Brennan Lee Mulligan Quotes

On the level of individuals and civilizations, personality predates ideology. Meaning, before you were a fascist, you were a bully and an asshole.

Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundaneness of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It's easy to understand why people do bad things. It's like "Yeah, okay, you're selfish and scared and cruel, I get it." Being good is complex and beautiful and hard.

We want any effort on our part to be the winning effort. We don't want to be a drop in the bucket, we want to be the entire ocean.

In the same way your heart feels and your mind thinks, you, mortal beings, are the instrument by which the universe cares. If you choose to care, then the universe cares. If you don't, then it doesn't.

It is a horrifying responsibility to think that because things cannot remain the same, each and every one of us must shoulder some responsibility for how they will become different

Nobody in the whole world is normal. That's an idea made up by clothing companies to sell t-shirts. It doesn't exist in nature. Everybody gets to be weird in their own special way.

You are a babbling fool, and we have built a temple to madness.

You think people make choices? No, people think they make choices, they think they're gonna steer right, or steer left, but they didn't build the roads. The big choices already got made for them, a long time ago.

Ever notice how when you're extremely upset, everyone becomes bad at listening? Wonder what that's about...

An adult human being is the most fearsome, terrifying, and powerful animal on the planet, and parenting is the act of creating an adult human being.

There is nothing wrong with second place. Your best effort is all that anyone's asking for. And if you give your best and you come in second, you come in third, you come in last, it's not about winning or losing. It's about giving it everything you've got.

At the end of the day, the problem is education. Without an educated population, it doesn't matter what other problems you try to tackle. It's not gonna work. Think of how much less powerful campaign contributions would be if people had the critical thinking skills to see through advertising? Think of how many of our problems are based just on pure ignorance, whether it's antiscience people or bigots or whatever.

Order and chaos are not opposites. They are names of deities that we invoke to place ourselves in a position in our little universe that we are seeking to understand.

Because you were lied to does not mean that everything is a lie. Do not take the crimes of those who have manipulated us and put them at the feet of the world. It’s our time to write the story—and we’re going to make the world how we want it.

That's very noble of you, cautionary tales of hubris notwithstanding.' 'Hah! Please. Find me a more universally REWARDED quality than hubris. Go on, I'll wait. The word is just ancient Greek for "uppity," as far as I'm concerned. Hubris isn't something that destroys you, it's something you are PUNISHED for. By the GODS. Well, I've never met a god, just powerful human beings with a lot to gain by keeping people scared. So fuck hubris! Punch the sun, baby!

People living in actual crises aren't looking for the perfect solution, they're looking for any solution. Telling them they're wrong, that there are facts they haven't considered, is missing the point.

Perhaps the answer lies in spurning our gifts altogether, and focusing not on our capabilities, but on our responsibilities. Perhaps it is time to stop paying attention as a species to what we are capable of doing, but instead look to what we should be doing and how we might do it better.

HEY NERD BOY! I KNOW YOU THINK YOU'RE SOMEHOW BEING MADE FUN OF, BUT THAT GIRL IS GENUINELY REACHING OUT TO YOU! YOU KNOW ABOUT FRIENDS, RIGHT? INSTEAD OF CONDESCENDING TO HER IN A PREEMPTIVE SHIELDING OF YOUR BRUISED AND BATTERED EGO, MAYBE JUST TALK TO HER ABOUT THE BOOK YOU BOTH LIKE? DO THIS NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE AND YOU'RE WRITING A COMIC TO DEAL WITH ALL THESE FEELINGS YEARS LATER!

Look! I've been in the Pentagon like four times, but I'm not really even sure what the Pentagon does! I'm supposed to fight crime, but I don't even know how laws get passed! I mean... Truth, Justice and the American Way? I stopped taking social studies when I was like fifteen! I grew up in Westchester, and have never traveled anywhere else without this stupid domino mask on my face! Am I the only one who's scared that people are looking to me for answers because I can lift a car over my head?! This is crazy!

I fantasize about killing people all the time. I think about how easy it would be. What if I just started showing up to Kitan rallies with an I-beam? Knock down the capitol building, force them to pass Universal Health Care, stuff aevery Ayn Rand fanatic into a big mason jar and hurl them into the sun. I could do it, you know. I really could. And then there's these people with their fucking sneers going 'You're a monster! You're a thug! You kill people!' No fucking shit I kill people!! I put holes in mountains! I break shit constantly without even trying! I saved the world on no less than seven fucking occasions, and guess what, super-accuracy is not one of my anomalies! Am I supposed to be impressed that you've never killed anybody? What a bold moral choice from a person who's terrified of violence and scared shitless of going to jail! It's like, have you ever had the option of murdering a bunch of people!? Okay, then why the fuck am I listening to your opinion on the matter!? Every day I don't kill a thousand fucking people, they should throw me a god-damned tickertape parade!

All together, these powers and abilities combine to face an enemy that depends on you believing that it cannot be defeated. But we know that it can. Every person in this crowd is dedicated to stories about overcoming impossible odds and telling people that, in the depths of despair, there is always hope. And no matter what you are facing, when you face it together, you are unstoppable.

People need an attachment to three different things at the same time in order to fight this feeling of Isolation: they need the ability to dream and hope and imagine a better future; they need an attachment to the Real and the people and communities and the beating heart of the world, the moment that they are in and a sense of belonging; and Memory and the past and reckoning with but also understanding and knowing the story of where you came from and where the people that you love came from and what has happened in the past.

Because I know what it's like to feel alone. I know what it's like to live in a paper world, to be good at hurting people, to think everybody should just shut up and do what you say. And then I remember that deep down, people are good, everybody's trying, and nobody deserves respect just for being powerful. So if I've got the voice in my head that tells me to crush people, then I think you probably have the voice that says the other thing too. If people keep calling us heroes and villains, they'll never know how close we came to listening to the other voice all those times.

Why do we tell stories? To try to make sense of a world that can be terrifying and enormous. In Exandria, I don't know that your story will long be known. I don't know who will remain to tell it, but it did happen — and it did matter. And though the Calamity is here, because of you, it will not be here forever.