Top 100 Brin Quotes
#1. In September 1998, one month after they met with Bechtolsheim, Page and Brin incorporated their company, opened a bank account, and cashed his check. On the wall of the garage they put up a whiteboard emblazoned "Google Worldwide Headquarters.
Walter Isaacson
#2. EVERY MOMENT IN business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them.
Peter Thiel
#3. Suri had a wolf named Minna. They were the best of friends and roamed the forest together. She had tattoos, was always filthy, afraid of nothing, and could do magic. From the first time I met her, I wanted to be Suri ... I still do.
- THE BOOK OF BRIN
Michael J. Sullivan
#4. Mark Zuckerberg did his own software for Facebook, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin made their own for Google.
Xavier Niel
#5. David Brin is a technological determinist. He thinks that we understand the trend and we need to hop on it. I don't have any such illusions.
Bruce Sterling
#6. (Brin) 'How good is your lawyer, on a scale of Atticus Finch to Franklin and Bash?
Lisa Henry
#7. That night there was more than one killer in the forest, the next day a lot more ghosts.
The Book of Brin
Michael J. Sullivan
#8. When the dead betray the living, the victims are memories.
The Book of Brin
Michael J. Sullivan
#9. It was like waiting for the sunrise and a chicken to hatch - if the sun marked the end of the world and the chicken was an all-devouring demon.
- THE BOOK OF BRIN
Michael J. Sullivan
#10. Sergey Brin has said to me, like, 10 times now, 'Why do you bother doing books? Why don't you just put all this stuff on the Internet?' It's because 10 years from now, my book will still be sitting on someone's coffee table or in a waiting room.
Rick Smolan
#11. Uh-oh, big boy. Your blood is in the water and the sharks are circling. Must be feeding time.
Mea Brin, The Huntress
Michelle O'Leary
#12. Google actually relies on our users to help with our marketing. We have a very high percentage of our users who often tell others about our search engine.
Sergey Brin
#13. Your neighbors are not all sheep. Your political opponents are not all evil or fools. Try talking to those you despise. They are your fellow citizens. And together, we are not lesser than any "greatest generation.".
David Brin
#14. I regret having been the bearer of ambiguous tidings.
David Brin
#15. Deep down, most humans prefer living out their lives surrounded by comfortable certainties, guided by warm myths and metaphors, knowing that they'll understand their children, and their children will understand them.
David Brin
#16. Someday we may look back on this era as a time when rational compromises might have enhanced both security and liberty, but those compromises were refused because each side was so busy self-righteously being right.
David Brin
#17. Any conversation I have about innovation starts with the ultimate goal.
Sergey Brin
#18. Dogmas don't have to be entirely logical, as long as they work.
David Brin
#19. Life is not fair ... Anyone who says it is, or even that it ought to be, is a fool or worse.
David Brin
#20. If what we are doing is not seen by some people as science fiction, it's probably not transformative enough
Sergey Brin
#22. Where subtlety fails us we must simply make do with cream pies.
David Brin
#23. She had called in the debt that parents owe a child for bringing her, unasked, into a strange world. One should never make an offer without knowing full well what will happen if it is accepted.
David Brin
#24. Science gives man what he needs, but magic gives man what he wants.
David Brin
#25. As for "Don't be evil," we have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good-always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, "Don't be evil" seems the easiest way to summarize it."
Sergey Brin
#26. a species used to strict patterns of inherited hierarchy.
David Brin
#27. Metaphorically speaking, some very bright people suggest that citizens of the twenty-first century will be best protected by masks and shields, while I prefer the image of a light saber.
David Brin
#28. Change is the very fabric of our time.
David Brin
#29. Science demands a terrible price - that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not.
David Brin
#30. It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.
David Brin
#31. There's no doubt that scientific training helps many authors to write better science fiction. And yet, several of the very best were English majors who could not parse a differential equation to save their lives.
David Brin
#32. A neurosis defends itself by coming up with rationalizations to explain away bizarre behavior.
David Brin
#33. The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.
David Brin
#34. The three basic material rights
continuity, mutual obligation, and the pursuit of happiness.
David Brin
#35. We are currently not planning on conquering the world.
Sergey Brin
#36. Too few people in computer science are aware of some of the informational challenges in biology and their implications for the world. We can store an incredible amount of data very cheaply.
Sergey Brin
#37. Cultural contamination that is directed outward is always seen as 'enlightenment.
David Brin
#38. It is a total mystery how we evolved minds capable of piloting cars through wild maneuvers using a wrist to steep while shouting at a cell phone. The creationists are fools for focusing on animal evolution. Darwin explains nature! He has more difficulty explaining us.
David Brin
#39. Too many rules with stifle innovation.
Sergey Brin
#40. Beware of assumptions that seem "obvious" in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.
David Brin
#41. There was a time, in living memory, when this nation bestrode the planet like a titan.
David Brin
#42. If you have other things in your life-family, friends, good productive day work-these can interact with your writing and the sum will be all the richer.
David Brin
#43. Self-righteousness is an especially heady condition that all of us have experienced at one time or another. Those who are honest will admit there is something sickly-sweet and alluring about knowing you are right, while others are terribly wrong.
David Brin
#44. In the future, search engines should be as useful as HAL in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey-but hopefully they won't kill people.
Sergey Brin
#45. It's how creativity works. Especially in humans. For every good idea, ten thousand idiotic ones must first be posed, sifted, tried out, and discarded. A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.
David Brin
#46. It is a paradox of Life that all species breed past mere replacement. Any paradise of plenty soon fills to become paradise no more.
David Brin
#47. Even in dying, a Thennanin ship was reputed to be not worth putting out of its misery. In battle they were slow, unmaneuverable - and as hard to disable permanently as a cockroach.
David Brin
#48. I wish there were a hundred services with which I could easily look at such a book; it would have saved me a lot of time, and it would have spared Google a tremendous amount of effort.
Sergey Brin
#49. Everything isn't subjective. Reality also matters. Truth matters. It is still a word with meaning.
David Brin
#50. It was a strange trek - the sullen leading the apathetic, followed by the confused, all tailed by the inveterately amused.
David Brin
#51. Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.
Sergey Brin
#52. I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.
David Brin
#53. People try new things all the time. By now, the people who succeed have to be very sophisticated.
Sergey Brin
#54. Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the Universe to make sense!
David Brin
#55. Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.
Sergey Brin
#57. It's not enough not to be evil. We also actively try to be good.
Sergey Brin
#58. Generally, health is just so heavily regulated. It's just a painful business to be in. It's just not necessarily how I want to spend my time.
Sergey Brin
#59. Only people with full stomachs become environmentalists.
David Brin
#60. The notion of a universe filled with cowards ... who stay cowardly FOREVER, no matter how advanced they become ... seems no[t] only unimaginative and temporally myopic, but deeply dismal, as well.
David Brin
#61. In the book, America had already been weakened by bio terror plagues before waves of selfish violence took down the rest. But the real enemy was the kind of male human being who nurses fantasies of violent glory at the expense of his fellow citizens.
David Brin
#62. Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true - in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals.
David Brin
#63. Humorists are precisely the kinds of guys who can cut through the orgy of petty indignation that the aging baby boomers are imposing on this great country.
David Brin
#64. Alas, criticism has always been what human beings, especially leaders, most hate to hear.
David Brin
#65. We aren't a curse upon the world. We are her new eyes. Her brain, testes, ovaries ... her ambition and her heart. Her voice. So sing. (556)
David Brin
#66. If an outsider perceives 'something wrong' with a core scientific model, the humble and justified response of that curious outsider should be to ask 'what mistake am I making?' before assuming 100% of the experts are wrong.
David Brin
#67. If Google Books is successful, others will follow.
Sergey Brin
#68. I had to admit, standing there, that sometimes you just gotta admire the passion of the truly insane
a passion that bulls right past all sense or reason.
David Brin
#69. Above all, TRIBES is fun, and even kind of sexy ... in that every round features an Opportunity for Reproduction, which is the main aim of the game, as it is in most of Nature.
David Brin
#70. In the end, the work of diplomats continues even while others fight. So, it's not necessarily true that everyone needs to march.
David Brin
#71. It may be that the best time for Otherness has already passed. Clearly part of the basis for this renaissance has been wealth, especially the unprecedented comfort enjoyed by the vast majority of Westerners since World War II, in which very few of us can even conceive of starving
David Brin
#72. The greedy and the power-hungry will always look for ways to break the rules, or twist them to their advantage.
David Brin
#73. We already live a very long time for mammals, getting three times as many heartbeats as a mouse or elephant. It never seems enough though, does it?
David Brin
#74. The best time to act on this was decades ago. The second best time is now.
David Brin
#75. But it is a delightful challenge to try to depict interesting aliens.
David Brin
#76. If facts are inconvenient, well, damn those who live and work with facts.
David Brin
#77. Self-awareness is probably overrated. A complex, self-regulating system doesn't need it in order to be successful, or even smart.
David Brin
#78. Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.
David Brin
#79. We wouldn't survive if people didn't trust us.
Sergey Brin
#80. If you want to chase a runaway ambulance toward what's left of the American Dream, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao show you that, still, somehow, boxing remains the yellow brick road in our country.
Brin-Jonathan Butler
#81. Excuse me for being greedy, but I want freedom and good government.
David Brin
#82. Science Fiction is the jazz of literature.
David Brin
#83. When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.
David Brin
#84. But Orpheus failed because, like all pakeha, he just couldn't keep his mind on one thing at a time.
David Brin
#85. The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.
Sergey Brin
#86. Petals floating by, Drift through my woman's hand, As she remembers me.
David Brin
#87. I am sometimes something of a lazy person, so when I end up spending a lot of time using something myself - as I did with Google in the earliest of days, I knew it was a big deal.
Sergey Brin
#88. The fundamental premise of sci-fi is not spaceships and lasers - it's that children can learn from the mistakes of their parents.
David Brin
#89. Fortunately, human beings are remarkably diverse models to work from.
David Brin
#90. When I was growing up, I always knew I'd be in the top of my class in math, and that gave me a lot of self-confidence.
Sergey Brin
#91. With gritty action and realistic science, Peter Watts brings to life a dark and vivid world.
David Brin
#92. We have earned our peace. It is, by now, more precious than honor, or even pity.
David Brin
#93. It takes great wisdom, maturity, and force of will to overcome ingrained human egotism and say
"Hey, I can fool myself! I might even be wrong, from time to time."
David Brin
#94. Someone once said that one measure of sentience was how much energy a sophont spent on matters other than survival. Fiben
David Brin
#95. But the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries. Books written after 1923 quickly disappear into a literary black hole.
Sergey Brin
#96. I feel there's an existential angst among young people. I didn't have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.
Sergey Brin
#97. Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction.
David Brin
#98. What point was there in pursuing an ever-elusive popularity?
David Brin
#99. Anyone who wants simple, pat stories should buy another author's product. The real universe ain't that way, and neither are my fictive ones.
David Brin
#100. My vision when we started Google 15 years ago was that eventually you wouldn't have to have a search query at all. You'd just have information come to you as you needed it. And [Google Glass] is now, 15 years later, sort of the first form factor that I think can deliver that vision.
Sergey Brin
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