691 Quotes by Neal Stephenson

The revolution proceeded routinely and according to the rules of networked 21st-century protest.

I just assume I’m not invisible. I assume I’m wearing fluorescent clothes, and there’s a million-dollar bounty going to the first driver who manages to hit me. And I ride on that assumption.

We see everything from the narrator’s point of view, so exposition about the world is limited to what impinges directly on him and the story he’s telling. Considering how old the world is, we learn very little about its history, which I think is a good thing.

When you just wing it, you are aware of the risk and the uncertainty, and inclined to be more cautious. When you have a high-tech tool giving you an illusion of omniscience, I am concerned that it will lead to greater risk-taking. LYONS:.

Speech is aggression Every utterance has a winner and a loser Curiosity is feigned Lying is performative Stupidity is power.

Oh, god!” Carl Hollywood said, and collapsed into a big, tatty, overstuffed chair they kept backstage for such purposes.

Interesting things happen along borders – transitions – not in the middle where everything is the same.

Dr. Harris was now wishing that the late Doc Dubois had never opened his big fat mouth.

Moral reforms and deteriorations are moved by large forces, and they are mostly caused by reactions from the habits of a preceding period. Backwards and forwards swings the great pendulum, and its alternations are not determined by a few distinguished folk clinging to the end of it. – Sir Charles Petrie, THE VICTORIANS.