Robert Driscoll: As for your Sheikh, he's just rapacious and pathetic.
Charles Andrews: No, that's not true. I've known Fayed a long time; I knew his father. If he gets our money he'll use it to help his people.
Robert Driscoll: Or buy a Cadillac.
Eldridge: He got two for the last concessionaires, he needs a road now.
Charles Andrews: No, he'll irrigate the land, he'll build schools and hospitals. That's what they've been waiting to do.
Robert Driscoll: Well, why doesn't he get on with it, then?
Charles Andrews: Because they're naturally hesitant.
Robert Driscoll: Why?
Charles Andrews: In a way they're losing their birthright.
Robert Driscoll: What are we gonna take that's any use to them?
Charles Andrews: A lot.
Robert Driscoll: Oil? Hundreds of feet down where they can't reach - and it's probably not there anyway.
Charles Andrews: I wasn't thinking of oil.
Robert Driscoll: What were you thinking of, then?
Charles Andrews: You wouldn't understand.
Robert Driscoll: Try me.
Charles Andrews: If you touch an uncorrupted people you rob them of something.
Robert Driscoll: Oh, the noble savages...
Charles Andrews: Oh no, no. But there's something in their lives that your vulgar little marketing people can't easily estimate.
Robert Driscoll: Such as?
Charles Andrews: They have a sort of... sureness. Which we haven't got.
King: Well, I hadn't noticed it.
Charles Andrews: Look: if you're fighting the desert for existence you don't worry - you don't have time to worry - about the purposes of life. You don't have to prove your manhood, your survival does that. But, if you take away that necessity you leave them without motive. Deeply without motive. Like us.
Robert Driscoll: They'll adjust.
Charles Andrews: Oh - the way we've adjusted? Do you ever think of our customers? The millions of people driving aimlessly about on our petrol, wondering what it is they've lost? Now we're asking the Arabs to go the same way. I don't blame them for wanting to strike a hard bargain.
Robert Driscoll: I don't blame them either. But I'm not gonna be on the wrong end of it.