Philip J. Fry, better known as just Fry, is the main character of Futurama, and as such, he gets some of the best lines in the entire series. After being frozen in the year 2000, Fry wakes up one thousand years in the future, where he has to build a new life for himself.
Unfortunately, Fry was never all that intelligent, and his twentieth-century slacker ways find him adapting to the future in ways that most people would not choose, such as finding new ways to be lazy. These are the ten best Fry quotes from Futurama.
"You can't lose hope when it's hopeless. You gotta hope more!"
"Then put your fingers in your ears and go, 'blah, blah, blah, blah!...'"
You have to hand it to Fry. He may not have been the smartest member of the Planet Express team (and if anything, he might have actually been the dumbest), but every once in a while, his childlike mind would hit upon something very true.
In the episode "Godfellas," Fry never stops looking for Bender, despite the fact that everyone tells him there will never be any conceivable way to find him. Fry won't listen though, and it's his perseverance that actually leads to Bender being sent back to Earth.
"That was the saltiest thing I ever tasted!
"And I once ate a big heaping bowl of salt!"
Fry lived an entire life in the twentieth century before he ended up in the future, and there are tiny glimpses into his past in lines like this one. We may never know why Fry felt the need to eat a bowl of salt, but somehow it seems exactly in character for him to do so.
This line also brings back memories of when Fry talked about much soda he used to drink in high school, right up until his "third heart attack."
"Wait, I'm having one of those things, you know, a headache with pictures."
There's an art to writing smart, dumb humor. It's not enough for Fry to not know the word "idea," he has to describe it in a way that is almost brilliant in how ridiculous it sounds.
This line is one of the best-written examples of how the writers on Futurama could make even an idiot like Fry sounds like some sort of abstract genius. Fun fact: this line also became the title of an Iron Chic song.
"Don't you worry about Planet Express. Let me worry about blank."
When Fry teams up with an 80s businessman who also froze himself and awoke in the future (in his case, it was to find a cure for his boneitis), the two of them use their knowledge of 1980s culture to try and turn Planet Express into a viable, moneymaking business.
The 80s guy, who is never named, teaches Fry all about management techniques, such as telling his employees "don't you worry about blank, let me worry about blank." Of course, Fry can't deliver this information properly, and ends up keeping the "blank" in there when confronting the crew.
"I am literally angry with rage!"
Sometimes you hear a quote on a TV show, and it just resonates with you. This is the kind of line we're talking about. In "Where No Fan Has Gone Before," Fry learns the truth about what happened to the cast of Star Trek, and upon hearing their story, he declares his feelings openly and honestly.
Sure it might be redundant in the silliest way possible, but it really is a clear expression of Fry's feelings, which is more than some other characters are able to do.
"It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus."
"All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns and also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?"
Like many of the great dumb characters on television, Fry had a knack for mixing metaphors and remembering things incorrectly. When he inadvertently becomes the emperor of an entire planet (after accidentally drinking the former emperor), Fry tries to explain to Leela how it makes sense, because he's like the lazy grasshopper who got everything he wanted anyway.
"It's like a party in my mouth and everyone's throwing up."
This is one of the plainest expressions of disgust you might ever hear someone say. After Fry buys a truck stop egg salad sandwich (out of a bathroom vending machine, no less), he notes that the flavor is akin to the kind of party disaster that would send all of the guests back to their homes.
Of course, things get even crazier when the eggs in that sandwich turn out to be worm eggs, and the worms somehow make Fry a better, smart, stronger person.
"Space. It seems to go on forever."
"But then you get to the end and the gorilla starts throwin' barrels at you."
It's the very first line in the series, and somehow it seems to encompass everything that makes Futurama so great. In one swift description of a video game (Monkey Fracas Jr. to be exact), Fry pretty much sums up the nature of the series itself.
After all, the crew spends a lot of time in space, and often their journeys are broken up by some sort of fantastic circumstance. It might not always be a gorilla throwing barrels at them, but then again, what the crew does experience is never that far off.
"No I'm... Doesn't."
"The route of All Evil" is probably one of the worst episodes of Futurama but it does contain this gem of a line from Fry. When the crew decides to brew their own beer inside of Bender, Cubert notes "alcohol makes you stupid."
This line is Fry's quick retort, which starts out with a lot of conviction, but the pause and then the inevitable grammatical error highlight Cubert's point exactly. It's a perfect moment to show just how reactionary Fry can be, and how not thinking about what he's saying basically loses the argument for him.
"Shut up and take my money!"
It's the line that spawned one of the most famous memes in internet history. When Fry and the rest of the crew decide to get the latest "eye phone" from Mom, they quickly let the device take over their entire lives.
When Fry finally makes it into the store and is informed "it's $500, you have no choice of carrier, the battery can't hold a charge, and the reception-" he doesn't even let the clerk finish before delivering this famous line.