The Man (1972)

James Earl Jones: Douglass Dilman

Photos 

Quotes 

• Wanda : How are you, Dad?

  Douglass Dilman : Numb! Numbness being a, er, defence mechanism.

  Wanda : Against what?

  Douglass Dilman : Against... against breaking into small pieces. They flew you here? From Ohio?

  Wanda : On an Air Force jet, no less. Two Secret Servicemen came right into my dorm and got me.

  Douglass Dilman : What's known as the long arm of Government!... It's nice to have you in the nation's capital for something other than a protest march.

  Wanda : Well, I guess I'll have to cool that sort of thing for a while.

  Douglass Dilman : I think maybe so. You are now a member of the nation's First Family, small though it may be. So the next time you throw rocks at the Establishment, keep in mind that the father you hit may be your own.

  [beat] 

  Douglass Dilman : Perhaps by tomorrow morning, I can get my hands to stop shaking. I'm the wrong one, Wanda.

  Wanda : Why?

  Douglass Dilman : They were expecting a black Messiah. You can tell them what they got, eh?

  Wanda : What they got is a black President. That's more than they've ever gotten.

  Douglass Dilman : May I remind you, not by election. And the rest of the country is going to want an Uncle Tom. Well, I can't be what everybody wants me to be. And I'm a little afraid that I'm going to cause this country more chaos then it really deserves.

  Wanda : Well, I don't give a damn about the rest of this country, their sensitivities, their racial hang-ups. Do me a favour, will you, please? Stop being the pedantic professor with an aversion to causes. Stop being "Senator Ineffectual". There are fifteen million people out there, tied to you by the colour of your skin. And if you go under, they drown with you. They don't want you humble. They don't want you apologetic. They just want you President.

• Douglass Dilman : We live in a time when violence is offered up as the panacea. The bullet seems to be the final instrument of political discourse. Men die violently, we bury them, we mourn for them and we seek retribution. It's a deadly pattern... a quote from Genesis: "Behold the dreamer. Come now therefore and let us slay him and we shall see what has become of his dream." We cannot murder the tyranny by murdering the tyrant and we cannot murder the dream by murdering the dreamer. And if we justify the taking of any life in the name of our morality, we've done nothing but murder our morality.

• Douglass Dilman : Black men don't burn churches and kill four children. They don't hunt down a Martin Luther King with a telescopic sight. Passion may drive you to the streets to throw a brick, but to buy a gun, plant an alibi and travel 5000 miles and kill a human being is bloodless, worthy of the selective morality of Adolf Eichmann.