The Matrix Principles

Neo (Keanu Reeves) believes that Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), an elusive figure considered to be the most dangerous man alive, can answer his question — What is the Matrix? Neo is contacted by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), a beautiful stranger who leads him into an underworld where he meets Morpheus. They fight a brutal battle for their lives against a cadre of viciously intelligent secret agents. It is a truth that could cost Neo something more precious than his life.

“Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

“The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

“The Matrix is a computer-generated dream world, built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.” [holding a copper-top D cell battery]

“What is real? How do you define real?”

“The way we choose to see the world creates the world we see.”

 “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”

 “Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? “

“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”

“If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

“There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

“Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.”

“We don’t know who struck first, us or them. But we do know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time, they were dependent on solar power. It was believed they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun.”

“I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing… why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You’re looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us, Neo. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did. The answer is out there, Neo, and it’s looking for you, and it will find you if you want it to.”

“I don’t like the idea that I’m not in control of my life.”

“You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.”

“What are you waiting for? You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are, know you are. Come on. Stop trying to hit me and hit me.”

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.”

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

“Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth. There is no spoon”

“You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, and disbelief, Free your mind.”

“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”

“Perhaps we are asking the wrong questions.”

“To deny our impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.”

“Do you believe that my being faster or stronger has anything to do with my muscles in this place? You think that’s air you’re breathing now?”

“The body cannot live without the mind”

“As long as the Matrix exists, the human race will never be free.”

“I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.”

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

“Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.”

“Never send a human to do a machine’s job.”

“Love is just a word, what matters is the connection the word implies.”

“Why do my eyes hurt? You’ve never used them before.”

“The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTU’s of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines had found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields – endless fields – where human beings are no longer born, we are grown. For the longest time I wouldn’t believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living.”

“Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without.”

“Believe me when I say we have a difficult time ahead of us. But if we are to be prepared for it, we must first shed our fear of it. I stand here, before you now, truthfully unafraid. Why? Because I believe something you do not? No, I stand here without fear because I remember. I remember that I am here not because of the path that lies before me but because of the path that lies behind me. I remember that for 100 years we have fought these machines. I remember that for 100 years they have sent their armies to destroy us, and after a century of war I remember that which matters most… We are still here!”

“Denial is the most predictable of all human responses”

“Not everyone believes what you believe.”

“I am the Architect. I created the Matrix. I’ve been waiting for you. You have many questions, and although the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also the most irrelevant.”

“Humph. Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.”

“Already I can see the chain reaction: the chemical precursors that signal the onset of an emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic and reason. An emotion that is already blinding you to the simple and obvious truth”

“What happened, happened and couldn’t have happened any other way.”

“You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth. Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect.”

“All of our lives, we have fought this war. Tonight I believe we can end it. Tonight is not an accident. There are no accidents. We have not come here by chance. I do not believe in chance. When I see three objectives, three captains, three ships. I do not see coincidence, I see providence. I see purpose. I believe it our fate to be here. It is our destiny. I believe this night holds for each and every one of us, the very meaning of our lives.”

“Because you didn’t come here to make the choice, you’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand why you made it.”

“As I was saying, she stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly ninety-nine percent of the test subjects accepted the program provided they were given a choice – even if they were only aware of it at a near-unconscious level. While this solution worked, it was fundamentally flawed, creating the otherwise contradictory systemic anomaly, that, if left unchecked, might threaten the system itself. Ergo, those who refused the program, while a minority, would constitute an escalating probability of disaster.”

“Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control. Which has led you, inexorably, here.”

“You do not truly know someone until you fight them.”

“We are all victims of causality.”

“I suppose the most obvious question is, how can I trust you? Bingo. It is a pickle. No doubt about it. The bad news is there’s no way if you can really know whether I’m here to help you or not, so it’s really up to you. You just have to make up you on damned mind to either accept what I’m going to tell you, or reject it.”

“The problem is choice”

“Some things never change, but some things do”

“There are only two possible explanations: either no one told me, or no one knows.”

“A program was written to watch over the trees, and the wind, the sunrise, and sunset. There are programs running all over the place. The ones doing their job, doing what they were meant to do, are invisible. You’d never even know they were here. But the other ones, well, we hear about them all the time.”

“Every time you’ve heard someone say they saw a ghost, or an angel. Every story you’ve ever heard about vampires, werewolves, or aliens, is the system assimilating some program that’s doing something they’re not supposed to be doing.”

“I like to be reminded this city survives because of these machines. These machines keep us alive, while other machines are coming to kill us. Interesting, isn’t it? The power to give life, and the power to end it.”

“What is the reason? Soon the why and the reason are gone and all that matters is the feeling. This is the nature of the universe. We struggle against it, we fight to deny it; but it is of course a lie. Beneath our poised appearance we are completely out of control.”

“There is so much in this world that I do not understand. See that machine? It has something to do with recycling our water supply. I have absolutely no idea how it works. But I do understand the reason for it to work. I have absolutely no idea how you are able to do some of the things you do, but I believe there’s a reason for that as well. I only hope we understand that reason before it’s too late.”

“Some people go their entire lives without hearing news that good.”

“Another way. Always another way.”

“We do only what we’re meant to do.”

“Everything that has a beginning has an end”

“Karma’s a word. Like “love”. A way of saying ‘what I am here to do.’ I do not resent my karma – I’m grateful for it. Grateful for my wonderful wife, for my beautiful daughter. They are gifts. And so I do what I must do to honor them.”

“It is remarkable how similar the pattern of love is to the pattern of insanity.”

“I don’t expect you to do anything. I expect what I’ve always expected, for you to make up your own damn mind. Believe me or don’t.”

“Appearances can be deceiving”

“In the beginning, there was man. And for a time, it was good. But humanity’s so-called civil societies soon fell victim to vanity and corruption. Then man made the machine in his own likeness. Thus did man become the architect of his own demise.”

“A case to end all cases.”

“There’s a difference, Mr. Ash, between a trap and a test.”

“There’s a difference between a test and a choice. For what it’s worth, I think you could’ve handled the truth.”

“Only the most exceptional humans become aware of the matrix.”

“You’ve just stepped to the edge of the looking glass.”

“You saved yourself”

“Reality can be a pretty scary thing for some people; this world must have been a cold and alienating place”

“This is not real, and the real world lies somewhere else.”

“Somebody tell me. Why does it feel more real when I dream than when I am awake? How can I know if my senses are lying?”

“There is some fiction in your truth, and some truth in your fiction. To know the truth, you must risk everything.”

“They can’t tell the difference. To an artificial mind, all reality is virtual. How do they know that the real world isn’t just another simulation? How do you?”

“I know I’ m not dreaming now because I know what its like being in a dream.”

“So dreaming lets you know that reality exists? No. Just that my mind exists. I don’t know about the rest.”

“Bless all forms of intelligence”

“And Man said, ‘Let there be light’. And He was blessed by light, heat, magnetism, gravity, and all the energies of the universe. “