From the very first episode of The Office on NBC, Dwight Schrute made us laugh with his ridiculous and hilarious lines. Of all the cast members on The Office, Rainn Wilson is easily one of the funniest. While we might choose spend our time rewatching the series over and over, or by checking out some of the other great shows like The Office, right now, let's revisit some of Dwight's most amusing, absurd and hilarious lines from through the series' run.
"You couldn’t handle my undivided attention.”
Don’t ask for something you can’t handle. Dwight made that pretty clear to Michael when he insisted on having Dwight’s undivided attention, and Dwight expressed sincere doubts about whether or not Michael was really prepared for it. I kind of want to see what Dwight's undivided attention actually looks like now.
“Through concentration, I can raise and lower my blood pressure at will.”
On the surface, this may sound like a ridiculous claim, and it probably is. But at the same time, it’s not hard to picture Dwight Schrute sitting at home trying to will his blood pressure to rise and lower just to see if he can.
“Do you ever watch Battlestar Galactica? No? Then you’re an idiot.”
The line “Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica” is said by Jim in a different episode, when impersonating Dwight. But Dwight did show off his love for the Syfy series on more than one occasion. Sure, we can laugh at how rude he was to this man when making small talk at David Wallace’s house, but if I'm being honest, as a fan of the show, I kind of get his enthusiasm.
"So say we all."
“In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is 'Ow, I hurt my leg. I can’t run. A lion eats me, and I’m dead.' Well I’m not dead. I’m the lion. You’re dead.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Dwight expressed a lot of confidence about his place in the world. In this case, while he feels the average person would be helpless in the wild, he’s cast himself as the predator in the scenario, for some reason. The power of getting to choose a healthcare plan for the office has clearly gone to his head.
“Today, smoking is gonna save lives.”
Dwight has a lot of big moments during the “Stress Relief” double-episode, but none shine quite as brightly as the cold open, wherein he sets off the smoke alarms in an effort to test the staff’s readiness for an emergency. Chaos promptly ensued.
“Their meatball parm is their worst sandwich.”
Dwight could be truly diabolical when he wanted to be. Like the time he knew that Michael would try to take revenge on him for spying by eating the food he’d picked up to go for Dwight, and Dwight made sure to order the absolute worst item on the menu: the meatball parm.
Michael's reaction when he takes a bite is just the cherry on top of this moment.
“Stop… doing rhyming poetry, just tell them please? God the simplest thing.”
Honestly, all Dwight wants to do is carry out a secret meeting in the warehouse, but Andy has to go and be overenthusiastic about his participation in it and Dwight just can't deal with it.
“I love catching people in the act. That’s why I always whip open doors.”
It’s not hard to imagine Dwight whipping open doors from time to time, whether it be at home, at work or wherever, in the hopes of catching people in the act of... whatever he thinks is worth catching them in the act of doing.
“How many people need to get hurt before we learn a valuable lesson? One? Two? Three? Four?… No, hear me out - five?”
If you need someone to create a distraction to buy some time, you can count on Dwight. During the company picnic, when Pam hurt her ankle, Jim asked Dwight to stall for time to keep them from forfeiting the volleyball game. And this is what Dwight came up with - a question that was soon followed by more questions. An infinite number of questions.
“People tell me things. I guess I have a face you can trust. I think it’s because of my low cheekbones.”
Michael was all too happy to share a bit of gossip with Dwight, only to be let down immediately when Dwight revealed that he was already aware of the two interns who were dating. Apparently his low cheekbones are to be credited for people telling Dwight things.
“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, ‘Would an idiot do that?’ And if they would, I do not do that thing.”
Dwight shared a bit a wisdom when talking about his efforts not to do as an idiot would do. As ridiculous as it is that Dwight would say this, his logic is sound right?
“I am ready to face any challenge that might be foolish enough to face me.”
Dwight isn’t one to back down from a challenge. In fact, it’s the challenges that should be backing down from him. He made that clear when he was seeking employment after briefly resigning from Dunder Mifflin.
“Any really good headhunter will storm your village at sunset with overwhelming force and cut off your head with a ceremonial knife.”
Leave it to Dwight to take the conversation in an entirely different direction. When Michael was talking about being headhunted after he quit his job at Dunder Mifflin, Dwight shared his two cents about headhunters. Of course, Michael was talking about the job-finding kind, not the ceremonial-knife-wielding kind.
“Yes, I shouted fire. I shouted many things.”
Dwight was not even remotely apologetic about how he handled his infamous and disastrous fire drill, which not only led to panic and broken property, but also to Stanley collapsing due to stress. Not even when David Wallace was questioning him about the incident did Dwight back down from his intentions. Yes, he shouted fire. He shouted many things. And it’s true, he did.
“Check for an organ donor card. If he has one, we only have minutes to harvest.”
Moments before he took the face off the CPR doll during an office emergency training session, Dwight suggested that the proper procedure after CPR failed should involve checking to see if the patient is an organ donor and getting to work on "harvesting." It’s more than a little unnerving that Dwight thinks he has any business carrying out this responsibility.
“Identity theft is not a joke, Jim! Millions of families suffer every year.”
It took until Jim said “Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica” for Dwight to realize that Jim was impersonating him and not just quizzing him on what kind of bears were best. And while Dwight tried to brush the mockery off at first, he soon became enraged that his desk-mate would dare try to steal his identity.
“They’re mushrooms! They don’t get that high.”
Why Dwight thought that growing mushrooms to a not-very-high height — because they’re mushrooms and don’t get that high — was a good example of something he could’ve been doing with all the time he’d spent that day trying to get the Scranton Branch staff members to owe him a favor is anyone's guess.
“Yes, I have a wig for every single person in the office. You never know when you’re going to need to bear a passing resemblance to someone.”
It’s a rare thing to see Dwight get the upper hand on Jim, but that’s what he did when he sported a Pam wig to trick Jim into mistaking him for his wife during the epic snowball fight they were having. This is what led to the reveal that he has a wig for everyone in the office. The Meredith wig has to be the best.
“What does it say under martial arts training?… Oh, ok, I’m gonna have to supplement that. Can I have your fax number?”
After Jim and Pam submitted Dwight’s resume to a company that’s hiring, Dwight missed his chance at a potentially better job by getting caught up in trying to make sure the place recognized his martial arts skills, which were surely very relevant to a salesman job... right?
“And I did not become a Lackawanna County volunteer sheriff’s deputy to make friends. And by the way, I haven’t.”
It’s no secret that Dwight isn’t popular, but in the early years of the series he did occasionally flex his authority as a volunteer sheriff’s deputy. Not that it’s made him any friends along the way, but as he said, that’s not why he became a volunteer sheriff’s deputy to begin with.
“When I die, I want to be frozen. And if they have to freeze me in pieces, so be it. I will wake up stronger than ever because I will have used that time to figure out why I died and what moves I could’ve used to defend myself better now that I know what hold they had me in.”
It’s not unusual to ponder one's own mortality from time to time. But it’s clear from this quote that Dwight has drawn some very specific conclusions about how he’ll meet his end. And it’ll apparently involve some kind of violent encounter with someone who manages to out-maneuver him.
“I will remain close by to provide unseen moral support but I will never help him. I will let harm befall him, I will even let him die. But I will never let him lose his dignity.”
Dwight insisted he’d stand back and let Michael die if it came to it. Fortunately for Michael, he doesn't actually follow through with this statement. In the end, when he spots Michael stuffing a mouthful of poisonous mushrooms into his mouth for an afternoon snack, Dwight quickly steps in to rescue his boss.
“Of course I see saw. Mose and I see saw all the time.”
This is one of the more underrated hilarious lines from Dwight Schrute, in my opinion. When Ryan asked him “Didn’t you see Saw?” — meaning the horror movie — Dwight’s mind instantly went to see-saw. While we never did get that Schrute Farms spinoff series, we did get more than a few glimpses of what went on at Dwight's home during his non-office hours. And that included (in a different episode) the reveal of a Google Maps photo of him and his cousin see-sawing the day away on the farm.
“Who is Justice Beaver?”
Dwight may have been up on the latest Battlestar Galactica twists and turns, but he’s not paying much attention to pop music. This is made clear when Jim mentions Justin Bieber, and Dwight asks him who "Justice Beaver" is. A crime-fighting beaver, obviously.
“The last time I went to a theater, a man dressed as a cat sat in my lap.”
There are a lot of good excuses someone might come up with for why they don’t want to go to the theater. In Dwight’s case, he’s still not over being sat on by a man dressed as a cat at the last show he attended. I like to think this experience involved some date with Angela in years past, but that’s just my speculation.
“I have to do something to his eyes.”
Dwight took Michael’s plan to strike back at the Utica branch very seriously. Like… too seriously. Not only did he bring bottles of gasoline with them, but he was also really insistent that he do something to someone’s eyes. Fortunately, the only thing injured during the incident was a copy machine.
“I was shunned from the age of four until my sixth birthday for not saving the excess oil from a can of tuna.”
Every once in a while, Dwight shared a nugget of his past that gave us some insight into his background and family history. In this case, it’s the unsettling reveal that he spent a couple of years of his youth being shunned by his family for being wasteful with tuna oil.
“There’s too may people on this earth. We need a new plague.”
Not only is it unnerving to hear the tone of irritation bordering on outrage at the mere presence of other people in his vicinity, but it’s even more disturbing that Dwight would wish a new plague on the population. Never mind that he’s saying these thoughts out loud. In a church.
“We have to establish a pee corner!”
Do we, Dwight?
Leave it to Dwight to waste absolutely no time at all in establishing a “pee corner” in the elevator when Pam’s prank on him backfires and they end up stuck in there together. It didn’t help that he’d been drinking copious amounts of water in the time leading up to this incident. Still… So gross.
“I have been recommending downsizing since I first got here. I even brought it up in my interview.”
This one goes all the way back to the pilot episode, when we were just getting to know Dwight Schrute. That Dwight would be so confident in his job security at Dunder Mifflin that he'd express enthusiasm at the prospect of downsizing really isn’t that surprising in retrospect. But it’s especially funny — and yet still believable — that he’d bring it up in his own interview.
Let’s be fair though, as unusual and occasionally rude as Dwight sometimes is, we know that he is actually pretty good at his job.
“In the end, the greatest snowball isn’t a snowball at all. It’s fear.”
Jim had to learn this lesson the hard way. It’s not often that Dwight gets the upper hand on Jim when it comes to pranks, but we saw it happen when Jim made the bad choice of starting a snowball fight war he, as it turns out, couldn’t finish. Jim survived, but not without some battle scars and a hefty dose of fear.
“Are you calling me an idiot? Don’t you ever talk to me like that, you pathetic, short little man. You don’t have any friends or any family or any land.”
Dwight wasn’t even up on stage to roast Michael, at first. He was trying to defend his boss when he felt people were being too harsh toward the regional manager. And then Michael started calling him an idiot and Dwight just let loose with some harsh facts.
Boom, roasted indeed.
