Paddy Chayefsky Quotations

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm not sentimental about war. I see nothing noble in widows.

The best thing that can happen is for the theme to be nice and clear from the beginning.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

Television will do anything for a rating... anything!

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

I'm afraid to look in the mirror. I'm afraid I'm going to see an old lady with white hair, just like the old ladies in the park. Alittle bundle in a black shawl just waiting for the coffin.

Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park.

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

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.

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

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

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?

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

It's not greed and ambition that makes wars--it's goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons, for liberation or manifest destiny, always against tyranny and always in the best interests of humanity. So far this war, we've managed to butcher some 10,000,000 people in the interest of humanity. The next war, it seems we'll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity.

I don't know what's good, or bad, or true. I let God worry about truth. I just want to know the momentary fact of things. Life isn't good, or bad, or true. It's merely factual. It's sensual. It's alive!

Americans don’t want drama, especially good drama, they just want their boredom killed.

The worst kind of censorship is the kind that takes place in your own mind before you sit down to a typewriter.

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.

Don't think of it as art, think of it as work.

Television is god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers and football players. We're in the boredom killing business.

Stop thinking about writing as art. Think of it as work. If you’re an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you’re not an artist, at least you can do a good day’s work.