... Because that’s the only place you’re ever going to find any real truth. But, man, you’re never going to get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you want to hear. We’ll lie like hell ... We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day night after night all ages, colors, creeds, where are you now? You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that you’re own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like a tube. You eat like a tube. You raise your children like a tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God’s name: you people are the reality. We are the illusion. Network 1976 Network starring Faye Dunaway & Peter Finch & William Holden & Robert Duvall & Wesley Addy & Ned Beatty & Beatrice Straight & Jordan Charney & William Prince & Lane Smith & Marlene Warfield & Arthur Burghardt et al, director Sidney Lumet
Valhalla, Mr Beale. Please sit down. You have meddled with the primal forces of Nature, Mr Beale. And I won’t have it. Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow. Tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system out of systems. One vast and immune interwoven, interacting, multi-variant, multinational dominion of Dollars. Petro Dollars. Electro Dollars. Multi dollars. Reichmarks. Rins, Rubles, Pounds and Shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of Nature! And you will atone! Am I getting through to you, Mr Beal? You get up on your little twenty-one-inch screen and howl about America and Democracy. There is no America. There is no Democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state – Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr Beal. The world is a college of corporations inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr Beal. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr Beale, to see that perfect world in which there in no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common purpose. In which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided. All anxieties tranquillised. All boredom amused. ibid. Jensen to Beale
They knew that to put God in the constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping or in the keeping of her God the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship or not to worship that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all to prevent the few from governing the many and the many from persecuting and destroying the few. Robert G Ingersoll
It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah. Robert G Ingersoll
England and America owe their liberty to commerce, which created a new species of power to undermine the feudal system. But let them beware of the consequences: the tyranny of wealth is still more galling and debasing than that of rank. Mary Wollstonecraft
Reporter: How do you find America?
Ringo Starr: Turn left at Greenland. Beatles’ first US tour 1964
America: It’s like Britain, only with buttons. Ringo Starr
The West shall be free from the British Isles. Nostradamus VII-80
So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty. Jack Kerouac, On the Road
This is the story of America. Everybody’s doing what they think they’re supposed to do. ibid.
The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period. The researches of the human mind after social happiness have been carried to a great extent, the treasures of knowledge acquired by the labors of philosophers, sages, and legislators, through a long succession of years, are laid open to our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily employed in the establishment of our forms of government. George Washington
In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could. Abigail Adams 1744-1818, wife of John Adams & mother of John Quincy Adams
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Thomas Paine, Common Sense
It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradation we surmount the force of local prejudice as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world. ibid.
The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. ’Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent – of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. ’Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak. The wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters. ibid.
We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. ibid.
Small islands not capable of protecting themselves are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something very absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. ibid.
When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, then may the country boast of its constitution and its government. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791
In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance. Thomas Jefferson
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Thomas Jefferson
Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm? Thomas Jefferson, inaugural address 4th March 1801
Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none. ibid.
Freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of the person under the protection of habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. ibid.
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property. Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. Thomas Jefferson
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. Thomas Jefferson
Rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over – yet the object is worth rivers of blood, and years of desolation. Thomas Jefferson
How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy! Thomas Jefferson