“Johnny sighed in the darkness. “I don’t understand the exact purpose of the Keats Project or the other Old Earth analogs, but I suspect that it is part of a TechnoCore project going back at least seven standard centuries to realize the Ultimate Intelligence.”“The Ultimate Intelligence,” I said, exhaling smoke. “Uh-huh. So the TechnoCore is trying to… what?… to build God.”“Yes.”

“Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac”

“But if neither sadness or rage could unite us, I didn't know what could - the more I wanted to identify with her, the more I identified with myself; and the more I tried to understand her, the less, necessarily, I succeeded: the failure of an intelligent mind to grasp feeblemindedness was dark and deep, no less than the failure of a feeble mind to grasp intelligence, because intelligence got its shape by not understanding the thing it could never be.”

“Canned food is a perversion,' Ignatius said. 'I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul.”

“What was amazing was that a large team of highly intelligent programmers could labor so hard and so long on such an unpromising project. You know, you shouldn’t trust us intelligent programmers. We can think up such good arguments for convincing ourselves and each other of the utterly absurd. Especially don’t believe us when we promise to repeat an earlier success, only bigger and better next time.”

“Vladimir: I don't understand. Estragon: Use your intelligence, can't you? Vladimir uses his intelligence. Vladimir: (finally) I remain in the dark.”