Barrett Brown > Quotes

“We're losing hope in the idea of trying to convince the American people to pay attention to something that matters. To some extent we are all the enemy, all of us have failed.”
― Barrett Brown

“Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession, and the leaders of the so-called "Intelligent Design" movement, as we shall see, are so incredibly dishonest that they could cause a veteran heroin addict to blush - not out of any moral objection on the part of the addict, but rather out of embarrassment that anyone could be so darned bad at lying. And, as we shall see, the Intelligent Design folks are bad liars indeed.”
― Barrett Brown, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny

“In the effort to understand, we may go too far in personalizing institutions, and even entire industries; we may forget that none of these things really exist. It is only individual human beings who have agendas—and these agendas are themselves complex expressions of political and personal drives, some unconscious. So long as institutions must be comprised of individuals, then, institutions will have fractures, gradients; they will be many things, and in combinations that will change over time. We speak and think in models. And so we say that “The New York Times” wants to accomplish this, or that “the CIA” is after that. So long as we recognize this as shorthand, necessary”
― Barrett Brown, My Glorious Defeats: Hacktivist, Narcissist, Anonymous: A Memoir

“If the Discovery
Institute tells a lie, it does so in order to advance the Truth. Because the Discovery Institute fights for morality, it is above morality.”
― Barrett Brown, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny