Politics & Power Quote by Arthur Miller

Miller’s bravado here isn’t just ego; it’s a courtroom objection disguised as a punchline. Set against the Cold War machinery of suspicion, he’s taking aim at the state’s attempt to turn “loyalty” into a bureaucratic performance. The McCarran Act, with its presumption that certain ideas are contagious and need quarantine, represents the era’s favorite civic fantasy: that you can legislate away dissent by making it administratively inconvenient.

The line works because it flips the power dynamic. The law is supposed to be permanent, granite, unquestionable; the artist is supposed to be ephemeral, decorative, safely marginal. Miller reverses that. He treats the statute as the disposable thing, a piece of political fashion destined for the attic, while art becomes the sturdier record of what a country actually did to itself. It’s a threat, but a refined one: not “I will beat you,” but “history will remember me, and forget you.”

There’s also a deliberately American sting to “credit to this nation.” He’s refusing exile. Instead of pleading innocence or patriotism on the government’s terms, he claims the higher civic function: the playwright as archivist of national conscience. Coming from the author of The Crucible, the subtext is unmistakable: persecutions recur, officials change names, and the paperwork rots. The plays remain as receipts.