54, 40 or fight. What does that mean?...Remember the Maine...Tippecanoe and Tyler, too...They're war slogans Mr. Motss. We remember the slogans, we can't even remember the **** wars. Y'know why? Cause its show business. That's why I'm here. Naked girl, covered in Napalm. Five marines Raising the Flag, Mount Suribachi. V for Victory, Y'remember the picture, fifty years from now, they'll have forgotten the war. Gulf War? Smart bomb, falling down a chimney. Twenty five hundred missions a day, 100 days, one video of one bomb Mr. Motss. The American people bought that war.
Stanley Motss
Dustin Hoffman · 13 quotes
Conrad 'Connie' Brean
Robert De Niro · 12 quotes
Winifred Ames
Anne Heche · 4 quotes
CIA Agent Charlie Young
Derek Morgan · 3 quotes
Johnny Dean
Willie Nelson · 2 quotes
Most scenes together: Conrad 'Connie' Brean & Stanley Motss (3), Conrad 'Connie' Brean & Winifred Ames (2)
Wag the Dog quotes
Page 1 of 2Why Albania?
Why not?
What have they done to us?
What have they done FOR us? What do you know about them?
Nothing.
See? They keep to themselves. Shifty. Untrustable.
Amy Cain But there isn't a B-3 bomber.
Where'd you go to school, kid? Wellesly?
Cain Dartmouth.
Then show a little spunk. There Is no B-3 Bomber. General Scott, the best of your knowledge, is not in Seattle to talk with Boeing...
It won't hold, Connie, it won't prove out.
We don't need it to prove out. We've got less than two weeks till the election, so we just need to distract them.
What on Earth would do that?
Well, I'm working on that.
What's the thing people remember about the Gulf War? A bomb falling down a chimney. The truth: I was in the building where we shot that shot, with a one-tenth scale model made out of Legos.
Is that true?
How the **** should we know? Take my point?
Let me ask you a simple question: Why do people go to war?
I'll play your silly game.
Okay. Why do people go to war?
To ensure their way of life.
Would you go to war to do that?
I have.
And if you went to war again, who would it be against? Your ability to fight a two-ocean war against who? Who? Sweden and Togo? That time is passed. It's over. The war of the future is nuclear terrorism, and it'll be against a small group of dissidents who, unbeknownst perhaps to their own government, have... blah blah blah. To go to that war, you have to be prepared, you gotta be alert, the public has gotta be alert. Because that is the war of the future, and if you're not gearing up to fight that war, then eventually the axe will fall, and you're gonna be out on the street. You can call this a drill, you can call this job security, you can call it anything you like. But I got one for you: You said go to war to preserve your way of life? Well, Chuck, this is your way of life. And if your spy satellites don't see nothin', if there ain't no war, then you can go home and prematurely take up golf, my friend. 'Cause there ain't no war but ours.
You can't tell anyone about this.
Tracy Lime It's, like, a union thing? [pause] What would they do if I did tell someone about this?
It's all, you know, thinking ahead, thinking ahead. That's what producing is.
It's like being a plumber.
Yeah, it's like a plumber: do your job right and nobody should notice. But when you **** it up, everything gets full of shit.
What do you think about lining the President up for the Peace Prize?
Our job's over come election day.
Yeah, but c'mon...
What, just for the symmetry of the thing? [Motss nods] Well, if Kissinger can win the Peace Prize, I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up and found I'd won the Preakness.
Yeah, but our guy did bring peace.
There was never a war.
All the greater accomplishment.
As long as he gets his medications, he's fine.
What if he doesn't get them?
He's not fine.
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
Albania's hard to rhyme.
All combat takes place at night, in the rain, and at the junction of four map segments.
Can't have a war without an enemy...You could have one, but it would be a very dull war...
Corny? He says it's corny? Of course it's corny. We wouldn't be doing the flippin' thing if it wasn't corny.
I was just on my way to get drunk.