We’re long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.

The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

And for all my rampant technological optimism, sometimes I think I'd be more comfortable if I were regarding these transcendental events from one thousand years remove... instead of twenty.

Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.

Well, what do you know," Pham said. "Butterflies in jackboots.

The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.

Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is losing irrelevant.