Al > Recent Status Updates

“I do what I do because I know there’s never been a time in your life when
you’ve been more confused or more vulnerable. And if I can do something
to at least alleviate that a little bit, then so be it. Death isn’t a final ending,
Wallace. It is an ending, sure, but only to prepare you for a new beginning.”

“You need to unlearn all that you know. I wish I could just flip a switch for you, but that’s not how it works. It’s a process, Wallace, and it takes time. For me, it started when I was shown the truth. It changed me, though definitely not right away.”

“I won’t pretend to say I understand what you’re going through. How can I? And even if I thought I knew what it’s like, I’d probably still be wrong. It’s different for everyone, man. What the people went through before you and those who will come after you, it’s never going to be the same thing twice. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He says, “Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is
imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of
perpetual regret, and is there anything worse? I built something that could
actually eradicate regret. Let you find worlds where you made the right
choice.”

Daniela says, “Life doesn’t work that way. You live with your choices
and learn. You don’t cheat the system.”

...others, they too would one day be condemned to death. He as well, he too would be condemned to death. What did it matter if accused of murder he was executed for not crying at his mother’s funeral?

Why should the death of other people or a mother’s love matter so much? Why should I care about his god, the lives, the destinies we choose when one unique destiny had chosen me, and along with me millions and millions of privileged others who, like him, called themselves my brothers? Couldn’t he understand, could he really not understand? Everyone was privileged. There was no one who wasn’t privileged. All those...

...was that the condemned man had to hope for the guillotine to function properly. This is where I’d say the system is definitely faulty. And it’s true in a way. Yet I had to admit that this system held the secret of good management. Because, when all was said and done, the condemned man was obliged to collaborate morally: it was in his own best interest that everything went smoothly.

I understood what was flawed about the guillotine: no one had a chance, none whatsoever. When all was said and done, the death of the patient had been decided, once and for all. The matter was closed; it was an immutable mechanism, a foregone conclusion, not open for discussion. If by some extraordinary chance anything went wrong, they would simply start all over again. And so, logically, what was really annoying...

[...] a man who had only lived for a single day could easily live a hundred years in prison.

‘I’ve never met anyone with such a hardened soul as yours,’ he said softly. ‘Every criminal who has stood before me has always cried when faced with this symbol of suffering.’ I was about to reply that that was because they were criminals. But then I realized I was also a criminal; it was an idea I was having trouble coming to terms with.

Linguists repeatedly run up against the myth that working-class people and the less educated members of the middle class speak a simpler or coarser language. This is a pernicious illusion arising from the effortlessness of conversation.

[...] language is not just any cultural invention but the product of a special human instinct. Cultural inventions vary widely in their sophistication from society to society; within a society, the inventions are generally at the same level of sophistication.

“You can’t quantify humanity. You can’t measure it—not the way you mean to. People are passionate and flawed and fallible. They make mistakes. Their memories fade. Their eyes deceive them. Or sometimes they drink too much and fall in the lake.”

“Anything can feel like punishment if it’s taught poorly.”

“You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough.”

Actors are by nature volatile—alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.

“The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names.”

“Cats don’t have names,” it said.
“No?” said Coraline.
“No,” said the cat. “Now, you people have names. That’s because you don’t know who you are. We know who we are, so we don’t need names.”

“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?”
“By making him suffer,” he said.
“Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. [...]”

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.

If human equality is to be for ever averted—if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently—then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.

In the 18th century there was no greater indication of wealth than the amount of food you were prepared to eat. For gentlemen it was also a test of virility; gluttony was manly, not greedy.

By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

Wealthy gamblers were subject to the gentleman's code of honour. A gentleman might gamble away a fortune, but he must do it without losing his temper or integrity.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.

How could you communicate with the future? It was of its nature impossible. Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listento him: or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.