67 quotes
The hours came to minutes, the minutes to seconds. And now each second was as long as all the time before.
A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)
Being alone was something he was very good at. There was so much to learn.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
It was not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.
A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)
There was an old Qeng Ho saying, “You know you’ve stayed too long when you start using the locals’ calendar.”
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
There had been an era of ubiquitous law enforcement, and some kind of distributed terror.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
Even the largest avalanche is triggered by small things.
The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
What do you do when your dream dies?
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
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.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
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!
A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)
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.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.
The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century.
The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
Pham was overwhelmed by the other things that Gunnar Larson had to say, the advice that might be worthless but that had the stench of wisdom.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.
A Fire Upon the Deep (1992)
This was the sort of desperate hallucination he must guard against. If you raise your desires high enough, certainty can grow out of the background noise.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
So what do you do when your dream dies?
When your dream dies, you give it up.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.
The Coming Technological Singularity (1993)
What do you do when your dream dies?
Dreams die in every life. Everyone gets old. There is promise in the beginning when life seems so bright. The promise fades when the years get short.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
So even in hell, there are clowns.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)
The essence of real creativity is a certain playfulness, a flitting from idea to idea without getting bogged down by fixated demands. Of course, you don’t always get what you thought you were asking for. From this era on, I think invention will be the parent of necessity—and not the other way around.
A Deepness in the Sky (1999)