Anthem Quotes

“At last count there were more than four hundred and twenty million guns in America (population 330,000,000). This makes America a Chekhov play, in which a gun shown in Act One must be fired in Act Two. In other words, if you think the next act of American life is going to unfold without gunfire, you’re not paying attention.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“The world of children is the world that makes sense.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Everybody has a theory, Judge Nadir has come to believe. A conviction, dogged and tenacious, which they refuse to surrender. This is the American way.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. —Voltaire”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“She spoke about polarization and a surge of aggression in America. “Empathy,” she said. “That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The ability to walk in someone else’s shoes; the recognition that someone else’s experience has value, too. Most of us practice this without a second thought. If we see someone suffering or struggling, we don’t stand in judgment. We reach out because, ‘There, but for the grace of God, go I.’ It is not a hard concept to grasp. It’s what we teach our children…”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Control, she had learned, is an illusion.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“But we can’t move on,” he says, “none of us, because you’re preying on us, you and the others, turning our grief into cash, keeping us angry, keeping us fighting, keeping us divided so you can take our children and bleed us dry.” The”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“I figured it out,” he repeats. “It’s grief. The five stages of death, right? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, but we’re all trapped in the first two stages. The whole country, or maybe the Earth. We’re in denial and we’re pissed, because something we love is dead, except, for half the country, what they’re grieving is the past they think they’ve lost, and the other half is mourning the progress they thought they’d made, but everyone feels the same way. Like someone they love is dead. And I get it. I’m grieving too. I miss her and I don’t want her to be dead, and I’m pissed.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Anthropocene”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“These aren’t mistakes,” says the Prophet. “This isn’t Oh, I must have heard God wrong. This is opportunism. This is twisting His will to corrupt ends. Because people are corrupt. Adults. They live in a world of hypocrisy. They will do anything”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“we live in a nation of laws and taxes, where the few make rules for the many.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“It is a strange alliance of what once would have been considered fringe thinkers from all walks of life. But they share one essential ideal. All believe that something has been stolen from them, that they are outcasts from the respected majority. All believe that they have suffered a lifetime of hatred at the hands of a powerful elite. They are victims of a vast conspiracy.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“We are at the center of the cosmos.” Simon stirs. He is lying on his mattress. His mouth tastes like old pennies.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“irony without humor is violence.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“We want relationships to last. We want families to stay together. We like it when the good guy wins. Fairy tales. I’m describing fairy tales.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Everyone you love will die. Everyone you need will pass from this world without warning or reason. Where is their song, the anthem of their lives, soaring to the rafters, celebrating all their sweet, pathetic attempts at permanence? Where is their anthem of fury, their anthem of love? When the people who fill your heart die, Story thinks, all that’s left is emptiness and regret. Nothingness. And a heart filled with nothing feels nothing. So she doesn’t cry. She just rocks back and forth and stares into the void.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Your author would also like to explain that he didn’t want to put all those guns in his story, but this is a story about America. At last count there were more than four hundred and twenty million guns in America (population 330,000,000). This makes America a Chekhov play, in which a gun shown in Act One must be fired in Act Two. In other words, if you think the next act of American life is going to unfold without gunfire, you’re not paying attention. In summation, your author would like to apologize for the world he has created. He knows it is ridiculous. He is simply doing his best to re-create reality as he has experienced it. Boo phooey. Before A routine traffic stop.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“We had returned to the age of polytheism without realizing it. Which God we worshipped depended on which tribe we belonged to, which wish we prayed granted. Even Reason had become a God to millions over the last century—an omnipotent being of pure science, worshipped by lettered liberals in the organic produce aisles of their local Whole Foods. And Whole Foods Jesus knows there’s no such thing as ghosts. Firm in”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“single spark can start an inferno. Or it can flare harmlessly, like a firefly. The difference is oxygen, kindling, and luck.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Résumés should have an acknowledgments page, where job applicants thank everyone in their lives who helped them.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Whether you believe you’re suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome or that 9/11 was an inside job, the World Wide Web exists to tell you you’re right. You are always right.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Anyone who has ever stood at a great height and felt the impulse to jump recognizes the draw. And what is adolescence if not a great height from which we are all expected to jump?”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Here’s another question. What if empathy doesn’t lead to anything? What if—like happiness or misery—feelings of empathy hit you intensely in the moment but then wane over time? For example, when we see a homeless child, we feel a swell of empathy. The feeling brings with it a bloom of moral righteousness—I feel empathy, therefore I am a moral being. This, in turn, increases our conviction that we are good people. We carry that feeling of moral goodness with us through the rest of our day, and yet the child is still homeless.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“As with everything else about God, where you come down on the issue revolves around faith.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“That it is impossible to be useful and sad.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Paul Slovic, another moral philosopher, agrees. He says empathy is a poor tool for improving the lives of others, because the human mind is bad at thinking about, and empathizing with, millions or billions of individuals”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Nietzsche once wrote, “In times of peace, the warlike man attacks himself.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Either we prevent 1.5 degrees [Celsius] of warming or we don’t.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“Our house is on fire.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem

“This is the lesson we had learned: when you don’t want to face the consequences of your actions, you focus on the soap opera of public life, with its heroes and villains, its clear narratives.”
― Noah Hawley, Anthem