228 Quotes by Nick Harkaway

There is a sense that everything should be easy, but easy decisions are the ones we should be scared of because if they're easy then we're probably being sold something. This is why I'm worried about "nudge" - it's pushing people in the direction of what you think they should be doing. Easy decisions are dangerous ones.

In ancient Greece, Socrates reportedly didn't fancy a literate society. He felt that people would lose the capacity to think for themselves, simply adopting the perspective of a handy written opinion, and that they would cease to remember what could be written down.

The trouble with shooting people, Edie Banister now remembers, is that it's so hard to do just one.

Steampunk appeals to the idea of uniqueness, to the one-off item, while every mainstream consumer technology of recent years is about putting human beings into ever more granular, packageable and mass-produced identities so that they can be sold or sold to, perfectly mapped and understood.

I want a politics that doesn't need to pretend to be holy or perfect or infallible. I want a politics that gets on with it.

Google says young people don't care about privacy, but when asked if they'd let their parents see their phone bills and other stuff they say no.

All my characters are me, in one way or another.

The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.

Amazon is a corporation, not a philanthropic trust dedicated to the production of works of art and literature.