Quotes by Neal Stephenson

“One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for may people, is not that hes socially inept - because everybodys been there - but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.”

“The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.”

“For example, there was the day he gave me the job of figuring out how many jellybeans it would take to fill up Soldier Field.”

“The science fiction approach doesnt mean its always about the future; its an awareness that this is different.”

“Most countries are static, and they need to do is keep having babies. But Americas like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.”

“The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent.”

“Once a person has all the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment.”

“Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.”

“It is the fate of operating systems to become free.”

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs, I said. We have a protractor.

A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.

If you cant test it, its not theorics -- its metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy.

Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?

Right, by tomorrow morning everyone will have congregated in Le Havre and you can all pile in the car and come back out here together, said Tristan in a rapid monotone, as if needing to rationalize being along with me overnight as nothing more than a matter of logistics.DEAR READER: It was not a matter of logistics.

Nell did not imagine that Constable Moore wanted to get into a detailed discussion of recent events, so she changed the subject. I think I have finally worked out what you were trying to tell me, years ago, about being intelligent, she said.The Constable brightened all at once. Pleased to hear it.The Vickys have an elaborate code of morals and conduct. It grew out of the moral squalor of an earlier generation, just as the original Victorians were preceded by the Georgians and the Regency. The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code– but their children believe it for entirely different reasons.They believe it, the Constable said, because they have been indoctrinated to believe it.Yes. Some of them never challenge it– they grow up to be smallminded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel– as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw.Which path do you intend to take, Nell? said the Constable, sounding very interested. Conformity or rebellion?Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded– they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.

Juanita believes that nothing is provably true or provably false in the Bible. Because if its provably false, then the Bible is a lie, and if its provably true, then the existence of God is proven and theres no room for faith.

They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.

In your Primer you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all the experience you need to be intelligent, but you have to think about those experiences. If you dont think about them, youll be psychologically unwell. If you do think about them, you will become not merely educated but intelligent.

Ares always reemerges from the chaos. It will never go away. Athenian civilization defends itself from the forces of Ares with metis, or technology. Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesnt work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish.