Going Zero Quotes

“But where can you go and truly not be found? Where can anyone go anymore?”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Homo homini lupus est. Man is wolf to man.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Some relationships bust you up. Some make you.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“And the internet, in the meantime, quietly evolves in the only way it can; just like the universe, driven by forces not fully understood, ever-expanding, forever flooding with new elements, actions, and counteractions, a growth beyond exponential, a system commensurate only with human complexity itself. The last chance at stopping or even slowing this expansion came at the moment of creation. After that, it was always only going to be something to be beheld, accepted, observed with powerless awe, like stars, like the earth’s spin, like oysters opening under a full moon to provide a glimpse of a pearl.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“It should have taken weeks to put together a story like this, since there are so many moving parts to it, but they assemble most of it in less than three hours. The first installment anyway. There will be more, much more, to come, months of it in fact, months in which serious questions will be raised about a secret program known as Fusion, which partnered with the CIA and WorldShare; about the wisdom of the Go Zero Beta Test; about the hidden domestic ambitions of the CIA; and about the trustworthiness of Cy Baxter and other Silicon Valley elites as stewards of private information.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Back in his office, he slumps into his chair, drinks a mouthful of water as his eyes fix on the magic wall: a sunlit South American rain forest, tropical birds, gigantic fruit. Maybe he should leave the country for a while? Go zero. But where can you go and truly not be found? Where can anyone go anymore?”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“SHE MET WARREN AT A house party in Georgetown when he was finishing his PhD and she was working at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“SURELY NOT EVERYBODY WAS KUNG FU FIGHTING?”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“Because what they crave is to be known, not unknown . . . to be transparent, watched, as if they matter, as proof they matter, all their secrets laid out there in public view, their sins proclaimed, heck, even advertised! Nothing hidden. They want it that way. And why? Wanna know why? Ms. Day? Because being watched . . . it feels a little like being loved.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“What chance could an algorithm have against all that inner chaos? And yet that remains the crucial challenge of the future, to bridge the gap between the calculable and the numinous, between the machine and the erratic, unstable, passion-ruled soul of man,”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“We’ve always supported corrupt regimes abroad if they help us with our global ambitions, so now we’re supporting corrupt regimes within.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“personal privacy. That debate, a quaint twentieth-century one, is just ignorant background noise: the right to privacy is gone, lost already, or at least so compromised it’s really worthless. No, the real present and future threat is manipulation, the inculcation of prescribed attitudes and modes of behavior into an unwitting citizenry, the unseen shift by the state from monitoring to control, the last chapter of the long tale of democracy, free will deformed into willing compliance.”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero

“...I can’t approve of a private company that profits from algorithmic amplification, dissemination and micro targeting of corrupt information, much of it produced by coordinated schemes of disinformation that splinter our shared reality, poison social discourse and paralyse democratic politics...
Pg179”
― Anthony McCarten, Going Zero