The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer QUOTES

1 " In your Primer you have a resource that will make you highly educated, but it will never make you intelligent. That comes from life. Your life up to this point has given you all the experience you need to be intelligent, but you have to think about those experiences. If you don't think about them, you'll be psychologically unwell. If you do think about them, you will become not merely educated but intelligent. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

2 " Yong is the outer manifestation of something. Ti is the underlying essence. Technology is a yong associated with a particular ti that is ... Western, and completely alien to us [the Chinese]. For centuries, since the time of the Opium Wars, we have struggled to absorb the yong of technology without importing the Western ti. But it has been impossible. Just as our ancestors could not open our ports to the West without accepting the poison of opium, we could not open our lives to Western technology without taking in the Western ideas, which have been as a plague on our society. The result has been centuries of chaos. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

3 " It had come from one of two corgis who were even now slamming their preposterous bodies into each other not far away, trying to roll each other over, which runs contrary to the laws of mechanics even in the case of corgis that are lean and trim, which these were not.

This struggle, which appeared to be only one skirmish in a conflict of epochal standing, had driven all lesser considerations, such as guarding the gate, from the combatants' sphere of attention... "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

4 " The windows on the Dovetail side of the gatehouse were larger, and she could see the two corgi dogs outside, peering in through the lead latticework, flabbergasted that they had, through some enormous lacuna in procedure, been left on the outside, wagging their tails somewhat uncertainly, as if, in a world that allowed such mistakes, nothing could be counted on. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

5 " The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

6 " Nell," the Constable continued, indicating through his tone of voice that the lesson was concluding, "the difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people—and this is true whether or not they are well-educated—is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambiguous or even contradictory situations—in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

7 " That we occasionally violate our own stated moral code does not imply that we are insincere in espousing that code. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

8 " The difference between stupid and intelligent people -- and this is true whether or not they are well-educated -- is that intelligent people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambigous or even contradictory situations -- in fact, they expect them and are apt to become suspicious when things seem overly straightforward. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

9 " We ignore the blackness of outer space and pay attention to the stars, especially if they seem to order themselves into constellations. “Common as the air” meant something worthless, but Hackworth knew that every breath of air that Fiona drew, lying in her little bed at night, just a silver flow in the moonlight, was used by her body to make skin and hair and bones. The air became Fiona, and deserving—no, demanding—of love. Ordering matter was the sole endeavor of Life, whether it was a jumble of self-replicating molecules in the primordial ocean, or a steam-powered English mill turning weeds into clothing, or Fiona lying in her bed turning air into Fiona. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

10 " He had some measure of the infuriating trait that causes a young man to be a nonconformist for its own sake and found that the surest way to shock most people, in those days, was to believe that some kinds of behavior were bad and others good, and that it was reasonable to live one's life accordingly. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

11 " They wanted to carry her, but she jumped to the stones of the plaza and strode away from the building, toward her ranks, which parted to make way for her. The streets of Pudong were filled with hungry and terrified refugees, and through them, in simple peasant clothes streaked with the blood of herself and of others, broken shackles dangling from her wrists, followed by her generals and ministers, walked the barbarian Princess with her book and her sword. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

12 " The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel was what they called it when they were speaking Chinese. Venerable because of his goatee, white as the dogwood blossom, a badge of unimpeachable credibility in Confucian eyes. Inscrutable because he had gone to his grave without divulging the Secret of the Eleven Herbs and Spices. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

13 " The hour of noon has passed,' said Judge Fang. 'Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

14 " Bud's relationship with the female sex was governed by a gallimaufry of primal impulses, dim suppositions, deranged theories, overheard scraps of conversation, half-remembered pieces of bad advice, and fragments of no-doubt exaggerated anecdotes that amounted to rank superstition. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

15 " But what you learn, as you get older, is that there are a few billion other people in the world all trying to be clever at the same time, and whatever you do with your life will certainly be lost—swallowed up in the ocean—unless you are doing it along with like-minded people who will remember your contributions and carry them forward. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

16 " Constable Moore had reached the age when men can subject their bodies to the worst irritations - whiskey, cigars, woolen clothes, bagpipes - without feeling a thing or, at least, without letting on. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

17 " If the item of stolen property had been anything other than a book, it would have been confiscated. But a book is different—it is not just a material possession but the pathway to an enlightened mind, and thence to a well-ordered society, "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

18 " I have devoted much effort, during the last decade or so, to the systematic encouragement of subversiveness. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

19 " Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy... Because they were hypocrites, the Victorians were despised in the late twentieth century. Many of the persons who held such opinions were, of course, guilty of the most nefarious conduct themselves, and yet saw no paradox in holding such views because they were not hypocrites themselves-they took no moral stances and lived by none. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

20 " There are only two industries. This has always been true....There is the industry of things, and the industry of entertainment....After people have the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment. Everything. "

― Neal Stephenson , The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer