One of the advantages of travelling the world is that you get to know the world broadly. And one of the advantages of staying in one place is that you get to know the world deeply.
The Rudderless World is not shaped by vague metaphysical Forces. It is not God who kills the Children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to the Dogs. ... It´s us. Only us.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes human responsibility for the real-world consequences of actions, rejecting the notion that external forces are to blame.
Alan Moore's quote reflects a strong philosophical stance on moral responsibility, arguing that the challenges and tragedies of the world are not the result of abstract forces like fate or divine will, but rather the direct result of human actions and decisions. It calls upon individuals to recognize their role in shaping the world and to take accountability for the harm that occurs, insisting that change begins with us and requires active participation rather than passive acceptance of a predetermined fate.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on social justice, this quote can be used to emphasize the necessity of taking personal action rather than waiting for divine intervention.
More from Alan Moore
All quotes →The only reality we can ever truly know is that of our perceptions, our own consciousness, while that consciousness, and thus our entire reality, is made of nothing but signs and symbols. Nothing but language. Even God requires language before conceiving the Universe. See Genesis: “In the beginning was the Word.
My main point about films is that I don't like the adaptation process, and I particularly don't like the modern way of comic book-film adaptations, where, essentially, the central characters are just franchises that can be worked endlessly to no apparent point.
The magician to some degree is trying to drive him or herself mad in a controlled setting, within controlled laws.
When I was working upon the ABC books, I wanted to show different ways that mainstream comics could viably have gone, that they didn't have to follow 'Watchmen' and the other 1980s books down this relentlessly dark route. It was never my intention to start a trend for darkness. I'm not a particularly dark individual.
Love your rage, not your cage.
Similar quotes
There is in stillness oft a magic power To calm the breast when struggling passions lower, Touched by its influence, in the soul arise Diviner feelings, kindred with the skies.
Mind precedes all phenomena, mind matters most, everything is mind-made. If with an impure mind, you speak or act, then suffering follows you as the cartwheel follows the foot of the draft animal. If with a pure mind, you speak or act, then happiness follows you as a shadow that never departs
Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.
Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.
The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all.
The more images I gathered from the past, I said, the more unlikely it seemed to me that the past had actually happened in this or that way, for nothing about it could be called normal: most of it was absurd, and if not absurd, then appalling.