Kage Baker - Mendoza in Hollywood (2000)

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Privilege tends to soften the brain, or so I've observed.

Kage Baker

Ah, Los Angeles. One disaster after another, always has been.

Kage Baker

And when there is peace at last, and when men are no longer distracted by the ravages of war and crime, then the real work begins. Mankind has grasped at science and invention to improve his lot; when he truly understands that he can wield those tools to improve himself, he will lay the cornerstone of the earthly paradise, Edward said. What might not science achieve, in a world where a nation's resources weren't continually drained by strife?

Kage Baker

Do you remember that terrible moment, señors, when the self-righteousness of your youth died? When all the stern warnings of your elders, ignored until the consequences abruptly came crashing down on your head, made you see in a flash that the warnings hadn't been unfair or mean-spirited or blind, they'd been right? All along your elders had been trying to tell you about the black joke that is life, trying to help you and save you from pain. But you insisted on running straight into the trap, mocking them as you ran, to the agony that was irreversible and permanent, with no one to blame, finally, but yourself.
It's not good to see yourself in the mirror then.

Kage Baker

Did you know what would happen next? Did you know and sit there like God, silent, remorseless, useless?

Kage Baker

His nation of liberty was founded on the backs of Negro slaves and at the cost of exterminating the aborigines. As far as I can tell, the Yankee's idea of freedom is his right to carry a pistol with which he may shoot strangers in the street.

Kage Baker

A missionary may persuade a painted savage to worship a cross rather than an idol; but he will not make laws that send that savage's children to school, where they might learn to make the desert they inhabit another Eden by means of the advanced sciences. He may persuade his flock to love one another for his God's sake, but he'll invariably urge them to slaughter any neighboring tribe that still worships stone idols. This is the failure of religion as a force for the common welfare.

Kage Baker

I looked up at several pockmarks in the nearest wall; if they weren't bullet holes, the place had damned big hailstones.

Kage Baker

I had a productive day, without the distraction of conversation.

Kage Baker

Faith and its attendant rituals sound like a good deal, the whole eternal salvation thing, but inevitably they lead to fear, oppression, the rack and flames.

Kage Baker

Religion has its place, certainly, in reinforcing ethical behavior amongst the masses, but any sufficiently enlightened secular laws will have the same effect. After all, most of the creeds of the world have essentially the same purpose, have they not? To enjoin men to be what we call moral, which is to say civilized. A civilized man obey the rule of law, he acknowledges that he must not injure his neighbors, and if injured by them, he must appeal to law for satisfaction rather than indulge in burning their houses over their heads as they sleep. Civilization is the ideal for which we strive, with so little perceptible success; yet we do succeed, in inches and over years.

Kage Baker

Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment, I quoted.

Kage Baker

Any brute will demand his right to be a law unto himself, beating his wife and his children as he pleases, and defend that right with his father's rifle and think himself a patriot.

Kage Baker