Brett Stevens > Brett's Quotes

“They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. They don't see the consequences.”
― Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

“Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system and this is plausible because when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore as good.”
― Theodore Kaczynski

“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The resulting texts always took a narrative term, enigmatic at first but ultimately explicit and often premonitory. The semantic distribution of these basic elements diverted them from their original meaning, thus revealing their real significance. Henceforth, every form of writing will consist of an operation of decoding, of contamination, and of sense perversion. All this because all language is essentially mystification, and everything is fiction.”
― Brion Gysin

“The modern, noisy, time-engrossing, conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates and prepares for 'unbelief' more than anything else.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Many great thinkers are said to be misanthropes, usually because they did not embrace all people around them as the greatest thing since sliced bread (which is actually a terrible thing: it massively reduces flavor if you keep it more than a day, which the shipping process by very nature imposes). This enables us to write off their opinions as “subjective,” with an airy wave of our hand and the all-knowing proclamation, “You know he was a misanthrope” or “Her misanthropy kept her from knowing the good in humanity.” This dismissive outlook is designed to protect the meek among us, who might be offended by the knowledge that recreational heroin use is actually a somewhat illogical outlook (to avoid absolute categories, we say “for most,” since for some people, dying of heroin addiction is the best solution). Misanthropy goes into the file with evil, terrorists, hackers, Nazis, pot smokers and Montana cabin-dwellers – people who have rejected society, and thus cannot be trusted.”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“To all you defenders of democracy, I'd like one answer: all of us acknowledge that there are hordes of stupid people out there. Why do you want to give them political power?”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“In the hands of the Crowd, any idea becomes perverted.”
― Brett Stevens

“Choices make us feel alive because in it we are exercising the capacity of life. [...] We feel alive when we encounter a choice and make a good one. We feel dead when we shirk from these choices, even if we're "comfortable" with our warm homes, cars, video games, pornography and serving-size packaged prefabricated foods.”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“Equality makes everyone into a prostitute for social influence points, or status. This leads them to become entirely self-serving, independent of their actual role in civilization, and this leads to a mixture of arrogance, pretense, narcissism and solipsism which is the defining feature of the person in the egalitarian society.”
― Brett Stevens

“Nihilism conditions us to actualize ourselves. It denies nothing of the inherent meaning to existence, and does not create a false "objective" reality based on our perceptions of what we wish did exist. Instead, it charges us to choose what we wish existed, and to work toward making it occur in reality.”
― Brett Stevens

“Marriage is the commitment to make a lifetime of a love, as one will most probably be creating new life forms merged of the parents. Love is what happens when one finds someone else one respects enough to wish literally union in the form of one's irreplaceable time and possibly spawn. If you look at the process of breeding, it's quite romantic: We work, so let Another be made of Us.”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“The belief, whether known in language to its bearer or not, that the individual should predominate over all other concerns is Crowdism. We name it according to the crowd because crowds are the fastest to defend individual autonomy; if any of its members are singled out, and doubt thrown upon their activities or intentions, the crowd is fragmented and loses its power. What makes crowds strong is an inability of any to criticize their members, or to suggest any kind of goal that unites people, because what makes for the best crowds is a lack of goal. Without a higher vision or ideal, crowds rapidly degenerate into raiding parties, although of a passive nature. They argue for greater “freedom.” They want more wealth. Anything they see they feel should be divided up among the crowd.”
― Brett Stevens

“Crowdists love “competition” of a fixed nature, where a single vector determines the winner. They do not like real life competition, including evolution, as it assesses the individual as a whole and does not simply rank individuals by ability. For this reason crowds love both sports events and free market capitalism, as each allow people to gain power according to a linear system. The more time you put into the system with the sole goal of making profit, excluding all else, the more likely it is that you can get wealth – and it can happen to anyone! That is the promise that makes crowds flock to these ideas. It is like the dream of being a rock star, or a baseball hero, or a billionaire: what makes it attractive is the idea that anyone can do it, if they simply devote themselves to a linear path of ascension – one that is controlled by the whims of the crowd. The crowd decides who is a baseball hero, or what to buy and thus who to make rich. Control without control.”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“What is the value of sensitives? Look around: we live in a ugly and stupid world which could have been prevented if sensitives had been present, and had the power to influence things.

That block-shaped, pressed concrete, ugly shopping mall? The princess would opine that no one could have any peace of mind with such hideous backgrounds, and demand something like a traditional building, with ornate spires and comfortable human spaces instead.

Grating, two-note music ranting about copulation and projected sexual desire? No princess would want this crass gibberish around her, nor would she recognize music which neglected the finer parts of composition, melody, harmony, rhythm, and narrative. She would hire Schubert instead.

Schools that treat students like livestock, jobs that are jails, marriages that are suicide pacts, and boring tract housing? Similarly, a princess would have no use for those, and perceive that these would be abusive to her so must be to others as well.

As children, we made fun of the sensitivity of the princess. A pea, under twenty mattresses, really? The point — in the visual-metaphorical language of fable, religion, literature, and conspiracy theory — tells us that sensitivity is in fact needed, and it needs power to save the rest of us from what we do not yet perceive.

In this story, the princess is simply a finer instrument. After twenty years, we might notice that we woke up tired in the mornings, and eventually investigate and find the pea, but she knew right away, intuitively and by the nature of her character. This is part of what makes an aristocrat.”
― Brett Stevens

“Look at the crowd. They all agree on some simple answer to a complex problem. You know in your gut that they are wrong, even if the situation does not break down into a 100% good party versus a 100% bad party. Their assertions, cloaked in positivity, reek of denial and death to the instinct in your gut and heart.”
― Brett Stevens

“Can you undog a dog back into a wolf?”
― Brett Stevens

“Some humans may be smarter than others, but together we are a mighty moron.”
― Brett Stevens

“To recognize the nature of nihilism, we see feces and death as the "dark side" of the mouth, and through that recognize life beyond the human perspective. Humans fear things that disturb them personally, and then assign to those things a universal status, like a monkey trying to convince a tribe that his enemy is its enemy. Escaping this is the essence of nihilism, or a reduction of all value except the inherent and holistic. "Disgusting" is not important; the function of the world and the human body is. Function, measures in real-world changes and results, is more important than sensations or moral judgements,feelings and emotions.”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“Strong men and strong women both possess an innate drive toward making something positive of life instead of simply avoiding bad things, where wimped men and women have no direction in life except to repeat the process of the past day and try to avoid bad things. Strong = there are good things; weak = there are safe things.”
― Brett Stevens

“Most of any job consists of “pro forma” activity, or tasks designed to keep up the appearance of being productive. The actual job is a few hours a week where your input is actually needed. The rest is designed to make your supervisors, and her managers all the way up to the top, look good because all the workers appear engaged in “important” activity.
Remember that being successful entails looking successful. Creating “important” tasks makes people look successful, so they do it to their underlings. This is why you will work all night on projects that never see the light of day, or spend hours each week filling out forms that no one sees. Appearance is more important than reality in dying civilizations.”
― Brett Stevens

“Bad rich people are created by thoughtless idiots buying scammy products.”
― Brett Stevens

“Effective thinkers and leaders create their own facts, their reason is founded on occult principles that they're not interested in justifying to midwit fact-worshipers and they re-write the rules of social and political logic, which don't even apply to human action in the first place.”
― Brett Stevens

“You cannot "educate" people; education does not improve moral character and congenital intelligence. You can show them things, and if they find meaning in them, they'll adapt to their own lifestyle and purpose. It's like eating: you take in food, break it down, and it becomes part of you where you can use it. The rest goes into the carrot patch, and might feed something else.”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“Truth doesn't exist. Truth is our perception of what does exist; our assessment of it. You will have to find the truth that's appropriate to your own life and also exists in reality. Note that I did not say "your own truth." Individualism is the greatest con job ever. You are the product of those who came before you in your bloodline, and the factors of your life. You do not exist separately from the world and you cannot escape this state. Furthermore, there's no point. Pursue truth as it is evident to you.”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“Democracy is the most popular political system because it demands nearly nothing from the citizen and gives them the ability to pretend to be anything.”
― Brett Stevens, Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity

“I don't care what 2+2 equals in some idealized, objective, universal, and absolute sense. I want to hang out with the people who think that 2+2=4, whether right or wrong.”
― Brett Stevens

“The problem with being conservative: 99% of your victories consist of saying "no" to the ideas that idiots want to adopt.”
― Brett Stevens

“Collaboration means working toward a goal; collectivism means a socialist style support group that "shares the wealth.”
― Brett Stevens