President Merkin Muffley

Hello? Uh, hello? Hello, Dmitri? Listen, I can’t hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little? [pause] Oh, that’s much better.… Now then, Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. [pause] The BOMB, Dmitri! The hydrogen bomb! Well now, what happened is, uh, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of, well, he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little … funny. And uh, he went and did a silly thing. Well, I’ll tell you what he did, he ordered his planes … to attack your country. Well, let me finish, Dmitri. Let me finish, Dmitri. Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it? Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dmitri? … I’m just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened. It’s a friendly call. Of course it’s a friendly call. Listen, if it wasn’t friendly, you probably wouldn’t have even got it. They will not reach their targets for at least another hour. [pause] I’m sorry too, Dmitri. I’m very sorry. All right! You’re sorrier than I am! But I am sorry as well. I am as sorry as you are Dmitri. Don’t say that you are more sorry than I am, because I am capable of being just as sorry as you are. So we’re both sorry, all right? All right.

President Merkin Muffley, as played by Peter Sellers, speaking to the Soviet premier in Stanley Kubrick’s classic dark comedy, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), written by Terry Southern and Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel Red Alert (1958) by Peter George.