Philip Wyeth > Quotes

“Take that old sales pitch from Apple computers. 'Think different.' It's a nice sentiment for children, but what happens in real life? You come back proudly holding up what you found, but then people cover their eyes and scream, 'No, no! We didn't really mean for you to think different!' The truth is, if you just want to be weird on the surface, that's fine. They'll pay you handsomely as long as you go with the flow. But don't call the plan into question, otherwise they have to rewrite everything.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Core

“All these white folks that move to LA, they don't just come here looking for something. I think they also tryin' to get away from something. They are renouncing something about their white-bread Midwest world, and LA is the temple where they make the blood sacrifice to get their revenge.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Maze

“A large banner above the teaching board read, 'Everything is racist. Everything else is a human right.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Core

“He hated himself for allowing his heart to be tossed by the waves of her flicking tongue. This Earth Mother who in one moment offered limitless hope—a glorious horizon that would inspire him to perform any heroic deed she might require—before hurtling him into the hollow despair of her disdain. The goddess had chosen another! Or perhaps no one at all. What mattered was that the lovely warmth of her gaze no longer shone upon you.”
― Philip Wyeth, Hot Ash and the Oasis Defect

“And I know that we won't be able to escape it in deep space, either. We might succeed in ignoring this doubt for a while—keep everyone so busy doing what it takes to build the ships to get us out there. But eventually the bustle ends, and then we're left with ourselves again. It'll be the loneliest revelation ever—half a million miles from home.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Core

“Have we not already seen the cultural malaise of the past fifty years, as people living within this worldwide cargo cult have been divorced from the need to produce anything, as well as from the consequences of their own actions? They have incrementally been separated from the land, from their factories, from creating art, and now they even abandon marriage and reproduction.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Mind

“He loved the game. The battle that raged inside each player's head. The little ball that sat motionless, defying you to hit it. No defenders, no game clock, no excuses. And maybe that's why the highs were so high and the lows felt so low. Could you in the moment quiet your thoughts and execute? It was glorious when you did!”
― Philip Wyeth, Chasing the Best Days

“Modestianity exists today because there was a pressing need for a philosophy that looked at the present in order to face the future, rather than looking backward for guidance today.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Mind

“We are the ones who saw how perpetual motion, as realized by the Worker-Factory-Mechanic, could be the vanguard of an equitable future. All that was needed was a raw material capable of matching AI's tireless pace. We found it in that bountiful gift that comes from our dear Mother Earth: industrial-grade hemp.”
― Philip Wyeth, Hot Ash and the Oasis Defect

“The United States of America as it had been known for centuries was no more. Transformed in the blink of an eye without consulting anyone, let alone by royal decree. And the people being overrun were expected not to mourn the loss of their homeland, but just roll over and fade away.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Maze

“The best of that So Cal feeling really was something you wished you could bottle.”
― Philip Wyeth, Chasing the Best Days

“Why should everything that happens be the entire world's business?”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Maze

“She had a working theory about what was going on, which she called the dilemma of the steam valve. On one hand, the world was being built up and maintained virtually on autopilot by an interconnected network of machines that could assemble and repair themselves. But people still had doubts and flaws and uncontrollable passions that needed some kind of release. That didn't always make for a rosy picture.”
― Philip Wyeth, Hot Ash and the Oasis Defect

“For those of you who still believe two plus two equals four, don't be afraid to walk out that door.'
-Rev. Matthias G. Witherspoon”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Maze

“Everyone thinks their revolution is about to break out and win the day.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations USA

“It's a bunch of people with master's degrees coming in and using us as guinea pigs. … Because they think they're social workers. But their minds work like anthropologists or missionaries trying to save the natives. They're so out of touch from our experience. They've never suffered, they've never been desperate—so the ideas that work in their world just won't take down here.
-Nolan Simmons”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations USA

“A large banner above the teaching board read, Everything is racist. Everything else is a human right.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Core

“Everybody wants to go to the nice place—instead of doing the work to make a place nice.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Maze

“Hearing Robert Plant and Steven Tyler wail and howl took him back to his own apprehensive first steps—when money was tight, hopes were unfulfilled only because they were untested—and everything still felt like it was possible. Fast forward twenty-five years, and now maybe the world looked more like a sadder version of the movie Rear Window. Where in each apartment you would see a lonely man quietly singing away his troubles in harmony with the rock 'n' roll gods whose voices transcended space and time.”
― Philip Wyeth, Chasing the Best Days

“He began to understand how this idealistic accounting project would inevitably become a monolithic tool of vengeance, which lashed out blindly without context or other sympathetic considerations. Even as restitution milestones were reached over time, the system itself would never feel the human satisfaction that justice had been served. The insatiable bots would crawl on and on...”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Mind

“Detective, what I'm trying to tell you is that there's no point in my being at this desk. Or anywhere else! We set it all into motion perfectly, and now the system itself can see to everything. It's like they're just keeping us around as... I don't know. Furniture? To occupy themselves? Learn from us? Or... maybe it's a form of tribute.”
― Philip Wyeth, Hot Ash and the Oasis Defect

“I always stated it explicitly: All politics is war. All art is political. Therefore all art is a weapon of war. Don't wilt now at the first sight of your own blood. … You want a Purple Heart for your trouble? Fine! But really, you should be thankful to end up stacked in an unmarked mass grave, if in your dying moment you know that your life was given to win the sacred War for Equity.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Mind

“Remember and remember again, that in dark times all a man need do is seek the truth. Protect it and speak it. Then, even if he is a wanderer for years and years, righteousness shall survive while the tallest of castles crumble.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Maze

“Today your ancestors may hang in effigy because of the crumbling documents that survived long enough to be scanned, but tomorrow you will be stored in a comprehensive 3D dossier and dissected without context or empathy by future historians, social scientists, judges, and jailers.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations USA

“It's as if every classroom has its own pied piper luring children away from their parents, from their own desires—from whatever they'd known to be true before entering that school building. Who gave them the right to access our minds? Why did they think they had that authority? We were innocent children!”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Mind

“And then what? Kate would teach this baby words… in order to tell her how privileged she was? To start planting those seeds of doubt and self-recrimination before she'd even taken her first steps? Make this child question herself, rather than blossom confidently?”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Maze

“We all know what enhanced emotions can lead to. Love, hate, passion, pain! So if you wanna shut us down just because somebody pulls a trigger with tasties in their blood... Well, either the world gets boring real quick—or you create a lot more problems for yourself.”
― Philip Wyeth, Hot Ash and the Oasis Defect

“We aren't all Americans now—we're all just in America.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations Core

“Greg knew he was just one little speck in this gauntlet that every person both ran and worked to maintain. The system that, while striving to let no part of a human life which could feed it go to waste, in turn left the potential for greatness to lie fallow. Better that a hundred thousand mundane tasks were done reliably, than to wait for the brilliant breakthrough that would turn the world on its axis.”
― Philip Wyeth, Chasing the Best Days

“It's a bunch of people with master's degrees coming in and using us as guinea pigs. … Because they think they're social workers. But their minds work like anthropologists or missionaries trying to save the natives. They're so out of touch from our experience. They've never suffered, they've never been desperate—so the ideas that work in their world just won't take down here.”
― Philip Wyeth, Reparations USA