691 Quotes by Neal Stephenson

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.

Ty got the feeling, from cues in the Teklan’s physique and general style of movement, that he was some manner of Snake Eater.

Do you reject the glamor of Evil, and refuse to be mastered by it?

Allegedly there was a Google Docs spreadsheet where it was being kept track of, but no one could agree on where it was.

One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for may people, is not that he’s socially inept – because everybody’s been there – but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.

Software comes out of factories, and hackers are, to a greater or lesser extent, assembly-line workers. Worse yet, they may become managers who never get to write any code themselves.

Why would that cause him to pack up his bolt, chord, and sphere, and hurry to Ecba, of all places?

Identity” had been forever changed by the Internet; formerly it had meant “who you really are” but now it meant “any one of a number of persistent faces that you can present to the digital universe.

Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists’ uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn’t 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.