Vernor Vinge Quotes

Life is a green madness just now, trying to squeeze the last bit of warmth from the season.

Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently.

Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.

How will the approach of the Singularity spread across the human world view?

Sometimes, sitting here in the dark, slowly slowly creating strategy, she wondered if she was only fooling herself to think her plans were clever.

We humans have millions of years of evolutionary baggage that makes us regard competition in a deadly light.

So High,
So Low,
So Many Things to Know

Its agents -- not even
human equivalent on this primitive hardware -- raced through the ship's
automation

The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

Poor humans; they will all die.""Poor us; we will not.

The dilemma felt by science fiction writers will be perceived in other creative endeavors.

This might be one of the few basements in Southern California, but it was clearly being used the way Juan's family used the garage.

The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.

welts long enough for them to grow eyes. Nature does indeed prefer that cobblies be created right before the Dark.

What we have is a data glut.

But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will.

Programming went back to the beginning of time. It was a little like the midden out back of his father's castle.

We're long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.

Fong's obscenity-spattered fit about keyboards. So what to look

This was the pretech experience, that even if you had no enemies the world itself could kill you. And

Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.

Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.

Ty or Ra or Thect

It is a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules.

The heart of manipulation is to empathize without being touched.

Though his invention worked superbly [ ... ] his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end.

Note that I am not proposing that AI research be ignored or less funded.

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.

Ravna became a librarian. "The ultimate dilettante!" Lynne had teased.

We're endangered by our own success.

One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

So much technology, so little talent.

I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.

All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge ... And now revenge was all that life had left for him.

The hours came to minutes, the minutes to seconds. And now each second was as
long as all the time before

Hexapodia as the key insight

How long must a fish study to understand human motivation?

The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.

Now on Tines World, the Zone physics was still improving. What was it like thirty lightyears higher? Bili

Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.

[He] was an insect wandering in the cathedral his mind had become.

When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project.

Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.

Tycoon had a peddler's talent for using words to redefine reality.

Little fish risking everything for a piece of godhood ... and not knowing heaven from hell, even when they find it.

Enormous cemeteries existed among sedentary civilizations, where the weight of the past grew larger than any present time.

Ravna thought a moment. "Sysadmin is the usual term," she said.

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all - no one's around to write horror stories.

Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.

IA is something that is proceeding very naturally, in most cases not even recognized by its developers for what it is.

How to explain? How to describe? Even the omniscient viewpoint quails.

It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.

Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years-and not one of them could come near to this!

Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.

The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.

Half-assed programming was a time-filler that, like knitting, must date to the beginning of the human experience.

I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.

I say, let's learn more and then speculate.

While We are out of Touch or How to Survive and Prosper during the Next Thirty Minutes by Your Friend, the Mysterious Stranger

He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.

For where there is heaven, there can also be hell.

If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.

Funny how Underhill could get along with almost anyone, tuning down his manias to whatever the traffic would bear.

I have come to kill you."The death's heads shrugged. "You have come to try.

This was a commercial situation, not some exercise in an Applied Theology course.

Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots.