“Of course a lot of guys were ashamed. Somebody said let's go out and fight for liberty and so they went out and got killed without ever once thinking of liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose kind of liberty? Were they fighting for the liberty of eating free ice cream cones all their lives or for the liberty of robbing anybody they pleased whenever they wanted to or what? You tell a man he can't rob and you take away some of his liberty. You've got to. What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he's talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it? No sir anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar.”
Dalton Trumbo“The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people.”
Dalton Trumbo“A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not.”
Dalton Trumbo“Now the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things people don't understand. Take the Einstein theory. Take taxes. Take love. Do you understand them? Neither do I. But they exist. They happen.”
Dalton Trumbo“They feel guilty for having survived so they pretend the bad things never happened Exodus (1960) screenplay”
Dalton Trumbo“He was the future he was a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future was like. Already they were looking ahead they were figuring the future and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight the war they would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn't fight.”
Dalton Trumbo“They are talking like fools. They are saying that two and two make nothing. They are saying that a man will have to die to in order to protect his life. If you agree to fight you agree to die. Now if you die to protect your life you aren't alive anyhow so how is there any sense in a thing like that? A man doesn't say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving. He doesn't say I will spend all my money in order to save money. He doesn't say I will burn my house to down in order to keep it from burning. Why then should he be willing to die for the privilege of living?”
Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun“How could you believe or disbelieve anything anymore? Four maybe five million men killed and none of them wanting to die while hundreds maybe thousands were left crazy or blind or crippled and couldn’t die no matter how hard they tried.”
Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun“What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he is talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?”
Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun“There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.”
Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun“There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.”
Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun