Daily Inspiration Quote by Aaron Sorkin

Sorkin is admitting the quiet contract behind prestige TV: you, the viewer, are lending time, and he owes you entertainment on the installment plan. The line sounds noble but it’s also a defense brief. “Our responsibility is to captivate you” frames storytelling as customer service, not self-expression. It’s the producer’s most revealing posture: the moral seriousness is real, but it has to clear the bar of watchability first.

Then comes the slippery pivot: “That said.” He knows the critique. If you chase “captivate” too hard, you risk turning politics into page-turning spectacle. So he preemptively sanctifies the technique by pointing to “tremendous drama” inside “heavy issues.” Subtext: I’m not trivializing the big stuff, I’m extracting its inherent theatricality. He’s arguing that governance and ethics aren’t vegetables you endure for your own good; they’re inherently kinetic when you focus on stakes, deadlines, and people forced to speak in choices.

The awkward self-correction - “the great, what you would say” - is classic Sorkin: a mind sprinting faster than a mouth, polishing even while performing. It also hints at a writer aware of audience skepticism about earnestness. In a media ecosystem trained to distrust sincerity, he’s positioning his brand of high-minded melodrama as both responsible and irresistible.

Contextually, this is the Sorkin ethos from The West Wing onward: convert civic complexity into velocity. The craft isn’t just clever dialogue; it’s persuasion by pacing. If you’re breathless, you’re listening, and if you’re listening, maybe you’ll care.