Mike O'Brien

“Even then, retailers learned early that shoppers prefer their shopping suggestions not be too truthful. One of the great unwritten chapters of retail intelligence programming featured a “personal shopper” program that all-too-accurately modeled the shoppers’ desires and outputted purchase ideas based on what shoppers really wanted as opposed to what they wanted known that they wanted. This resulted in one overcompensatingly masculine test user receiving suggestions for an anal plug and a tribute art book for classic homoerotic artist Tom of Finland, while a female test user in the throes of a nasty divorce received suggestions for a small handgun, a portable bandsaw, and several gallons of an industrial solvent used to reduce organic matter to an easily drainable slurry.”
― John Scalzi, The Android's Dream

“One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die ...and accepts his sentence undismayed.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“Seems to be a deep instinct in human beings for making everything compulsory that isn't forbidden.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“Never appeal to a man's better nature. He may not have one.”
― Robert A. Heinlein , Time Enough for Love