- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: I thought you hated all employers and capitalists.
- Max Brinker: I despise them! I spit on them! But, I'm villing to get rich vith them.
- Mr. Winston: After 25 years of public confidence, I find myself with a drug addict in my employ. A drug addict handling the depositors' money. An employee of mine with this loathsome, cowardly habit. I can't understand it. I know how careful your mother brought you up. The sacrifices she made sending you to school, fitting you for a good, clean Christian life. This is a nice...
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Oh, wait a minute. How do you think I started taking that stuff, for fun or pleasure? Well, I'll tell you how. They gave it to me in a German hospital to keep me from going mad with pain. Pain, agony, continual torture. Day after day, like a million ants eating me alive. You know what that means? No, you don't. Because when I was being blown to bits, you were sitting here, safe and comfortable. And you're still sitting here in judgment.
- Roger Winston: There I was, everybody making a hero of me. I accepted it because I didn't have guts enough to refuse it. It went on, and on - the honors piled up. And every one I got made it more impossible to tell the truth. I couldn't let go. Oh, I'm not fooling myself. I know that all my promotions and decorations belong to you. I know that I've stolen the credit from a real hero.
- Pa Dennis: You're trying to tell me the world ain't getting any better.
- Max Brinker: It's getting worse.
- Pa Dennis: But why is it getting worse?
- Max Brinker: Oh, the burden of proof is on you, my friend. Why is it getting better?
- Pa Dennis: Look how much longer people live.
- Max Brinker: I admit that, but that only prolongs their suffering.
- Pa Dennis: Well, if you think life is so awful, why don't you cut your throat?
- Max Brinker: Because I can't afford to buy a knife.
- [Pa hands Max a knife]
- Max Brinker: Oh, you are stupid, my friend. That's why you can't accept the doctrines of Communism, why you endure class servitude. You are a fish, a timid little rabbit, a slinking mouse afraid to fight. And what have you to lose, I ask you?
- Max Brinker, Pa Dennis: Nothing but your chains.
- Roger Winston: Tom, I can't believe it. You were killed. I saw you die.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Well, they had me out there among the clouds, but I bounced back just to fool them.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Listen. Listen, Roger. I've been in the shadow of death for so long, that nothing in life seems very important anymore.
- Mary Dennis: They settle every problem in the world four times a day. It's a regular Bureau of Misinformation.
- Max Brinker: The great Lenin once said...
- Mary Dennis: Well, he ain't gonna say it around here. Now, you go on upstairs. All you do is talk everybody into a stomachache.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Maybe you know where I could get a good cheap room?
- Mary Dennis: Why, Pa and me rent rooms in our flat upstairs. We got a nice empty now.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Bedbugs?
- Mary Dennis: Only if you bring 'em.
- Mary Dennis: Oh, this is a lovely bed. I gave $15 for the mattress alone.
- [sits on bed, starts bouncing up-and-down]
- Ruth Loring: That's the inventor.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: He's kind of cracked, isn't he?
- Ruth Loring: Yeah, a little bit.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: I guess we're all kind of cracked one way or another.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Where do you work?
- Ruth Loring: In a laundry.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: That ought to be a nice clean job.
- Pa Dennis: Primpin' for Tom again, eh? Trying to look pretty.
- Mary Dennis: No, just trying to look less like the family.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Funny, here I was down in the dumps, disgusted with everything. And then you came along and...
- Ruth Loring: And what?
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Well, I'm a new man.
- [snaps his fingers]
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Just like that.
- Ruth Loring: Why don't you tie a hook on that line and go fishing.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: I will if you'll go with me.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: I need every penny I make. I'm gonna have a baby.
- Ruth: We're going to have a baby.
- Max Brinker: What good is a baby? Anybody can have a baby.
- Mary Dennis: Yeah? Well, you just try it sometime.
- Max Brinker: Increase and multiply like rabbits. Make more poor people for the rich to prey upon, starve and exploit.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Max, you're daffy. If everybody felt like that - there wouldn't be any people left, only machines.
- Max Brinker: Vouldn't it be a better vorld?
- Leader of Agitators: The machines did it. The machines ruined us. They grabbed our jobs away. They wrecked our homes. Are we gonna take it laying down?
- Leader of Agitators: Ah. Take it to court. That's great. The lawyers get fat while our children starve to death.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: I think we all ought to celebrate. Let's go out and get some chop suey!
- Ruth Loring: Oh, I'd love it.
- Mary Dennis: No, you kids go ahead. I haven't got a thing to wear.
- Max Brinker: You fool, you idiot. Vhy, you already have an income of a thousand dollars a month. Vhy, you can hire the best lawyers. Bribe everybody. Buy your vay out of here.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: Funny, isn't it? You started way up high and I started pretty low. And we end up here in the rain, together.
- Max Brinker: You enjoy this prison? You like to sit here and rot? Blood on the money? Vho asks you vhat's on the money vhen you spend it? There's only one ting important in the vorld. To have money. Vithout it, you are just garbage. Vith it, you are a king.
- Thomas 'Tom' Holmes: And you used to hate the capitalists.
- Max Brinker: Naturally, that was before I had money.