The phrase "What we've got here is (a) failure to communicate" is a quotation from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, spoken at different points in the movie first by Strother Martin (as the Captain, a prison warden) and later Paul Newman (as Luke, a young prisoner).
The context of the delivery of the line is:
Captain: You gonna get used to wearing them chains after a while, Luke. Don't you never stop listening to them clinking, 'cause they gonna remind you what I been saying for your own good.
Luke: I wish you'd stop being so good to me, Cap'n.
Captain: Don't you ever talk that way to me. (pause, then hitting him) NEVER! NEVER! (Luke rolls down hill; to other prisoners) What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men.
The Captain's line is often misquoted as What we have here is a failure to communicate.
The phrase is #11 on the American Film Institute list, AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes.
Read more about What We've Got Here Is (a) Failure To Communicate: References in Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words failure and/or communicate:
“Dear George: Remember no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings! Love, Clarence”
—Frances Goodrich (1891–1984)
“Learning first occurs as a part of emotional interactions; it involves the split-second initiatives that children take as they try to engage other people, interact with them, communicate and reason with them.”
—Stanley I. Greenspan (20th century)