Bruce Sterling Quotes

Quotes about:

• If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science fiction writers are its court jesters. We are Wise Fools who can leap, caper, utter prophecies, and scratch ourselves in public. We can play with Big Ideas because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.

  Bruce Sterling

  Wise, Play, Ideas

  47 Copy quote

• The future is a process, not a destination.

  Bruce Sterling

  Process, Destination

  7 Copy quote

• But even the Four Horsemen of Kidporn, Dope Dealers, Mafia and Terrorists don't worry me as much as totalitarian governments. It's been a long century, and we've had enough of them.

  Bruce Sterling

  Dope, Government, Long

  "So, people, we have a fight on our hands" by Bruce Sterling, www.wired.com. July 1, 1994.

  4 Copy quote

• The past is a kind of future that has already happened.

  Bruce Sterling

  Past, Kind, Happened

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• The frontiers of the future will be the ruins of the unsustainable.

  Bruce Sterling

  Ruins, Frontiers

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think there's much distinction between surveillance and media in general. Better media means better surveillance. Cams are everywhere.

  Bruce Sterling

  Mean, Thinking, Media

  "Big Brother and the Next 50 years". Interview with Declan McCullagh, www.cnet.com. June 05, 2003.

  9 Copy quote

• Tomorrow composts today.

  Bruce Sterling

  Today, Tomorrow, Compost

  "Shaping Things". Book by Bruce Sterling, 2005.

  6 Copy quote

• Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes. THAT is cyberpunk.

  Bruce Sterling

  Eye, Thinking, Going Away

  21 Copy quote

• You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place.

  Bruce Sterling

  Morning, Shining, Atoms

  7 Copy quote

• The internet brought many laudable things, but prosperity, stability, accountability and honest politics were not four of them.

  Bruce Sterling

  Accountability, Four, Honest

  6 Copy quote

• You may be a geek. You may have geek written all over you. You should aim to be the geek they will never forget. Don’t aim to be civilized. Don’t hope that straight people will keep you on as some sort of pet. To hell with them, they put you here. You should realize what society has made of you and take full revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly thoroughly weird and don’t do it half way, put every ounce of your horse power into it. Have the artistic courage to realize your significance in culture.

  Bruce Sterling

  Horse, Revenge, People

  4 Copy quote

• When you can’t imagine how things are going to change, that doesn’t mean that nothing will change. It means that things will change in ways that are unimaginable.

  Bruce Sterling

  Mean, Way, Imagine

  6 Copy quote

• I've been asked to explain why I don't worry much about the topics of privacy threat...One reason is that these scenarios seem to assume that there will be large, monolithic bureaucracies...that are capable of harnessing computers for one-way surveillance of an unsuspecting populace. I've come to feel that computation just doesn't work that way. Being afraid of monolithic organizations especially when they have computers, is like being afraid of really big gorillas especially when they are on fire.

  Bruce Sterling

  Fire, Organization, Worry

  6 Copy quote

• Don't become a well rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and ull. Become a thoroughly spiky person.

  Bruce Sterling

  People, Belief, Smooth

  16 Copy quote

• The future is unwritten. Cyberspace is the funhouse mirror of our own society, reflects our values and our faults, sometimes in terrifying exaggerations. It doesn't matter who you are today, if you don't show up in that mirror you are just not going to matter very much. Our kids have to show up in the mirror.

  Bruce Sterling

  Kids, Mirrors, Cyberspace

  4 Copy quote

• Worrying about a large institution, especially when it has computers, is like worrying about a large gorilla, especially when it's on fire.

  Bruce Sterling

  Fire, Worry, Gorillas

  6 Copy quote

• I'm an entertainer in the military-entertainment complex.

  Bruce Sterling

  Military, Entertainment, Entertainers

  "Inside the Military-Entertainment Complex". Interview with Krystian Woznicki, www.heise.de. June 16, 2002.

  8 Copy quote

• Science fiction is not about the freedom of imagination. It's about a free imagination pinched and howling in a vise that other people call real life.

  Bruce Sterling

  Real, People, Imagination

  4 Copy quote

• In a world so redolent with wonder, how can we allow ourselves to conduct our daily lives with so little insight, such absence of dignity?

  Bruce Sterling

  World, Littles, Dignity

  4 Copy quote

• Architects thrive after massive urban disasters. The abject collapse of East Berlin gave us the only city in Europe with a mighty host of Postmodern skyscrapers.

  Bruce Sterling

  East Berlin, Europe, Cities

  4 Copy quote

• I was once a student in a punk T-Shirt hooked on screwed-up scenarios. Thats how I became the esteemed cultural figure that I am today.

  Bruce Sterling

  Literature, Today, Students

  16 Copy quote

• University, as institutions, pre-date the information economy by many centuries and are not for-profit cultural entities, whose reason of existence (purportedly) is to discover truth, codify it through techniques of scholarship, and then teach it. Universities are meant to pass the torch of civilization not just download data into student skulls.

  Bruce Sterling

  Data, Civilization, Skulls

  6 Copy quote

• Information wants you to give me a dollar.

  Bruce Sterling

  Giving, Dollars, Want

  4 Copy quote

• Everybody has a different Internet.

  Bruce Sterling

  Different, Internet, Free Speech

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• You don't get to cut that chain of evidence and start over. You're always going to be pursued by your data shadow, which is forming from thousands and thousands of little leaks and tributaries of information.

  Bruce Sterling

  Cutting, Data, Starting Over

  4 Copy quote

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