Quotes by 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 an...”

“Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "We have a protractor.”

“Right, by tomorrow morning everyone will have congregated in Le Havre and you can all pile in the car and come back out here together," said Tristan in a rapid monotone, as if needing to rationaliz...”

“A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.”

“If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics fr...”

“It is a second-generation Seattle-scene record label; all of its artists are young people who came to Seattle after they graduated college in search of the legendary Seattle music scene and discove...”

“Gold is the corpse of value...”

“If money is a science, then it is a dark science...it has gone on developing...by its own rules”

“. . . if money is a science, then it is a dark science, darker than alchemy. It split away from Natural Philosophy millennia ago, and has gone on developing ever since, by its own rules.”

“Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?”

“Is power like the vis viva and the quantite davancement? That is, is it conserved by the universe, or is it like shares of a stock, which may have great value one day, and be worthless the next? If...”

“Nell did not imagine that Constable Moore wanted to get into a detailed discussion of recent events, so she changed the subject. "I think I have finally worked out what you were trying to tell me, ...”

“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 ...”

“Juanita believes that nothing is provably true or provably false in the Bible. Because if it's provably false, then the Bible is a lie, and if it's provably true, then the existence of God is prove...”

“... when I saw any of those kinds of beauty I knew I was alive, and not just in the sense that when I hit my thumb with a hammer I knew I was alive, but rather in the sense that I was partaking of ...”

“They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.”

“In your Primer you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all the experience you ...”

“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 conclud...”

“Debbie insisted on following the rhythm of the waves. Typical duck-squeezer sex: slow, frustrating, in-tune with nature.”

“Most of the people on the Cloud Ark were going to have to be women.There were other reasons for it besides just making more babies. Research on the long-term effects of spaceflight suggested that w...”