Vernor Vinge Quotes

Peregrine Wickwrackscar was flying. A pilgrim with legends that went back almost a thousand years—and not one of them could come near to this!

Technical people don’t make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart.

Over the last twenty years, the worldwide net had come to be a midden of bogus sites and recursive fraudulence…telling truth from fantasy was often the hardest thing about using the web.

Didn’t Underhill understand? All decent societies agreed on basic issues, things that meant the healthy survival of their people. Things might be changing, but it was self-serving nonsense to throw the rules overboard.

I have come to kill you."
The death's heads shrugged. "You have come to try.

Wil wondered fleetingly if she might be psychopathic, and not merely young and naive.

The more you realized what the stars really were, the more you realized what the universe must really be.

Principal Alcalde was into a long speech, about the fast-changing world and the need for Fairmont to revolutionize itself from semester to semester. At the same time they must never forget the central role of modern education, which was to teach the kids how to learn, how to pose questions, how to be adaptable—all without losing their moral compass.

Politics may come and go, but Greed goes on forever.

It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.

“We think the governance has opted for ubiquitous law enforcement.”
Pham whistled softly. Now every embedded computing system, down to a child’s rattle, was a governance utility. It was the most extreme form of social control ever invented. “So now they have to run everything.” The notion was terribly seductive to the authoritarian mind.

Our system is founded on the Concept of Chaos. The universe is basically a dark and Unhappy place—a place where evil and injustice and randomness rule. The ironic thing is that the very act of organization creates the potential for even greater ruin. Social organizations have a natural tendency to become monopolistic and inflexible. When they finally break down, it is a catastrophic debacle. So, we must except a great deal of disorder and violence in our lives if we are to avoid a complete blow up later.

Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program.

Even as my conscious mind concluded that we were under fire, I threw myself on the ground and flatten into the lowest profile possible. You’ve heard the bromide about combat making life more real. I don’t know about that, but it’s certainly true that when you are flat against the ground with your face in the dirt, the whole universe looks different.

There had been an era of ubiquitous law enforcement, and some kind of distributed terror.