Ken MacLeod Quotes & Sayings

It had long been established in the Civil Worlds that public business was to be transparent, and personal business opaque; but it was as well recognised that the two would always have a turbulent interface, and that the clique, the caucus, and the conspiracy were as ineradicable features of civility as the council or the committee. — Ken MacLeod

The only way to get there was to burn through capitalism, to get through that unavoidable stage as fast as possible. — Ken MacLeod

Had always believed an immersive virtual reality afterlife was possible in principle. Maybe — Ken MacLeod

Intellectually he understood perfectly what the problem was: guilt and doubt, the waste products of innocence and faith, inhibited him and filled him with self-loathing even at his own weakness in trying to be free of them. — Ken MacLeod

As far as I was concerned, the best thing one could do for the poor was to not add one's self to their number. — Ken MacLeod

What if capitalism is unsustainable, and socialism is impossible? — Ken MacLeod

That evening, Hope wrote a letter to her MP, Jack Crow. She found no difficulty at all in composing it, but quite a bit in writing it. She hadn't hand-written an entire page since primary school. In the end she found an app on her glasses that sampled her handwriting and turned it into a font that looked like her handwriting would if it had been regular, and printed it off. There was even an app for the printer that indented the paper a little, and an ink that looked like ballpoint ink. — Ken MacLeod

There's a part of the human brain, the temporal lobe, that is associated with religious experiences as well as with epilepsy. — Ken MacLeod

It is possible that we are the only persons,> said another robot. — Ken MacLeod

Oh, no," Hope said. "I'm not. No, I don't believe in all that, but it's - well, it's two things. One is my job, you know? In China? So I'm all for that side of it, the war and so on; we really have to, you know, defeat those people. And the other is, uh, my husband. He's from the Highlands and he's half native, as he puts it, and I don't know if you know what the people up there are like, but I swear if he even thought I was going to vote any other way he'd walk out on me. — Ken MacLeod

Imagine a world where speaking or writing words can literally or directly make things happen, where getting one of those words wrong can wreak unbelievable havoc, but where the right spell you can summon immensely powerful agencies to work your will. Imagine further that this world is administered: there is an extensive division of labour, among the magicians themselves and between the magicians and those who coordinate their activity. It's bureaucratic, and also (therefore) chaotic, and it's full of people at desks muttering curses and writing invocations, all beavering away at a small part of the big picture. The coordinators, because they don't understand what's going on, are easy prey for smooth-talking preachers of bizarre cults that demand arbitrary sacrifices and vanish with large amounts of money. Welcome to the IT department. — Ken MacLeod

The Christians had an almost miraculous talent for turning wine into water. — Ken MacLeod

I don't really believe in the Devil, but if the Devil is the Father of Lies, then he certainly invented the Internet. — Ken MacLeod

Green humanism? What's that? Humanism for little green men? — Ken MacLeod

None of its components were conscious beings. As post-conscious AIs, they were well beyond that. They — Ken MacLeod

There is only one way this can end: with the kind of defeat that makes a people feel that their preachers have lied to them, their leaders have deserted them, that the world is against them and that God is dead. — Ken MacLeod

She read it over, decided it was too complicated for Memo, and ran it through an app called MyTxt4Dummies. — Ken MacLeod

Naive' is not a word I associate with the Southern Rule. Superstitious, perhaps, traditional, yes, maddeningly set in their way, certainly but not naive." "I meant you are naive. They must have a hidden motive." "This is why I have no politics," said Darvin. "I can't think in those terms. — Ken MacLeod

Everyone's an equal shareholder. Birth shares are inalienable, and death duties are unavoidable. The estate tax is one hundred per cent. In between, you can buy and sell and earn as much as you like. — Ken MacLeod

Falling in love indicated that your genes were complementary to those of the loved one. It told you nothing about when your personalities and sexualities were compatible. — Ken MacLeod

All life is a struggle for existence. Why should it cease to be a struggle if it spreads among the stars? — Ken MacLeod

Software development was insecurities all the way down. Even — Ken MacLeod

Carlyle spread her hands. 'I speculated that it was the remains of the starship that took the Eurydiceans to the planet. This seems to have been borne out.' She smiled. 'It transmitted a defensive virus that contained Microsoft patches. — Ken MacLeod

Science fiction made me aware of how big and strange the universe was, leaving aside the whole question of aliens. — Ken MacLeod

The fourteen conscious robots contemplated their cosmic loneliness for several milliseconds. — Ken MacLeod

The discretion of the watcher versus the privacy of the watched was just another arms race; this one, I could see, would run and run. — Ken MacLeod

The real world is far too complex and unpredictable to make something like the idea of humanity controlling its own evolution or engineering itself - well, I wouldn't say impossible but it should be approached with a degree of caution. — Ken MacLeod

I'm a long-term optimist, and I don't think the problems with our society are from being overly optimistic. — Ken MacLeod

I was overcome by a wave of wonder at how much good was going on, and how you heard about the bad things that happened so much that you overlooked the immensely disproportionate majority of other acts done to the real benefit of self and others without which none of this would be here at all. — Ken MacLeod

The idea of determinism combined with complete human responsibility struck me as very hard to reconcile with an idea of justice, let alone mercy. — Ken MacLeod

Poor white trash quoting de Maistre and Carlyle and fancying themselves elite while they scrabbled to survive in a world where they were outstripped economically by the Chinese and intellectually by their own phones. — Ken MacLeod

If you're interested, you'll be there. — Ken MacLeod

Anyway ... I find what you write interesting." "That's what people usually say when they disagree with it. — Ken MacLeod

For us scientists, on the other wing, life is not quite so simple. Because we learn the unknown. Unlike, hah-hah, our esteemed friends the philosophers, who learn the unknowable. — Ken MacLeod

I knew from the beginning it was hopeless, but it's possible to love without hope. — Ken MacLeod

The eighties?' I said. 'As in, the nineteen-eighties? The decade that taste forgot? Honest, Sophie, ask your granny. Ask mine, if you like. She'll tell you the only good thing about it was that the internet and phone cameras weren't invented, well hardly anyway, so most of the awful photos are lying out of sight in drawers and shoeboxes. — Ken MacLeod

Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear ********* weapons. — Ken MacLeod

The defining element of hell was eternal conscious suffering. Here — Ken MacLeod

Kindle, ah,' said Baxter, 'takes me back. — Ken MacLeod

Change the problem by changing your mind. — Ken MacLeod

The secret of becoming a writer is to write, write and keep on writing. — Ken MacLeod

That there was no God was a given, as far as Hope was concerned, and being nice to people and making the most of your life struck her as a reasonable enough conclusion to draw from it, and in any case what she wanted to do. But besides the spires of theology and the watch-towers of ideology, it seemed a very shaky hut indeed, and not one that offered her much shelter or would stand up in court.
She couldn't see a way to make her objection to the fix a deduction from any body of thought. It came from a body of flesh, her own, and that was enough for her. She doubted that this would be enough for anyone else. — Ken MacLeod

Of all the sciences, astronomy was the one the superstitious liked least. — Ken MacLeod

Fascinating,' said Darvin. 'The mystery of life. The miracle of reproduction. I don't know why I didn't learn all this in school.' 'I did not,' said Orro. 'I read it in an imaginative but broadly accurate illustrated treatise inscribed, if memory serves, on the wall of a municipal pissery. — Ken MacLeod

On the one hand faith kids and nature kids and on the other the rest, those you might call, under your breath of course, New Kids? Were these a centimetre taller than others of their age, a glimmer brighter of eye, a syllable more articulate? A step ahead in the race, a pace more sure-footed? A decibel less loud? — Ken MacLeod

Whatever the truth about the Deliverer, she will remain in my mind as she was shown on that statue, and all the other statues and murals, songs and stories: riding, at the head of her own swift cavalry, with a growing migration behind her and a decadent, vulnerable, defenceless and rich continent ahead; and, floating bravely above her head and above her army, the black flag on which nothing is written. — Ken MacLeod

I enjoyed Old Man's War immensely. A space war story with fast action, vivid characters, moral complexity and cool speculative physics, set in a future you almost want to live into, and a universe you sincerely hope you don't live in already. — Ken MacLeod

The world has become one big grassy knoll, crawling with lone gunmen who think they're the Warren Commission. — Ken MacLeod

But isn't it enough that I just don't want it?"
"No," said Fiona. "It isn't enough."
"Why not?"
"Well, if that was enough, if just saying no and not giving a reason was enough, where would we be? It would just be chaos. — Ken MacLeod

You must rely on reason and science," she said, "and be guided by a likewise rational ethic of human concern. You must do your utmost as individuals to improve your understanding, ability and compassion. — Ken MacLeod

Syn bio tech had come on stream, springing full-grown from the bench like the Incredible Hulk bursting his lab coat, a great green monster that sucked carbon dioxide from the air and sprouted wood, pissed oil, and shat diamonds. — Ken MacLeod