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“I wasn’t this stupid at any age,” I said untruthfully.

— Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

Empty-handed combat has only two rules. Get in as many blows, as hard and as fast as you can, and put your opponent down. When he’s on the ground, you kill him. If there are other rules or considerations, it isn’t a real fight, it’s a game.

— Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

Trepp, the apologetic Zen killer who I’d killed and who’d apparently come back with no hard feelings because she couldn’t remember it, because, in her terms, it hadn’t happened to her.

— Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

like all men of power, when he talked of prices worth paying, you could be sure of one thing. Someone else was paying.

— Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

Like most of common humanity, she would have clung to life until the last undignified moment. Hoping for some miracle. Begging for mercy.”

— Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

Take what is offered, and that must sometimes be enough.

— Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

One of the great joys of mathematics is the incontrovertible feeling that you’ve understood something the right way, all the way down to the bottom; it’s a feeling I haven’t experienced in any other sphere of mental life. And when you know how to do something the right way, it’s hard—for some stubborn people, impossible—to make yourself explain it the wrong way.

— How not to be wrong: the power of mathematical thinking by Jordan Ellenberg

(In mathematics, you very seldom get the clearest account of an idea from the person who invented it.)

— How not to be wrong: the power of mathematical thinking by Jordan Ellenberg

Nonlinear thinking means which way you should go depends on where you already are.

— How not to be wrong: the power of mathematical thinking by Jordan Ellenberg

Mathematics is the extension of common sense by other means.

— How not to be wrong: the power of mathematical thinking by Jordan Ellenberg

One thing the American defense establishment has traditionally understood very well is that countries don’t win wars just by being braver than the other side, or freer, or slightly preferred by God. The winners are usually the guys who get 5% fewer of their planes shot down, or use 5% less fuel, or get 5% more nutrition into their infantry at 95% of the cost.

— How not to be wrong: the power of mathematical thinking by Jordan Ellenberg

the initial pheromones of attraction between bodies appeared to undergo a form of encoding the longer said bodies were in proximity, binding them increasingly close.

— Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan

The only problem they had, as they cruised sharkishly back and forth across the cool marble floor of the court, was in drawing the fine differences between war—mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss—mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence—mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit.

— Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan