The Minority Report

by

Philip K. Dick

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Minority Report makes teaching easy.

John Anderton Character Analysis

The protagonist of the story, Anderton is the creator and head of Precrime. He is Lisa’s husband and colleague, Witwer’s boss, and Kaplan’s murderer. At the beginning of the story, Anderton is deeply insecure about his physical appearance and the security of his position at the agency, worrying that his new assistant—the handsome, young, and confident Witwer—is secretly plotting to take over Anderton’s role as Police Commissioner. He initially believes that the Senate is using Witwer to remove Anderton from his position, and he even accuses his own wife of being in on it. When Anderton learns that two of the three precogs have predicted that he will commit a crime—a majority rule, or majority report, that deems Anderton officially guilty even though he hasn’t actually done anything yet—Anderton immediately believes that Witwer rigged the system to get him out of the way. With police on his tail to send him to a detention camp for his would-be crime, murdering a stranger named Kaplan, Anderton is at first concerned with his own safety and resolves to not kill this mysterious Kaplan person. However, when he comes to realize that Kaplan, a retired army general trying to take down Precrime, is actually behind the plot, Anderton decides that he must focus on saving Precrime. As Anderton pieces together over the course of the story, Kaplan is trying to destabilize Precrime and make it look faulty so that the army might gain more power for itself, eradicating the careful checks and balances that exist between the two organizations. Kaplan assumes that Anderton won’t actually commit murder, which would invalidate the majority report and prove that just because two of the three precogs predict that the person will commit a crime doesn’t mean the person actually will. Such an outcome would dismantle the basis of Precrime and make the whole system look unjust and ineffectual. Thus, Anderton changes his mind and resolves to kill Kaplan—even if it means having to flee to another planet—in order to keep Precrime credible and functioning.

John Anderton Quotes in The Minority Report

The The Minority Report quotes below are all either spoken by John Anderton or refer to John Anderton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Security vs. Liberty Theme Icon
).
Section 1 Quotes

“You’ve probably grasped the basic legalistic drawback to precrime methodology. We’re taking in individuals who have broken no law.”

Related Characters: John Anderton (speaker), Witwer
Page Number: 224
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 2 Quotes

“I’m being framed—deliberately and maliciously. This creature is out to get my job. The Senate is getting at me through him.”

Related Characters: John Anderton (speaker), Witwer, Lisa
Page Number: 229
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 5 Quotes

“…unanimity of all three precogs is a hoped-for but seldom-achieved phenomenon, acting-Commissioner Witwer explains. It is much more common to obtain a collaborative majority report of two precogs, plus a minority report of some slight variation, usually with reference to time and place, from the third mutant. This is explained by the theory of multiple-futures. If only one time-path existed, precognitive information would be of no importance, since no possibility would exist, in possessing this information, of altering the future.”

Related Characters: John Anderton, Witwer
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 240
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 7 Quotes

“Perhaps a lot of the people in the camps are like you.”

“No,” Anderton insisted. But he was beginning to feel uneasy about it, too. “I was in a position to see the card, to get a look at the report. That’s what did it.”

“But—” Lisa gestured significantly. “Perhaps all of them would have reacted that way. We could have told them the truth.”

“It would have been too great a risk,” he answered stubbornly.

Related Characters: John Anderton (speaker), Lisa (speaker)
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:

“You’ve convinced me that you’re innocent. I mean, it’s obvious that you won’t commit a murder. But you must realize now that the original report, the majority report, was not a fake. Nobody falsified it. Ed Witwer didn’t create it. There’s no plot against you, and there never was. If you’re going to accept this minority report as genuine you’ll have to accept the majority one, also.”

Related Characters: Lisa (speaker), John Anderton, Witwer
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 9 Quotes

“But there can be no valid knowledge about the future. As soon as precognitive information is obtained, it cancels itself out. The assertion that this man will commit a future crime is paradoxical. The very act of possessing this data renders it spurious. In every case, without exception, the report of the three police precogs has invalidated their own data. If no arrests had been made, there would still have been no crimes committed.”

Related Characters: Kaplan (speaker), John Anderton
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 257
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 10 Quotes

Each report was different,” Anderton concluded. “Each was unique. But two of them agreed on one point. If left free, I would kill Kaplan. That created the illusion of a majority report. Actually, that’s all it was—an illusion. ‘Donna’ and ‘Mike’ previewed the same event—but in two totally different time-paths, occurring under totally different situations.”

Related Characters: John Anderton (speaker), Kaplan, Witwer
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 259-260
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Minority Report LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Minority Report PDF

John Anderton Quotes in The Minority Report

The The Minority Report quotes below are all either spoken by John Anderton or refer to John Anderton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Security vs. Liberty Theme Icon
).
Section 1 Quotes

“You’ve probably grasped the basic legalistic drawback to precrime methodology. We’re taking in individuals who have broken no law.”

Related Characters: John Anderton (speaker), Witwer
Page Number: 224
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 2 Quotes

“I’m being framed—deliberately and maliciously. This creature is out to get my job. The Senate is getting at me through him.”

Related Characters: John Anderton (speaker), Witwer, Lisa
Page Number: 229
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 5 Quotes

“…unanimity of all three precogs is a hoped-for but seldom-achieved phenomenon, acting-Commissioner Witwer explains. It is much more common to obtain a collaborative majority report of two precogs, plus a minority report of some slight variation, usually with reference to time and place, from the third mutant. This is explained by the theory of multiple-futures. If only one time-path existed, precognitive information would be of no importance, since no possibility would exist, in possessing this information, of altering the future.”

Related Characters: John Anderton, Witwer
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 240
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 7 Quotes

“Perhaps a lot of the people in the camps are like you.”

“No,” Anderton insisted. But he was beginning to feel uneasy about it, too. “I was in a position to see the card, to get a look at the report. That’s what did it.”

“But—” Lisa gestured significantly. “Perhaps all of them would have reacted that way. We could have told them the truth.”

“It would have been too great a risk,” he answered stubbornly.

Related Characters: John Anderton (speaker), Lisa (speaker)
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:

“You’ve convinced me that you’re innocent. I mean, it’s obvious that you won’t commit a murder. But you must realize now that the original report, the majority report, was not a fake. Nobody falsified it. Ed Witwer didn’t create it. There’s no plot against you, and there never was. If you’re going to accept this minority report as genuine you’ll have to accept the majority one, also.”

Related Characters: Lisa (speaker), John Anderton, Witwer
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 245
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 9 Quotes

“But there can be no valid knowledge about the future. As soon as precognitive information is obtained, it cancels itself out. The assertion that this man will commit a future crime is paradoxical. The very act of possessing this data renders it spurious. In every case, without exception, the report of the three police precogs has invalidated their own data. If no arrests had been made, there would still have been no crimes committed.”

Related Characters: Kaplan (speaker), John Anderton
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 257
Explanation and Analysis:
Section 10 Quotes

Each report was different,” Anderton concluded. “Each was unique. But two of them agreed on one point. If left free, I would kill Kaplan. That created the illusion of a majority report. Actually, that’s all it was—an illusion. ‘Donna’ and ‘Mike’ previewed the same event—but in two totally different time-paths, occurring under totally different situations.”

Related Characters: John Anderton (speaker), Kaplan, Witwer
Related Symbols: Precogs
Page Number: 259-260
Explanation and Analysis: