Anton Ego Quotes

Wine and tobacco destroy the individuality. After a cigar or a glass of vodka you are no longer Peter Sorin, but Peter Sorin plus somebody else. Your ego breaks in two: you begin to think of yourself in the third person.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. ~ Anton Ego, Ratatouille

You religious men who boast so much that you live on charity including what the poor manage to scrape together out of their meagre income - how can you justify your actions? How can your moral conscience be clear when you acknowledge that in no way do you contribute to the society that is maintaining you, day after day? In your self complacent conceit, you denigrate and harshly condemn, those who, with their sweat and hard work, provide you with a life fit for a king. What is the reason you spend your lives living comfortably in some ashram or isolated monastery when life only makes sense if it is experienced with your fellow brothers and sisters by showing compassion to them? It is easy and simple enough to spend your lives meditating in the Himalayas being irritated by nothing and no one if not the occasional goat, rather than placing yourselves in the midst of your fellow men and living an ordinary life of toil as they do. Do not delude yourselves, because what you refer to as a state of internal peace represents nothing but the personal satisfaction of the conscious ego that is admiring and adoring itself..

he had an ego so large that only by contemplating the mathematical definition of infinity could anything so limitless be imagined.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the *new*.

You are the most important person in your life, so you should treat yourself as such, but few people do. Most are afraid of being seen as selfish and being labeled by their peers as someone with a big ego, as if that automatically means you are a bad person.

SECRETS ARE POWER. WHEN YOU DIVULGE A SECRET, YOU BARTER THE POTENTIAL power of your hidden knowledge for the fleeting ego boost that comes with its revelation.

I don't like food. I LOVE it. If I don't love it, I don't swallow.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: "Anyone can cook." But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.

If I don't love it, I don't love it.

...Although the term Existentialism was invented in the 20th century by the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, the roots of this thought go back much further in time, so much so, that this subject was mentioned even in the Old Testament. If we take, for example, the Book of Ecclesiastes, especially chapter 5, verses 15-16, we will find a strong existential sentiment there which declares, 'This too is a grievous evil: As everyone comes, so they depart, and what do they gain, since they toil for the wind?' The aforementioned book was so controversial that in the distant past there were whole disputes over whether it should be included in the Bible. But if nothing else, this book proves that Existential Thought has always had its place in the centre of human life. However, if we consider recent Existentialism, we can see it was the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who launched this movement, particularly with his book Being and Nothingness, in 1943. Nevertheless, Sartre's thought was not a new one in philosophy. In fact, it goes back three hundred years and was first uttered by the French philosopher René Descartes in his 1637 Discours de la Méthode, where he asserts, 'I think, therefore I am' . It was on this Cartesian model of the isolated ego-self that Sartre built his existential consciousness, because for him, Man was brought into this world for no apparent reason and so it cannot be expected that he understand such a piece of absurdity rationally.'' '' Sir, what can you tell us about what Sartre thought regarding the unconscious mind in this respect, please?'' a charming female student sitting in the front row asked, listening keenly to every word he had to say. ''Yes, good question. Going back to Sartre's Being and Nothingness it can be seen that this philosopher shares many ideological concepts with the Neo-Freudian psychoanalysts but at the same time, Sartre was diametrically opposed to one of the fundamental foundations of psychology, which is the human unconscious. This is precisely because if Sartre were to accept the unconscious, the same subject would end up dissolving his entire thesis which revolved around what he understood as being the liberty of Man. This stems from the fact that according to Sartre, if a person accepts the unconscious mind he is also admitting that he can never be free in his choices since these choices are already pre-established inside of him. Therefore, what can clearly be seen in this argument is the fact that apparently, Sartre had no idea about how physics, especially Quantum Mechanics works, even though it was widely known in his time as seen in such works as Heisenberg's The Uncertainty Principle, where science confirmed that first of all, everything is interconnected - the direct opposite of Sartrean existential isolation - and second, that at the subatomic level, everything is undetermined and so there is nothing that is pre-established; all scientific facts that in themselves disprove the Existential Ontology of Sartre and Existentialism itself...

The devils of past religions have always, at least in part, had animal characteristic, evidence of man's constant need to deny that he too is an animal, for to do so would serve a mighty blow to his impoverished ego.

I can’t help but think of one of my favorite moments in any Pixar movie, when Anton Ego, the jaded and much-feared food critic in Ratatouille, delivers his review of Gusteau’s, the restaurant run by our hero Remy, a rat. Voiced by the great Peter O’Toole, Ego says that Remy’s talents have “challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking … [and] have rocked me to my core.” His speech, written by Brad Bird, similarly rocked me—and, to this day, sticks with me as I think about my work. “In many ways, the work of a critic is easy,” Ego says. “We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.

All religions of a spiritual nature are inventions of man. He has created an entire system of gods with nothing more than his carnal brain. Just because he has an ego and cannot accept it, he has had to externalize it into some great spiritual device which he calls "God." God can do all the things man is forbidden to do- such as kill people, preform miracles to gratify his will, control without any apparent responsibility, etc. If man needs such a god and recognizes that god, then his is worshiping an entity that a human being invented. Therefore, HE IS WORSHIPING BY PROXY THE MAN THAT INVENTED GOD. Is it not more sensible to worship a god that he, himself, has created, in accordance with his own emotional needs- one that best represents the very carnal and physical being that has the idea-power to invent a god in the first place?

Religionists have kept their followers in line by suppressing their egos. By making their followers feel inferior, the awesomeness of their god is insured. Satanism encourages its members to develop a good strong ego because it gives them the self-respect necessary for a vital existence in this life.

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the *new*. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new: an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, "Anyone can cook." But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist *can* come from *anywhere*. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.

Satori is the Japanese word, used in Zen Buddhism, for the highest type of unification experience. It is known as Samadhi (union with God) in Hinduism. According to Dr. John Lilly’s hypothesis, it is expansion of ego-awareness into those areas of the biocomputer that are usually unconscious or stored with rejected information. Christian theologicans call it union with the “totally other”. ~•~

The Satanist believes in complete gratification of his ego. Satanism, if fact, is the only religion which advocate the intensification or encouragement of the ego. Only if a person's own ego is sufficiently fulfilled, can he afford to be kind and complimentary to others, without robbing himself of his self-respect. We generally think of a braggart as a person with a large ego; in reality, his bragging results from a need to satisfy his impoverished ego.

The "intellectual decompression chamber" of the Satanic temple might be considered a training school for temporary ignorance, as are ALL religious services! The difference is that the Satanist KNOWS he is practicing a form of contrived ignorance in order to expand his will, whereas another religionist doesn't - or if he does know, he practices that form of self-deceit which forbids such recognition. His ego is already too shaky from his religious inculcation to allow himself to admit to such a thing as self-imposed ignorance!

Even if a person is no longer struggling under the burden of religiously-induced guilt (or thinks he isn't), modern man still feels shame if he yields to his masturbatory desires. A man may feel robbed of his masculinity if he satisfies himself auto-erotically rather than engaging in the competitive game of woman chasing. A woman may satisfy herself sexually but yearns for the ego-gratification that comes from the sport of seduction. Neither the quasi Casanova nor bogus vamp feels adequate when "reduced" to masturbation for sexual gratification; both would prefer even an inadequate partner. Satanically speaking, though, it is far better to engage in a perfect fantasy than to cooperate in an unrewarding experience with another person. With masturbation, you are in complete control of the situation.

All religions of a spiritual nature are inventions of man. He has created an entire system of gods with nothing more than his carnal brain. Just because he has an ego and cannot accept it, he has had to externalize it into some great spiritual device which he calls "God". God can do all the things man is forbidden to do - such as kill people, perform miracles to gratify his will, control without any apparent responsibility, ect. If man needs such a god and recognizes that god, then he is worshipping an entity that a human being invented. Therefore, HE IS WORSHIPPING BY PROXY THE MAN THAT INVENTED GOD. Is it not more sensible to worship a god that he, himself, has created, in accordance with his own emotional needs - one that best represents the very carnal and physical being that has the idea-power to invent a god in the first place?

No lo puedo evitar, pero de todas las películas de Pixar uno de mis momentos favoritos es aquel en que Anton Ego, el hastiado y temido crítico gastronómico de Ratatouille, entrega su reseña del Gusteau’s, el restaurante dirigido por nuestro héroe, la rata Remy. Con la voz del gran Peter O’Toole, Ego dice que el talento de Remy «ha puesto en cuestión todas mis ideas preconcebidas sobre la gastronomía … [y] me ha hecho ver las cosas claras». Su discurso, escrito por Brad Bird, tuvo el mismo efecto sobre mí, y resume hasta la fecha lo que pienso sobre mi trabajo. «El trabajo de un crítico es fácil en muchos sentidos —dice Ego—. Arriesgamos muy poco y sin embargo disfrutamos de una posición superior a la de quienes ofrecen su trabajo y a sí mismos a nuestra crítica. Nos encanta hacer malas reseñas, porque son divertidas de escribir y de leer. Pero la amarga verdad a la que debemos enfrentarnos los críticos es que en el gran esquema de las cosas, cualquier mal producto es probablemente más valioso que la crítica que nosotros hacemos de él. Pero hay ocasiones en las que el crítico se arriesga al descubrir y defender algo nuevo. El mundo suele ser cruel con el nuevo talento, con las creaciones nuevas. Lo nuevo necesita amigos.»

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions about fine cooking is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: 'Anyone can cook.' But I realize, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.

Anton Ego: [sarcastic] You're slow for someone in the fast lane. Linguini: [a little nervously] And you're... thin, for someone who likes food. [crowd gasps] Anton Ego: I don't *like* food; I LOVE it. If I don't love it, I don't *swallow*.

The new needs friends.

❝In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.❞

Reimprinting the third semantic circuit can now follow easily. The human brain is capable of mastering any symbol-system if sufficiently motivated. Some people can even play Beethoven’s late piano music, although to me this is as “miraculous” as any feat alleged by psychic researchers; people can learn French, Hindustani, differential calculus, Swahili, etc. ad. infinitum — if motivated. When the first circuit security needs have been reimprinted and second-circuit ego-needs have been hooked to mastering a new semantic reality-tunnel, that tunnel will be imprinted.

For full effect, this is, of course, proceeded by normal brainwashing. The victim is first isolated from his or her previous environment and trained to hook the bio-survival circuit onto the “guru” and/or the Ashram or commune. The emotional circuit is bent and broken by continuous attacks upon status (ego), until the only emotional security left is found in Total Submission to the group reality-island. The re-infantilized victim is then ready to imprint any semantic circuitry desired, from psychological cults, political cults, religious cults, etc. The socio-sexual circuit can then easily be programmed for celibacy, for free love, or for whatever sexual game the guru has selected. Then, and only then, the neurosomatic buttons are pushed and ecstasy is “given” to the subject “by” the guru.

In pre-ethological terms, the emotional-territorial circuit is what we usually call “ego.” Ego is simply the mammalian recognition of one’s status in the pack; it is a “role” as sociologists say, a single brain circuit which mistakes itself for the whole Self, the entire brain-mind apparatus. The “egotist” behaves like “a two year old,” in the common saying, because Ego is the imprint of the toddling and toilet-training stage.

The first scientific model of this system appeared in Dr. Rupert Sheldrake's A New Science of Life. Where Leary and Grof, like Jung and Freud, assumed the non-ego information, not known to the brain, must come from the genes, Sheldrake, a biologist, knew that genes cannot carry such information. He therefore posited a non-local field, like those in quantum theory, which he named the morphogenetic field. This field communicates between genes but cannot be found "in" the genes — just as Johnny Carson "travels" between TV sets but cannot be found "in" any of the TV sets that receive him.

Bruno and the hermeticists generally believed, like Jung, that most people are over-developed in one of these areas and under-developed in the others, and that the path to integration was to learn to balance all four. It has by now become commonplace in Joyce exegesis to recognize that the warring twins, and , are two aspects of the nonlocal , roughly isomorphic to Jung's Persona and Shadow or Freud's ego and id. It seems likely to me that the four X are also aspects of the one E or psychic functions of the dreamer that have been separated and need to be reunified.

Honegger believes that the right hemisphere ego consciousness is continually trying to assert its existence and communicate with the left hemisphere ego, which Western adults think is their only ego. The right- side ego usually communicates via dreams, as noted by Freud and Jung, but if the left-sided ego remains deaf to these messages, the right hemisphere creates Freudian slips or hysterical symptoms to get the ego's attention. And, if nothing else works, it produces an ACOP. It does this, Honegger suggests, by means of connecting principles such as those suggested by Bell and Bohm. According to Honegger, we should analyze such ACOPs the way Freud and Jung analyzed dreams to see what unconscious messages they contain.

* The distinction between psycholytic and psychedelic doses of LSD is used in many scientific publications but seems to be ignored by popularizers who either preach the “LSD utopia” or warn of the “decline of the west.” A psycholytic dose, generally 75 or 100 – or at most 200 – micrograms, causes a rush of thoughts, a lot of free association, some visualization (hallucination) and abreaction (memories so vivid that one seems to relive the experience). A psychedelic dose, around 500 micrograms, produces total but temporary breakdown of usual ways of perceiving self and world and (usually) some form of “peak experience” or mystic transcendence of ego. “Bad trips” usually occur only on psychedelic doses. ~•~

The climax comes when Sir Peter, driven into extreme stress by boredom in unrelieved doses, and finding himself less and less enjoying his drugs as the hollowness of the above reasons becomes clearer and clearer, wakes up one afternoon to realize he has been designing a new airplane engine all day. Lamus then tells him that he didn’t speak to anybody during lunch and that he was almost in the same sort of trance as any “holy man” in the Orient. According to Lamus (and Crowley), this is the meaning of “doing one’s will,” and it is not always a religious experience as we are usually told. Not only a scientist, but a businessman or virtually anyone who is truly “entranced” by a project achieves some variety of the same mental concentration and transcendence of the usual ego hang-ups.

The ego — or self — defined by this system appears more mammalian and evolutionarily advanced than the quick reptilian reflexes of the self operating on the oral biosurvival system. Nonetheless, the personality shrinks back to the primitive bio-survival self whenever real danger appears — whenever confronted by threat to life, rather than mere threat to status. This difference between mammalian strategy and reptilian reflex explains why there seems more "time" in the anal territorial system than in the oral bio-survival system. In the later, mammalian system, one explores relative power signals slowly; in the earlier, reptilian system, one attacks or flees instantly.

The easiest way to get brainwashed is to be born. All of the above principles then immediately go into action, a process which social psychologists euphemistically call socialization. The bio-survival circuit automatically hooks onto or bonds to the most appropriate mother or mothering object; the emotional-territorial circuit looks for a “role” or ego-identification in the family or tribe; the semantic circuit learns to imitate and then use the local reality-grids (symbol systems); the socio-sexual circuit is imprinted by whatever mating experiences are initially available at puberty.

Colin Wilson, Criminal History of Mankind, op. cit.: Wilson presents a theory of the Violent Male, backed up by criminological and historical data from the past 3000 years, and some current anthropological data on our earlier ancestors. He claims the Violent Male basically acts like Van Vogt's Right Man: he can never admit he might be wrong about anything. His ego definition, as it were, demands that he is always Right, nearly everybody else is always Wrong, and he must "punish" them for their Wrongness. He despises the "softness" of "emotions" and thinks most people are fools. As such, he sounds like the Authoritarian Personality described by such psychologists as Fromm and Adorno; what makes him Violent is a particular savage intensity of what I have called modeltheism. The Right Man, in addition to the above traits, has a basically paranoid attitude toward people: he thinks they are all rotten; they have all cheated him; they are always cheating; they are sneaks; they are liars; they are, in fact, rotten bastards. He is going to be the rottenest bastard of all to get back at them.

Have you ever considered the possibility that God might be a crazy woman? Or that John Dillinger died for you? Do you think there might be a secret technique by which the Enlightened can literally get Something for Nothing? Could the Martians have the true religion while we Earthians are lost in superstitious darkness? Can a cup of coffee be a sacrament, and if not, why not? Does the mathematics of six-dimensional space-time and philosophy of Multi-Ego Panthesitic Solipsism explain the universe?

It should be clear that in Finnegans Wake, past, present, future, space, time and Ego-reality are all dissolved into the multiple "realities" described by mystics and quantum physicists; that Joyce, a man of timid courage, has seized the keys of hell of death, by showing that the Ego dies and is reborn more continually than we realize, and that absence or death are as unreal in this context as the famous Schrödinger equations which demonstrated in quantum theory that a cat may be dead and alive at the same time.

Since the mechanical bio-chemical reflexes on this level remain "invisible" (and cannot even reach translation onto the verbal level except in an altered state of consciousness, such as hypnosis, or under certain drugs), this hard-wired infantile information system controls all later information systems (or "selves") without the knowledge of the conscious ego.

It seems that there is no unit-animal-which can be scientifically used to account for the facts known to modern cyberneticists. The only unit that can be used is animal-in-environment. What I am suggesting is that the mystics got there before Dr.Ashby, that the "unification" with God or the universe mentioned in all religious literature and in reports of acid trippers and some pot and hashish smokers is precisely the shift of attention from the conscious ego to the previously unconscious organism-environment feedback network. Does this seem an extravagant thought? All mystics have talked about the "unreality" of the ego; are they not trying to say exactly what Dr.Ashby has said? Many speak also, for that matter, of the unreality of space and time, and Einstein was modest enough to acknowledge that they seemed to be talking about the same facts he had noted mathematically. 'You are part of something larger than yourself, something which space and time do not restrict' is what every mystic, in essence, and this is just what Dr.Ashby's homeostat illustrates.

...In the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.