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Films
Ghost of Christmas Present: If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, none other of my species will find him here. But if [Tiny Tim] is to die, then let him die...and decrease the surplus population.
Ebenezer Scrooge: You use my own words against me?
Ghost of Christmas Present: Yes! So perhaps, in the future, you will hold your tongue until you have discovered where the surplus population is, and who it is. It may well be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than MILLIONS like this poor man's child!
Ebenezer Scrooge: You use my own words against me?
Ghost of Christmas Present: Yes! So perhaps, in the future, you will hold your tongue until you have discovered where the surplus population is, and who it is. It may well be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than MILLIONS like this poor man's child!
Manchester: You crazy son of a bitch! You killed my team!
Superman: (unnervingly calm) Your team were killers. Now guess what: they won't be killing anyone else.
(Superman and Manchester clash)
Superman: See, I've finally bought what you've been selling!
(the fight escalates as Superman becomes unconcerned with collateral damage)
Manchester: You bloody psychopath!
Superman: How does it feel, Black? How does it feel to be deconstructed? To be the victim?! To watch your dreams die?!
Superman: (unnervingly calm) Your team were killers. Now guess what: they won't be killing anyone else.
(Superman and Manchester clash)
Superman: See, I've finally bought what you've been selling!
(the fight escalates as Superman becomes unconcerned with collateral damage)
Manchester: You bloody psychopath!
Superman: How does it feel, Black? How does it feel to be deconstructed? To be the victim?! To watch your dreams die?!
Literature
''Now when they had eaten and drunk, and were merry, the old King asked the waiting-maid to solve a knotty point for him. "What," said he, "should be done to a certain person who has deceived everyone?" and he proceeded to relate the whole story, ending up with, "Now what sentence should be passed?"
Then the false bride answered: "She deserves to be put stark naked into a barrel lined with sharp nails, which should be dragged by two white horses up and down the street till she is dead."
"You are the person," said the King, "and you have passed sentence on yourself; and even so it shall be done to you."
Then the false bride answered: "She deserves to be put stark naked into a barrel lined with sharp nails, which should be dragged by two white horses up and down the street till she is dead."
"You are the person," said the King, "and you have passed sentence on yourself; and even so it shall be done to you."
"I think," said the Supreme Grand Master ... "that a wise king would only, as it were, outlaw showy coaches for the undeserving."
There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.
There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.
Live-Action TV
The White Rabbit: I don't get it—why is the Queen excluding us from the party, and letting the Walrus stay?
Tweedledum: Is there something wrong with us?
The Hatter: Please, Your Majesty, why won't you let us join in the fun?
The Queen of Hearts: For no good reason at all. Just because you're YOU...now you know what it's like to be treated unfairly! The way you treated the Walrus!
Tweedledum: Is there something wrong with us?
The Hatter: Please, Your Majesty, why won't you let us join in the fun?
The Queen of Hearts: For no good reason at all. Just because you're YOU...now you know what it's like to be treated unfairly! The way you treated the Walrus!
—Adventures in Wonderland, "I Am the Walrus"
"You don't understand. Ferengi workers don't want to stop the exploitation. We want to find a way to become the exploiters."
— Rom, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ("Bar Association")
Music
Funny thing about a cage, it's never built for just one group
So when that cage is done with them and you still poor, it come for you
The newest lowest on the totem, well, golly gee, you had been used
You have to build a death machine that down the line will kill you too
[...]
I wish I could magically
Fast forward to the future so then you could face it and see how fucked up it'll be
I promise, I'm honest, they coming for you they day after they coming for me
— Run the Jewels - "walking in the snow"
Myths & Religion
''Haman entered, and the king asked him, “What should be done for a man whom the king desires to honor?” Haman said to himself, “Whom would the king desire to honor more than me?” So Haman said to the king, “For the man whom the king desires to honor, let royal garb which the king has worn be brought, and a horse on which the king has ridden and on whose head a royal diadem has been set; and let the attire and the horse be put in the charge of one of the king’s noble courtiers. And let the man whom the king desires to honor be attired and paraded on the horse through the city square, while they proclaim before him: This is what is done for the man whom the king desires to honor!”
“Quick, then!” said the king to Haman. “Get the garb and the horse, as you have said, and do this to Mordecai the Jew, who sits in the king’s gate. Omit nothing of all you have proposed.”
“Quick, then!” said the king to Haman. “Get the garb and the horse, as you have said, and do this to Mordecai the Jew, who sits in the king’s gate. Omit nothing of all you have proposed.”
Theatre
Will Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round against you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man's laws, not God's – and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake!
"If I were Fortune — which I'm not —
B should enjoy A's happy lot,
And A should die in miserie —
That is, assuming I am B."
B should enjoy A's happy lot,
And A should die in miserie —
That is, assuming I am B."
Video Games
Elizabeth: But I thought Andrew Ryan was all about "free markets" and "open competition".
Booker: All those ideas lose their luster when the quarterly earnings come in and you find out the other guy's been eating your lunch.
Booker: All those ideas lose their luster when the quarterly earnings come in and you find out the other guy's been eating your lunch.
"I've tried to hold together my crumbling flesh with whatever little demonic power I have left, but... I'm approaching my limit. In separating and regaining my human soul, I've realized the gravity of the crime I've committed. I've realized how important everything was... Everything I've thrown away in my pursuit of power."
—V, Devil May Cry 5
Web Animation
"Stupid dog! You didn't tell me votin' for the 'Jaguars Eating Faces Party' would get my face eaten!"
Webcomics
Red Mage: I gotta be honest. My hope was that this whole Chaos thing was going to turn out to be like a metaphor.
Black Mage: Are you kidding? This is great for us! Or just me and not you guys. Which is even better, really! Loyal servant of Chaos Black Mage reporting for duty, oh great lord of evil. May I suggest my first act be to herald your emergence in this doomed world with the slaughter of these three jerks?
Chaos: No, I'll just use my supergod powers to lock the souls of all living things on this plane in the eternal torment of the darkness between worlds.
Black Mage: Does that include me?
Chaos: Big time.
Black Mage: Pretty sure we have to kill Chaos, guys.
Thief: It's good to have you on the team.
Black Mage: Are you kidding? This is great for us! Or just me and not you guys. Which is even better, really! Loyal servant of Chaos Black Mage reporting for duty, oh great lord of evil. May I suggest my first act be to herald your emergence in this doomed world with the slaughter of these three jerks?
Chaos: No, I'll just use my supergod powers to lock the souls of all living things on this plane in the eternal torment of the darkness between worlds.
Black Mage: Does that include me?
Chaos: Big time.
Black Mage: Pretty sure we have to kill Chaos, guys.
Thief: It's good to have you on the team.
Sonic: Disgusting. Why, Tails.
Tails: He's going to build a giant egg! To keep all the disgusting animals in there.
Sonic: You're a FOX!
Tails: Other animals, Sonic. Other animals.
Tails: He's going to build a giant egg! To keep all the disgusting animals in there.
Sonic: You're a FOX!
Tails: Other animals, Sonic. Other animals.
Web Video
"Rules must always be evaluated for their power to oppress. This is a blind spot to crypto enthusiasts because they just assume they're the early adopters, they're the ones who will have power, they are the ones who will get to set the rules, and they are the ones who will do the oppressing."
—Dan Olson, Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs
"Now, I know there's people out there going 'Man, I could really go for some Mad Max shit right now.' The problem is: You will not be Mad Max. You're going to be the guy tied to the stick that they use as a flaming projectile for Lord Humungus."
— Pat Boivin, Super Best Friendcast 075: Chickens are Noble Creatures
Western Animation
Nixon: Alright, listen up, nitwits. Who here is tired of illegal space aliens taking our good Earth jobs? (The crowd cheers.) Me too! So if I'm re-elected, I promise to build a really big Dyson fence across the Southern border of our solar system. (The crowd cheers.) And furthermore, by golly, I promise to cut taxes for the rich and use the poor as a cheap source of teeth for aquarium gravel!
Fry: Yeah, that'll show those poor!
Leela: Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich.
Fry: True. But someday I might be rich, and people like me better watch their step!
Fry: Yeah, that'll show those poor!
Leela: Why are you cheering, Fry? You're not rich.
Fry: True. But someday I might be rich, and people like me better watch their step!
— Futurama, "Decision 3012"
Real Life
This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slaves. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me."
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me."
— Pastor Martin Niemöller, on Nazi Germany
Others
Mrs. Asimov: How pleasant it would be if only we lived a hundred years ago when it was easy to get servants.
Isaac Asimov: It would be horrible... We'd be the servants.
— Conversation said to have taken place at some social function
"'Amazon is not happening to bookselling,' Jeff Bezos of Amazon likes to say. 'The future is happening to bookselling.' And what the future wants just happens to be exactly what Amazon wants. What an amazing coincidence."
— Thomas Frank, Listen, Liberal
"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows because it always coincides with their own desires."
— Susan B. Anthony
"Anti-populism is an essential part of a political myth that is dear to a certain class of people. Hating populism is the built-in corollary to this group’s grand vision of how society ought to be directed: which is to say, by responsible professionals, meaning they themselves, always concurring prudently with one another, always doing their best to steer the world through complex problems. The core of this myth, as the political theorist Michael Rogin once put it, is 'the hope that if only responsible elites could be left alone, if only political issues could be kept from the people, the elites would make wise decisions'.
Unfortunately, elites have been making decisions of seismic foolishness for many years now: bank deregulation, Wall Street bailouts, deindustrialization, the opioid epidemic and the Iraq war, to name but a few. Besides, the context of cold war complacency is long gone. Self-assured liberalism crumbled decades ago. Consensus is an ideal that no longer beguiles the academic mind: it’s all about conflict today. But somehow the old 50s faith continues to play right through it all, tootling its one-note song of anti-populist indignation even as the rightwing night falls."
— Thomas Frank, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism
''"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.
"I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.''
'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
— Adrian Bott, Twitter
“Many people who incite the Inquisition so vehemently against sorcerers in their towns and villages are not at all aware and do not notice or foresee that once they have begun to clamor for torture, every person tortured must denounce several more. The trials will continue, so eventually the denunciations will inevitably reach them and their families, since, as I warned above, no end will be found until everyone has been burned.”
— Friedrich Spee
[Libertarianism is] a fantasy where the strongest and most self-reliant folks end up at the top of the heap, and a fair number of men share the fantasy that they are these folks. They believe they've been held back by rules and regulations designed to help the weak, and in a libertarian culture their talents would be obvious and they'd naturally rise to positions of power and influence. Most of them are wrong, of course. In a truly libertarian culture, nearly all of them would be squashed like ants — mostly by the same people who are squashing them now. But the fantasy lives on regardless.
— Kevin Drum
"I really don’t know what you do about the “taxes are theft” crowd, except possibly enter a gambling pool regarding just how long after their no-tax utopia comes true that their generally white, generally entitled, generally soft and pudgy asses are turned into thin strips of Objectivist Jerky by the sort of pitiless sociopath who is actually prepped and ready to live in the world that logically follows these people’s fondest desires. Sorry, guys. I know you all thought you were going to be one of those paying a nickel for your cigarettes in Galt Gulch. That’ll be a fine last thought for you as the starving remnants of the society of takers closes in with their flensing tools."
—John Scalzi
