Network: the speech that says it all!

Do you really think America is a democracy? Or maybe even a constitutional republic? Think again, Bucky! You're floating in an Orwellian cosmos of cyber dollars, Euros and pounds - humming ceaselessly in the electronic ether. And you too are are a product - to be bought and sold, along with others of your assigned herd, on the trading floor of the new world order. Your birth certificate even assigns you a stock number! Look that up! I know it doesn't really seem that way. We're free Americans! We can get in our cars and drive around town without being hassled by the police... unless we're caught not wearing our seat belt; or our tag has expired, or our safety sticker is out of date, or our driver's license doesn't have a certain, necessary endorsement, or the kid isn't in a government approved child seat.... Mad as hell? We're not nearly mad enough!

Citizenfitz


Mr. Jensen: "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it, is that clear!?! You think you have 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 of systems, one vast interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! Petro-dollars, Electro-dollars, Multi-dollars, Reichmarks, Rubles, Yen, Pounds and Shekels! It is the international system of currency that determines the totality of life on this planet! That is the natural order of things today! That is the atomic, 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. Beale?

"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a collage of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale! It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children, Mr. Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine, oppression and brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale."

Beale: "Why me?"

Mr. Jensen: "Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday."