"Technical people don't make good slaves. Without their wholehearted cooperation, things fall apart."

Vernor Vinge Literature See all quotes by Vernor Vinge →

React to this quote

More by Vernor Vinge

“Peregrine Wickwrackrum was of two minds about evil: when enough rules get broken, sometimes there is good amid the carnage.”

“Sometimes the biggest disasters aren’t noticed at all—no one’s around to write horror stories.”

“All his life he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge....And now revenge was all that life had left for him.”

“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

“If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn.”

“The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat.”

Resonant Thoughts

"I believe I have omitted mentioning that in my first Voyage from Boston, being becalm'd off Block Island, our People set about catching Cod and haul'd up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my Resol…"

— Benjamin Franklin

Politics1812–1878

#love

"The backlash is not a conspiracy, with a council dispatching agents from some central control room, nor are the people who serve its ends often aware of their role; some even consider themselves femin…"

— Susan Faludi

Journalism1959

#love

"Descartes... fell back on his original confusion of matter with space—space being, according to him, the only form of substance, and all existing things but affections of space. This error... forms on…"

— Baruch Spinoza

Philosophy1632–1677

#love

"Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the U…"

— Abraham Lincoln

Politics1744–1786

#love