Quotes from Cory Doctorow

the American worker's enemy isn't the Mexican worker, it's the auto manufacturer who screws both of them.

Seth was a portable, external id. Not always comfortable or appropriate, but handy nevertheless.

But as an actual old lady with gray hair and wrinkles, she understood the silences. She didn't have to talk to Seth about most things, because she had him modeled so well in her mind, she knew what he would say to practically anything she might say to him—and vice versa. They could sit together, not speaking. The silence wasn't distance, it was closeness. She'd catch him looking and grinning sometimes. She'd grin back.

If a paycheck could change your life, do you think they'd let you have one?

cops only find crime where they look for it. If you make every Black person you see turn out their pockets, you will find every knife and every dime-baggie that any Black person carries, but that doesn't tell you anything about whether Black people are especially prone to carrying knives or drugs, especially when cops make quota by carrying around a little something to plant if need be.

Screw the end of the world. The world doesn't end. Humans aren't the kind of things that have endings.

That's the tragedy of the commons? A fairy tale about giving public assets to rich people to run as personal empires because that way they'll make sure they're better managed than they would be if we just made up some rules?

After all, wasn't the system the problem? No matter who we voted for, the government always seemed to win. What was the point of living out my little fantasy of democratic change and Justice when the real action was being fought out in secrecy, with Anonymous envelopes of cash, encrypted Whispers, secret bunkers, and secret deals?

Someday, people are going to realize that. Someday, enough white folks, enough rich white folks are going to realize that living in a lawless city where hooligans like you can administer beatings and then get your victims locked up for the crime of complaining about it is no good for them. "But long before then, everyone else is going to wake up to that fact. Brown people. White people. Chinese people and Puerto Ricans and everyone

The second bomber went after a Tennessee Republican state senator who'd voted down the Medicare expansion, despite his campaign promise to make sure that "every Tennessean who wants insurance will get insurance.

It was hard to tell whether things were deteriorating or whether it was just the usual baseline of craziness, made more vivid by the fact that they'd all hunkered down in a fortress to await the collapse of civilization.

If you want, you can make him seem erratic and unreliable so they get rid of him. You can manufacture crises that might make one side or the other reveal the identities of other spies. In short, you own them. This is called the man-in-the-middle attack and if you think about it, it's pretty scary. Someone who man-in-the-middles your communications can trick you in any of a thousand ways. No man, I don't get scared. I'm always scared.

Boredom was unquestionably the worst part of the end of the world.

What they are is hopeful.

Any time I'm at work at 2:00 a.m., it's either PEBKAC or Microsloth.

There's no bullshit more self-serving than the idea that you're a precious snowflake, irreplaceable and deserving to be treated like a thoroughbred, when there are ten more just like you who'd do your job every bit as well.

Computers can control you or they can lighten your work—if you want to be in charge of your machines, you have to learn to write code.

The trick isn't to fight the aristocracy, it's to find one who isn't too terrible, who has his hands on the reins of power, and make friends. Make yourself useful. The quid pro quo in feudalism is the protection of the lord from the marauders sent forth by the other lords.

It's our version of Christian guilt—it's impious to feel good about your piety. You have to want to be good, but not feel good about how good you are. The

They wouldn't do it. They're kids. If they understood risks, they wouldn't join uprisings and march in the streets and the world would be a simpler place. Not a better one, of course. But simpler.

The you that is you is actually the space of things that you might think in response to some stimulus.

When I forget to do the dishes, that's because no one's perfect. When you forget to do the dishes, it's because you're a selfish asshole.

You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knows what is in Room 101.

It's a big world, and most of it is fungible. Doesn't matter where you are or what's around you, if you can cover your basic needs and find something productive to do.