Wired Quotes

“The universe was infinite, and there were most likely an infinite number of universes. To sit on one tiny planet in an ocean of infinite infinities and believe you understood anything about the true nature of existence and reality was absurd.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“Humanity seemed to have a singular ability to find destructive uses for any constructive technology. Invent the computer, and you could be certain someone would invent computer viruses and other ways to attack it. Invent the Internet, an unimaginable treasure trove of information, and you could bet it would be used as a recruiting tool for hate mongers and instantly turned into a venue for child pornographers, sexual predators, and scam artists. Humanity never failed to find a way to become its own worst enemy. “I”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“The brain is the last and grandest biological frontier, the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe. It contains hundreds of billions of cells interlinked through trillions of connections. The brain boggles the mind.”   —James D. Watson, Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“It’s impossible to say. Normal motives don’t necessarily apply to psychopathic personalities. Jeffrey Dahmer murdered and cannibalized seventeen people, three of whose skulls were found in his refrigerator.” “That’s perfectly rational behavior,” said Desh sarcastically. “He just didn’t want them to spoil.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“unpredictable. No conscience; no remorse.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“There’s no evolutionary advantage to long life.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“would be to set up an artificial matrix into which she can transfer”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“And what happened when an individual cell became selfish and exhibited Nietzsche’s will to power? It became a cancer. The cell would break free of the restraints on its own division and become immortal—for a while—until its very immortality choked the entire organism to death, killing the selfish cell in the process.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“Humanity was composed of separate individuals now, but an embryo at early stages was also nothing more than a ball of separate cells. But these separate cells would ultimately become connected in wondrous ways to create something unimaginably greater than themselves.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“The purpose of consciousness—any consciousness—was to achieve infinite comprehension. It was as simple as that. If a God existed, humanity must strive to discover this God and help this deity become omniscient, not just in one infinity, but in an infinity of infinities.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“The purpose of consciousness—any consciousness—was to achieve infinite comprehension.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“Don’t be fooled by the anti-smoking lobby, my dear,” said Sam. “Cigarette use is thriving in every corner of the world. Over five trillion are smoked each year. Do you think it would be difficult for someone with immeasurable intelligence to figure out a simple way to contaminate a majority of the world’s cigarette production lines with a hyper-contagious agent? With all the world's smokers playing the role of Typhoid Mary, it would spread to every human on the planet in no time.” He grinned. “I guess second-hand smoke isn't the biggest danger you can face from smokers, after all.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“This is classic data mining. You draw a conclusion and then mine the data retrospectively to find support for it.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“Intuition is just your subconscious putting together subtle clues and coming to a conclusion that your conscious mind hasn’t quite reached. Since”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“My level of skill? My imagination may be prodigious, but that’s a lot to ask of it,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“His foot was heavy on the gas pedal by nature, and when he didn’t actively control himself, his default speed was usually twenty miles per hour over the posted limit. Despite conscious efforts to contain this impulse, he was beginning to feel he was beyond hope and desperately in need of a twelve-step speedaholics program.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“Just because you were good at something didn’t mean it was a match with your personality or psyche.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“And innocent people who feel threatened hire bodyguards. Guilty people hire mercenaries.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“additional assailants.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“millions,”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“There’s another million upon success.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“No wonder Kira Miller was so wealthy.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.” —Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher (1844-1900)”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“neurons the human brain has?” “More than three hundred and two,” said Desh wryly. “One hundred billion,” said Kira emphatically. “One hundred billion! And on the order of one hundred trillion synaptic connections between them. Not to mention two million miles of axons. Electrical signals are constantly zipping along neuronal pathways like pinballs, creating thought and memory. The possible number of neuronal pathways that can be formed by the human brain are basically infinite.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“Without question, violence and brutality—and bloodlust—were intrinsic to human nature. Scratch any century throughout recorded history and staggering displays of cruelty came gushing out: the slaughter of helpless innocents on a massive scale, brutal wars, enslavements, tortures, mass rapes and murders, and other atrocities far too numerous to ignore. Hitler was just one example in a seemingly endless parade. Humanity could wrap itself in the cloak of civilization and pretend this side of its nature didn’t exist, but the hostility and savagery that drove the most dangerous predator on the planet to the top of the food chain was always seething, just below the surface.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“There have been thousands of different religions through time. And the followers of each of these religions believe that their founders received the divine answer, and that the religious mythology of all other religions is delusional. Almost everyone agrees that all the other religions were invented by man, just not the particular one into which they were born.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“unlike a computer, the brain is controlling our every movement, breath, heartbeat, and blink of an eye, and even our every emotion. And all the while it’s taking in massive amounts of sensory information—nonstop. Your retina alone has over one hundred million cells constantly relaying visual information to your brain; in ultra-high definition I might add. If a computer had to monitor and manage your every bodily function and download, process, and react to this never-ending barrage of information, it would melt.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“Intuition is just your subconscious putting together subtle clues and coming to a conclusion that your conscious mind hasn’t quite reached.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“I know it’s like drinking from a fire-hose.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired

“Love was a lizard brain instinct. A survival mechanism bred into the species that was totally separate from reason. Women were extremely vulnerable during pregnancy, and children were helpless for many years. If humans didn’t have a mechanism for cementing a pair bond, nothing would remain but selfishness and promiscuity. Certain animal species were wired in the same way. How”
― Douglas E. Richards, Wired