Waking Life Quotes

Man with the Long Hair: They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?

Speed Levitch: On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.

Quiet Woman at Restaurant: When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses - that's what I loved the most, connecting with the people. Looking back, that's all that really mattered.

Pinball Playing Man: There's only one instant, and it's right now. And it's eternity.

Pinball Playing Man: I mean, I'm not saying that you don't know what you're talking about, but I don't know what you're talking about.

Boat Car Guy: I feel like my transport should be an extension of my personality. And this is like my little window to the world... and every minute's a different show. I may not understand it. I may not even necessarily agree with it. But I'll tell you what I've accepted: just sort of glide along. You want to keep things on an even key, this is what I'm saying. You want to go with the flow. The sea refuses no river. The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving. It saves on introductions and goodbyes. The ride does not require explanation - just occupants. That's where you guys come in. It's like you come onto this planet with a crayon box. Now you may get the 8 pack, you may get the 16 pack but it's all in what you do with the crayons - the colors - that you're given. Don't worry about coloring within the lines or coloring outside the lines - I say color outside the lines, you know what I mean? Color all over the page; don't box me in! We're in motion to the ocean. We are not land locked, I'll tell you that.

Guy Forsyth: The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because, if you can do that, you can do anything.

Speed Levitch: Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others presence.

Young Girl Playing Paper Game: Dream is destiny.

Guy Forsyth: The worst mistake that you can make is to think you're alive when really you're asleep in life's waiting room.

John Christensen: Super perfundo on the early eve of your day.

Speed Levitch: The ongoing WOW is happening right NOW.

Alex Jones: "You can't fight city hall." "Death and taxes." "Don't talk about politics or religion." This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda, rolling across the picket line. "Lay down, GI! Lay down, GI!". We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now on the 21st Century, it's time to stand up and realize, that we should NOT allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not SUBMIT to dehumanization. I don't know about you, but I'm concerned with what's happening in this world. I'm concerned with the structure. I'm concerned with the systems of control. Those that control my life, and those that seek to control it EVEN MORE! I want FREEDOM! That's what I want, and that's what YOU should want! It's up to each and every one of us to turn loose of just some of the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities, because that is the central mode of control, make us feel pathetic, small, so we'll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have GOT to realize we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century's gonna be a new century! Not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance, of classism and statism, and all the rest of the modes of control... it's gonna be the age of humankind, standing up for something PURE and something RIGHT! What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it's all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated! The TRUTH is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of LIES! I'm SICK of it, and I'M NOT GONNA TAKE A BITE OUT OF IT! DO YA GOT ME? Resistance is NOT futile, we're gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, WE'RE NOT A BUNCH OF UNDERACHIEVERS, WE'RE GONNA STAND UP, AND WE'RE GONNA BE HUMAN BEINGS! WE'RE GONNA GET FIRED UP ABOUT THE REAL THINGS, THE THINGS THAT MATTER - CREATIVITY, AND THE *DYNAMIC* *HUMAN* *SPIRIT* THAT REFUSES TO *SUBMIT*! WELL THAT'S IT, that's all I've got to say. It's in your court now.

Alex Jones: We have got to realize that we're being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state.

Alex Jones: What a bunch of garbage; liberal, democrat, conservative, republican. It's all there to control you! Two sides of the same coin. Two management teams bidding for control, the CEO job of Slavery, Incorporated! The truth is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of lies. I'm sick of it, and I'm not going to take a bite out of it, do you got me?

Alex Jones: Resistance is not futile, we're gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, we're not a bunch of under-achievers! We're gonna stand up, and we're gonna be human beings. We're going to get fired up about the real things, the things that matter! Creativity, and the dynamic human spirit that refuses to submit.

Boat Car Guy: The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving.

Guy Forsyth: Did you ever have a job that you hated and worked real hard at? A long, hard day of work. Finally you get to go home, get in bed, close your eyes and immediately you wake up and realize... that the whole day at work had been a dream. It's bad enough that you sell your waking life for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.

Philosophy Professor: The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity, is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it's, a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as, a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, it's like your life is yours to create. I've read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It's something very concrete, it's you and me talking, making decisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world, and counting, but nevertheless -what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, it makes a difference to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off or see each other as a victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are.

John Christensen: ...and, of course, everyone knows fun rules.

Philosophy Professor: What you do makes a difference. We should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are.

Man on TV: A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this experience. And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe, I contemplate relationships of my various selves to one another.

Kim Krizan: Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration and this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or saber tooth tiger right behind you. We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting I think is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is like... frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet you know, when we communicate with one another and we feel that we have connected and we think that we're understood I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.

Man on TV: I do not await the future, anticipating salvation, absolution, not even enlightenment through process. I subscribe to the premise that this flawed perfection is sufficient and complete, in every single ineffable moment.

Otto Hofmann: The quest is to be liberated from the negative, which is really our own will to nothingness. And, once having said yes to the instant, the affirmation is contagious. It bursts into a chain of affirmations that knows no limit. To say yes to one instant, is to say yes to all of existence.

Man 3: If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible.

Ryan Power: A thousand years is but an instant. There's nothing new, nothing different; same pattern over and over. The same clouds, same music, the same things I felt an hour or an eternity ago. There's nothing here for me now, nothing at all. Now I remember, this happened to me before. This is why I left. You have begun to find your answers. Although it will seem difficult the rewards will be great. Exercise your human mind as fully as possible knowing that it is only an exercise. Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems, explore the secrets of the physical universe, savor the input from all the senses, filled with joy and sorrow and laughter, empathy, compassion, and tote the emotional memory in your travel bag. I remember where I came from, and how I became human, why I hung around, and now my final departure's scheduled. This way out, escaping velocity. Not just eternity, but Infinity.

Eamonn Healy: For looking at the highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution of the organism, and then at the development of its interaction with the environment. Evolution of the organism will begin with the evolution of life, proceed through the hominid, coming to the evolution of mankind. Neanderthal, Cro-magnon man. Now interestingly, what you are looking at here are three strings: Biological, Anthropological, development of cities, cultures, and Cultural, which is human expression. Now, what you've seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that's involved here, two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it, you begin to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then, when you get to agriculture, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you're looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years. You've seen a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is as we go through the new evolution, it's going to telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime, within a generation. The new evolution stems from information, and it stems from two types of information: Digital and Analog. Digital is artificial intelligence. The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism, and you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before, under the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die, and the other would grow and dominate, but under the new paradigm, they would exist as a mutually supportive, non-competitive grouping, independent from the external. And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process emanating from the needs and the desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality, and new consciousness, But that's only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes, until what? Until you reach a crescendo. In a way, it could be imagined as an almost instantaneous fulfillment of human, human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences, parallel existences, now, with the individual no longer restricted by time and space. And the manifestations of this neo-human-type evolution, manifestations could be dramatically counterintuitive. That's the interesting part. The old evolution is cold, it's sterile, it's efficient, and its manifestations are those of social adaptation. You're talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, war, predation. These will be subject to de-emphasis. These will be subject to de-evolution. The new evolutionary paradigm would give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These would the manifestations of the new evolution. And that is what we would hope to see from this. That'd be nice.

Louis Mackey: What are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question and that's this: Which is the most universal human characteristic: fear, or laziness?

Guy with loudspeakers on his car: We have got to realize that we are being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state. The 21st century is going to be a new century. Not the century of slavery; not the century of lies and issues of no significance and classism and statism and all the rest of the modes of control. It's going to be the age of human kind standing up for something pure and something right. What a bunch of garbage!... liberal, democrat, conservative, republican... It's all there to control you; two sides of the same coin! Two management teams bidding for control of the CEO job of slavery incorporated. The truth is out there in front of you but they lay out this buffet of lies. I'm sick of it; and I am not going to take a bite out of it! Do you got me?