Dialogue from Network (1976)

--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.

--Why me?

--Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Network is surely one of the greatest films of all time. It is great because, in the middle of 1970s, it is deeply prescient of the realities of the millenium. With perhaps Citizen Kane and Ivan the Terrible, it is for film what Nineteen-Eighty-Four is for literature: social prophecy and political philosophy Every moron who watches FOX News should should read the script for FOX that is Network.