Dave Eggers Quotes

“Would you say you behave differently when you know you’re being watched?”

“We will become all-seeing, all-knowing.”

“Mae called her parents . . . and there were tears . . . and some very embarrassing talk about how Mae had become a real adult, how her parents were ashamed and humbled to be leaning on her, leaning so heavily on their young daughter in this way, it’s just this messed-up system we’re all stuck in, they said. But thank you, they said, we’re so proud of you.”

“There were now over a hundred million cameras functional and accessible around the world, making in-person reporting unnecessarily expensive and dangerous, to say nothing of the carbon expenditures.”

“I understand that secrecy is part of, well, an aberrant behavior system. It comes from a bad place, not a place of light and generosity. And when you deprive your friends . . . of experiences like I had, you’re basically stealing from them. You’re depriving them of something they have a right to.”

“It’s not that I’m not social. I’m social enough. But the tools you guys create actually manufacture unnaturally extreme social needs. No one needs the level of contact you’re purveying. It improves nothing. It’s not nourishing. It’s like snack food . . . They scientifically determine precisely how much salt and fat they need to include to keep you eating. You’re not hungry, you don’t need the food, it does nothing for you, but you keep eating those empty calories. This is what you’re pushing.”

“The dominance of the Circle stifles competition and is dangerous to our way of free-market capitalism.”

“And then Mae found herself sobbing. Her father was a mess . . . And there was nothing she could do for him. No, there was too much to do for him. She could quit her job. She could quit and help make the phone calls, fight the many fights to keep him well. This is what a good daughter would do. What a good child, an only child, would do.”

“All of it felt like something from another time, a rightfully forgotten time, and made Mae feel that she was not only wasting her life but that this entire company was wasting life, wasting human potential and holding back the turning of the globe.”

“Tyrants can no longer hide. There needs to be, and will be, documentation and accountability, and we need to bear witness. And to this end, I insist that all that happens should be known.”

“That’s the vast majority of this social media, all these reviews, all these comments. Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication.”

“You know how you finish a bag of chips and you hate yourself? You know you’ve done nothing good for yourself. That’s the same feeling, and you know it is, after some digital binge. You feel wasted and hollow and diminished.”

“I’m a believer in the perfectibility of human beings. I think we can be better. I think we can be perfect or near to it. And when we become our best selves, the possibilities are endless.”

“But for now, let’s go back to the places in the world where we most need transparency and so rarely have it.”

“Whoever is persecuting them, and all those who tacitly support this persecution, would realize that to persecute them would mean persecuting at least 10 percent of the population—including their sons, daughters, neighbors and friends—even their own parents. It would be instantly untenable.”

“In a family, is a secret a good thing? Theoretically, do you ever think, You know what would be great to keep from my family? A secret.”

“We see this workplace as a community, and every person who works here is part of that community. And to make it all work it requires a certain level of participation.”

“Knowledge is a basic human right. Equal access to all possible human experience is a basic human right.”

“My problem with paper is that all communication dies with it. It holds no possibility of continuity. You look at your paper brochure, and that’s where it ends. It ends with you.

“There were old printers, fax machines, telex devices, letterpresses. The decor, of course, was for show. All the retro machines were nonfunctional.”