John Twelve Hawks Quotes
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'All the doctors that have examined you state that you appear to have no friends or family relationships and you are incapable of any sort of empathy. In short…you’re perfect for this job.'
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All language – everything we say – is just an approximation of reality.
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True freedom is tolerant. It gives people the right to live and think in new ways.
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The warrior uses the power of the brain to be deliberate and the power of the heart to be instinctive.
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Virtue is admirable, but boring.
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The first icon of the 21st Century is the closed-circuit surveillance camera, slowly panning back and forth as we move beneath its gaze.
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Half the things you've been taught in school are just convenient fictions. History is a puppet show for childish minds.
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Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality.
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Machines, no matter how sophisticated, can only follow programs. If we sleepwalk through our lives, then we’re no better than machines. Only humans are capable of a job done well - which means thinking about the consequences of our actions. A job done well pays the bills, but it also improves the lives of everyone around us.
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Every new experience is unusual. The rest of life is just sleep and committee meetings.
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Human beings are tool-making animals. Since the prehistoric era, we have created and used a wide variety of objects. But now a significant change is about to occur. In the near future, we will simply become another object that can be monitored, tracked and controlled within a vast machine.
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Many of our leaders have gone past the old-fashioned politics of the democratic era and entered into the politics of fear. People running for national office no longer emphasize their views about the economy or social change. The leading political question of our time has become: who can ease our nightmares?
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In reality, the universe is neutral about our existence. Only dogs care.
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The Grid exists even if you don't see the lines.
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Fear requires a desire to exist in the future.
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Gradually, I realized that the surveillance cameras plus the email and cell phone monitoring was creating a Virtual Panopticon – a digital prison created and maintained by computer networks that enclosed all of us within its invisible walls.
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Most conscious thought is simply an attempt to claim ‘authorship’ for a choice that has already been made. Our thoughts are just an ongoing attempt to explain what we’ve already decided.
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It took me years to realize that a computer would never truly be able to say cogito ego sum although dozens of lurid Hollywood movies about robots want to leave that impression. A computer thinks....that is, it realizes it has been switched on...but it doesn't know it exists.
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Both dogs and humans know when we’ve been caged.
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The Turing Test tried to make a distinction between humans and machines. But these days Shadow programs like Edward and Laura can be programmed to say 'I love you' or imitate other emotions. If a machine wanted to act like a human, then it had to deny the truth. Lying, not love, is the fundamental indication of humanity.
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The laws of mathematics are stronger than the laws of man.
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Life is dangerous. That's what makes it interesting.
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What happens in our future can change the meaning of what has happened in our past.
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Many physicists these days sound like the Delphic oracle - with equations.