thing because she was always the... calmer one.
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Cooper : I'm here now, Murph. I'm here.
Murph : No. No parent should have to watch their own child die. I have my kids here for me now. You go.
Cooper : Where?
Murph : Brand. She's... out there. Setting up camp. Alone, in a strange galaxy. Maybe right now, she's settling in for the long nap. By the light of our new sun. In our new home.
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Young Murph : Why did you and mom name me after something that's bad?
Cooper : Well, we didn't.
Young Murph : Murphy's law?
Cooper : Murphy's law doesn't mean that something bad will happen. It means that whatever *can* happen, will happen. And that sounded just fine to us.
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Cooper : Okay. Now you need to tell me what your plan is to save the world.
Dr. Brand : We're not meant to save the world. We're meant to leave it.
Cooper : [looks up, sees space ships] Rangers.
Dr. Brand : The last components of our one versatile ship in orbit, the Endurance. Our final expedition.
Cooper : You sent people out there looking for a new home?
Dr. Brand : The Lazarus missions.
Cooper : That sounds cheerful.
Dr. Brand : Lazarus came back from the dead.
Cooper : Sure, but he had to die in the first place. There's not a planet in our solar system that can sustain life and the nearest star is over a thousand years away, I mean, that doesn't even qualify as futile. Where'd you send them?
Dr. Brand : Cooper, I can't tell you any more, unless you agree to pilot this craft. You're the best pilot we ever had.
Cooper : And I barely left the stratosphere.
Dr. Brand : This team never left the simulator. We need a pilot, and this is the mission that you were trained for.
Cooper : What, without even knowing it? An hour ago, you didn't even know I was alive and you were going anyway.
Dr. Brand : We had no choice. But something sent you here. They chose you.
Cooper : Well who's "they"?
[Dr. Brand does not answer]
Cooper : How long would I be gone?
Dr. Brand : Hard to know. Years.
Cooper : I've got kids, professor.
Dr. Brand : Get out there, and save them.
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Cooper : After you kids came along, your mom, she said something to me I never quite understood. She said, "Now, we're just here to be memories for our kids." I think now I understand what she meant. Once you're a parent, you're the ghost of your children's future.
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[comforting his daughter]
Cooper : I love you, forever. You hear me? I love you forever. And I'm coming back. I'm coming back.
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Brand : Cooper, you can't ask TARS to do this for us.
Cooper : He's a robot. So you don't have to *ask* him to do anything.
Brand : Cooper, you asshole!
Cooper : Sorry, you broke up a little bit there.
TARS : It's what we intended, Dr. Brand. It's our only chance to save the people on Earth. If I can find a way to transmit the quantum data I'll find in there, they might still make it.
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Doyle : Where's the rest?
Brand : Towards the mountains!
Cooper : Those aren't mountains... they're waves.
Brand : Oh shit. Oh shit!
Cooper : That one's moving away from us...
Brand : [struggling through the water] We need the recorder!
Cooper : [he looks in the other direction and sees a mounting wave towering thousands of feet over them] Brand, Doyle, back to the Ranger, now!
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Young Murph : What are you gonna do with it?
Cooper : I'm going to give it something socially responsible to do. Like drive a combine.
Young Murph : Can't we just let it go? It wasn't hurting anybody.
Cooper : This thing needs to learn how to adapt, Murph. Like the rest of us.
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TARS : Cooper, they didn't bring us here to change the past.
Cooper : Say that again.
TARS : They didn't bring us here to change the past.
Cooper : [realizing] But they didn't bring us here at all. We brought ourselves. TARS, give me the coordinates for NASA, in binary.
TARS : In binary, roger, feeding data.
[Cooper creates the binary lines in the dust on Murphy's bedroom floor]
Murph : It's not a ghost... it's gravity.
Cooper : Don't you get it yet, TARS? I brought myself here! We're here to communicate with the three-dimensional world! We're the bridge! I thought they chose me. But they didn't choose me, they chose her!
TARS : For what, Cooper?
Cooper : To save the world! All of this, is one little girl's bedroom, every moment! It's infinitely complex! They have access, to infinite time and space, but they're not *bound* by anything! They can't find a specific place *in* time, they can't communicate. That's why I'm here. I'm gonna find a way to tell Murph, just like I found this moment.
TARS : How, Cooper?
Cooper : Love, TARS, love. It's just like Brand said. My connection with Murph, it is quantifiable. It's the key!
TARS : What are we here to do?
Cooper : Find how to tell her... The watch... The watch. That's it. We code the data into the movement of the second hand. TARS, translate the data into Morse and feed it to me.
TARS : Translating data to Morse. Cooper, what if she never came back for it?
Cooper : She will. She will.
Getty : [watching for Tom] Murph I can see his car! He's coming, Murph!
Murph : Okay. I'm coming down!
TARS : How do you know?
Cooper : Because I gave it to her.
Murph : [rushing downstairs with the watch] He came back! It was him! All this time, I didn't, I didn't know it was him! Dad's gonna save us!
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Cooper : Oh we are not prepared for this. We have the survival skills of a Boy Scout troop!
Brand : Well we got this far on our brains, further than any human in history.
Cooper : Well not far enough! And now we're stuck *here*, until there won't be anyone on Earth left to save!
Brand : I'm counting every minute, same as you, Cooper.
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Young Murph : Dad?
Cooper : Sorry, Murph. Go back to bed.
Young Murph : I thought you were the ghost.
Cooper : There are no such things as ghosts, babe.
Young Murph : Grandpa says you can get ghosts.
Cooper : Maybe that's because Grandpa is a little too close to being one himself. Go back to bed.
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Cooper : We're still pioneers, we barely begun. Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, cause our destiny lies above us.
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Brand : Maybe we've spent too long trying to figure all this out with theory.
Cooper : You're a scientist, Brand.
Brand : So listen to me, when I say that love is not something we invented. It's observable, powerful. It has to mean something.
Cooper : Love has meaning, yes. Social utility, social bonding, child rearing...
Brand : We love people who've died. Where's the "social utility" in that?
Cooper : None.
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[Cooper is sitting at a parent/teacher meeting with the principal and one of Murph's teachers who wants to punish Murph for believing in the Apollo mission to the moon]
Ms. Kelly : Murph got into a fistfight with several of her classmates over this Apollo nonsense. So we thought it would be best to bring you in and see what ideas you might have for dealing with her behavior on the home front.
Cooper : Alright, yeah, you know what? There's a game tomorrow night. She's going through a bit of a baseball phase. Her favorite team's playing, There's gonna be candy and soda...
[smiles]
Cooper : I think I'll take her to that.
[cut to Cooper walking back to his truck, quietly whistling]
Young Murph : How'd it go?
Cooper : [awkwardly] I got you suspended.
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Cooper : I'm coming back...
Young Murph : [crying] When?
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Cooper : [Cooper sits to watch the video messages left for him over the years] Cooper.
Computer : Messages span twenty-three years.
Cooper : Play from the beginning.
[message from Tom starts playing]
Young Tom : Hey, Dad. Checkin' in, sayin' hi. Um... finished second in school, Miss Carlin's still giving me Cs though. Pulled me down, but second's not bad. Grandpa attended the ceremony. Um... oh, I met another girl, dad. I, uh... I really think this is the one. Her name is Lois. That's her right there.
[Tom holds up a photo of Lois, Cooper, overwhelmed with emotion, begins weeping]
Young Tom : Murphy stole grandpa's car. She crashed it, she's okay though.
Tom : [we see another message from Tom showing him as an adult] Hey, Dad. Look at this!
[Tom holds up his baby next to him]
Tom : You're a grandpa. His name's Jesse. I kind of wanted to call him Coop, but, Lois says maybe next time.
Lois : [to Jesse] Say bye-bye Grandpa. Bye-bye Grandpa.
Tom : [Cooper continues to watch his messages, the next one shows Tom looking despondent] Sorry it's been a while. Just... what with Jesse and all. Uh... grandpa died last week. We buried him out in the back plot next to mom and... Jesse. Just where we would've buried you if you'd ever... come back. Murph was there at the funeral. We don't see her that much, but she came for that.
Tom : [Tom hesitates] You're not listening to this, I know that. All these messages are just... drifting out there in the darkness. Lois says that, uh... I have to let you go. And, uh... so, I guess... I'm letting you go. I don't know where you are, Dad. But I hope that wherever you are you're at peace. Goodbye.
[Tom turns off the camera, Cooper touches the screen not wanting to let go when suddenly a message from a now adult Murph comes up]
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Romilly : Of all these anomalies, the most significant is this: out near Saturn, a disturbance of space-time.
Cooper : It's a wormhole?
Romilly : Appeared 48 years ago.
Cooper : And, it leads where?
Dr. Brand : Another galaxy.
Cooper : A wormhole's not a naturally occurring phenomenon...
Brand : Someone placed it there.
Cooper : "They."
Brand : And whoever they are, they appear to be looking out for us. That wormhole, lets us travel to other stars. Came along right as we needed it.
Doyle : They've put potentially habitable worlds right within our reach. Twelve, in fact, from our initial probes.
Cooper : You send probes into that?
Doyle : Mm-hm.
Dr. Brand : We sent *people* into it. Ten years ago.
Cooper : The Lazarus missions.
Dr. Brand : Twelve possible worlds, twelve Ranger launches, carrying the bravest humans ever to live. Led by the remarkable Dr. Mann.
Doyle : Each person's landing pod had enough life support for two years, but they could use hibernation to stretch that, making observations on organics over a decade or more. Their mission was to assess their world, and if it showed potential, then they could send out a signal, bed down for the long nap, wait to be rescued.
Cooper : And what if the world didn't show promise?
Doyle : Hence the bravery.
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Cooper : Murph. You have to talk to me, Murph. I have to fix this, before I go.
Young Murph : I'll keep it broken so you have to stay.
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Murph : Hey Dad.
Cooper : Hey, Murph.
Murph : You son of a bitch. I never made one of these when you were still responding because I was so mad at you for leaving. And then when you went quiet, it felt like I should live with that decision, and I have. But today is my birthday. And it's a special one, because you told me... you once told me that when you come back we might be the same age. And today I'm the same age you were when you left.
[she begins to cry]
Murph : So it would be a real good time for you to come back.
[Murph wipes the tears from her eyes and ends the message]
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Cooper : [when Dr. Mann betrays him] You fucking coward.
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Cooper : If we find a home, then what?
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Cooper : Did it work?
TARS : I think it might have.
Cooper : How do you know?
TARS : Because, the bulk beings are closing the tesseract.
Cooper : Don't you get it yet, TARS? They're not *beings*... they're us! What I've been doing for Murph, they're doing for me, for all of us.
TARS : Cooper, people couldn't build this.
Cooper : No. No, not yet. But one day. Not you and me, but a people, a civilization that's evolved beyond the four dimensions we know.
[the tesseract closes around him in a brilliant flash of light]
Cooper : What happens now?
[he sees the Endurance on its flight through the wormhole, touches Brand's hand through the space-time distortion]
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Cooper : [the ranger won't take off] CASE, what's the problem?
CASE : Too waterlogged. Let it drain.
Cooper : GODDAMN IT!
[smashes the dashboard]
Brand : I told you to leave me.
Cooper : And I told you to get your ass back here!
Brand : Why didn't you leave me?
Cooper : The difference is one of us was thinking about the mission, Brand!
[Cooper punches the wall next to Brand's head]
Brand : Cooper, you were thinking about getting home! I was trying to do the right thing!
Cooper : You tell that to Doyle!
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Cooper : We agreed Amelia. 90%.
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Brand : [reuniting with Romilly, after just a few hours on Miller's planet, deep in Gargantua's gravity well] Hello, Rom.
Romilly : I've waited years.
Cooper : How... How many years?
Romilly : By now it must be...
TARS : It's twenty-three years, four months, eight days.
Romilly : Doyle?
[Cooper stares at floor, walks past]
Brand : I thought I was prepared. I knew the theory, I... Reality's different.
Romilly : Miller?
Brand : There's nothing here for us.
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Dr. Mann : Your father had to find another way to save the human race from extinction. Plan B. A colony.
Brand : But why not tell people? Why keep building those damn stations?
Dr. Mann : Because he knew how hard it would be to get people to work together to save the species instead of themselves.
Cooper : Bullshit.
Dr. Mann : You never would have come here unless you believed you were going to save them. Evolution has yet to transcend that simple barrier. We can care deeply - selflessly - about those we know, but that empathy rarely extends beyond our line of sight.
Brand : But the lie... that monstrous lie...
Dr. Mann : Unforgivable. And he knew that. He was prepared to destroy his own humanity in order to save the species. He made an incredible sacrifice...
Cooper : No. No, the incredible sacrifice is being made by the people on Earth who are gonna die! Because in his fucking arrogance he declared their case hopeless.
Dr. Mann : I'm sorry Cooper. Their case... is hopeless.
Cooper : No... no.
Dr. Mann : We are the future.
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[after Mann breaks Cooper's helmet and leaves him for dead]
Dr. Mann : I'm sorry. I can't watch you go through this. I'm sorry. I thought I could, but I can't. I'm here. I'm here for you. Just listen to my voice, Cooper. I'm right here. You're not alone.
Dr. Mann : [looking back] Do you see your children? It's okay, they're right there with you.
Dr. Mann : [turns to leave] Did Professor Brand tell you that poem before you left? Do you remember? "Do not go gentle... into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
[Mann switches off his transmitter. Cooper chokes; Cooper manages to get his long-range transmitter reinstalled]
Cooper : [gasping] MURPH! HELP! HELP!
Cooper : Cooper? CASE! Go! Go!
Cooper : No... No air... ammonia...
Brand : Cooper, we're coming! Hang in there, don't talk! Try to breathe as little as possible, we're almost there!
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Cooper : [the ranger's engines are waterlogged, needing time to dry before they can leave Miller's planet] CASE! How much time?
CASE : 45 to an hour.
Cooper : Agh!
[removes helmet]
Cooper : The stuff of life, huh? What's this gonna cost us, Brand?
Brand : [devastated] A lot. Decades.
Cooper : God... What happened to Miller?
Brand : Judging by the... wreckage, she was broken up by a wave soon after impact.
Cooper : How does the wreckage stay together after all these years, huh?
Brand : Because of the time slippage. On this planet's time, she just landed hours ago, she... she probably just died minutes ago.
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[They land on Miller's Planet, which has severe gravitational time dilation]
Brand : [sardonically] Very graceful.
Cooper : No. But very efficient.
[He looks at Doyle, who has been alarmed by the landing, and then at Brand]
Cooper : What are you waiting for? Let's go. Go, go, go, go go! Seven years per hour here. Let's make it count.
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TARS : Sir, I'm having trouble completing the bootup.
Romilly : I don't understand.
TARS : There is a security lockout, sir, it requires a person to access function. It's all yours, sir.
[Romilly accesses archives]
Romilly : [confused] This data makes no sense.
Cooper : [lying on the floor of the Ranger after the fight with Mann] I'm sorry.
Brand : What?
Cooper : Mann... was lying! Go, go! Romilly!
Brand : [transmitting] Romilly! Romilly, do you read me, Romilly? Romilly!
[Romilly puts in his ear piece]
TARS : [realizing that KIPP has been booby-trapped] Step back professor! STEP BACK!
[Mann's landing pod explodes with TARS and Romilly inside]
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[while landing on Miller's planet]
CASE : We should ease.
Cooper : Hands where I can see 'em, CASE! The only time I ever went down was when a machine was easing at the wrong time.
CASE : A little caution...
Cooper : Will get you killed, just like reckless driving.
Doyle : Cooper, it's too damn fast!
Cooper : I got this.
CASE : Should I disable the feedback?
Cooper : No. I need to feel the air.
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Cooper : Who's they?
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Brand : We love people who have died. Where's the social utility in that?
Cooper : None.
Brand : Maybe it means something more, something we can't... yet, understand. Maybe it's some evidence, some... artifact of a higher dimension that we can't consciously perceive. I'm drawn across the universe to someone I haven't seen in a decade... who I know is probably dead. Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving... that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can't understand it yet. All right, Cooper... yes... the tiniest possibility of seeing Wolf again excites me. That doesn't mean I'm wrong.
Cooper : Honestly, Amelia... it might. TARS, chart a course for Dr. Mann's.
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Cooper : Disengage Endurance Two
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Cooper : Come on, TARS!
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Brand : He inspired eleven people to follow him on the loneliest journey in human history. Scientists, explorers... That's what I love - out there we face great odds. Death. But not evil.
Cooper : Nature can't be evil?
Brand : Formidable, frightening - not evil. Is a tiger evil because it rips a gazelle to pieces?
Cooper : Just what we bring with us, then.
Brand : This crew represents the best aspects of humanity.
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Cooper : Mann was lying.
