Quote

It is the fate of operating systems to become free.

Neal Stephenson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Neal Stephenson
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 31
Author
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Camp Annapolis Junction
Neal Town Stephenson
Stephen Bury
Operating
Systems
Fate
Free
Become

More quotes by Neal Stephenson

Image
Lawrence immediately saw that it was a trick question. You would have to be some kind of idiot to make the facile assumption that the current would add or subtract 5 miles per hour to or from the speed of the boat.
Neal Stephenson
Image
Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?' Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.
Neal Stephenson
Image
The hour of noon has passed,' said Judge Fang. 'Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Neal Stephenson
Image
...your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.
Neal Stephenson
Image
Hiro is a talented drifter. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. But in the bleak light of full adulthood, which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night, he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed.
Neal Stephenson
Image
That to me is the basic message of events like the rise of Nazism, the Salem witch trials, and so on: not that bad people do bad things, but that good people do bad things.
Neal Stephenson
Image
It is exciting to discover electrons and figure out the equations that govern their movement it is boring to use those principles to design electric can openers. From here on out, it's all can openers.
Neal Stephenson
Image
Clearly Mr. Drkh has had a long career of being the weirdest person in any given room, but he's about to go down in flames.
Neal Stephenson
Image
The story is everything, so it always begins with a story.And 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
Image
The suspect had experienced a ballistic interlude earlier in the evening, Miss Pao said, regrettably not filmed, and relieved himself of excess velocity by means of an ablative technique.
Neal Stephenson
Image
If you sincerely believed in God, how could you form one thought, speak one sentence, without mentioning Him?
Neal Stephenson
Image
She's not afraid. She's wearing a dentata.
Neal Stephenson
Image
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
Image
Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.
Neal Stephenson
Image
In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not at a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity : Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.
Neal Stephenson
Image
This made him a grad student, and grad students existed not to learn things but to relieve the tenured faculty members of tiresome burdens such as educating people and doing research.
Neal Stephenson
Image
That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code.
Neal Stephenson
Image
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
Image
I feel that I am entitled to trample all other considerations into the dirt in my pursuit of a satisfying pun.
Neal Stephenson
Image
The full cosmos consists of the physical stuff and consciousness. Take away consciousness and it's only dust add consciousness and you get things, ideas, and time.
Neal Stephenson