The Stone Canal Quotes

“thirty billion have refuted Malthus: everybody’s rich. They’ve refuted Mises: nobody’s paid. They’ve refuted Freud: nobody’s sad. But it’s kind of crowded.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“Say what you like about succubi, they are loyal little fucks.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“the trapped ghosts of theologians in a hell that only they could fully deserve.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“a momentary shiver in the dreams of the posthuman.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“I must be lost in the swarm. (And how many of those swarming robots ran copies of me? There was something infinitely depressing in the thought; of the soul’s cheapening as its supply curve went up and its production costs dropped.)”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“You may also be wondering what you’re doing, haunting the onboard computer of a maintenance robot made not from smart matter but from what we now call ‘dumb mass.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“I’ve never made a principled decision in my life! I’m an opportunist and proud of it.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“the only lectures currently being given there were from the ignorant to each other.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“It was a notorious fact that libertarians in Norlonto were rarer than communists in what Reid used to call the workers’ states.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“People said there was a hole in the greenhouse, as they lit fires with yesterday’s money.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“The Republic’s modest aim of combining national unity with local autonomy clashed repeatedly with locals whose idea of autonomy was a good deal more expansive.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“Nothing—not Communists, not fascists, not authoritarians of any stripe—ever aroused in me the same homicidal rage as the Pro-Lifers.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“swap retirement for longevity and a degree of rejuvenation, and you can work till you drop.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“the ostensibly human species—or hominid genera—are divided between real people and some hollow mockery of people, beings like vampires, who live on the lives of others.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“parasitic mimicry of humanity,”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“but it took a lot of work to bring that reckless impulse to birth: decades of agitation, grumbling, constitution-drafting, sparsely attended meetings in poorly furnished halls, letters to the editor, noisy demonstrations, and all the rest. And bloody hard work it was. I know, because I was there and I didn’t do any of it. * * *”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“an entirely unjustified sense of having achieved something”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“It remains easier to reprogram a machine than to subvert a human.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“Whatever you say, say nothing.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“Freelance professional eunuch and part-time catamite.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“planet occupied by organized gangs of nuclear-armed nutters is not my idea of a safe environment.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“I’m not an idealistic fighter for anything.” “That’s what you think,” Reid said. “You’re an anarchist out of pure, innocent self-interest?”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“an anarchist out of pure, innocent self-interest?”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal

“crowded, not so much because of its popularity but because of a shrewd tactic of always booking a room just a little smaller than the expected attendance.”
― Ken MacLeod, The Stone Canal