Don't become a well rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and ull. Become a thoroughly spiky person.

Science fiction is not about the freedom of imagination. It's about a free imagination pinched and howling in a vise that other people call real life.

Hackers are arrogant geek romantics. They lack the attentive spirit of inquiry.

I like to get paid for doing basic research, so it's pleasant to write some nonfiction about it.

(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute

We may yet work up to some serious shooting war, or maybe some acts of urban genocide committed with rogue nuclear weapons. But if that were the case, why would we call that "9/11"? If Washington disappeared in a mushroom cloud, we'd give that huge event a different name.

Worrying about a large institution, especially when it has computers, is like worrying about a large gorilla, especially when it's on fire.