April 08, 2011 10:35:28 AM
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This dialogue is from “Network” Paddy Chayefsky’s Academy award-winning 1976 screenplay; Jensen is the chairman of the company that owns the network that news anchorman Howard Beale works for. This scene can be found toward the end of the film, approx page 116-117 of the screenplay.

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 and
immense, interwoven, interacting,
multi-variate, multi-national
dominion of dollars! petro-dollars,
electro-dollars, multi-dollars!,
Reichmarks, rubles, rin, 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?
(pause)
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 A T
and 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 pull out their linear
programming charts, statistical
decision theories and 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. Beale. The
world is a college of corporations,
inexorably deter- mined 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.

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Arthur Jensen, from the "Network" screenplay

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