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Nerds Quotes

Browse 31 quotes about Nerds.

Nerds Quotes

“For Oscar, high school was the equivalent of a medieval spectacle, like being put in the stocks and forced to endure the peltings and outrages of a mob of deranged half-wits, an experience from which he supposed he should have emerged a better person, but that’s not really what happened—and if there were any lessons to be gleaned from the ordeal of those years he never quite figured out what they were. He walked into school every day like the fat lonely nerdy kid he was, and all he could think about was the day of his manumission, when he would at last be set free from its unending horror. Hey, Oscar, are there faggots on Mars?—Hey, Kazoo, catch this. The first time he heard the term moronic inferno he know exactly where it was located and who were its inhabitants.”

“The nobles had made reading unpopular, as it showed that one couldn’t afford to buy spells or magical devices, since one had to get knowledge to do things the ordinary way; even if this view held little logic, the king himself was known to insult readers as “bookfaces” or “unable to think for themselves, so they need to spout what others have said,” and these opinions became popular, as did most views expressed by the king or his son.”

“The distinction that only sciences are useful and only arts are spirit-enhancing is a nonsensical one. I couldn't write much without scientists designing my computer. And some of them must want to read about Greek myth after a long day at work. These Muses always remind me that scientists and artists should disregard the idiotic attempts to separate us. We are all nerds, in the end.”

“Turner had never met a kid like Elwood before. Sturdy was the word he returned to, even though the Tallahassee boy looked soft, conducted himself like a goody-goody, and had an irritating tendency to preach. Wore eyeglasses you wanted to grind underfoot like a butterfly. He talked like a white college boy, read books when he didn't have to, and mined them for uranium to power his own personal A-bomb. Still--sturdy.”

“I firmly believe that all the best things on earth have been created by brave nerds. (I have on the wall of my office a photograph of the 1927 Solvay Conference on Physics. My heroes are those brave nerds who brought about a revolution and enabled the progress of all humankind. I find them so inspiring that I have hung a copy of that photo in the rooms of both my children.) But these nerds in Yabloko were cowardly, scared to experiment. The world changed and they stood still. There was a time when Yabloko was a faction in the State Duma, and the party could not imagine it ever being different. When they failed to get over that 5 percent threshold, they complained about abuse of power and falsification of results. They were indignant and claimed that victory had been stolen from them and that in fact they had received many more votes. It was true that the election results even then were being flagrantly rigged, but Yabloko had also done nothing to fight for votes. Gradually the y resigned themselves to the idea that they could never win. They believed they were little people facing a huge, hostile country were nerds were unpopular. They became afraid of their voters, and their fear was masked by exaggerated elitism with intellectual overtones. Needless to say, no one cared for that, and they began to lose what little support they had left. This was absolutely contrary to my idea of how to do politics. I believed it was essential to find a common language with everyone. I feel at home with my former classmates, almost all of whom are now in the armed forces or police, as well as when I am being held in a detention center with drug addicts and hooligans of every variety. One such hapless guy in the next bunk has been telling me how he ruined his life, and that his HIV treatment is very expensive and doesn't work. We are discussing the ins and outs of methadone therapy. The Russian people are good; it's our leaders who are appalling. I had no doubt that 30 percent of the Russian population subscribed to democratic views, so we had every chance of becoming, over time, the political majority. That is why, when I realized Yabloko was deliberately alienating its supporters, I got tired of being in a political minority. I was ultimately expelled from the party. The pretext was my "nationalism.”

“We're not hunter-gatherers anymore. We're all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn't bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It's our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.”

“The Humanitarian Nerd (Sonnet 1538) Machines have a tendency of disconnecting mind from society. Unless you're driven by a humane dream, silicon dreams only facilitate inhumanity. Worse than silicosis is silicon psychosis, Worse than septicemia es la indiferencia. Worse than writer's block is fighter's block, to settle in ice-age is insult of la conciencia. Before you master raspberry and arduino, learn to master common everyday humanity. If you're not burning with the fire to do good, there's no point to your gray's anatomy.”

“Diante dos seus olhos apareceu então a imagem minúscula e claramente iluminada de Adolf Hitler dirigindo-se ao servis lacaios que deviam constituir o Reichtag por finais dos anos 30. Der Führer estava então com o seu ar sarcástico, jovial e zombeteiro. Aquela cena famosa ― que todos os homens de Yancy conheciam de cor― era aquela em que Hitler respondia ao requerimento que lhe fora feito pelo presidente Roosevelt para que garantisse as fronteiras de uma boa dúzia de minúsculas nações europeias. Uma a uma Hitler enunciava as nações que constituíam tal lista, a voz ia num crescendo ao ler o nome de cada uma, e de cada vez, as marionetes articuladas exultavam com o crescendo de troça do seu líder. A emotividade de tudo aquilo ― der Führer, possesso de um divertimento titânico perante aquela lista tão absurda (mais tarde iria invadir, sistematicamente, quase todas as nações então referidas), os rugidos daqueles loucos… Joseph Adams escutava, observava, sentia ecoarem dentro de si esses berros, sentia um divertimento sarcástico em consonância com o de Hitler ― e ao mesmo tempo sentia um receio pura e simplesmente infantil de que aquela cena tivesse alguma vez ocorrido realmente. O que de fato acontecera. Aquele segmento, do primeiro episódio do documentário A, era ― por estranho que tal pudesse parecer, dada a sua natureza de tal modo demoníaca ― autêntico.”

“...my classical values make me advocate the triplet of erudition, elegance, and courage; against modernity's phoniness, nerdiness, and philistinism...many philistines reduce my ideas to an opposition of technology when in fact I am opposing the naive blindness to it's side affects - the fragility criterion. I'd rather be unconditional about ethical and conditional about technology than the the reverse.”

“She stared, wide eyed as glass-walled elevators shot up fifty-two floors like pods in a launch tube. Everything - from the glaringly bright carpet swirling with psychedelic lines; to the hotel's open ceiling ringed by storey after storey of balconies, the distant roof so high it made her head spin; to the people decked out in cosplay - was torn from a science fiction novel. It seemed Liv had spent the last eighteen years in search of her people, and in one sudden explosion of fate, they'd all been brought together in this place in time. Her eyes filled with tears as a sudden awareness filled her. They were all nerds.”