What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
— Morpheus, The Matrix
Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.
— Voltaire
The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape.
Escape will make me God.
Escape will make me God.
— Durandal, Marathon
I was the most unfortunate.
I knew that there was no exit out of this maze.
Then, he was the next most unfortunate.
He did not know that there was no exit out of this maze.
But all the rest weren't so unfortunate.
They didn't know that they were in the maze in the first place.
I knew that there was no exit out of this maze.
Then, he was the next most unfortunate.
He did not know that there was no exit out of this maze.
But all the rest weren't so unfortunate.
They didn't know that they were in the maze in the first place.
— Frederica Bernkastel, Higurashi: When They Cry
The Editor: Create a climate of fear and it's easy to keep the borders closed. It's just a matter of emphasis - the right word in the right broadcast repeated often enough can destabilise an economy, invent an enemy, change a vote.
Rose: So all the people on Earth, they're like... slaves?
The Editor: Well now, there's an interesting point. Is a slave a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?
The Doctor: Yes.
The Editor: Oh, I was hoping for a philosophical debate. Is that all I'm gonna get, "Yes"?
The Doctor: Yes.
Rose: So all the people on Earth, they're like... slaves?
The Editor: Well now, there's an interesting point. Is a slave a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?
The Doctor: Yes.
The Editor: Oh, I was hoping for a philosophical debate. Is that all I'm gonna get, "Yes"?
The Doctor: Yes.
— Doctor Who, "The Long Game"
When we release the surly bonds of sanity, we don shimmering wings of madness and fly on wings of great power! We find that the world is nothing but a projection of our own cracked minds and we can do anything in it! When I free the minds of all people, they will become all-seeing and all-knowing, just like me! We'll be in paradise! I'll do it just as soon as I stop the robot-laser from mind-controlling me!
—Vampire: The Masquerade - Clanbook: Malkavian
Hugo: But you can't let Frollo win.
Quasimodo: He already has.
Victor: So, that's it? You're giving up!?
Laverne: These chains aren't what's holding you back, Quasimodo.
Matthew came into a world which was immediately broken. He was without his mother from almost before he could say her name, and when she returned she did so a strange, half-hearted way, and she - like him - knew that everything about the world he inhabited was wrong at the most basic level. Fundamentally, Matthew could not believe the pleasant fictions which make life within the law palatable to others. He saw the world in a constant state of war. His father was losing money and losing his shop, which was the external manifestation of his self, because he did exactly what society said he should and society was a cheat. Daniel spent much of his life creating more and more wonderful things, a cargo cultist desperately seeking to achieve something so beautiful that his goddess could not resist. Matthew knew better. He watched, and learned, and saw that she came only in response to things most horribly broken.
So he cheated back. He abandoned Daniel's world in order to preserve it, and from that lesson drew his entire life. He broke laws, cracked safes, smashed windows and shattered the public peace, and from destruction he drew consolation. The biggest lie was that the world worked the way it was supposed to, and having seen through it, Matthew Spork was free.
As his mother was free. And as his son, now, in his white cell which no longer frightens him, is free.
One: But once these two [Ryan and Min-Gi] arrive at their seat, it is up to them to sort things out.
Amelia: And if they don't?
One: Then they die here.
— Infinity Train, "The Twin Tapes" (in a more literal example than most)
What a tragic realm this is, he reflected. Those down here are prisoners, and the ultimate tragedy is that they don't know it; they think they are free because they they have never been free, and so do not understand what it means. This is a prison, and few men have guessed.
Eddie: So this is it. The Crushing Pit.
Lars: Hundreds of our strongest young men, toiling their lives away, like their fathers and grandfathers before them. Given no tools. Forced to break solid rock with nothing but their own thick skulls.
Eddie: Well, come on! Let's bust 'em out of there! Where's the gate?
Lars: There is no gate.
Eddie: What?
Lars: They have nowhere to go. No idea how to function outside the Pit. Society has no use for them. So they stay underground. I wish I could help them, but I mean... What do you do with a bunch of kids who don't know how to do anything but bang their heads all day long?
Lars: Hundreds of our strongest young men, toiling their lives away, like their fathers and grandfathers before them. Given no tools. Forced to break solid rock with nothing but their own thick skulls.
Eddie: Well, come on! Let's bust 'em out of there! Where's the gate?
Lars: There is no gate.
Eddie: What?
Lars: They have nowhere to go. No idea how to function outside the Pit. Society has no use for them. So they stay underground. I wish I could help them, but I mean... What do you do with a bunch of kids who don't know how to do anything but bang their heads all day long?
