Mary: Let me ask you something. Why are you alive?
John Preston: I'm alive... I live... To safeguard the continuity of this great society. To serve Libria.
Mary: It's circular. You exist to continue your existence. What's the point?
John Preston: What's the point of your existence?
Mary: To feel. 'Cause you've never done it, you can never know it. But it's as vital as breath. And without it, without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock... Ticking.
Brandt: What are you doing?
John Preston: I'm rearranging my desk.
Bradnt: You didn't like the way it was before?
John Preston: I had no feeling about it. I'm merely attempting to optimize.
John Preston: You expecting resistance?
Brandt: It's something you'll find about me, Cleric. I am a weary person. Cautious by nature. Always expecting the worst.
DuPont: The gun katas. Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically predictable element. The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents while keeping the defender clear of the statistically traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%. The difference of a 63% increase to lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly.
John Preston: I'll do what I can to see they go easy on you.
Partridge: We both know they never "go easy."
John Preston: Then, I'm sorry.
Partridge: No, you're not. You don't even know the meaning. Its just a vestigial word for a feeling you've never felt.
DuPont: Wait! Wait! Look at me. I’m alive. I live. I...I breathe. I feel. Now that you know it...can you really take it? Is it really worth the price?
John Preston: I pay it gladly.
Brandt: Always practising, cleric. I guess that’s why you’re the best.
John Preston: Maybe I’m just better.
Brandt: Something on your mind?
John Preston: Why do you ask?
Brandt: The intuitive arts, Cleric. It’s my job to know what you’re thinking.
[Chemist validates the Mona Lisa.]
Chemist: It's real.
John Preston: Burn it.
Mary: You can't do this. You cannot do this!
John Preston: Tetragrammaton, there's nothing we can't do.
Partridge: Don't you see, Preston? It's gone. Everything that makes us what we are, traded away.
John Preston: There's no war. No murder.
Partridge: What is it you think we do?
John Preston: No. You've been with me. You've seen how it can be, the jealousy. Rage.
Partridge: A heavy cost. I pay it gladly.
John Preston: Every time we come from the nethers to the city, it reminds me why we do what we do.
Partridge: It does?
John Preston: I beg your pardon?
[Partridge injects his Prozium.]
Partridge: It does.
Partridge: How long, Preston... 'till all this is gone? 'Till we've burned every last bit of it?
John Preston: Resources are tight. We'll get it all eventually.
John Preston: Why didn't you just leave it for the evidentiary team to collect and log?
Partridge: They miss things sometimes. I thought I'd take it down myself. Get it done properly.
Father: In the first years of the 21st century a third World War broke out. Those of us who survived knew mankind could never survive a fourth. That our own volatile natures could simply no longer be risked. So we have created a new arm of the law. The Grammaton Cleric, whose sole task it is to seek out and eradicate the true source of Man's inhumanity to Man. His ability to feel.
John Preston: You're an offender!
Reading Room Proprietor: I'm not!
John Preston: No? Then why are you so scared of me?
John Preston: Then I have no choice but to remand you to the Palace of Justice for processing.
Mary: Processing. You mean execution, don't you?
John Preston: Processing.
Chosen answer: As I see it, the point of the speeches is not to evoke emotions in the listeners, but rather to show what emotions such as anger and jealousy lead to in the course of human history. So they use historic "evidence" to justify their actions (such as killing sense offenders) and to show what emotions can lead to.
Andreas[DK]