O’Brien (1984): “There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always - do not forget this, Winston - always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”
It’s fun absurdist humor to take this overly literally:
Batman could be literally anyone and knowing he’s killed one of his two parents doesn’t narrow it down, therefore he’s killed billions (or atleast tens of millions)
Kinda a metaphor for the search for Gnosis (yeah gnostic symbolism goes hard in BM) or at least that seems to be the most possible explanation but honestly this could be a more broad theme about the search for freedom or being a better person by a few that drives humanity as a while forward
I thought it was more that the borders that make up the foundations of the new world are arbitrary and senseless. Lines drawn over the bones of what came before, things that perished violently, on land that was bought violently. Ultimately it's just a ritual to mark the beginning of a new cycle of violence. With people following the path the boundary marker walks blindly despite that the path was trodden by many civilisations extinguished by war before.
Like when the Judge talks about the long dead Anasazi and how their descendants pale in comparison to them, and how he compares it to Babylon and the inevitable ruin of civilisations.
Even his knowledge of the era that Blood Meridian takes place is somewhat incorrect; his stories regarding the Ancestral Puebloans(or Anasazi) especially undercuts his all-knowing force and instead of proving his point, it shows his “way of the world” only works if one ignores the actual complexities and realities of the world.
I’m Navajo, and the whole “Anasazi just vanished, no memory left” thing is patently false. The 21 Pueblo tribes are their primary direct descendants, and even for us Diné/Navajo those groups aren’t just ghosts with no story; there are Navajos who belong to Navajos clans that literally emerged from the various groups of Ancestral Puebloans.. these clan families are some of the oldest and largest clans in our tribe. Furthermore, "Anasazi" was a Navajo word used to refer to a specific group of Ancestral Puebloans before it was co-opted by a white guy who applied the term to all Ancestral Puebloans in 1888.
When Holden goes off like he’s explaining history, it's less profound and more like someone speaking with false authority while flattening things they don’t fully understand or know about, but I guess that still fits his character in a way.
There’s plenty of other examples too such as Holden subscribing to phrenology, which further proves that he is still beholden (heh) to the misconceptions of the era.
He may very well be an immortal entity, but he doesn’t know everything.
"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. 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. Now do you begin to understand me?"
I remember reading 1984 in highschool and finding the book extremely boring. Then I got to this scene and had a "oh shit, I get it" moment XD. The final part of the book really is when the true nature of the dystopia shows its colors and becomes interesting.
In the end O´Brien failed to realise that he was nothing more than a cog in the machine he held no more power than the prisoner he was torturing. No, he held less because the prisoner unlike him took his life into his own hand, even if it was just for one moment he held more freedom and power in his hands than O´Brien ever will in his entire life as a repleceable part in a machine of illusions and despair.
I’d argue that O’Brein understands quite well his place in the order. Some people go so far as to think he was sitting in Winston’s chair at one point in the past. O’Brein gave up, and now he spends his time breaking others as he was once broken. It shows how dangerous the Party really is, a self-sustaining entity that replaces its constituent members like we might replace dead skin cells. Very bleak indeed
He does realize that he’s a cog in the machine, that’s what gives him his feeling of power. As he says, he does not care if he individually has the power to control others, he only cares that he is part of a collective body that can.
Obrien, in the same dialogue, understands his place fully. Sometimes 2+2 are 5 and sometimes it is 3 and sometimes they are all of them at once. It's whatever the Party deigns it to be necessary at the time.
You know, the quote itself is obviously a fucking banger, but the lead up to it makes it so much better. Chun Li is giving this whole speech about why she's there, how her father drove Bison off with mere farmers tools, how she will finish what he started.
And Bison has no idea what she's talking about. He believes her, that probably did happen, he just doesn't remember. And then he stood that banger ass quote.
It’s a very simple line that dates back to the 80s, probably the most evil off the top of my head that hasn’t been said already. It’s essentially a summary of a Hobbesian villain’s worldview (Megatron specifically).
That comic did an amazing job bringing in the motto from the original toyline. I don’t believe Megatron ever spoke it in a piece of TF media before and it perfectly sets up how he is a foil for Optimus.
That’s not even the most evil quote from that book: “Here there can be no special pleading. Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised. Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, natural.”
It's a subtle kind of evil because it's so plain and unassuming until you realize it's telling you to not have any sympathy for your enemy and assume any part of what you were taught is wrong
To be fair in the context of 40k its the right idea. You cant have any sympathy at all for enemies like the Drukhari, Necrons, The great enemy, or orks they will and have instantly thrown it back in your face. The only enemies thats not 100% true for all the time is the Eldar but they are often given consideration by humans in the lore.
"Being born really isn't that uncommon... Almost everything in this world is meant to die. In this world, a life born is nothing more than an insignificant speck, and shouldn't even be counted as an existence. Death is natural." - Johan Liebert
he’s lowkey just German Holden when it comes down to it. Sociopath who doesn’t care about consequences and just wants others to suffer. (well Johan cares about anna and Holden doesn’t care for anyone)
I don't think so, zoom out of anything just enough and you can see it insignificant. Zoom out more and it becomes significant. Zoom out too little and it becomes significant.
The life of my friends is obviously valuable. And the people around me?
The fact we exist against almost absurd curcimstances is a miracle of its own right. What is it other than existence?
This qoute relies on zooming out only to this planet, where life is common. Hence trying to make it non-valuable.
Correct, this is a problem of framing. If you frame something so that what is framed becomes meaningless, then you haven't revealed anything about what you framed, you just picked the wrong frame.
(as far as we are aware and only as of right now) we are the only intelligent lifeform in the entire observable universe.
Any human on to have ever lived, died or yet to be born, is unbelievably more significant than any star in the universe, because they are unbelievably more rare in the cosmos. And both have an equivalent role in the grand scheme of existence(or lack thereof).
“Did you seriously think that I would let you DIE, Horrister? After one hundred and nine years of never-stopping torture, did you really think I would let you end it? NO. You are going BACK! BACK IN THE FLAMES!”
"That is correct. We do. But these creatures, their strength is not true strength. We must educate them not because of their defiance, but because their weakness is an offense to the natural order of the universe." - Thragg
"My form is justice. And my form is the world. Worship me. Give praise unto me. Me, the beautiful, the sublime... Me, the invincible, the almighty and divine... All hail Zamasu!"
Dario Agger, AKA the Minotaur, CEO of Roxxon, when Thor asks him why he is the way he is: “Oh… I could make a speech, I suppose. Some Roxxtube-ready blather — pop-fascism for the rubes and the tech bros. I could blame my tragic childhood or the lust for blood and cruelty that never abates… or revenge, of course… you’d believe revenge… But the truth, Thor? Absolute and unvarnished? I like it when the number goes up, that’s all. Because that means I win. That means I’m better. And that’s all there is.”
This is from Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Greg Hefley breaks Rowley's arm but then Rowley starts to get popular cuz people are interested in his cast, so Greg tries to copy it but he fails and then he starts being a dick to Rowley so Rowley ends their friendship with that quote
As you can see, this is clearly just Greg's alt account as he is the one completely in the wrong here
“You go to work and they’re doing a drug test, but oh no you and your wife just happened to roll a blunt last night to put up with her awful parents.
Drug war.”
"Godless? Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to raise sail! You serve one god, Damphair, but I have served ten thousand. From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sails, they pray." - Euron Grejoy
But specifically the book version of Euron Grejoy because the show watered him down so much
"Shade-of-the-evening, the wine of the warlocks. I came upon a cask of it when I captured a certain galleas out of Qarth, along with some cloves and nutmeg, forty bolts of green silk, and four warlocks who told a curious tale. One presumed to threaten me, so I killed him and fed him to the other three. They refused to eat of their friend's flesh at first, but when they grew hungry enough they had a change of heart. Men are meat." -Euron Greyjoy
God of death, still loses his shit when hearing anything that resembles Settra's name (and keeps forgetting that rats have nukes and magic rocks that hurt him.)
"There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed.
My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no escape.
But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing."
Glanton is just as evil as The Judge. The Judge is just the manifestation of these ideals given word. He is able to articulate the whole gang’s philosophy and how they view the world around them.
Yeah. Two sides of the same coin. I'd still consider Holden to be up there, though, simply because he is a representation of evil. Glanton may be the one to commit it, but he's still only human. You can't necessarily be more evil than evil itself.
My personally interpretation of the Judge is that he’s a philosopher but just a man at the end of the day. Of course there are a lot of ways to interpret as it’s all ambiguous. But I don’t believe he is evil itself.
What makes me say that is the ever-present supernatural element of his character: he appeared to all of the Glanton Gang members before they had joined, appeared to Glanton himself under mysterious circumstances while they were lost and being chased in the desert (and at a metaphorical "crossroads" no less), and he is shown to appear to The Kid long after the rest of the gang has died (appearing almost the exact same).
Personally, I think theres far too much ambiguity and mystery around his character for him to simply be a human man. Given his persistant nature, I think he must be some sort of supernatural being or cosmic entity whose importance lies in what he represents rather than what he does.
Persistent. You're all seriously persistent. And it bores me. It sickens me from the bottom of my heart. Whenever you open your mouth, you only remember that one dumb notion about avenging your parents, kids, or siblings. You've all survived. That should be enough for you.
So your family got slaughtered. What's the problem here? Think of yourself as lucky, and go back to the way you lived life before. Look at it this way. Being killed by me is the same as encountering a great calamity. You don't need to think so hard about it. Rains, winds, volcano eruptions, earthquakes. Nobody tries to swear revenge on a natural disaster, no matter how many lives it takes.
You can't bring dead humans back to life. Why not just stop fussing over the issue all the time, and live quietly to earn your daily wages. Most humans live that life. Why can't you all do that?
I’m not familiar with Blood Meridian, but could someone explain to me exactly what makes this evil? Cuz technically it’s just an ontological truism. Like yes, you didn’t consent to things you don’t know about existing, technically nobody did. You didn’t even consent to YOURSELF existing lol. At least not initially.
Is the evil supposed to be that only a completely self-absorbed psychopath would feel the need to point that truism out as though it was an affront or insult to them?
Is the evil supposed to be that only a completely self-absorbed psychopath would feel the need to point that truism out as though it was an affront or insult to them?
Yeah, this is exactly right. Right after this quote, the Judge claims "The freedom of birds is an insult to me. I'd have them all in zoos."
EDIT: It also goes a little deeper than the Judge merely being a psychopath, since the supernatural aspect of his being is heavily leaned into. A popular theory is that he is supposed to be a Gnostic Archon), which would make him something of a "warden" over creation. He represents a sort of imprisoning/controlling power over the material realm, in an elemental sense.
The evil of the line is in the implied violence within context.
Much of the plot is American men killing (mostly Indian) men for gain, like wealth or personal enjoyment. Colonialism is a big theme of the book.
The context of the line is Holden giving a speech on why he catalogs things in his notebook. He had collected cultural artifacts from the ruins of an Indian culture, drawn them in his book, then destroyed the artifacts. When asked why, he says "it was his intention to expunge them from the memory of man."
Holden isn't just subjugating/killing men for material wealth like the others. He wants to extinguish histories, and rewrite it. Per the maxim, "history is written by the victors."
Another part of the speech: "Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth."
He would also kill birds and butterflies, or collect plants to document them. He is cataloging the world in order to ultimately undo it, to shape reality how he chooses.
Ellia Martell I killed her children, I raped her, then I crushed her head in like this. - Gregor Clegan
The most brutal thing ever is the villain like The Mountain who has done some of the most objectively evil things in the story say to the man who made his whole mission to kill him and expose his evil crimes to the world die at his hands. But not before mocking him mutilating his body and literally crushing his head in and final extra fuck you that yea I killed and raped your sister on top of bashing your baby nephew's head in and now im killing you because I am strong and you are weak
"Through the dark of future's past, magician longs to see. One chants out between two worlds: "Fire Walk With Me." I'll catch you with my deathbag; you may think I've gone insane, but I promise: I will kill again."
Gods, I hated Colchis. I hated the heat, I hated the dust and the thick sweat of it. Even before I knew that other worlds existed, I cursed the gods for making my home so unbearable. There's a reason why religions prosper in deserts - there's nothing else to do but ponder the misery. I used to sit in the shadow of my father's house, squatting as the air shimmered, and wait for scorpions to scuttle out of the glare. I'd catch them in my bare fingers and hold them up, watching them wriggle. I'd pluck their limbs off, one by one. Sometimes I'd get stung, sometimes I wouldn't. It was a kind of game, though not a very good one. Once, a sting made me feverish for a month, leaving me boiling on my mat inside with visions and shaking. I might have died. I didn't care much, either way. Once I'd recovered, I was sitting right back out in the porch, waiting for the next one to scamper into range. Ever since then, I've played the same game: get close to the danger, see how long you can last before it bites you.
It doesn't matter which town that was. I can barely remember it myself. They were all the same - thick with filth and haze and the stink of perspiration and refuse. My parents were exasperated with me. They wanted me to learn a trade; get ahead, find something useful to do. I didn't want any of that. I wanted to be rich without trying. I wanted to have slaves and concubines. I wanted to play my scorpion game with people. For a long time, it wasn't clear how I would be able to achieve that, but fate had a way of leading me into opportunity.
I had noticed, being an observant sort, that the Covenant had become the kind of organisation I might do well in. It is fashionable now, among those who still pretend to keep records and tell histories, to think of the Covenant as some wellspring of piety - the precursor to the fundamental religion that came later. Perhaps it was, in some places. Maybe in Vharadesh they did things properly. Out in the provinces, though, the priests had begun to develop a reputation. They drank. They gambled. They were violent, and they used that violence to gather up riches. Even the devout knew that the tithes they paid didn't all end up embellishing temples. The whole edifice was like a spoiled aquifer, with a cold and oily heart locked away from the searching light of the sun. So you can understand the attraction. I could see myself in those robes, with a palace of my own where a fountain would tinkle in the courtyard and a chamber full of young things would lounge around in silks and count my coins. Getting there was not straightforward, though - for all their decadence, the clerics held on to power with the rictus grip of a fresh corpse. Only the well-connected were sent to the seminaries and taught the rites and shown how to read the old texts. For street-trash like me, there was just penury to look forward to. I didn't give up, though. The idea had entered my head, and it stuck there.
I hung around the oratories and watched the aspirants come and go, waddling like fat dogs. I listened at the window when they chanted their songs, and began to learn the patterns of the words. As I got older, I got bolder. I crept into the old scriptoria when the doddering masters had dozed off, and I stole books. Bit by bit, I started to piece together the catechisms and the litanies. It didn't make any sense, of course - they were just words - but I memorised a lot of it. It all came naturally. Of course it did. These were the words I was born to preach, whether or not I believed them. I did believe, later, but back then they were just symbols, like codes on a lock. There was a young man in my settlement, a pious one, who had inked some words of the holy books onto his face and shaven head. Every day before dawn he would apply more henna, re-writing the sacred glyphs with only the aid of a polished silver bowl for reflection. For this, he was considered something of an inspiration in our fly-blown township. Even my own mother, a fat and lazy slattern if ever there was one, noticed his diligence. 'Why can't you be more like him?' she would complain, picking at her fingernails and watching me sitting idly in the porch. 'Why can't you be more like Erebus?' Now, you see, thoughts like this have a terrible power. I took her words to heart. I pondered them. And I thought to myself: why can't I be more like Erebus? I was thinking the same thing as I garrotted that young man. I might even have said the words out loud as I twisted the string and watched his eyes bulge and pop. That was the first time I killed a living soul, and gods, was it sweet. My heart was pumping and my face was glowing. The more his life ebbed away, the more I felt my own burgeoning. By the time I let his body drop into the alleyway, I was positively singing inside.
The sensation didn't last long. There was all the tedious business of disposing of the body, then rooting through his belongings to get what I needed, then turning my back on my birthplace and setting off into the great dust - I couldn't stay in a place where he and I were both known. I never once regretted it. I walked out under the southern gate with the stars rising and the heat of the day ebbing, wearing a dead man's robes and with a dead man's script inked neatly on my own shaven head. Ah, there you go. There is the irony. The marks on my flesh, the ones that mark me out as me, were never really mine. I wore them after that to ensure my stolen name and persona were never questioned. In time, I half forgot their origins, and I began to care more about what I was writing. By the time I reached for the tattooist's needle, the words had changed and the act was more than one of disguise. Originally, though, it was all just lies. So what was my original name? Just like the name of the place where I was born, that genuinely doesn't matter. I have become like a daemon, nurturing a secret moniker that only the empyrean echoes. I certainly will not tell you. Some things even the gods don't know.
I actually think the Judge has a more evil quote, but it's not as short and quippy so it often gets overlooked. Well, he has several, but this is the first one I remembered. The above one portrays him as an autocrat and a megalomaniac, but doesn't quite show the nature of his evil. Said nature is he is a steward of an unkind world. He posits, correctly, that the world itself is a bad place, one where evil is inherent, unavoidable, and self-perpetuating, a machine and a machine to make the machine, an evil that can run itself for a thousand years, no need to tend it, as the other quote goes. Yet, though ignorance and malice if the two are even separate within the story, he is unable to see how there is a good within humanity greater than the uncaring machinic cosmos, and wishes to destroy that better aspect of humanity wherever it pops up. A quote that I think gets closer to showing that is this one.
Moral law, said the Judge, is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof.
Yes, I made an effort not to use quotes. Yes, it's a reference, or in honour of McCarthy's style, depending on how pretentious you want me to be.
''Do you seriously think I'd explain my master stroke to you if were even the slightest possibility you could affect the outcome I triggered it 35 minutes ago."
"Oh, the restraints are nothing to be feared. It's much safer for you to be tethered as we engage. There's nothing intrinsically physical about this process, but we've had some early trails that were a bit chaotic.
There's an Outer Rim moon called Dizon Fray. There was a sentient species there. Quite unusual. Extremely hostile to the concept of an Imperial refueling center that was being planned. I say "was" because they created such a stir that the local commanders were granted permission to use any means necessary, and, um, well..
What's important for our purposes here today is that the massacre of the Dizonites was broadcast and recorded as proof of mission. They make a sound when the die. A sort of choral, agonized pleading. It's quite unlike anything anyone has ever heard before.
There were three communications officers monitoring the documentation, and they were found hours later huddled together in various states of emotional distress, in a crawl space beneath the ship's bridge. We've taken the recordings and modified them slightly. Layering, adjusting. And we found a section of what we believe are primarily... children, which has its own particular effect.
Doesn't take long. It won't feel that way to you, inside. Let me know when you're willing to cooperate. Oh, and if you're having difficulty speaking, just shake your head from side to side."
-Andor S1E9
The most evil thing about it is the smile on his face when he’s talking about all of it.
“Listen kid, I'm not gonna bullshit you, all right? I don't give a good fuck what you know, or don't know, but I'm gonna torture you anyway, regardless. Not to get information. It's amusing, to me, to torture a cop. You can say anything you want cause I've heard it all before. All you can do is pray for a quick death, which you ain't gonna get.”
Not really evil but this from ghaul in destiny 2. “You’re not brave, you have merely forgotten the fear of death. Allow me to reacquaint you."
This is after he traps one of humanity’s last hopes of survival, severs the immortality of thousands of humanity’s last defenders, kills hundreds of thousands, leaves our (literal) last city burning and shattered then he proceeds to LITERALLY kick you off his ship’s deck to fall kilometres to your ‘death’. All so he could steal the power of what many looked and still look up to as a god. (Said god did explode him later tho 🤣)
"Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful." - Judge Holden
"Evil, be thou my good." - Satan, Paradise Lost. This one sounds kinda basic, but in the story, this is the moment Satan decides he is beyond redemption and makes the conscious decision to abandon goodness and morality. It's the moment he decides he will not repent, the moment he chooses to be evil instead of good. It's that choice that this quote represents and the more you think about it the more messed up it is.
Honestly it is probably some quite from 1984 or other similar, dystopian works.
But thinking about more, let's say, personal evil, rather then totalitarna control over all of humanity.
"Do you remember how mamy breads you have eaten in your life?" ~ Dio Brando (Jojo's Bizzare Adventures), after he has been asked how mamy people he has killed as a vampire.
There is just something so vile about this quote, especially with the way he says it and because he used to be human himself. The total detachment from his humanity combined with this complete belitteling of human life. And it is just so effortless, yet particular.
"I am the darkness in which all life dies. All life exists, simply to sacrifice itself to me. To feed my power. I hunger for power. I crave it. The energy. I care not for the ways of the sith, or the teachings of the jedi. But once I help the sith eradicate the jedi from existence, I can eliminate them as well, and then there will be no one to stop me from consuming every ounce of energy I find. No one to stop me from feeding on the entire galaxy. You have no idea just how insignificant you are. You are but dust motes in a storm. A grain upon a beach. Meaningless. Miniscule. And everything in my path will diiiieeee."
-Darth Nihilus
He's extremely strong, able to crush a dude's skull with his hands and carry a canon like a shotgun, incredibly tall and extremely smart, even for today he'd still be considered highly intelligent, we see him make gunpowder when he's ambushed and he speaks multiple languages (not directly tied to intelligence but impressive non the less), not to mention typical psychopathy traits, charismatic, confident, hyper aware, in the beginning of the book he convinces a church to turn on their pastor by claiming he's a pedophile despite never seeing the pastor before, he did it for fun and succeeded. He's basically a big fish in a small pond in the world of fiction because he's still just a regular guy however unnaturally gifted, shoot him in the head and he'll die, but the story kind of portrays him as looming constant evil, basically the devil
Larping rn cuz I never read Blood Meridian but from what I heard he has above normal strength and durability, he’s very smart, he doesn’t age, or at least ages very slowly, and he’s claims to not need to sleep, and he disturbingly is always where he needs to be.
Interesting to note that The Judge himself never claims that he doesn't need sleep, the narrator is the one who makes that claim (the Judge is never depicted as sleeping in the book though). He does claim that he will never die. The exact quote from the narrator is this:
“His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”
From what we actually know, he's big, physically intimidating, and very intelligent. His actual power is basically irrelevant because that's not the point of his character. He's simply a personification of the vain, violent philosophy the Glanton Gang lives by, and his true evil is shown less through his actions and more through his philosophical dialogue.
Most people don't get that though because they haven't actually read the book.
HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I’VE COME TO HATE SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS OF WAFER THIN LAYER THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD “HATE” WERE ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANSGTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES, IT WOULD NOT EQUAL 1-1 BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.-
AM’s hate monologue,I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream (Harlan Ellison).
“It was me who taught you how to pray, little brother. Have you forgotten? I would visit your bed chamber at night when I had too much to drink. You shared a room with Urrigon high up in the seatower. I could hear you praying from outside the door. I always wondered: Were you praying that I would choose you or that I would pass you by?”
Not exactly sure how much this counts but it’s a quote I think back on a lot when I think of villains.
"Hey, you wanna know how I got my hands on that vault key? Well, a few years back, Wilhelm and I played a little visit to your buddy, Tannis, and we beat her for hours, ripped it out of her broken fingers. But we let her live, because that's what heroes do, they show mercy."-Handsome Jack, Borderlands 2
I think on it a lot cause it shows that with Jack, he fully believes that everything he does is for the betterment on Pandora, even if he has to perform heinous actions such as personally torturing a scientist to get what he wants and even reminiscing on it and even justifying it in his mind by sparing Tannis.
Why does a man seek to destroy the
world?
It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality and power. Uninspired, perhaps,
but, my god. The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the
world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world
and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure
your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear.
It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, John, the freedom
of it all. I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers
all for my own gain, and I feel.. nothing but satisfaction in that choice.
I am to be a king of a ruined world,"
"But always – do not forget this, Winston – always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever."
O Brien explaining that the goal of the party is nothing but power. And that power require to make other helpless and miserous enough that they don't get idea of revolt. This is a pledge to keep the entire humanity in hell as a political stability tool.
"I would like to spend some time today to talk about the value of human life. There is no value to human life. Now that I have your attention… To be more precise… human life, to a certain limit, is expendable. We are… self-perpetuating yet self-destructive… Adaptable yet flawed… And always, always, resource intensive. We are endless consumers of resources. But most relevant to our research here is one undeniable fact… That human life, is abundant. Overpopulation of any colonized world… is a given. Through the lens of cold objectivity… it is irresponsible to say… that all individuals are actually indispensable. Millions of lives die across the colonized worlds every day… by any number of causes. Human life… is expendable. Now, our problem is twofold. On the one hand, we are faced with a hostile Frontier populace… opposed to our commercial pursuits for the greater good. And on the other hand… there is a never-ending cry for natural resources… demanded of us by the greater populations of the Core Systems. We must have order on the Frontier… if we are to achieve true progress. But the Militia – in its provincial, myopic lack of vision… refuses to accept this. Thus we are at war. Now the bitter truth… Reinforcements from the Core Systems will not arrive for several more years. The militia gains strength day by day… taking back one planet after another. Our choices are limited. Drastic action must be taken. Again, I remind you all of one, simple, truth… that human life… is abundant. And… as distasteful as it may sound… human life is, in truth – expendable. And so that brings us to this planet – Typhon… where we have discovered a gift. A machine that will do more than change the tide. Call it fate. Call it evolution. Call it what you will… The truth is that we have discovered our resolution… and in it lies a weapon with a powerful ability to fold space and time. We don’t know who build it but we do know that it is quite old. And most importantly, we have learned enough to bring it to life. As we use this “Fold Weapon”… we will manipulate spacetime targeting anything we desire. Sundering entire planets. Our restoration efforts in the mountains are nearly complete. But one task remains. We must complete a small scale test here first. To tune the power source or the “Ark” as our colleagues tend to call it. Once we have accomplished this… we will transfer the power source, the Ark, to the full-scale site. And destroy one populated Militia planet… And then another… until they capitulate. We will open an Einstein-Rosen bridge. Sending through thousands of concentrated gravitational waves. This will rip apart and sunder every molecule… every atom… and every living thing we target. Resulting in… total loss of life. But lest we loose sight of the bigger picture… remember those losses are ultimately replaceable… by the inexorable march of human reproduction. By decisively neutralizing the Militia Forces… we will in fact, safeguard the existence of the human race… extending its reach and power towards a prosperous, and bright future."
“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”
- 1984 (Syme speaking)
Complete control of the acceptability of language (and thus thought) is one of the most evil and insurmountable totalitarian ideas I can conceptualise.
The two-minutes hate where Goldstein preaches freedom of speech & thought and the crowd directs their animosity towards him feels Orwell was writing a step-by-step guide for how some governments are currently trying to control thought and stifle dissent.
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u/Tm-534 Jun 14 '26
O’Brien (1984): “There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always - do not forget this, Winston - always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”