"Hello. In the traditional motion picture story, the villains are usually defeated, the ending is a happy one. I can make no such promise for the picture you are about to watch." (Ronald Reagan)
My conscience satisfies me, and now I will speak plainly, that your statute is faulty and that your authority baseless.
My conscience holds with the majority, which makes me know it does not speak false.
Against Henry’s kingdom, I have all the kingdoms of Christendom. Against each one of your bishops, I have a hundred saints. Against your one Parliament, I have all the General Councils of the Church, stretching back for a thousand years.
Sir Thomas More, speaking before he was sentenced to death for refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy and acknowledge Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church, as imagined by Hilary Mantel in Wolf Hall
Earlier, the senator asked, "Upon what meat does this, our Caesar, feed?" Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare's Caesar, he would have found this line, which is not altogether inappropriate:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
... We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.
As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies.
And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear. He merely exploited it, and rather successfully.
Cassius was right.
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."
Good night, and good luck.
US Journalist Edward R Murrow, 'A Report on Senator Joseph R McCarthy,' 9th March 1954.
If you ignore the bits that are obviously contextual to 1950s Red Scare America, there are huge chunks that apply to us in Britain today.
For best impact, it has to be heard in Murrow's voice:
Or, David Strathairn playing Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck:
