The Confusion Quotes

“every human being who is born into this universe is like a child who has been given a key to an infinite Library, written in cyphers that are more or less obscure, arranged by a scheme—of which we can at first know nothing, other than that there does appear to be some scheme.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“The problem of the librarian is that books are multi-dimensional in their subject matter but must be ordered on one-dimensional shelves.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“My men think you are dead now, and won’t waste balls on you,” Jack said. “In fact I have let you live, but for one purpose only: so that you can make your way back to Paris and tell them the following: that the deed you are about to witness was done for a woman, whose name I will not say, for she knows who she is; and that it was done by ‘Half-Cocked’ Jack Shaftoe, L’Emmerdeur, the King of the Vagabonds, Ali Zaybak: Quicksilver!”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“You have responsibilities, now, Bob. You must lose this naive understanding of violence! You are embarrassin' me in front of the lads! You can't play by their rules or they'll win unfailingly! You don't engage in courtly play-fightin' with one such as this. You get a great friggin' tree-branch and keep hittin' him with it until he dies.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“What, not coins in the bank? Does your purse hang as flaccid as a gelding's scrotum?”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“You know," said Jack, "I was a King for a while in Hindoostan, and my subjects would get worked up into a lather about a potato, which to them was worth as much as a treasure-chest. At first I'd want to know everything about the potato in question, and I would take a large stake in the matter, but towards the end of my reign—"

Here Jack rolled his eyes, as Frenchmen frequently did during encounters with Englishmen. Leroy seemed to take his meaning very clearly. "It is the same with every King.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman.’ ” Teague considered it for a moment, then nodded. “In Connaught,” he added. “In Connaught,” Bob agreed, then eyed the ditch.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“Now this was like trying to comprehend all the activity of an anthill, and read all the words in a book, and feel all the splendor of a cathedral, in one glance. Jack’s mind was not equal to the demands that Cairo placed on it, and so for a long while he fixed his attention on small and near matters, as if he were a boy peering through a hollow reed.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“‎...Gold is gold everywhere, fungible and indifferent. But when a disk of gold is stamped by a coiner with certain pompous words and the picture of a King, it takes on added value -- seigneurage. It has that value only in that people believe that it does -- it is a shared phant'sy.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“When later generations come to read about our history they will think they are reading a romance, and not believe a word of it.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“It registered on the mind as a blunt impression that could be talked about only by smearing it into some gray word like “complicated.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“In Memoriam, Louis Anglesey, Earl of Upnor, finest swordsman in England, beaten to death with a stick by an Irishman.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“We say of some Nations, the People are lazy, but we should say only, they are poor; Poverty is the Fountain of all Manner of Idleness. —DANIEL DEFOE, A Plan of the English Commerce”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“At the entrance of this street, a Janissary was pinned to a wooden door by an eight-foot-long spear, which Jack looked on as proving that Yevgeny had passed by there recently.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“If I had a copper for every fly that swarms on you, beast, I’d buy the Spanish Empire! You smell worse than Vera Cruz in the springtime, and there is more filth clinging to your body than most animals shit in a year. Truly you must have sprung fully formed from a heap of manure, as flies and Popes do—may God have mercy on my soul for saying that!”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“In the center of that open space, a bony woman in a threadbare garment was hunched over a dead plant.

Sword of Divine Fire's reaction was succinct: "Fuck!" The woman cringed as if he'd hit her with a bullwhip. Then: "What has happened to our potato?”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“Natural Philosophy cannot advance without attacking theories that are old, and beating back new ones that are wrong, neither of which may be accomplished without doing some injury to their professors.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“Jack could sound them out only through carousing with them over a period of weeks. Jack had long since lost interest in carousing per se, but he recalled how it was done, and could still put on a performance of carousing that looked sincere but was in fact wholly affected, shrewd, and calculating. He was helped in this by his two sons, who really meant it.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“Between these efforts he sent the following, loosely connected string of comments and observations Bob’s way: “You have responsibilities now, Bob. You must lose this naïve understanding of violence! You are embarrassin’ me in front of the lads! You can’t play by their rules or they’ll win unfailingly! You don’t engage in courtly play-fightin’ with one such as this. You get a great friggin’ tree-branch and keep hittin’ him with it until he dies. Like that. D’you see, boys?”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“I don’t hold it against you that you turned out Irish, either. I wasn’t there to make Englishmen of you, and so it’s Irish you are, by default.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“If Admiral Tourville’s invasion-fleet makes it across the Channel without being sunk by the Royal Navy, and if the Papist legion establishes a beachhead on English soil without being destroyed by the Army or torn to bits by an enraged Mobb of English rurals, then I shall personally carry every single one of your coins from the Tower of London to the front in my arse-hole, and Deposit them in some Place where they may be easily Picked Up.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“You have responsibilities now, Bob. You must lose this naïve understanding of violence! You are embarrassin’ me in front of the lads! You can’t play by their rules or they’ll win unfailingly! You don’t engage in courtly play-fightin’ with one such as this. You get a great friggin’ tree-branch and keep hittin’ him with it until he dies. Like that. D’you see, boys?”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“The situation could not possibly be as dire as it seemed or they would all be dead.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“The wording does not come naturally in this bastard language of Sabir, but Moseh’s plan was to synergistically leverage the value-added of diverse core competencies into a virtual entity whose whole was more than the sum of its parts…”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“If the world was populated soley by persons who loved and desired each other symmetrically, it might be happier, but not so interesting.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“she’d had the sound judgment to know when to draw back, and let her investments and her children grow, and her plans come to fruition.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“Pay attention, that’s all,” Eliza said. “Notice things. Connect what you’ve noticed. Connect it into a picture. Think of how the picture might be changed; and act to change it. Some of your acts may turn out to have been foolish, but others will reward you in surprising ways; and in the meantime, simply by being active instead of passive, you have a kind of immunity that’s hard to explain—”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean. It is well he knows that it is long enough to reach the bottom, at such places as are necessary to direct his voyage, and caution him against running upon shoals that may ruin him.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“THE QUILL SWIRLED and lunged over the page in a slow but relentless three-steps-forward, two-steps-back sort of process, and finally came to a full stop in a tiny pool of its own ink. Then Louis Phélypéaux, first comte de Pontchartrain, raised the nib; let it hover for an instant, as if gathering his forces; and hurled it backwards along the sentence, tiptoeing over i’s, slashing through t’s and x’s, nearly tripping over an umlaut, building speed and confidence while veering through a slalom-course of acute and grave accents, pirouetting though cedillas and carving vicious snap-turns through circumflexes. It was like watching the world’s greatest fencing-master dispatch twenty opponents with a single continuous series of maneuvers. He drew his hand up with great care, lest his lace cuff drag in the ink; it inflated for a moment as it snatched a handful of air, then flopped down over his hand, covering all but the fingertips that pinched the pen, and giving them an opportunity to warm up. Twin jets of steam unfurled from Pontchartrain’s cavernous elliptical nostrils as he re-read the document.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion

“So great is the dignity and excellency of humane nature, and so active those sparks of heavenly fire it partakes of, that they ought to be look'd upon as very mean, and unworthy the name of men, who thro' pusillanimity, by them call'd prudence, or thro' sloth, which they stile moderation, or else through avarice, to which they give the name of frugality, at any rate withdraw themselves from performing great and noble actions.

-Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri,
A Voyage Round the World

As quoted in Neal Stephenson, The Confusion”
― Neal Stephenson, The Confusion