Tao Te Ching

The Power of Goodness, the Wisdom Beyond Words
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Neal Stephenson

(Stephen Bury)

1959 CE –

Speculative futurist and cultural social commentator

Futurist, author, technology/culture/social commentator; Stephenson's writings span the range from speculative to historical fiction, from critiques of technology to mystery novels. He brings mathematics, science, and history into his novels; has worked on scientific spacecraft systems and developed innovative, collaborative writing projects. Seen at the time as "futuristic," many of his cultural descriptions and imagined technologies—self-learning nanotechnology, dynabooks, cyber cities—have become common place and well-known today.

Lineages
American (USA)

Eras

Unlisted Sources

Anathem (2008)​

Diamond Age

Interface (1994)

The Big U (1984)​

The Cobweb

Zodiac (1988)​​

Quotes by Neal Stephenson (23 quotes)

“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.”

from Diamond Age

Themes: Strategy Failure

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“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.”

Themes: Complaint

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“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. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward."”

from Diamond Age

Themes: Paradox Reason

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“The Indians of the American Southwest called him Coyote, those of the Pacific Coast called him Raven. Europeans called him Reynard the Fox. African-Americans called him Br'er Rabbit. In twentieth-century literature he appears first as Bugs Bunny and then as the Hacker... As technology became more important, the Trickster underwent a shift in character and became the god of crafts—of technology, if you will—while retaining the underlying roguish qualities. So we have the Sumerian Enki, the Greek Prometheus and Hermes, Norse Loki, and so on.”

from Diamond Age

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“They were morally superior to the Victorians because they had no morals at all... Because they were hypocrites, the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefarious conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none.”

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“What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their own damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being open-minded and, finally, they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to.”

from The Big U (1984)​

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“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.”

from Zodiac (1988)​​

Themes: Socialism

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“It is a strange world that Industry has made. Kind of a seething toxic harbor, opening out on a blue unspoiled ocean. Most people are swimming in it... If people like me would just keep our mouths shut, people like him would never suspect why they got cancer. They’d chalk it up to God or probability. They wouldn't die with hearts full of venom.”

from Zodiac (1988)​​

Themes: Health Capitalism

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“Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.”

from Anathem (2008)​

Themes: Beauty

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“Technology is making borders irrelevant. The governments who still value their borders refuse to understand this basic fact... Of course, governments and borders are still very important for the time being”

from The Cobweb

Themes: Technology

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“The problem was the managers. Not for them the open struggle of ideas in the marketplace of policy. It was turf politics, building alliances not to further the general good of the body politic, but to cement advantage... to feather their own nests—not to solve problems, but to use problems to strengthen position.”

from The Cobweb

Themes: Leadership

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“she now saw iguanas all over Washington, people who sat sunning on their rocks, destroying anything or anybody who came within tongue's reach, but doing nothing.”

from The Cobweb

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“There were a few, an extremely few, people in the world who by sheer dint of their intelligence and their sensitivities could overcome the limitations of national identity, the stupidities of their own bureaucracies to navigate a path to world survival.”

from The Cobweb

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“the mysterious boundaries separating proper from improper behavior, so invisible to him and so obvious to her”

from The Cobweb

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“D.C. is not about solving problems. If we solved problems, there would be nothing else left to do and we would all have to go out and do something honest—like fry hamburgers.”

from The Cobweb

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“people who long ago decided it wasn't sophisticated to be sincere, that sincerity was for fools, that sincere people were put on earth to be manipulated and exploited by people like them—for the greater good of course.”

from The Cobweb

Themes: Control Openness

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“it is amazing what feats of organization our government can accomplish—if you don't mind waiting until it's too late”

from The Cobweb

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“Americans may be under-educated, lazy, and disorganized, but they do one thing better than any people on the face of the earth, and that is watch television... You can tell lies to them and they'll never know.”

from Interface (1994)

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“Mall-hopping corporate concubine... debt-hounded wage slave... Bible-slinging porch monkey... depression-haunted can stacker... mid-American knickknack queen... Winnebago jockey... economic roadkill... 400-pound Tab-drinkers”

from Interface (1994)

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“sometimes the truth is so harsh that when people hear it spoken, it sounds like abuse... everyone is so easy to offend nowadays that no one is willing to say the things that are true.”

from Interface (1994)

Themes: Truth

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“America used to have citizens. Then its government put it up for sale. Now it's got investors. You and I work for the investors.”

from Interface (1994)

Themes: Business

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“In the 1700s, politics was all about ideas. But Jefferson came up with all the good ideas. In the 1800s, it was all about character. but no one will ever have as much character as Lincoln and Lee. For much of the 1900s it was about charisma. But we no longer trust charisma because Hitler used it to kill Jews and JFK used it to get laid and send us to Vietnam.”

from Interface (1994)

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“the rarest thing in life is a person who speaks the truth. The most dangerous thing in life is a person who constantly refers to 'values.'... None of us has the right to hold back anybody else for any reason.”

from Interface (1994)

Themes: Integrity

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