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Neal Stephenson Quotes
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Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.

His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque.

Stephenson's work explores subjects such as mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has also written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury , under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.

Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and is also a cofounder of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He is currently Magic Leap's Chief Futurist. Wikipedia  

✵ 31. October 1959
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Neal Stephenson Quotes

“The world has actually been wired together by digital communications systems for a century and a half. Nothing that has happened during that time compares in its impact to the first exchange of messages between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in 1858. That was so impressive that a mob of celebrants poured into the streets of New York and set fire to City Hall.”

Neal Stephenson

"Mother Earth Mother Board," cover story in Wired, 4.12 (1996)

World , Communication , Time

“Hungary, severed from half of the population and most of the natural resources that it had once claimed, had now to practice a sort of economic acupuncture, striving to know the magic nodes in the global energy flow where a pinprick could alter the workings of a major organ. Mathematics was one of the few disciplines where it was possible to exert that degree of leverage, and so the Hungarians had become phenomenally good at teaching it to their children.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 4
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Children , Mathematics , Nature

“He could only conjecture what style pheromones Zula was throwing off to her peers, but to him it was a sort of hyperspace-librarian, girl-geek thing that he found clever and fetching without attracting him in a way that would have been creepy.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Way , Girl

“It's the ultimate Boston transportation. On land…all those slow cars get in the way. There's public transit – the T — but if you're in good shape, it's usually faster to walk. Bicycles aren't bad. But on water, nothing stops you and there isn't anything important in Boston that isn't within two blocks of being wet. The harbor and the city are interlocked like wrestling squid, tentacles of water and land snaking off everywhere, slashed with bridges or canals.”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

Source: Zodiac (1988), Chapter 4

Cars , Way , Water

“In the whole world, there might have been as many as ten thousand people who were better than Sokolov at falling and rolling around on hard surfaces. Circus acrobats and aikido masters, mostly. Also included in that group would have been many of the younger Spetsnaz men. The remaining six billion or so living humans did not even enter the picture.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 4
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Men , People , World

“She…cast an eye over the contents of his cart, wondering whether this was totally random stuff…to perfect his Walmart shopper disguise: 5.56-millimeter cartridges, a water purification device, jerky, bug repellent, a camouflage hat. Freeze-dried meals. A roll of black plastic sheeting. Parachute cord. Batteries. A folding bucksaw. Camouflage binoculars.…
It turned out that Sokolov really did want to buy all that stuff. Not because he envisioned any particular use for it. He just believed in stocking up on such things, on general principles, whenever an opportunity presented itself.
He would fit in well here.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 20, Northern Idaho
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

Water , Perfection

“One way to be strong was to be knowledgeable. In so many areas, it was not possible to be knowledgeable without getting a Ph. D. and doing a postdoc. Guns and hunting provided an out for men who wanted to be know-it-alls but who couldn’t afford to spend the first three decades of their lives getting up to speed on quantum mechanics or oncology.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 8
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

Men , Way , Knowledge , Strong

“That, as far as she could tell, was the purpose of the religion she had been brought up in: It made people feel better when really horrible things happened, and it offered a repertoire of ceremonies that were used to add a touch of class to such goings-on as shacking up with someone and throwing dirt on a corpse.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 4
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

People , Religion , Feeling

“Though Richard’s Wikipedia entry had been quiet lately, in the past it had been turbulent with edit wars between mysterious people, known only by their IP addresses, who seemed to want to emphasize aspects of his life that now struck him as, while technically true, completely beside the point. Fortunately this had all happened after Dad had become too infirm to manipulate a mouse, but it didn’t stop younger Forthrasts.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Life , War , People , Past

“Don Donald was clearly accustomed to addressing people whose only way of responding was to nod worshipfully and take notes. He did not, in other words, leave a lot of breaks in his testimony to allow for discussion. For the moment, that was fine, since it made it easier for Richard to drink.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 2
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

People , Way , Drink

“I can hardly believe we are talking about a possibility so inconceivable as that other universes exist—and that the Geometers originate there!"
In this, Zh'vaern seemed to speak for the entire table.
Except for Jad. "The words fail. There is one universe, by the definition of universe. It is not the cosmos we see through our eyes and our telescopes—that is but a single Narrative, a thread winding through a Hemn space shared by many other Narratives besides ours. Each Narrative looks like a cosmos alone, to any consciousness that partakes of it. The Geometers came from other Narratives—until they came here, and joined ours."
Having dropped this bomb, Fraa Jad excused himself, and went to the toilet.
"What on earth is he going on about?" Fraa Lodoghir demanded. "It sounded like literary criticism!”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Part 10, "Messal"
Anathem (2008)

Universe

“Yul had simply launched himself at the guy from some distance away, and body-checked him at full speed, stopping on a dime in midair as he transferred all of his energy into the target.
"Conservation of momentum," he announced, "it's not just a good idea—it's the law!"”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Yulassetar Crade removes a TV reporter in zero gravity, Part 12, "Requiem"
Anathem (2008)

Law , Guy , Idea , Speed

“Eve Moira had been a child of London, fascinated by the natural world, but drawn to the city. So, Kath Two looked to the bright lights of the big city.
Here, that meant gazing up into the sky.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Five Thousand Years Later"
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

World , Nature , Light

““I have done research on it,” Aïda said. “Some say that bipolarity is a useful adaptation. When things are bad, you become depressed, retreat, conserve energy. When things are good, you spring into action with great energy.”
“And your point is …”
“Will you treat this condition in my offspring against my will?”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

What if I want to have a lot of little bipolar kids?”
"Cleft"
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Spring

“It was difficult to sustain the illusion that education was of value for kids who would not live long enough to use it. They’d never take the standardized tests that they were prepping for. … Free from the constraints of racking up high test scores or getting into colleges, students could learn for learning’s sake—which was how it ought to be. The tick-tock curriculum had dissolved and been replaced by activities improvised from day to day by teachers and parents: hiking in the mountains, doing art projects about the Cloud Ark, talking with psychologists about death, reading favorite books. In one sense Amelia and her colleagues had never been more needed, never had such an opportunity to show their quality.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"The Casting of Lots"
Seveneves (2015), Part One

Death , Books , Education , Art

“There was a common saying in the biz/tech world that “A's hire A's, and B's hire C's,” the point being that as long as you continued to recruit only the very best people, they would attract others, but as soon as you let your standards slip, the second-raters would begin to sign up third-raters to act as their minions and advance their agendas.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 18 (This saying was popularized by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his "Rumsfeld's Rules" document, dating back to his tenure on the Ford Administration transition team.)
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

People , World

“Why do they believe that?”
“Because we are hackers,” Csongor said, “and they have seen movies.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 4
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

“Both Penang and the Internet were established basically for strategic military reasons. In both cases, what was built by the military was merely a kernel for a much vaster phenomenon that came along later. This kernel was really nothing more than a protocol, a set of rules. If you wanted to follow those rules, you could participate, otherwise you were free to go elsewhere. Because the protocol laid down a standard way for people to interact, which was clearly set out and could be understood by anyone, it attracted smart, adaptable, ambitious people from all over the place, and at a certain point it flew completely out of control and turned into something that no one had ever envisioned: something thriving, colorful, wildly diverse, essentially peaceful, and plagued only by the congestion of its own success.”

Neal Stephenson

"Mother Earth Mother Board," cover story in Wired, 4.12 (1996)

People , Peace , Color , Way

“Any strategy that involves crossing a valley—accepting short-term losses to reach a higher hill in the distance—will soon be brought to a halt by the demands of a system that celebrates short-term gains and tolerates stagnation, but condemns anything else as failure. In short, a world where big stuff can never get done.”

Neal Stephenson

"Innovation Starvation," World Policy Journal, Fall 2011

World , Failure , Loss

“But in that we started so many things in that moment, we brought to their ends many others that have been the subject matter of this account, and so here is where I draw a line across the leaf and call it the end.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Final sentence of the novel, possibly addressing criticism of the author’s previous endings, Part 13, "Reconstitution"
Anathem (2008)

Drawing

“Very old money was behind the Crow’s Nest. And enough of it that its Owners didn’t mind losing some every month to keep the place going. It was a kind of eleemosynary institution, created to serve not culture and not dukh, but a thing called the Purpose.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

And if Ty kept working there for another few decades, perhaps one of the Owners would sit him down one day in the Bolt Hole and deign to tell him what exactly the Purpose was.
"Five Thousand Years Later"
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Money

“Men always made crude jokes about people pissing their pants with fear, but in Sokolov’s experience, shitting the pants was more common if it was a straightforward matter of extreme emotional stress. Pants pissing was completely unproductive and suggested a total breakdown of elemental control. Pants shitting, on the other hand, voided the bowels and thereby made blood available to the brain and the large muscle groups that otherwise would have gone to the lower-priority activity of digestion. Sokolov could have forgiven Peter for shitting his pants, but if he had pissed his pants, then it really would have been necessary to get rid of him.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 2
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Fear , People , Men

“Waging war on his enemies had been Sokolov’s habit and his profession for a long time, but being chivalrous to everyone else was simply a basic tenet of having your shit together as a human and as a man.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 2
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

War , Time

“Gold, he learned, was considered to be a reliable store of value because extracting it from the ground required a certain amount of effort that tended to remain stable over time. When new, easy-to-mine gold deposits were found, or new mining technologies developed, the value of gold tended to fall. It didn’t take a huge amount of acumen, then, to understand that the value of virtual gold in the game world could be made stable in a directly analogous way: namely, by forcing players to expend a certain amount of time and effort to extract a certain amount of virtual gold…”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Economics of gold farming, Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Time , Understanding , Game , Learning

“It might interest you to know that our state is tired of being used as a chemical toilet so that people in Utah can have plastic lawn furniture.”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

"I can't believe an assistant attorney general came right out and said that."
"Well, I wouldn't say it in public."
"Cohen," the assistant attorney general of an unnamed East Coast state meeting covertly with Sangamon Taylor near the Jersey Shore. Chapter 11
Zodiac (1988)

People

“Agreement got by compulsion or trickery is not agreement, but a thing akin to slavery. Free minds are the only company worth having.”

Neal Stephenson book Fall; or, Dodge in Hell

Source: Fall; or, Dodge in Hell (2019), Chapter 43

“Welcome to the GWOJ.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

“GWOJ?”
“Global War on Jones.”
Day 15
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

“If you are going to make first contact with an intelligent alien race,” said Cantabrigia Five, “dropping huge strip-mining robots into their homeland might not be your best move.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Five Thousand Years Later” (p. 830)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Intelligence

“If you show her too much favor she will be punished. If you touch her, we’re all dead,” Ty said.
“Why?”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

Einstein asked.
“Because this is one of those cultures that is psychotic about female reproductive organs.”
“Five Thousand Years Later” (p. 776)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Dead

“It is only a certain type of mind that scorns what is known by all and reads secrets as jewels.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Five Thousand Years Later” (p. 749)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Reading , Secret

“As it turned out, imagining the fate of seven billion people was far less emotionally affecting than imagining the fate of one.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Five Thousand Years Later” (p. 741)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Imagination , People , Fate

“If history was any guide, those best at violence might end up ruling over everyone else.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Five Thousand Years Later” (p. 684)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

History

“I have been clinically depressed for most of my life. I once used drugs to fix it. Then I stopped. I stopped because I decided they were making me stupid, and I’d rather be miserable than stupid. I am what I am.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Cleft” (pp. 560-561)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Stupidity , Life

“There is a process known as parthenogenesis, literally virgin birth, by which a uniparental embryo can be created out of a normal egg. It’s been done with animals. The only reason no one ever did it with humans is because it seemed ethically dodgy, as well as completely unnecessary given the willingness of men to impregnate women every chance they got.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Cleft” (pp. 552-553)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Birth , Chance , Animals , Women

“We can’t make the same mistake again,” Aïda said, “of fooling ourselves. Believing in shit that isn’t real.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Cleft” (p. 551)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Fools

“We can’t run this experiment a thousand times to see the range of different outcomes. We can only run it once. The human mind has trouble with situations like that. We see patterns where they don’t exist, we find meaning in randomness.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“YMIR” (pp. 423-424)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Time

“We did not expect to have a backup system for the rest of the universe. We can rely upon it to be cold most of the time.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“YMIR” (p. 354)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Time , Universe

“Hotness was a part of the human condition and it was pointless to pretend that it did not exist.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Day 700” (p. 276)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

Parting

“People who claim they are motivated by the Purpose end up behaving differently—and generally better—than people who serve other masters.”
“So it is like believing in God.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Maybe yes. But without the theology, the scripture, the pigheaded certainty.”
Epilogue (p. 860)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

God , People , Motivation

“I hope that this assignment will not prove an inconvenience,” Doc continued.
“All duty is inconvenient to a greater or lesser degree, or it would not be duty.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Five Thousand Years Later” (p. 648)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

Hope

“Trying to, you know, persuade others to join our side. Trying to make the other side look bad. Just like the Internet always was.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Endurance” (pp. 518-519)
Seveneves (2015), Part Two

“You could get use to anything. You got used to it and then time raced by, and before you knew it, time was up.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Consolidation: Day 260” (p. 173)
Seveneves (2015), Part One

Time

“Sportsmanship is for sportsmen.”

Neal Stephenson

Diachronicle: day 1960 (10 December, year 5)
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (2017)

“Reader, if you don’t know what a database is, rest assured that an explanation of the concept would in no way increase your enjoyment in reading this account. If you do know, you will thank me for sparing you the details.”

Neal Stephenson

Diachronicle: Days 57–221 (winter, year 0)
Source: The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (2017)

Reading , Way

“You can't get most people to believe how wildly the eco-laws get broken, but if I say "More than twice the legal limit," they get comfortably outraged.”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

Source: Zodiac (1988), Chapter 2

Law , People

“My nighttime attitude is, anyone can run you down and get away with it. Why give some drunk the chance to plaster me against a car? That's why I don't even own a bike light, or one of those godawful reflective suits. Because if you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe — to see you, and to give a fuck — you've already blown it.”

Neal Stephenson book Zodiac

Source: Zodiac (1988), Chapter 5 (Taylor on riding a bike at night)

Light , Chance , Cars