14-11-2003 08:37									#31
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What actually transpires beneath the veil of an event horizon? Decent people shouldn't think too much about that.

Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

	14-11-2003 15:13									#32
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Yang of course

	14-11-2003 20:17									#33
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I tend to find Yang a little wordy and pretentious, but the Probability Mechanics quote is predictably succinct and a clever turn of phrase.

Morgan is great for his hilarious pragmatism. Sadly, a lot of things you hear and read and laugh about, but they're not entirely untrue to the whole concept of capitalism and business.

Miriam can be comically dogmatic and morbidly profound. Her quotes are a mixed bag between ridiculous and intensely impactful.

The three are by far the best. Why did Santiago and Zak get so many damn quotes? I don't mind Dee so much, but Santi is just... boring.

	14-11-2003 21:07									#34
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Actually, I prefer the non faction quotes.

"He held his arm too stiffly, and so was thrown back repeatedly...."

"We purchased his identity manifest and repackaged him as the Recon Rover Rick character..."

Some great quotes

	15-11-2003 00:32									#35
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quote: Originally posted by Jac de Molay Actually, I prefer the non faction quotes. "He held his arm too stiffly, and so was thrown back repeatedly...." "We purchased his identity manifest and repackaged him as the Recon Rover Rick character..." Some great quotes

Those two are both faction quotes- just not faction leader quotes. The first is Spartan, and the 2nd is Morgan

	15-11-2003 00:34									#36
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[QUOTE] Originally posted by sammy1339
>Well, I'm no physicist either, but I'm pretty sure that the wave equation can't be applied in any dimensions for a particular kind of wave. For example, you can't arbitrarily say that sound waves propagate in four directions instead of three - if you said that you would get results that had nothing to do with sound.

Fair enough. I really need to look up stuff about string theory.

>I'm not a mathematician either, just an undergraduate student, and I really don't know what the Poincare Conjecture is. I am pretty sure it is a condition that should distinguish between 3-spheres and the other 3-manifolds, and when you said it had different approaches for 2,3,4, and higher dimensions I assumed you were talking about distinguishing between 2-,3-,4-, and n-manifolds and 2-,3-,4-, and n-spheres. I didn't ask if that was right because I don't even know what the condition is to begin with and it really had nothing to do with Zakharov's quote anyhow. :-)

Actually you are essentially correct on the Poincare conjecture; it's a classification conjecture (and theorem for n not equal to 3 although it looks likely that the n = 3 case has also now been proven)

	16-11-2003 05:43									#37
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Moygan has to be the funniest.

	16-11-2003 09:02									#38
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'Twas I the first to cast my pebble in Sister Miriam's ring. She harbors no hatred for science per se, but rather a distrust of those who would worship at its table. She speaks not against Research itself, but asks that those who make use of that Knowledge consider the consequences of their actions. Look at the quotes from "We Must Dissent" and those of Academician Prokhor Zakharov, and see what a lively dialog must have occurred at many a Council.

quote: Quantum Machinery, TECH69: Men in their arrogance claim to understand the nature of creation, and devise elaborate theories to describe its behavior. But always they discover in the end that God was quite a bit more clever than they thought. Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent"

quote: Industrial Nanorobotics, TECH73: Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these ... things ... these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need of us? Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent"

quote: The Self-Aware Colony, PROJECT25: Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind. Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent"

Also, since my signature quote will eventually change, here is an interesting item that, while not from SMAC, could just as easily have been an exchange between our dear Sister and the good Provost:

quote: Prologue: Perhaps we should ask ourselves: Will the next leap of science be a step into the future, or a plunge into the abyss? Epilogue: The more we learn about the universe around us, the more we realize how little we truly know. But we will only find what wonders await us if no false walls are built around our explorers and no false restraints applied to the unquenchable human thirst to know it all. The Outer Limits: Double Helix

	16-11-2003 18:15									#39
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could a mod edit my poll. those typos look stupid

	16-11-2003 21:00									#40
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The game's quotes don't do Miriam justice, in my opinion. If you read Michael Ely's work Journey to Alpha Centauri, she is represented as a very deep and thoughtful person, and she has more than a few debates with the Provost (and actually comes off looking better than he does in them).

On the flip side, the story paints Sheng-Ji Yang as a very two dimensional character, giving him little personality if any, and bestowing upon him a series of seemingly supernatural abilities (which I tried to rationalize in Joe). The game's mp3 quotes are considerably deeper and more interesting than Ely portrayed Yang.

	16-11-2003 23:15									#41
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I accidentally posted the same thing twice and for some reason I can't delete this post. Sorry.

Last edited by sammy1339 on 16-11-2003 at 23:25

	16-11-2003 23:18									#42
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That's why I don't believe in the Michael Ely series. It takes a bunch of interesting characters and makes them boring. In my mind the Michael Ely characters have nothing to do with the SMAC characters. I refuse to acknowledge the existence of the books. That way I can still think Yang is deep and Zakharov is smart and Miriam is crazy and Deirdre is not old and saggy and mean and unsure of herself (cf. Dragon Sun, chapter 1 or 2 for a counterexample) and Santiago is gay. The game is more fun that way.

And the Weisenheimer of the Datalinks still has the best quotes.

Last edited by sammy1339 on 16-11-2003 at 23:26

	19-11-2003 01:30									#43
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No way!! All you Yang lovers are crazy!

While I do enjoy a lot of his qoutes, I don't consider them to be 'deep' I mean, if you understand the context of most of them he is essentially justifying what any decent person would label unethical treatment of people.

My favorite of his is the qoute on the Genejack factory...

"MY contribution to industry is the Genejack...or genetically engineered worker... [genetically engineered to desire nothing but work]. Tyranny you say? How can you tyranize (sp?) someone who does not feel pain?" Thats some eye-opening deepness right there.

My favorites are the datalink qoutes...especially the ones by Kant.

Lal has some real good ones too...my favorite being that when they come 9mid to late game) you really start getting a feel for how the people in the game are evolving and that a lot as happend 'behind the scenes whil you play"

paraphrased

"How a loved my chosen...[forgot this part]...and so I took from her body a singe cell...perhaps to one day love her again."

as well as his MMI qoutes about his experience with the machine "but what I could not imagine, is that thoughts cross back...cold hard rigid" and Unscrupulous power brokers, forcibly installing the MMI and creating their own private army of demons.

	19-11-2003 07:25									#44
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Everyone has good quotes.

Dierdre:

quote: "Symbols are the key to telepathy. The mind wraps its secrets in symbols; when we discover the symbols that shape our enemy's thought, we can penetrate the vault of his mind." - Lady Deirdre Skye, "Our Secret War"

quote: "You are orphans, earthdeirdre, your homeworld already buried so young among the aeons. Yet now you fill the skies where we watched a million sunsets with flame and contrails, paying no heed to the hard lessons the universe has tried to teach you. Are you a breath of life to invigorate a complacent world, you earthhumans, or an insidious cancer which must be excised?" - Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations With Planet"

(Sure the last one is the Planetmind speaking, but still...)



Zakharov:

quote: "Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist." - Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

quote: "The popular stereotype of the researcher is that of a skeptic and a pessimist. Nothing could be further from the truth! Scientists must be optimists at heart, in order to block out the incessant chorus of those who say "It cannot be done." - Academician Prokhor Zakharov, University Commencement

quote: "The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms we find electrons, and behind electrons quarks. Each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries. " - Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "For I Have Tasted The Fruit"

Morgan:

quote: "Of course we'll bundle our MorganNet software with the new network nodes; our customers expect no less of us. We have never sought to become a monopoly. Our products are simply so good that no one feels the need to compete with us." - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Morgan Data Systems press release

Funny, since it reminds me of Microsoft's attitude (even though their belief in their products' superiority is unfounded)

quote: "Look at any photograph or work of art. If you could duplicate exactly the first tiny dot of color, and then the next and the next, you would end with a perfect copy of the whole, indistinguishable from the original in every way, including the so-called "moral value" of the art itself. Nothing can transcend its smallest elements." - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Ethics of Greed"

quote: "You ivory tower intellectuals must not lose touch with the world of industrial growth and hard currency. It is all very well and good to pursue these high-minded scientific theories, but research grants are expensive and you must justify your existence by providing not only knowledge, but concrete and profitable applications as well." - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Ethics of Greed"

Lal:

quote: "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." - Commisioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"

quote: "Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective." - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "A Social History of Planet"

quote: "The entire character of a base and its inhabitants can be absorbed in a quick trip to the Rec Commons. The sweaty arenas of Fort Legion, the glittering gambling halls of Morgan Bank, the sunny lovers' trysts in Gaia's High Garden, or the somber reading rooms of U.N. Headquarters. Even the feeding bay at the Hive gives stark insight into the sleeping demons of Yang's communal utopia." - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "A Social History of Planet"

Santiago:

quote: "Superior training and superior weaponry have, when taken together, a geometric effect on overall military strength. Well-trained, well-equipped troops can stand up to many more times their lesser brethren than linear arithmetic would seem to indicate." - Col. Corazon Santiago, "Spartan Battle Manual"

quote: "A ship at sea is its own world. To be the captain of a ship is to be the unquestioned ruler of that world and requires all of the leadership skills of a prince or minister." - Col. Corazon Santiago, "Leadership and the Sea"

quote: "We shall take only the greatest minds, the finest soldiers, the most faithful servants. We shall multiply them a thousandfold and release them to usher in a new era of glory." - Col. Corazon Santiago, "The Council of War"

quote: Proper care and education for our children remains a cornerstone of our entire colonization effort. Children not only shape our future; they determine in many ways our present. Men and women work harder knowing their children are safe and close at hand. And never forget that, with children present, parents will defend their home to the death. - Col. Corazon Santiago, "Planet: A Survivalist's Guide"

Even Miriam has a few pearls of wisdom hidden within her irrational, evangelical ramblings...

quote: "The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil." - Sister Miriam Godwinson, "The Blessed Struggle"

quote: "Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?" - Sister Miriam Godwinson, "But for the Grace of God"

quote: "Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind." - Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent"

But of course, the best quotes are from the great Chairman Sheng-ji Yang!!!

quote: "Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outwards, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment." - Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"

quote: "I maintain nonetheless that yin-yang dualism can be overcome. With sufficient enlightenment we can give substance to any distinction: mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Remember, enlightenment is a function of willpower, not of physical strength." - Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"

quote: "What do I care for your suffering? Pain, even agony, is no more than information before the senses, data fed to the computer of the mind. The lesson is simple: you have received the information, now act on it. Take control of the input and you shall become master of the output." - Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"

quote: "If our society seems more nihilistic than that of previous eras, perhaps this is simply a sign of our maturity as a sentient species. As our collective consciousness expands beyond a crucial point, we are at last ready to accept life's fundamental truth: that life's only purpose is life itself." - Chairman Sheng-ji Yang,"Looking God in the Eye"

	19-11-2003 09:44									#45
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Don't make me choose! All the quotes are so cool. I find the "filler", if you like, to be the best thing about Alpha Centauri.

	22-11-2003 01:55									#46
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You people are looking at this all wrong. None of the quotes are deep (except a few from the datalinks). What makes them good is the feel they give to the game. I think these are the best quotes:

1. "I don't know but I've been told/ Deirdre got a network node./ Likes to press the on/off switch./ Dig that crazy Gaia witch." - Network Node.

2. "It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people." - Recycling Tanks.

3. "Organic Superlube? Oh, it's great stuff, great stuff. You really have to keep an eye on it, though - it'll try and slide away from you the first chance it gets." - Organic Superlubricant.

4. "You are the children of a dead planet, earthdeirdre, and this death we do not comprehend. We shall take you in, but may we ask this question - will we too catch the planetdeath disease?" - Advanced Ecological Engineering.

5. "Mary had a little lamb, Little lamb little lamb, Mary had a little lamb, Whose fleece was white as snow." -The Dream Twister.

6. "I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice." - The Longevity Vaccine.

7. "The first living thing to go through the device was a small white rat. I still have him, in fact. As you can see, the damage was not so great as they say." - Matter Transmission.

8. "I swear sometimes they're watching me." - Self-Aware Machines.

9. "Richard Baxton piloted his Recon Rover into a fungal vortex and held off four waves of mind worms, saving an entire colony.
We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character with a multi-tiered media campaign: televids, touchbooks, holos, psi-tours - the works.
People need heroes. They don't need to know how he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy. The real story would just hurt sales, and dampen the spirits of our customers." - Hologram Theatre.

10. "I shall not confront Planet as an enemy, but shall accept its mysteries as gifts to be cherished. Nor shall I crudely seek to peel the layers away like the skin from and onion. Instead I shall gather them together as the tree gathers the breeze. The wind shall blow and I shall bend. The sky shall open and I shall drink my fill." - The Weather Paradigm.

	22-11-2003 23:55									#47
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No, actually I prefer to look into the quotes for the meanings rather than take them as simple stylistic windowdressing.

I believe SMAC's quotes are unsurpassed for the amount of philosophy in them.

If I want quick-quip laughs and jokes, I'll play Warcraft III.

	23-11-2003 22:27									#48
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Nah. Some of the quotes from Nietzche are interesting, if you know the context. Same goes for Aristotle's and the one from Plato's Symposium. I like some of the poems, particularly the one by Coleridge (when you build the Paradise Garden.) I admit that a few of Yang's quotes have some cute philosophical points, such as the Genejack Factory quote or even the Virtual World quote, though that one has a couple of holes philosophically. But those are not very developed arguments. You can't develop a deep philosophical argument in a couple of lines. Otherwise it's not deep. And Yang's quotes are not deep. They are cute, and that's all. But the great thing about them is that they sound deep. Whoever wrote them knew what he was doing. When you hear those quotes you get the feeling that there actually is a "Looking God in the Eye" or "Essays on Mind and Matter" and you want to read them. There is still no depth to the philosophy, though. It's window-dressing. There's nothing wrong with that. And it's not all quick-quip laughs and jokes, either. It gives depth to the game. But it is not philosophy.

	25-11-2003 07:46									#49
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Some are truly freaky, make you wonder what happened. Headquarters, Tachyon Field, Inertial Damping, Temple of Planet, Psi Gate...

	26-11-2003 09:14									#50
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Are Yang's quotes 'deep'?
Certainly - but deep in which direction?
His 'arguments' have holes, of course. That can't easily be said for Nietzsche or Aristotle.

Need some quotes? I go with Diedre and Voice/Planet.
Of course, How sick do I become after hearing "Eternity lies ahead of us..." for the 100th time...

I am still unable to find the Arrogance in what Zakharov says... you folk mention that it exists, but I can't find it.