The Diamond Age Quotes

“Moral reforms and deteriorations are moved by large forces, and they are mostly caused by reactions from the habits of a preceding period. Backwards and forwards swings the great pendulum, and its alternations are not determined by a few distinguished folk clinging to the end of it. —Sir Charles Petrie, THE VICTORIANS”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“The Victorian system used Darwinian techniques to create killers adapted to their prey, which was elegant and effective but led to the creation of killers that were simply too bizarre to have been thought up by humans, just as humans designing a world never would have thought up the naked mole rat.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“The old neighborhoods of Shanghai, Feedless or with overhead Feeds kludged in on bamboo stilts, seemed frighteningly inert, like an opium addict squatting in the middle of a frenetic downtown street, blowing a reed of sweet smoke out between his teeth, staring into some ancient dream that all the bustling pedestrians had banished to unfrequented parts of their minds.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code—but their children believe it for entirely different reasons.” “They believe it,” the Constable said, “because they have been indoctrinated to believe it.” “Yes. Some of them never challenge it—they grow up to be small-minded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel—as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“What's an adventure?” Nell said. The word was written across the page. Then both pages filled with moving pictures of glorious things: girls in armor fighting dragons with”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“It had come from one of two corgis who were even now slamming their preposterous bodies into each other not far away, trying to roll each other over, which runs contrary to the laws of mechanics even in the case of corgis that are lean and trim, which these were not.

This struggle, which appeared to be only one skirmish in a conflict of epochal standing, had driven all lesser considerations, such as guarding the gate, from the combatants' sphere of attention...”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“John Hackworth withdrew some tickets from his breast pocket and asked them to illuminate themselves; but they were printed on old-fashioned paper that did not contain its own energy source, and so he finally had to use the microtorch dangling from his watch chain.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Information contains an almost mystical power of free flow and self replication, just as water seeks it's own level or sparks fly upward.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“Now we understand that it's all cultural. That, after all, is what a culture is—a group of people who share in common certain acquired traits. “Information technology has freed cultures from the necessity of owning particular bits of land in order to propagate; now we can live anywhere. The Common Economic Protocol specifies how this is to be arranged. “Some cultures are prosperous; some are not. Some value rational discourse and the scientific method; some do not. Some encourage freedom of expression, and some discourage it. The only thing they have in common is that if they do not propagate, they will be swallowed up by others. All they have built up will be torn down; all they have accomplished will be forgotten; all they have learned and written will be scattered to the wind. In the old days it was easy to remember this because of the constant necessity of border defence. Nowadays, it is all too easily forgotten.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Reptiles are just retarded birds,” said the King of the Birds, “and so I am your King, thank you very much.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“What is a game but a drill that's dressed up in colorful clothing?” Dojo said.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“It's a wonderful thing to be clever, and you should never think otherwise, and you should never stop being that way. But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people in the world all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost—swallowed up in the ocean—unless you are doing it along with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“extremely dangerous drug-related occupations for which decoy served as a paid audition of sorts. A start weapons system was a wise investment. The”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“human or mechanical. The next part of the message was GIVE- - -CHAIN- - - -TUG- - - - - -ANSWER. Assuming that four horizontal”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Not very honourable, I suppose, but then, there is no honour among consultants.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Next was a castle divided into many small rooms, with a system for passing messages between rooms through a pneumatic tube. In each room was a group of people who responded to the messages by following certain rules laid out in books, which usually entailed sending more messages to other rooms. After”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“The difference between stupid and intelligent people—and this is true whether or not they are well-educated—is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“parents of small children must perforce have an entirely different sense of irony than unimpaired humankind.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“hot and pulsing on the edge of a dynastic rebellion, like the arteries of an old man about to have his first orgasm in years. He”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Now, there was a time when we believed that what a human mind could accomplish was determined by genetic factors. Piffle, of course, but it looked convincing for many years, because distinctions between tribes were so evident. Now we understand that it's all cultural. That, after all, is what a culture is—a group of people who share in common certain acquired traits.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“The difference between stupid and intelligent people-and this is true whether or not they are well-educated-is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations-in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“from a hundred to a hundred and fifty kilometers, depending on how fat you were and whether”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“The windows on the Dovetail side of the gatehouse were larger, and she could see the two corgi dogs outside, peering in through the lead latticework, flabbergasted that they had, through some enormous lacuna in procedure, been left on the outside, wagging their tails somewhat uncertainly, as if, in a world that allowed such mistakes, nothing could be counted on.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“The only human in evidence was a white-haired Constable whose belly had created a visible divergence between his two rows of brass buttons. He was bent over using a trowel to extract a steaming turd from the emerald grass. Circumstances suggested that it had come from one of two corgis who were even now slamming their preposterous bodies into each other not far away, trying to roll each other over, which runs contrary to the laws of mechanics even in the case of corgis that are lean and trim, which these were not. This struggle, which appeared to be only one skirmish in a conflict of epochal standing, had driven all lesser considerations, such as guarding the gate, from the combatants' sphere of attention, and so it was the Constable who first noticed Nell and Harv. “Away with you!” he hollered cheerfully enough, waving his redolent trowel down the hill. “We've no work for such as you today! And the free matter compilers are all down by the waterfront.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Hackworth took a bite of his sandwich, correctly anticipating that the meat would be gristly and that he would have plenty of time to think about his situation while his molars subdued it. He did have plenty of time, as it turned out; but as frequently happened to him in these situations, he could not bring his mind to bear on the subject at hand. All he could think about was the taste of the sauce. If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this: Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, singlemalt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain deaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

“For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticise another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behaviour—you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“What they conceal tells you more than what they reveal.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“We change the script a little,” Madame Ping said, “to allow for cultural differences. But the story never changes. There are many people and many tribes, but only so many stories.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“It was the destruction of our society. When our society was based upon planting, it could truly be said, as the Master did, “Virtue is the root; wealth is the result.' But under the Western ti, wealth comes not from virtue but from cleverness. So the filial relationships became deranged. Chaos,”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

“Carl Hollywood was appalled to realize that the only thing now standing between them and their three-decade march to the banks of the Huang Pu was Carl Hollywood, his .44, and a handful of lightly armed civilians.”
― Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age