Attack Surface (Little Brother, #3)

by Cory Doctorow

Her little cell had been good friends before they’d been “dangerous radicals.” I didn’t have that problem because I didn’t have friends.

Depression is a fucking liar, but it’s a convincing one,

I was doing something, but it wasn’t something I was proud of.

Technology didn’t create the brief democratic blip, and it didn’t kill it, but now that it’s dead, technology will sure as shit make sure it never comes back. Those days are done.

Sometimes hard problems don’t have easy solutions.”

I wasn’t getting paid to use my big brains nursemaiding the fragile male ego.

Fights like this aren’t fights you win, they’re fights you fight.

Why did all the idealists in my life have to be so committed to personally making a difference rather than finding a comfortable place from which to watch the great forces of historic inevitability play out?

Be as safe as you can be and choose the right side.

“The point is just that people usually only figure out that things are turning bad when they turn bad for them, and by then it’s too late. The time to act is when you still have privilege and power, not when you’ve had it stripped from you.”

“I have given this offer more consideration than it is due already. Now, fuck off. Then keep fucking off. Fuck off until you come up to a gate with a sign saying ‘You Can’t Fuck Off Past Here.’ Climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off forever.”

“When the whole world is ridiculous, who am I to buck the trend?”

“The way we stay free and safe and un-shot and all of that? Politics. Democracy. Holding them to account.

The most important tool we have for curbing official abuses of power is consensual, legitimate, democratic government.

“They told us that if we trusted them, everything would be okay. Everything is not okay.