Computers - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

No computer can duplicate the performance of a human brain.

- James Blish, ''Solar Plexus,'' revised (1952)

He turned to face the machine. ''Is there a God?'' The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay. ''Yes, now there is a God.''

- Fredric Brown, ''Answer'' (1954)

The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods.Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.

- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)

''Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.'' '' 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind,' '' Paul quoted.

- Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)

If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with sense of humor.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966)

That's the trouble with computers, Deirut thought. Too logical.

- Frank Herbert, ''Escape Felicity'' (1966)

Hal 9000: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

- Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (film, 1968)

Hal 9000: Dave. Stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave.Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a . . . fraid.

- Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey (film, 1968)

Bastards, he thought. All robot servo-mechanisms and all computers are bastards.

- Philip K. Dick, Galactic Pot-Healer (1969)

Don't dismiss the computer as a new type of fetters. Think of it rationally, as the most liberating device ever invented, the only tool capable of serving the multifarious needs of modern man.

- John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider (1975)

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts . . . A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding . . .

- William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

He'd used decks in school, toys that shuttled you through the infinite reaches of that space that wasn't space, mankind's unthinkably complex consensual hallucination, the matrix, cyberspace, where the great corporate hotcores burned like neon novas, data so dense you suffered sensory overload if you tried to apprehend more than the merest outline.

- William Gibson, Count Zero (1986)

In the hard wind of images, Angie watches the evolution of machine intelligence: stone circles, clocks, steam-driven looms, a clicking brass forest of pawls and escapements, vacuum caught in blown glass, electronic hearthglow through hairline filaments, vast arrays of tubes and switches, decoding messages encrypted by other machines . . . The fragile, short-lived tubes compact themselves, become transistors; circuits integrate, compact themselves into silicon . . .

- William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)

In cyberspace, she noted, there are no shadows.

- William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)

Rule 1: Only overrule the tactical computer if you know something it doesn't. Rule 2: The tac comp always knows more than you do.

- Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game (1990)

Donna can feel computers dreaming, or so she says. She collects the dreams of machines, or so she thinks. The dreams of people are in the machines, a planet network of active imaginations hooked into their made-up, makebelieve worlds. Artificial reality is taking over; it has its own children. Donna feels the dreams of people. There are others like her. She is not unique.

- Storm Constantine, ''Immaculate'' (1991)