Quotes by Nick Harkaway

“And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.”

“Privacy is a protection from the unreasonable use of state and corporate power. But that is, in a sense, a secondary thing. In the first instance, privacy is the statement in words of a simple unde...”

“A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak th...”

“Intellectual property, more than ever, is a line drawn around information, which asserts that despite having been set loose in the world - and having, inevitably, been created out of an individual'...”

“The sergeants are shunted forward and they blink and stare up at Gonzo as he leans on the edge of his giant mixing bowl. MacArthur never addressed his troops from a mixing bowl--not even one made f...”

“Mercer, Polly says, we are now going to hug. As a group. The experience will be very un-English. It will be good for you. Do not speak, at all, especially not in an attempt to diffuse the emotional...”

“This, not incidentally, is another perfect setting for deindividuation: on one side, the functionary behind a wall of security glass following a script laid out with the intention that it should be...”

“Like casinos, large corporate entities have studied the numbers and the ways in which people respond to them. These are not con tricks - they're not even necessarily against our direct interests, a...”

“Law is error, you see. It's an attempt to write down a lot of things everyone ought to know anyway.”

“Another important consequence in the arrival of digital technology and its facilitation of feedback is that we can look at large systems and recognize them once more not only as part of ourselves, ...”

“Crotch biting menace:I have my mouth in close proximity to your genitals.Oh thou man who talks to my mistress over coffee.Do not irk or trifle with me! I possess but one tooth, oh, yes, for the res...”

“He wore his medals. He had a surprising number of them, the real kind, not the ones you got for turning up. Although turning up was no mean thing, some days.”

“Something else emerges from this discussion about us as human individuals: we're not fixed, stable intellects riding along peering at the world through the lenses of our eyes like the pilots of peo...”

“Destiny' is the state of perfect mechanical causation in which everything is the consequence of everything else. If choice is an illusion, what's life? Consciousness without volition. We'd all be p...”

“Children, bored and opinionated, are scholars of the most dogmatic stripe.”

“I shall now explain my plan. You may then speak, but only to amend the detail. The broad outline is not subject to negotiation. Are you ready? Good I propose to have sex with you. I believe it wil...”

“Joe Spork opens the door. The man departs. Joe turns to Polly to say something about how theyre obviously not going to Portsmouth, and finds an oyster knife balanced on his cheek, just under his ey...”

“Newton's work on gravity led to the discovery of the Lagrange point, a place where opposing forces cancel one another out, and a body may remain at relative rest. This is where I am right now; the ...”

“Its not that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic, its that any technology taking place beyond the threshold of our senses is.”

“Now, are those engaged in the business of governing any different by nature from those they govern?""Yes. They're prideful and tend to sexual misconduct. Also, the situation of being in government ...”