Stewart Brand Quotes

Quotes about:

• Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.

  Stewart Brand

  Technology, Service Culture, Over You

  The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT ch. 1 (1987)

  19 Copy quote

• A library doesn't need windows. A library is a window.

  Stewart Brand

  Library, Needs, Window

  How Buildings Learn ch. 3 (1994)

  49 Copy quote

• A building is not something you finish. A building is something you start.

  Stewart Brand

  Building

  Stewart Brand (1995). “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built”, p.327, Penguin

  16 Copy quote

• The urgent finds you; you have to find the important. Importance is not fast. It is slow. It is not superficial. It is deep. And as a result, it's extremely powerful. When important matters go wrong, they undermine everything. When they go right, they sustain everything.

  Stewart Brand

  Time, Powerful, Stress

  21 Copy quote

• We are as gods and might as well get good at it.

  Stewart Brand

  Might, Wells

  Stewart Brand (2010). “Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, RestoredWildlands, and Geoeng ineering Are Necessary”, p.1, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• We can influence the future but not see it.

  Stewart Brand

  Influence

  Stewart Brand (1999). “The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility”, p.127, Basic Books

  4 Copy quote

• Do what's good for humans, modeled on how humans already do things; ignore what's convenient for computers.

  Stewart Brand

  Computer, Humans, Convenient

  9 Copy quote

• Every interview with a public figure should include the question "What have you been wrong about, and how did that change your views?" The answer will tell us if the person is intellectually honest or a tale spinner with delusions of infallibility.

  Stewart Brand

  Views, Answers, Honest

  Stewart Brand (2010). “Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, RestoredWildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary”, p.243, Penguin

  10 Copy quote

• The great problem with the future is that we die there. This is why it is so hard to take the future personally, especially the longer future, because that world is suffused with our absence.

  Stewart Brand

  World, Problem, Absence

  14 Copy quote

• On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

  Stewart Brand

  Fighting, Hands, Two

  “Hackers” and “Information Wants to Be Free” by Steven Levy, medium.com. November 21, 2014.

  17 Copy quote

• Tool - something with a use on one end and a grasp on the other end.

  Stewart Brand

  Tools, Use, Ends

  4 Copy quote

• Redefine the possible.

  Stewart Brand

  Internet, Free Speech

  8 Copy quote

• How can I throw my life away in the least unhappy way?

  Stewart Brand

  Unhappy, Way

  4 Copy quote

• For artists diving into a new technology, it is a triple short-cut to mastery: you get a free ride on the novelty of the medium; there are no previous masters to surpass; and after a few weeks, you are the master. Try that with the violin.

  Stewart Brand

  Cutting, Technology, Artist

  10 Copy quote

• All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong.

  Stewart Brand

  Building, Predictions

  Stewart Brand (1995). “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built”, p.311, Penguin

  14 Copy quote

• Humans have made a huge hole in nature in the last 10,000 years. [With de-extinction,] we have the ability now, and maybe the moral obligation, to repair some of the damage.

  Stewart Brand

  Years, Extinction, Lasts

  20 Copy quote

• Science is the only news. When you scan a news portal or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same cyclical dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness; even the technology is predictable if you know the science behind it. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly

  Stewart Brand

  Fashion, Drama, Technology

  4 Copy quote

• If all of your electricity in your lifetime came from nuclear [energy], the waste from that lifetime of electricity would go in a Coke can.

  Stewart Brand

  Motivation, Inspiration, Energy

  12 Copy quote

• The point is to explore whatever may be helpful for thinking, understanding, and acting responsibly over long periods of time.

  Stewart Brand

  Thinking, Long, Understanding

  Stewart Brand (1999). “The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility”, p.12, Basic Books

  4 Copy quote

• Whenever I hear the word "share" I would reach for a gun if I had one. "Share" is frequently followed by the word "feelings", and I have enough of my own thank you; please do us both a favor and repress yours.

  Stewart Brand

  Funny, Clever, Smart

  13 Copy quote

• In our researches on the likely economic apocalypse it's become clear what is the prime survival tool for hard times: friends. Good friends. Lots of them.

  Stewart Brand

  Good Friend, Hard Times, Survival

  "The Whole Earth Epilog: Access To Tools". Book by Stewart Brand, 1974.

  6 Copy quote

• Style is time’s fool. Form is time’s student

  Stewart Brand

  Growth, Style, Fool

  Stewart Brand (1995). “How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built”, p.233, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

• Information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.

  Stewart Brand

  Cost, Want, Information

  Whole Earth Review, May 1985.

  9 Copy quote

• Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working?

  Stewart Brand

  Block, House, Greek

  "Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto". Book by Stewart Brand, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

• Civilization’s shortening attention span is mismatched with the pace of environmental problems.

  Stewart Brand

  Civilization, Environmental, Attention

  Stewart Brand (1999). “The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility”, p.141, Basic Books

  4 Copy quote

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