I don't have to tell you things are bad.
Everybody knows things are bad.
It's a depression.
Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job.
The dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter.
Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.
We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
We know things are bad - worse than bad! They're crazy!
It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore.
We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'
Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad!
I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write.
I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.
All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, God damn it! My life has Value!'
So I want you to get up now.
I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.
I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell,
'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'
I want this to go around because it’s still true and relevant today as it was in 1976. The air has become toxic, riots in the streets, and all we do is sit in our houses and look at the news telling us that the world is crumbling around us. I can’t be the only one angry about what the world has come to. I don’t know how to handle the situations out there in the world, but all I know is you got to get mad! Stand up and say to the world:
I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!