Top 40 Dennis E. Taylor Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Just when you start to get ahead in the rat race, the universe delivers bigger rats.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

2. “All actions have risks. Most inactions even more so.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

3. “I like people in the abstract but not in the concrete?”

— Dennis E. Taylor

4. “Stereotypes are valid first-order approximations.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

5. “Above my pay grade!”

— Dennis E. Taylor

6. “Yeah, they still make duct tape. And it still holds the universe together.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

7. “But right or wrong, I’ll die in peace. And Pascal’s Wager works both ways, right?” I nodded, returning his smile. “Yup. If you’re wrong, you won’t have the opportunity to regret it.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

8. “How are you supposed to feel if you are forced to do what you would have done anyway?”

— Dennis E. Taylor

9. “So, you’re doing things the hard way, because you’re too lazy to figure out how to do them the easy way?”

— Dennis E. Taylor

10. “I had three issues that bothered me. Was I conscious? Could I actually consider myself to be alive? And was I still Bob? Philosophers had been going on and on about this type of thing for centuries, but now, for me, it was personal. A human, regardless of their opinion on the subject, could depend on being a human. The minister’s offhand reference to me as ‘it’ and ‘replicant’ had stung at a level I was just now starting to appreciate.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

11. “Thank God for family. And than GOD for a couple of miles of distance.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

12. “Just when you think humanity has found the limits of stupid, they go and ratchet up the standard by another notch.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

13. “Belly laughs are one of the best things about being sentient, and you should never miss a chance for one.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

14. “Some people just seemed to want to display their power by defining what others could or couldn’t do.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

15. “Well, the fecal matter seems to have struck the atmospheric propulsor.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

16. “We will deliver unacceptable levels of damage to any aggressor.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

17. “People’s capacity for turning dogmatic stupidity into political movements never ceased to amaze me. We’ve knocked off 99.9% of the human race and somehow the crazies still manage to survive. It just defies the odds.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

18. “Point is, that’s when I really realized that I don’t think like most people. I’m fine with solitude. In fact, I get antsy when I’m around people for too long a period without respite.” The.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

19. “Wake up, buddy. You okay?” “Auntie Em! Auntie Em!” Homer’s VR came online, smiling. “I guess we got’em.” I snorted with relief. “And their little dog, too.” Homer steepled his fingers in a properly evil mastermindish pose. “All their base are belong to us.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

20. “If there was a hell, it was in sales.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

21. “A self-propelled forty-pound ball of steel impacting at Mach 1 didn’t leave much room for argument.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

22. “Funny, I couldn’t remember any science-fiction stories that actually dealt with how you’d handle timekeeping on a new planet.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

23. “Um. Ways in which a sentence beginning with the word “missiles” could be a good thing... Nope. I got nuthin’.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

24. “Seven billion people on earth in the early 21st century, and FAITH decided to replicate a nerd slash engineer with a Star Trek fixation.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

25. “Since I doubt, I think; since I think, I exist.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

26. “Hey, with IPv8, we should be able to address every galaxy in the universe.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

27. “Sleepy took a sip of his drink before responding. “Sounds like a plan. Although I don’t like the implications. If I get taken down, the Bob that gets restored won’t really be me.” “What, you’re positing a soul, now? For us?” Surly, I mean Hungry, rolled his eyes. “Every time the crew of Star Trek transported, they faced the same philosophical question.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

28. “Interestingly, two hundred years later and twenty light years away, people still behaved the same in elevators as they did in Original Bob’s day. Everyone turned to face the doors, and ignored each other.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

29. “It blew me away that almost two hundred years after Shatner first famously didn’t actually say, “Beam me up, Scotty,” people still knew Star Trek. Now that’s a franchise.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

30. “The death squad shot forward at close to forty G, and I imagined them yelling “Wheee!” in high-pitched minion voices.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

31. “Ah, the good old days,” I replied. “When things were simpler, kids were more respectful, and we had to walk to school through six feet of snow.” “Barefoot.” “Uphill.” “Both ways.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

32. “Bureaucracy. Turned out there was a hell, and it was behind a desk.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

33. “At times like this, I wondered if I hadn’t gone a little overboard with the level of detail in my virtual-reality environment. There was no reason for me to even have nether regions, let alone for them to pucker.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

34. “Some problems simply do not yield to reductionist techniques, particularly those that are dependent on emergent phenomena.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

35. “What it lacks in elegance, it makes up for with wads of unearned optimism. Let’s do it.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

36. “Subtlety: I no haz it.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

37. “I could leave my devices to their own devices.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

38. “The Iron Rule: Treat others less powerful than you however you like. The Silver Rule: Treat others as you’d like to be treated. The Golden Rule: Treat others as they’d like to be treated.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

39. “Clothes shopping. Even death apparently wasn’t an escape.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

40. “I sat back, staring into space, so preoccupied that I stopped patting Spike. I was reminded of my primary duty by a furry head butting against my chin. “Sorry, your highness.” I smiled at the cat and resumed justifying my existence.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

41. “I’d made a decision to help the Deltans avoid extinction. What had started as a small, anonymous intervention quickly turned into a full-time job as The Bawbe, resident sky god.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

42. “Retired just means I don’t have a job description, and I can work on what I want now.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

43. “Tell you what, Fred,” I answered. “Why don’t you bend way over, stick your head up your own butthole, and keep pushing until you disappear completely.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

44. “Garfield looked sharply at ANEC. “Do you have free will?” “I choose to believe so.” “Do you have a soul?” Howard asked. “I choose to believe so.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

45. “That one is approaching puberty. He might’ve been checking out your wife.” “That’s it. He’s sushi.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

46. “People’s capacity for turning dogmatic stupidity into political movements never ceased to amaze me.”

— Dennis E. Taylor

47. “It’s the law, Marcus.” I smiled at Councilor Brennan. “Which simply sidesteps the statement. Anything can be passed into law. That doesn’t make it right.”

— Dennis E. Taylor