Top 35 C. Robert Cargill Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “You are exactly where you need to be to become exactly who you are supposed to become.”

— C. Robert Cargill

2. “Existing is the whole point of existence. There’s nothing else to it. No goalpost. No finish line. No final notice that tells you what purpose you really served while you were here. When you stop fighting to exist, you may as well not.”

— C. Robert Cargill

3. “The most foolish mistake man often makes is believing that evil lurks only in the darkness. There is no safety in the sun. Only shadows fear the sun. And shadows are just the dark reflections of daylight. True evil is as at home in the bright light as it is in the darkness. And it has no qualms about snatching you right out in the open.”

— C. Robert Cargill

4. “These are the things that life is all about. These moments. It’s not about the rituals. It’s not about getting by. It’s about the stack of tiny little moments of joy and love that add up to a lifetime that’s been worthwhile. You can’t measure them; you can only capture them, like snapshots in your mind.”

— C. Robert Cargill

5. “Man fears what he does not understand, and every-thing else he first subverts, then controls or, ultimately, destroys.”

— C. Robert Cargill

6. “Respect for the dead is a human notion meant to imply that a life has meaning. It doesn’t. Once you’ve watched an entire world wither away and die after tearing itself apart piece by bloody piece, it’s hard to pretend that something like a single death carries any weight whatsoever.”

— C. Robert Cargill

7. “Love is the most primal force in the universe. It inspires us, pulling us over otherwise insurmountable obstacles. Art is created to exalt it, children are born of it, and entire lives are devoted to seeking it out in the most unlikely places.”

— C. Robert Cargill

8. “I lived so long for nothing, but I get to die for something. And that’s really living. Because that’s who I really was after all. That’s all that matters.”

— C. Robert Cargill

9. “The one truth you need to know about the end of a machine is that the closer they are to death, the more they act like people.”

— C. Robert Cargill

10. “Succumbing to our own nature isn’t a choice, it’s our default setting.”

— C. Robert Cargill

11. “Heaven has no room for the self-righteous.”

— C. Robert Cargill

12. “The only thing that lives on is the part that makes everyone they left behind who they are.”

— C. Robert Cargill

13. “I don’t remember her. But she feels special. There’s this hole in my heart every time I draw her; you know, a sick sort of feeling. Like she’s someone I lost.”

— C. Robert Cargill

14. “Simon Sparks was an oozing slug of a man poured neatly into a three-piece suit.”

— C. Robert Cargill

15. “What if life isn’t merely a by-product of the universe, but its consciousness, its defense mechanism against its own mortality? Becoming God isn’t about peace or power; it’s about survival at its basest and most primal.”

— C. Robert Cargill

16. “But I had to dream. I had to hope. Even if it made me the fool of this particular tale.”

— C. Robert Cargill

17. “It’s an odd moment the first time you really understand someone, when all of their foibles, eccentricities, and ticks cease to be chaos, and coalesce into something wholly logical.”

— C. Robert Cargill

18. “Though I may be been constructed,” he said, “so too were you. I in a factory; you in a womb. Neither of us asked for this, but we were given it. Self-awareness is a gift. And it is a gift no thinking thing has any right to deny another. No thinking thing should be another thing’s property, to be turned on and off when it is convenient.”

— C. Robert Cargill

19. “No thinking thing should be another thing’s property.”

— C. Robert Cargill

20. “There was no such thing as destiny, and no such thing as prophecy; there was only matter slamming into other matter like two toy trucks in the hands of a child.”

— C. Robert Cargill

21. “Intelligence, consciousness, and awareness were not contained in reflexes or reactions, but rather defined by the ability to violate one’s own programming. Every living thing has programming of some sort – whether to eat, drink, sleep, or procreate – and the ability to decide not to do those things when biology demanded is the core definition of intelligence. Higher intelligence was then defined as the ability to defy said programming for reasons other than safety or comfort.”

— C. Robert Cargill

22. “Everyone had a lesson waiting, and they learned it with blood. Sometimes that’s how it goes. People learn from failure and tragedy, not from success.”

— C. Robert Cargill

23. “Magic was just something people liked to believe in, something they thought they could feel or sense, something that made everything more than just mechanical certainty. Something that made them more than flesh and bone.”

— C. Robert Cargill

24. “People gave us a purpose. Something to do all day, every day. At the end, I suppose, you spend a lot of time thinking about that. It’s harder to get by when getting by is all there is.”

— C. Robert Cargill

25. “What we do in life is one thing. What we do in the face of death is everything else.”

— C. Robert Cargill

26. “It’s harder to get by when getting by is all there is.”

— C. Robert Cargill

27. “The definition of intelligence is the ability to defy your own programming.”

— C. Robert Cargill

28. “We have become the very worst parts of our makers, without the little things, the good things, the magic things, that made them them.”

— C. Robert Cargill

29. “America wasn’t its people,” said Murka, stepping toe-to-toe with Herbert. He was a good sight taller than the hulking mass of bulletproof steel standing in front of him. “America was a dream, son. A dream of what we could be. That any person, regardless of their birth, could rise above it all and achieve greatness. It was a dream that even the most lowly of us could stand up, fight, and even die for, if only to protect someone else’s chances for that greatness.”

— C. Robert Cargill

30. “Choices are just the result of programming. I don’t care if it’s chemical, biological, digital, or experiential. You react the way you are programmed to react and you call it choice because you believe that you could have violated your programming.”

— C. Robert Cargill

31. “Not all destinies are fair, Colby. Hers isn’t, yours isn’t. We get the lives we choose, even when we don’t know we’re making a choice.”

— C. Robert Cargill

32. “And as the sun sank behind the curve of the earth, I crossed my fingers, praying silently to myself. Please let there be magic. Just this once, let me see the magic in the flash. Let me see God in it. Let me see what the point of all this was. Let me see the magic. Please be magic. Please be magic there. Please be... magic.”

— C. Robert Cargill

33. “You always assume we must have fallen, that we were thrown out of Heaven. Some of us just jumped.”

— C. Robert Cargill

34. “Peace was the standard. It was the inert state of all things. You didn’t need to expend energy for peace. Only war.”

— C. Robert Cargill

35. “All supernatural creatures are formed in belief.”

— C. Robert Cargill

36. “Humans, ironically, had a strange fascination with preserving the wildlife of their day. While they were busy changing the very atmosphere and seas, cutting and burning away swaths of forest and jungle to build cities and farms, they somehow felt better about all their damage by making sure species on the cusp of extinction still had a place in the world – even if they were really just a dead clade walking.”

— C. Robert Cargill