- Monte Walsh: When we get through... you're gonna want to take a nap, sit on the porch and wait for the mares to come callin'.
- Colonel Wilson: Machines do all the work. Another 20 years, we'll all be sitting around on cushions and eating ice cream.
- Monte Walsh: What's ice cream?
- Cal Brennan: See, these boys have no home, except for a horse and a cook shack. They got no property but a saddle and a gun. They don't earn any money. Got no wife, got no kids. They spend their entire life pushing cattle around to where them cattle don't want to go.
- Robert Slocum: Sounds like a terrible job.
- Cal Brennan: Yes, sir, it is a terrible job, but it's their job. All they got is freedom and pride; keeping their word and looking out for one another. All they got is their rules.
- Robert Slocum: And where are these rules written down?
- Cal Brennan: They're not written down, you damn fool. They're lived.
- Robert Slocum: But they work for us.
- Cal Brennan: They don't work for anybody. They work for the life.
- Frank 'Shorty' Austin: Do you suppose he felt anything?
- Monte Walsh: Mostly he felt it before he jumped.
- Robert Slocum: It's the twentieth century, Walsh. Stay out of the way of progress.
- Monte Walsh: I believe I will.
- Monte Walsh: [as Slocum's motorized cart passes] Damn thing stinks worse than goats.