Josh > Josh's Quotes

“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“The rough-and-ready intellectual consensus of the mid-Twentieth Century is being pushed out by a New Superstition whose victims can find testimony on the Internet for anything they choose to believe. The only cure for it is reading books, and lots of them.”
― Neal Stephenson, Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing – A Brilliant Collection on Science and Technology from Newton to Star Wars

“To qualify as a Seeker, it was necessary to show a high serendipity factor. In my experimental behaviour pool as a child, I had exhibited such a factor, and had been selected for special training forthwith. I had taken additional courses in Philosophical, Alpha-humerals, Incidental Tetrachotomy, Apunctual Synchronicity, Homoontogenesis, and other subjects, ultimately qualifying as a Prime Esemplastic Seeker. In other words, I put two and two together in situations where other people were not thinking about addition. I connected. I made wholes greater than parts. Mine was an invaluable profession in a cosmos increasingly full of parts.”
― Brian W. Aldiss, The 1977 Annual World's Best SF

“Complain about your crumbling infrastructure and overzealous Homeland Security all you like, but as least you have a system that theoretically provides both, which is a damn sight better for national morale than knowing you don’t, and that at any moment some Aramis-drenched Visigoth could climb in the window of your bedroom, unzip your torso like a garment bag and eat out your liver with a crab fork.”
― Cintra Wilson, Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny

“I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind.”
― Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds

“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“Heartless reality does not grant humans the lifespan necessary to master every specialty of science, so no one genius in his secret lab can really bring robots, mutants, and clones into the world at his mad whim--it takes a team, masses of funds, and decades. But one man can love all sciences, even if he cannot wield them, and he can inspire children with the model of the mad genius, even if he cannot live it.”
― Ada Palmer, Too Like the Lightning

“Our cultures used to be almost hereditary, but now we choose them from a menu as various as the food court of a suburban shopping mall. Ambition, curiosity, talent, sexuality or religion can draw us to new cities and cultures, where we become foreigners to our parents. Synthetic cultures are nimbler than old ones, often imprudently so. They have scattered so widely that they can no longer hear each other and now some have gone so far afield that they have passed through the apocalypse while the rest of us are watching it on TV.”
― Neal Stephenson, Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing – A Brilliant Collection on Science and Technology from Newton to Star Wars

“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 ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“You can't throw too much style into a miracle.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

“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.”
― Neal Stephenson, Anathem

“Boredom is a pleasing antidote for fear”
― Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca

“In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.

(Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.)”
― Thomas a Kempis