“Why are you trying to shoot that cat?”
”Because—” I squeeze off another shot “—it’s possessed!”...
Mo turns and looks at me harshly. “That looked just like a perfectly ordinary cat to me. If you’ve—”
“It was possessed by the animation nexus behind JENNIFER MORGUE Two!” I gabble. “The clue—he saw a laser dot and dodged—”
Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 16, “Reflex Decision” (p. 329; ellipsis represents a half-page elision)
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Charles Stross 211
British science fiction writer and blogger 1964Related quotes

Douglas Adams. The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. New York: Random House, 2002, 135–136.
Also quoted by Richard Dawkins in his Eulogy for Douglas Adams (17 September 2001) http://www.edge.org/documents/adams_index.html
Context: If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat. Life is a level of complexity that almost lies outside our vision; it is so far beyond anything we have any means of understanding that we just think of it as a different class of object, a different class of matter; 'life', something that had a mysterious essence about it, was God given, and that's the only explanation we had. The bombshell comes in 1859 when Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it's yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we're not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn't read well.

“Why not? With my way of thinking, you always shoot for the top.”
On 60 Minutes, when asked whether he favors amending the U.S. Constitution to allow naturalized citizens (such as himself) to run for president. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=6675372&src=rss/oddlyEnoughNews§ion=news (31 October 2004).
2000s

“Cats kill far more birds than men. Why don't you have a slogan: ‘Kill a cat and save a bird?”
Source: At a project to protect turtle doves in Anguilla in 1965. https://www.womanandhome.com/life/news-entertainment/prince-philip-quotes-63435/

“Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government — I will stand against you.”
2010s, 2010
Context: Just because you in Washington and you who are so out of touch with life in the media, just because you don't believe in anything doesn't mean nobody else does. We do. You know why you're confused by this show? It's because I believe in something. You don't.
Tea parties believe in small government. We believe in returning to the principles of our founding fathers. We respect them, we revere them. Shoot me in the head before I stop talking about the founders. Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government — I will stand against you. And so will millions of others. We believe in something. You in the media and most in Washington don't. The radicals that you and Washington have co-opted and brought in wearing sheep's clothing — change the pose. You will get the ends. You've been using them? They believe in Communism. They believe and have called for revolutionar — a revolution. You're going to have to shoot them in the head. But warning: they may shoot you.
They are dangerous because they believe. Karl Marx is their George Washington. You will never change their mind. And if they feel you have lied to them — they're revolutionaries. Nancy Pelosi, those are the people you should be worried about.
Here is my advice when you're dealing with people who believe in something that strongly — you take them seriously. You listen to their words and you believe that they will follow up with what they say.

“You don't take a dead cat to the vet. I mean you might, but why?”
WNYC Radio Podcast, RadioLab, "Gravitational Anarchy" November 29, 2010, Minute 16:33.
2010s

"Hellbound" (featured on Yosumi Records' compilation album Game Over, 2000)
2000s