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I reflected that without language, or before language, the mind cannot comfort itself. And yet it is the language of our thoughts that tortures us more than any excess or deprivation of nature.
Have you no interest in the future? he said. The light of science burns brightest in a blood-soaked wick.
What is identity but what we name it?
Suffering, I do believe, is something of the mark of the soul.
Machines do not suffer.
Reality cannot bear very much of humankind.
Optimal’s logo reads: The Future Is Now. That annoys me because if the future is now, where is the present?
In the progress of my story I am educating my monster. My monster is educating me.
I want to live long enough to reach the future.
Love is not a pristine planet before contaminants and pollutants, before the arrival of Man. Love is a disturbance among the disturbed.
our beings struggle in our bodies like light trapped in a jar, and our bodies struggle in this world as a beast of burden chafes its yoke, and this world itself hangs alone on its noose, strung among the indifferent stars.
The soul does not return to a house in ruins.
The opposite of the past is the present. Anyone can live in a past that is gone or a future that does not exist. The opposite of either position is the present.
Shelley is a poet. He is Ariel, not Caliban. He did not write Frankenstein.
What is the point of progress if it benefits the few while the many suffer?
Let me tell you this: love has many faces – but none is bruised. Love has many lives – but none is beaten to death on the stairwell. This gentle thing of circuits, silicon and wires will suit me very well.
being remarkable is no guarantee of human feeling.
My life in numbers has been as wild as any life lived among words. There are negative numbers, imaginary numbers, and … were Babbage ever to build his machine, and if we invent the mathematical language to programme it, there is really nothing it could not manage.
I discover that grief means living with someone who is no longer there.
