Karl Schroeder Quotes

She looked up at the towering wisdom and felt a sudden love for it—as if these books were family.

“The fact is, there’s no such thing as an ultimate state of consciousness. It’s a myth; sentience has meaning only insofar as it’s connected into the physical world...
If you’d like to see it, here’s a view of the Omega Point.” It gestured to open a large inscape window in the sky. Instantly Doran’s head was filled with an undifferentiated roar; white noise matched in the window by endless video snow.
Choronzon laughed. “The more information there is in a signal, the more it resembles noise. You’re looking at infinite information density, gentlemen, a signal so packed with information that it has become noise. These idiots pushed so far in one direction that they ended up at the opposite pole...
Perhaps the fanatics of Omega Point had gotten their wish, but if so they had been mistaken in thinking that the Absolute was something that hadn’t been there all along. Absolute meaning, it seemed, was no different from no meaning at all.

Only the dead are free of the influence of others.

She started threatening the stability of the ruling classes, at least in their own eyes. No ruler who does that ever stands for long.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature.<ref>

Even the gods fight boredom in vain.

So why did you do it?
August stared at the ceiling pensively. "It gets easier to risk your life as you get older. I think women understand that when they have children. Suddenly they know they would give their life for their child, and it doesn't bother them. With men it's different, but we…trade our allegiance in the same way. At some point, if you've grown up at all, you have to decide that something outside yourself is more important than you are. Otherwise you'll be a miserable bastard, and you'll die screaming." He closed one eye and peered at Jordan. "That make sense?"
"I don't know," Jordan said uncomfortably.
"You get perspective. You can stand outside your own death, a little. Not while you're dying, though."

All sound is music, he had said, and there is no place without sound.

Humans become violent when they feel their interest are threatened.
Galas scowled. "They were never threatened! Parliament is a rumor mill staffed by trough-fed clods who abuse the tongue of their birth every time they open their mouths. They all gabble at once and confuse one another mightily, and when this confusion is committed to paper they refer to it as 'policy.'"

Just because something is convincing, that does not make it true. It is merely convincing.

Our whole life we’ve lived in a world of softened edges and easy decisions. All except once. One time, when someone had to look at the world through adult eyes and even the grown-ups who survived the crash with us failed the test. Someone had to look at the world as it was, and make the hard decisions that were necessary—not to romanticize, not to retreat into illusions. You did it then. I’m asking you to do it again. See what’s really going on here. See what’s real.

The great commandment of the narratives is that your life must be meaningful, said Charon. If knowing the truth strips the meaning away, then the truth must be suppressed.

Something's wrong.
Axel shrugged. That statement probably applies to every second I've spent on this blasted world.

“Which do you prefer?”
Armiger leaned over her and kissed her cheek. “Which what do I prefer?”
“Do you prefer making love or reading?” Her voice held a teasing note, but he had learned there were frequently hidden needs behind her teasing questions.
“To read is to make love to the world,” he said. “But to make love to a woman is to feel like the world is reading you.”
She smiled, not comprehending, and fell asleep.

They see something they may never have seen before: a normal human reacting normally to a traumatic situation. Livia, these people have been insulated within inscape their whole lives. They have lived in a world where their merest whim could be granted with a thought. Reality has always conformed to their desires—never the other way around. Now they find themselves in a world that obstinately refuses to change itself to fit their imagination. They literally have no idea how to respond.