Quotes by Vernor Vinge

About Vernor Vinge:

Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University (SDSU) Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels and novellas A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), Rainbows End (2006), Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002), and The Cookie Monster (2004), as well as for his 1984 novel The Peace War and his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that the creation of superhuman artificial intelligence will mark the point at which "the human era will be ended", such that no current models of reality are sufficient to predict beyond it.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Most civilizations had more fiction than they did real history.

Vernor Vinge

Tycoon had a peddler's talent for using words to redefine reality.

Vernor Vinge

Politics is good; when it works properly, disagreements get solved without people beating each other up. But when a regime knows its days are numbered, there's always the chance it may use its position to change the rules and make the debate it is lo...

Vernor Vinge

Sometimes, sitting here in the dark, slowly slowly creating strategy, she wondered if she was only fooling herself to think her plans were clever.

Vernor Vinge

You are enjoying the gift of genius. When ordinary people are confronted with multiple tragedies, the pain scarcely increases. They simple can't feel the extra burdens. But you have a greater capacity for suffering.

Vernor Vinge

It is an edged cliché that the world is most pleasant in the years of a Waning Sun. It is true that the weather is not so driven, that everywhere there is a sense of slowing down, and most places experience a few years where the summers do not burn ...

Vernor Vinge

Second by second, the Queng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth's moon. But if you looked at it still more closely ... the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of ...

Vernor Vinge

Les enfants sont des créatures extraordinaires, quand ils ne sont pas simplement chiants.

Vernor Vinge

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

Vernor Vinge

Intelligence is the handmaiden of flexibility and change.

Vernor Vinge

I never guessed I could cry so hard my face hurt.

Vernor Vinge

Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and the least expensive manipulation of all.

Vernor Vinge

One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

Vernor Vinge

The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

Vernor Vinge

Sometimes the biggest disasters aren't noticed at all - no one's around to write horror stories.

Vernor Vinge

He claimed that nearby gun thunder cleared the mind - but most everybody else agreed it made you daft.

Vernor Vinge

All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that cannot be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.

Vernor Vinge

We're endangered by our own success.

Vernor Vinge

I have argued above that we cannot prevent the Singularity, that its coming is an inevitable consequence of the humans' natural competitiveness and the possibilities inherent in technology.

Vernor Vinge

I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.

Vernor Vinge

Author Bio

  • NameVernor Vinge
  • DescriptionAmerican mathematician, computer scientist, and science fiction writer
  • BornOctober 2, 1944
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionMathematician; Computer Scientist; Novelist; Writer
  • WorksTrue Names; A Fire Upon The Deep
  • AwardsHugo Award; Prometheus Award - Hall Of Fame; Prometheus Award - Special Award