(Article is below...)

Inherit the Wind (1960 film) Quotes

Inherit the Wind (1960 film) is a television show that appeared on TV in 1970 . Inherit the Wind ended in 1970.

It features Stanley Kramer as producer, Ernest Gold (composer) in charge of musical score, and Ernest Laszlo, ASC as head of cinematography.

Inherit the Wind (1960 film) is recorded in English and originally aired in United States. Each episode of Inherit the Wind (1960 film) is 128 minutes long. Inherit the Wind (1960 film) is distributed by United Artists.

The cast includes: Fredric March as Matthew Harrison Brady, Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond, Harry Morgan as Judge, Gene Kelly as E. K. Hornbeck, Elliott Reid as Prosecutor Tom Davenport, Donna Anderson as Rachel Brown, Dick York as Bertram T. Cates, Florence Eldridge as Sarah Brady, Florence Eldridge as Sam, Claude Akins as Rev. Jeremiah Brown, and Jimmy Boyd as Howard.

Inherit the Wind (1960 film) Quotes

Gene Kelly as E. K. Hornbeck

  • (Gene Kelly) "How do you write an obituary about a man who's been dead for thirty years?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "He that sups with the devil must have a long spoon."
  • (Gene Kelly) "We're growing a strange crop of agnostics this year."
  • (Gene Kelly) "He's the only man I know who can strut sitting down."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Whatever happened to silent prayer?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "The Athiest who believes in God."
  • (Unnamed) "You're the stranger, ain'tcha? Are you looking for a nice, clean place to stay?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "Madam, I had a nice clean place to stay -- and I left it, to come here."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Hello, Devil. Welcome to Hell."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Which is hungrier my stomach or my soul? Hotdog."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Aw, Henry. Why don't you wake up? Darwin was wrong. Man's still an ape. His creed's still a totem pole. When he first achieved the upright position, he took a look at the stars; thought they were something to eat. When he couldn't reach them, he decided they were groceries belonging to a bigger creature; that's how Jehovah was born."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "I wish I had your worm's-eye view of history. It would certainly make things a lot easier."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Oh ho, no. Not for you. No, you'd still be spending your time trying to make sense out of what is laughingly referred to as the "human race." Why don't you take your blinders off? Don't you know the future's already obsolete? You think man still has a noble destiny. Well I tell you he's already started on his backward march to the salt and stupecy from which he came."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "What about men like Bert Cates?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "Cates? A monkey who tried to fly. Cates climbed to the top of the totem pole, but then he jumped. And there was nobody there to catch him. Not even you."
  • (Gene Kelly) "There's only one man in the whole town who thinks, and he's in jail."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "That's why I'm here"
  • (Gene Kelly) "Sit down, Samson, you're about to get a haircut."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Evolution is a tricky question, which is hungrier, my stomach or my soul? Hot dog."
  • (Bible salesman) "Are you an evolutionist? An infidel? A sinner?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "The worst kind, I write for a newspaper."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Want a hot dog?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "No."
  • (Bible salesman) "Oh then you sir, you must be a man of God."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "No no no, ulcers."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Disillusionment is what little heroes are made of."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Cynical? That's my fascination. I'm both poles and the equator with no temperate zone in between."
  • (Gene Kelly) "You look like you need a drink."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "What I need is a miracle."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Miracle, eh? Here's a whole bag of them,"
  • (Gene Kelly) "Courtesy of Matthew Harrison Brady."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Sit down, Samson, you're about to get a haircut."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Looks like you're going out in a blaze of glory counselor. You were pretty impressive for a while there today, Henry. "Your Honor, after a while you'll be setting man against man, creed against creed" etc, etc, ad nauseam unquote. AHH, Henry. why don't you wake up? Darwin was Wrong. Man's still an ape. His creed still a totem pole. When he first achieved the upright position he took a look at the stars -- thought they were something to eat. When he couldn't reach them, he thought they were groceries belonging to a bigger creature -- that's how Jehovah was born."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Well, those are the boobs that make our laws. That's the democratic process."
  • (Gene Kelly) "I do hateful things for which people love me, and I do loveable things for which they hate me. I'm admired for my detestability. Now don't worry, little Eva. I may be rancid butter, but I'm on your side of the bread"

Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond

  • (Spencer Tracy) "The Gospel according to Brady. God speaks to Brady, and Brady tells the world. Brady, Brady, Brady, Almighty."
  • (Fredric March) "All of you know what I stand for; what I believe. I believe in the truth of the Book of Genesis. Exodus. Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomy. Joshua. Judges. Ruth. First Samuel. Second Samuel. First Kings. Second Kings. Isaiah. Jeremiah. Lamentations. Ezekiel --."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Ever been in love Hornbeck?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "Only with the sound of my own words, thank God."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "For I intend to show this court that what Bertram Cates spoke quietly one spring morning in the Hillsboro High School is not crime. It is incontrovertible as geometry to any enlightened community of minds."
  • (Elliott Reid) "In this community, Colonel Drummond, and in this sovereign state, exactly the opposite is the case. The language of the law is clear, your Honor. We do not need experts to question the validity of a law that is already on the books."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Well, what do you need? A gallows to hang him from?"
  • (Elliott Reid) "That remark is an insult to this entire community."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "And this community is an insult to the world."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "The Bible is a book. It's a good book, but it is not the only book."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "And I object to all this Col. Brady talk. I am not familiar with Mr. Brady's military record."
  • (Harry Morgan) "Well, he was made honorary colonel in our state militia the day he arrived in Hillsboro."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Well, the use of the title prejudices the case of my client. It calls up a picture of the prosecution a stride a white horse a blaze in the uniform of a military colonel and with all the forces of right and righteousness marshaled behind him."
  • (Harry Morgan) "Well, we certainly want to give you a fair hearing in this courtroom. We don't want anything prejudicial to your client. What do you suggest we do, counselor?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Break him. Make him a private. I have no serious objection to the honorary title of Private Brady."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "My God, don't you understand the meaning of what happened here today?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "What happened here has no meaning --"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "YOU have no meaning. You're like a ghost pointing an empty sleeve and smirking at everything people feel or want or struggle for. I pity you."
  • (Gene Kelly) "You pity me?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Isn't there anything? What touches you, what warms you? Every man has a dream. What do you dream about? What -- what do you need? You don't need anything, do you? People, love, an idea, just to cling to? You poor slob. You're all alone. When you go to your grave, there won't be anybody to pull the grass up over your head. Nobody to mourn you. Nobody to give a damn. You're all alone."
  • (Gene Kelly) "You're wrong, Henry. You'll be there. You're the type. Who else would defend my right to be lonely?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "I don't swear just for the hell of it. Language is a poor enough means of communication. I think we should all the words we've got. Besides, there are damn few words that anybody understands."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "It's the loneliest feeling in the world-to find yourself standing up when everybody else is sitting down. To have everybody look at you and say, "What's the matter with him?" I know. I know what it feels like. Walking down an empty street, listening to the sound of your own footsteps. Shutters closed, blinds drawn, doors locked against you. And you aren't sure whether you're walking toward something, or if you're just walking away."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "But all you have to do is knock on any door and say, "If you let me in, I'll live the way you want me to live, and I'll think the way you want me to think," and all the blinds'll go up and all the windows will open, and you'll never be lonely, ever again. If that's the case, I'll change the plea; that is, if you know the law's right and you're wrong."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Bert, whenever you see something bright, shining, perfect-seeming; all gold, with purple spots; look behind the paint. And if it's a lie, show it up for what it really is."

Claude Akins as Rev. Jeremiah Brown

  • (Claude Akins) "Oh, Lord of the tempest and the thunder, strike down this sinner, as thou did thine enemies of old in the days of the Pharaohs. Let him know the terror of thy sword. Let his soul, for all eternity, writhe in anguish and damnation."
  • (Donna Anderson) "No. No, Pa. Don't pray to destroy Bert."
  • (Claude Akins) "Lord. We ask this same curse for those who ask grace for this sinner. Though they be blood of my blood and flesh of my FLESH."

Fredric March as Matthew Harrison Brady

  • (Fredric March) "Why is it, my old friend, that you've moved so far away from me?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "All motion is relative, Matt. Maybe it's you who've moved away by standing still."
  • (Fredric March) "They're looking for something that's more perfect than what they already have. Why do you want to take that away from them when it's all they have?"
  • (Fredric March) "But your client is wrong. He is deluded. He has lost his way."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "It's a shame we don't all possess your positive knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, Mr. Brady."
  • (Fredric March) "Remember the wisdom of Solomon in the book of Proverbs. "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.""
  • (Fredric March) "I do not think about things I do not think about."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Do you ever think about things that you do think about?"
  • (Fredric March) "Is the counsel for the defense showing us the latest fashion in the great metropolitan city of Chicago?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Glad you asked me that. I brought these along special. Just so happens I bought these suspenders at Peabody's General Store in your home town Mr. Brady. Weeping Water, Nebraska."
  • (Fredric March) "Drummond and I have worked side by side in many battles for the common folk. Twice he campaigned for me when I ran for president."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "That's right."
  • (Fredric March) "After all these years we find ourselves on the opposite side of an issue."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Well, that's evolution for you."
  • (Fredric March) "We must not abandon faith. Faith is the most important thing."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Then why did God plague us with the capacity to think? Mr. Brady, why do you deny the one faculty of man that raises him above the other creatures of the earth? The power of his brain to reason. What other merit have we? The elephant is larger; the horse is swifter and stronger; the butterfly is far more beautiful; the mosquito is more prolific. Even the simple sponge is more durable. But does a sponge think?"
  • (Fredric March) "I don't know. I'm a man, not a sponge."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "But do you think a sponge thinks?"
  • (Fredric March) "If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Do you think a man should have the same privilege as a sponge?"
  • (Fredric March) "Of course."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Then this man wishes to have the same privilege of a sponge, he wishes to think."
  • (Fredric March) "There is only one great truth in the world."
  • (Fredric March) "I am more interested in the 'Rock of Ages' than I am in the age of rocks."
  • (Fredric March) "I have been to their cities and I have seen the altars upon which they sacrifice the futures of their children to the gods of science. And what are their rewards? Confusion and self-destruction. New ways to kill each other in wars. I tell you gentlemen the way of science is the way of darkness."
  • (Fredric March) "Funny how two people can start off at the same point and -- drift apart."

Dick York as Bertram T. Cates

  • (Dick York) "Its your father's church or our house, you can't live in both."
  • (Dick York) "Where do I finish? Dead with a paper medal on my chest? 'Bert Cates, World's Chump, he Died Fighting.' Well, let's face it; to him I'm a headline, to you I'm a cause?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "And to yourself? All right, let's face it. Now you chose to get into this by yourself. You didn't get into it because of his headline or because of my cause or maybe even because of their kids. You got into it because of yourself, because of something you believed in, for yourself."
  • (Dick York) "I didn't believe it would happen this way."
  • (Gene Kelly) "It can get worse, those people are in a lean and hungry mood."
  • (Gene Kelly) "They look at me as if I was a murderer."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "In a way you are. You killed one of their fairy tale notions."
  • (Dick York) "Rach, what goes on in this town is not necessarily the Christian religion every place else either."

Donna Anderson as Rachel Brown

  • (Donna Anderson) "Don't you see what's happening, Bert? They're using you as a weapon against your own people. What you think or believe isn't the point any more. You're helping something bad."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Go on now, young lady, it's not as simple as all that, good or bad, black or white, day or night. Do you know that at the top of the world, the twilight is six months long?"
  • (Donna Anderson) "Bert and I don't live on the top of the world, we live in Hillsboro. And when the sun goes down, it's dark. And why do you have to come here to make it different?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "I didn't come here to make Hillsboro different. I came here to defend his right to be different. And that's the point. How 'bout it boy?"
  • (Donna Anderson) "Don't you see? Bert didn't think it was fair that a little child couldn't go to Heaven."
  • (Donna Anderson) "He went swimming in the river with the other boys, he got a cramp and drowned. At the funeral, my father said that Tommy's soul couldn't pass on to Heaven."
  • (Dick York) "Tell them what your father really said, that Tommy's soul was damned and burning in hellfire. Religion is supposed to comfort people, not scare them to death."
  • (Donna Anderson) "What are you trying to prove anyway?"
  • (Dick York) "Rach, I'm not trying to prove anything. All I want to do is teach my students that man just wasn't planted here like a geranium in a flowerpot. That life comes from a long miracle; it didn't just take seven days."
  • (Donna Anderson) "But it's against the law. A school teacher's a public servant. He should do what the law and the school board want him to."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Has the accused have anything to say in his own defense? If not, I sentence you to life as a public servant. A silent butler in the service of your school board. Waste baskets for ideas on sale in the outer lobby."
  • (Donna Anderson) "I don't see anything funny in this Mr. Hornbeck."
  • (Gene Kelly) "Objection sustained. Neither do I."
  • (Donna Anderson) "Then why don't you just leave us alone? You newspaper people have stirred up enough trouble for Bert. What do you want anyway?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "I came to tell Boy Socrates here that the Baltimore Herald is opposed to Hemlock and will provide a lawyer."
  • (Dick York) "Who?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "Who? I don't know yet but what's the difference? A new lawyer with old tricks, an old lawyer with new tricks. Wake up Copernicus. The law is still on the side of the lawmakers and everything revolves around their terra firma."
  • (Dick York) "Then why bother, you and your newspaper?"
  • (Gene Kelly) "Because I know that the sunrise is an optical illusion. My teacher told me so."

Harry Morgan as Judge

  • (Harry Morgan) "Colonel Drummond, what reasons can you possibly have?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Well, there are two hundred of them."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "And if that's not enough there's one more. I think my client has already been found guilty."
  • (Fredric March) "Is Mr. Drummond saying that this expression of an honest emotion will in any way influence the court's impartial administration of the law?"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy, you can only punish. And I warn you, that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys every one it touches. Its upholders as well as its defiers."
  • (Harry Morgan) "Colonel Drummond --"
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Can't you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind."
  • (Harry Morgan) "I hope counsel does not mean to imply that this court is bigoted."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "Well, your honor has the right to hope."
  • (Harry Morgan) "I have the right to do more than that."
  • (Spencer Tracy) "You have the power to do more than that."

Jimmy Boyd as Howard

  • (Jimmy Boyd) "He said that men sort of evo-luted from Old World monkeys."
  • (Fredric March) "Do you hear that, friends? Old World monkeys. According to Bertram Cates, we don't even descend from good American monkeys."
  • (Jimmy Boyd) "What do you wanna be when you grow up?"

Florence Eldridge as Sam

  • (Florence Eldridge) "Youth can be so pure. What do you know of good or evil? What do you understand of the sum of a man's life?"
  • (Donna Anderson) "He betrayed me."
  • (Florence Eldridge) "You betrayed yourself. You see my husband as a saint, and so he must be right in everything he says and does. And then you see him as a devil, and everything he says and does must be wrong. Well my husband's neither a saint nor a devil. He's just a human being, and he makes mistakes."
  • (Donna Anderson) "How can you defend him?"
  • (Florence Eldridge) "It's not he I'm defending. I'm defending the forty years I've lived with this man, and watched him carry the burdens of people like you. If he's been wrong, at least he stood for something. What do you stand for? Do you believe in Bertram Cates? I believe in my husband. What do you believe in?"
  • (Florence Eldridge) "We all voted for you three times."
  • (Fredric March) "I trust it was in three separate elections. I just wish one thing, that you'd not given us quite so WARM a welcome."

Add or Update Quotes

If you have a quote to add or change and want to let us know, please fill in the form below. Include the time in the film/video if possible so we can find it.




Additional Film and TV Quotes

The Wind Journeys Quotes | How'd You Get So Rich? Quotes | Room 2426 Quotes | Do Not Shoot at White Swans Quotes | Alpha Scorpio Quotes | De Stilte van het Naderen Quotes | Baantjer, de film: De Cock en de wraak zonder einde Quotes | Jesus is a Palestinian Quotes | When the Light Comes Quotes | Het 14e kippetje Quotes | Belle van Zuylen – Madame de Charrière Quotes | To Play or to Die Quotes | Dagboek van een Oude Dwaas Quotes | The Dragon That Wasn't (Or Was He?) Quotes | Laat de Dokter maar Schuiven Quotes | De Mantel der Liefde Quotes | Dokter Pulder zaait papavers Quotes | The Burglar (1972 film) Quotes | Blue Movie (1971 film) Quotes | Bezeten, Het Gat in de Muur Quotes | Ciske de Rat (1955 film) Quotes | Pray the Devil Back to Hell Quotes | The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach Quotes | Samson and Delilah (2009 film) Quotes | The Blackout (1997 film) Quotes |