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Computers, contrary to what you may have been told, are not smart. They’re just fast. They can be programmed to act smart, but then it’s the programmer who’s actually smart and not the computer. If you give a computer long enough to chew on a problem it will usually solve it. And since a long time to a computer is about a millionth of a second, they give the illusion of being smart.

— John Varley Millennium (1983)

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More quotes by John Varley

The nice thing about being a pessimist is that bittersweet is an improvement.

Millennium (1983)

They understood the basic principles of morals: that nothing is moral always, and anything is moral under the right circumstances.

Like plugging into life-support equipment, I view apologizing as a dangerous vice that can take over your whole life if you give in to it.

Millennium (1983)

Predestination is the ugliest word in any human language.

Millennium (1983)

I found that it is much more pleasurable to read adventures than to live them.

The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Varley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.