What people do isn't determined by where they live. It happens to be their damned fault. They decided to watch TV instead of thinking when they were in high school. They decided to blow-off courses and drink beer instead of reading and trying to learn something. They decided to chicken out and be intolerant bastards instead of being openminded, and finally they decided to go along with their buddies and do things that were terribly wrong when there was no reason they had to. Anyone who hurts someone else decides to hurt them, goes out of their way to do it. The fact that it's hard to be a good person doesn't excuse going along and being an asshole. If they can't overcome their own fear of being unusual, it's not my fault, because any idiot ought to be able to see that if he just acts reasonably and makes a point of not hurting others, he'll be happier. Neal Stephenson
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike. - Oscar Wilde
  2. The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned - Antonio Gramsci
  3. A man must not be without shame, for the shame of being without shame is shamelessness indeed. - Mencius
  4. Dove la moralità è troppo forte l'intelletto perisce. - Friedrich Nietzsche
  5. My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing, ' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be. - Frank Herbert
More Quotes By Neal Stephenson
  1. Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was...
  2. Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs, " I said. "We have a protractor.
  3. A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.
  4. If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy.
  5. Supposing that originally there was nothing but one creator, how could ordinary binary sexual relations come into being?
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