Cody Conroy > Cody's Quotes

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, 5-Book Boxed Set: A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, A Dance with Dragons

“and Catelyn Stark stepped up behind him and opened his throat. The horseman remembered an urgent engagement elsewhere and galloped off suddenly.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“No matter how far back Ned searched in the brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the coal.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones: The Story Continues: The Complete 5 Books

“The fact that there are countless things we will never know, and many that we could not possibly know, does not mean they do not exist—only that we cannot prove it.”
― Poul Anderson, Starfarers

“Our guess is that machines capable enough to be useful interstellar explorers are necessarily so complex as to be vulnerable to mutation in their programs,” Dayan said. “They need not visit a nova. Sooner or later, if nothing else, cosmic radiation will do it. Generally, they lose their ‘wits’ and just drift on aimlessly forever. Probably no line of von Neumanns gets beyond a few hundred light-years before it goes effectively extinct.”
― Poul Anderson, Starfarers

“You cannot go back into the past and change what has happened, no matter what you do. But your actions can be a part of what did happen.”
― Poul Anderson, Starfarers

“We’re all scared. We’d be fools if we weren’t.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“Good ser, it is gold I crave, not words on papers.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“Cersei began to cry. Tyrion Lannister could not have been more astonished if Aegon the Conqueror himself had burst into the room, riding on a dragon and juggling lemon pies.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

“The area-bombing advocates had this cleverly deceptive word they used to describe the effect of their bombing: dehousing. As if you could destroy a house without disturbing its occupants. But if my house is gone, doesn’t that make me more dependent on my government, not more inclined to turn on my government?”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

“The more you invest in a set of beliefs—the greater the sacrifice you make in the service of that conviction—the more resistant you will be to evidence that suggests that you are mistaken. You don’t give up. You double down.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War

“What about the related matter of whether we are capable of creating intelligences smarter than ourselves? Computers routinely do mathematics that no unaided human can manage, outperform world champions in checkers and grand masters in chess, speak and understand English and other languages, write presentable short stories and musical compositions, learn from their mistakes, and competently pilot ships, airplanes, and spacecraft. Their abilities steadily improve. They’re getting smaller, faster, and cheaper. Each year, the tide of scientific advance laps a little further ashore on the island of human intellectual uniqueness with its embattled castaways. If, at so early a stage in our technological evolution, we have been able to go so far in creating intelligence out of silicon and metal, what will be possible in the following decades and centuries? What happens when smart machines are able to manufacture smarter machines?”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space