Little Brother Quotes

“Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“I can't go underground for a year, ten years, my whole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom is something you have to take for yourself.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“It's our goddamed city! It's our goddamed country. No terrorist can take it from us for so long as we're free. Once we're not free, the terrorists win! Take it back! You're young enough and stupid enough not to know that you can't possibly win, so you're the only ones who can lead us to victory! Take it back!”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“Skipping school isn't a crime. It's an infraction. They're totally different.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“Abnormal is so common, it's practically normal.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“The good news (for writers) is that this means that ebooks on computers are more likely to be an enticement to buy the printed book (which is, after all, cheap, easily had, and easy to use) than a substitute for it. You can probably read just enough of the book off the screen to realize you want to be reading it on paper.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“Take it from someone who's read the Wikipedia entry: this is how the Ottoman Empire was won: madden horsemen fueled by lethal jet-black coffee-mud.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“Once you get to naming your laptop, you know that you're really having a deep relationship with it.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“I don't know anything about press conferences."
"Oh, just Google it. I'm sure someone's written an article on holding a successful one. I mean, if the President can manage it, I'm sure you can. He looks like he can barely tie his shoes without help.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“I fireballed him as he was seeking out treasure after we wiped out a band of orcs, playing rock-paper-scissors with each orc to determine who would prevail in combat. This is a lot more exciting than it sounds.

It's quite civilized, and a little weird. You go running after someone through the woods, catch up with him, bare your teeth, and sit down to play a little roshambo.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“If you've never programmed a computer, you should. There's nothing like it in the whole world. When you program a computer, it does exactly what you tell it to do. It's like designing a machine — any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas-hinge for a door — using math and instructions. It's awesome in the truest sense: it can fill you with awe.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“I read my copy of On the Road and dug the scenery whizzing past. On the Road is a semi-autobiographical novel about Jack Kerouac, a druggy, hard-drinking writer who goes hitchhiking around America, working crummy jobs, howling through the streets at night, meeting people and parting ways. Hipsters, sad-faced hobos, con-men, muggers, scumbags and angels. There's not really a plot -- Kerouac supposedly wrote it in three weeks on a long roll of paper, stoned out of his mind -- only a bunch of amazing things, one thing happening after another. He makes friends with self-destructing people like Dean Moriarty, who get him involved in weird schemes that never really work out, but still it works out, if you know what I mean.

There was a rhythm to the words, it was luscious, I could hear it being read aloud in my head. It made me want to lie down in the bed of a pickup truck and wake up in a dusty little town somewhere in the central valley on the way to LA, one of those places with a gas station and a diner, and just walk out into the fields and meet people and see stuff and do stuff.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“I'd never been a tall guy, and the girls I'd dated had all been my height--teenaged girls grow faster than guys, which is a cruel trick of nature.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“If you love freedom, if you think the human condition is dignified by privacy, by the right to be left alone, by the right to explore your weird ideas provided you don’t hurt others, then you have common cause with the kids whose web-browsers and cell phones are being used to lock them up and follow them around.
If you believe that the answer to bad speech is more speech - not censorship - then you have a dog in the fight.
If you believe in a society of laws, a land where our rulers have to tell us the rules, and have to follow them too, then you’re part of the same struggle that kids fight when they argue for the right to live under the same Bill of Rights that adults have.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“There's something really liberating about having some corner of your life that's yours, that no one gets to see except you. It's a little like nudity or taking a dump. Everyone gets naked every once in a while. Everyone has to squat on the toilet. There's nothing shameful, deviant or weird about either of them.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“The Bill of Rights was written before data-mining," he said. He was awesomely serene, convinced of his rightness. "The right to freedom of association is fine, but why shouldn't the cops be allowed to mine your social network to figure out if you're hanging out with gangbangers and terrorists?”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s crashware turd that no one under the age of forty used voluntarily.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“This sounds like you’re saying that national security is more important than the Constitution.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“When in problem, or in doubt, run in cirles, scream and shout”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“The law didn’t care if you were actually doing anything bad; they were willing to put you under the microscope just for being statistically abnormal.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“The important thing about security systems isn’t how they work, it’s how they fail.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“There’s something else,” he said. “What?” “I wasn’t going to mention it, but I want you to understand why I have to do this.” “Jesus, Jolu, what?” “I hate to say it, but you’re white. I’m not. White people get caught with cocaine and do a little rehab time. Brown people get caught with crack and go to prison for twenty years. White people see cops on the street and feel safer. Brown people see cops on the street and wonder if they’re about to get searched. The way the DHS is treating you? The law in this country has always been like that for us.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“So close the book and go. The world is full of security systems. Hack one of them.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“We were dancing, lost in the godbeat and the thrash and the screaming--TAKE IT BACK! TAKE IT BACK!”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“Making stuff: The folks at Instructables have put up some killer HOWTOs for building the technology in this book. It's easy and incredibly fun. There's nothing so rewarding in this world as making stuff, especially stuff that makes you more free.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother

“I’ve always loved just learning stuff for its own sake. Just to be smarter about the world around me.”
― Cory Doctorow, Little Brother