Will McAvoy quotes from The Newsroom

Will

Every two years we drive to a fire station and overthrow the government, and there isn’t a policeman in the street.

Will

I'm a registered Republican - I only seem liberal because I believe that hurricanes are caused by high barometric pressure, and not gay marriage.

Will

I've been searching for, uh... uh, Biblical quotes. None of them... We don't know how many are dead. It's gonna be a lot. It's gonna be thousands. We don't know who attacked us, we don't know what's coming tomorrow, and I don't know what I'm doing. But I'll make you this promise... I'm gonna be with you all night. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be right here.

Will

Good evening. From New York City, I'm Will McAvoy. ACN is now able to report and confirm that for the first time in almost three decades, the world has no reason to fear Osama bin Laden. In just a moment, in a live address to the nation, the president will announce that in a coordinated operation under the cover of darkness, US Special Forces tonight killed the leader of al-Qaeda and the mastermind behind the deadly attack of September 11th, 2001. It's been nine years, seven months, and 20 days since America's most wanted criminal took from us 2,977 American sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, friends and colleagues. We were transformed that morning into a different nation, more fearful and so, of course, more hostile. And while nothing, not even this victory our country has waited for for such a long time, can bring back the souls lost on that terrible morning in New York City, in Virginia, in a field in Pennsylvania, and all across America and the world, let tonight serve as a welcome reminder that throughout our history, America's darkest days have always been followed by its finest hours. Here now, from the East Room of the White House, the President of the United States. [goes into the presidents address]

Will

Ideological purity. Compromise as weakness. A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism. Denying science. Unmoved by facts. Undeterred by new information. A hostile fear of progress. A demonization of education. A need to control women's bodies. Severe xenophobia. Tribal mentality. Intolerance of dissent and a pathological hatred of the US government. They call themselves the 'Tea Party'. They can call themselves 'Conservatives', and they can even call themselves 'Republicans', though Republicans certainly shouldn't. But we should call them what they are - The American Taliban. And the American Taliban cannot survive if Dorothy Cooper is allowed to vote.

Will

That was a big room full of Republican primary voters booing an American combat soldier who, as he was speaking, was in combat. The audience members who were booing were in Orlando. Soon, they'll surely be in Hell, though not soon enough. Not everyone was booing. There were people in the audience who heard Captain Hill say that when he was deployed to Iraq, he was worried that if his sexuality was discovered, they might not let him go. As opposed to most of us who, if told we were being deployed to Iraq, would go Corporal Klinger faster than you can pull on a yellow taffeta picnic dress. I'm sure there were even some people in the building who stood up for Captain Hill. People who had the simple strength of character to turn to the fraction of a human in the seat next to them and say "How many different kinds of disgusting do you have to be to boo a man who volunteered to fight and die for you?" I'm sure those people were there. I'm sure there were many of them. But, unfortunately, none of them were on the stage. Not one of these would-be Commanders in Chief took a moment to stand with a line officer. They let him stand alone. Soldiers never do that. Leaders never do that. Witless bullies and hapless punks do it all the time. The only President on the stage last night was Stephen Hill. Godspeed, Captain Hill, and come home soon. A grateful nation is waiting to say thank you.

Will

Everyone’s gonna close their eyes including me, and the person who couldn’t keep their mouth shut is gonna raise their hand. That wouldn’t work. That doesn’t make any sense.

Will

Well, I guess it's just us now.

Will

March 2, 1955. A young black woman is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Alabama. Civil rights leaders and the ACLU rush to her side and she will be a symbol of the struggle against segregation. Her name is Claudette Colvin and she's 15 years old. She's also unmarried and pregnant. Civil rights leaders and the ACLU decide that Colvin is not the best foot forward and stand down. Eight months later, Rosa Parks happens, but during that eight months, a brilliant and charismatic young minister gets the attention of the community and is chosen to lead the bus boycotts. If Claudette Colvin doesn't get pregnant, if they'd gone in the spring instead of eight months later, Martin Luther King is a preacher you've never heard of in Montgomery.

Will

Who is Giuseppe Zangara? I don't really know. He's a guy with a gun who fired five shots in February 15, 1933, killing the Mayor of Chicago. Why? Because Zangara was standing on a wobbly chair. And the Mayor of Chicago wasn't his target. It was the guy the mayor was shaking hands with, the newly elected President Franklin Roosevelt. If Zangara's chair isn't wobbly, Roosevelt never takes office and we swear in his running mate, John Nance Garner, a man whose political ideology was the basis for his opposition to a package of legislation that would be called The New Deal and we don't survive the Great Depression.

Will

Your kitchen faucet has washers. They keep water from leaking through the joints in the fixtures. And that's what O-rings do. They're giant washers that keep pressurized hydrogen from leaking out of the SRB, the solid rocket booster, that shoots the space shuttle out of the Earth's atmosphere. These O-rings have been tested and tested under every possible circumstance but one-- cold. They didn't test to see if the O-rings worked when it was cold. Why would they even think to test for that? The thing's launching from south Florida. When's it gonna be cold? On January 28, 1986, a cold snap dragged the overnight temperature down to 18 degrees and it turns out the O-rings stopped working below 40. So 73 seconds after the Challenger lifts off, it converts itself into a bomb and detonates.

Will

I'd like to present the future Mrs. Mackenzie Morgan McHale McA- that's not going to work.

Will

You know who did great this week? The police. The FBI. The DOJ. Homeland Security. In less than 100 hours, they found two needles in a haystack the size of the world. You know who sucked? Everybody else. Two times in 24 hours, law enforcement officials 00:19 had to publically disclose information before they wanted to because either a paper or website put someone's life in danger. So I'm not so easily surrendering to citizen journalists or citizen detectives.

Will

You were a man, Charlie. You were a great big man.

Will

[On Charlie] His religion was decency. He spent a lifetime fighting its enemies.