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 losing irrelevant.

— Vernor Vinge

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

— 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

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

— Vernor Vinge

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

— Vernor Vinge

The essence of real creativity is a certain playfulness, a flitting from idea to idea without getting bogged down by fixated demands. Of course, you don’t always get what you thought you were asking for.

— 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

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

— Vernor Vinge

When I began writing science fiction in the middle '60s, it seemed very easy to find ideas that took decades to percolate into the cultural consciousness; now the lead time seems more like eighteen months.

— Vernor Vinge

Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence.

— Vernor Vinge