Sean Penn credited as playing...
Samuel J. Bicke
- Samuel Bicke: Slavery never really ended in this country. It just gave it another name... Em-plo-yee.
- Samuel Bicke: Who are these men? Who are these men, maestro, who keep us waiting at their feet? The meek shall not inherit the earth. The earth belongs to the bullies who do not care how they get to the top, as long as they arrive. I am an honest man, and if that is to be my undoing then so be it... but I will not go quietly.
- [trashes the bin]
- Samuel Bicke: [softly] It's about money, Dick.
- Samuel Bicke: It's about... money, Dick.
- Samuel Bicke: [loudly] It's about money! It's about money, Dick! It's about mon-ey, Dick! Money!
- Samuel Bicke: I wanna throw an idea at you. Zebras.
- Harold Mann: Zebras?
- Samuel Bicke: Zebras. You see, they're black, and they're white. The Black Panthers become The Zebras, and membership will double.
- Samuel Bicke: Please let them know, maestro. Let them know I was nervous... that unlike the powerful I was not so arrogant, as to be sure that my actions were righteous. Certainty is the disease of kings, maestro... and Sam Bicke was many things, but not a king. He just wanted to make a change, to stop the lies... and he aimed high.
- Samuel Bicke: What happened, Mr. Bernstein... to the land of plenty. When there's plenty for the few, and nothing for the plenty. Is that the American Dream?
- Samuel Bicke: Mr. Bernstein, sir there are people who sit and wait their lives away on the promise of the dream that will not come... they are the sheep.
- Samuel Bicke: [desperately upset] I'm just, I'm trying to keep my family together... and that little guy can't do it anymore, he just can't do it anymore. Because there's is, there's a cancer... in the system, the whole system has a cancer and I'm being punished because I resist. But somebody has to resist, just somebody has to resist.
- [first lines]
- Samuel Bicke: Testing. Testing. Testing. One, two, three. Mr. Maestro, Leonard Bernstein, tape number one.
- Samuel Bicke: My name is Sam Bicke, and I consider myself a grain of sand. On this beach called America there are 211 million grains of sand. Three billion on the beach we call Earth. If I am lucky, if I am lucky, the action that I am about to take
- [big smile]
- Samuel Bicke: will show the powerful that even the least grain of sand has is him the power to destroy them.
- Samuel Bicke: The government is looking for black business men.
- Bonny Simmons: I been here 15 years and they ain't found me yet.
- Samuel Bicke: It wasn't like a light bulb, really. It was more like an old candle, you know, just a plain, simple idea.