“Ultimately, it was Super Mario Bros. that taught me what remains perhaps the most important lesson of my life.
When the game begins, Mario is standing all the way to the left of the legendary opening screen, and he can only go in one direction.
Throughout all thirty-two levels, Mario exists in front of what in gaming parlance is called ‘an invisible wall’, which doesn’t allow him to go backward.
There is no turning back, only going forward - for Mario and Luigi, for me, and for you.
Life only scrolls in one direction, which is the direction of time, and no matter how far we might manage to go, that invisible wall will always be just behind us.
Cutting us from the past, compelling us on into the unknown..”
- Edward Snowden (Permanent Record, The Invisible Wall)
“To be a software developer was to run the rest stops off the exits and to make sure that all the fast-food and gas station franchises accorded with each other and with user expectations;
To be a hardware specialist was to lay the infrastructure; to grade and pave the roads themselves,
While to be a network specialist was to be responsible for traffic control, manipulating signs and lights to safely route the time-crunched hordes to their proper destinations.
To get into systems, however, was to be an urban planner, to take all the components available and ensure interaction to maximum effect.
It was, pure and simple, like getting paid to play God, or at least a tinpot dictator..”
- Edward Snowden (Permanent Record, The System)
"It's about time somebody took you down a notch, what with all the pain and suffering you've created."
"Jerry, what if I told you all of that was to make you stronger?"
"I'd say you're a sick bastard.."
- Disenchantment (S2E2, Stairway to Hell)
"Well, let them talk. The present is theirs. I work for the future. And the future is mine.."
- Nikola Tesla (Doctor Who, S12E04)
"You've lost your way, Sergeant. You've lost sight of the purpose of the law.
To protect its citizens, not persecute them. Whatever we are, whatever is left of us, we are better than that.."
- Commander Adama, Battleship Galactica
"If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
“Great minds have purposes; others have wishes..”
- Washington Irving
"The secret of happiness is something to do.."
- John Burroughs
"It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and then do your best.."
- W. Edwards Deming
"We must not only give what we have; we must also give what we are.."
- Desire-Joseph Mercier
"The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.."
- Malcolm Forbes
"It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.."
- Leonardo Da Vinci