Neal Stephenson Quotes
In the whole world, there might have been as many as ten thousand people who were better than Sokolov at falling and rolling around on hard surfaces. Circus acrobats and aikido masters, mostly. Also included in that group would have been many of the younger Spetsnaz men. The remaining six billion or so living humans did not even enter the picture.

Quotes to Explore
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It's really important to me that my sound is a combination of beats and melody. I love hearing strong, confident beats in music because I love to dance. At the same time, melody is really important to me because I love singing.
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It may be a cold, clammy thing to say, but those that treat friendship the same as any other selfishness seem to get the most out of it.
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I'm not the type of person that is forced.
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Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.
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Nobody should be sent indefinitely into detention; everybody should have their day in court.
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There's such a preoccupation with liquidity and such an unwillingness to invest beyond the horizon of the next quarter and making sure that the CEOs hit their quarterly earnings.
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In those days, even as a boy, I watched some people that I knew were living way beyond their means.
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It is in fact agreed that I am the plague, the cholera of the benevolent and generous men who are interested in art and that, when I show myself with my plasters, even the Emperor of the Sahara would flee.
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Her body calculated to a millimeter to suggest a bud yet guarantee a flower.
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There isn't much in the way of pure communist spirit, because the whole nation seems to be engaged in capitalistic enterprises. Much of the country still operates under government control.
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There's a lot of interviews now where nobody seems to talk about anything. Like it's illegal. But it can be fun if you stay involved. Like most conversations.
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I think I'm a good judge of character.
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As long as I love Beauty I am young.
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There's a difference between a failure and a fiasco... a fiasco is a disaster of mythic proportions.
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Spiritual practice should not be confused with grim duty. It is the laughter of the Dalai Lama and the wonder born with every child.
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One knows less about one's own destiny than about anything else on earth.
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In organic chemistry, we have learnt to derive from compounds containing only carbon and hydrogen, i.e. from the hydrocarbons, all other types of combinations, such as alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, acids, etc.
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Losing is no fun no matter who you lose to.
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So now I know. I fear the unknown so deeply that I'd rather repeat the same heart-breaking pattern than face something or someone I can't predict.
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There are large cooperatives all across this country. Land O'Lakes is a $12 billion club functioning all across America. There are rural electric co-ops in 47 states. Ace Hardware is a cooperative.
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What hinders the middle class the most is taxes, and what hinders business from creating jobs and moving people into the middle class are regulations.
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The best start-ups might be considered slightly less extreme kinds of cults. The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful start-up are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.
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In the whole world, there might have been as many as ten thousand people who were better than Sokolov at falling and rolling around on hard surfaces. Circus acrobats and aikido masters, mostly. Also included in that group would have been many of the younger Spetsnaz men. The remaining six billion or so living humans did not even enter the picture.