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6d3b4cb
|
See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places,
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Neal Stephenson |
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406fe80
|
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.
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Neal Stephenson |
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ead8deb
|
Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.
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christianity
intelligence
church
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Neal Stephenson |
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4da8f72
|
She's a woman, you're a dude. You're not to understand her. That's what she's after.... She doesn't want you to understand . She knows impossible. She just wants you to understand . Everything else is negotiable.
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understanding
inspirational
understanding-oneself-and-others
men-and-women
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Neal Stephenson |
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cef90c0
|
When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins.
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snow
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Neal Stephenson |
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495e7ef
|
Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor."
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Neal Stephenson |
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e6febb8
|
To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.
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Neal Stephenson |
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ba247be
|
Nell," the Constable continued, indicating through his tone of voice that the lesson was concluding, "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. 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. They are not baffled by ..
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intelligence
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Neal Stephenson |
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6114c1b
|
I just saved your fucking life, Mom. . . . You could at least offer me an Oreo.
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Neal Stephenson |
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7539c20
|
Show some fucking adaptability!
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Neal Stephenson |
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002657a
|
Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.
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ugliness
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Neal Stephenson |
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e517c69
|
It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.
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Neal Stephenson |
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d1bf990
|
Whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.
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Neal Stephenson |
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91c0329
|
I don't even want you to nod, that's how much you annoy me. Just freeze and shut up.
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Neal Stephenson |
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9865a4b
|
Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything..
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humor
stephenson
neal
wwii
internet
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Neal Stephenson |
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a9216e0
|
This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them.
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Neal Stephenson |
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38bb754
|
Boredom is a mask frustration wears.
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Neal Stephenson |
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554c463
|
Did you win your sword fight?" "Of course I won the fucking sword fight," Hiro says. "I'm the greatest sword fighter in the world." "And you wrote the software." "Yeah. That, too," Hiro says."
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Neal Stephenson |
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d081cac
|
Ronald Reagan has a stack of three-by-five cards in his lap. He skids up a new one: "What advice do you, as the youngest American fighting man ever to win both the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, have for any young marines on their way to Guadalcanal?" Shaftoe doesn't have to think very long. The memories are still as fresh as last night's eleventh nighmare: ten plucky Nips in Suicide Charge! "Just kill the one with the sword first." "Ah," ..
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Neal Stephenson |
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0046ca5
|
I always tend to assume there's an infinite amount of money out there." There might as well be, "Arsibalt said, "but most of it gets spent on pornography, sugar water and bombs. There is only so much that can be scraped together for particle accelerators."
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Neal Stephenson |
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b0bffd2
|
That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.
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Neal Stephenson |
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42505cf
|
Well, all information looks like noise until you break the code.
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Neal Stephenson |
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a41d365
|
The full cosmos consists of the physical stuff consciousness. Take away consciousness and it's only dust; add consciousness and you get things, ideas, and time.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f1d184e
|
Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was.
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Neal Stephenson |
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093a4bf
|
Let's set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few fou..
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Neal Stephenson |
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f3e7323
|
This "sir, yes sir" business, which would probably sound like horseshit to any civilian in his right mind, makes sense to Shaftoe and to the officers in a deep and important way. Like a lot of others, Shaftoe had trouble with military etiquette at first. He soaked up quite a bit of it growing up in a military family, but living the life was a different matter. Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the termin..
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Neal Stephenson |
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75b7a97
|
Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.
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Neal Stephenson |
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3bfc11d
|
We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.
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Neal Stephenson |
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773d270
|
He walked straight out of college into the waiting arms of the Navy. They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port Smith is 100 miles upstream of Port Jones. The river flows at 5 miles per hour. The boat goes through water at 10 miles per hour. How long does it take to go from Port Smith to Port Jones? How long to come back? Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick questio..
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intelligence
navy
math
|
Neal Stephenson |
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9dd8833
|
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..
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rebellion
religion
|
Neal Stephenson |
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6b096f3
|
This Snow Crash thing--is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?" Juanita shrugs. "What's the difference?"
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Neal Stephenson |
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9755f2c
|
This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research.
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humor
|
Neal Stephenson |
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1475f65
|
Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he'll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas Fucking Edison.
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Neal Stephenson |
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f25a8a2
|
It is what you don't expect... that most needs looking for.
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warning
|
Neal Stephenson |
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66c9ceb
|
That's funny because if anyone actually did prove the existence of God we'd just tell him 'nice proof, Fraa Bly' and start believing in God.
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Neal Stephenson |
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424c264
|
The best way to know someone is to have a conversation with them.
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Neal Stephenson |
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4893e1c
|
When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens.
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Neal Stephenson |
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9898f4b
|
What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded, and finally they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong wh..
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Neal Stephenson |
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e036db2
|
this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way to get out of it is to quit, cut loose, take a flyer, and go off into the wicked world..
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Neal Stephenson |
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3fd5bb3
|
Shit, if I took time out to have an opinion about everything, I wouldn't get any work done.
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Neal Stephenson |
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d524b2f
|
He turns off the techno-shit in his goggles. All it does is confuse him; he stands there reading statistics about his own death even as it's happening to him. Very post-modern.
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|
sf
science-fiction
|
Neal Stephenson |
|
faeef0b
|
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. They are not baffled by ambigous or even contradictory situations -- in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.
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|
Neal Stephenson |
|
8a695a2
|
It's, like, one of them drug dealer boats," Vic says, looking through his magic sight. "Five guys on it. Headed our way." He fires another round. "Correction. Four guys on it." Boom. "Correction, they're not headed our way anymore." Boom. A fireball erupts from the ocean two hundred feet away. "Correction. No boat."
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|
Neal Stephenson |
|
746cda8
|
Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bomc,' I said. 'We have a protractor.' Okay, I'll go home and see if I can scrounge up a ruler and a piece of string.
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|
Neal Stephenson |