Quotes and turns of phrase

Sat, 2010-12-04 11:15

#2

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

T-F-U-U-G (Tee-Foog): Titan's Effed Us Up Good. It's the Eclipse Phase version of FUBAR.

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Sat, 2010-12-04 15:21

#3

Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

TFUUG. I like that one!!! it would be nice to have that on a teeshirt, with that illustration from Continuity

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Sat, 2010-12-04 20:02

#4

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

Some more quotes that might be useful for characters to say:

Quote:
If you can't feel secure - and teach your children to feel secure - about 1-in-610,000 nightmare scenarios - the problem isn't the world. It's you. -- Bryan Caplan I suffer great disaster because I have a body. When I have no body, what disaster can there be? -- Lao Tzu A *serial* killer? No. If anything he's *massively parallel*. -- Schlock Mercenary It just looks like the universe is undergoing some technical difficulties. -Berserk: the Abridged Version Absence is the best revenge. A little knowledge is a friend indeed. My past experience with crime families has made it clear to me that blood and money don’t mix. Your money gets *wet*. --The Darkness If the end doesn't justify the means, you're working on the wrong problem! --Miracleman

Here is a real example of humans meeting superintelligence (endgame databases can play parts of chess *perfectly*):

Quote:
"Writing about a 262-move optimal ‘rook and knight versus two knights’ game Thompson found in the 6-piece endgames, former championship chess player Tim Krabbé explained: Playing over these moves is an eerie experience. They are not human; a grandmaster does not understand them any better than someone who has learned chess yesterday. The knights jump, the kings orbit, the sun goes down, and every move is the truth. It's like being revealed the Meaning of Life, but it's in Estonian."

And then we have a quote from a guy who would either have been a leading Firewall proxy or one of the organisation's prime targets (maybe both at the same time) if he had been alive:

Quote:
I have been surprised at the unanimity with which the notion of the unacceptability of a Doomsday Machine is greeted. I used to be wary of discussing the concept for fear that some colonel would get out a General Operating Requirement or Development Planning Objective for the device, but it seems that I need not have worried. Except by some scientists and engineers who have overemphasized the single objective of maximizing the effectiveness of deterrence, the device is universally rejected. It just does not look professional to senior military officers, and it looks even worse to senior civilians. The fact that more than a few scientists and engineers do seem attracted to the idea is disquieting, but as long as the development project is expensive, even these dedicated experts are unlikely to get one under way. --Herman Khan, On Thermonuclear War

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Sun, 2010-12-05 06:56

#5

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

Another great one from today's Schlock Mercenary:

Quote:
You shouldn't leave important apps like "consciousness" open while I'm recompiling your brain.

Of course, that comic has a lot of good advice for EP characters in the book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates":

Quote:
Rule 1: Pillage, then burn. Rule 2: A Sergeant in motion outranks a Lieutenant who doesn't know what's going on. Rule 3: An Ordnance Technician at a dead run outranks everybody. Rule 4: Close air support covereth a multitude of sins. Rule 5: Close air support and friendly fire should be easier to tell apart. Rule 6: If violence wasn't your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it. Rule 8: Mockery and derision have their place. Usually, it's on the far side of the airlock. Rule 9: Never turn your back on an enemy. Rule 10: Sometimes the only way out is through. ...through the hull. Rule 11: Everything is air-droppable at least once. Rule 12: A soft answer turneth away wrath. Once wrath is looking the other way, shoot it in the head. Rule 13: Do unto others. Rule 14: "Mad Science" means never stopping to ask "what's the worst thing that could happen?" Rule 15: Only you can prevent friendly fire. Rule 16: Your name is in the mouth of others: be sure it has teeth. Rule 21: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Take his fish away and tell him he's lucky just to be alive, and he'll figure out how to catch another one for you to take tomorrow. Rule 27: Don't be afraid to be the first to resort to violence. Rule 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less. Rule 30: A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go. Rule 31: Only cheaters prosper. Rule 34: If you're leaving scorch-marks, you need a bigger gun. Rule 35: That which does not kill you has made a tactical error. Rule 36: When the going gets tough, the tough call for close air support. Rule 37: There is no 'overkill.' There is only 'open fire' and 'time to reload.' Rule 38: Just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it can't be hard on your clients.

Some other good expressions for EP:

Quote:
UNS Officer: 'Minimal collateral damage' and 'Entire star system' do not belong in the same sentence. Schlock: We don't run from the end of the world. We CHARGE! Petey: No offense, sir, but you think too slowly. Every three seconds you waste kills over a hundred thousand people. Captain Kaff Tagon: I think that's the stupidest I've ever been called, Petey. Commander Kevyn: Leave me before I'm compelled to use your lifeblood as cream in my coffee.

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Sun, 2010-12-05 14:06

#6

Rhyx

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

A few I like are: "Virtue untested is innocence." (good one for Scum) "Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."-John Kenneth Galbraith "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."- Albert Einstein “The world will not be inherited by the strongest, it will be inherited by those most able to change” - Charles Darwin

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Tue, 2010-12-07 14:45

#7

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

"It is profoundly inconsiderate of you to remain outside of my firing solution." --J.C. Hutchins "There's just one thing I want to know: are we the good guys or the bad guys?" --Johnny-B, [u]Misfits of Science[/u] "As the size of an explosion increases, the number of social situations it is incapable of solving approaches zero." --Vaarsuvius "'Catastrophic' is a bad word." --Claudia, [u]Warehouse 13[/u] "I simply *have* to get one of those sonic crowd-dispersal things and incorporate it into my live act. Everytime a kickdrum hits I want people to fall to the floor and start writhing in agony as the calcium matrices of their bones hum." --Derek C.F. Pegritz "Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it's dark." --Zen saying

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Sun, 2011-01-23 23:30

#8

The Green Slime The Green Slime's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

"Stand up and fight! Not one step back, that is the idea. Fight it out, whatever comes. Let the stars move from the spheres! Let the whole world stand against us! Death means only a change of garment. What of it? Thus fight! You gain nothing by becoming cowards. Taking a step backward, you do not avoid any misfortune. You have cried to all the gods in the world. Has misery ceased? … The gods come to help you when you have succeeded. So what is the use? Die game. … You are infinite, deathless, birthless. Because you are infinite spirit, it does not befit you to be a slave. Arise! Awake! Stand up and fight!" - [url=http://jnanagni.com/quotes/swami-vivekananda/]Swami Vivekananda[/url]

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Mon, 2011-01-24 10:43

#9

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

"Whether we are based on carbon or silicon makes no fundamental difference. We should each be treated with appropriate respect." - Dr Chandra, 2010 "Some people call it megalomania, I call it healthy self-esteem." - discwuzit@yahoo.comdrashner1 "If you ask me, any species that naturally prodices flammable growth on top of it's head is begging for trouble." - Sam, in Freefall "Seriously, if the extropian dreams come true, we'll pretty much be memetic organisms--we'll exist as long as someone (including ourselves) is interested in us." --Nancy Lebovitz "I don't hold with messing with gravity wells, it's just more room for error." - Bruce Sterling, Schismatrix "The sky isn't right down there, Maria," he said. "It changes colors, black to blue or red or something, and you can only see the stars part of the time, and they don't shine, they're all distorted. They twinkle. We won't have access to freefall when we want it, we'll be stuck in full gravity all the time. We couldn't keep clean - there'll be *dirt* everywhere. They'll make us grow plants in the mud to eat." - Ubu Roy, _Angel Station_ by Walter John Williams Last one to become a monolith is a lump of protoplasm!

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Tue, 2011-02-08 14:28

#10

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

Arenamontanus wrote:
"Whether we are based on carbon or silicon makes no fundamental difference. We should each be treated with appropriate respect." - Dr Chandra, 2010

How could I have forgotten this one? Time to run a consistency check...

Quote:
Last one to become a monolith is a lump of protoplasm!

This has been added to my ~/.taglines file.

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Sat, 2011-03-12 07:42

#11

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

Here is a good one from Iain Banks' "Surface Detail", which could be a Firewall saying: "Utility is seven-eights Proximity" You never know when you need to get an agent on site *fast*.

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Mon, 2011-03-14 22:20

#12

Jay Dugger Jay Dugger's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

Everyone watches everything all the time, but only the distribution of interested parties matters. Or, as Laurie Anderson put it, "We're in record."

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Sometimes the delete key serves best.

Wed, 2011-03-16 16:21

#13

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

"The TITANs - they did it for the lulz!" --Lyssa, on the TITANs having grown from Anonymous in 3,000 years (Yes, that is an actual in-game quote.) "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." --H.P. Lovecraft "I will act AS IF what I do makes a difference." --William James "There's just one thing I want to know: are we the good guys or the bad guys?" --Johnny-B, [u]Misfits of Science[/u] "Lesson: Mars does not read requirements documents." --Robert Manning, MSL Chief Engineer The mass driver: because nothing says "I love you" quite like relativistic bombardment with nickel-iron asteroids. "Never ask someone who was cloned in a lab and given a serial number to name a pet." --Solo "This Stream of Consciousness has been brought to you by Citizens for Titan. Please have your hermaphroditic lizardling pet spayed and neutered." --Jason "The transmigration of souls is not supposed to involve Ethernet." --Hasufin

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Tue, 2011-03-22 19:21

#14

Acatalepsy Acatalepsy's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

"A guilty system recognizes no innocents. As with any power apparatus which thinks everybody's either for it or against it, we're against it. You would be too, if you thought about it. The very way you think places you amongst its enemies. This might not be your fault, because every society imposes some of its values on those raised within it, but the point is that some societies try to maximize that effect, and some try to minimize it. You come from one of the latter and you're being asked to explain yourself to one of the former. Prevarication will be more difficult than you might imagine; neutrality is probably impossible. You cannot choose not to have the politics you do; they are not some separate set of entities somehow detachable from the rest of your being; they are a function of your existence. I know that and they know that; you had better accept it." - Iain Banks, [i]Player of Games[i]. A good summary of the larger issues between the hypercorps and the autonomists. I've stopped trying to reconcile the wisdom of Earthbound experts with the reality I have encountered. The old paradigms are useless. I propose a new one: technology implies belligerence. Tools exist for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treat nature as an enemy, they are by definition a rebellion against the way things are. In benign environments technology is a stunted, laughable thing, it can't thrive in cultures gripped by belief in natural harmony. What need of fusion reactors if food is already abundant, the climate comfortable? Why force change upon a world which poses no danger? - Peter Watts, 'Ambassador' One of the reasons Firewall is so paranoid about technological aliens, and why they might mean for us.

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[I]This isn't a war ordinary humans can win. This is the future. Death's an inconvenience, now. Nothing more.[/I]

Tue, 2011-03-29 07:21

#15

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

Just realized that Lem is a great souce of quotes and dictums: "He who must be what he is, may curse his fate, but cannot change it; on the other hand, he who can transform himself has no one in the world but himself to blame for his failings, no one but himself to hold responsible for his dissatisfaction." Stanislaw Lem, the Cyberiad (this is of course one reason so many people in EP obsessively upgrade their bodies) "Any attempt to understand the motivation of these occurrences is blocked by our own anthropomorphism. Where there are no men, there cannot be motives accessible to men." Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (Said on a gatecrashing mission.) "A smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it. " Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress (The big problem in AI design)

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Sat, 2011-05-28 01:42

#16

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

"The only thing privacy laws accomplish is making the bugs smaller." --Robert A. Heinlein "Some things can be taught. For others, there is the LART." --Binder (Binder would make a good Proxy for Firewall.) "I think promoting insecurity in the form of plastic surgery is infinitely more harmful than an artistic expression related to body modification." --Lady Gaga "Dude, you see JPEG ARTEFACTS?! When did you last upgrade your software?!" --Hasufin "You have just been VIOLATED little girly warranty!" --Bryce "William Gibson says I have more Twitter followers than Hugo Chavez. I believe this means he has to give me Venezuela now." --Warren Ellis (On reputation economies?) "I have successfully privatized world peace!" --Tony Stark, _Iron Man II_

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Mon, 2011-07-11 23:30

#17

Jay Dugger Jay Dugger's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

I recently read both Zebrowski's "Cave of Stars" and Hite's "The Day After Ragnarok." This inspired me to restart collecting quotes and paraphrases. :::Know, O student, that between the years when Earth fell and antimatter slew America and her gleaming cities, and the centuries of the rise of Macrolife, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining habitats orbited across Sunspace like jewels beneath the night sky: Autonomist Alliance and Planetary Consortium alike claiming the ideology of the future, Mars torn asunder and farming its desert, harsh Mercury, cold Titan, Pandora where the path of the Fall lay waiting, Elysium and Mendeleev and Feynman alongside containment zones, the Jovian Republic whose warriors eschewed modernity. But the proudest habitat of Sunspace was Extropia, shining bright among the flying mountains.::: --Larger center hyperpersonal aggregate of historic individuals, reciting The History of Life, Sigma Draconis Star System, A.F. 2041 (If you can rework this to fit dactylic hexameter, or paraphrase Homer or Virgil to fit E.P., kudos!) The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent and identical. --N. Kazantakis, The Last Temptaion of Christ All this began some four-and-a-half million kilometers from Sol, on the planet Mars, some ten years after the Fall of Earth. --opening lines of Cave of Stars, paraphrased Progress eliminates yesterday’s problems, and creates today’s and tomorrow’s. …but the solution of even the gravest problems cannot close the future to newer problems. I would not want it any other way; the relativity of progress is the source of our continuing discontent, and the necessary precondition for continuing satisfaction. --Richard Bulero, “The Relativity of Progress,” speech before the Projex Council’s First Session, B.F. 59 There are two kinds of critics of any possibility; those who wait and see, and those who try to kill an idea in advance; at every crossroad, each forward-looking soul is opposed by a thousand guardians of the past. --Richard Bulero (aphorism in margin of last page of his wajor work)

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Sometimes the delete key serves best.

Sat, 2012-03-17 18:54

#18

Acatalepsy Acatalepsy's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

So, a bit of thread necromancy (because, seriously, death? who needs death?), I thought some Alpha Centauri quotes would be good for EP. If I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it. Sun Tzu, "The Art of War", As distances vanish and the people can flow freely from place to place, society will cross a psychological specific heat boundary and enter a new state. No longer a solid or liquid, we have become as a vapor and will expand to fill all available space. And like a gas, we shall not be easily contained. Sister Miriam Godwinson "But for the Grace of God" As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. Commissioner Pravin Lal "U.N. Declaration of Rights"

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[I]This isn't a war ordinary humans can win. This is the future. Death's an inconvenience, now. Nothing more.[/I]

Sat, 2012-03-17 20:17

#19

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

Ah, SMAC, my favorite game... Some other good quotes: The genetic code does not, and cannot, specify the nature and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron in the brain. What it can do is describe the underlying fractal pattern which creates them. Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There are no genes for trunks. What you CAN do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals. For instance, we can in theory splice the native plants' talent for nitrogen fixation into a terran plant. Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "Nonlinear Genetics" (this is an important biological fact that we all should recognize by heart - and the reason biomorphs are so expensive and tricky to design.) Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind. Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these...things...these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day announce that they have no further need for us? Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We must Dissent" (Spoken like a true Jovian!) I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice. CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Morganlink 3D-Vision Interview (A hypercorp gerontocrat if I ever saw one) We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism? Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7. Activity recorded M.Y. 2302.22467. (TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED) (When your seed AGI begins to recreate Descartes, you better activate the failsafes quickly!)

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Tue, 2012-03-20 15:28

#20

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

"We are as gods and HAVE to get good at it." --Stewart Brand "[note: insert Genesis 1:1 here] ..and Man made Machine. And Machine made Music. And Machine saw everything it had made, and said, '...the hell?'" --VNV Nation, _State of Silicon_ "People say, ''I'm a woman trapped in a man's body'' or ''I'm a man trapped in a woman's body,'' but I say ''I'm trapped in a body.''" --Genesis P. Orridge "Genuinely ubiquitous computing spreads like warm Vaseline." --William Gibson "I'll fix what we did to their heads. You fix what we did to the rest of the world. Your job is way harder." --Topher, _Dollhouse_ "It's not about being mad at everything. It's about being really mad at the right things." --Ice-T "The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." --Alvin Toffler "We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely. --E.O. Wilson "Haters gonna hate." "Haters ain't codin'." --Anonymous

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Fri, 2012-04-20 00:09

#21

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

- I was completely dead, wasn't I? - Yes. - ...That's pretty cool. - You should see the video. from today's Schlock Mercenary.

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Fri, 2012-04-20 05:10

#22

Aeroz

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

"are you a man or a god" "I find both terms rather limiting" -vaanclice "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." -K (and every proxies answer to why they keep people in the dark) "If we can store music on a compact disc, why not a man's intelligence and personality. Brain mapping, artificial intelligence, we should have been working on it 30 years ago." -Cave Johnson "[AI] the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" -Homer Simpson (slightly modified) looking at an army of hundreds of enemies "Hmm its not really fair is it" destroys his last ally "Now, its fair." -Coop "I have a mysterious feeling we are about to have more fun than mortal man was even intended" -Hsu "but you died" "I got better" (sadly I forget) "Knowledge is power, and I'm alot smarter than you"

Sun, 2012-04-22 14:54

#23

Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture

Re: Quotes and turns of phrase

WARNING! season finale spoilers! "When the last parameter of my conditionnning was fulfilled, I regained consciousness. Though I'm sure Savage was going to use the Starrotech on me." "I'm not the real Roy Harper. What am I? Just a traitor." Roy Harper/Red Arrow, YJ s01e26 " Auld Acquaintances" "But Starrotech isn't programming..." "it's remote control. I can see who is infected...and you three aren't!" Vandal Savage and Klarion, YJ s01e26 " Auld Acquaintances"

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