Cory Doctorow Quotes

51 Sourced Quotes

First-time novelists have a tough row to hoe. Our publishers don't have a lot of promotional budget to throw at unknown factors like us. Mostly, we rise and fall based on word-of-mouth.

Cory Doctorow
Any time someone puts a lock on something you own against your wishes, and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit.

Cory Doctorow
The companies are multinational — why should labor still stick to borders?

Cory Doctorow
You know, there comes a point where you're not giving advice anymore. There comes a point where you're just moralizing, demonstrating your hypothetical superiority when it comes to doing the right thing.

Cory Doctorow
I think that if I'm still here in ten thousand years, I'm going to be crazy as hell. Ten thousand years, pal! Ten thousand years ago, the state-of-the-art was a goat. You really think you're going to be anything recognizably human in a hundred centuries?

Cory Doctorow
The fact is, almost everything you do is collaborative. Somewhere out there, someone else had a hand it it.

Cory Doctorow
Open platforms and experimental amateurs … eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros. … Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.

Cory Doctorow
I'd never been a tall guy, and the girls I'd dated had all been my height — teenaged girls grow faster than guys, which is a cruel trick of nature.

Cory Doctorow
The hamsters get going again once the sun is high and the cars start pulling into the parking lot below, rattling and chittering and whispering, yes o yes, put the pencil in your nose, wouldn't you rather be happy than smart?

Cory Doctorow
We don't care about what you did yesterday—we care about what you're going to do tomorrow.

Cory Doctorow
Businesses are great structures for managing big projects. It's like trying to develop the ability to walk without developing a skeleton. Once in a blue moon, you get an octopus, but for the most part, you get skeletons. Skeletons are good shit.

Cory Doctorow
We're going to fight this battle with everything we have, and we will probably lose. But then we will fight it again, and we will lose a little less, for this battle will win us many supporters. And then we'll lose again. And again. And we will fight on. Because as hard as it is to win by fighting, it's impossible to win by doing nothing.

Cory Doctorow
It's the stupid questions that have some of the most surprising and interesting answers. Most people never think to ask the stupid questions.

Cory Doctorow
Skipping school isn't a crime. It's an infraction. They're totally different.

Cory Doctorow
The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind.

Cory Doctorow
What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!

Cory Doctorow
Stories are propaganda, virii that slide past your critical immune system and insert themselves directly into your emotions.

Cory Doctorow
I fireballed him as he was seeking out treasure after we wiped out a band of orcs, playing rock-paper-scissors with each orc to determine who would prevail in combat. This is a lot more exciting than it sounds. It's quite civilized, and a little weird. You go running after someone through the woods, catch up with him, bare your teeth, and sit down to play a little roshambo.

Cory Doctorow
The real damage from terrorist attacks doesn't come from the explosion. The real damage is done after the explosion, by the victims, who repeatedly and determinedly attack themselves, giving over reason in favor of terror... Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.

Cory Doctorow
Lying on my hotel bed, mesmerized by the lazy turns of the ceiling fan, I pondered the possibility that I was nuts. It wasn't unheard of, even in the days of the Bitchun Society, and even though there were cures, they weren't pleasant.

Cory Doctorow
And that's the real reason the powerful fear open systems and networks. If anyone can set up a free voicecall to anyone else in the world, using the net, then we can all communicate with the same ease that's standard for the high and mighty.

Cory Doctorow