13 quotes
Quit crossing your fingers, Wim; the only thing that’ll ever save you from is the respect of educated men.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
Wil wondered fleetingly if she might be psychopathic, and not merely young and naive.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
Every state religion he’d ever seen had a core of hypocrisy. That was why he’d been against bringing “Hrala” ashore—he knew the priests would never accept their theology suddenly incarnate.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
Did you ever think? Old-fashioned writing is the ultimate in context tagging. It’s passive, informative, and present exactly where you need it.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
The closer a Citizen came to the centers of power, the more of a madhouse the universe became.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
She was obviously an idealist: that is, someone who can twist his every vice into self-righteous morality.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
One of his many mottos was, “If you didn’t figure it out yourself, you don’t understand it.”
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
Some dreams take a long time in dying. Some get a last minute reprieve…and that can be even worse.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
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)
There may have been some time in the past when a group calling themselves astrologers could produce results. I don’t know, and the matter doesn’t interest me, for I live in the present. In our time the men working in the name of astrology are incapable of producing results, are conscious frauds.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
That was the old saying: Once your secret is outed anywhere, however briefly, it is outed forever. “Oh, I don’t know,” said Juan. “The way to cover a slip is to embellish it, hide it in all sorts of fake secrets.”
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
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.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)
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.
The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (2001)