[Speech from the film Network]
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. A dollar
buys a nickel's worth. Banks are going bust. Shop keepers 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 with it. There's no end to it. We know the air is
unfit to breath and our food is unfit to eat. We sit watching our TVs while
some local news caster tell us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 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 a house and slowly the world we're living in is
getting smaller and all we say is "Please at leave us alone in our living
rooms. Let me have my toaster, my TV, my steel belted radials, and I won't say
anything. Just leave us alone". But I'm not going to 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 congressmen because I wouldn't know what to tell you
to write. I don't know what to do about the depression, and inflation, and the
Russians, and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to
get mad. You've got to say "I'm a human being dammit. My life has value". I
want you to get up now. I want all of you to get 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!"