Neal Stephenson Quotes

Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.

But what are you going to do about the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?

F. Scott Fitzgerald has an indespensible quote: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at once and still retain the ability to function'. Or, as I like to call it, 'O.J. killed his wife, and the police are corrupt.'

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

I think we do good things and bad things, sometimes simultaneously - or they may be the same thing.

My problem is not that I see all 17 sides of any issue, but I'm equally passionate about all 17 sides simultaneously.

I'm of the establishment but anti-establishment.

I like characters who are contradictory.

I don't see the world completely in black and white. Sometimes I do.

I am a man of contradictions, I suppose.

I think people have to choose between living with contradictions or painting themselves into a corner. I have a lot of contradictions.

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

Being human is being a lot of things at the same time.

I like things that aren't superficially one thing or another.

The best ideas make you want to say 'yes' and 'no' in the same breath.

In contradiction and paradox, you can find truth.

Sometimes I wonder if the world is too interesting and too boring at the same time.

It took me a long time to learn both good and bad can exist simultaneously.

You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?

Is it good or bad?" she asked Issa. The wrong question, she knew. She just couldn't help herself. "It's both, sweet girl," said Issa. "like everything.

I think one thing my mother always instilled in me was a sense of individuality. Being an only child, I never thought I had to rely on anyone. I was never afraid to be alone and I was never afraid to be my own person. So when all my friends were like, "Let's smoke weed," I was like, "I'm not doing it." It wasn't because I was trying to be a rebel or because I didn't like it or I was anti-drugs. I just didn't do it because I didn't want to do it, and if I didn't want to do it, I wasn't doing it. That was it.

There's a paradox in every paradigm.