The System Quotes

“Oh, a lion hunter
in the jungle dark,
And a sleeping drunkard
up in central park,
and a Chinese dentist
and a British queen
All fit together
in the same machine.
Nice, nice,
such very different
people in the same device!”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“The system didn't screw you. The system revealed you.”
― Michael Crichton, Disclosure

“She’s fulfilled her obligation, assuaged her conscience by finding me in the hallway and giving me the chance to freak out, and I’ve played my role too, by remaining calm, pretending to be okay, and therefore giving her permission to cross me off her things-to-do list. Now she can move on, and I can too.
Once you understand how adults are controlled by the system, manipulating them is elementary.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is made to corroborate those claims. One ADA [Associate District Attorney] told me about inheriting a murder case, after the first jury deadlocked. He checked the raps for the jurors and found that four had criminal records. None of those jurors were prosecuted. Nor was it policy to prosecute defense witnesses who were demonstrably lying--by providing false alibis, for example--because, as another ADA told me, if they win the case, they don't bother, and if they lose, "it looks like sour grapes." A cop told me about a brawl at court one day, when he saw court officers tackle a man who tried to escape from the Grand Jury. An undercover was testifying about a buy when the juror recognized him as someone he had sold to. Another cop told me about locking up a woman for buying crack, who begged for a Desk Appearance Ticket, because she had to get back to court, for jury duty--she was the forewoman on a Narcotics case, of course. The worst part about these stories is that when I told them to various ADAs, none were at all surprised; most of those I'd worked with I respected, but the institutionalized expectations were abysmal. They were too used to losing and it showed in how they played the game.”
― Edward Conlon, Blue Blood by Conlon, Edward (2004) Paperback

“[T]hat little voice shut up the instant I did something. And not just something: the exact thing I knew to be right. Because if the system was broken, if Carrie Johnstone wasn’t going to ever pay consequences for her action, it wasn’t because “the system” failed to get her. It was because people like me chose not to act when we could. The system was people, and I was part of it, part of its problems, and I was going to be part of the solution from now on.”
― Cory Doctorow, Homeland

“… our nation's truly critical problems are built into the very structure of the economic and political system; they are not something passing in the night that will go away even when we elect forward-looking leaders and actively pressure them to move in a different direction.”
― Gar Alperovitz, What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution

“The problem with the media - is that if you talk to it, it will use things against you. And that if you don't talk to it, it will use things against you”
― lauren klarfeld

“A Bluesman hates to be told what to do. Authority rankles him, inspires his rebellion, and plays to his need to self-destruct. A Bluesman doesn't take to having a boss unless he's on a chain gang (for the chain gang boss ranks below only a mean old woman and a sweet young thing in the hierarchy of the Blues Muse, followed closely by bad liquor, a dead dog, and the Man).”
― Christopher Moore, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

“When a guy goes out there and kills somebody, he might look at himself as the winner. But in truth he’s also a loser, because now he would be lost in the system. If you were listening to the news recently, some people you know well are doing 45, and 64 years for murder. They might have won their fight, but they lost their lives to the system. Franco ‘Co’ Bethel, former gang leader and right hand man to Scrooge.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“One of the most characteristic Italian emotions, it seems to me, is that mixture of envy, perplexity and wonder that comes when one realises that others are working the system far more effectively than oneself - said com'è? - this together with the knowledge that they are doing so and will continue to do so with absolute impunity. Until it dawns on you that the system was invented in order to be worked in this way.”
― Tim Parks, An Italian Education

“The bottom line was, if I could outsmart the judicial/legal system, then I could keep my addiction. But was that really what I wanted? Here I am, talking about my addiction as if it were some small and innocent pet, something that merited my unconditional affection. Wasn’t it tearing my life apart?”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I’m sick and tired of half answers for the bedridden sisters around the world. The white-washing of their experience. The silencing of their symptoms. The System broken into little boxes to be ticked.”
― Lucy H. Pearce, Medicine Woman: Reclaiming the Soul of Healing

“The relationship of the Phenomenology to the rest of the systemis as an entrance exam. It is a test for those who have presuppositions about the world that they are unable to suspend, in order to begin with Hegel’s Logic and follow the development of thought that is unfolded there. The Phenomenology charts alternative perspectives on how we know the world and demonstrates the inadequacy of all of them. For this reason, Hegel calls this discussion ‘the pathway of doubt, or more precisely as the way of despair’ (PS, p. 49).”
― Thom Brooks, Hegel's Political Philosophy: A Systematic Reading of the Philosophy of Right

“I suppose this anger and manipulation was my pseudo-conscious method of giving the system, and all it entailed, the big fat birdie finger. What I failed to realize was that my inward disposition of fuming vindictiveness and self-justification only caused me to rob myself. I was giving myself the middle finger, not them.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“By arresting me and putting me in courses and mandatory programmed counseling sessions, the authorities had shoved me onto an assembly line, believing it would fix me without ever accurately assessing what was broken. I was a broken person in need of wisdom, love, patience, and hope, not an object in need of fixing.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“After my sentencing from the judge, I started getting drug tested regularly. As a result, I had to stop smoking weed. In place of weed, I started doing other drugs that stayed in my system for shorter amounts of time and were harder to detect. It started with nontraceable substances like mushrooms, acid, and 2-CB (a derivative of mescaline), but it quickly turned into hard drugs. While weed was detectable on tests for up to a month, hard drugs were only traceable for a few days or a week at most. Ironically, the drug tests which were meant to discourage me from drug use, turned me on to hard drugs.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“All three men are in masks. They’re those LED purge-looking masks, with X’s for eyes and stitched mouths. As far as masks go, they’re pretty hot. I know faceless streamers have been a thing for years, but I didn’t realize they actually attended events.”
― Madison Fox, The System

“Never confuse justice with the law.
The law upholds authority and the System.
Justice upholds integrity and the Truth.”
― Gavin Nascimento

“Do not expect those the system has elevated and given employment to support you in your fight against the system.”
― Eduvie Donald