As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us... is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our day.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: th...is is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The multiplication of individual sects should not fool us: the important point is that the whole of America is preoccupied with th...e sect as a moral institution, with its immediate demand for beatification, its material efficacity, its compulsion for justification, and doubtless also with its madness and frenzy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A child is born with the potential ability to learn Chinese or Swahili, play a kazoo, climb a tree, make a strudel or a birdhouse,... take pleasure in finding the coordinates of a star. Genetic inheritance determines a child's abilities and weaknesses. But those who raise a child call forth from that matrix the traits and talents they consider important.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Do the day's work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation bet...ter to serve the people, whatever the opposition, do that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don't be a stand-patter. Expect to be called a demagogue, but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table.... Give administration a chance to catch up with legislation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The dice of God are always loaded. The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you... will, balances itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"A sigh for every so many breath, And for every so many sigh a death.... That's what I always tell my wife Is the multiplication table of life."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"The matrix is God?" "In a manner of speaking, although it would be more accurate ... to say that the matrix has a God, since... this being's omniscience and omnipotence are assumed to be limited to the matrix." "If it has limits, it isn't omnipotent." "Exactly.... Cyberspace exists, insofar as it can be said to exist, by virtue of human agency."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »