Quotes from Paddy Chayefsky

This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings.

You're not such a dog as you think you are.

God save us from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half.

Howard Beale is processed, instant God, and right now it looks like he might just go over bigger than Mary Tyler Moore.

I'm not a great writer. I'm a great rewriter.

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let's not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment.

It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.

I'm a human being, god-dammit. My life has value!

You don't send a man to his death because you want a hero.

Television is the menace that everyone loves to hate but can't seem to live without.

Television is not the truth. Television is a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats, storytellers dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business.

The first dead man on Omaha Beach must be a sailor!

Ma, sooner or later there comes a point in a man's life when he's gotta face some facts. And one fact I've got to face is whateverit is women like, I ain't got it.

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

We've established the most enormous medical entity ever conceived... and people are sicker than ever. We cure nothing! We heal nothing!

Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

His vital signs were taken, an electrocardiogram... which revealed occasional ventricular premature contractions. An intern took his history... and then he was promptly... simply... forgotten to death.

I would like at this moment to announce that I will be retiring from this program in two weeks' time because of poor ratings. Since this show is the only thing I had going for me in my life, I've decided to kill myself. I'm going to blow my brains out right on this program a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that. 50 share, easy.

I don't want to leave you alone. I want you to get mad.[…]You've got to say 'I'm a human being, god dammit! My life has value!

Oh, there are no living poets, Miss Van Damn. We're not entirely sure there ever were. They've found some shreds of sonnets in England and, embedded in a chalk wall of a cave in France, some yet undetermined thing which might be the legendary inward eye. But all evidence, such as it is, suggests that, if there ever were poets, they were all burned into extinction during the interglacial period of despair.

This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings