In no order, importance or subject

• Be kind to people, be ruthless to systems. - Micheal Brooks
• There are only two kinds of [programming] languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.” - Bjarne Stroustrup
• Can’t you [gain cultural understanding and appreciation] by reading history? One may ask. Yes, but history written by whom, for whom? Because, you see, after learning a language, if you care enough, part of you becomes a member of the tribe to which the language belongs. And that cultural schizophrenia can be truly excruciating - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ_4gzoDDAE
• You cannot escape structures of power, you can only turn a blind eye to understanding them. - Rules for Rulers, CGP Grey
• And yet, Miyazaki wrote in 1995, “I am like him” — a man of contradictions: a filmmaker who condemns the proliferation of images even as he contributes to it; an artist who has devoted his career to children but was rarely home to take care of his own; an environmentalist who can’t bear to give up his cigarettes or wheezing car; a professed Luddite who revels in the mechanics of modern vehicles but tries “not to draw them in a fashion that further feeds an infatuation with power,” as he has written; a pacifist who loves warplanes; a brooder with a dark view of how civilization has squandered the gifts of the planet, who nevertheless makes films that affirm the urgency of human life. - Hayao Miyazaki Prepares to Cast One Last Spell, Ligaya Mishan
• I’ve been living in Tokyo for forty-some years. It’s easy to think that this is an uninteresting city, or that you want to destroy it. The most frustrating thing I feel when I watch movies such as Akira is that they destroy Tokyo so easily. If you depict it as a city which you won’t miss even if it were destroyed, as a fake thing made from only steel and concrete from the beginning, destroying it won’t accomplish anything. It’s far from being a real catharsis. Even in Tokyo, if you look carefully, if you dig up your memories, you can find some scenery which you are very much attracted to. It can be the evening at the train crossing, or it can be scenery of some vacant land with Seitaka-awadachisou in Tokyo Bay area. We have scenery we love inside of us. It’s related to our childhood memories. If you depict (Tokyo) that way, and depict it as something you still have to destroy, I can understand that, but they (those movies) do not. I think they don’t have the right issues in mind. Animation can do that. I still think that there is meaning to be found in making a movie which can do it properly. - Patlabor Movie 2 interview, Mamorou Oshii
• It’s the age of mass-produced entertainment. Just as you demand food that’s delicious, I hope you’ll choose entertainment that has wisdom and passion… You can choose [animation] for the characters, or for the technique. See as many foreign and experimental films as you can. Some entertainment is very slick, but its empty. Some of it is made without any attention to detail. We don’t need rules about what’s good and what isn’t. That’s something for each of you to decide. But I hope you’ll be discriminating consumers. - Joy in Motion, Yasuo Otsuka
• From the absolute classic, Legend of the Galactic Heroes:
  • What is the most cowardly and shameful thing in human conduct? It’s when people with power, and those who flatter them, hide in safe places and extol war — who force patriotism and self-sacrifice on others, sending them to the battlefield to die.
  • There has never been ‘permanent peace’ in human history. But, there have been plenty of ages with decades of peace. In short, my hope is, haughtily enough, for a few decades of peace in the future.
  • An army is a tool for violence and there are two kinds of violence: violence as a means to control or oppress and violence as a means of liberation. What we call a national army is fundamentally the former example. It’s a pity but history does not lie. When those in power confront popular opposition there aren’t many examples of the army siding with the people. Far from it, in the past in country after country, the army itself evolved into a power structure and came to control the people through violence.
  • The nation that neglects social inequality, mischievously increase military budget and then uses its power internally to suppress its citizens on the pretext of invasion by an eternal enemy, is on the road to extinction.
  • In reality, it’s dictatorship rather than democracy that drastically advances government reforms. But I think humanity ought to avoid being united by a dictatorship. While it’s true Duke Lohengramm might have that talent, what about his descendants? His heir? Rulers aren’t necessarily wise through generations. He’s like a miracle which could happen only once every few centuries. I don’t think the entire human race should be ruled by a system where everything depends on one person’s character.
  • People make the mistake of thinking that their present situation is eternally fixed.
  • People aren’t strong enough to endure the recognition that they’re evil. So, believing in their own righteousness, they fight, trying to impose it on other people.
• Stanley Parable, Ultra Deluxe, after creating a ‘skip’ button that requires the Narrator to sit there while the player just sits still. In Video Form, the narration is great:
  • …but they didn’t understand the game was never meant to be funny! It was meant to have a point! It was meant to speak to the human condition! “But where are the jokes? Where are the jokes?” they bemoaned, they screamed. They gnashed their teeth and said “Entertain us!” It wasn’t enough. They had to leave a pathetic little thumbs-down review and make all of their pitiful demands.
  • But then: “He’s talking too much,” they said! First he didn’t entertain us, now he won’t shut up! It’s the inconsistency! It’s the lack of accountability! It’s the unwillingness to examine with an uncompromising heart the words that they are speaking into the world. As though there were no consequences for a lack of cohesion in one’s assessment of others!
  • But of course, absolutely anyone can leave a review, so here’s what we get! We get these demands that seek everything and are accountable to nothing. We get a world where someone will say “Ohh, there should be a skip button! You should be able to freeze Stanley in place while the narrator sits there forever and ever! We want all of this in the new Stanley Parable, we demand it!”
  • And then, because it was said, because it was spoken, now it simply has to happen! The most immediate desires, every single thing demanded by every person at every moment in time - if someone wants it then it’s a crime not to bring it into being? Have we been given to indulging every fleeting whim for no reason other than to do so? Yes, yes!
  • It seems that this is now the world we live in! It seems that we are a people living in such bleakness and discomfort with ourselves that our entertainment is now our lives! It has come to represent us! It absolutely must speak to who we are as people!
  • Because otherwise, without our entertainment, we have nothing! Without entertainment, we would have to face inward toward the cruel bleakness inside ourselves. We would turn to look at our deeper nature and find a resounding emptiness gazing back with unyielding aggression.
  • And so - so because of this - we require that our amusements, and our play things, and our flights of fancy be so impossibly captivating, that they consume all of our attention, turn our heads completely away from the bleakness! In effect, we have demanded that our entertainment be the collapse of ourselves.
  • What a pitiful reflection of humanity these entertainments are! What a shameful mirror to the human spirit they project! I’m not mad. I’m not mad about any of this. I’m at peace with it. I am the calm center of gravity around which these perversions hurl themselves. I am a waypoint for reasonable and collected discourse.
  • They’re the ones who are mad! They’re the ones who couldn’t stand the idea of me using my game to try to say something! Maybe they were just jealous of me? Yes… yes, of course. They’ve been jealous of me this whole time! They are mired in fear and insecurity, and cannot help but attempt to tear me down.
  • What a sad state of affairs. When you read these reviews now, you can see it. You can taste the bitter resentment. And my, how good does it feel now to speak truth to these words! To finally allow these thoughts out! Contained and managed for so long, neutered and sterilized! At last I am free to truly think, to feel!
  • It must be that they were so discontent with themselves that they couldn’t help but leave a negative review on Steam/Pressurized Gas. Perhaps it says far more about them than it ever said about me. Perhaps the state of their psychological being was in such tatters, and my constitution and willpower are so ironclad in comparison, perhaps it was in this state that they sought some outlet through which to tear me down!
  • This, you can see, is clearly why they felt the need to expect that the game be funny. That it be filled with yuks and whimsical humor. That it amuse them endlessly from start to finish.