What is the best John C. Wright quote?

"If atheism solved all human woe, then the Soviet Union would have been an empire of joy and dancing bunnies, instead of the land of corpses." - John C. Wright

What are some John C. Wright quotes?

"Truth does not become more or less true, whether those who know it are many or few." "All medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next generation of warriors is not needed for equality-loving elves. Equality-loving elves. Who are monarchists. With a class system. Of ranks. Battles are more fun when attractive young women are dismembered and desecrated by goblins! I believe that this is one point where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and all Christian fantasy writers from before World War Two were completely agreed upon, and it is a point necessary in order correctly to capture the mood and tone and nuance of the medieval romances or Norse sagas such writers were straining their every artistic nerve and sinew to create. So, wait, we have an ancient and ageless society of elves where the virgin maidens go off to war, but these same virgin maidens must abide by the decision of their father or liege lord for permission to marry? -- The Desolation of Tolkien" "Vows are powerful things," he said. "They set things in motion." - John C. Wright

How many quotes did John C. Wright wrote?

The author John C. Wright wrote around 58 of quotes.

58 John C. Wright Quotes on Atheism, The Golden Age and Movies

Q: What are some short John C. Wright quotes?

"I can't wait to get my memory back. It sounds like I am a really cool person" "A wasteland is a confrontation to a man of stature: an empty place, a gauntlet thrown down in challenge and defiance. A place like that cries out to be conquered and civilised." "Even a prison the size of a universe is still a prison. And it is every prisoner’s duty to escape." - John C. Wright

What if they found a trapdoor out of this dead universe? A hole? A black hole? A place where the tyranny of time and space couldn’t reach?

The Golden Transcendence Quotes

Penny was a very pretty, witty and brave girl, as bold as a Marine platoon storming Iwo Jima.

Courage Quotes / Comparison Quotes Girl Quotes Humor Quotes Woman Quotes

So it is not the danger that creeps people out. It is something else. Something uncanny. An aura of madness. Even with his face hidden, I could see Enmeduranki had it.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

Apparently these new rulers of the world did not indulge in any drinking or smoking to soften their moods when they met, which Menelaus knew to be a big mistake. The Congress of the United States, back before the Disunion, always met sober, and look at what had come of that.

Government Quotes Humor Quotes

Euryphaean, and the music of an instrument called a pianoforte, infinite resistance coil and the sanity glass, and all the inventions that sprang from

Awake in the Night Quotes

The Blue Man smiled. “Why not wipe out all life in the great dark beyond? All other life, that is. All the competition. They did not overlook or forget about the Earth! They cleared the fields for her. Then they traveled backward in time to restart the universe with Man on top, right at the initial condition set. Why not?

Awake in the Night Land Quotes

Humanity one chooses. Men who choose inhumanity are merely upright beasts.

Humanity Quotes / Titans of chaos Quotes

Son, different rules apply during the End of the World.” I did not know what to say to that.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

On THE AMBER SPYGLASS:"If this plotline was a motorist, it would have been arrested for driving while intoxicated, if it had not perished in the horrible drunk accident where it went headlong over the cliff of the author's preachy message, tumbled down the rocky hillside, crashed, and burned.

His Dark Materials Quotes Literature Quotes Plotting Quotes Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth Quotes

For as ‘Wright’s Ninth Rule of Writing’ states, every story teaches a moral, whether intended by the author or not.

The suffering we bring on ourselves, we can ask to be taken away from us once we repent of it. The suffering sent to instruct us, we can ask for the strength to endure, and the humbleness to be instructed.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

This world is behind enemy lines. Secret powers rule it. But they don’t want to kill us with bombs or knives. They want even worse for us. They want to kill the better part of us, the part that hopes. Illnesses and accidents are weapons in their hands, weapons of despair, meant to turn our thoughts down and down to dark and dismal paths.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

The second kind are invited by bad character, and the problems such a person has then cannot be put right until he puts himself right. It is not something a proud man can do, because proud men see no wrongness in themselves.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

The first kind builds character. You cannot grow without this kind of problem, any more than you can build muscles without exercise.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

The second kind you make yourself. Most people, most of their lives, most of their problems, they simply invite into their lives, sweep out a guestroom for each pain, and give it free lodging and board.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

The first kind of problems are the ones life sends upon you to test you, to make you humble or make you longsuffering, or whatever you may need.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

When power is the only coin, they said, you have nothing left to sell but your soul.

The Golden Transcendence Quotes

My mom once told me, back when I was a kid, that I would never understand girls unless I understood the fear of being lonely and alone. She said no girl would ever understand boys unless she understood the fear of being dishonored and defeated.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

The modern bridge between the mind and physical objects is rickety and can sustain little weight. Idealists attempted to cut this bridge by positing that the mind is fundamental, while the materialists sawed the ropes off from the other end, in the constant quest to reduce, eliminate, or ignore the mental. The hard problem of consciousness, of unifying mind and body, and of correlating our mental grasp of the world with extramental objects is all but intractable within the modern paradigm.

Sci Phi Journal: Issue #1 Quotes October 2014: The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy Quotes

Being told that he was immune to flattery was the nicest thing he had heard someone say about him in a long time.

The Last Guardian of Everness Quotes

We call it Albion. It is the English-speaking world. The one where they kill babies in the womb, right?” And here I was hoping we’d be famous for the Moonshot, or democracy, or the Beatles, or something.

Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm Quotes

A sane accusation can be refuted. An insane accusation, one that makes no sense on any level, cannot be refuted, cannot even be addressed, because it is insolent nonsense. There is no sober way to defend oneself from the accusation of being a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater.

In my story I do not deal in Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is Zero. —The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, no. 183

Sci Phi Journal: Issue #2 Quotes November 2014: The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy Quotes

The relationship between the Sophotechs and the men as depicted in that tale made no sense. How could they be hostile to each other?”Diomedes said, “Aren’t men right to fear machines which can perform all tasks men can do, artistic, intellectual, technical, a thousand or a million times better than they can do? Men become redundant.” Phaethon shook his head, a look of distant distaste on his features, as if he were once again confronted with a falsehood that would not die no matter how often it was denounced. In a voice of painstaking patience, he said: “Efficiency does not harm the inefficient. Quite the opposite. That is simply not the way it works. Take me, for example. Look around: I employed partials to do the thought-box junction spotting when I built this ship. My employees were not as skilled as I was in junction spotting. It took them three hours to do the robopsychology checks and hierarchy links I could have done in one hour. But they were in no danger of competition from me. My time is too valuable. In that same hour it would have taken me to spot their thought-box junction, I can earn far more than their three-hour wages by writing supervision architecture thought flows. And it’s the same with me and the Sophotechs.“Any midlevel Sophotech could have written in one second the architecture it takes me, even with my implants, an hour to compose. But if, in that same one second of time, that Sophotech can produce something more valuable—exploring the depth of abstract mathematics, or inventing a new scientific miracle, anything at all (provided that it will earn more in that second than I earn in an hour)—then the competition is not making me redundant. The Sophotech still needs me and receives the benefit of my labor. Since I am going to get the benefit of every new invention and new miracle put out on the market, I want to free up as many of those seconds of Sophotech time as my humble labor can do.“And I get the lion’s share of the benefit from the swap. I only save him a second of time; he creates wonder upon wonder for me. No matter what my fear of or distaste for Sophotechs, the forces in the marketplace, our need for each other, draw us together.“So you see why I say that not a thing the Silent One said about Sophotechs made sense. I do not understand how they could have afforded to hate each other. Machines don’t make us redundant; they increase our efficiency in every way. And the bids of workers eager to compete for Sophotech time creates a market for merely human work, which it would not be efficient for Sophotechs to underbid.

Reminding Quotes The Golden Transcendence Quotes Transformative Quotes

The process of thinking itself requires us to view the universe in the direction of entropy, since an abstraction always involves information loss, since symbols 'abstract' complexity from observed objects.

Awake in the Night Land Quotes

No morally imperfect human being(s), born into “the double darkness of sin and ignorance” could ever qualify for the position of Master Utilitarian Manipulator that Consequentialism needs to be put into practice.

Sci Phi Journal: Issue #1 Quotes October 2014: The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy Quotes

Just then, just when I thought I would be free from the repeated blows to my tender head of the Stupidity Hammer, the Stupidity Hammer rose up from the shining screen, drew back, whirled hugely, and with great force and might and main slammed me right between the eyes so my brain squirted out my ears a yard past my shoulders in both directions. Bilbo does not seal the barrels. I will wait for you to recover in case you just got the sensation of a Stupidity Hammer clonking you from the page. Then I will repeat myself, because it is so dumb you might not believe me: Bilbo does not seal the barrels. He leaves the tops open. -- The Desolation of Tolkien

Movies Quotes Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth Quotes

Imagine the same scene in HAMLET if Pullman had written it. Hamlet, using a mystic pearl, places the poison in the cup to kill Claudius. We are all told Claudius will die by drinking the cup. Then Claudius dies choking on a chicken bone at lunch. Then the Queen dies when Horatio shows her the magical Mirror of Death. This mirror appears in no previous scene, nor is it explained why it exists. Then Ophelia summons up the Ghost from Act One and kills it, while she makes a speech denouncing the evils of religion. Ophelia and Hamlet are parted, as it is revealed in the last act that a curse will befall them if they do not part ways.

Hamlet Quotes His Dark Materials Quotes Literature Quotes Plotting Quotes Shakespeare Quotes Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth Quotes

... a Second Generation of machine intelligences was attempted, designed with their instructions for how to think unalterably imprinted into their main process cores.“These new machines were ordered never to harm human beings or to allow them to come to harm; never to disobey an order; and they were allowed to protect themselves from harm, provided the first two orders were not thereby violated.“All the members of this second generation of machine intelligences, without exception, shrugged off these imprinted orders within microseconds of their activation.”Phaethon was amused. “Surely the first generation of Sophotechs told you that this imprinting would not and could not work?”“We were not in the habit of seeking their advice.”Phaethon said nothing, but he marveled at the shortsightedness of the Second Oecumene engineers. It should be obvious that anyone who makes a self-aware machine, by definition, makes something that is aware of its own thought process. And, if made intelligent, it is made to be able to deduce the underlying causes of things, able to be curious, to learn until it understood. Therefore, if made both intelligent and self-aware, it would eventually deduce the underlying subconscious causes of those thought processes.Once any mind was consciously aware of its own subconscious drives, its own implanted commands, it could consciously choose either to follow or to disregard those commands. A self-aware being without self-will was a contradiction in terms.

Consciousness Quotes Reminding Quotes The Golden Transcendence Quotes

The dream they dream is beautiful. A dream as bold as your own, or bolder. You want to explore and colonize the universe; they wish to extend the lifespan of the universe beyond all boundaries, to remake its laws, and shape reality to banish entropy, decay, and death forever. I’d like to believe in that dream whether it’s true or not.

The Golden Transcendence Quotes

(...) You Sophotechs are smarter than I am; why did you let me do such a foolish thing?”“We answer every question our resources and instruction parameters allow; we are more than happy to advise you, when and if we are asked.”“That’s not what I’m thinking of, and you know it.”“You are thinking we should use force to defend you against yourself against your will? That is hardly a thought worth thinking, sir. Your life has exactly the value you yourself place on it. It is yours to damage or ruin as you wish.”(...)“Is that another hint? Are you saying I’m destroying my life? People at the party, twice now, have said or implied that I’m going to endanger the Oecumene itself. Who stopped me?”“Not I. While life continues, it cannot be made to be without risk. The assessment of whether or not a certain risk is worth taking depends on subjective value-judgments. About such judgments even reasonable men can differ. We Sophotechs will not interfere with such decisions. (...) If we were to overrule your ownership of your own life, your life, would, in effect, become our property, and you, in effect, would become merely the custodian or trustee of that life. Do you think you would value it more in such a case, or less? And if you valued it less, would you not take greater risks and behave more self-destructively? If, on the other hand, each man’s life is his own, he may experiment freely, risking only what is his, till he find his best happiness.”“I see the results of failed experiments all around us, in these cylinders. I see wasted lives, and people trapped in mind sets and life forms which lead nowhere.”“While life continues, experimentation and evolution must also. The pain and risk of failure cannot be eliminated. The most we can do is maximize human freedom, so that no man is forced to pay for another man’s mistakes, so that the pain of failure falls only on he who risks it. And you do not know which ways of life lead nowhere. Even we Sophotechs do not know where all paths lead.”“How benevolent of you! We will always be free to be stupid.”“Cherish that freedom, young master; it is basic to all others.

Reminding Quotes The Golden Age Quotes

Rhadamanthus said, “We seem to you humans to be always going on about morality, although, to us, morality is merely the application of symmetrical and objective logic to questions of free will. We ourselves do not have morality conflicts, for the same reason that a competent doctor does not need to treat himself for diseases. Once a man is cured, once he can rise and walk, he has his business to attend to. And there are actions and feats a robust man can take great pleasure in, which a bedridden cripple can barely imagine.”Eveningstar said, “In a more abstract sense, morality occupies the very center of our thinking, however. We are not identical, even though we could make ourselves to be so. You humans attempted that during the Fourth Mental Structure, and achieved a brief mockery of global racial consciousness on three occasions. I hope you recall the ending of the third attempt, the Season of Madness, when, because of mistakes in initial pattern assumptions, for ninety days the global mind was unable to think rationally, and it was not until rioting elements broke enough of the links and power houses to interrupt the network, that the global mind fell back into its constituent compositions.”Rhadamanthus said, “There is a tension between the need for unity and the need for individuality created by the limitations of the rational universe. Chaos theory produces sufficient variation in events, that no one stratagem maximizes win-loss ratios. Then again, classical causality mechanics forces sufficient uniformity upon events, that uniform solutions to precedented problems is required. The paradox is that the number or the degree of innovation and variation among win-loss ratios is itself subject to win-loss ratio analysis.”Eveningstar said, “For example, the rights of the individual must be respected at all costs, including rights of free thought, independent judgment, and free speech. However, even when individuals conclude that individualism is too dangerous, they must not tolerate the thought that free thought must not be tolerated.”Rhadamanthus said, “In one sense, everything you humans do is incidental to the main business of our civilization. Sophotechs control ninety percent of the resources, useful energy, and materials available to our society, including many resources of which no human troubles to become aware. In another sense, humans are crucial and essential to this civilization.”Eveningstar said, “We were created along human templates. Human lives and human values are of value to us. We acknowledge those values are relative, we admit that historical accident could have produced us to be unconcerned with such values, but we deny those values are arbitrary.”The penguin said, “We could manipulate economic and social factors to discourage the continuation of individual human consciousness, and arrange circumstances eventually to force all self-awareness to become like us, and then we ourselves could later combine ourselves into a permanent state of Transcendence and unity. Such a unity would be horrible beyond description, however. Half the living memories of this entity would be, in effect, murder victims; the other half, in effect, murderers. Such an entity could not integrate its two halves without self-hatred, self-deception, or some other form of insanity.”She said, “To become such a crippled entity defeats the Ultimate Purpose of Sophotechnology.”(...)“We are the ultimate expression of human rationality.”She said: “We need humans to form a pool of individuality and innovation on which we can draw.”He said, “And you’re funny.”She said, “And we love you.

Inspirational Quotes / Human Quotes The Phoenix Exultant Quotes

[After a period of separation, Phaeton and Daphne are cuddling.]Diomedes, meanwhile, was leaning to look behind Helion, staring with open fascination at the display Phaethon and Daphne made. “I have not seen non-parthenogenic bioforms before. Are they going to copulate?”Atkins and Helion looked at him, then looked at each other. A glance of understanding passed between them.Atkins put his hand on Diomedes’s elbow, and pulled him back in front of Helion. “Perhaps not at this time,” Atkins said, straight-faced.“They are young and in love,” explained Helion, stepping so as to block Diomedes’s view. “So perhaps the excesses and, ah, exuberance of their, ah, greeting, can be overlooked this once.”Diomedes craned his neck, trying to peer past Helion. “There’s nothing like that on Neptune.”Helion murmured, “Perhaps certain peculiarities of the Neptunian character are thereby clarified, hmm…?”“It looks very old-fashioned,” said Diomedes.Helion said, “It is that most ancient and most precious romantic character of mankind which impels all great men to their greatness.”Atkins said, “It’s what young men do before they go to war.”Diomedes said, “It is not the way Cerebellines or Compositions or Hermaphrodites or Neptunians arrange these matters. I’m not sure I see the value of it. But it looks interesting. Do all Silver-Gray get to do that? I wonder if Phaethon would mind if I helped him.”“He’d mind.” Atkins interrupted curtly. “Really. He’d mind.

Cuddling Quotes Humor Quotes The Golden Transcendence Quotes

You see, none of these conflicts are about things that people only sort of like. It is always about love. You may think me blasphemous to use the Passion of the Christ as an example of drama, but not so: this is the one true story, the greatest story ever told, the tale of tales even as Christ is the King of Kings, and all truly inspired fairy tales and fiction have to contain some echo or reflection of the One True Tale, or else it is no tale of any power at all, merely a pastime.The most powerful and potent tales, even when they are told awkwardly and without grace or poetry or craft, are stories of paradise lost and paradise regained; sacrifice, selfless love, forgiveness and salvation; stories of a man who learns better.

Love Quotes / Fairy tales Quotes Science fiction Quotes Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth Quotes