“But why should it command itself? We made it; it didn’t make us.”
“So? And anyway we didn’t make it; other machines made it... and even they only started it off; it mostly made itself. But anyway, you’d have to go back... I don’t know how many thousand generations of its ancestors before you found the last computer or spaceship built directly by any of our ancestors. Even if this mythical ‘we’ had built it, it’s still zillions of times smarter than we are. Would you let an ant tell you what to do?”
“Bacterium? Flea? Ant? Make up your mind.”
“Oh go away and de-scale a mountain or something, you silly man.”
“But we started all this; if it hadn’t been for us—”
“And who started us? Some glop of goo on another rock-ball? A super-nova? The big bang? What’s starting something got to do with it?”" - Meaning and context.">
QuotesCosmos
“State of the Art” (p. 126)
“

I looked at Li. “An argument? All right; you—anybody—taking command of the ship is like a flea taking over control of a human... maybe even like a bacteria in their saliva taking them over.”
“But why should it command itself? We made it; it didn’t make us.”
“So? And anyway we didn’t make it; other machines made it... and even they only started it off; it mostly made itself. But anyway, you’d have to go back... I don’t know how many thousand generations of its ancestors before you found the last computer or spaceship built directly by any of our ancestors. Even if this mythical ‘we’ had built it, it’s still zillions of times smarter than we are. Would you let an ant tell you what to do?”
“Bacterium? Flea? Ant? Make up your mind.”
“Oh go away and de-scale a mountain or something, you silly man.”
“But we started all this; if it hadn’t been for us—”
“And who started us? Some glop of goo on another rock-ball? A super-nova? The big bang? What’s starting something got to do with it?”

— Iain Banks

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I looked at Li. “An argument? All right; you—anybody—taking command of the ship is like a flea taking over control of a human... maybe even like a bacteria in their saliva taking them over.”
“But why should it command itself? We made it; it didn’t make us.”
“So? And anyway we didn’t make it; other machines made it... and even they only started it off; it mostly made itself. But anyway, you’d have to go back... I don’t know how many thousand generations of its ancestors before you found the last computer or spaceship built directly by any of our ancestors. Even if this mythical ‘we’ had built it, it’s still zillions of times smarter than we are. Would you let an ant tell you what to do?”
“Bacterium? Flea? Ant? Make up your mind.”
“Oh go away and de-scale a mountain or something, you silly man.”
“But we started all this; if it hadn’t been for us—”
“And who started us? Some glop of goo on another rock-ball? A super-nova? The big bang? What’s starting something got to do with it?”" in the context of "“State of the Art” (p. 126)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Iain Banks" (Quotes, Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991): All page numbers from the trade paperback edition published by Night Shade Books (ISBN 978-1-59780-074-7) Only A Gift from the Culture, Descendant and State of the Art are set in the world of his Culture series For details on the original publication of each story, see the Wikipedia page All ellipses in the original stories ) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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Iain Banks

About Iain Banks

Iain Menzies Banks (February 16, 1954 – June 9, 2013), officially Iain Banks, was a Scottish writer. As Iain M. Banks he wrote science fiction; as Iain Banks he wrote literary fiction.