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

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

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

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

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.

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic, 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?

All my brothers, my brothers-in-law, they're always telling me what a good-hearted guy I am. You don't get to be good-hearted by accident. You get kicked around long enough, you get to be a real professor of pain.