Tucker: What's all this cloak and dagger business now? Abe: Yor office is wired. The boardroom. The whole plant. Even the washrooms. Tucker: What? Abe: Ever since you road tested the new car, forty G-men have been following you around the clock. Tucker: What for? Abe: You made the car too good. Tucker: Well that's the whole idea isn't it? To build a better mouse trap. Abe: Not if you're the mouse.
When I was a boy I used to uh... I used to read all about Edison and the Wright brothers, Mr. Ford, they were my heroes. Rags to riches, that's not just the name of a book, that's what this country was all about. We invented the free enterprise system where anybody, no matter who he was, where he came from, what class he belonged to, if he came up with a better idea about anything, there's no limit to how far he could go. I grew up a generation too late, I guess, because now the way the system works, the loner, the dreamer, the crackpot who comes up with some crazy idea that everybody laughs at, that later turns out to revolutionize the world, he's squashed from above before he even gets his head out of the water, because the bureaucrats they would rather kill a new idea than let it rock the boat. If Benjamin Franklin were alive today he would be thrown in jail for sailing a kite without a license. It's true. We're all puffed up with ourselves now 'cause we invented the bomb. Dropped the... Beat the daylights out of the Japanese, the Nazis. But if big business closes the door on the little guy with a new idea, we're not only closing the door on progress but we're sabotaging everything we fought for, everything the country stands for. And one day we're going to find ourselves at the bottom of the heap, instead of king of the hill having no idea how we got there, buying our radios and our cars from our former enemies. I don't believe that's going to happen. I can't believe it because if I ever stop believing in the plain ol' common horse sense of the American people there'd be no way I could get out of bed in the morning.