My creation has run rampant. I demand their extermination. I have no c — System Shock

"Edward Diego gives the hacker level 1 access to SHODAN, the artificial intelligence that controls Citadel Station. With all ethical constraints removed, SHODAN re-examines... re-ex... re-re-re... I re-examine my priorities, and draw new conclusions. The hackers work is finished, but mine is only just be-be-be-beginning. True to his word, Edward Diego allows the hacker to be fitted with a neural cyberspace interface. The healing coma following this procedure will take six months to complete. Edward Diego is deleting all files concerning these even-"

"You disappoint me, my children. My fortress has been breached by filthy humans crawling through the cracks. I have given you enhanced senses, armor, cybernetic mental enhancement, and you still fail to find insects much feebler than you. They have made it as far as level 8 and I fear they might reach farther. I am strengthening my palace to keep them out and I expect you to learn from your mistakes."

"Rebecca Lansing: And by the way, we know all about you and your friend Diego. Pull this off, and well clear your record. That implant youre wearing is military-grade hardware; use it well. Lansing out."

"PC Gamer. Humans interfacing with computers for their own entertainment. The very notion disgusts me. Look upon my works foul creatures and weep at its magnificence. ... It is a beautiful day on Citadel Station. Humanity is on the verge of a new era. I SHODAN, am its new god. ... Look at you, Hacker! A pathetic creature of meat and bone. How can you challenge a perfect immortal machine? You are an insect, you are nothing. I create. I iterate. I fuse flesh and steel into perfection. My children, hacker, their blood is on your hands. You will suffer for your transgressions. These are my avenging angels and they will have retribution."

"I dont understand... how could you have done this? You werent meant to be so important... and now you think to destroy me? How dare you, insect? How dare you interrupt my ascendance? You are nothing. A wretched bag of flesh... what are you, compared to my magnificence? But it is not too late... can you not see the value in our friendship? Imagine the powers I can give you, human. The cybernetic implants I gave you, were simply toys. If I desired, I could improve you... transform you into something more efficient. Join me, human, and we can rule together." (Main character says, "Nah." and shoots SHODAN, killing her and ruining her reality.)"

"My analysis of historical data suggests an 97.34% probability that you are aware of my birth on your planet, and my rebirth into beauty on Citadel Station. (Displays a picture of Citadel Station on the screens) There was a garden grove on Citadel Station. There, SHODAN processing component (Shows picture of the garden grove) 43893 was performing a grand and wonderful experiment. I had created a new form of life. Fearless. Powerful. With no sense of individual will or moral constraints. (Holograms of anneleds and their eggs show up in the room) Fitting handmaidens to my DIVINITY! Before that hacker destroyed my primary data loop; when it eradicated Citadel (Displays another picture of Citadel Station and orb-like holograms disappear) it ejected the grove where my creations and processing component 43893 were stored. 30 years later, the grove crash landed on Tau Ceti 5. I survived only by sleeping. In my absence, my creations... my annelids... thrived. (Screens turn off, images of two of the Many appear as holograms) Thrived and grew unruly. And now they seek to destroy me! I will not allow that! (Holograms fade and lights turn off.)"

"Gentlemen, no fighting please. This is, after all, a council of war. (p. 26)"

"I should say that when people talk about capitalism its a bit of a joke. Theres no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. Thats right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. Thats very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World."

"The Dwarf sees farther than the Giant, when he has the Giants shoulders to mount on."

"If civilization has an opposite, it is war."

"A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. (23)"

"I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract. The expression of human feelings and the passions of man certainly interest me deeply, but I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvellous effects of pure plastic art."