Quote

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

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
Stupid
Differences
Whether
Facts
Latter
Nothing
Ignorant
People
Educated
Intelligent
Difference

More quotes by 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
Image
Talent was not rare the ability to survive having it was.
Neal Stephenson
Image
Jad said, The leakage was forcing choices, the making of which in no way improved matters. Okay. So we were, in effect, locked in a room with a madman sorcerer. That clarified things a little.
Neal Stephenson
Image
It would be quite unusual for me to get deep into a project and then shitcan it. One of the advantages of having done this for a while is that I have a better sense than I used to of when something is or isn't working. Until I developed that sense, this was a pretty dicey career for me, both in terms of paying the rent, and emotional wear and tear.
Neal Stephenson
Image
If you are a professional writer - i.e., if someone else is getting paid to worry about how your words are formatted and printed - Emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter it simply makes everything else vanish.
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
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
And it happened all the time that the compromise between two perfectly rational alternatives was something that made no sense at all.
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
I think visual literacy and media literacy is not without value, but I think plain old-fashioned text literacy and mathematical literacy are much more powerful and flexible ways to organize your mind.
Neal Stephenson
Image
Southern California doesn't know whether to bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.
Neal Stephenson
Image
...your Web browser is Ronald Reagan.
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
Wait a minute, Juanita. Make up your mind. This Snow Crash thing—is it a virus, a drug, or a religion? Juanita shrugs. What's the difference?
Neal Stephenson
Image
They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.
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
So, you're worried that a pink dragon will fly over the concent and fart nerve gas on us?
Neal Stephenson
Image
Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whisky, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on.
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
The less attractive the character, the more I enjoyed writing them. Officious bureaucrats and PowerPoint weasels are where it's at for me.
Neal Stephenson