Dr. Manhattan's (Jonathan Osterman's) memorable Quotes from Watchmen (book / graphic novel)

As I commented in my Dr. Manhattan's Origin article, Dr. Manhattan is known for his eccentric view of the world! His unique godlike powers have so removed him from normalcy that Dr. Manhattan can no longer relate to human beings anymore! This supra-human view of the world is reflected in the way he talks and I think Dr. Manhattan's Quotes pretty much distinguish him from everything else in Watchmen.

And by the way, Dr. Manhattan has commented on pretty much everything on the planet even after all the "I'm not human nemore" attitude that he has! Below I present the few most interesting ones -

Watchmen Chapter I:

Dr. Manhattan's observation on death -

"A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. Structurally there's no discernible difference."

"Life and Death are unquantifiable abstracts. Why should I be concerned?"

Dr. Manhattan's reply to an invitation to party - ""I'd join..,but I think I'm close to locating a gluino, which would completely validate supersymmetrical theory..."

Watchmen Chapter III:

Dr. Manhattan's excuse for not having sex - ""Laurie, try to understand...my work's at an important stage! It seemed unnecessary to..."

Dr. Manhattan's response to Silk Spectre breaking up with him - "If you think there's a problem with my attitude, I'm prepared to discuss it.

Watchmen Chapter IV:

Dr. Manhattan looking at some photo - "The photograph is in my hand...in twelve seconds time, I drop the photograph ...walking away. It's already lying there, twelve seconds into the future...I found it...twenty-seven hours ago. It's still there, twenty-seven hours into the past...I'm still there looking at it."

Dr. Manhattan decides to look at stars - ""I am going to look at the stars. They are so far away, and their light takes so long to reach us...All we ever see of stars are their old photographs."

Dr. Manhattan thinks of sunlight - ""I am two hundred and twenty-seven million kilometers from the sun. It's light is already ten minutes old..."

Dr. Manhattan predicts past and future - ""Two hours into my future, I observe meteorites from a glass balcony, thinking about my father. Twelve seconds into my past, I open my fingers..."

Dr. Manhattan predicts female orgasms and breakups - ""It's 1959. A pulse flutters in her belly, beneath my cheek. It's 1966...She's crying."

Dr. Manhattan's thanks for a gold ring from his girlfriend (Janey Slater) - ""I like it very much. Its atomic structure is a perfect grid, like a checker board."

Dr. Manhattan's comment on superheroes - ""...friend;y middle-aged men who like to dress up..."

Dr. Manhattan's view on causality - ""I can't prevent the future. To me, it's already happening."

Dr. Manhattan's view of Comedian (Edward Blake) - ""Blake is interesting. I have never met anyone so deliberately amoral."

Dr. Manhattan on sculpting - ""Things have their shape in time, not space alone. Some marble blocks have statues within them embedded in their future."

Dr. Manhattan forgets that he was once human - ""I am tired of this world, these people. I am tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives."

Dr. Manhattan on being late - ""But it's too late. Always has been, Always will be too late."

Watchmen Chapter IX:

Dr. Manhattan's masterpiece - ""We're all puppets Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings."

Dr. Manhattan's wonders why humans can't predict future - ""There is no future. There is no past...Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet."

Dr. Manhattan's reply to Laurie's questions -

Laurie: "What's in the bottle?"

Dr. Manhattan: ""What do you want to be in the bottle?"
------

Laurie: "Humanity is about to be become extinct. Doesn't it bother you"

Dr. Manhattan: "All that pain and conflict done with? All that needless suffering over at last? No, that doesn't bother me."
------
Laurie: "Jon, what about the war? You've got to prevent it! Everyone will die."

Dr. Manhattan: "...And the universe will not even notice."

Dr. Manhattan's view of human life - "In my opinion, it's a highly overrated phenomenon. Mars gets along perfectly without so much as a micro-organism."

Dr. Manhattan's sarcasm about environment pollution - (talking of Mars) ""...Giant steps, ninety feet high...A constantly changing topographical map, flowing and shifting...Tell me...would it be greatly improved by an oil pipeline?"

Dr. Manhattan feels quantum mechanics is more important than human life - ""I read atoms, Laurie. I see the ancient spectacle that birthed the rubble. Beside this, human life is brief and mundane."

Dr. Manhattan finally feels that human life is a miracle - ""In each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive, meeting, siring this precise son; that exact daughter...until your mother loves a man ...and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you...(it's) like turning air to gold...thermodynamic miracle."

Dr. Manhattan soothes his girlfriend Silk Spectre - ""Come...dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg...dry your eyes..."

Watchmen Chapter XII:

Dr. Manhattan coming back from dead - ""Restructuring myself after the subtraction of my intrinsic field was the first trick I learned. It didn't kill Osterman...Did you think it would kill me?"

Dr. Manhattan ridiculing Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt) - ""...this world's smartest man means no more to me than does its smartest termite."

Dr. Manhattan's masterpiece - "Nothing ends...Nothing ever ends."

To read more fun stuff on Dr. Manhattan, click - Dr. Manhattan's personal life

To read about Dr. Manhattan's origin, click - Dr. Manhattan's Origin

To find out if Dr. Manhattan can beat Superman and Hulk, click -
Dr. Manhattan vs Superman and Hulk

Dr. Manhattan Jonathan Osterman - Watchmen character - Personal Life

Yes, Dr. Manhattan aka Jonathan Osterman totally deserves another post! This guy is like a geek's dream come true! One moment he's sitting at his desk solving some math problem and next he's got super powers to beat the sh-t out of even Superman!

So what does the good doc do after obtaining these super-freakish-human powers -
a) Go own a country or become the king of the world?
b) Go become the ultra blue rock star and thrill the universe with his cosmic guitar?
c) Convert mount Everest into E and party all night long for next 2000 years?
d) Fight crime?

No! All answers above are incorrect. Our good Doc just goes right back to his unsolved math problem! He's so obsessed with physcs & maths that he solves maths problems while being in bed with his gilfriend (more on that later). Talk about dedication! But wait, I should be fair here - Dr. Manhattan has scored the hottest girl in the costumed vigilante community (Laurie Juspeczyk or Silk Spectre the second). He had a girlfriend (called Janey Slater) from his former physics lab life too, but unfortunately for her, as she got older Doc revealed "super roving eyes" to his already huge list of super powers. The fact that now chicks dig him all the more than they used to back in his physics days doesn't help much either here! So he does what any physicist will do - he figures that the future has already been decided for us so lets just have all the fun we can! I'm all for this philosophy of life though! And I can't blame the guy, with a girlfriend like Ms Juspeczyk (pic on the left) I would totally ditch the physics lab colleague too!

Now you might be wondering about the problems that regular superheroes have with girlfriends - Like Spiderman frets all the time about spending too much time crime fighting instead of having some wild times with his Mary Jane, Superman (Smallville) has issues exposing his superidentity to Lana Lang and so on. But our good old Dr. Manhattan again shows how only physicists or mathematicians or geeks can truly enjoy their superhero identities unlike their press-reporter and millionaire boys counterparts! Instead of worrying about exposing his identity, protection of the girl he dates and what not, he solves this problem by simply hooking up with a fellow super heroine (Silk Spectre 2)! So he doesn't have to worry about the identities and villains trying to use her against him and stuff as she will just kick anyone's butt if someone messes with her! Also, the fact that she has the body any figure athele would die for helps too!

As far as not having time to crime fight and date issue, our hero simply duplicates himself so one Dr Manhattan can go fight crime and second Dr Manhattan can go have a quiet evening with Ms. Juspeczyk! And since the good old doc is now totally Don Juan in bed, Dr. Manhattan can even triplicate himself and have threesomes with Silk Spectre while working on his physics problems at the same time! Compare this to the regular super heroes though who fret about this and that instead of putting their super powers to some creative use! Thinking about it, this is one really cool use of the self-duplicating superpower! Threesome, that is; minus the physics problem part! Laurie though, like any sensible girl, totally freaks out about the prospect of having a threesome with the same guy!

Now that I mentioned the math problem part though, this kinda puzzles me. I mean why and how can someone do those things at the same time? The only reason I can think of is that poor Doc has some sort of physics fetish. And in fact this doesn't really come as a surprise when we think of his background! The guy is a physicist geek from Princeton for God's sake and must've spent countless hours with his math equations instead of trying to get laid in school ! So what he got those super powers! What really matters is that he gets his physics equations accurately solved. But the apparent super-libido power is also at work so he just triplicates himself - two of hims having some wild time with Ms Juspeczyk and remaining one solving math equations in the next room. Unfortunately for him though, Laurie is not totally an idiot and dumps him ASAP and hooks up with the next superhero in line (Night Owl aka Daniel Dreiberg) once she discovers that Dr. Manhattan was having sex with her AND solving those all important math problems at the same time last night! Poor girl doesn't realize that it could very well be Osterman's secret fetish from his Princeton days....

Ok, that was the personal life before he became, here is an article on how he came into existence - Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan's Origin

To find out if Dr. Manhattan can beat Superman and Hulk, click -
Dr. Manhattan vs Superman and Hulk