Inherit the Wind (1960)

Dick York: Bertram T. Cates

Photos 

Quotes 

• Rachel Brown : [addressing the court about the Stebbeins boy]  He went swimming in the river with the other boys, he got a cramp and drowned. At the funeral, my father said that Tommy's soul couldn't pass on to Heaven.

  Bertram T. Cates : Tell them what your father really said, that Tommy's soul was damned and burning in hellfire! Religion is supposed to comfort people, not scare them to death!

• Bertram T. Cates : Where do I finish? Dead with a paper medal on my chest? "Bert Cates, World's Chump: He Died Fighting." Well, let's face it, to him I'm a headline, to you I'm a cause?

  Henry Drummond : And to yourself? All right, let's face it. Now you chose to get into this by yourself. You didn't get into it because of his headline or because of my cause or maybe even because of their kids! You got into it because of yourself, because of something you believed in, for yourself.

  Bertram T. Cates : I didn't believe it would happen this way.

  E. K. Hornbeck : It can get worse. Those people are in a lean and hungry mood.

  Bertram T. Cates : They look at me as if I was a murderer.

  Henry Drummond : In a way you are. You killed one of their fairy tale notions.

• Bertram T. Cates : [to Rachel]  Its your father's church or our house, you can't live in both.

• Bertram T. Cates : Rach, what goes on in this town is not necessarily the Christian religion every place else either.

• Rachel Brown : [to Bertram T Cates]  What are you trying to prove anyway?

  Bertram T. Cates : Rach, I'm not trying to prove anything. All I want to do is teach my students that man just wasn't planted here like a geranium in a flowerpot. That life comes from a long miracle; it didn't just take seven days.

  Rachel Brown : But it's against the law. A school teacher's a public servant. He should do what the law and the school board want him to.

  E. K. Hornbeck : [Pounding his hand on the chair like a gavel]  Has the accused have anything to say in his own defense? If not, I sentence you to life as a public servant. A silent butler in the service of your school board. Waste baskets for ideas on sale in the outer lobby.

  Rachel Brown : I don't see anything funny in this Mr. Hornbeck.

  E. K. Hornbeck : Objection sustained. Neither do I.

  Rachel Brown : Then why don't you just leave us alone? You newspaper people have stirred up enough trouble for Bert. What do you want anyway?

  E. K. Hornbeck : I came to tell Boy Socrates here that the Baltimore Herald is opposed to Hemlock and will provide a lawyer.

  Bertram T. Cates : Who?

  E. K. Hornbeck : Who? I don't know yet but what's the difference? A new lawyer with old tricks, an old lawyer with new tricks. Wake up Copernicus! The law is still on the side of the lawmakers and everything revolves around their terra firma.

  Bertram T. Cates : Then why bother, you and your newspaper?

  E. K. Hornbeck : [smiling]  Because I know that the sunrise is an optical illusion. My teacher told me so.

• [first lines] 

  Bertram T. Cates : [addressing his class as Mayor Jason Carter, Reverend Jeremiah Brown, Jessie Dunlap, and Deputy Sam enter the classroom to arrest him]  Good morning visitors. For our science lesson for today, we will continue our discussion of Darwin's Theory of the descent of man. As I told you yesterday, Darwin's Theory tells us that man evolved from a lower order of animals: from the first wiggly protozoa here in the sea, to the ape, and finally to man. As some of you fellas out there probably gonna say that's why some of us act like monkeys.

  [the class laughs] 

  Bertram T. Cates : But what Mr. Chatles Darwin was trying to tell us in his own way...

  Sam - Deputy Arresting Cates : Bertram T. Cates.

  Bertram T. Cates : Huh, come off it Sam, you've known me all my life.

  Sam - Deputy Arresting Cates : Bert, you're charged with violation of Public Act 31428 - Volume 37, Statute Number 31428 of a state code - which makes it unlawful for any teacher of the public schools to teach any theory that denies the creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

  [the photographer takes a photo of the arrest] 

  Sam - Deputy Arresting Cates : Bertram Cates, I hereby place ya under arrest.

  [the scene seamlessly splits to a brief montage of the case appearing as a front page story in various major newspapers: including in the Baltimore Herald with the heading 'Teacher Jailed In Test Of Evolution Law', the Indianapolis Journal as 'Are We Men Or Monkeys?', the Philadelphia Globe as 'Heavenly Hillsboro: A Return To Middle Ages', and the New York Chronicle as 'Monkey Trial In Hillsboro']