John Twelve Hawks Quotes

Her face kept changing and that bothered me as well. Why were human beings so unstable? The door and the curtains and the supply cabinet didn't continually change their appearance.'

No machine can daydream. When they’re not switched on, they’re as cold as a toaster in a midnight kitchen.

"When people decide that a certain way of faith is destined and inevitable, hatred and intolerance follow. Instead of saying, 'The Light is within you, choose the Light,' the message becomes 'Agree with our version of history or we'll kill you.”

Even the most casual student of history realizes that human beings are greedy, impulsive, and cruel. But Bentham's prison showed us that societal control was possible with the right sort of technology. There was no need to have a policemen standing on every corner. All you need is a Virtual Panopticon that monitors your population. You aren't required to literally watch them all the time, but the masses have to accept the possibility and the inevitability of punishment. You need the structure, the system, the implicit threat that becomes a fact of life. When people discard their notions of privacy, they permit a peaceful society.

The urge to control others is very strong, but the desire for freedom and the ability to show compassion will always survive. Darkness is everywhere, but the Light still appears.

Believing that the government knows what's best is an argument that barely merits a serious discussion. Any high school history student can come up with hundreds of examples of when a king, dictator, or elected official followed a destructive, foolish policy. Democracy doesn't protect our leaders from having a limited, parochial vision. A politician's true priority is career self-preservation.

Lying, not love, is the fundamental indication of humanity.

All language – everything we say – is just an approximation of reality.

We drink our morning coffee with a drop of fear.

Freedom is the biggest myth ever created. It's a destructive, unachievable goal that has caused a great deal of pain. Very few people can handle freedom. A society is healthy and productive when it's under control.

Artificial intelligence is a concept that obscures accountability. Our problem is not machines acting like humans -- it’s humans acting like machines.

At the training camp, I was told that doors always open for a man wearing a hard hat and carrying a clipboard.

Modern authority is based on a system of lies that are accepted by the general population. If you pull away the curtain and show the reality of power, people are motivated to question the fictions that govern their own lives.

Machines, no matter how sophisticated, can only follow programs. If we sleepwalk through our lives, then we’re no better than machines. Only humans are capable of a job done well -- which means thinking about the consequences of our actions. A job done well pays the bills, but it also improves the lives of everyone around us.

True freedom is tolerant. It gives people the right to live and think in new ways.