Even the best of us have certain psychological mechanisms that can suddenly kick in and turn us into monsters. Neal Stephenson More Quotes by Neal Stephenson More Quotes From Neal Stephenson Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad. Neal Stephenson realrevengeart Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds. Neal Stephenson intelligentatheistchristian Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be — or to be indistinguishable from — self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time. Neal Stephenson selfgamesyears See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places. Neal Stephenson powerfulifsworld You should not believe a thing only because you like to believe it. We call that 'Diax's Rake. Neal Stephenson rakesshouldbelieve The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. Neal Stephenson differencesintelligentstupid Any property that's open to common use gets destroyed. Because everyone has incentive to use it to the max, but no one has incentive to maintain it. Neal Stephenson incentivesmaxuse The story is everything, so it always begins with a story. Research is a kind of scaffolding built underneath the story as I go along. My enjoyment level varies, but in general, I'm writing about topics I find interesting, so I can't gripe too much. Neal Stephenson too-muchwritinginteresting And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all. Neal Stephenson alternativescompromisetwo ..this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way to get out of it is to quit, cut loose, take a flyer, and go off into the wicked world, where you will be swallowed up and never heard from again. Neal Stephenson cuttingstupidorder Most of the brain's work is done while the brain's owner is ostensibly thinking about something else, so sometimes you have to deliberately find something else to think and talk about. Neal Stephenson donebrainthinking The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. Neal Stephenson differencesintelligentstupid What are letters?” “Kinda like mediaglyphics except they’re all black, and they’re tiny, they don’t move, they’re old and boring and really hard to read. But you can use ’em to make short words for long words. Neal Stephenson blacklongmoving But then, Cap'n Crunch in a flake form would be suicidal madness; it would last about as long, when immersed in milk, as snowflakes sifting down into a deep fryer. No, the cereal engineers at General Mills had to find a shape that would minimize surface area, and, as some sort of compromise between the sphere that is dictated by Euclidean geometry and whatever sunken treasure related shapes that the cereal aestheticians were probably clamoring for, they came up with this hard-to-pin-down striated pillow formation. Neal Stephenson suicidalcereallong Talent was not rare; the ability to survive having it was. Neal Stephenson abilitytalent When you are wrestling for possession of a sword, the man with the handle always wins. Neal Stephenson winningmenwrestling Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise. Neal Stephenson barriersnoisesound To condense fact from the vapor of nuance. Neal Stephenson vapornuancefacts We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information. Neal Stephenson urban-legendssmartself For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane. Neal Stephenson atmosphereoxygentrying
