Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Re: Is it ok to put movie quotes on a t-shirt?

The short answer is that it depends on what you quote from a film and how much you quote (as well as whether you use any images or graphics)--specific facts ought to be examined before making a decision whether you need to clear any IP rights or not. Short phrases or even sentences by themselves may not receive strong copyright protection, if any, but that is not the end of the inquiry here.

There may be liability associated with the characters whose lines you are quoting (various torts, including misappropriation of likeness), may be privacy/publicity considerations and, possibly, even trademark implications. I assume the phrases you would like to use are very closely associated with either films themselves, their titles or their leading characters so your potential legal exposure to whoever owns rights to these probably relates less to copyrights than to the other intellectual property rights and various torts I mentioned.

In sum, this is not something that can be answered in abstract.

This reply is in the nature of general information, is not legal advice and should not be relied upon as such.