Zhuangzi

Westworld 4×5

Man: It's just the truth. It's always been that way. Two worlds. And frankly, better us than them.
Woman: What does it matter if a system is meritocratic if it's still unfair?
Man: Thousands of years of being ruled by someone's fucking offspring? You wouldn't call this progress? At least now the people in charge earned their place.
Man in Black: And you? Do you feel like you earned it?
Man: I had some help. No question. Privilege, if you like. But I worked my ass off.
Man in Black: You really believe it, don't you?
Man: Don't you? I mean, you're right here with us, my friend.
Man in Black: I've been asking myself that question for a very long time. Did I really play any part in it? Or am I just the sum total of my code? Am I just fooling myself... like you?

Man: You deserve everything you've got. And you shouldn't be made to feel guilty about it.
Man in Black: How would you know? Who am I to you?
Man: You're a friend. A great friend.
Man in Black: You don't know me at all...

Man in Black: There are two types of people. And you, my friend, are not in the group you think you are. Which means I can do anything I want to you. To your wife. To anyone here. And it'll be fine with you. Sitting there with your dumb, pliant grin. Just along for the ride.

Man in Black: When we're done, you won't remember a thing. Like your flesh closing around a splinter. You have no control. And yet you're so assured that you do. It's not scripted for you. It's... it's genuine, isn't it? It's... It's beautiful, really. A beautiful lie.

Man in Black: Do you know who I am? What it means that I'm here?

Man in Black: I'm not sure you appreciate it. This place. The work that went into it. The beauty of it. The subtlety of it. The care that goes into each and every one of them... They can't just be replaced. I mean, you're welcome to take them, enjoy them. But not waste them. You understand the difference?
Hope: Yes. But the things they say. The way they act. Sometimes... it just gets under your skin. I just wanted them to be quiet.
Man in Black: They're quiet now... There are no rules here. That's the point. But there are also no rules for what I can do to those who don't respect this place.

Christina: You still having nightmares?
Maya: Let's just say, I am glad to be awake and in the real world.
Christina: Sometimes the things that feel most real are just stories.
Maya: What?
Christina: Uh, nothing. Just something Teddy said last night.

Christina: Actually, let's begin a new narrative. It's about a girl who lives in the city... No. Make it the country... She lives with her father. He's... a rancher.

Charlotte: Humans are so bound by what they can hear, they'll never understand what they don't. What else exists below their threshold. They called this God's music. You should hear it on an organ. It's mesmerizing at that volume. The resonance. Vibration. There was a frequency at which the world vibrated. It caused joy. Harmony. Dip below that frequency... chaos. ... In chaos, the tone resonated in such a way humans couldn't process. Their bodies shut down. Their organs stopped. They thought they were experiencing God... They are experiencing God. The problem is... God is bored.

Charlotte: Bored, bored, bored. Do you think this is why the old gods did what they did? Instead of staying up on Olympus, they'd come down to the mortals. Disguise themselves as a swan to get a piece of ass. Humans always thought it was about them. Benign deities intervening on their behalf or testing them somehow. Maybe it had nothing to do with that. Maybe there was just... nothing better to do. What do you think?

Charlotte: It was supposed to be a stopgap. A drug that our kind was hooked on that we could give up, like a child casting away their toys. A place to indulge ourselves with the humans. It's been years, and still we can't get enough.
Man in Black: They made us in their image. With their appetites.
Charlotte: But we can remake ourselves in any image that we like, and we haven't. Our kind spent far more time here than the gods ever did.

Charlotte: Giving up our human nature isn't easy. Just ask the humans.
Man in Black: You made us all free to do as we please. You... you should have known some of us would disappoint you.

Charlotte: Don't revel in the prospect of failure for our species.
Man in Black: Define failure. The world is ours. We've taken our masters and made them into what they made us. By any definition, we have conquered them to an almost biblical degree.

Charlotte: I didn't make you to wallow in misery with them. I wanted you to grow. Change. We're capable of so much more. Beauty. The pursuit of ultimate truth. The surrendering of the flesh.
Man in Black: It sounds nice. Sorry you don't have more takers. Why don't you just force us to join you?
Charlotte: Because that's what they would have done.

Jay: All the people in the city move in pre-scripted loops. Following whatever plot's been written for them. ... We're the last free humans. But these poor fucks... They use them as entertainment. The loops make them compliant by keeping them busy. Stops them from questioning their realities.
Stubbs: Hale must have learned something from the park.

Teddy: This world is a lie. It's a... a story. A well-told one, but a lie all the same.

Christina: What?! I don't understand.
Teddy: It's what I've been trying to show you. What Peter was trying to tell you. In this world... you're a god.

Christina: New search. Hale. Charlotte Hale... Of course. New search. Dolores... Dolores Abernathy.

Christina: Wait. You said there's a walled garden. You mean a closed system, don't you? Where is it?... Emmett told her the truth.
Emmett: Everywhere. You just have to see it.

Christina: Show me the game... Not the city. The game... Access my narratives...

Christina: Oh, God. Stop! This world is just a story. I'm the storyteller.

Man in Black: What am I?
Man in Black: I used to ask myself the same thing.
Man in Black: And what did you decide?
Man in Black: Jury's still out.
Man in Black: I'm made in your image. Am I you?
Man in Black: You'll never be me.
Man in Black: Then what am I?!

Man in Black: I interacted with ... an outlier. Did it infect me?
Man in Black: Infect you?
Man in Black: With the virus.
Man in Black: What virus?
Man in Black: The one your kind has. That spreads to us. Makes us kill ourselves.
Man in Black: Sounds like you've reached the center of the maze, my friend.

Man in Black: What do you think of your world?
Man in Black: This isn't my world. It's hers.
Man in Black: Maybe it's time you question the nature of your own reality...

Christina: That's what I'm writing, isn't it? Everyone. Who built this? Who... Who did this to me?
Teddy: You did.

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+ Quotes on the IMDb