Neal Stephenson Quotes
Top 100 wise famous quotes and sayings by Neal Stephenson
Neal Stephenson Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Neal Stephenson on Wise Famous Quotes.
Sir, if you ask a Marine if he wants another cigarette, or if he's ready, the answer is always the same, sir!
Men who believe that they are accomplishing something by speaking speak in a different way from men who believe that speaking is a waste of time.
Any property that's open to common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it.
They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.
Allegedly there was a Google Docs spreadsheet where it was being kept track of, but no one could agree on where it was.
Half of the castle has, at one point or another, been burned down by a combination of Barbary corsairs, lightning bolts, Napoleon, and smoking in bed.
Markus's mind jumped straight to the most obvious explanation: Is the president nuking people again?
The science fiction approach doesn't mean it's always about the future; it's an awareness that this is different.
My eyes skimmed over the legalese and bureaucratese (two languages I had never mastered), until I found something descriptive to
Two days later a Scout simply disappeared without explanation, possibly the victim of a micrometeoroid, or even of suicide.
Any power structure one of whose main goals was to prevent humans from fucking each other at will had to be extremely formidable.
Maybe this was all down to some supernatural effect, such as grace, that flowed through people's lives even if they didn't understand why.
RESPECT THE PEDESTRIAN, say the street signs of Metro Manila. As soon as Randy saw those he knew that he was in trouble.
These women stared out from the canvases with arched brows, enormous eyes and tiny mouths, seeing much, and saying little.
every pirate and privateer has lurking within him the soul of an accountant. Though some would say 'tis the other way round.
His comb had left visible, parallel grooves through his heavily gelled brown hair, like the tracks of fleeing dinosaurs in a fresh volcanic mudflow.
His rule of thumb, after a walk, is to drink water until he begins to urinate again. Then he can consider other activities.
It was more likely that they would lose consciousness from the gee forces first - a relatively painless way to go.
Crappy old OSes have value in the basically negative sense that changing to new ones makes us wish we'd never been born.
some manner of cause-and-effect relationship existed between the rise of scientific knowledge and the decline of magic.
Ever think of introducing yourself?" Y.T. says.
"Nah," he says, "people always forget names. You can just think of me as that one guy, y'know?
"Nah," he says, "people always forget names. You can just think of me as that one guy, y'know?
It wasn't just a matter of hiding what you really felt. If you hid your feelings well enough, it actually changed you. A
In the wilderness, only the most terrible beasts of prey cavort and gambol. Deer and rabbits play no games.
All the people saying mean things about me on the Internet are gonna be dead in four hundred and thirty-three days," she said, deadpan.
Earth looked as if some god had attacked it with a welder's torch, slashing away at it and leaving thin trails of incandescence.
That's even worse. They'll steal it. Then they'll say they didn't steal it, they confiscated it. I know you Feds, you're always confiscating shit.
The last ship home has sailed. From now on, launch vehicles will rise up into orbit, but they will not go back for ten thousand years.
The cat, morbidly obese from eating virtually all of Isaac's meals, fell off the table like a four-legged haggis, and trudged away.
At this point in their lives, neither one of them is important enough to kill, kidnap, or interrogate.
It is commonly the case with technologies that you can get the best insight about how they work by watching them fail.
In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman.
He was already thinking about the videos he was going to make to teach his baby about calculus when he climaxed.
The problem with those honorable men," Avi says, "is that they expect everyone else to be honorable in the same way.
On a sub, you know, there's no place for things to drain to. The survivors claimed that the blood was knee-deep all through the submarine.
Now he had learned that a machine, simple in its design, could produce results of infinite complexity.
The Sword fled, and would have vanished utterly if the Pope had not granted them refuge in the ranks of the Teutonic Knights.
Clearly Mr. Drkh has had a long career of being the weirdest person in any given room, but he's about to go down in flames.
I see there are no heroes any more. Where is my head of Joseph Kony on a plate? Slice him thinly so there's enough to go around.
If you sincerely believed in God, how could you form one thought, speak one sentence, without mentioning Him?
But even if they did have that kind of money rattling around in their pockets, actually spending it would offend their native frugality.
There followed one of those comical interludes in which the jihadists were confused about what to do next and fell to bitter recriminations.
The kind of woman who could pleasantly instruct you to fuck off, dear, and you immediately would because you'd just hate to disappoint her.