Anthony McCarten > Quotes

“Finally, it's not the lies we tell others that do the most damage, it's those we tell ourselves. From this all troubles rise.”
― Anthony McCarten

“Titanic orator. Drunk. Wit. Patriot. Imperialist. Visionary. Tank designer. Blunderer. Swashbuckler. Aristocrat. Prisoner. War hero. War criminal. Conqueror. Laughing stock. Bricklayer. Racehorse-owner. Soldier. Painter. Politician. Journalist. Nobel Prize-winning author. The list goes on and on, but each label, when taken alone, fails to do him justice; when taken together, they offer a challenge on a par with tossing twenty jigsaw puzzles together and expecting a single unified picture.”
― Anthony McCarten, Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink

“We shall go on and we shall fight it out, here or elsewhere, and if this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”
― Anthony McCarten, Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink

“I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government – every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.”
― Anthony McCarten, Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought us Back from the Brink

“Homo homini lupus est. Man is wolf to man.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“And that's when he saw, at last, why it was so sweet to be infinitesimal: because as we become nothing, beneath the stars, so too do our troubles.”
― Anthony McCarten, Show of Hands

“But where can you go and truly not be found? Where can anyone go anymore?”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Some relationships bust you up. Some make you.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“What can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Anthony McCarten

“We’ve always supported corrupt regimes abroad if they help us with our global ambitions, so now we’re supporting corrupt regimes within.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Sin is more than a stain that can be removed by a trip to the dry cleaner. It is a wound that needs to be treated, healed.”
― Anthony McCarten, The Pope: Francis, Benedict, and the Decision That Shook the World

“Loss, this was what he felt. Loss and deprivation. One man owns, another man craves - the craving far more passionate than the dull pleasures of ownership. How galling not to have when you were the type who deserved to have - yes, deserved.”
― Anthony McCarten, Show of Hands

“...I can’t approve of a private company that profits from algorithmic amplification, dissemination and micro targeting of corrupt information, much of it produced by coordinated schemes of disinformation that splinter our shared reality, poison social discourse and paralyse democratic politics...
Pg179”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“personal privacy. That debate, a quaint twentieth-century one, is just ignorant background noise: the right to privacy is gone, lost already, or at least so compromised it’s really worthless. No, the real present and future threat is manipulation, the inculcation of prescribed attitudes and modes of behavior into an unwitting citizenry, the unseen shift by the state from monitoring to control, the last chapter of the long tale of democracy, free will deformed into willing compliance.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Amateurs borrow, professionals steal’ – as either Picasso or T. S. Eliot famously said, depending on who stole the line from whom.”
― Anthony McCarten, Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink

“for as long as self-doubt is not paralysing, it also allows for alternative points of view to be given their proper weight and consideration and so can be considered a vital step in any sound decision-making process.”
― Anthony McCarten, Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink

“And the internet, in the meantime, quietly evolves in the only way it can; just like the universe, driven by forces not fully understood, ever-expanding, forever flooding with new elements, actions, and counteractions, a growth beyond exponential, a system commensurate only with human complexity itself. The last chance at stopping or even slowing this expansion came at the moment of creation. After that, it was always only going to be something to be beheld, accepted, observed with powerless awe, like stars, like the earth’s spin, like oysters opening under a full moon to provide a glimpse of a pearl.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Because what they crave is to be known, not unknown . . . to be transparent, watched, as if they matter, as proof they matter, all their secrets laid out there in public view, their sins proclaimed, heck, even advertised! Nothing hidden. They want it that way. And why? Wanna know why? Ms. Day? Because being watched . . . it feels a little like being loved.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“It should have taken weeks to put together a story like this, since there are so many moving parts to it, but they assemble most of it in less than three hours. The first installment anyway. There will be more, much more, to come, months of it in fact, months in which serious questions will be raised about a secret program known as Fusion, which partnered with the CIA and WorldShare; about the wisdom of the Go Zero Beta Test; about the hidden domestic ambitions of the CIA; and about the trustworthiness of Cy Baxter and other Silicon Valley elites as stewards of private information.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Back in his office, he slumps into his chair, drinks a mouthful of water as his eyes fix on the magic wall: a sunlit South American rain forest, tropical birds, gigantic fruit. Maybe he should leave the country for a while? Go zero. But where can you go and truly not be found? Where can anyone go anymore?”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“SURELY NOT EVERYBODY WAS KUNG FU FIGHTING?”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Life, especially in relation to other women, would always be a competition, one she would rarely win.”
― Anthony McCarten, Show of Hands

“Schopenhauer on pessimism;”
― Anthony McCarten, Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink

“Dover Castle,”
― Anthony McCarten, Darkest Hour: How Churchill Brought England Back from the Brink

“SHE MET WARREN AT A house party in Georgetown when he was finishing his PhD and she was working at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“What chance could an algorithm have against all that inner chaos? And yet that remains the crucial challenge of the future, to bridge the gap between the calculable and the numinous, between the machine and the erratic, unstable, passion-ruled soul of man,”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero