“The frogs hopping indoors agree that we are on a prison planet.They themselves are frog criminals that were convicted of doing frog crimes.”
“This is a mournful discovery.1)Those who agree with you are insane2)Those who do not agree with you are in power.”
“What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they have never been free, and do not understand what it means.”
“Once, in a cheap science fiction novel, Fat had come across a perfect description of the Black Iron Prison, but set in the far future. So if you superimposed the past (ancient Rome) over the present (California in the twentieth century) and superimposed the far future world of The Android Cried Me a River over that, you got the Empire, as the supra- or trans-temporal constant. Everyone who had ever lived was literally surrounded by the iron walls of the prison; they were all inside it and none of them knew it.”
“In his article, Bogen concluded: “I believe [with Wigan] that each of us has two minds in one person. There is a host of detail to be marshaled in this case. But we must eventually confront directly the principal resistance to the Wigan view: that is, the subjective feeling possessed by each of us that we are One. This inner conviction of Oneness is a most cherished opinion of Western Man. . . .”
“Certainly it constitutes bad news when the people who agree with you are buggier than batshit.”
“…we all lie to ourselves; we tell our own selves more lies than we ever do other people.”