Cryptonomicon Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Book: Cryptonomicon
Quotes of Book: Cryptonomicon

Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be-or to be indistinguishable from-self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
Hey," Shaftoe says, "if we surrender to you, you'll kill us. Right?" "Yes." "If you guys surrender to us, we won't kill you. Promise. Scout's honor." "For us, living or dying is not the important thing," Goto Dengo says. "Hey! Tell me something I didn't fucking already know!" Shaftoe says. "Even winning battles isn't important to you. Is it?" Goto Dengo looks the other way, shamefaced. "Haven't you guys figured out yet that banzai charges DON'T FUCKING WORK?" "All of the people who learned that were killed in banzai charges," Goto Dengo says.
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
He was a sniper scout, and it was in his nature to do crazy shit like this; but it was also part of his training to scan the terrain carefully before venturing in.
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
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.
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
But even if they did have that kind of money rattling around in their pockets, actually spending it would offend their native frugality.
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
But if you use shortwave, then you can bounce the information off the ionosphere. This works a good deal better when the sun is not in the sky, sluicing the atmosphere with wideband noise. So radio telegraphers, and the people who eavesdrop on them {what the Brits call the Y Service} are, alike, nocturnal beings.
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
For each stop-each timbre, or type of sound, that the organ could make {viz. blockflöte, trumpet, piccolo}-there was a separate row of pipes, arranged in a line from long to short. Long pipes made low notes, short high. The tops of the pipes defined a graph: not a straight line but an upward-tending curve. The organist/math teacher sat down with a few loose pipes, a pencil, and paper, and helped Lawrence figure out why. When Lawrence understood, it was as if the math teacher had suddenly played the good part of Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor on a pipe organ the size of the Spiral Nebula in Andromeda-
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
But that's bullshit!" Doug says. "Jesus! Haven't you guys spent any time at all around people like Comstock? Can't you recognize bullshit? Don't you think it would be a useful item to add to your intellectual toolkits to be capable of saying, when a ton of wet steaming bullshit lands on your head, 'My goodness, this appears to be bullshit'?
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
a serial killer armed with a couple of feet of clothesline is far more dangerous than a cheerleader with a bazooka.
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
In fact, Kia is trans-just about every system of human categorization, and what she isn't trans- she is post-.
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
Randy says, "You asked me earlier what is the highest and best purpose to which we could dedicate our lives. And the obvious answer is 'to prevent future Holocausts.' "Avi laughs darkly. "I'm glad it's obvious to , my friend. I was beginning to think I was the only one.""What!? Get over yourself, Avi. People are commemorating the Holocaust all the time.""Commemorating the Holocaust is , not not not not , the same thing as fighting to prevent future holocausts. Most of the commemorationists are just whiners. They think that if everyone feels bad about past holocausts, human nature will magically transform, and no one will want to commit genocide in the future.""I take it you do not share this view, Avi?""Look at Bosnia!" Avi scoffs. "Human nature doesn't change, Randy. Education is hopeless. The most educated people in the world can turn into Aztecs or Nazis just like that." He snaps his fingers."So what hope is there?""Instead of trying to educate the potential of holocausts, we try to educate the potential . will at least pay some fucking .
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Neal Stephenson _ Cryptonomicon
Half of the castle has, at one point or another, been burned down by a combination of Barbary corsairs, lightning bolts, Napoleon, and smoking in bed.
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