Karl Schroeder Quotes

Technologies are control systems, she said. They dictate your reality.

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

The richest billionaire has to realize that the gods next door take no more notice of him than he would a bug.

It's time to abandon the plans of the entity that enslaved me all these centuries, he said. And time to start making my own.

Each technology equated to some human value or set of values, she saw. She’d known that. But on Earth, in the Archipelago and everywhere else, technologies came first, and values changed to accommodate them. Under the locks, values were the keys to access or shut away technologies...
The locks proclaimed that there were no neutral technologies. The devices and methods people used didn’t just represent certain values—they were those values, in some way.

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

You know I was once a human being, too, Doran. I remember how hard it was to marshal all the resources I needed to cure myself of the affliction. I also remember, quite clearly, how I always told people I had no interest in self-deification. It was a useful and sometimes necessary shield against interference.
Blow off, said Doran. Unless you have some specific threat you want to use on me.
Choronzon laughed. Not a threat. Just curiosity as to why someone so violently opposed to improving on the human model should decide to go against all his principles.
Sometimes, said Doran icily, mature people do things they don't want to do. It's called following higher principles. But someone without mortal concerns, say, like yourself, wouldn't understand that.