Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs,” I said. “We have a protractor.
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 from philosophy.
Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?
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 proven and there’s no room for faith.
They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain that they were right.
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.
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.
Debbie insisted on following the rhythm of the waves. Typical duck-squeezer sex: slow, frustrating, in-tune with nature.
That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking, what’s your vice and what brand of trouble does it lead to?
But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator’s report card would say: “Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills.
Seven billion who need to be kept happy, and docile, until the end. How do you do that? What’s the best way to calm down a scared kid, get them to go back to sleep? Tell them a story. Some shit about Jesus or whatever.
He had spoken with such absolute confidence that I knew he had to be blowing this out of his rectal orifice.
I just saved your fucking life, Mom. . . . You could at least offer me an Oreo.
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.
I just saved your fucking life, Mom…It’s like, if you–people of a certain age–would make some effort to just stay in touch with sort of basic, modern-day events, then your kids wouldn’t have to take these drastic measures.
It’s–my God–like you stretched a tarp across a stadium to turn it into a giant tom-tom and crashed a 747 into it.
We are all in trouble…. with a bunch of dead people.
I don’t think that teenagers are the way they are because of their age. It’s because they have nothing to lose. They simultaneously have a lot of time on their hands and yet are very impatient to get on with their lives.
Most of the brain’s work is done while the brain’s owner is ostensibly thinking about something else, so sometimes you have to deliberately find something else to think and talk about.
Dr. Turing of Cambridge says that the soul is an illusion and that all that defines us as human beings can be reduced to a series of mechanical operations.
See, the world is full of things more powerful than us. But if you know how to catch a ride, you can go places,
A Kourier has to establish space on the pavement. Predictable law-abiding behavior lulls drivers. They mentally assign you to a little box in the lane, assume you will stay there, can’t handle it when you leave that little box.
think that if Hiro was so convinced in his own mind that he was unworthy of her, maybe he knew something she didn’t.
How slow can a mammal be and still have respiratory functions?
Most men would rather be shot through with a broad-headed arrow than be described by you.
To him it was a sort of hyperspace-librarian, girl-geek thing that he found clever and fetching without attracting him in a way that would have been creepy.
You mentioned . . . one of the two great labyrinths into which the mind is drawn. What . . . is the other?””The other is the composition of the continuum, or: what is space?
In the timeless and universal manner of authors conversing in public places, he did not fail to mention its title, “Volume III of Principia Mathematica entitled, The System of the World, available shortly, where books are sold.
The ocean is a Turing machine, the sand is its tape; the water reads the marks in the sand and sometimes erases them and sometimes carves new ones with tiny currents that are themselves a response to the marks.
The Bibliotheque du Roi then gives you the closest thing that currently exists to God’s understanding of the world.””And yet with a bigger library we could come ever so much closer.
Topology is destiny,’ he said, and put the drawers on. One leg at a time.
It appeared that way, Lawrence, but this raised the question of was mathematics really true or was it just a game played with symbols? In other words—are we discovering Truth, or just wanking?
Never been here before. It’s like something on the top floor of a luxury high-rise casino in Atlantic City, where they put semi-retarded adults from South Philly after they’ve blundered into the mega jackpot” Hiro Protagonist – Snow Crash
This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.
Technically, of course, he was right. Socially, he was annoying us.
If you’ve put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe – to see you, and to give a fuck – you’ve already blown it.
Persons of quality had devoted yester evening and much of the night to liquidating their holdings in the South Sea Company and gathering in clubs and coffeehouses to misinform one another.