Top Stewart Brand Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Stewart Brand Biography

Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the author of several books, most recently Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto.

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Stewart Brand Quotes

[Wind energy] takes a very large footprint on the land, five to 10 times what you'd use for nuclear, and typically to get one gigawatt of electricity is on the order of 250 square miles of wind farm.

Energy, Inspiration, Motivation, Square, Squares, Takes

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.

Answers, Honest, Infallibility, Intellectually, Spinner, Views

This is pretty much the infrastructural stuff that comes along with large quantities of energy. Whichever technology we are looking at has serious hazardous issues.

Energy, Infrastructural, Issues, Pretty, Quantities, Technology

Carbon tax has the advantage of basically being able to subsidize one set of activities that you want with another set of activities that you don't want. It's like a cigarette tax.

Able, Basically, Carbon, Cigarette, Want

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

Drama, Fashion, Interest, Nature, News, Technology

Certain knowledge of what to fight for, and what to fight against, gives meaning to life and provides its own version of discipline: never give up. That kind of meaning is illusory, I now believe, and blinkered. Fealty to a mystical absolute is a formula for disaster, especially in transformative times.

Against, Believe, Fighting, Giving Up, Illusory, Provides

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.

Clever, Enough, Funny, Reach, Share, Smart

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.

Cost, Fighting, Hands, Right, Two, Valuable

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

Over You, Part, Rolls, Service Culture, Technology

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.

Good Friend, Hard, Hard Times, Survival, Tool

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

Gods, Good, Might, Wells

All buildings are predictions. All predictions are wrong.

Building, Buildings, Predictions, Wrong

We have wished, we eco-freaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion-guilt-free at last!

Disaster, Garden, Guilt, Like, Localism, Technology

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

Building, Finish, Start

Information wants to be free.

Free, Information, Internet, Want

Art flouts convention. Convention became convention because it works.

Art, Convention, Conventions, Flouts, Works

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

Attention, Civilization, Civilizations, Environmental, Span

There should always be in sight the draw — a kind of a beacon that draws you on through the labyrinth.

Beacon, Draw, Draws, Kind, Labyrinth, Sight

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.

Deep, Powerful, Result, Stress, Time

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.

Artist, Artists, Cutting, Master, Masters, Technology

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