Quotes

"Sergeant, why are you so certain no one is coming?" "We're just clones, sir. We're meant to be expendable." "Not to me." ―Plo Koon and Clone Sergeant Sinker

If this is success, then I achieved it by failing at pretty much every benchmark that’s supposed to matter. The only thing I can conclude from that—the closest thing to advice I can offer—is that Rules matter a lot less than anyone told us. They’re statistical descriptors at best, curves, and confidence limits designed to reduce a million data points down to a few manageable parameters. They’re next to useless when it comes to predicting the trajectory of a single point. There are a million points in this cloud. There have to be a million trajectories. Peter Watts July 2016

Identity

The canvas isn’t blank. But it also isn’t black? (me). I am the river and the river is me (Whanganui iwi) Cogito ergo sum (René) Oel ngati kameie (Neytiri) Dif tor heh smusma / P&LL...LL&P (Spock) Amazing grace how sweet the sound... (Father John, ex-slave trader) Rosebud (Charles) Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish (Steve) I’ve fallen into good ways. I keep thinking I can give it up at any time I like, but I don’t. But I know if I couldn’t give it up any time I liked, I wouldn’t go on doing it (Moist) There wasn’t any real magic, she thought. I just stood my ground. You have to stand your ground, because it’s your ground (Tiffany) I must not fear. / Fear is the mind-killer. / Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. / I will face my fear. / I will permit it to pass over me and through me. / And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. / Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. / Only I will remain. (Bene Gesserit) Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt (Gregor) The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers (William) [γνῶθι σεαυτόν / gnōthi seauton / nosce te ipsum / temet nosce]... / It is unknown to thousands, and to thee; /... / Clouded and shrouded there doth sit / The Infinite / Embosomed in a man; /... / The clouds that veil his life within / Are thy thick woven webs of sin, / Which his glory struggling through / Darkens to thine evil hue. /... / Happy if thou dost know and love this truth, / Thou art unto thyself a law, / And since the soul of things is in thee, / Thou needest nothing out of thee. / The law, the gospel, and the Providence, / Heaven, Hell, the Judgement, and the stores Immeasurable of Truth and Good, / All these thou must find / Within thy single mind, / Or never find. / Thou art the law; / The gospel has no revelation / Of peace and hope until there is response / From the deep chambers of thy mind thereto,—– / The rest is straw. / It can reveal no truth unknown before. /... / Thou art thyself that doth dispense / Wealth to thy work, want to thy sloth, / Glory to goodness, to neglect, the moth. / Thou sow’st the wind, the whirlwind reapest, / Thou payest the wages / Of thy own work, /.../ Who approves thee doing right? / God in thee. / Who condemns thee doing wrong? / God in thee. / Who punishes thine evil deed? / God in thee. / What is thine evil meed? / Thy worse mind, with error blind / And more prone to evil / That is, the greater hiding of the God within... (Ralph) A man who in spite of humankind / is Spinoza and the Baal Shem and the kabbalists, / a man that is a Book, / a mouth praising heaven’s justice/ from the abyss, / an attorney or a dentist / who talked with God in a mountain, / a man condemned to ridicule and abomination, a Jew, / an ancient man, burnt and drowned in lethal chambers, / an obstinate man who is immortal / and now has returned to battle, / to the violent light of victory, / beautiful like a lion at noon. (Jorge) I labour by singing light / Not for ambition or bread /... / But for the common wages / Of their most secret heart. /... / Who pay no praise or wages / Nor heed my craft or art. (Dylan)) Chaotic good / Archetype: Rebel /A chaotic good character does what is necessary to bring about change for the better, disdains bureaucratic organizations that get in the way of social improvement, and places a high value on personal freedom, not only for oneself, but for others as well. Chaotic good characters usually intend to do the right thing, but their methods are generally disorganized and often out of sync with the rest of society. Examples of this alignment include copper dragons, many elves, and unicorns. (D&D) Carpe diem (John) I am Groot (Groot) The Diner Party (Judy) [It is...] therefore resolve[d] that[...]: / (1) A "planet" is a celestial body that is in orbit around the Sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. / (2) A "dwarf planet" is a celestial body that meets the first two criteria for a planet, but has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and is not a satellite. / (3) All other objects, except satellites, orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as "Small Solar System Bodies". / [By this resolution] The planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune / and Pluto is a "dwarf planet" [...] and is recognised as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects. (IA-fucking-U)

Freedom

They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom! (William) Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death. (Aldous) I beg you to accept that there is no people on earth who would not prefer their own bad government to the good government of an alien power...And that is what we intend to achieve: peaceful, nonviolent, non-cooperation -- till you, yourselves, see the wisdom of leaving...To gain independence, we must prove worthy of it. There must be Hindu-Muslim unity always....We must remove untouchability from our hearts and from our lives...Until we stand in the fields with the millions that toil each day under the hot sun, we will not represent India (Mohandas K) This is Sparta (Leonidas) Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference. (Robert, lieing) If you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you (Esk) Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote (Vetinarii) If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do (Angel) Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men (Douglas) Freedom is the right of all sentient beings (Optimus Prime) Knowledge is free. We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us. (Anonymous - message to Scientology) You can’t stop the signal (Mr Universe)

The Persistence of Memory [and its Disintergration] (melted clocks) / Metamorphosis of Narcissus / Swans Reflecting Elephants / Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening / Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) / The Great Masturbator / Leda Atomica / The Sacrament of the Last Supper (Salvador)

Justice

פתח־פיך לאלם אל־דין כל־בני חלוף׃ פתח־פיך שפט־צדק ודין עני ואביון: (משלי ל”א:ח”ט) צדק צדק תרדף: (דברים ט”ז:כ’) Only crimes could take place in darkness. Punishment had to be done in the light. That was the job of a good watchman, Carrot always said. To light a candle in the dark (Carrot) / The common people?.. They’re nothing special. They’re no different from the rich and powerful except they’ve got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit (Samuel) I don't regret it, because the things that attracted me were things that pleased my soul (Nelson) Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another... (Nelson) I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and to see realised. But my lord, if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. (Nelson) ...[T]he kind of nation we want to be. A nation where all belong and know they belong; where all are insiders, none is an outsider, where all are members of this remarkable, this crazy, country, they belong in the rainbow nation. (Desmond) He was a person who divided the world quite simply into people who were trying to kill him and people who weren’t. That didn’t leave much room for fine details like what colour anyone was (Rincewind) I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him...Brutus is an honorable man... (Marc)

Mathematical beauty

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry. (Bertrand) Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is. (Paul) e^(iπ) + 1 = 0 (Leonhard) a² + b² = c² (Πυθαγόρας) 1 + 1 = 2 (Ishango Bone) 2 + 2 = 5 (Lord George Gordon and another George) x^n + y^n ≠ z^n, for n > 2 (Pierre) φ = (1 + √5) ÷ 2 (Εὐκλείδης) S = k.log(W) (Ludwig) dS / dt > 0 (Rudolph) x(n+1) = rx(n) × [1 - x(n)] (Robert) z(n+1) = z(n)² + c (Benoit) F = ma (Isaac) E = hv (Max) γ = 1 ÷ √(1- v²/c²), t′ = γ(t - vx/c²), x′ = γ(x - vt) (Hendrik) Δt′ = γΔt, Δx′ = Δx/γ, m′ = γm(0), p = γm(0)v, E = γm(0)c² (Albert) R(μν) - ½Rg(μν) + Λg(μν) = (8πG÷c^4)T(μν) [curvature = energy/mass] (Albert) σ(m)σ(p) ≥ (h÷2π),÷ 2 (Werner) i.(h÷2π).[∂/∂t]ψ(t) = Hψ(t) (Erwin - that the cat is also dead is sad ) ζ(s∈ℂ=σ+it) = ∑(1/n^s) = [1/Γ(s)] ∫{x^(s-1) ÷ [e^x -1]}dx, converges ∀(σ=ℝ(s)>1), ζ(-1) = ζ(-13) = -1/12, ζ(0) = -½, ζ(1) = ∞, ζ(2) = π²/6, ζ(4) = π^4/90 (Leonhard-Bernhard) 1729 (Srinivasa) √2 (Πυθαγόρας) To every ω-consistent recursive class κ of formulas, there correspond recursive class-signs r such that neither (v Gen r) nor Neg(v Gen r) belongs to Flg(κ), where v is the free variable of r (Kurt) A straight line can be drawn through any two points / Any terminated line can be extended indefinitely / A circle with any radius can be drawn around any point / All right angles are equal / The parallel axiom - or not, which is the beauty (Εὐκλείδης) What do you get if you multiply six by nine? Forty two. (Random Letters)

The Vast Universe

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar', every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. (Carl) And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labor and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of stars. (Olaf) In this belief I have tried to construct an imaginative sketch of the dread but vital whole of things. I know well that it is a ludicrously inadequate and in some ways a childish sketch, even when regarded from the angle of contemporary human experience. In a calmer and a wiser age it might well seem crazy. Yet in spite of its crudity, and in spite of its remoteness, it is perhaps not wholly irrelevant. (Olaf) Intellect, peering beyond the star, discovered no Star Maker, but only darkness; no Love, no Power even, but only Nothing. And yet the heart praised. (Olaf) To see a world in a grain of sand / And a heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, / And eternity in an hour (William) We saw something so true. (Shep, about M87) And AC said: "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light. (Isaac) It’s simple. Just change the gravitational constant of the universe (Q) N = R.f(p).n(e).f(l).f(i).f(c).L (Frank)

The infinite

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| Morpheus | 1999 | film

Absurd truths

Because in this world, after everyone panics, there’s always got to be someone to tip the wee out of the shoes (Susan) Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch! (Wolfgang) Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker! (John) Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain (Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmanuel Ambroise Diggs) Wax on, wax off (Hideo) I'll be back (T-800) Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer (Michael) As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again (Scarlett) "Surely you can't be serious." "I am serious...and don't call me Shirley." (Dr Rumack) If you build it, he will come (Ray) The first rule of fight club is that you do not talk about fight club (Tyler) No damn cat, and no damn cradle. (Newt) If you're ever in Cody, Wyoming, just ask for Wild Bob! (Wild Bob) I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o'er vales and hills, / When all at once I saw a crowd, / A host, of golden daffodils (William) She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies (George) Time is. Time was. Time is past. (Brazen Head) In all trust there is the possibility of betrayal (William) At this moment an unending stream of traffic/intercourse was just going over the bridge (Georg) They're brothers Data, brothers forgive (Beverly) Wie du dich auch drehst, der Arsch bleibt mimer hinten (Erich) You don't need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary...Like a dog! (K.) I opened myself to the benign/gentle/tender indifference of the world (Meursault) All your base is belong to us / 連邦政府軍のご協力により、君達の基地は、全てCATSがいただいた。 (CATS) お前はもう死んでいる; Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru...Nani?! (北斗の拳; Hokuto no Ken) I know kung fu (Neo) This is my Kung-Fu and it is strong!...Your Kung-Fu is not strong! (Rat) The only winning move is not to play (Joshua) Elementary, my dear Watson (not Sherlock) There can be only one (Connor) 640K ought to be enough for anybody (Bill) I have a cunning plan. (Baldrick) Remember, remember, the fifth of November... (V) Many things are complicated ... loving one’s children is not one of them (Teal’c) Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast / If I’m not back in five minutes, just wait longer (Ace) Wait a minute, Doc. Ah... Are you telling me you built a time machine... out of a DeLorean? (Marty) The Enemy’s Gate is Down (Ender) / There is no teacher but the enemy...but who is the enemy (Scot) I like to eat my cake, and have yours to! (Garfield) If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away! (Ea-Nasir) Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. (Pablo) Ovina Sancta (Vox Telekom Ad - what we don't want more of) One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension (Wendall) We think, we think, but do we (Reddington) There are no evil thoughts except one: the refusal to think (Rand) If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? (Albert) Don’t panic (HHGTTG) / Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so (Ford) / Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? ‘Cos I don’t. (Marvyn) Make it so (Jean-Luc) / I have been, and shall always be, your friend (Spock) / You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon (Gorkon) / I should have gone into insurance - better hours, more money, less scruples... (Qwuaark) The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it (Pratchett) And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire... (Milton) Time [...] ought, above all other kinds of property, to be free from invasion; and yet there is no man who does not claim the power of wasting that time which is the right of others (Samual interpreting the Dog asking the Great to move out of his sunlight) I have been hacked. all my apes gone. this just sold please help me (@toddkrammer1) 2 words, 1 finger (internet meme, the sign in charades that the answer has two words, of one syllable each) Portrait of Madame X (John) Niobe: I remember. I remember you used to dance. I remember you were pretty good. Morpheus: There are some things in this world ... that will never change...Some things do change.

LotR

Sauron was not the Lord of,the Rings: Three rings for the Elven kings under the sky / seven for the Dwarf lords in their halls of stone / nine for the mortal men doomed to die, / one for the Dark Lord on his dark throne / in the land of Mordor where the shadows lie. / Ash nazg durbatulûk, / ash nazg gimbatul, / ash nazg thrakatulûk/agh burzum-ishi krimpatul./In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie. (Sauron)

Frodo was not the Lord of the Rings: ...so great was the Ring's power of lust, that anyone who used it became masted by it; it was beyond the strength of any will (even his own [Sauron’s]) to injure it, cast it away, or neglect it. (JRR, letter #131, showing that when Frodo stood at the edge of Mount Doom and refused to throw the Ring, that was to be the outcome from the very start. This means that no matter how Frodo made it to the volcano and how many members of the Fellowship made the journey with him, they were always doomed to push Frodo in along with the One Ring) Sam is the Lord of the Rings: Perhaps even more aptly: Samwise Gamgee. His name roughly translates to "halfwit", and it applies. He's overweight, easily frightened, and not very bright. He also beat a man-eating giant spider demi-god in single combat, single-handedly stormed a tower full of hostile orcs to save his friend's life, was the only Ringbearer to steadfastly resist the temptation of the One Ring, and literally carried another man up the side of a volcano for the fate of the world while starving and suffering from dehydration. There's a reason Tolkien considered him the true hero of the story. / However: Sam saves the world. Over and over, at the end of the quest, Sam just gets it done. Frodo spends the tail of the quest in a state of perpetual near-failure, and suffers a moral failure at the brink, requiring Gollum to prevent him from throwing the entire quest away... in fact, the story told is one in which Frodo reaches the end only by virtue of Sam's labor. Frodo presents as a tragic character; handed a burden he didn't ask for, trudging along through the story fueled by duty, and in the end damaged beyond repair. He travels through the story in a pessimistic condition. Sam's sense of duty is much more positive: his love for Frodo, his home, Rosie (though we don't learn much about that until the end) and the world. Sam, unlike Frodo (and, well, Moses) gets to enjoy the fruits of his labors, and I think that this is a sufficient clue that he's the hero of the piece. Gollum is the Lord of the Rings: It’s my birthday and I wants it...My precious (Gollum) Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends... / My heart tells me [Gollum] has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before the end; and when that comes, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many - yours not least... / Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes (Olórin, foreshadowing that Gollum was unintentionally, one of the biggest (and most unlikely, and tragic) heroes in The Lord of the Rings, by hiding the ring from Saruman and Sauron for 500 years, making the journey into Mordor easier/possible, stopped Frodo from succumbing and claiming the ring which would have destroyed ME, and, finally, destroying the ring. He couldn’t defeat the rings power, but the essential goodness of his Smeagle part caused all his and the rings evil plans to be turned to good. Being a hero is not about being a wholesome guy; it’s about getting the job done and, in this case, saving the world---which Gollum did. “Gollum” is a plausible answer to “Who is the Lord of the Rings?” A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice. “Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.” (The ring bearer, or the Ring (?), dooming Gollum on the slopes of Orodruin, as seen by Sam) / May death find you quickly, within Gondor or without, if you do not well serve him (The 2nd son dooming Gollum if he betrays the ring bearer) Gollum came very, very close to actually repenting. There is a scene in the book where he is about to repent, but Sam wakes up irritable and rebukes him, and the opportunity is lost. Tolkien found this to be the saddest moment in the book. So one point is that, no matter how low we fall, there is always hope for a change of heart. Tolkien also says that, had he repented, he would have taken the Ring from Frodo and voluntarily thrown himself into the fire of Mount Doom to save his beloved master. Thus we see that Gollum’s love was as deep as his treachery. And, forgiven or not, it was Gollum who destroyed the One Ring, after all. This is a reminder of God’s fundamental statement to all beings who seek their own ends out of harmony with Divine Love, including joy and peace for all: Do what you will, and what you do will, nonetheless, be included within my larger plan. (Internet commentator quoting JRR) Eru Iluvatar is the Lord of the Rings: The fall of Gollum might seem anticlimactic, but it had to be so, in order to convey the moral message: the vicious circle of Power is only broken by acts of Pity, Mercy, Self-sacrifice, and humble alignment with the divine design, thus allowing Divine Providence to act by means of simple, good-hearted people. Useless and even more damaging are other means like strength, violence, or the same Power, the morally ambiguous idea of fighting fire with fire...And indeed vain would have been the Lore of Elrond, the Wisdom of Gandalf, the Charisma of Aragorn, the Power of Galadriel if Bilbo and Frodo would have not spared Gollum and if Frodo would have not carried a burden too great for him towards sure death through unspeakable sufferance... Maybe Frodo was the Lord of the Rings: But the moral climax is reached only afterward, when the Hobbits come back to the Shire only to find it completely devastated, polluted, and poisoned to its very heart by Saruman and a band of thugs at his command...They manage to deal with the hundreds of thugs by sparking and leading a rebellion, in which Merry and especially Pippin, turn out to play a pivotal leadership role. Frodo, tired and spiritually wounded, stays out of the brawl and what he mostly does, is preach peace and restrain the hobbits from the use of violence...Frodo forgives [Saruman] and bids him leave. Saruman attempts to kill Frodo with a knife but he is stopped. Frodo again forgives him and stops the Hobbits from doing him any harm saying “he was of ancient order upon which mortals should not raise their hands, he was great once but he is fallen and redemption seems lost for him, but I wish he can find it”. At that point Saruman watches Frodo in grudging admiration and then renewed hate: “you are grown, you have become wise” he says “and cruel, now I leave in debt to you of my life and I hate it.” This is the moral climax of the Story: the hobbits, all the hobbits, now become masters of their lives having the chance to apply the Courage, the Charisma, the Wisdom, Pity, and Mercy they have experienced throughout the Quest, to save their own home. Frodo receives the grudging praise of a fallen “angelic power”: his growth in moral virtues and wisdom is so apparent and astonishing that even the most cunning and deceitful of his enemies cannot but recognize it. (Internet commentators) Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time. The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing...They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25 and it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film...There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away. (Cristopher, on the movies) "I wish it need not have happened in my time." "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." / Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule (Olórin to the ring bearer / the returned king and the unlikely friends) ...spy from the little rat-land of the Shire (the Mouth) All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost... (Olórin) One does not simply walk into Mordor (stupid son) "No living man may hinder me!" (Witch-king via Glorfindal’s prophecy)