Movie lines

These are troubled times. Lobbyists plead guilty and sing like canaries, investigations "widen," new Grand Juries are convened, there is talk about "high crimes and misdemeanors" at the top, the war has gone horribly wrong and keeps getting worse. Something has begun the end of which is not known. Neither blood nor money seem able to hide the lies anymore. The Badlands staff, stunned, confused, in the words of our local congressman, the Shrimp Slayer, "troubled," looked deep into our hearts ... and probably like many Americans, came up with some lines from a couple of movies. They didn’t make a whole lot of sense but they expressed attitudes that don’t make a lot of sense either, but which are “going around like that flu.”

Bill Hatch
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Wall Street (1987)
Stanley Weiser & Oliver Stone

The point is, ladies and gentlemen, is that greed—
for lack of a better word--is good. Greed is right.
Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and
captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms--greed for life, for money,
for love, knowledge--has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And Greed--you mark my works--will not only save
[this company] but that other malfunctioning corporation
called the USA.
Thank you very much.
--Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas)
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Miller's Crossing (1990)
Joel and Ethan Coen

It's a wrong situation. It's gettin' so a
businessman can't expect no return from a fixed
fight. Now if you can't trust a fix, what can
you trust? For a good return you gotta go
bettin' on chance, and then you're back with
anarchy. Right back inna jungle. On account of
the breakdown of ethics. That's why ethics is
important. It's the grease makes us get along,
what separates us from the animals, beasts a
burden, beasts a prey. Ethics. . .
--Johnny Casper (Jon Polito)