Quotes About Sophistication

The people who know the most are not allowed to ask questions—or even to make suggestions. The least common denominator sets the standards. Just wait until you see Washington, Betsy—these goddamn car salesmen and small-town lawyers come into town every two years not knowing their ass from a hole in the ground, and this enormously sophisticated and powerful and dangerous system is at their mercy. The Agency distorts information to fit the half-assed policies they scheme up.

Most hacker types don't go in for garish avatars, because they know that it takes a lot more sophistication to render a realistic human face than a talking penis.

As a tactic for planting misinformation in the enemy's reticules, you mean," Osa said. "This I know about. You are referring to the Artificial Inanity programs of the mid–First Millennium A.R." "Exactly!" Sammann said. "Artificial Inanity systems of enormous sophistication and power were built for exactly the purpose Fraa Osa has mentioned.

his idea of a satisfying outdoor experience had been to saunter out onto the terrace of a European hotel to smoke cigars and drink brandy.

It boiled down to Amistics. In the decades before Zero, the Old Earthers had focused their intelligence on the small and the soft, not the big and the hard, and built a civilization that was puny and crumbling where physical infrastructure was concerned, but astonishingly sophisticated when it came to networked communications and software.

more complicated, and that awaited further Intel.

when they become informed, they become tired like you, jaded.

Men like women who know how to be subtle.

If you dress like a movie star, you have me.

An intellectual is someone who avoids the mundane by lowering his handicap.

My Nana Gladys never left the house without lipstick on; she always had matching nails and lips.

I'm not as naive as some people think.

She was temptation wrapped in casual elegance.

He wasn't a good talker under the best of circumstances. If she needed someone killed, he was her man, but trying to sound suave and sophisticated was far beyond any ability he had.

Hoy no salir en televisión es un signo de elegancia.

The prince of darkness is a gentleman. —Shakespeare, King Lear, III, iv

It is in Paris that the beating of Europe's heart is felt. Paris is the city of cities.

The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of arts.

A flower should smell sweet, and a woman should have wit.

The hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts.

Madame Dufour stood at the head of the table, dressed in a severe black dress that revealed the soup spoon–sized hollow at the base of her long neck. A single diamond brooch was her only adornment (one good piece, ladies, and choose it well; everything makes a statement, nothing speaks quite so loudly as cheapness).

The stairs unfold from the ceiling like a gentleman extending his hand.

Perhaps the most complicated things are also the most beautiful.

For all its size and sophistication, even the American military was capable of little more than a lengthy string of elaborate failures.