Rooting for the Empire/Quotes

"Don't you just love it when the bad guys win?"

—Scratch, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

—William Blake, on Paradise Lost

Who roots for the cops in a heist movie, anyway?

—Feng Shui: Friends of the Dragon

"So what? Audiences always think the villain is cooler than the hero is, anyway."

—Tarquin, The Order of the Stick

Till the age of about fourteen I believed in God, and believed that the accounts given of him were true. But I was well aware that I did not love him. On the contrary, I hated him, just as I hated Jesus and the Hebrew patriarchs. If I had any sympathetic feelings towards any character in the Old Testament, it was towards such people as Cain, Jezebel, Haman, Agag, Sisera: in the New Testament my friends, if any, were Ananias, Caiaphas, Judas and Pontius Pilate.

—George Orwell, "Such, Such Were the Joys"

"Are zombies the protagonists of The Walking Dead? Because they're the ones I'm rooting for. They're the only ones who have a clear motivation, i.e. brains, and behave in such a way as to bring those desires to fruition. They're clearly the best written."

—Tycho, Penny Arcade, March 2, 2012

"Jimmy was the kind of guy who rooted for the bad guys in the movies"

—Henry Hill, Goodfellas