We Are Legion (We Are Bob) Quotes

“How are you supposed to feel if you are forced to do what you would have done anyway?”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Since I doubt, I think; since I think, I exist.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“People's capacity for turning dogmatic stupidity into political movements never ceased to amaze me. We've knocked off 99.9% of the human race and somehow the crazies still manage to survive. It just defies the odds.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Wake up, buddy. You okay?” “Auntie Em! Auntie Em!” Homer’s VR came online, smiling. “I guess we got’em.” I snorted with relief. “And their little dog, too.” Homer steepled his fingers in a properly evil mastermindish pose. “All their base are belong to us.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“I like people in the abstract but not in the concrete?”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“At one time, we thought that the way life came together was almost completely random, only needing an energy gradient to get going. But as we’ve moved into the information age, we’ve come to realize that life is more about information than energy. Fire has most of the characteristics of life. It eats, it grows, it reproduces. But fire retains no information. It doesn’t learn; it doesn’t adapt. The five millionth fire started by lightning will behave just like the first. But the five hundredth bacterial division will not be like the first one, especially if there is environmental pressure. That’s DNA. And RNA. That’s life. …”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Stereotypes are valid first-order approximations.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Belly laughs are one of the best things about being sentient, and you should never miss a chance for one.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Yeah, they still make duct tape. And it still holds the universe together.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Point is, that’s when I really realized that I don’t think like most people. I’m fine with solitude. In fact, I get antsy when I’m around people for too long a period without respite.” The”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Um. Ways in which a sentence beginning with the word "missiles" could be a good thing... Nope. I got nuthin'.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“It blew me away that almost two hundred years after Shatner first famously didn’t actually say, “Beam me up, Scotty,” people still knew Star Trek. Now that’s a franchise.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Hey, with IPv8, we should be able to address every galaxy in the universe.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“I had three issues that bothered me. Was I conscious? Could I actually consider myself to be alive? And was I still Bob? Philosophers had been going on and on about this type of thing for centuries, but now, for me, it was personal. A human, regardless of their opinion on the subject, could depend on being a human. The minister’s offhand reference to me as ‘it’ and ‘replicant’ had stung at a level I was just now starting to appreciate.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy. … Sun Tzu, Art of War”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“How are you supposed to feel if you are forced to do what you would have done anyway? I”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“I sat back, staring into space, so preoccupied that I stopped patting Spike. I was reminded of my primary duty by a furry head butting against my chin. “Sorry, your highness.” I smiled at the cat and resumed justifying my existence.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Thank God for family. And thank God for a couple thousand miles of distance. When everyone was home at the same time, I could generally take it for about half an hour before I retreated into the basement. Usually, Dad followed about ten minutes later. There’d be the mutual eye-rolling, and we’d settle down without a word, to read or watch TV. My father and I were both loners by disposition. We could sit in the same room for hours, not say five words to each other, and both be completely comfortable. It drove my mother crazy.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Thank God for family. And than GOD for a couple of miles of distance.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“it was considerably better than my current defensive armament, which consisted of harsh words and heavy disapproval. Probably not effective against Klingons. Spike”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“About half of the global population was currently living in New Zealand, Madagascar, and, strangely, Florianópolis, Brazil. The”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Part of my job is to instruct you in right-thinking so you can become a good servant of the state.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Was I alive? Hmm, since no one had yet managed to define life rigorously, that was going to be a fun one. As the speaker at that long-ago panel in Vegas had pointed out, fire has most of the qualities of life but is not alive. According to Dr. Landers, I would be able to reproduce via printer-based autofactories. I certainly responded to stimuli, and acted with self-interest. The claim that life would have to be carbon-based was chauvinistic and narrow-minded, so yeah, I could consider myself alive.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“I could leave my devices to their own devices.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Now, the big one. Who was I? Was I Bob? Or was Bob dead? In engineering terms, what was the metric used to ascribe Bob-hood? Bob was more than a hunk of meat. Bob was a person, and a person was a history, a set of desires, thoughts, goals, and opinions. Bob was the accumulation of all that Bob had been for thirty-one years. The meat was dead, but the things that made Bob different from a chipmunk were alive. In me. I am Bob. Or at least, I am the important parts that made Bob.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“In 2036, the USA elected an over-the-top, unapologetic fundamentalist president named Andrew Handel. Yes, that Handel. During his term, he tried to ban election of non-Christians to any public post, and tried to remove the constitutional separation between church and state. He was nominated, supported, and elected based on his religious views, rather than on his political or fiscal expertise. And of course, he appointed persons of similar persuasion to every post he could manage, in some cases blatantly ignoring laws and procedures. He and his cronies rammed through far-right policies with no thought for consequences. In a number of cases, when challenged on the results, he declared that God would not allow their just cause to fail. He eventually brought the USA to its knees in an economic collapse that made the 2008 recession look like a picnic in the park.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“At one time, we thought that the way life came together was almost completely random, only needing an energy gradient to get going. But as we’ve moved into the information age, we’ve come to realize that life is more about information than energy. Fire has most of the characteristics of life. It eats, it grows, it reproduces. But fire retains no information. It doesn’t learn; it doesn’t adapt. The five millionth fire started by lightning will behave just like the first. But the five hundredth bacterial division will not be like the first one, especially if there is environmental pressure. That’s DNA. And RNA. That’s life. … Dr. Steven Carlisle, from the Convention panel Exploring the Galaxy”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“People’s capacity for turning dogmatic stupidity into political movements never ceased to amaze me.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Fire has most of the characteristics of life. It eats, it grows, it reproduces. But fire retains no information. It doesn’t learn; it doesn’t adapt. The five millionth fire started by lightning will behave just like the first. But the five hundredth bacterial division will not be like the first one, especially if there is environmental pressure.”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“Above my pay grade!”
― Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)