The Twilight Zone (TV Series)

No Time Like the Past (1963)

Robert Cornthwaite: Hanford

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Quotes 

• Hanford : [at dinner]  ... So what are your world views, Driscoll?

  Paul Driscoll : ...I don't have any, Mr. Hanford.

  Hanford : Of course you do, man. We ALL do! Like all this nonsense about giving the Indians land. What we need are twenty General Custers and a hundred thousand men! What we should have done is swept across the prairie, destroying every redskin that stood before us. Then we should have planted the American flag deep, high, and proud!

  Abigail Sloan : I think the country is tired of fighting, Mr. Hanford. I think we were bled dry by the Indian Wars. I think anything we can accomplish peacefully, with treaties, we should... so long as it saves lives.

  Hanford : Now, I trust this isn't the path you spoon-feed your students. Treaties, indeed! Peace, indeed! Why, the virility of a nation is in direct proportion to its military prowess. I *live* for the day when this country SWEEPS AWAY...

  [notices Driscoll's disapproving look] 

  Hanford : ... You some kind of a pacifist, Driscoll?

  Paul Driscoll : No, just some sick idiot who's seen too many boys die because of too many men who fight their battles at dining room tables... and who probably wouldn't last so long as twenty-five seconds in a REAL skirmish if they WERE thrust into it.

  Hanford : ...I take offense at that remark, Mr. Driscoll!

  Paul Driscoll : And I take offense at "armchair warriors" like yourself - who clearly don't know what a shrapnel, or a bullet, or a saber wound feels like... or what death smells like after three days on an empty, sun-drenched battlefield... who've never seen the look on a man's face when he realizes he's lost a limb, and his blood is seeping out. Mr. Hanford, you have a great enthusiasm for "planting the American flag deep, high, and proud." But you don't have a nodding acquaintance with what it's like for American families to bury their sons in the same soil!

• Hanford : I'll not sit here and take talk like that.

  Paul Driscoll : No, of course not. You'll go back to your bank, and it'll be business as usual... until next dinnertime, when you'll give us another vacuous speech about enlarging and strengthening countries by filling graveyards. Well, if THIS country shares your devilishly virile sentiments - as I dread it just might - then you're in for some gratifying times, Mr. Hanford. Believe me, there'll be a lot of graveyards for America to fill... and not just her own. We'll show how red our blood is, because we'll spill it. And we'll show how red our neighbors' blood is, because we'll spill that too. Chances are you won't have to spill any yourself, or to be there when all that I've spoken of comes to pass. I simply don't know whether to pity you because of said likelihood, or to envy you for it.