The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.
Tags: difference, true, stupid, people

Other Quotes by "Neal Stephenson"

It is the fate of operating systems to become free.
Tags: systems, become, fate, free
One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for may people, is not that he's socially inept - because everybody's been there - but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.
Tags: things, your, true, people
The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or intelligent.
Tags: nothing, facts, stupid, people
Just aiming a speely input device, or a Farspark chambre, or whatever you call it... a speelycaptor... at something doesn't collect what is meaningful to me. I need someone to gather it in with all their senses, mix it round in their head, and make it over into words.
Tags: technology, media, books, authorship
Ares always reemerges from the chaos. It will never go away. Athenian civilization defends itself from the forces of Ares with metis, or technology. Technology is built on science. Science is like the alchemists' uroburos, continually eating its own tail. The process of science doesn't work unless young scientists have the freedom to attack and tear down old dogmas, to engage in an ongoing Titanomachia. Science flourishes where art and free speech flourish.
Tags: war, society, science
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