"You want to be treated like men? You want to be treated fair? Well, you ain't men to the (coal) company, you're equipment. They'll use you 'til you wear out or break down (or you're buried alive under a slate fall) and then get a new one, and they don't care what color it is or where it comes from."
"They got you fightin' white against the colored, native against foreign... When you know there ain't but two sides in the world - them that work and them that don't. That's all you got to know about the enemy."
both from John Sayles' MATEWAN
"The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy and second, the chronic terror among the rich lest we get one." - Edward Dowling
"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes to expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, pull back the curtains, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater." - Frank Zappa
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. (shouting) You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!...You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!'
- Peter Finch as Howard Beale in NETWORK
For "extra credit" see John Sayles' MATEWAN, Paddy Chayefsky's NETWORK, Martin Ritt's NORMA RAE and Oliver Stone's WALL STREET.
