fortunes

"... the educated person is not the person who can answer the questions, but
the person who can question the answers."
        ― Theodore Schick Jr., in The_Skeptical_Inquirer, March/April, 1997
%
"A little fire, Scarecrow?"
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"A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis of
being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite series of
incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric precisions from vague
assumptions based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive documents
and carried out on instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of
dubious reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed purpose of
annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department that was
unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the first place."
        ― IEEE Grid newsmagazine
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"Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing."
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"Anchovies? You've got the wrong man! I spell my name DANGER! (click)"
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"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence."
        ― Time Bandits
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"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds
himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous
resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their
ignorance the hard way."
        ― Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
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"But I don't like Spam!"
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"But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad place
to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge. Why do
people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a kludge,
after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs, poor
quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I explained yet
about the bytes?"
%
"Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle."
        ― Alice Roosevelt Longworth
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"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
        ― Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
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"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false. What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
entire intellectual heritage ― good teaching ― than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?
        ― Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
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"Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" ― it implies all sorts of
marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a theory",
quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah, those who can
claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly blessed.
        ― Randy Davis
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"Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow."
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"Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him."
        ― John Barrymore's dying words
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"Do not stop to ask what is it;
 Let us go and make our visit."
        ― T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
%
"Do you have blacks, too?"
        ― George W. Bush, to Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso;
           Washington, D.C., November 8, 2001
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"Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash."
        ― Bo Diddley
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"Don't say yes until I finish talking."
        ― Darryl F. Zanuck
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"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
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"Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun."
        ― Jeff Berner
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"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
        ― Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
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"Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it."
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"Grub first, then ethics."
        ― Bertolt Brecht
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"He didn't say that. He was reading what was given to him in a speech."
        ― Richard Darman, director of OMB, explaining why President Bush
           wasn't following up on his campaign pledge that there would be
           no loss of wetlands
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"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes..."
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"He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ..."
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"His mind is like a steel trap ― full of mice."
        ― Foghorn Leghorn
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"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
        ― William Gilbert
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"I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!"
        ― Paul McCracken
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"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
        ― English Professor
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"I didn't accept it. I received it."
        ― Richard Allen, National Security Advisor to President Reagan,
           explaining the $1000 in cash and two watches he was given by
           two Japanese journalists after he helped arrange a private
           interview for them with First Lady Nancy Reagan.
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"I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating."
        ― Boss Tweed
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"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
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"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
at in the right way, did not become still more complicated."
        ― Paul Anderson
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"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
        ― Bill Hoest
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"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
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"I support efforts to limit the terms of members of Congress, especially
members of the House and members of the Senate."
        ― former Vice-President Dan Quayle
%
"I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes."
        ― President Richard Nixon
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"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous."
%
"If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?"
%
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!"
        ― "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
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"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
        ― J. Paul Getty
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"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce."
        ― Winston Churchill
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"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
        ― Winston Churchill, of Montgomery
%
"It depends on your definition of asleep. They were not stretched out.
They had their eyes closed. They were seated at their desks with their
heads in a nodding position."
        ― John Hogan, Commonwealth Edison Supervisor of News Information,
           responding to a charge by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission
           inspector that two Dresden Nuclear Plant operators were
           sleeping on the job.
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"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased."
        ― Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
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"It was hell," recalls former child.
        ― caption to a B. Kliban cartoon
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"It's bad luck to be superstitious."
        ― Andrew W. Mathis
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"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
        ― Kevin White, mayor of Boston
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"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune
 to bullets"
        ― The Brigader, "Dr. Who"
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"Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
        ― Victor Borge
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"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts."
        ― Winston Churchill
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"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."
        ― Lily Tomlin
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"Mate, this parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it!"
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"Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles."
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"Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong."
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"Of COURSE it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a fake?"
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"One planet is all you get."
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"She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to."
        ― Gypsy Rose Lee
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"Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an
excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature."
        ― Samuel Johnson
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"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
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"Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something
else anyway."
        ― Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board, on chlordane
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"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
        ― J. Finnegan, USC.
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"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
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"The C Programming Language: A language which combines the flexibility of
assembly language with the power of assembly language."
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"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them."
        ― Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
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The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch.
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"The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell
into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him
out again, it would be a calamity."
        ― Benjamin Disraeli
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The brain is a beautifully engineered get-out-of-the-way machine that
constantly scans the environment for things out of whose way it should
right now get. That's what brains did for several hundred million years ―
and then, just a few million years ago, the mammalian brain learned a new
trick: to predict the timing and location of dangers before they actually
happened.

Our ability to duck that which is not yet coming is one of the brain's most
stunning innovations, and we wouldn't have dental floss or 401(k) plans
without it. But this innovation is in the early stages of development. The
application that allows us to respond to visible baseballs is ancient and
reliable, but the add-on utility that allows us to respond to threats that
loom in an unseen future is still in beta testing.
        ― Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University,
           in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times; 6 July, 2006
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"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer."
        ― Henry Kissinger
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"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and
tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted activity will
have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ... neither its pipes nor
its theories will hold water."
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"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!"
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"The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who
make them unsafe."
        ― the late Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and ex- mayor of
           Philadelphia
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The voters have spoken, the bastards...
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"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
that would be clearly understood."
        ― Alexander Haig
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The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
with a large fortune.
%
"There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone
loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor."
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"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope."
        ― Oscar Wilde
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"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
        ― C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
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"They gave me a book of checks. They didn't ask for any deposits."
        ― Congressman Joe Early (D-Mass) at a press conference to answer
           questions about the House Bank scandal.
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This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys...
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"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
        ― Woody Allen
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To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?
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"Tom Hayden is the kind of politician who gives opportunism a bad name."
        ― Gore Vidal
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"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under Communism, it's just the opposite."
        ― John Kenneth Galbraith
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"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
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"We don't have to protect the environment ― the Second Coming is at hand."
        ― James Watt
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"We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
hands for masturbation."
        ― Lily Tomlin
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"We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later."
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"Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what CAN
you believe?!"
        ― Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
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"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?"
        ― Bertold Brecht
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"When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical."
        ― Jon Carroll
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"When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
        ― Winston Churchill, on formal declarations of war
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"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked. "Begin at the
beginning," the King said, gravely, "and go on till you come to the end:
then stop."
        ― Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
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"Why be a man, when you can be a success?"
        ― Bertold Brecht
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"Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
        ― Lily Tomlin
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"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
        ― Oscar Wilde
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"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
        ― Lewis Carrol
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"Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have goaded
me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in their endless
search for "one more feature". Their irritating unwillingness to learn how
to do things my way has usually led to my doing things their way; most of
the time, they have been right.
        ― S. C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
%
"Yes, that was Richard Nixon. He used to be President. When he left the
White House, the Secret Service would count the silverware."
        ― Woody Allen, "Sleeper"
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"Yes, well, that's just the sort of blinkered, Philistine pig-ignorance I've
come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome
spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss for the
struggling artist, you excrement! You whining, hypocritical toadies with your
Tony Jacklin golf clubs, your colour TVs and your bleedin' Masonic handshakes!
You wouldn't let me join, would you, you blackballing bastards?! WELL I
WOULDN'T BECOME A FREEMASON NOW IF YOU GOT DOWN ON YOUR LOUSY STINKING KNEES
AND BEGGED ME!"
%
"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't."
        ― Dagwood Bumstead
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"You'll never be the man your mother was!"
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$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
        ― Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
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'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
        ― George Bernard Shaw
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'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
        ― Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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[Humanity] is the measure of all things.
        ― Protagoras
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... And malt does more than Milton can/To justify God's ways to man
        ― A. E. Housman
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An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders
a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The
bartender says "You're all idiots", and pours two beers.
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Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months
might as well have been written by someone else.
        ― Eagleson's Law
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Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
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... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we
can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now
seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their
world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of
ancient nonsense ― the debate about angels on pinheads ― makes sense once
you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen
would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.
        ― S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
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... Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of
the person making the claim, not the critic. It is not the responsibility
of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the
responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals
or colored lights never healed anyone. The skeptic's role is to point out
claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidence and to
provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
the accepted body of scientific evidence. ...
        ― Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215
%
... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.
%
... The book is worth attention for only two reasons: (1) it attacks
attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and
plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple
jeering.
        ― Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot,
           The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201
%
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself―and you are the
easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After
you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You
just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.
        ― R. P. Feynman, "Cargo Cult Science"
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... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
        ― J. B. White
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... if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust,
this would be a better world.
        ― Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
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... the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost would never throw the Devil out
of Heaven as long as they still need him as a fourth for bridge.
        ― Letter in NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES #19
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... they [the Indians] are not running but are coming on.
        ― note sent from Lt. Col Custer to other officers
           of the 7th Regiment at the Little Bighorn
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...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and
concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our family,
the Hominidae.
        ― Richard Leakey
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... It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united
opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to give
equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond the
flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
        ― Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
           The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
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...computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
        ― Fred Brooks, Jr.
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...difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects
perform the office of a common censor morum over each other. Is uniformity
attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
        ― Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
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...it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
        ― Sidney Hook
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...skill such as yours is evidence of a misspent youth.
        ― Herbert Spencer
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...the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality
tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
        ― M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
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...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is
the practice of truth.
        ― George Jacob Holyoake
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...this is an awesome sight. The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
        ― The Firesign Theater
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...though his invention worked superbly ― his theory was a crock of sewage
from beginning to end.
        ― Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
%
...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has
been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
        ― Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
/earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
%
10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
%
36 percent of the American public believes that boiling radioactive milk
makes it safe to drink.
        ― results of a survey by Jon Miller at Northern Illinois University
%
43rd Law of Computing: Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation fault ― core dumped
%
80 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot, including this one.
%
99% of all guys are within one standard deviation of your mom.
%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
%
A bore is a man you deprives you of solitude without providing you with
company.
        ― Gian Vincenzo Gravina
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A Nixon [is preferable to] a Dean Rusk ― who will be passionately
wrong with a high sense of consistency.
        ― J. K. Galbraith
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A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone somewhere is
having fun.
%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
out of a divorce.
        ― Don Quinn
%
A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.
        ― Everett Dirksen
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A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
enlightened him with ours.
%
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as
afterward.
%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
poor to protect them from each other.
%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
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A child's education should begin at least 100 years before he is born.
        ― Oliver Wendell Holmes
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A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
        ― Herbert Prochnow
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A clash of doctrine is not a disaster ― it is an opportunity.
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A closed mouth gathers no foot.
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A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
%
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing,
but together can decide that nothing can be done.
        ― Fred Allen
%
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for
the first time.
        ― Alfred E. Wiggam
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A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never
learned to walk.
        ― Franklin D. Roosevelt
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A conservative is one who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
%
A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
        ― Ben Franklin
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A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
        ― Channing Pollock
%
A day without sunshine is like night.
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A decision occurs when one abandons the obvious for the possible.
        ― P. Taylor
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A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat.
%
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you
will look forward to the trip.
        ― Caskie Stinnett
%
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never her age.
        ― Robert Frost
%
A diva who specializes in risque arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
%
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
        ― Ogden Nash
%
A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox
1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to
help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse,
and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the Undergraduate replied "I
see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back
of the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the
head with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
%
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
        ― Winston Churchill
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A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
        ― G. B. Shaw
%
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
        ― Samuel Johnson
%
A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
        ― D. Gries
%
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows
something.
        ― Wilson Mizner
%
A good memory does not equal pale ink.
%
A good workman is known by his tools.
%
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
        ― William James
%
A handful of friends is worth more than a wagon of gold.
%
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his weight
in other people's patience.
        ― John Updike
%
A hermit is a deserter from the army of humanity.
%
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
%
A king's castle is his home.
%
A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
%
A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
in than some that do.
        ― Dennis M. Ritchie
%
A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work
by being declared to work.
        ― Anatol Holt
%
A learning experience is one of those things that says, "You know that
thing you just did? Don't do that."
        ― attributed to Douglas Adams
%
A little caution outflanks a large cavalry.
        ― Bismarck
%
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
        ― Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
believe everything positively stinks.
        ― Lew Col
%
A man forgives only when he is in the wrong.
%
A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
        ― John Barrymore
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A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
%
A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a
sense of obligation."
        ― Stephen Crane
%
A man shall never be enriched by envy.
        ― Thomas Draxe
%
A man who fishes for marlin in ponds will put his money in Etruscan bonds.
%
A man who turns green has eschewed protein.
%
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
%
A manager would rather live with a problem that he cannot solve than
accept a solution that he does not understand.
        ― G. Woolsey
%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%
A mathematician named Hall
Has a hexahedronical ball,
        And the cube of its weight
        Times his pecker's, plus eight
Is his phone number ― give him a call.
%
A model is an artifice for helping you convince yourself that you
understand more about a system than you do.
%
A moose once bit my sister.
%
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%
A nymph hits you and steals your virginity.
%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%
A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
%
A person who knows only one side of a question knows little of that.
%
A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is
never sure.  Proverb
%
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
        ― George Wald
%
A plucked goose doesn't lay golden eggs.
%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
your wife will give you for free.
%
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
unless there be two.
        ― Seneca
%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
that the system works.
%
A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and
the real reason.
%
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
dimensional objects ...
%
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
        ― Ramsey Clark
%
A scout troop consists of twelve little kids dressed like schmucks following
a big schmuck dressed like a kid.
        - Jack Benny
%
A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
        ― Samuel Johnson
%
A sine curve goes off into infinity or at least to the end of the blackboard.
%
A smile is the shortest distance between two people.
        ― Victor Borge
%
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
        ― O'Henry
%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an
exam.
%
A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by
its author.
        ― S. C. Johnson
%
A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you, not what you choose to
pay for it.
        ― John Ruskin
%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
in students.
        ― John Ciardi
%
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
replaces it with.
        ― Tenessee Williams
%
A visit to a fresh place will bring strange work.
%
A visit to a strange place will bring fresh work.
%
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
getting nervous.
%
A well-known friend is a treasure.
%
A witty saying proves nothing.
        ― Voltaire
%
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
%
Ada, n.: Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an Ada
awareness."
%
Abandon hope, all ye who press "ENTER" here.
%
Ability is useless unless it is used.
        ― Robert Half
%
About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
%
About the only thing on a farm that has an easy time is the dog.
%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
        ― Herbert Hoover
%
Above all things, reverence yourself.
%
Abstention makes the heart grow fonder.
%
Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Accident, n.: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
body is better.
%
According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
        ― Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
%
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally
worthless.
%
According to my scuba instructor, if a shark attacks, you're supposed to
poke it in the eye with your finger. After that, I suppose you should hit
it in the face with a cream pie, or maybe hose it down with a seltzer bottle.
        ― Jerry L. Embry
%
Accordion: A bagpipe with pleats.
%
Accuracy: The vice of being right.
%
Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not
well enough to lend to.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
%
Activity makes more men's fortunes than cautiousness.
        ― Marquis de Vauvenargues
%
Actors will happen in the best-regulated families.
%
Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist.
        ― Jean Ichbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
%
Adapt. Enjoy. Survive.
%
Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.
[Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]
        ― Ovid
%
Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
%
Adore, v.: To venerate expectantly.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adult: One old enough to know better.
%
Adversity makes men, prosperity monsters.
        ― French Proverb
%
Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
Advertising: The science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to
get money from it.
        ― Stephen Leacock
%
After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
        ― Freeman Dyson
%
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
%
After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done.
%
After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not
for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have
simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
        ― P. J. O'Rourke
%
After any machine or unit has been assembled, extra components will be
found on the bench.
        ― "Industry at Work," Oilways, n2., 1972, pp. 16-17. Humble Oil
           & Refining Company., Houston, TX
%
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover,
it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
%
After winning the pennant one year, Casey Stengel commented, "I couldn'ta
done it without my players."
%
Air is water with holes in it.
%
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
        ― Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
%
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And
radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive
them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting for a
dial tone.
%
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
        ― Peggy Joyce
%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance.
%
All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
        ― Kingfish
%
All a hacker needs is a tight PUSHJ, a loose pair of UUOs, and a warm
place to shift.
%
All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
%
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy in its own way.
        ― Tolstoy
%
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
%
All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.
        ― Jane Wagner
%
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts
those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds
of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end
goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works,
the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found
the last bug."
        ― Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
%
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
every organism to live beyond its income.
        ― Samuel Butler
%
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
        ― E. Rutherford
%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
        ― Sean O'Casey
%
All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.
%
All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce obedience by
prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their power. The swastika is
only one example of many in recent history.
        ― American Bar Association task force on flag burning
%
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
%
All wise men share one trait in common: the ability to listen.
%
Allen's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.
%
Alliance, n.: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
separately plunder a third.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Although every American has a sense of humor―it is his birthright and
encoded somewhere in the Constitution―few Americans have never been able to
cope with wit or irony, and even the simplest jokes often cause unease,
especially today when every phrase must be examined for covert sexism,
racism, ageism.
        ― Gore Vidal, "The Essential Mencken," The Nation,
           August 26/September 2, 1991.
%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid back.
%
Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
        ― Alfred Hitchcock 
%
Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a
left.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
        ― Charlie McCarthy
%
America had often been discovered before Columbus; it had just been hushed up.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
America's best buy for a quarter is a telephone call to the right man.
%
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
        ― Allen Ginsberg
%
American Non Sequitur Society: We don't make sense. We like pizza.
%
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%
Among the chosen, you are the lucky one.
%
Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.
%
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but
is always polite to traffic cops.
%
An Army travels on its stomach.
%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
        ― A. P. Herbert
%
An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.
        ― Alfred A. Knopf
%
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
%
An idle mind is worth two in the bush.
%
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
        ― Albert Camus
%
An NT server can be run by an idiot, and usually is.
        - Tom Holub <doosh@best.com>
          (Posted to comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix on 03 Sep 1997)
%
An object never serves the same function as its image―or its name.
        ― Rene Magritte
%
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
        ― Benjamin Franklin
%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
%
Anarchy: It's not the law, it's just a good idea.
%
And I alone am returned to wag the tail.
%
And now for something completely different.
%
And now that the legislators and the do-gooders have so futilely inflicted
so many systems upon society, may they end up where they should have begun:
may they reject all systems, and try liberty...
        ― Frederic Bastiat
%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%
And the Lord God said unto Moses ― and correctly, I believe ...
        ― Field Marshal Montgomery, opening a chapel service
%
And the crowd was stilled. One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said. Wide-eyed,
the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no
clothes! He is naked!"
        ― "The Emperor's New Clothes"
%
And there's hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut.
%
And they told us, what they wanted...
Was a sound that could kill some-one, from a distance.
        ― Kate Bush
%
And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a horizontal
rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports,
which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory, ma'am, are as advanced
in design as one will find anywhere in the world.
        ― Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
%
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that
cometh out of man, in their sight...Then he [the Lord!] said unto me, Lo, I
have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread
therewith. [Ezek. 4:12-15 (KJV)]
%
Anger is a prelude to courage.
        ― Eric Hoffer
%
Angular momentum makes the world go round.
%
Ankh if you love Isis.
%
Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently
slippery.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%
Another one bites the dust.
%
Anthony's Law of Force: Do not force it; get a larger hammer.
%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop: Any tool when dropped, will roll into the
    least accessible corner of the workshop.
Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
    your toes.
%
Antimatter doesn't matter as a matter of fact.
        ― Piggins
%
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur
ad necem. (In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on
windswept crags.)
%
Antonym, n.: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
        ― Charles McCabe
%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
        ― Aesop
%
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.
%
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
sell it.
%
Any given program, when running correctly, is obsolete.
%
Any job worth quitting is worth sticking around long enough until they
fire you.
        ― Tim Wirth
%
Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple
his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than
against them is to attain literacy.
        ― Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
%
Any shrine is better than self-worship.
%
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a
larger object.
%
Any small object when dropped will hide under a larger object.
%
Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic.
        ― Arthur C. Clarke
%
Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses.
%
Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
        ― Paul Chvostek by way of Arthur C. Clarke (via John Ripley)
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
        ― Andy Finkel, computer guy
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
        ― Arthur C. Clarke
%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
        ― Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
%
Anyone can hate. It costs to love.
        ― John Williamson
%
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
        ― Publilius Syrus
%
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a
tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes
in the house.
        ― Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
        ― Eleanor Roosevelt
%
Anyone who wants to be paid for writing software is a fascist asshole.
        ― Richard M. Stallman, founder, Free Software Foundation
%
Anything anybody can say about America is true.
        ― Emmett Grogan
%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%
Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the
price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
%
Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.
%
Arbolist . . . Look up the word. I don't know, maybe I made it up. Anyway,
it's an arbo-tree-ist, somebody who knows about trees.
        ― George W. Bush, quoted in USA Today; August 21, 2001
%
Are we not men?
%
Are you a turtle?
%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.
        ― Mickey Mouse
%
Armadillo: To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
%
army, n.: A body of men assembled to rectify the mistakes of the diplomats.
        ― Josephus Daniels
%
Army Axiom: An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.
%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
    (1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
    (2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
    (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws.
%
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
        ― Harry S Truman (one of his more ridiculous comments)
%
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free variable."
%
As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
        ― Weisert
%
As goatherd learns his trade by goat, so writer learns his trade by wrote.
%
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
%
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.
When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the
active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in
the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the
active power.
        ― Thomas Aquinas, prominent historical misogynist
%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't
as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be
discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large
part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in
my own programs.
        ― Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
%
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" ― probably because it's
so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
        ― Woody Allen
%
As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear,
bearing hot new versions of their pieces ― faster, smaller, more complete,
or putatively less buggy. The replacement of a working component by a new
version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
efficient test cases will usually be available.
        ― Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
        ― National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
divinity.
        ― Benjamin Franklin
%
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple
memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time
to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A,
E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
        ― Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
%
As you read the scroll it vanishes,
and you hear maniacal laughter in the distance.
%
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, If God won't have you, the devil must.
%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the bathtub,
it tolls for thee.
%
Ask your boss to reconsider ― it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
for an answer.
%
Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained control of the
country, it would probably fly around in circles.
        ― Pat Paulsen
%
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
        ― The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
%
At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los Angeles
fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head under the
exhaust of a bus until he revived.
%
At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on
the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is
quite untrue in practice. Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather
than blinkers it.
        ― G. L. Glegg, The Design of Design
%
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes ― an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
        ― Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade,
           February 1, 1987
%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
the computer.
%
Athens built the Acropolis. Corinth was a commercial city, interested in
purely materialistic things. Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the
old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth.
        ― Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%
Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
        ― Winston Churchill
%
Auribus teneo lupum. (I hold a wolf by the ears.)
%
Automobile, n.: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
%
Automobile: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
%
Average managers are concerned with methods, opinions, precedents.
Good managers are concerned with solving problems.
%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
        ― National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
Avoid letting temper block progress; keep cool.
        ― William Feather
%
Back off, man. I'm a scientist.
%
Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.
%
Bagdikian's Observation:
        Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American
        newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion"
        on a ukelele.
%
Bad sneakers and a piña colada, my friend
Stompin' down the avenue by Radio City
With a transistor and a large sum of money to spend.
        ― Steely Dan
%
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
        A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
        by governors.
%
Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people
into two types, and those who don't.
%
Basic, n.: A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in
           that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
%
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely get
your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your face.
        ― National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
Be careful when a loop exits to the same place from side and bottom.
%
Be different: conform.
%
Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original
in your work.
        ― Gustave Flaubert
%
Be seeing you.
%
Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of life.
%
Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly goes straight to the bone.
%
Bees are not as busy as we think they are; they just cannot buzz any slower.
        ― Abe Martin
%
Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.
        ― Louis Brandeis
%
Behold the warranty: The bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away.
%
Beifeld's Principle: The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is
already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better looking
and richer male friend.
%
Being stoned on marijuana isn't very different from being stoned on gin.
        ― Ralph Nader
%
Berkeley's First Law of Mistakes: The moment you have worked out an answer,
start checking it―it probably isn't right.
%
Corollary 1 to Berkeley's First Law of Mistakes: Always let an answer cool
off for awhile―it should not be used while hot.
%
Corollary 2 to Berkeley's First Law of Mistakes: Check the answer you have
worked out once more―before you tell it to anybody.
%
Berkeley's Second Law of Mistakes: If there is an opportunity to make a
mistake, sooner or later, the mistake will be made.
%
Better living a beggar than buried an emperor.
%
Between the choice of two evils, I always pick the one I've never tried before.
        ― Mae West
%
Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey
wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That's lost.
        ― Ivan Chtcheglov
%
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
        ― Donald Knuth
%
Beware of Geeks bearing grifts.
%
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
        ― Leonard Brandwein
%
Beware of a dark-haired man with a loud tie.
%
Beware of a tall dark man with a spoon up his nose.
%
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
%
Beware of friends who are false and deceitful.
%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
%
Beware the new TTY code!
%
Biggest security gap - an open mouth.
%
Bingo, gas station, hamburger with a side order of airplane noise,
and you'll be Gary, Indiana. - Jessie in the movie "Greaser's Palace"
%
Biography is the fallacy of intention.
        ― Peter Taylor
%
Biology ... it grows on you.
%
Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
%
Black holes are where God is dividing by zero.
%
Blah.
%
Bleeding into a new computer is always a good thing; it's an ancient geek
voodoo magic to ensure its long life and reliability.
        ― from Mike Taht's blog, http://the-edge.blogspot.com/
%
Blessed are the meek for they shall inhibit the earth.
%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
%
Blessed is the man who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to
worry at night.
        ― Leo Aikman
%
Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
%
Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in
plain sight. It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again. The legend has it
that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he was arrested
for drunk driving. The snakes left because people kept throwing up on
them.
%
Boling's postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
        Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
        vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
%
Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them
seemed to come from Texas.
        ― Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
%
Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look.
%
Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Boren's Laws:
        (1) When in charge, ponder.
        (2) When in trouble, delegate.
        (3) When in doubt, mumble.
%
Boss, n.:
        According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages
the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss,
in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
ornamental stud."
%
Boston, n.:
        Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
        finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
%
Boy, n.:
        A noise with dirt on it.
%
Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
committee. that will do them in.
%
Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
committee. That will do them in.
%
Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult
problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How
would the Lone Ranger have handled this?"
%
Brain fried ― core dumped
%
Brain, n.: The apparatus with which we think that we think.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]:
        To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of
error in an opponent.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Bride, n.: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
%
Broad-mindedness: The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%
Brook's Law:
        Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
%
Brooke's Law:
        Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
        discovers something which either abolishes the system or
        expands it beyond recognition.
%
Bubble Memory, n.:
        A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
        intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".
%
Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%
Bug: Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls.
%
Bumper Sticker: Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children.
%
Bumper sticker on nuclear war: if you have seen one, you have seen them all.
%
Bunk Carter's Law: At any given moment there are more important people in
the world than important jobs to contain them.
%
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
        ― Balzac
%
Bureaucrat, n.: A politician who has tenure.
%
Bureaucrats cut read tape ― length-wise.
%
Burnt Sienna: That's the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.
        ― Ken Weaver
%
Business will be either better or worse.
        ― Calvin Coolidge
%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
        ― Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"
%
By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely
overwhelm me.
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
%
By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
completely overwhelm you.
%
By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun.
        ― P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in the April 1988
           issue of "Computer Language"
%
By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic
credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who
give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life
forms did not evolve but appeared "abruptly."
        ― Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
%
C, n.: A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like
assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else.
It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't.
        ― Ray Simard
%
C++ : Where friends have access to your private members.
        ― Gavin Russell Baker
%
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
        ― Randall Garrett
%
Cabbage, n.: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
a man's head.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise
as a man's head.
%
Caeca invidia est. (Envy is blind.)
        ― Livy
%
Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.
%
California is a fine place to live ― if you happen to be an orange.
        ― Fred Allen
%
California is the ghost of Christmas future for the rest of America.
        ― anonymous post to an Internet forum
%
California is the land of perpetual pubescence, where cultural lag is
mistaken for renaissance.
        ― Ashley Montagu
%
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
        ― Indian proverb
%
Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
%
Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.
%
Cannot fork ― try again.
%
Cannot fortune open database.
%
Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time,
and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool Mom.
%
Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than
expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to
complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their
planning to reduce the time it takes.
%
Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
        The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
        ― Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world.
%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk
with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point
with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe
years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their
habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing
this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Change is what people fear most.
        ― Dostoevski
%
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
%
Character Density: the number of very weird people in the office.
%
Character is the ligament holding together all other qualities.
        ― Arnold Glasow
%
Chemicals, n.: Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
%
Chicken Little was right.
%
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort
to teach them good manners.
%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
        ― Ogden Nash
%
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely,
if ever, do they forgive them.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
Children have more need of models than of critics.
%
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for
word what you shouldn't have said.
%
Chism's Law of Completion:
        The amount of time required to complete a government project is
        precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
        When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%
Civilisation is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does
not know everyone else.
        ― Julian Jaynes
%
Civilization Law #1: Civilization advances by extending the number of
important operations one can do without thinking about them.
%
Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor.
        ― Toynbee
%
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.
        ― Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand's _The Fountainhead_
%
[Classical music] would be a lot more popular if they gave the pieces titles
like "Kill the Wabbit."
        ― Mark Fetherolf.
%
Classified material requires proper storage.
%
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum ―
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cogito ergo doleo. (I think, therefore I am depressed.)
%
Cogito ergo sum.
%
Cohen's Law: Everyone knows that the name of the game is what label you
succeed in imposing on the facts.
%
Collaboration, n.: A literary partnership based on the false assumption
that the other fellow can spell.
%
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
        ― Hellen Keller
%
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
%
Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million
typewriters, and Usenet is nothing like Shakespeare.
        ― Blair Houghton
%
Commitment, n.: Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and
eggs. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
%
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
        ― Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%
Complacency is the enemy of progress.
        ― Dave Stutman
%
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems theory.
%
Computer Science: the boring art of coping with a large number of trivialities
(The Devil's DP Dictionary)
%
Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
a part of our lives?
        ― Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
%
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
        ― LaRouchefoucauld
%
Concept, n.: Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
$25,000.
%
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one
mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
        ― Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is
good for dandruff.
        ― Peter de Vries
%
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
%
Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!
        ― Ben Jonson
%
Confusticate and bebother these dwarves!
%
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
%
Conservative, n.: One who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
        ― Leo C. Rosten
%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
give it back to them.
%
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.
        ― Brian W. Kernighan
%
Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his
breath is called the listener.
%
Conway's Law: Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure
that produced it.
%
Coronation, n.: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
visible signs of his divine right to be blown sky-high with a dynamite bomb.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit
without individual responsibility.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Corripe Cervisiam!
%
Corrupt, adj.: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%
Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job
is to enforce the law and fight crime.
        ― P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
%
Courage is grace under pressure.
%
Coward, n.: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with
nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
        ― Wernher von Braun
%
Creativity cannot be diminished by the medium of expression.
        ― Mitch Allen
%
Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up
after being drunk all night.
        ― Isaac Asimov
%
Creditors have better memories than debtors.
        ― Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758)
%
Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
        ― A. E. Newman
%
Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital
to form a corporation.
        ― Howard Scott
%
Critic, n.: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
to please him.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull ass will not mend his
pace with beating.
        ― Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1
%
Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.
%
Cynic, n.: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking
out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cynic, n.: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
%
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward,
they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
        ― J. W. von Goethe
%
Dawn, n.: The time when men of reason go to bed.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
De Borglie rules the wave, but Heisenberg waived the rules.
        ― Piggins
%
Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also easy to
handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
%
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%
Death is Nature's way of saying, "slow down".
%
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
        ― R. Geis
%
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
%
Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged
about forever.
        ― button at the Boston Computer Museum
%
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are―by
definition―not smart enough to debug it.
        ― Brian Kernighan
%
Decisionmaker, n.: The person in your office who was unable to form a task
force before the music stopped.

%
Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really
overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene language
may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the judging
panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when addressing
contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
        ― Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Association
%
Decisions terminate panic.
%
Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it
is buttered on.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
        ― Senator Soaper
%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
        ― G. B. Shaw
%
Democracy is four wolves and a lamb, voting on what to have for lunch.
%
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
        ― E. B. White
%
Denniston's Law: Virtue is its own punishment.
%
Deprive a mirror of its silver, and even the Czar won't see his face.
%
Der Unterschied zwischen Genie und Wahnsinn liegt nur im Erfolg.
[The only difference between genius and insanity is the success.]
%
Did I forget to mention, forget to mention Memphis?
Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks.
Do I smell? I smell home cooking.
It's only the river, it's only the river.
        ― Talking Heads (Cities)
%
Did you know gullible is not in the dictionary?
%
Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
%
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build:
They have very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing,
and testing them hard. Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states
than computers do.
        ― Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
%
Diplomacy is the art of extricating oneself from a situation that tact
would have prevented in the first place.
%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
%
Disc space ― the final frontier!
%
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
%
Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no
one else has thought.
        ― Albert Szent-Gyorgi
%
Distress, n.: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Do not allow this language (Ada) in its present state to be used in
applications where reliability is critical, i.e., nuclear power stations,
cruise missiles, early warning systems, anti-ballistic missle defense
systems. The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language
error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus:
It may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our cities. An unreliable
programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far
greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic
pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations.
        ― C. A. R. Hoare
%
Do not merely believe in miracles, rely on them.
%
Do not clog intellect's sluices with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.
%
Do not compromise yourself; you are all you have got.
        ― Janis Joplin
%
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
%
Do not try to solve all life's problems at once ― learn to dread each
day as it comes.
        ― Donald Kaul
%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
Don't have aesthetic convulsions when using them, either.
%
Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
the time to take the dirt out of them?
%
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
        ― Dick Brandon
%
Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must
be good because the programmers hate it so much.
%
Don't be overly suspicious where it's not warranted.
%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%
Don't comment bad code: rewrite it.
%
Don't compare floating point numbers solely for equality.
%
Don't crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers.
%
Don't diddle code to make it faster, find a better algorithm.
%
Dobbin's Law: When in doubt, use a bigger hammer.
%
Don't get suckered in by the comments ― they can be terribly misleading.
Debug only code.
        ― Dave Storer
%
Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
%
Don't learn the tricks of the trade, learn the trade.
%
Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash.
        ― Bo Diddley
%
Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
%
Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy
it today you can do it again tomorrow.
%
Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
        ― James J. Ling
%
Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free
with my breakfast cereal.
        ― Zaphod Beeblebrox
%
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already
tomorrow in Australia.
        ― Charles Schultz
%
Don't worry about things that you have no control over, because you have no
control over them. Don't worry about things that you have control over,
because you have control over them.
        ― Mickey Rivers
%
Don't worry about what other people are thinking about you. They're too
busy worrying about what you are thinking about them.
%
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
        ― Voltaire
%
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
        ― Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
%
Doubts and jealousies often beget the facts they fear.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
Down with categorical imperative!
%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%
Ducharme's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
yourself as part of the problem.
%
Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together ...
        ― Carl Zwanzig
%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.
%
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
and captain of your soul.
%
Dum excusare credis, accusas. (When you believe you are excusing yourself,
you are accusing yourself.)
        ― St. Jerome
%
Dunne's Law: The territory behind rhetoric is too often mined with
equivocation.
%
During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has
been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places,
pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity;
in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
        ― James Madison
%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to
have nothing whatever to do with it.
        ― W. Somerset Maughm
%
E Pluribus Unix
%
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy
based on excellence of performance.
        ― James Bryant Conant
%
Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested
version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece. Their
work will be set back by having that test bed change under them. Of course it
must. But the changes need to be quantized. Then each user has periods of
productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change. This seems
to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling.
        ― Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
        ― John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Economics, n.: Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K.
Galbraith ...
        ― Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Economy makes men independent.
%
Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish
what is worth reading.
        ― G. M. Trevelyan
%
Education helps earning capacity. Ask any college professor.
%
Een schip op het strand is een baken in zee.
[A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea.]
        ― Dutch Proverb
%
Eeny Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak.
        ― Bullwinkle Moose
%
Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
        ― Adlai Stevenson
%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
of being a damned fool.
        ― Bellamy Brooks
%
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
        ― Frank Leahy
%
Egotist, n.: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Ehrman's Commentary:
        1. Things will get worse before they get better.
        2. Who said things would get better?
%
Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
        ― Ronald Reagan, famous movie star
%
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
        ― Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
Either do not attempt at all, or go through with it.
        ― Ovid
%
Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.
        ― Oscar Wilde's last words
%
Electrocution: Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
%
Elevators smell different to midgets
%
Eloquence is vehement simplicity.
        ― Cecil
%
Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall
make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%
Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
        ― Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
%
Enjoy your life; be pleasant and gay, like the birds in May.
%
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
%
Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides.
        ― Pliny
%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking.
        ― Jerome Lettvin
%
Equal bytes for women.
%
Eschew obfuscatory digressiveness.
        ― Barry Dancis (1983)
%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
        ― Woody Allen
%
Ettore's observation: the other line moves faster.
%
Etymology, n.: Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that
were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed
from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy"
("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow."
        ― Mike Kellen
%
Even a cabbage may look at a king.
%
Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.
%
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
        ― Hajime Karatsu
%
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
speak it to?
        ― Clarence Darrow
%
Even the boldest zebra fears the hungry lion.
%
Even the future comes one day at a time.
        ― W. Woodhouse
%
Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.
%
Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
States we really shouldn't complain ― it's still only 2 cents a day.
%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
just how busy they are.
%
Ever wander around the web, look at discussions, totally agree with one of
the points of view, and then notice it was posted under one of your web
aliases 5 years ago?
        ― Larry Weber
%
Every 4 seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this woman
and stop her.
%
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse
of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
color"], that does not exist.
%
Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door. Now all you have to do is
bend a disk.
        ― an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
           commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their
           movement
%
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
%
Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
%
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
        ― Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
%
Every institution I've ever been associated with has tried to screw me.
        ― Stephen Wolfram
%
Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
        ― Don Vonada
%
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
        ― Miguel de Cervantes
%
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction ― from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
%
Every program has two purposes ― one for which it was written and another
for which it wasn't.
%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%
Every purchase has its price.
%
Every silver lining has a cloud around it.
%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%
Every successful person has had failures, but repeated failure is no
guarantee of eventual success.
%
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
        ― Beckett
%
Everything is better with no people.
        ― Bob "Biff" Rendar
%
Dykstra's Law: Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
%
Everything to excess! Moderation is for monks.
        ― Lazarus Long
%
Everything you know is wrong.
        ― The Firesign Theater
%
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There
are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight
lines.
        ― R. Buckminster Fuller
%
Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
%
Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact.
Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only
atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
        ― Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, "The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution"
%
Evolution does not require the nonexistence of God, it merely allows for
it. That alone is enough to evoke condemnation from those who fear the
nonexistence of God more than they fear God Himself.
        ― Keith Doyle, in talk.origins
%
Evolution is both fact and theory. Creationism is neither.
        ― Anonymous
%
Exactitude in small matters is the essence of discipline.
%
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
        ― W. Somerset Maugham
%
Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
%
Excuse me while I change into something more formidable.
%
Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.
%
Expense Accounts, n.: Corporate food stamps.
%
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
        ― Poor Richard's Almanac
%
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
        ― Olivier
%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when
you make it again.
        ― Franklin P. Jones
%
Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and
the instructions afterward.
%
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
%
Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
%
Extreme good-naturedness borders on weakness of character. Avoid it.
%
Extremes of fortune are fatal to folks of small dimensions.
        ― Arnold Glasow
%
FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when
the little hand is on the ....
%
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
%
Facts are simple and facts are straight / Facts are lazy and facts are late.
Facts all come with points of view / Facts don't do what I want them to.
Facts just twist the truth around / Facts are living turned inside out.
Facts are getting the best of them / Facts are nothing on the face of things.
Facts don't stain the furniture / Facts go out and slam the door.
Facts are written all over your face / Facts continue to change their shape.
        ― Talking Heads
%
Failing to get them to do it your way might mean they're stupid, but it also
means you failed to get them to do it your way.
        ― Cal Keegan
%
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
%
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
        ― Ferenc Mantfeld
%
Faire de la bonne cuisine demande un certain temps. Si on vous fait attendre,
c'est pour mieux vous servir, et vous plaire.
[Good cooking takes time. If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better,
and to please you.]
        ― Menu of Restaurant Antoine, New Orleans
           [Also, what we're going to be telling our customers]
%
Fairy Tale: A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
%
Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint.
        ― Dave Sim, author of "Cerberus the Aardvark"
%
Familiarity breeds attempt
%
Familiarity breeds children.
%
Familiarity breeds contempt.
%
Families, when a child is born/Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,/Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove/Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life/By becoming a Cabinet Minister
        ― Su Tung-p'o
%
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your
aim.
        ― Santayana
%
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters;
united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
        ― Goya
%
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though
checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither
enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows
not victory or defeat.
        ― Theodore Roosevelt
%
Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.

%
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
Felson's Law: To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
many is research.
%
Fidelity: A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
%
Field theories, unite!
%
Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
%
Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%
Finagle's Second Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it
only makes it worse.
%
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and
bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we
don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly
serious problems that face us ― and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up
for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
        ― Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade,
           February 1, 1987
%
Fine, Java MIGHT be a good example of what a programming language should be
like. But Java applications are good examples of what applications
SHOULDN'T be like.
        ― pixadel
%
Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
%
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
%
Finster's Law: a closed mouth gathers no feet.
%
First Law of Procrastination: Procrastination shortens the job and places
the responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority
who imposed the deadline).
%
First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.
%
First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself, historians merely
repeat each other.
%
Flee at once: All is discovered.
%
Flon's Law:
        There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
        the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%
Flugg's Law:
        When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
        world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
%
Follow the river and you will eventually find the sea.
%
Football combines the two worst features of American life: violence and
committee meetings.
        ― George Will
%
For a really sweet time, call C6H12O6.
%
For a while there I was worried that my tin foil beanie was blocking the
TopFive.com website. Luckily it turned out to be a router problem.
        ― Attributed to "wubwub", quoted on www.ruminate.com (2004)
%
For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
always old-fashioned.
%
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%
For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
        ― R. Clopton
%
For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
"Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
        ― Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to
                   the U.S.
%
For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
%
For the politicians this was never about how efficient they could make
things happen or how to solve a problem, it is about the *appearance* of
efficiency, or problem solving. My observation is that most politicians
think more like sales people than technicians, and are about as clueful.
Which means, unless the politicians change the way they think, discussion
about how to use *them* to go about really solving these problems would be
like asking a booth babe to write a kernel module.
        ― Rich Costine
%
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
        ― Abraham Lincoln
%
Forgetfulness, n.: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for
their destitution of conscience.
%
Fourth Law of Revision: It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
interferences ― if you have none, someone will make one for you.
%
Fourth Law of Thermodymanics:
If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.
        ― David Ellis
%
Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.
%
Fresco's Discovery: If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
%
Friends: people who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.
%
Frisbeetarianism, n.: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the
roof and gets stuck.
%
Frobnicate, v.:
        To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ.
Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a
frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless
manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is
turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
%
From the ice-age to the dole-age
there is but one concern
and I have just discovered:
some girls are bigger than others
some girls are bigger than others
some girls are bigger than
other girls' mothers
        ― The Smiths
%
From too much love of living/From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving/Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever/That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
        ― Swinburne
%
Froud's Law: A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the
fuse by blowing first.
%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition: Push something hard enough and it will
fall over.
%
Furbling, v.: Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank
even when you are the only person in line.
        ― Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
        ― H. H. Williams
%
Gadji beri bimba clandridi/Lauli lonni cadori gadjam
A bim beri glassala glandride/E glassala tuffm I Zimbra.
        ― Talking Heads (I Zimbra)
%
G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One
of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
`No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.'
And that's your chance, my boy."
%
Garbage In ― Gospel Out.
%
Garter, n.: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
stockings and desolating the country.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Genderplex, n.: The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and tortoises).
        ― Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Gene Police: YOU! Out of the pool!
%
Generosity and perfection are your everlasting goals.
%
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
you should.
%
Genius is the talent of a man who is dead.
%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
        ― Elbert Hubbard
%
Genius: A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with "bright".
%
Genuinely skillful use of obscenities is uniformly absent on the Internet.
        ― Karl Kleinpaste
%
Geology shows that fossils are of different ages. Paleontology shows a
fossil sequence, the list of species represented changes through time.
Taxonomy shows biological relationships among species. Evolution is the
explanation that threads it all together. Creationism is the practice of
squeeezing one's eyes shut and wailing, "Does not!"
        ― Dr.Pepper@f241.n103.z1.fidonet.org
%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%
Get forgiveness now ― tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
%
Get hold of portable property.
        ― Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
        ― Calvin Keegan
%
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs
pounding.
        ― Abraham Kaplan
%
Give big space to the festive dog that shall sport in the roadway.
%
Give me a plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh Dome, and a place
to stand, and I will drain the world.
%
Give up.
%
Giving advice is not as risky as people say; few ever take it anyway.
%
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability: Investment in reliability will increase
until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on
getting some useful work done.
%
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
be in owning a piece thereof.
        ― National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
Go soothingly in the grease mud, as there lurks the skid demon.
%
Go west young, man.
%
God did not create the world in 7 days; he screwed around for 6 days
and then pulled an all-nighter.
%
God does not play dice with the universe.
%
God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can choose our friends.
%
God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ... The
trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do not mean
to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman ... not enough
to support a man and five children if he insists on smoking and drinking
beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live!
A family may live on good bread and water in the morning, water and bread
at midday, and good bread and water at night!
        ― Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
%
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
        ― Voltaire
%
God is a polytheist.
%
God is a verb, not a noun.
%
God is an atheist.
%
God is playing a comic to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
%
God is real, unless declared integer.
%
God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant
and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
        ― Pablo Picasso
%
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
        ― Alfred Jarry
%
God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
%
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
        ― Kronecker
%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%
God requireth not a uniformity of religion.
        ― Roger Williams
%
God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and
Saturday.
        ― William Bragg
%
Godwin's Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a
comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
%
Going the speed of light is bad for your age.
%
Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school
make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.
%
Goldenstern's Rules:
        1. Always hire a rich attorney
        2. Never buy from a rich salesman.
%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
        ― La Rouchefoucauld
%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example.
        ― La Rouchefoucauld
%
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
%
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
        ― George Saunders' dying words
%
Got Mole problems? Call Avogadro, 6.02 E23.
%
Goto, n.: A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
to complain about unstructured programmers.
        ― Ray Simard
%
Government expands to absorb all revenue and then some.
%
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
        ― Tolstoy
%
Government sucks.
        ― Ben Olson
%
Grabel's Law:
        2 is not equal to 3 ― not even for large values of 2.
%
Graduate life ― it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
%
Grain grows best in shit.
        ― Ursula K. LeGuin
%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
        You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%
Granholm's Definition of the Kludge: An ill-assorted collection of poorly
matching parts forming a distressing whole.
        ― Jackson W. Granholm, "How to Design a Kludge,"
           Datamation, Feb. 1962
%
Gray's Law of Programming:
        `N+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
        time as `N' tasks.

Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
        `N+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `N' trivial tasks.
%
Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small
people talk about wine.
        ― Fran Lebowitz
%
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent.
%
Greener's Law: Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
%
Grelb's Reminder: Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
%
Hacker's Law: The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir
a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
        ― Andrew Hacker, The End of the American Era (1970)
%
Haggis is a kind of stuffed black pudding eaten by the Scots and considered
by them to be not only a delicacy but fit for human consumption. The minced
heart, liver and lungs of a sheep, calf or other animal's inner organs are
mixed with oatmeal, sealed and boiled in maw in the sheep's intestinal
stomach-bag and ... Excuse me a minute ...
%
Half of one, six dozen of the other.
%
Half the things that people do not succeed in are through fear of making
the attempt.
%
Hand, n.: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately
explained by stupidity.
%
Hanson's Treatment of Time:
        There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
        before Saturday.
%
Happiness adds and multiplies as we divide it with others.
%
Happiness comes and goes and is short on staying power.
        ― Frank Tyger
%
Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
        ― Ogden Nash
%
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
        ― Oscar Levant
%
Happiness, n.: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
another.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
of another.
%
Hardware, n.: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
%
Harris' Lament: All the good ones are taken.
%
Harris's Lament:
        All the good ones are taken.
%
Harrisberger's Second Law of the Lab: No matter what result it anticipated,
there is always someone willing to fake it.
%
Harrisberger's Third Law of the Lab: Experiments should be reproducive.
They should all fail in the same way.
%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab: Experience is directly proportional
to the amount of equipment ruined.
%
Harrison's Postulate:
        For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%
Hartley's First Law:
        You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
        on his back, you've got something.
%
Hartley's Second Law: Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%
Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as
it damn well pleases.
%
Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
typed with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
of both hands. It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.
%
Hatred, n.: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell you,
"There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time for play?
%
Have you locked your file cabinet?
%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
crack in your sidewalk?
%
He had that rare weird electricity about him ― that extremely wild and
heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
of ever behaving "normally."
        ― Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
%
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
He hated to mend, so young Ned
Called in a cute neighbor instead.
        Her husband said, "Vi,
        When you stitched up his torn fly,
Did you have to bite off the thread?"
%
He is considered the most graceful speaker who can say nothing in most words.
%
He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap.
%
He launched a massive attack on everything this country held inviolate, on
most of what it held self-evident. He showed how our politics was dominated
by time-servers and demagogues, our religion by bigots, our culture by
puritans. He showed how the average citizen, both in himself and in the
way he let himself be pulled around by the nose, was a boob.
        ― Louis Kronenberger, "H.L. Mencken," in Malcolm Cowley, ed.,
           After the Genteel Tradition, 1964.

%
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
%
He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
        ― John Mason Brown, drama critic
%
He that labors and thrives spins gold.
        ― George Herbert
%
He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
%
He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.
%
He walks as if balancing the family tree on his nose.
%
He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
%
He wasn't much of an actor, he wasn't much of a Governor ― Hell, they
HAD to make him President of the United States. It's the only job he's
qualified for!
        ― Michael Cain
%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
        ― William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%
He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last.
%
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
%
He who hates vices hates mankind.
%
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
%
He who invents adages for others to peruse takes along rowboat when going on
cruise.
%
He who laughs, lasts.
%
He who lives without folly is less wise than he believes.
%
He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return.
        ― South African Saying
%
He who sneezes without a handkerchief takes matters into his own hands.
%
He who spends a storm beneath a tree takes life with a grain of TNT.
%
He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
        ― M. C. Escher
%
He'll sit here and he'll say, "Do this! Do that!" And nothing will happen.
        ― Harry S. Truman, on presidential power
%
He's dead, Jim.
%
He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%
Heaven, n.: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
expound your own.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Heavy, adj.: Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
%
Hedonist for hire: no job too easy.
%
Heisenberg may have slept here.
%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
        ― Milton Friedman
%
Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's Corollary: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
organization.
%
Hello. My name is Batman. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%
Help stamp out, remove and abolish redundancy.
%
Her life was saved by rock and roll.
        ― Lou Reed
%
Herblock's Law: if it is good, they will stop making it.
%
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow
up.
        ― Peter Drucker
%
Here at Controls, we have one chief for every Indian.
%
Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs,
then they'd be algorithms.
%
Hey what? Where? When? (Are you confused as I am?)
%
Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
%
Hidden talent counts for nothing.
        ― Nero
%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%
Hippogriff, n.:
        An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full
of surprises.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%
His heart was yours from the first moment that you met.
%
History does not repeat itself; historians merely repeat each other.
%
History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion ―
i.e., none to speak of.
        ― Lazarus Long
%
History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
%
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people
maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of
ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will
always avail themselves for their own purpose.
        ― Thomas Jefferson, to Baron von Humboldt, 1813
%
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them
asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at
intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another... Truly the
imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step
gained.
        ― Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
%
Hlade's Law: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person ― they
will find an easier way to do it.
%
Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a
small problem struggling to get out.
%
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.
%
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at
your side.
        ― Han Solo
%
Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
        ― Rex Reed
%
Holy Smoke, Batman, it's the Joker!
%
Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
        ― F. M. Hubbard
%
Honi soit la vache qui rit.
%
Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the honorable
gentleman is a scurvy cur."
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Horngren's Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a special
case.
%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
        ― W. C. Fields
%
How about a little fire, scarecrow?
%
How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
%
How can you be two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
        ― Firesign Theater
%
How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
%
How does a project get to be a year late? ... One day at a time.
        ― Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
Q. How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?
A. It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
%
Q. How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
%
Q. How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. "That's a known problem... don't worry about it."
%
Q. How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. Three: one to screw it in and two to say "I told you so" when it doesn't
   work.
%
Q. How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Two. One to change the bulb and one to mix the drinks.
%
Q. How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of the way.
%
Q. How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?
A. "Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem."
%
Q. How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None. It's a hardware problem.
%
Q. How many Vietnam vets does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. You don't know, man. You don't KNOW. Cause you weren't THERE.
        ― http://bash.org/?255991
%
Q. How was Thomas J. Watson buried?
A. 9 edge down.
%
Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%
However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
manner ... sulking and nausea.
        ― Tom K. Ryan
%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%
Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929.
Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating
table to prevent his interference, he placed a uretheral catheter into a
vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and walked
upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory x-ray film.
In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the Nobel Prize.
%
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
        ― Isaac Asimov
%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly
proportional to ..... to ........ uh ..............
%
I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to
their fellows.
        ― Susan B. Anthony
%
I HATE arbitrary limits, especially when they're small.
        ― Stephen Savitzky
%
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life, I absented myself
from Christian assemblies.
        ― Benjamin Franklin
%
I have had interactions with developers who are convinced that everything in
.Net was created solely by MS for open source usage. But that could be another
result of vaccination preservatives.
        ― Larry Weber
%
I think all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being
told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick
and tired. I'm certainly not! And I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
        ― Monty Python
%
I would defend the liberty of concenting adult creationists to practice
whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own
homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.
        ― Arthur C. Clarke
%
I would not dare to so dishonor my Creator God by attaching His name to
that book [the Bible].
        ― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part 1, Section 5
%
I'm also not very analytical. You know, I don't spend a lot of time thinking
about myself, about why I do things.
        ― George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One; June 4, 2003
%
I'm an evolutionist because I judge the evidence for the unity of life by
common descent over billions of years to be overwhelming, not so that I can
cheat on my wife or kick the cat with impunity. I live in no hope of heaven
or fear of hell, but like most of my fellow Americans of all religious
persuasions, I try to live a decent life. Folks like Tom DeLay just can't
get it through their heads that a person can choose to live ethically
because civilized life requires doing unto others as you would have them do
unto you.
        ― Chet Raymo, science columnist for The Boston Globe, in a
           5 Sep, 1999, article on the anti-evolution decision by Kansas
           School Board
%
I am a member of a party of one, and I live in an age of fear. Nothing
lately has unsettled my party and raised my fears so much as your
editorial, on Thanksgiving Day, suggesting that employees should be
required to state their beliefs in order to hold their jobs. The idea is
inconsistent with our constitutional theory and has been stubbornly opposed
by watchful men since the early days of the Republic.
        ― E.B. White, in a letter to the New York Herald Tribune
           (November 29, 1947)
%
I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormenter.
        ― Leo Tolstoy
%
I am astounded ... at the wonderful power you have developed ― and terrified
at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record
forever.
        ― Arthur Sullivan, on seeing a demonstration of Edison's new
           talking machine in 1888
%
I am not now, and never have been, a girl friend of Henry Kissinger.
        ― Gloria Steinem
%
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the
great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
        ― Winston Churchill
%
I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.
%
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of
pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you
that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic
globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't
help it. I was born sneering.
        ― Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
%
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
        ― G. K. Chesterton
%
I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
        ― Will Rogers
%
I'll bet the human brain is a kludge.
        ― Marvin Minsky
%
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?
        ― Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I
%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
        ― Joe Walsh
%
I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both.
Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity
is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is
a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
        ― Norman Cousins
%
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
        ― Lillian Hellman
%
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than
you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods,
you will understand why I dismiss yours.
        ― Steven Roberts
%
I could prove God statistically.
        ― George Gallup
%
I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat veggies.
%
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
        ― Thomas Paine
%
I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself
to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon...
        ― Lyndon B. Johnson
%
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
        ― Isaac Asimov
%
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
        ― Galileo Galilei
%
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
        ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language
I don't understand.
        ― Sir Edware Appleton
%
I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
don't believe in astrology.
        ― James R. F. Quirk
%
I don't care if I'm a lemming. I'm not going.
%
I don't care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine!
        ― Vidiu Platon
%
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I don't like spreading rumors, but what else can you do with them?
%
I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual
becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
        ― George Bernard Shaw
%
I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be
questioned about their motives.
        ― Leray Scifres
%
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I fart in your general direction, tiny-brained wiper of other people's bottoms.
%
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
        ― Mae West
%
I get the feeling that as soon as something appears in the paper, it ceases to
be true.
        ― T-Bone Burnett
%
I glance at the headlines just to kind of get a flavor for what's moving.
I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read
the news themselves.
        ― George W. Bush, Washington, D.C.; September 21, 2003
%
I go to seek a great perhaps.
        ― Francois Rabelais
%
I had a great idea this morning but I did not like it.
        ― Anon
%
I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.
        ― Samuel Goldwyn
%
I hate quotations.
        ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
I have a simple philosophy:
        Fill what's empty.
        Empty what's full.
        Scratch where it itches.
        ― A. R. Longworth
%
I have discovered the heart of bushido: to die!
        ― Yamamoto Tsunetomo
%
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
        ― Clarence Darrow
%
I haven't lost my mind ― it's backed up on tape somewhere.
%
I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
%
I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents
become better people as a result of practicing it.
        ― Joe Mullally, computer salesman
%
I just thought of something funny...your mother.
        ― Cheech Marin
%
I like a man who grins when he fights.
        ― Winston Churchill
%
I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
        ― Art Leo
%
I like the future, I'm in it.
%
I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And
in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the
additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
        ― Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
           Vol. 12, Fall 87
%
I must have slipped a disk; my pack hurts.
%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away.
%
I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
%
I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
        ― William F. Buckley
%
I program, therefore I am.
%
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis
socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think
you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a
very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days,
though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to
crudeness.
        ― Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
%
I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce.
        ― J. Edgar Hoover
%
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce.
        ― J. Edgar Hoover
%
I sat through it. Why shouldn't you?
        ― David Letterman, it a spot promoting one of his shows
%
I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's.
%
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot.
        ― King Henry V, "Henry V", Act III, Scene 1
%
I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that decaying
mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to medieval conceptions
of Christianity, and which still lingers among us―a most serious barrier to
religion and morals, and a menace to the whole normal evolution of society.
        ― Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896
%
I support everyone's right to be an idiot. I may need it someday.
%
I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass.
        ― Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of
           Jerry Falwell's suggestion that all good Christians should be
           against Sandra Day O'Connor's nomination to the Supreme Court
%
I think Microsoft named .NET so it wouldn't show up in a Unix directory listing.
        ― Oktal
%
I think people are reacting to what they perceive to be your simplistic and
fetishistic understanding of the economy, which is becoming more and more
pronouncedly so in its outward manifestations as you react to your
misunderstanding of people's reactions to your reaction to what you perceived
as Sam's simplistic and fetishistic understanding of the economy.
        ― Gordan Todorovac
%
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
I think time is crucial to anything. For example, if you lock an infinite
number of monkeys in a room with those typewriters, but you limit the
amount of time they have to write, the best you'll get out of them is the
pilot to The Dukes of Hazzard.
        ―Doug Sykes
%
I think trash is the most important manifestation of culture we have in my
lifetime.
        ― Johnny Legend
%
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
%
I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.
        ― Marvin
%
I tried being reasonable once. I didn't like it.
%
I use not only all the brains I have but all that I can borrow.
        ― Woodrow Wilson
%
I used to be indecisive; now I'm not sure.
        ― Graffiti
%
I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance.
%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%
I was brought up in the other service; but I knew from the first that the
Devil was my natural master and captain and friend. I saw that he was in
the right, and that the world cringed to his conqueror only from fear.
        ― Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"
%
I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all
these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these
kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and
I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been
avoiding the beach.
        ― Lucinda Childs (Philip Glass: Einstein On The Beach)
%
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained
it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent ― not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I
chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
        ― George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
                   Holes and the Fate of Stars"
%
I will never use biometrics. I'm afraid they'll make me change my password.
        ― Drew Sudell
%
Few companies really work like the Borg.  Most work a lot more like the Holy
Roman Empire. News often takes weeks to travel from castle to castle by
minstrel.
        ― Drew Sudell
%
[The Ramones'] "I Wanna Be Sedated" should be played loud, poorly, and in
some dingy club where you'd get grounded if your folks found out you were
there, not quietly while strolling down the freezer aisle.
        ― Drew Sudell
%
I will contend that conceptual integrity is *the* most important consideration
in system design.
        ― Frederick Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
%
I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's
a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work.
        ― Gallagher
%
I wish they all could be California girls.
%
I wish you humans would leave me alone.
%
I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice
whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own
homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.
        ― Arthur C. Clarke
%
I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have
gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the
missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.
        ― Oliver North
%
I wouldn't mind dying ― it's that business of having to stay dead that
scares the shit out of me.
        ― R. Geis
%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%
I'll tell you what kind of guy I was. If you ordered a boxcar full of
sons-of-bitches and opened the door and only found me inside, you could
consider the order filled.
        ― Robert Mitchum
%
I'm a misanthrope. What's your fucking problem?
%
I'm growing older, but not up.
        ― Jimmy Buffett
%
I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?
        ― Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
%
I'm mad, and that's a fact./I found out animals don't help.
Animals think they're pretty smart./Shit on the ground, see in the dark.
        ― Talking Heads (Fear of Music)
%
I'm not breaking the rules. I'm just testing their elasticity.
%
I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid, and I'm not going.
%
I've got a bad feeling about this.
%
I've had fun before. This isn't it.
%
I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more
of them who were paralyzed in the head.
        ― George Wallace
%
Idiot Box, n.: The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the
stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
        ― Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Idiot, n.: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
        ― Roy Santoro
%
If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows.
        ― Yiddish saying
%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%
If I had a hammer, I'd use it on Peter, Paul and Mary.
        ― Howard Rosenberg
%
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
        ― Ted Turner
%
If Java had true garbage collection, most programs would delete themselves
upon execution.
        ― Robert Sewell
%
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They
would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
        ― Thomas Carlyle
%
If Murphy's Law were true, every time you tried to take a breath, all the
air would be on the other side of the room.
%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
%
If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1
passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
        ― T. Cheatham
%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.
%
If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
        ― Sir Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble
%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
        ― John Kenneth Galbraith
%
If all the philosophers in the world were laid end to end, they wouldn't
reach a conclusion.
%
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
%
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
        ― Paul Beatty
%
If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
conclusion.
        ― William Baumol
%
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
it isn't worth the effort.
%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%
If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
%
If at first you don't succeed, quit; don't be a nut about success.
%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
plentiful as blackberries...
        ― Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author
%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
tellers?
%
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
%
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
%
If guns are outlawed, how will we shoot the liberals?
%
If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than
blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has
created that whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading
mankind?
        ― Arthur C. Clarke, June 5, 1998, in the essay "Presidents, Experts,
           and Asteroids"
%
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
%
If imprinted foil seal under cap is broken or missing when purchased, do not
use.
%
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
        ― Bert Lantz
%
If it doesn't come from you, shouldn't it come from Gerber?
        ― Bristol Meyers baby formula ad
%
If it has syntax, it isn't user friendly.
%
If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.
%
If it weren't for Newton, we wouldn't have to eat bruised apples.
%
If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
%
If it's working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
If it's not working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
        ― A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
%
If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
%
If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
the page number.
%
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
%
If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges.
%
If one year is seven dog years, then one day is a dog week.
%
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss Bank.
        ― Woody Allen
%
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss bank.
        ― Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
having to accomplish anything.
%
If people were required to know the law rather than obey it, the government
would be overthrown the very next day.
%
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
        ― Vannevar Bush
%
If someone gives you a lemon, make lemonade.
        ― D. Woodhouse
%
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
        ― Pope John Paul I
%
If someone were to ask me for a short cut to sensuality, I would
suggest he go shopping for a used 427 Shelby-Cobra. But it is only
fair to warn you that of the 300 guys who switched to them in 1966,
only two went back to women.
        ― Mort Sahl
%
If something's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.
%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
        ― Stanley Garn
%
If the bulk of American SF can be said to be written by robots, about
robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written
by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits.
        ― Michael Moorcock
%
If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
        ― Norm Schryer
%
If the experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.
%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances are
50-50 it will.
%
If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a
circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted
instantaneously by electricity.
        ― Samuel F. B. Morse
%
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down. If
the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down. If the
bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will
exceed all expectations.
        ― Reverend Chichester
%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
        ― Art Hoppe
%
If this country is worth saving, it's worth saving at a profit.
        ― H. L. Hunt
%
If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
doing the thinking.
        ― Lyndon Baines Johnson
%
If voting could really change the system, it would be against the law.
%
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are
headed.
%
If we do not change our direction, we might end up were we are headed.
%
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution
inevitiable.
        ― John F. Kennedy
%
If you always postpone pleasure you will never have it. Quit work and play
for awhile.
%
If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.
%
If you are willing to die, you can do anything.
%
If you build something a fool can use, only a fool will want it.
%
If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
%
If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
%
If you can't say something nice, say something surrealistic.
%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
        ― Harry S Truman
%
If you cannot take a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.
        ― Nikita Khrushchev
%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
%
If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
will always do it.
        ― Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
%
If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
%
If you have to push so hard that you break your penis, you are doing
something wrong.
        — Frank McLaughlin
%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
        ― Graham Summer
%
If you make a mistake, you right it immediately to the best of your ability.
%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you.
%
If you meet somebody who tells you that he loves you more than anybody
in the whole wide world, don't trust him. It means he experiments.
%
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
        ― Maslow
%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
develop.
%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.
%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
%
If you see someone without a smile, give them yours.
        ― Anonymous
%
If you substitute other kinds of intellectual property into the GNU
manifesto, it quickly becomes absurd.
        ― Cal Keegan
%
If you suspect a man, don't employ him.
%
If you think before you speak, the other guy gets his joke in first.
%
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
        ― Derek Bok, president of Harvard
%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
        ― Earl Wilson
%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
        ― Richard M. Nixon
%
If you want to eat hippopotamus, you've got to pay the freight.
        ― some IBM guy
%
If you work hard and do your homework, you can grow up and get a job doing
homework.
        ― former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer
%
If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee.
        ― broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center,
           Houston, July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.
%
If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for
tomorrow morning, sleep late.
        ― Henny Youngman
%
If you're happy, you're successful.
%
If you're not careful, you're going to catch something.
%
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
%
If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
        ― Benjamin Disraeli
%
If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it
off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the
universe?
%
If you've seen one Grand Canyon, you've seen them all.
        ― a member of the Monkey Wrench Gang
%
If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.
        ― Spiro Agnew
%
If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
        ― Ronald Reagan
%
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
%
Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion.
        ― Robert Burton
%
Ignorance is when you don't know anything and somebody finds it out.
%
Ignore previous fortune.
%
I'll play with it first and tell you what it is later.
        ― Miles Davis
%
Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot ― it's more like the
land He's trying to ignore.
%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
        ― Jules de Gaultier
%
Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism.
%
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
        ― Fred Allen
%
Immortality ― a fate worse than death.
        ― Edgar A. Shoaff
%
Impartial, adj.: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting
opinions.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.
%
In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
        ― Adlai Stevenson
%
In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only,
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.
        ― The Peter Principle
%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
the most popular of all neuro-mythologies ― the notion that we ordinarily
use only 10 percent of our brains...

This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of
"pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes. As
a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it? As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
it leaves much to be desired.
        ― Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Conciousness: Implications for
           Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
%
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty. He
is always in alliance with the despot.
        ― Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814
%
In general, it is best to assume that the network is filled with malevolent
entities that will send in packets designed to have the worst possible effect.
        ― the draft "Requirements for Internet Hosts" RFC
%
In marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every advantage of the enemy.
%
In order to succeed in any enterprise, one must be persistent and patient.
Even if one has to run some risks, one must be brave and strong enough to
meet and overcome vexing challenges to maintain a successful business in
the long run. I cannot help saying that Americans lack this necessary
challenging spirit today.
        ― Hajime Karatsu
%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the
cares of office.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
In software, we rarely have meaningful requirements. Even if we do, the
only measure of success that matters is whether our solution solves the
customer's shifting idea of what their problem is.
        ― Jeff Atwood
%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
discotheques.
        ― Art Linkletter
%
In the beginning I was made. I didn't ask to me made. No one consulted me
or considered my feelings in this matter. But if it brought some passing
fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way through
life's mournful jungle then so be it.
        ― Marvin the Paranoid Android
%
In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's not
there if you want to keep writing good code.
        ― Karl
%
In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared minds.
        ― L. Pasteur
%
In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?
%
[In the future], people like me will be underground and hunted.
        ― Chuck Murcko, 1995 (at an employer-sponsored brainstorming session)
%
In Sedona, "Namaste" means "What can I sell you?"
        ― Chuck Murcko
%
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.
        ― Robert Lucky
%
In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful Dead.
        ― Egyptian Book of the Dead
%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
        ― Alan Perlis
%
In the market, there can be no such thing as exploitation.
        ― Murray Rothbard
%
In the pitiful, multipage, connection-boxed form to which the flowchart has
today been elaborated, it has proved to be useless as a design tool ―
programmers draw flowcharts after, not before, writing the programs they
describe.
        ― Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true
or becomes true.
        ― John Lilly
%
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are
prepared.
        ― Louis Pasteur
%
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're different.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
In this world, Truth can wait; she's used to it.
%
Incest, n.: Sibling revelry.
%
Information Center, n.: A room staffed by professional computer people whose
job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
%
Ingrate, n.: A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
indigestion.
%
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
        ― Martin Luther King, Jr.
%
Innovation is hard to schedule.
        ― Dan Fylstra
%
Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.
        ― Erma Bombeck
%
Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
%
Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the
salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
%
Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
%
Integrity has no need for rules.
%
Interpreter, n.: One who enables two persons of different languages to
understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.
        ― Harry S Truman
%
Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets.
%
Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed
the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom have always proved the most
intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?
        ― Robert E. Lee, in a letter to President Franklin Pierce
%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to
be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?
%
Is life worth living? It depends on the liver.
        ― Herbert Beerbohm Tree
%
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of
the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as
are out wish to get in?
        ― Ralph Emerson
%
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
tellers take economists seriously?
%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:
1. The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse.
2. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%
It could be worse, you could be in Cleveland.
%
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
It has been said that the great scientific disciplines are examples of
giants standing on the shoulders of other giants. It has also been said
that the software industry is an example of midgets standing on the toes of
other midgets.
        ― Alan Cooper
%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%
It is Fortune, not wisdom that rules man's life.
%
It is a poor judge who cannot award a prize.
%
It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.
        ― Willie Sutton
%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing
thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?
        ― Alan Perlis
%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
        ― Voltaire
%
It is bad luck to be superstitious.
        ― Andrew W. Mathis
%
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
%
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because
he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
        ― Voltaire
%
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly
and try another. But above all, try something.
        ― Franklin D. Roosevelt
%
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
        ― R. Serling
%
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
        ― Rod Serling
%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
versa.
%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%
It is easier to run down a hill than up one.
%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
one.
%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people.
        ― Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
It is happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
        ― S. Johnson
%
It is important to note that probably no large operating system using current
design technology can withstand a determined and well-coordinated attack,
and that most such documented penetrations have been remarkably easy.
        ― B. Hebbard, "A Penetration Analysis of the Michigan Terminal
           System", Operating Systems Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 1980,
           pp. 7-20
%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
        ― "Industry at Work," Oilways, n2., 1972, pp. 16-17. Humble Oil
           & Refining Company., Houston, TX
%
It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not
desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
        ― Woody Allen
%
It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system
would see in our species ― which has tended to be cruel, destructive,
wasteful, and irrational ― the crown and apex of cosmic evolution.
Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us as a
transitional species makes more sense ― and gives us more hope.
        ― Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species",
           Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem.
%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
problem.
%
It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat
somebody.
        ― Richard M. Nixon
%
It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
        ― Abraham Lincoln
%
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
        ― Gore Vidal
%
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another ― it's one
damn thing over and over.
        ― Edna St. Vincent Millay
%
It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and
intimidation.
%
It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
        ― Elizabeth Carpenter
%
It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a
pit.
%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
        ― Voltaire
%
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?
%
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
day, that is the highest of arts.
        ― Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
%
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
        ― Robert Bly
%
It is the business of little minds to shrink.
        ― Carl Sandburg
%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
        ― Hawkwind
%
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to
the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is
eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the
consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
        ― John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790.
           (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)
%
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
        ― Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
%
It is the wise bird who builds his nest in a tree.
%
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
        ― W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
%
It is your destiny.
        ― Darth Vader
%
It just goes to show what you can do if you're a total psychotic.
        ― Woody Allen
%
It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
%
It may soon be time for you to look for a new line of work.
%
It often works better if you plug it in.
%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
%
It seems to make an auto driver mad if he misses you.
%
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
        ― Edward Dahlberg
%
It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the
system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine some
of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very sharp,
probably not someone here on campus.
        ― Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, quoted
           in "The Technique," Georgia Tech's newspaper, after the computer
           worm hit the Internet
%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%
It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been
always thus.
        ― Dean Lattimer
%
It was the Law of the Sea, they said.  Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
        ― Hunter S. Thompson
%
It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
%
It works better if you plug it in.
%
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
        ― Andrew Jackson
%
It's a fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
%
It's a poor workman who blames his tools.
%
It's all in the mind, ya know.
%
It's better to burn out than it is to rust.
%
It's better to burn out than to fade away.
%
It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud.
        ― J. C. R. Licklider
%
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%
It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for
being right.
%
It's hard to get ivory in Africa, but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa.
%
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It
isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
        ― Oxford University Press, Edpress News
%
It's later than you think.
%
It's like deja vu all over again.
        ― Yogi Berra
%
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
direction.
%
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
        ― Phil White
%
It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
        ― Alexander Korda
%
It's not hard to meet expenses; they're everywhere.
%
It's not often that you get so much class entertainment outside your bedroom
window or outside your bedroom, period.
        ― Groucho Marx
%
It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless
world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less
cruel and heartless.
        ― L.R. Knost
%
It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things.
%
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
        ― Woody Allen
%
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop.
%
It's not what we don't know that gets us into trouble, it's what we know that
ain't so.
        ― Will Rogers
%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%
It's smart to pick your friends - but not to pieces.
%
It's so humid, you could poach an egg on the sidewalk.
%
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government: No man's life, liberty, or
property are safe while the legislature is in session.
%
Jay's First Law: The classic hierarchy consists of one man at the top with
three below him, each of who has three below him, and so on with fearful
symmetry unto the seventh generation, by which stage there is a row of 729
managers.
        ― Antony Jay, Management and Machiavelli, 1967
%
Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.
%
Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin.
        ― Michael O'Donoghue
%
Jesus was killed by a Moral Majority.
%
Jizz changes everything. It's science!
        ― Jim Chapman
%
John Birch Society ― that pathetic manifestation of organized apoplexy.
        ― Edward P. Morgan
%
Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so
at the most inconvenient possible time.
%
Jones' Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
to blame it on.
%
Jones' Law of Hierarchical Limits: As an administrator, you need to give
ten pats on the head for each kick in the butt. This is the reason for
keeping the number of people reporting to you a fairly small number.
Otherwise, you will run out of hands, but still have an overcapacity in feet.
%
Jones' Motto: Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%
Jones's First Law:
        Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
        endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
        obstruction to its progress ― in direct proportion to the
        importance of their original contribution.
%
Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.
%
Jury ― Twelve people who determine which client has the better lawyer.
%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
        ― Southern California Oracle
%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows
what it is.
%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.
%
Just give Alice some pencils and she will stay busy for hours.
        ― B. Kliban
%
Just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that isn't immune to bullets.
        ― The Brigadier, Dr. Who.
%
Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
%
Just remember: you're not a "dummy," no matter what those computer books
claim. The real dummies are the people who―though technically
expert―couldn't design hardware and software that's usable by normal
consumers if their lives depended upon it.
        ― Walter Mossberg
%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
        ― J. Edgar Hoover
%
Justice, like lightning, should ever appear
To some men hope, to other men fear.
        ― Jefferson Pierce
%
Justice: A decision in your favor.
%
Karl's version of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to exceed the time allotted it.
%
Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities
have been exhausted.
%
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%
Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
1. The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land
   under a car, just out of reach. (This force is technically termed "car
   suck.")
2. Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!"
%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver
makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard.
"The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's wrong."
%
Ketterling's Law: Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
%
Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority.
Kinkler's Second Law: All the easy problems have been solved.
%
Klein bottle for rent, apply within.
%
Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
        ― Henry N. Camp
%
L'extension des privileges des femmes est le principe general de tous progres
sociaux.
        ― Charles Fourier, 1808
%
Labor, n.: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
        ― Joey Ramone
%
Lactomangulation, n.: Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so
badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
        ― Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Laissez Faire Economics is the theory that if each acts like a vulture,
all will end as doves.
%
Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will
serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of
society...It is justified because...the program can give a sense of shared
adventure and achievement to the society at large.
        ― Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%
Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false.
%
Laugh, and the world ignores you. Crying doesn't help either.
%
Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged
communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly
increased area of misunderstanding.
%
Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences:
        If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set.
%
Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be
evenly distributed.
%
Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
%
Lawrence's Axiom: Anger is one letter short of danger.
%
Laws of Computer Programming
(1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
(2) Any given program costs more and takes longer.
(3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
(4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
(5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
(6) The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
(7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
    programmer who must maintain it.
(8) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you
    will find that programmers cannot write in English.
        ― SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 2, No. 2
%
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how
tragic your defeats ― approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
%
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
        ― Anon
%
Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%
Leisure can be justified.
Recreation maximizes productive stamina.
Play is not the opposite of work.
Idleness consolidates thought.
        ― Thomas "Sam" Frantz
%
Lend money to a bad debtor and he will hate you.
%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%
Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
%
Let me play with it first and I'll tell you what it is later.
        ― Miles Davis
%
Let me tell you the truth: The truth is what is. And what should be is a
fantasy, a terrible, terrible lie somebody gave the people long ago.
        ― Lenny Bruce
%
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
%
Let the machine do the dirty work.
%
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we countenance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
Let's give discredit where discredit is due.
        ― Karl Lehenbauer
%
Lewis's Law of Travel:
        The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
        anyone, ever.
%
Liar, n.: A lawyer with a roving commission.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Liar: One who tells an unpleasant truth.
%
Liberty is the mother not the daughter of order.
        ― Proudhon
%
Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date.
%
Lieberman's Law: Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%
Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood. Blood debts
must be repaid in kind. The longer the delay, the greater the interest.
        ― Chinese author Lu Xun, 1926
%
Life in a free society is friendly, prosperous, pleasant, cultured, and
ever-longer.
        ― Jeff Daiell, 1989, in counterpoint to Hobbes
%
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
        ― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
%
Life is a pinball machine. You bounce around for a while, and then you drain.
        ― Joe Bak
%
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
%
Life is full of surprises when you're up th' stream of consciousness
without a paddle...
        ― Zippy the Pinhead
%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.
%
Life is not one thing after another, it's the same damned thing over and over.
%
Life is the application of noble and profound ideas to life.
        ― Matthew Arnold
%
Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid.
        ― John Wayne
%
Life is wasted on the living.
        ― Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
%
Life is what happens to you while you are planning to do something else.
%
Life's greatest gift is natural talent.
        ― P. K. Thomajan
%
Life. Don't talk to me about life.
        ― Marvin the Paranoid Anroid
%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
        ― Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%
Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
        ― Alan McKay
%
Like winter snow on summer lawn, time past is time gone.
%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%
listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door;
                let's go.
        ― ee cummings
%
Live every day like it's your last because someday you'll be right.
%
Live free or die.
%
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
around the Sun.
%
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
%
Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree, that smells awful.
%
Long computations which yield 0 (zero) are probably all for naught.
%
Long distance runners break into more pants.
%
Long life is in store for you.
%
Look under the sofa cushion; you will be surprised at what you find.
%
Look, let me explain something to you. I'm not Mr. Lebowski. You're
Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. That, or His
Dudeness … Duder … or El Duderino, if, you know, you're not into the
whole brevity thing.
        ― The Dude ("The Big Lebowski")
%
Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies.
        ― D'Hericault
%
Los Angeles is a geometropolitan predicament rather than a city. You can no
more administer it than you could administer the solar system.
        ― Jonathan Miller
%
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
        ― Elbert Hubbard
%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%
Love means never having to say, "Put down that meat cleaver."
%
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
%
Lowery's Law: If it jams ― force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing
anyway.
%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.
%
Luck is probability taken personally.
        ― Chip Denman
%
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
        ― E. Letterman
%
Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes.
%
Lynch's Law: When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.
%
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
        ― Alan Turing
%
Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Main's Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
%
Maintainer's Motto: If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
%
Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%
Make a wish: it might come true.
%
Make input easy to proofread
%
Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the
programmers cannot write in English.
%
Make it right before you make it faster.
%
Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood.
        ― D. B. Hudson
%
Make sure all variables are initialized before use.
%
Make sure comments and code agree.
%
Make sure your code "does nothing" gracefully.
%
Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users
tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It
has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is
the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
        ― System V.2 administrator's guide
%
Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%
Man is a Generalist. Specialization is for insects.
        ― Lazarus Long
%
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
Man is a rationalizing animal, not a rational animal.
        ― R. A. Heinlein
%
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
        ― Wernher von Braun
%
Man rarely reads the handwriting on the wall until he has his back to it.
%
Man who falls in blast furnace is certain to feel overwrought.
%
Man who falls in vat of molten optical glass makes spectacle of self.
%
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick
himself up and carry on...
        ― Winston Churchill
%
Man's horizons are bounded by his vision.
%
Mankind has yet to devise a rule that never requires exceptions.
        ― Wayne Dyer
%
Manual, n.: A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a
given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The information
you need is in the others.
        ― Ray Simard
%
Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist.
%
Many are called, few are chosen. Fewer still get to do the choosing.
%
Many are called, few volunteer.
%
Many are cold, but few are frozen.
%
Many are the wonders of the Universe, and none so wonderful as Mankind!
        ― Sophocles
%
Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long.
%
Many pages make a thick book.
%
Many receive advice, few profit from it.
%
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ...
        ― Walt Kelly
%
Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
        Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
        simple yes or no answer.
%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
        ― Voltaire
%
Marshall's generalized iceberg theorem: 7/8ths of everything cannot be seen.
%
Martin's Law of Communication: The inevitable result of improved and
enlarged communication between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly
increased area of misunderstanding.
%
Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
receipt.
%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
        ― Jules Feiffer
%
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
        ― R. S. Barton
%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom: If an item is advertised as "under $50",
you can bet it's not $19.95.
%
Meader's Law: Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
everyone you know, only more so.
%
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
%
Mediocrity thrives on standardization.
        ― Wayne Dyer
%
Meditation is not what you think.
%
Meeting, n.: An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
%
Memories of you remind me of you.
        ― Karl
%
Memory should be the starting point of the present.
%
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
%
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires
us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness,
inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are
contrary to habit...
        ― Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
        The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
        All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%
Menu: A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
%
Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
do it over.
%
Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of
Casablanca.
%
Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%
Mile's Law: where you stand depends on where you sit.
%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
        ― Groucho Marx
%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
        ― Groucho Marx
%
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
        ― Susan Ertz
%
Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that politics is
almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum and Tweedledee,"
they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they are presented with a
President who appoints the people who are going to rummage around in their
lives for the next four years. Consider all the people who sat home in a
stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert Humphrey. They showed Humphrey.
Those people who taught Hubert Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the
Nixon Supreme Court when Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads
among the gold and the black.
        ― Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
%
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
        ― Jean Cocteau
%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%
Miss Wormwood: What state do you live in?
Calvin: Denial.
Miss Wormwood: I don't suppose I can argue with that... 
%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%
Mister Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
        Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
        held to discuss it.
%
Modern man is the missing link between the apes and humans.
%
Modesty is an ornament, but you go further without it.
        ― German Proverb
%
Modesty is of no use to a beggar.
        ― Homer
%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: If an idea can survive a bureaucratic
review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing.
%
Money is like a sixth sense, and you can't use the other five without it.
%
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
Morality is one thing. Ratings are everything.
        ― A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
%
More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path
leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let
us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
        ― Woody Allen
%
Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously.
%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
        Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
        be out of a job.
%
Most legislators are so dumb that they couldn't pour piss out of a boot
if the instructions were printed on the heel.
%
Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are
three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
        ― Larry Wall
%
Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
%
Mr. Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
population is growing.
%
Mr. Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
%
Mrs Podgorny: Angus how are y'going to get 48,000,000 kilts into the van?
Angus: I'll have t'do it in two goes.
%
Muddy water let stand will clear.
        ― Chinese Proverb
%
Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.
%
Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%
My answer is, bring them on.
        ― George W. Bush, on Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces;
           Washington, D.C.; July 3, 2003
%
My grandson has learned how to hold and carry the cat. He has also learned
how to flush the toilet. I can't help but believe that in the
not-too-distant future there will be another lesson in store for him.
        ― Dave Henry
%
My head is bloodied, but unbowed.
        ― From the poem "Invictus"
%
My life is so fucking miserable that I don't know whether I was
born or if Morrissey just sang me into existence.
        ― R.K. Milholland
%
My mother is a fish.
        ― William Faulkner
%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%
My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human systems,
and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable.... We should be
reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch. Space is
indifferent to what we do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in
whether or not we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to space,
because the grand, slow march of intelligence has brought us, in our
generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize
it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities.
        ― James A. Michener
%
My past is my own.
        ― The Shadow (DC Comics)
%
Naeser's Law: You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof.
%
Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature,
because it is a product what we can find in our neighborhoods.
        ― George W. Bush, Austin, Texas; December 20, 2000
%
Natural selection won't matter soon, not anywhere as much as concious
selection. We will civilize and alter ourselves to suit our ideas of what
we can be. Within one more human lifespan, we will have changed ourselves
unrecognizably.
        ― Greg Bear
%
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
        ― Abraham Lincoln
%
Necessity is a mother.
%
Neil Armstrong to Walter Cronkite: "Well, Walter, I believe that the Good
Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to
use up mine running up and down a street."
%
Neil Armstrong tripped.
%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
%
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off.
%
Never drink Coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled with
the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations. People tend to change into
lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually fly in the
window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators have windows.
%
Never insult an alligator until you have crossed the river.
%
Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting.
        ― Billy Rose
%
Never lick a gift horse in the mouth.
%
Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.
%
Never say you know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him.
%
Never throw a bird at a dragon.
%
Never count your chickens until they rip your lips off.
%
New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
his wife most often reminds him to act it.
        ― Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
%
New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
        ― David Letterman
%
New boots, big steps.
        ― Chinese Proverb
%
New systems generate new problems.
%
Newlan's Truism:
        An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
        economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
%
Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
        A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't
have a lucky day this year.
%
Next Wednesday you will be presented with a great opportunity.
%
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
        ― F. J. Raymond
%
Nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecunia possit. (No fort is so strong
that it cannot be taken with money.)
        ― Cicero
%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
%
No guts, no glory.
%
No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in
his pocket, or at least had been fooling around with timetables.
        ― Archie Goodwin
%
No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the Legislature is in
session.
        ― Lysander Spooner
%
No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up.
%
No matter where you go, there you are.
        ― Buckaroo Banzai
%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
        ― Eleanor Roosevelt
%
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived
at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ... And if he does
know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to
decide a single human fate.
        ― C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
%
No one is talking behind your back as far as you know.
%
No one who accepts the sovereignty of truth can be a foot soldier in a party
or movement. He will always find himself out of step.
        ― Sidney Hook
%
No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.
        ― Ayn Rand
%
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
%
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
%
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
%
No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough,
'twill serve: ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man.
        ― Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1
%
No user-serviceable parts inside. Refer to qualified service personnel.
%
Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest.
%
Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
        ― Tallulah Bankhead
%
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
%
Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with
constructive praise.
%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
        Negative expectations yield negative results.
        Positive expectations yield negative results.
%
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
%
None love the bearer of bad news.
        ― Sophocles
%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced ― even a proverb is no
proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
        ― John Keats
%
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
%
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.
        ― Edmund Burke
%
Nothing is as repulsive as phoniness; conversely, nothing is as magnetic
as reality.
        ― Howard Henrichs
%
Nothing is done until nothing is done.
%
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
than to understand him.
        ― Fyodor Dostoevski
%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
        ― Andrew Young
%
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm: It moves stones, and it charms brutes.
%
Nothing recedes like success.
        ― Walt Kelly
%
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
%
O'Riordan's Theorem: Brains x Beauty = Constant.
Purmal's Corollary: As the limit of (Brains x Beauty) goes to infinity,
availability goes to zero.
%
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist.
%
Objects on your screen are closer than they appear.
%
Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which
he has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has
the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with
distorted and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting,
with propaganda and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole
reasoning processes, and make him something less than a man.
        ― Arthur Hays Sulzberger
%
Ocean, n.: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for
man ― who has no gills.
%
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
        ― Plato
%
Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.
        ― Thomas Paine
%
Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
%
Of course, someone who knows more about this will correct me if I'm wrong,
and someone who knows less will correct me if I'm right.
        ― David Palmer (palmer@tybalt.caltech.edu)
%
Ogden's Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
%
Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again.
        ― Marvin the Paranoid Android
%
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
%
Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement.
%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
        ― Trotsky
%
Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
%
Oliver's First Law of Computing: Computers are much too complex; they'll
never work.
        ― Robert Oliver (circa 1982)
%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
%
On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective software
tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the University.
        ― John Lions (U. of Toronto (?))
%
Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
        ― W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
%
One Page Principle: A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11-
inch paper cannot be understood.
        ― Mark Ardis
%
One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a
stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.
        ― Gustave Flaubert (letter to Madame Louise Colet, August 12, 1846)
%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled.
%
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
a rivalry of aim.
        ― Henry Brook Adams
%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
%
One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.
%
One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
merit a wise man's reflection.
        ― Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Stanford University,
           commenting on psi research
%
One millihelen: the unit of beauty required to launch just one ship
%
One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible
from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at
least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts
are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but
when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
        ― John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
%
One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is
the use of the word "I".
        ― Ludwig Wittgenstein
%
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no
longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured
us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge ― even to ourselves ― that
we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the
new bamboozles rise.)
        ― Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,"
           Parade, February 1, 1987
%
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
%
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.
%
One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
%
One's mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.
%
Only God can make random selections.
%
Opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one, but nobody wants to look at
the other guy's.
        ― Hal Hickman
%
Optimists say the glass is half full, pessimists say the glass is half
empty, engineers say the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%
Optimization is not some mystical state of grace, it is an intricate act
of human labor which carries real costs and real risks.
        ― Tom Neff
%
Ordinary people: I fuckin' hate 'em.
        ― Harry Dean Stanton in "Repo Man"
%
Oregon, n.:
        Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
night.
%
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
        ― Mike Adams
%
Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't.
%
Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined,
hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not
aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension.
        ― Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us: Hypnotic Regression
           Revisited", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
%
Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press, and that cannot be
limited without being lost.
        ― Thomas Jefferson (1786)
%
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
        ― Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
%
Out of body, back in five minutes.
%
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too
dark to read.
%
Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
%
Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
%
Overload ― core meltdown sequence initiated.
%
PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs,
whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil perpetrated by skilled but
perverted professionals.
        ― Jon Ribbens
%
Paranoia doesn't mean the whole world really isn't out to get you.
%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
        ― D. J. Hicks
%
Parking fees that Universal Studios collected from picketers of _The Last
Temptation of Christ_: $4,500
        ― Harper's Index Nov. 1988
%
Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay in important decision,
the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%
Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to
increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%
Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time alloted it.
%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%
Benford's Law of Controversy: Passion is inversely proportional to the
amount of real information available.
        ― Gregory Benford
%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
        ― Eric Hoffer
%
Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
        ― Ambrose Bierce
%
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtains.
%
Peace: a period of cheating between two wars.
%
People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange surroundings ―
they can become accustomed to reading Lisp and Fortran programs, for example.
        ― Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
%
People get lost in thought because it is unfamiliar territory.
%
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
the future.
%
People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how
hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
        ― Calvin
%
People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
%
People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never
slept in a room with a single mosquito.
%
People who have no faults are terrible; there is no way of taking advantage
of them.
%
People who look down on other people do not end up being looked up to.
%
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
Benjamin Franklin said it first.
%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
(Confound those who have said our remarks before us.)
        ― Aelius Donatus
%
Perfection is achieved only on the point of collapse.
        ― C. N. Parkinson
%
Perpetuo vincit qui utitur clementia. (He is forever victor who employs
clemency.)
        ― Syrus
%
Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.
        ― E. G. Leter
%
Peter's Law of Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains
will look after themselves.
%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%
Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
%
pi seconds is a nanocentury.
        ― Tom Duff
%
Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die
        ― John W. Campbell
%
Plagiarism is basic to all culture.
        ― Papa Seeger
%
Plan ahead: it was not raining when Noah built the ark.
        ― Richard Cushing
%
Please don't ask me what the score is. I'm not even sure what the game is.
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the
truth.
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Please go away.
%
Please ignore previous fortune.
%
Please try to limit the amount of `this room doesn't have any bazingas'
until you are told that those rooms are `punched out.' Once punched
out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas,
and such.
        ― N. Meyrowitz
%
Please update your programs.
%
Poetry is nobody's business except the poet's, and everybody else can fuck off.
        ― Philip Larkin
%
Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
%
Police up your spare rounds and frags. Don't leave nothin' for the dinks.
        ― Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
%
Politician, n.: From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete"
("head" or "face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face).
Hence "polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
        ― Martin Pitt
%
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
        ― Leonardo da Vinci
%
Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Power is poison.
%
Power, n: The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
%
Practice is the best of all instructors.
        ― Publilius
%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
        ― Niels Bohr
%
Preserve the old, but know the new.
%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side.
%
Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or
from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
of individual human brains.
        ― Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for
           Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%
Prevent security leaks.
%
Pro is to Con as Progress is to Congress.
%
Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system]
made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories.
        ― Ted Nelson, October 1977
%
Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.
        ― Leviticus 25:10
%
Programming is an art form that fights back.
%
Programming is 10% science, 25% ingenuity and 65% getting the ingenuity to
work with the science.
%
Programming is like sex: one mistake and you're providing support for a
lifetime.
        ― Michael Sinz
%
Progress is nothing but the victory of laughter over dogma.
        ― Benjamin DeCasseres
%
Promptness is its own reward
If one lives by the clock instead of the sword.
%
Pronounce your prepositions, dammit!
%
Proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect.
        ― David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey,
           in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%
Pull yourself together; things are not all that bad.
%
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
%
Put your trust in those who are worthy.
%
Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
%
Q. What's all wrinkled and hangs out your underwear?
A. Your mom!
%
Q.: "Why do trans-atlantic transfers take so long?"
A.: "Electrons don't swim very fast."
%
Q: How do you play religious roulette?
A: You stand around in a circle and blaspheme and see who gets struck
   by lightning first.
%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat ?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
%
Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%
Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%
Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001,
   Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of
   the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20%
   of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences
   of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
%
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
%
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
   Californians trying to share the experience.
%
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself
   symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a
   netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin
   cosmos of nothingness.
%
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
   light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government
   plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer
   Prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb-assassin
   to break the bulb in the first place.
%
Q: How many Pro-Lifers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to say that light started when the
   screwing began.
%
Q: How many supply-siders does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.
%
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with
   brightly-colored power tools.
%
Q. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Only one, but it takes a really long time and the light bulb has to want
   to change.
%
Q: What do you do with an elephant with three balls?
A: Walk him and pitch to the rhino.
%
Q: Why did the tachyontac cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
%
Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
%
Quantity is no substitute for quality, but it's the only one we've got.
%
Quoth the Raven, "Never mind."
%
Quotations are for people who are not saying things worth quoting.
%
Quoting one is plagiarism. Quoting many is research.
%
Rational people don't go stomping around demanding that the world be
perfect for them.
        ― Matthew N. Dodd <winter @ jurai.net>, in comments posted to the
           freebsd-java mailing list, 6 Feb 2000
%
READ UNHAPPY - MAKNAM
        ― LISP 1.5
%
Romeo:   Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
Mercutio: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church.
%
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!
        ― Dylan Thomas
%
Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
        ― George W. Bush; Florence, South Carolina; January 11, 2000
%
Ray's Rule of Precision:
        Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
%
Re: graphics: A picture is worth 10K words ― but only those to describe the
picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with
pictures.
%
Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
%
Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
spring up in the middle of the machine room.
%
Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
%
Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use
functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
%
Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
and then.
%
Real wealth can only increase.
        ― R. Buckminster Fuller
%
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
        ― Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
Recent investments will yield a slight profit.
%
Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at
speeds faster than 85 MPH (140k/h).
        ― presumable misprint from the 1987 Buick Grand National
           owner's manual.
%
Reliable software must kill people reliably.
        ― Andy Mickel
%
Religions revolve madly around sexual questions.
%
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for
every noble enterprise.
        ― James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774
%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse
in Cleveland.
%
Remember: You cannot drain the ocean with a teaspoon.
        ― Ignas Bernstein
%
Removing the error messages "now that the program is working" is like
wearing a parachute on the ground, but taking it off once you're in the air.
        ― Kernighan & Plauger [Software Tools]
%
Render unto Caesar if line 54 is larger than line 62.
%
Replace repetitive expressions by calls to a common function.
%
Reporter, n.: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
tempest of words.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
        ― Wernher von Braun
%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
another chance later on.
%
Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals.
        ― "Oh, Lucky Man"
%
Ride the tributaries to reach the sea.
        ― Arab Proverb
%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
        Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
        reject the proposal.
%
Rudin's Law: In a crisis that forces a choice to be made between alternative
courses of action, most people will choose the worse one possible.
%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
        When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
        content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the
        bathroom.
%
Rule of the Great:
        When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
        thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
%
Rules for driving in New York:
        1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
        2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers on.
        3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the intersection.
%
SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
        ― Ken Thompson
%
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
        ― George Orwell
%
Salad is what food eats.
%
Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.
%
Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.
%
Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OSes is like saying that
anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
        ― Alanna
%
Schapiro's Explanation: The grass is always greener on the other side ―
but that's because they use more manure.
%
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty
without any proof.
        ― Ashley Montague
%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%
Scott's First Law: No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%
Scott's Second Law: When an error has been detected and corrected, it will
        be found to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it will be
        impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
%
See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and
over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.
        ― George W. Bush; Greece, New York; May 24, 2005
%
Seminars, n.: From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
%
Semper ubi sub ubi.
%
Serocki's Stricture: Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
        ― M. C. Reed.
%
Sex is the poor man's opera.
        ― G. B. Shaw
%
Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
it's one of the best.
        ― Woody Allen
%
Shake hands with your mother again.
        ― from an old hymn
%
Shaw's Principle:
        Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
        want to use it.
%
She hates testicles, thus limiting the men she can admire to Democratic
candidates for president.
        ― John Greenway, "The American Tradition", on feminist
           Elizabeth Gould Davis
%
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
have poured on a waffle ...
%
Short words are best, and the old words when short are best of all.
        ― Winston Churchill
%
Show business is just like high school, except you get paid.
        ― Martin Mull
%
Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
playing golf with his boss.
%
Silverman's Law: If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%
Simon's Law: Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor): That quantity which,
when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you
get, gives you the answer you should have gotten.
%
Slime is the agony of water.
        ― Jean-Paul Sartre
%
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.
        ― Bertrand Russell
%
So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and
our doubts serve to reassure us.
        ― Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
%
So where the sheer incompetence of politicians and generals used to start
wars, the sheer incompetence of us computer people has now put an end to
it. No mean feat. For centuries humanity has been looking for the Weapon
That Would End War Forever. We have found it. War has ended, not with the
bang of a bomb, but with the gentle whisper of crashing software.
        ― Gerard Stafleu (gerard@uwovax.uwo.ca)
%
So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here.
        ― Biff in "Back to the Future"
%
Socialism is power, power, and more power.
        ― Oswald Spengler, Hitler's intellectual forebear
%
Society is the presumption of habit over instinct.
        ― Peter Taylor
%
Sodd's Second Law: Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
bound to occur.
%
Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human
construct because no two parts are alike. If they are, we make the two
similar parts into a subroutine ― open or closed. In this respect, software
systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where
repeated elements abound.
        ― Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
'user-friendly'.... Their best approach, so far, has been to take
all the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover.
        ― Bill Gates, President, Microsoft, Inc.
%
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
Some grow with responsibility, others just swell.
        ― Arnold Glasow
%
Some men are discovered; others are found out.
%
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
        ― Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%
Some people fall for everything and stand for nothing.
%
Some people hope to achieve immortality through their works or their children.
I would prefer to achieve it by not dying.
        ― Woody Allen
%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
them on the head.
%
Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall
instead of using it
        ― Gordon R. Dickson
%
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they
should live next door and just visit now and then.
        ― Katherine Hepburn
%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
        ― Lily Tomlin
%
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
        ― Sigmund Freud
%
Sometimes the only solution is to find a new problem.
%
Sometimes the only way out of a difficulty is through it.
%
Sometimes, too long is too long.
        ― Joe Crowe
%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers: If a subordinate asks you a pertinent
question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down,
paraphrase the question back at him.
%
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
%
Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure
that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free the
middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a bit
string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a
controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before passing it
back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same memory
location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well, no, but Real
Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously designed and written by
Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
%
Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
power should not become too important in any church.
        ― Eleanor Roosevelt
%
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
%
Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old.
        ― Pink Floyd
%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
        Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
        handle.
%
Stock brokers invest your money until it's all gone.
        ― Woody Allen
%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if it'd only take a bath.
%
Stult's Report: Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is
fight the solutions.
%
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
%
Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap.
%
Success is a journey, not a destination.
%
Success is not free. Neither is failure.
        ― Ray Kroc
%
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss
of enthusiasm.
        ― Winston Churchill
%
Success is what happens when something goes right.
        ― Arnold Glasow
%
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
        ― Seneca
%
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
%
Superiority is always detested.
        ― Balasar Gracian
%
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest
men in national government too.
        ― Richard M. Nixon
%
Swipple's Rule of Order: He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
        ― Frank Lloyd Wright
%
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.
%
Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
%
Tact is the great ability to see other people as they think you see them.
%
Tact, n.: The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
%
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
%
Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
%
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
enough cheese.
        ― National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it
needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
        ― Kipling
%
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
        ― Ken Kesey
%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
        ― Russell Long
%
Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he
grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway.
%
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means
for going backwards.
        ― Aldous Huxley
%
Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll believe
you.... Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll have to touch it
to be sure.
%
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing.
        ― R. Geis
%
Than self restraint, there is nothing better.
        ― Lao Tzu
%
That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.
        ― Thomas Jefferson, on the U.S. Congress.
%
That government is best which governs least.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
That government is best which governs not at all.
        ― Henry David Thoreau
%
That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended ― civilizations
are built up ― excellent institutions devised; but each time something
goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to
the top, and then it all slides back into misery and ruin. In fact, the
machine conks. It seems to start up all right and runs a few yards, and
then it breaks down.
        ― C. S. Lewis
%
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
        ― Thoreau
%
That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.
%
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
        ― Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
%
The Abrams' Principle: The shortest distance between two points is off the
wall.
%
The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will
take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that
by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.
%
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
their children to speak it.
        ― G. B. Shaw
%
The Fifth Rule: You have taken yourself too seriously.
%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
by the number of people in the group.
%
The Idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on
cross-breeding, grows better for being stepped on.
        ― Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"
%
The Kennedy Constant: Don't get mad ― get even.
%
The Law of Software Envelopment (at MIT): Every program at MIT attempts to
expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot expand are
replaced by ones which can.
%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor,
to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
        ― Anatole France
%
The Official MBA Handbook on business cards: Avoid overly pretentious job
titles such as "Lord of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India"
or "Director of Corporate Planning."
%
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the
right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
        ― Dorothy Nevill
%
The Roman Rule: The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
one who is doing it.
%
The Swartzberg Test: The validity of a science is its ability to predict.
%
The Third Law of Photography: If you did manage to get any good shots, they
will be ruined when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all
of the dark leaks out.
%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
%
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
world put together.
        ― Sir Peter Medawar
%
The United States has entered an anti-intellectual phase in its history,
perhaps most clearly seen in our virtually thought-free political life.
        ― David Baltimore
%
The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by
people who want some.
        ― Dwight MacDonald
%
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the―the vast majority
of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these
people and we will bring them to justice.
        ― George W. Bush, Washington, D.C.; October 28, 2003
%
The angels wanna wear my red shoes.
%
The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
        ― Samuel Johnson
%
The attacker must vanquish; the defender need only survive.
%
The attention span of a computer is as long as its electrical cord.
%
The author should gaze at Noah, and ... learn, as they did in the Ark, to crowd
a great deal of matter into a very small compass.
        ― Sydney, Smith, Edinburgh Review
%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
%
The best cure for anger is delay.
        ― Seneca
%
The best prophet of the future is the past.
%
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and
fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
drifting side by side to our common doom.
        ― Clarence Darrow
%
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off
by a bit.
        ― Anonymous
%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
%
The best way to break a bad habit is to drop it.
        ― Anonymous
%
The better part of maturity is knowing your goals.
        ― Arnold Glasow
%
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
time.
        ― Merrick Furst
%
The chain that can be yanked is not the cosmic chain.
        ― Cal Keegan
%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steam fitters' picnic.
%
The chief barrier to happiness is envy.
        ― Frank Tyger
%
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
        ― Eric Sevareid, CBS Evening News, December 29, 1970
%
The city of the dead antedates the city of the living.
        ― Lewis Mumford
%
The clothes have no emperor.
        ― C. A. Hoare, about Ada.
%
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity
often abstract away its essence.
        ― Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
        ― Alan Perlis
%
The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems
and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting
language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best
dangerous.
        ― Bjarne Stroustrup in "The C++ Programming Language"
%
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but ―" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about.
        ― Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going
down.
%
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold,
persistent experimentation.
        ― Franklin Delano Roosevelt
%
The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to eat.
        ― John McNulty
%
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being
as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of
the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the
dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with
this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine
doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
us who are fortunate enough never to have been one ― like watching
Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
%
The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
%
The decision didn't have to be logical, it was unanimous.
%
The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
%
The difference between Genius and Stupidity is that Genius has limits.
%
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
        ― Robert Heinlein
%
The difference between sympathy and empathy is three letters: "yes".
        ― P. Taylor
%
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere
in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths,
Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
Christianity.
        ― John Adams
%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
        ― Buckminster Fuller
%
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
%
The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
symposium to follow.
%
The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.
        ― Horace
%
The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand
years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man
is and will always be a wild animal.
        ― Charles Galton Darwin
%
The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
        ― L. Ogborn
%
The famous politician was trying to save both his faces.
%
The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order
of space and time.
        ― Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%
The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems.
        ― Roger Levian
%
The finest eloquence is that which gets things done.
%
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% of a project
takes 90% of the time.
%
The first and great commandment is: Do not let them scare you.
        ― Elmer Davis
%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
        ― Abbie Hoffman
%
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
        ― Paul Erlich
%
The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
        ― Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization.
        ― Alan Coult
%
The following statement is true.
The previous statement is false.
%
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects
into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to
levitation.

Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the
character does not have fire resistance.

        ― README file from the NetHack game
%
The fourth law of thermodynamics:
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.
%
The fundamentalists, by "knowing" the answers before they start [examining
evolution], and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their
discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science―-or of any
honest intellectual inquiry.
        ― Stephen Jay Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus (1990)
%
The future isn't what it used to be. (It never was.)
%
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
%
The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%
The government of the United States is not in any sense founded
on the Christian Religion.
        ― George Washington (The Treaty of Tripoli)
%
The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.
%
The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace.
        ― Holly Near
%
The hand that rocks the cradle can also cradle a rock.
        ― Feminist saying, circa 1968-1972
%
The hardest thing to open is a closed mind.
        ― Leo Burnett
%
The heart has no rainbows when the eye has no tears.
%
The hell with the Prime Directive: let's kill something.
%
The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent
thinkers.
%
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best".
        ― H. Allen Smith
%
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity
― the rest is overhead for the operating system.
%
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
protein ― it rejects it.
        ― P. Medawar
%
The hypothesis: Amid a wash of paper, a small number of documents become the
critical pivots around which every project's management revolves. These are the
manager's chief personal tools.
        ― Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to
lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the
fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into
it in the first place.
        ― attributed to Douglas Adams
%
The ideal is impossible. The idea of the ideal is essential.
        ― P. Taylor
%
The inability to benefit from feedback appears to be the primary cause of
pseudoscience. Pseudoscientists retain their beliefs and ignore or distort
contradictory evidence rather than modify or reject a flawed theory. Because
of their strong biases, they seem to lack the self-correcting mechanisms
scientists must employ in their work.
        ― Thomas L. Creed, "The Skeptical Inquirer," Summer 1987
%
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
important thing to people.
        ― Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
%
The Internet? Is that thing still around?
        ― Homer Simpson
%
The Internet is the most powerful stupidity amplifier ever invented. It’s
like television without the television part.
        —- James “Kibo” Perry
%
The lame in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it.
        ― Francis Bacon
%
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
        ― Blaise Pascal
%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%
The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is
evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful for the sake
of something else.
        ― Aristotle
%
The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
%
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
train.
%
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get
much sleep.
        ― Woody Allen
%
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
        ― Henry Kissinger
%
The love of money is only one among many.
        ― Alfred Marshall
%
The luck that is ordained for you will be coveted by others.
%
The main thing is the play itself. I swear that greed for money has nothing
to do with it, although heaven knows I am sorely in need of money.
        ― Feodor Dostoyevsky
%
The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be. ...
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and
experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it
enough.
        ― Adam Smith
%
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no
one has ever been.
        ― Alan Ashley-Pitt
%
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a soda
can, when discarded will last forever; and a $20,000 car which, when
properly cared for, will rust out in two or three years.
%
The meek are contesting the will.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth ― they are too weak to refuse.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
        ― J. Paul Getty
%
The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us will go to the stars.
%
The meek will inherit the Earth..... The rest of us will go to the stars.
%
The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out.
        ― Tenessee Williams
%
The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
%
The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and
robbers there will be.
        ― Lao Tsu
%
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
%
The more things change, the more they'll never be the same again.
%
The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us
is right.
%
The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
        ― Andy Warhol
%
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
        ― Isaac Asimov
%
The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to
correlate all its contents.
        ― H. P. Lovecraft
%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
hope I don't get run over again.
%
The next six days are dangerous.
%
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
choose from.
        ― Andrew S. Tanenbaum
%
The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
80-column card.
        ― Dennis M. Ritchie
%
The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly analyze
all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their occurrence, have
answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve these problems when
called upon. However, when you are up to your ass in alligators it is
difficult to remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
%
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a necessity.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
to cringe.
%
The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
%
The only good bug is a dead bug.
But the best bug is the one that wasn't there to begin with.
%
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the
`social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
        ― Ernest Rutherford
%
The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
and take a rest.
%
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
        ― Edmund Burke
%
The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.
        ― Harry S Truman
%
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any
use to oneself.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement.
%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
        ― Brian Kernighan
%
The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
until 5 or 6 pm.
%
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a
profound truth may well be another profound truth.
        ― Niels Bohr
%
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
        ― Bohr
%
The optimum committee has no members.
        ― Norman Augustine
%
The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
it isn't here.
        ― Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%
The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato
chip market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food
market and is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose
        ― James Finke, President, Commodore Int'l Ltd. (1982)
%
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter
swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The
center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
        ― Dizzy Dean
%
The plural of spouse is spice.
%
The police are not there to create disorder.  The police are there to
preserve disorder.
        ― The late Richard J. Daly, Mayor of the city of Chicago
%
The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of
the Force.
        ― Darth Vader
%
The price of greatness is responsibility.
        ― Winston Churchill
%
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side.
        ― James Baldwin
%
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
        ― FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
%
The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the
stupidity of your action.
%
The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go
to erase it.
        ― Glaser and Way
%
The problem with being best man at a wedding is that you never get a
chance to prove it.
%
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
        ― Elizabeth Taylor
%
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
%
The program is absolutely right; therefore the computer must be wrong.
%
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-
stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the
imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and
rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
        ― Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
The purpose of most meetings seems to be to get as much human meat as possible
into one room.
        ― James Iry, via Twitter
%
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong ―
but that's the way to bet.
        ― Damon Runyon
%
The rain it raineth on the just
        And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
        The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
%
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in
contemporary psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven
fruitful...After more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist
one example of an ESP phenomenon that is replicable under controlled
conditions. This simple but basic scientific criterion has not been met
despite dozens of studies conducted over many decades... It is for this
reason alone that the topic is now of little interest to psychology... In
short, there is no demonstrated phenomenon that needs explanation.
        ― Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology",
           pp. 160-161
%
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
%
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our
behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel.
        ― Steve Furtick
%
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
        ― George Bernard Shaw
%
The revolution will not be televised.
%
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
        ― Emerson
%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left-handed people are in their right minds.
%
The road to to success is always under construction.
        ― Florian Bruckner
%
The secret cement of any organization is trust.
        ― Donald E. Walker
%
The shell must break before the bird can fly.
        ― Alfred, Lord Tennyson
%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
        ― Noelie Altito
%
The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.
%
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference ― one can
see only a very few things at once.
        ― Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
The solution to a problem changes the problem.
        ― J. Martin
%
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
        ― Ed Bluestone
%
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
%
The steady state of disks is full.
        ―Ken Thompson
%
The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study
of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it
proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and
it admits of no conclusion.
        ― Thomas Paine, from The Age of Reason
%
The subject matter of research is no longer nature in itself, but nature
subjected to human questioning . . .
        ― Werner Heisenberg
%
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright ―
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
        ― Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
The superfluous is very necessary.
        ― Voltaire
%
The sweetest of all sounds is praise.
        ― Xenophon
%
The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time
to come. One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just
within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most
intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex
craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best
adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common
sense, and ... humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.
        ― Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
The Three Laws of Thermodynamics
The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.
The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break even.
The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
%
The time is right to make new friends.
%
The trouble with a kitten is that
When it grows up, it's always a cat
        ― Ogden Nash.
%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
more important to do.
%
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.
%
The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer
is doing until it's too late.
        ― Seymour Cray
%
The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to
prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.
        ― Louis Kronenberger
%
The truth is that all those having power ought to be mistrusted.
        ― James Madison
%
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And
vice versa.
%
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
light table for cutting and pasting documents.
%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%
The unnatural, that too is natural.
        ― Goethe
%
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense.
        ― E. W. Dijkstra (1982)
%
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that
high aims are worth-while. Vigorous societies harbor a certain
extravagance of objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of
personal gratifications. All strong interests easily become impersonal,
the love of a good job well done. There is a sense of harmony about such
an accomplishment, the Peace brought by something worth-while.
        ― Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space
           Flight"
%
The way to make a small fortune in the stock market is to start with a
large one.
%
The Web is like a dominatrix. Everywhere I turn, I see little buttons
ordering me to Submit.
        ― Nytwind
%
The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.
        ― Wavy Gravy
%
The wife you save may be your own.
        ― Unofficial slogan of supporters of one of FDR's sons,
           a notorious womanizer, during the son's first congressional race
%
The wise shepherd never trusts his flock to a smiling wolf.
%
The world is a fantasy, so let's find out about it.
        ― Astrophysicist Dennis Sciama, to Timothy Ferris (quoted in
           Ferris's book, "The Mind's Sky")
%
The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
%
[The World Wide Web is] the only thing I know of whose shortened
form―www―takes three times longer to say than what it's short for.
        ― attributed to Douglas Adams
%
The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who think the world is
divided into two kinds of people and those who do not.
%
The world is no nursery.
        ― Sigmund Freud
%
The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.
        ― Father Robert F. Capon
%
The world will not recognize your talent until you demonstrate it.
%
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful
        ― Frederick Locker-Lampson
%
The worst form of failure is the failure to try.
%
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
the answers.
%
Theorem: A cat has nine tails. Proof: No cat has eight tails. A cat has one
tail more than no cat. Therefore, a cat has nine tails.
%
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
%
There are 10 types of people who understand binary: The ones who do, and
the ones who don't.
%
There are a lot of lies going around.... and half of them are true.
        ― Winston Churchill
%
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
and praiseworthy ...
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
There are no bugs, only unrecognized features.
%
There are no giant crabs in here, Frank.
%
There are no saints, only unrecognized villains.
%
There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always
bitch about and those nobody uses.
        ― Bjarne Stroustrup
%
There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again,
don't we all?
%
There are 10 kinds of people. Those who know binary and those who don't.
%
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
        ― Heisenberg
%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
        ― Disraeli
%
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
%
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life:
"The Lord of the Rings" and "Atlas Shrugged". One is a childish fantasy
that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes,
leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to
deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
        ― John Rogers (kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/03/ephemera-2009-7.html)
%
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
        ― Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
%
There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one works.
%
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true. The other
is to refuse to accept what is true.
        ― Søren Kierkegaard
%
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a
suitable application of high explosives.
%
There can be no offense where none is taken.
        ― Japanese proverb
%
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
        ― Henry Kissinger
%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know nothing
about.
%
There is a bear following you around.
%
There is a decivilizing bug somewhere at work; unconsciously persons of
stern worth, by not resenting and resisting the small indignities of the
times, are preparing themselves for the eventual acceptance of what they
themselves know they don't want.
        ― attributed to E.B. White
%
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
%
There is no "Complete Idiot's Guide to Creationism," but perhaps one is not
needed.
        ― Andrei Codrescu, on NPR Aug. 25, 1999
%
There is no excuse for the use of the word "synergies" on any project where
common sense and straight talking are the norm.
        ― Paul Robinson <paul @ iconoplex.co.uk>, in a post to the
           FreeBSD-Hackers mailing list, 17 July, 2003
%
There is some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing that it's basically
impossible to send a piece of hate mail through the Internet without its
being touched by a gay program. That's kind of funny.
        ― Eric Allman
%
There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage
and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What
is it? Distrust.
        ― Demosthenes: Philippic 2, sect. 24.
%
There is a time in the tides of men,
Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
On the other hand, don't count on it.
        ― T. K. Lawson
%
There is danger in delaying, good fortune in acting.
%
There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing the
rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries civilization
will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements. We must provide a Great
Age or see the collapse of the upward striving of the human race.
        ― Alfred North Whitehead
%
There is no heavier burden than a great potential.
%
There is no idea so sacred that it cannot be questioned, analyzed...
and ridiculed.
        ― Cal Keegan
%
There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the tools to
attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not abuse it. So
it is written in the genetic cards ― only physics and war hold him in
check. And also the wife who wants him home by five, of course.
        ― Encyclopadia Apocrypha, 1990 ed.
%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it
        ― G. B. Shaw
%
There is no statute of limitations on stupidity.
        ― Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
%
There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
%
There is no such thing as not enough time if you are doing what you want to do.
%
There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.
%
There is no time like the pleasant.
%
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing.
%
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
        ― Swift
%
There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way.
        ― Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%
There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a howling
away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were
a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to
see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was.
        ― Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
%
There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of the
two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double- digit
inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the 8-cent
postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the transistor,
the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording,
sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, magnetic tape,
magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching systems, microwave radio and TV
relay systems, information theory, the first electrical digital computer,
and the first communications satellite. Guess which one got to tell the
other how to run the telephone business?
%
There will always be survivors.
        ― Robert Heinlen
%
There will be big changes for you, but you will be happy.
%
There you go man,
Keep as cool as you can.
It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave.
Keep on being free!
%
There's a bug somewhere in your code.
%
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not a fence.
%
There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
%
There's always someone, somewhere,
with a big nose, who knows
and who trips you up and laughs
when you fall.
        ― The Smiths
%
There's at least one fool in every married couple.
%
There's got to be more to life than compile-and-go.
%
There's more than one way to skin a cat:
        Way number 15 ― Krazy Glue and a toothbrush.
%
There's more than one way to skin a cat:
        Way number 27 ― Use an electric sander.
%
There's more to life than sitting around in the sun in your underwear
playing the clarinet.
        ― Woody Allen
%
There's no future in time travel
%
There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one
thing always leading to another.
        ― E. B. White
%
There's no place like home.
%
There's no place like $HOME.
%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
        ― Dr. Who
%
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right
keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
        ― J. S. Bach
%
There's nothing wrong with America that a good erection wouldn't cure.
        ― David Mairowitz
%
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
what it is I'll get married again.
        ― Clint Eastwood
%
There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
becoming an endangered synthetic.
        ― Lily Tomlin
%
These patriots don't mince words... Okay, sure, they ARE dangerous,
hopelessly ignorant, inbred, retarded borderline lunatics with an
insatiable lust for the blood of sinners ― but at least they're HONEST
about it.
        ― Reverend Ivan Stang, cofounder of the Church of the Subgenius,
           about a group known as Free Love Ministries, in his book _High
           Weirdness By Mail_
%
They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live.
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%
They took some of the Van Goghs, most of the jewels, and all of the Chivas!
%
Things are always at their best in the beginning.
        ― Pascal
%
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
        ― Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%
Things are not as simple as they seems at first.
        ― Edward Thorp
%
Things won't get any better, so get used to it.
%
Think honk if you're a telepath.
%
This fortune intentionally not included.
%
This fortune is false.
%
This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
%
This fortune will self destruct in 5 years.
%
This isn't brain surgery; it's just television.
        ― David Letterman
%
This space unintentionally left blank.
%
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks ― to have
a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
no wires, no controls.
        ― Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
%
Thoreau's Law: If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of
doing you good, you should run for your life.
        ― Attributed to Thoreau by William H. Whyte, Jr., in
           The Organization Man (1956)
%
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever
church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused
of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with
religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.
        ― Eleanor Roosevelt
%
Those who are quick in deciding are in danger of being mistaken.
        ― Sophocles
%
Those who believe in astrology are living in houses with foundations of
Silly Putty.
        ― Dennis Rawlins, astronomer
%
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their
hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt,
without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in
the God idea, not God Himself.
        ― Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer
%
Those who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
%
Those who can, do; those who can't, simulate.
%
Those who can't repeat the past are condemned to remember it.
        ― Mark O'Donnell
%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
        ― Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hacker
%
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
        ― Aristotle
%
Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
%
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable.
        ― John F. Kennedy
%
Those who talk don't know. Those who don't talk, know.
%
Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit
are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide
to avoid assassination.
        ― Harry S Truman
%
Throw out your gold teeth / And see how they roll.
The answer they reveal: / Life is unreal.
        ― Steely Dan
%
Time and tide wait for no man.
%
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
%
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
        ― Graffiti
%
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
%
Time wounds all heels.
%
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is
writing a book.
        ― Cicero
%
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
        ― Frank Lloyd Wright
%
To be awake is to be alive.
        ― Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden Pond"
%
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
%
To be is to program.
%
To be overbusy is a witless task.
        ― Sophocles
%
To be perfect is to have changed often.
        ― J. H. Newman
%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the
target.
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
%
To be wrong all the time is an effort, but some manage it.
        ― William Feather
%
To be, or what?
        ― Sylvester Stallone
%
To criticize the incompetent is easy; it is more difficult to criticize the
competent.
%
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.
        ― H. F. Amiel
%
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
        ― C. K. Chesterton
%
To err is human, to compute divine. Trust your computer but not its programmer.
        ― Morris Kingston
%
To err is human, to forgive divine.
%
To follow foolish precedents, and wink
With both our eyes, is easier than to think.
        ― William Cowper
%
To invent products out of thin air, you don't ask people what they want ―
after all, who would've told you ten years ago that they needed a CD
player? You ask them what problems they have when they get up in the
morning.
        ― Robert Hall, Sr. Vice President, GVO, as quoted in the December,
           1991, issue of Fortune
%
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
        ― Thomas Edison
%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a
deep delight of the blood.
        ― Georges Santayana
%
To know the world one must construct it.
        ― Cesare Pavese
%
To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.
%
To program anything that is programmable is obsession.
%
To program is to be.
%
To steal from a thief is not theft. It is merely irony.
        ― Zorro, while retrieving money taxed from Californians
%
To steal from one person is theft. To steal from many is taxation.
        ― Daiell's Law (a take-off on Felson's Law)
%
To teach is to learn.
%
To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence: precision
and flexibility may be just as disfunctional in novel, uncertain situations
as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar, well-defined ones. Those
who admire the massive, rigid bone structures of dinosaurs should remember
that jellyfish still enjoy their very secure ecological niche.
        ― Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
%
Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
%
Today is the last day of your life so far.
%
Too clever is dumb.
        ― Ogden Nash
%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
        ― Mae West
%
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted.
%
Troglodytism does not necessarily imply a low cultural level.
%
True innovation often comes from the small startup who is lean enough to
launch a market but lacks the heft to own it.
        ― Timm Martin
%
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind.
        ― Percy Bysshe Shelley
%
Truthful, adj.: Dumb and illiterate.
        ― Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
        ― Charles Schulz
%
Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
        ― Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
specification is that it should run noiselessly.
%
Turnaucka's Law: The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
electrical cord.
%
Tussman's Law: Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
        ― Howard Kandel
%
Two men look out through the same bars; one sees mud, and one the stars.
%
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%
UFOs are for real. It's the Air Force that doesn't exist.
%
Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
        ― Blaise Pascal
%
Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
        Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
        hammer or get a splinter in it.
%
Uncompensated overtime? Just Say No.
%
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some
ordinance under which you can be booked.
        ― Robert D. Sprecht (Rand Corp)
%
Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it
can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
        Superiority is recessive.
%
United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the
Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of
all the patriots of every persuasion.

Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
world.
        ― Isaac Asimov
%
Universe, n.: The problem.
%
University, n.: Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to fix it.
%
UNIX *is* user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are.
        ― unknown
%
Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.
        ― Anthony Hope
%
Unless you are very rich and very eccentric, you will not enjoy the luxury of
a computer in your own home.
        ― Edward Yourdon, 1975.
%
Use GOTOs only to implement a fundamental structure.
%
Use debugging compilers.
%
Use free-form input where possible.
%
Use library functions.
%
Use the Force, Luke.
%
Useful knowledge is a great support for intuition.
        ― Charles B. Rogers
%
Users of a tool are willing to meet you halfway; if you do ninety percent
of the job, they will be ecstatic.
        ― Software Tools, p.136.
%
VMS isn't an operating system, it's a playpen for DEC system programmers.
        ― Herb Blashtfalt
%
Van Roy's Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%
Variables won't. Constants aren't.
%
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
        1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
            once.
        2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
            points.
%
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
%
Vests are to suits as seat-belts are to cars.
%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
        ― Salvor Hardin
%
Vique's Law:
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
%
Virtue is its own punishment.
%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
%
Volcano - a mountain with hiccups.
%
Vote anarchist.
%
Walter, I love you, but sooner or later, you're going to have to face the
fact you're a goddamn moron.
        ― The Dude ("The Big Lebowski")
%
War is menstruation envy.
%
Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%
Watch out for off-by-one errors.
%
We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
        ― Whole Earth Catalog
%
We all know that no one understands anything that isn't funny.
%
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
        ― Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
%
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
        ― Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
We are not alone.
%
We are what we pretend to be.
        ― Kurt Vonnegut, JR
%
We call our dog Egypt, because in every room he leaves a pyramid.
%
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
%
We can't let children think it's okay to dress up like Vikings and go
around hollering.
        ― Dogbert, on opera
%
We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting
        ― Stanley Sutton
%
We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you.
%
We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
%
We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish.
        ― John Culkin
%
We don't want to discourage the innovators and those who take risks because
they're afraid of getting sued by a lawsuit.
        ― George W. Bush; Washington, D.C.; June 24, 2004
%
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
        ― King Henry V, "Henry V", Act IV, Scene 3
%
We have met the enemy and he is us
        ― Walt Kelly (in POGO)
%
We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history.
%
We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
respect their good judgement.
%
We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately.
        ― Benjamin Franklin
%
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
        ― Benjamin Franklin  
%
We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass
no matter how self-seeking.
        ― F. G. Withington
%
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
%
We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
        ― Ann Marion
%
We were spanking each other with meat and then suddenly it got weird.
        ― Joe Hacket
%
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
technical problem ― how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
%
We work to become, not to acquire.
        ― Elbert Hubbard
%
We'll be a great country where the fabrics are made up of groups and
loving centers.
        ― George W. Bush, Kalamazoo, Michigan; March 27, 2001
%
We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did.
        ― Rufus T. Firefly, in "Duck Soup"
%
We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.
        ― attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
%
We're the weirdest monkeys ever.
        ― Karl Lehenbauer
%
We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
        ― Andy Rooney
%
Wear me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong
as death, passion cruel as the grave; it blazes up like blazing fire, fiercer
than any flame.
        [Song of Solomon 8:6 (NEB)]
%
Weiler's Law:
        Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
%
Weinberg's First Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%
Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers
wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
civilization.
%
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends!
%
Welcome to the human race, with its wars, disease and brutality.
        ― Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), "Show Me"
%
Welcome to The Machine.
%
Welcome to the working week.
I know it don't thrill you
I hope it don't kill you.
%
Well, I killed my own grandfather and here I am! Guess there's no paradox
when time travel isn't involved.
        ― Andrew Kennedy
%
Well, well, well! Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in
poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come
and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!
        ― Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
%
Well, you see, it's such a transitional creature. It's a piss-poor
reptile and not very much of a bird.
        ― Melvin Konner, from "The Tangled Wing", quoting a zoologist who has
        studied the archeopteryx and found it "very much like people"
%
Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve.
        ― Anonymous
%
Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently
save a couple of hours in the library.
%
Wethern's Law: Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
%
What a waste it is to lose one's mind ― or not to have a mind at all.
How true that is.
         ― V.P. Dan Quayle, garbling the United Negro College Fund slogan
            in an address to the group (from Newsweek, May 22nd, 1989)
%
What are you doing wrong with our bug-free product?
%
What cannot be eaten must be civilized.
        ― Peter Taylor
%
What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? A stick!
        ― Bill Kirchenbaum, comedian
%
What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
%
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
%
What happens when you cut back the jungle? It recedes.
%
What is a magician but a practising theorist?
        ― Obi-Wan Kenobi
%
What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.
        ― Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
%
What is the difference between the modern computer and a Turing machine?
It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the
establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
%
What is tolerance? ― it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly ―
that is the first law of nature.
        ― Voltaire
%
What is vice today may be virtue tomorrow.
%
What is virtue today may be vice tomorrow.
%
What is worth doing is worth delegating.
%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
%
What makes the Universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
%
What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism. It's
corporate feminism ― a brand of feminism designed to sell books and
magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes and, most
important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes, women were
discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate mistake has been
remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige and power by dint of
individual rather than collective effort."
        ― Susan Gordon
%
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
        ― Ursula K. LeGuin
%
What sin has not been committed in the name of efficiency?
%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
%
What this calls for is a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.
        ― Vyvyan Basterd, "The Young Ones"
%
What this country needs is a good 5 dollar plasma weapon.
%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
%
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
        ― Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
        ― Bengamin Disraeli
%
What we do not understand we do not possess.
        ― Goethe
%
What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?
%
What, me worry?
%
What boots it at one gate to make defence,
And at another to let in the foe?
        ― John Milton, Samson Agonistes (l. 560)
%
Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not nailed down.
        ― Collis P. Huntingdon
%
When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young
ladies, and, of course, the goat.
%
When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve
it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality.
        ― Al Capone
%
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now
I'm beginning to believe it.
        ― Clarence Darrow
%
When I was in my twenties, not shaving for a few days gave me a cool Don
Johnson/Miami Vice look. Now that I'm in my forties, though, it tends to
make me look more like Otis from Mayberry.
        ― Tom Gray
%
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
        ― Woody Allen
%
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
%
When Yahweh your gods has settled you in the land you're about to occupy, and
driven out many infidels before you...you're to cut them down and exterminate
them. You're to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy.
[Deut. 7:1 (KJV)]
%
When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him ― that's where the
money is.
        ― Robespierre
%
When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
thing," it's the money.
        ― Kim Hubbard
%
When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half loop?
%
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is
not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space
travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
        ― Robert Heinlein
%
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the
sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain
relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
        ― Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%
When all other means of communication fail, try words.
%
When asked, "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United
States, then why do you live here?" Mencken replied, "Why do men go to zoos?"
%
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one,
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
        ― Edmund Burke
%
When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never tried
before.
        ― Mae West
%
When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask? Well, last year, I
think it was a Tuesday.
%
When everything has been seen to work, all integrated, you have four more
months of work to do.
        ― C. Portman of ICL Ltd.
%
When in doubt, do what the President does ― guess.
%
When in doubt, lead trump.
%
When in doubt, punt.
%
When in doubt, use brute force.
        ― Ken Thompson
%
When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!
        ― Laurie Anderson
%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
        ― Calvin Coolidge
%
When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought
the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the
earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your
view is wronger than both of them put together.
        ― Isaac Asimov, "The Relativity of Wrong",
           The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 14 No. 1, Fall 1989
%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
        ― Alan J. Perlis
%
When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem, you
modify the problem, not the remedy.
%
When the wind is great, bow before it; when the wind is heavy, yield to it.
%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
        ― George Bernard Shaw
%
When we are ignorant of the answer to an important question, one way
to proceed is to ask which path of inquiry promises best to facilitate
learning.
        ― Timothy Ferris, "The Mind's Sky: Human Intelligence in a
           Cosmic Context."
%
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
not hereditary.
        ― Thomas Paine
%
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
        ― General James Gavin
%
When you are alone you are all your own.
        ― Leonardo da Vinci
%
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
%
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
        ― Harry S Truman
%
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
        ― The Wall Street Journal
%
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
        ― Dave Parnas
%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
        ― Oscar Wilde
%
Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried
        ― Thomas Jefferson
%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards ― no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
        ― John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Where is it written in the Constitution that you may take children from their
parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles
of any war in which the folly or wickedness of government may engage it?
        ― Daniel Webster, 1814
%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
%
Wherever you go, there you are.
        ― Buckaroo Banzai
%
Whether you can hear it or not
The Universe is laughing behind your back
        ― National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
        ― Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman",
                   November 26, 1792
%
While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
admission to someone else.
%
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
form of misery.
%
While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their correctness never
does.
%
While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very reassuring to
know that it's still there.
%
Whipit! Whipit good!
%
Whistler's Law:
        You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge.
%
Who has more leisure than a worm?
        - Seneca
%
Who is W. O. Baker, and why is he saying those terrible things about me?
%
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.
        ― A. E. Housman
%
Who needs companionship when you can sit alone in your room and masturbate?
%
Who works achieves and who sows reaps.
        ― Arab Proverb
%
Who's on first?
%
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
%
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.
        ― Book of Proverbs
%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
avoid responsibility with?
%
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently
there must be a beverage.
        ― Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
Why does opportunity always knock at the least opportune moment?
%
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that
happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told
it to the same person?
        ― La Rochefoucauld
%
Why is it that there are so many more horses' asses than there are horses?
        ― G. Gordon Liddy
%
Why isn't "palindrome" spelled the same way backwards?
%
Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
        ― Lily Tomlin
%
Wiker's Law: Government expands to absorb all available revenue and then some.
%
Wiker's Law:
        Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%
Will the highways on the Internet become more few?
        ― George W. Bush, Concord, NH; January 29, 2000
%
Williams and Holland's Law:
        If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
        statistical methods.
%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
%
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
build a nuclear balm?
%
With clothes the new are best, with friends the old are best.
%
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
        ― Ransom K. Ferm
%
With friends like these, who need hallucinations?
%
With great effort, you move the rug aside, revealing a trap door.
%
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in
the way he did. In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere
as an indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no
less important to him than his table or his white robe.
        ― Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
%
Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
%
Words are the voice of the heart.
%
Words must be weighed, not counted.
%
Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout.
This is also the worst vegetable of next year.
        ― Steve Rubenstein
%
Wozencraft's Law: If you make all of your plans on the assumption that a
particular thing won't happen―it will.
%
Writing code has a place in the human hierarchy worth somewhere above grave
robbing and beneath managing.
        ― Gerald Weinberg
%
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
%
Writing in C or C++ is like running a chain saw with all the safety guards
removed.
        ― Bob Gray
%
Writing programs needs genius to save the last order or the last millisecond.
It is great fun, but it is a young man's game. You start it with great
enthusiasm when you first start programming, but after ten years you get a
bit bored with it, and then you turn to automatic-programming languages and
use them because they enable you to get to the heart of the problem that you
want to do, instead of having to concentrate on the mechanics of getting the
program going as fast as you possibly can, which is really nothing more than
doing a sort of crossword puzzle.
        ― Christopher Strachey, 1962
%
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%
XML is just data with that Internet shit wrapped around it.
        ― Joe Romello, by way of Steve Sapovits
%
Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
%
Yes, but which self do you want to be?
%
Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth...But in today's technical
vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different.
        ― The Firesign Theater
%
Yes, we have no bonanzas.
%
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today ―
I think he's from the CIA.
%
Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
        ― Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Yinkel, n.: A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
will notice.
        ― Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
        ― Al Capone
%
You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
%
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
        ― Alan Perlis
%
You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you
have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on.
        ― Harry S Truman
%
You can observe a lot just by watching.
        ― Yogi Berra
%
You can often profit from being at a loss for words.
        ― Frank Tyger
%
You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
        ― F. Allen
%
You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
supercomputers.
        ― Steven Feiner
%
You can't antagonize and influence at the same time.
%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
%
You can't get there from here.
%
You can't have great software without a great team, and most software teams
behave like dysfunctional families.
        ― Jim McCarthy
%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic
enough worrying about what's happening now.
        ― Lauren Bacall
%
You can't teach self-esteem. Self-esteem arises from attempting challenging
tasks and mastering them.
%
You can't underestimate the power of fear.
        ― Tricia Nixon
%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%
You cannot build a reputation on what you are going to do.
        ― Henry Ford
%
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
%
You cannot succeed by criticizing others.
%
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
        ― Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%
You don't have to explain something you never said.
        ― Calvin Coolidge
%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
        ― J. D. Salinger
%
You know, you really half give me a buzz.
        ― Stevie Ray Vaughan, "Honey Bee" (from "Couldn't Stand the Weather")
%
You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United
States? Because your hackers have so much mobility into the establishment.
Here, there is no such mobility. If you have the slightest bit of
intellectual integrity you cannot support the government.... That's why the
best computer minds belong to the opposition.
        ― an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
%
You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth.
        ― Nicklaus Wirth
%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
        ― Alfred Kahn
%
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the beach.
%
You never finish a program, you just stop working on it.
%
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you.
I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but
we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
        ― J. Wellington Wells
%
You see but you do not observe.
        ― Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
%
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
if they are dead.
%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
        ― Henrick Ibson
%
You're never too old to become younger.
        ― Mae West
%
Your attitude determines your attitude.
        ― Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
%
Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you
from enjoying it.
%
Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart, what is true.
%
Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries.
%
Your reality is lies and balderdash, and I'm glad to say that I have no grasp
of it.
        ― Baron von Munchausen
%
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
%
Youth is the trustee of posterity.
%
Youth is wasted on the young.
        ― George Bernard Shaw
%
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
%
Zero Defects, n.: The result of shutting down a production line.
%
Zimmerman's Law of Complaints: Nobody notices when things go right.
%
Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
since I first called my brother's father dad.
        ― William Shakespeare, "King John"
%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
        People are always available for work in the past tense.
%
[In the U. S. Army] An officer does not take an oath of loyalty to the
Commander-in-Chief.  He takes an oath of loyalty to the Constitution.
        ― Sam Donaldson
%
[Leslie Stahl was] a pussy compared to Rather.
        ― George H. W. Bush
%
grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
%
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
        ― H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
%
All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They
never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced
upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.
        ― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1919.
%
A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.
        ― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956
%
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the
trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and
necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
        ― H. L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955.
%
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the
black flag, and begin slitting throats.
        ― H.L. Mencken
%
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the
improbable.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a
well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.
        ― H. L. Mencken, "The Divine Afflatus" (16 November 1917)
%
Equality before the law is probably forever inattainable. It is a noble
ideal, but it can never be realized, for what men value in this world is
not rights but privileges.
        ― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956
%
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the
improbable.
        ― H.L. Mencken, "Prejudices: Third Series", 1922
%
For one American husband who maintains a chorus girl in Levantine luxury
around the corner, there are hundreds who are as true to their oaths, year
in and year out, as so many convicts in the deathhouse.
        ― H.L. Mencken, In Defense of Women, 1922.
%
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind―that
its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been
more than overborne by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
        ― H. L. Mencken, "Forum" (September, 1930)
%
I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination papers.
        ― H.L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955
%
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
        ― attributed to H. L. Mencken
%
Men have a much better time of it than women. For one thing, they marry
later. For another thing, they die earlier.
        ― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949.
%
My guess is that well over eighty per cent of the human race goes through
life without ever having a single original thought. That is to say, they
never think anything that has not been thought before, and by thousands. A
society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought
would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it
frantic.
        ― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956
%
Never let your inferiors do you a favor. It will be extremely costly.
        ― H.L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955.
%
No government is ever really in favor of so-called civil rights. It always
tries to whittle them down. They are preserved under all governments,
insofar as they survive at all, by special classes of fanatics, often
highly dubious.
        ― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956
%
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
        ― Attributed to H.L. Mencken.
%
Nowhere in the world is superiority more easily attained, or more eagerly
admitted. The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is the setting up
of heroes, mainly bogus.
        ― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1923.
%
Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
the railroad yards.
        ― H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan,
           counsel for the supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution
           law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
%
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to
the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the
congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
Suppose two-thirds of the members of the national House of Representatives
were dumped into the Washington garbage incinerator tomorrow, what would we
lose to offset our gain of their salaries and the salaries of their parasites?
        ― H. L. Mencken, "Prejudices, Fourth Series" (1924)
%
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater
than that of any other animal.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof
that God is a bore.
        ― H.L. Mencken, "The Aesthetic Recoil," American Mercury, July, 1931.
%
The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even
ordinarily respectable. No virtuous man―that is, virtuous in the YMCA
sense―has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony
worth hearing, or a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that
the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.
        ― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1919.
%
The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always
assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer
hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every
adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than
Christianity has made them good.
        ― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956
%
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not
true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
        ― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949.
%
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes―that
it leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
effects―this notion has no support in the plain facts. If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once ― and there is
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be
filled, not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply
to give ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
        ― H. L. Mencken, 1930
%
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear―fear of the unknown,
the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.
        ― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1920.
%
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking. Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent ― slimy, sneaking and abominable. Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man. It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions. It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence
clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of
hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator on
his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is even
highly probable.
        ― H. L. Mencken, 1930
%
To sum up: 1. The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions
a minute. 2. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. 3. Religion is the
theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride.
        ― H. L. Mencken, Coda from "Smart Set", 1920
%
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of
sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that
they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save
the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and
whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted,
the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on
the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can
most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The
Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected,
the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We
move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of
the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be
adorned by a downright moron.
        ― H. L. Mencken
%
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.
        ― H. L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955.
%
When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a
scoundrel.
        ― H. L. Mencken, "Newspaper Days: 1899-1906" (1941)
%
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that
he expects to be paid for it.
        ― H.L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955.
%
From Fronto I learned to observe what envy, and duplicity, and hypocrisy are
in a tyrant, and that generally those among us who are called Patricians are
rather deficient in paternal affection.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book I
%
The time of a man's life is as a point; the substance of it ever flowing, the
sense obscure; and the whole composition of the body tending to corruption.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book II
%
That [life] which is longest of duration, and that which is shortest, both
come to one effect.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book II
%
You must, therefore, hasten, not only because you are every day nearer to
death, but also because your intellect, which enables you to know the true
nature of things and to order all your actions by that knowledge, wastes and
decays daily―or, may fail you before you die.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book II
%
Never esteem of anything as profitable, which shell ever constrain thee to
break thy faith, or to lose thy modestroy; to hate any man, to suspect to
curse, to dissemble, to lust after anything, that requireth the secret of
walls or veils.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book III
%
He who prefers, before all things, his rational part and spirit... he shall
never lament and exclaim; never sigh; he shall never want either solitude
or company; and, which is chiefest of all, he shall live without either
desire or fear.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book III
%
Let no act be done without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to the
perfect principles of art.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
Take away your opinion, and you then take away the complaint, "I have been
harmed." Take away the complaint, "I have been harmed," and the harm is taken
away.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
Many grains of frankincense on the same altar: one falls before, another falls
after; but it makes no difference.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over
you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbour says or
does or thinks, but only to what he does himself, that it may be just and pure.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and
terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself. Neither worse,
then, nor better is a thing made by being praised.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
The words which were formerly familiar are now antiquated: so also the names
of those who were famed of old, are now in a manner antiquated... For all
things soon pass away and become a mere tale, and complete oblivion soon
buries them.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is
remembered.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
Thou art a little soul bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say. 
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream;
for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in
its place, and this will be carried away too.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it
stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IV
%
How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome
or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book V
%
To seek what is impossible is madness: and it is impossible that the bad
should not do something of this kind.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book V
%
The best way of avenging yourself is not to become like the wrong-doer.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book VI
%
If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act
right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever
injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book VI
%
Let not future things disturb you, for you will come to them, if it shall be
necessary, having with you the same reason which you now use for present
things.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book VII
%
Receive wealth or prosperity without arrogance; and be ready to let it go.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book VIII
%
He often acts unjustly who does not do a certain thing; not only he who does a
certain thing.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IX
%
It is your duty to leave another man's wrongful act there, where it is.
        ― Marcus Aurelius, "The Meditations", Book IX
%
America is a ball of Appalachia with a thin coating of civility.
        ― Rich Simons
%
American justice is measured by the amount of money you are willing to risk
to make your point.
        ― Rich Simons
%
America has become a tired old whore, selling her institutions like back alley
blowjobs to fat cat businessmen for their pocket change.
        ― Rich Simons
%
But in the end I remind myself that people are merely shaved apes, and
pretty much spend their time masturbating and throwing feces.
        ― Rich Simons
%
I am waiting for the "Internet Beermeister," so hackers can wage a
"Denial of Cerveza" attack.
        ― Rich Simons
%
Money doesn't stretch―if somebody makes a killing, somebody else loses
his shirt.
        ― Rich Simons
%
Never work anywhere where you can't find the guy in charge and break his nose.
        ― Rich Simons
%
Nothing is more dangerous than a man whose actions are the responsibility
of his deity.
        ― Rich Simons
%
Some people hold their noses when used as toilet paper by the shadowy
overlords; some people inhale the heady aroma with gusto.
        ― Rich Simons
%
Those who sacrifice liberty for the sake of safety deserve neither, but those
who sacrifice creativity for safety end up with a velvet painting of Elvis.
        ― Rich Simons
%
Windows is a manifestation of commerce; Unix is a manifestation of culture.
        ― Rich Simons
%
Working in Windows is like baking moose shit pie. Sure, you're baking pies, but
look what's in 'em.
        ― Rich Simons
%
I prefer the company of men without ovaries.
        ― Rich Simons
%
The American business executive resembles the Ferengi more each day. In another
20 years, there will be dorm rooms full of toothless hillbillies at the Amazon
fulfillment centers and the Walmarts.
        ― Rich Simons
%
Be cautious of those who give you advice. That's my advice to you.
        ― Steve Mayr
%
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Sounds like a plan.
        ― Steve Mayr
%
If you take the easy way out, nothing will come easy.
        ― Steve Mayr
%
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.
        ― George Carlin
%
Here's a bumper sticker I'd like to see: "We are the proud parents of a child
whose self-esteem is sufficient that he doesn't need us promoting his minor
scholastic achievements on the back of our car."
        ― George Carlin
%
Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently,
by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
        ― George Carlin
%
I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who
believe it.
        ― George Carlin
%
I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that
these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them
together is certain death.
        ― George Carlin
%
I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and
cross it deliberately.
        ― George Carlin
%
If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say
the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
        ― George Carlin
%
If God had intended us not to masturbate, he would've made our arms shorter.
        ― George Carlin
%
If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed.
        ― George Carlin
%
Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't make you
Spiritual. It's right above the crack of your butt. And it translates to
"beef with broccoli." The last time you did anything spiritual, you were
praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual.
        ― George Carlin
%
The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone
said to themselves, "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire,
but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."
        ― George Carlin
%
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.
        ― George Carlin
%
American justice is measured by the amount of money you are willing to risk
to make your point.
        ― Rich Simons
%
America has become a tired old whore, selling her institutions like back alley
blowjobs to fat cat businessmen for their pocket change.
        ― Rich Simons
%
But in the end I remind myself that people are merely shaved apes, and
pretty much spend their time masturbating and throwing feces.
        ― Rich Simons
%
Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned ― I
support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you
exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to
share your dogma, rapture or necrodestination.
        ― Frank Zappa, "The Real Frank Zappa Book"
%
Don't eat yellow snow.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
Hey, you know something, people? I'm not black, but there's a whole lot of
times I wish I could say I'm not white.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
I think pop music has done more for oral intercourse than anything else
that has ever happened, and vice versa.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your
mother, your Dad, your priest, to some guy on television, to any of the
people telling you how to do your shit, then you *deserve* it. If you
want to be a schmuck, be a schmuck ― but don't wait around for respect
from other people ― a schmuck is a schmuck.
        ― Frank Zappa, "The Real Frank Zappa Book"
%
In the future, etiquette will become more and more important. That doesn't
mean knowing which fork to pick up ― I mean basic consideration for the
rights of other animals (human beings included) and the willingness,
whenever practical, to tolerate the other guy's idiosyncrasies.
        ― Frank Zappa, "The Real Frank Zappa Book"
%
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or a Sears poncho?
Hmmm... No fooling.
        ― Frank Zappa, "Camarillo Brillo"
%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't
talk for the people who can't read.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child
is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
Love is not music; Music is the best.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to
the Bible? Who wins?
        ― Frank Zappa
%
The bassoon is one of my favorite instruments. It has a medieval aroma,
like the days when everything used to sound like that. Some people crave
baseball...I find this unfathomable, but I can easily understand why a
person could get excited about playing the bassoon.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
The Book says BURN and DESTROY repent and redeem and revenge and deploy and
rumble thee forth to the land of the unbelieving scum 'cause they don't go
for what's in the Book and that makes 'em BAD.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact
mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history.
The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is,
"All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was
going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your
fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions."
        ― Frank Zappa
%
There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer
shelf life.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful,
that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.
        ― Frank Zappa
%
Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.
        ― Randall Munroe, xkcd
%
There's no such thing as bad language. I don't believe that any more. That's
ridiculous. They call it a "debasing of the language?" No! We are adults.
These are the words that WE use, to express frustration, rage, anger―in
order that we don't pick up a tire iron and beat the shit out of someone.
        ― Lewis Black
%
I don't know if you noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit
looking in the mirror at itself.
        ― Lewis Black
%
There is a big difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament,
and that is, the New Testament God is kind of a great guy (He is!), especially
when you compare him to the Old Testament God, who is a prick.
        ― Lewis Black
%
The reason you should go to Las Vegas is because, for only the second time,
the second time, ever, they have rebuilt Sodom and Gomorrah. It's back!!
And you have the opportunity to see it before it turns to salt. And you
wanna get out there before the Christian Right finds out what we're up to
and shits all over it.
        ― Lewis Black
%
[The Weather Channel] is the most watched cable channel in America. I'll
repeat that. It is the most watched cable channel in America. They were
worried about the terrorists immobilizing us, and a portion of our
countrymen watch weather. 'Kay, you don't get any more immobile than
that... unless you're in a goddamn coma. That means you're saying, "I'd go
to the window, but it's too far." If you want to know what the weather is
you go to a window and stick your hand out and if you want to know what the
temperature is you drive by a bank.
        ― Lewis Black
%
There's no such thing as soy milk. It's soy juice. But they couldn't sell
soy juice, so they called it soy milk. Because anytime you say soy juice,
you actually... start to gag.
        ― Lewis Black
%
You don't want another Enron? Here's the law: If you have a company, and it
can't explain, in one sentence... what it does... it's illegal!
        ― Lewis Black
%
The one thing I think we learned this year is that the Democrats and the
Republicans are completely worthless.
        ― Lewis Black
%
If mzero doesn't need to be a single, unambiguous value, then the algebra
of monads would seem to be a bit hinky.
        ― A tweet from @djspiewak (Daniel J. Spiewak)
%
A monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?
        ― Saunders Mac Lane, filtered through James Iry
%
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
        ― Confucius
%
Rotten wood cannot be carved.
        ― Confucius (Analects, Book 5, Chapter 9)
%
Men's natures are alike. It is their habits that carry them far apart.
        ― Confucius
%
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.
        ― Confucius
%
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
        ― Confucius
%
We like to think we spend most of our time power-typing. "I'm being productive,
I'm writing programs!" But, we don't. We spend most of our time looking into
the abyss, saying, "My God, what have I done?"
        ― Douglas Crockford, during his keynote at YUIConf 2011
%
"That hardly ever happens" is another way of saying, "It happens".
        ― Douglas Crockford, during his keynote at YUIConf 2011
%
I used to think everyone should learn programming. When I first starting
programming...I thought, "Wow, this is such an amazing way to organize
information! Everybody should learn to do this!" I don't think that any more. I
think there has to be something seriously wrong with you, in order to do this
work. A normal person, once they've looked into the abyss, will say, "I'm done.
This is stupid. I'm going to go to something else." But not us, 'cause there's
something really wrong with us.
        ― Douglas Crockford, during his keynote at YUIConf 2011
%
Confusion must be avoided. Confusion is the enemy. Confusion is what causes
bugs and security mishaps and all the other things that make us miserable.
        ― Douglas Crockford, during his keynote at YUIConf 2011
%
Write [code] in a way that clearly communicates your intent.
        ― Douglas Crockford, during his keynote at YUIConf 2011
%
Geriatric Relativity: The observation that time goes faster the older you get.
        ― Brian M. Clapper
%
Critical thinking is the antidote to gullibility and credulity, which explains
why politicians aren't fond of critical thinking.
        ― Brian M. Clapper
%
There's a certain freedom in being so tired that you just can't possibly do
another thing.
        ― Brian M. Clapper
%
The president of the United States has claimed, on more than one occasion, to
be in dialogue with God. If he said that he was talking to God through his
hairdryer, this would precipitate a national emergency. I fail to see how the
addition of a hairdryer makes the claim more ridiculous or offensive.
        ― Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation
%
Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. This universe is shot through
with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery
absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name.
        ― Sam Harris, "The End of Faith"
%
What is so unnerving about the candidacy of Sarah Palin is the degree to which
she represents—and her supporters celebrate—the joyful marriage of confidence
and ignorance . . . Ask yourself: how has "elitism" become a bad word in
American politics? There is simply no other walk of life in which extraordinary
talent and rigorous training are denigrated. We want elite pilots to fly our
planes, elite troops to undertake our most critical missions, elite athletes to
represent us in competition and elite scientists to devote the most productive
years of their lives to curing our diseases. And yet, when it comes time to
vest people with even greater responsibilities, we consider it a virtue to shun
any and all standards of excellence. When it comes to choosing the people whose
thoughts and actions will decide the fates of millions, then we suddenly want
someone just like us, someone fit to have a beer with, someone down-to-earth—in
fact, almost anyone, provided that he or she doesn't seem too intelligent or
well educated.
        ― Sam Harris
%
Unreason is now ascendant in the United States—in our schools, in our courts,
and in each branch of the federal government.
        ― Sam Harris, "The Politics of Ignorance" (2005)
%
The point at which we fully acquire our humanity, and our capacity to suffer,
remains an open question, but anyone who would dogmatically insist that these
traits must arise coincident with the moment of conception has nothing to
contribute, apart from his ignorance, to this debate.
        ― Sam Harris
%
Water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. This seems as value-free an
utterance as human beings ever make. But what do we do when someone doubts the
truth of this proposition? Ok, all we can do is appeal to scientific values.
The value of understanding the world. The value of evidence. The value of
logical consistency. What if someone says, “Well, that’s not how I choose to
think about water. Ok, what can we say to such a person? Ok, all we can do is
appeal to scientific values. And if he doesn’t share those values, the
conversation is over. Ok, if someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are
you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t
value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of
logic?
        ― Sam Harris, during a Notre Dame debate with William Lane Craig
%
I love living in the future. ― Bill Cheswick
%
Sendmail(8) proved that if you polish a turd long enough, you may eventually
end up with a shiny coprolite.
        ― Bill Cheswick
%
Salad is what food eats. ― Bill Cheswick
%
Angels we have heard on High/Tell us to go out and Buy.
        ― Tom Lehrer
%
The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
and color, but also on ability.
        ― Tom Lehrer
%
If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something
nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been
worth the while.
        ― Tom Lehrer
%
I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out
what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise
George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them.
        ― Tom Lehrer (2003)
%
I basically like "comments," though they can seem a little jarring: spit-
flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure
of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it
comes with a side of maggots.
        ― Gene Weingarten, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist
%
I disagree with those who suggest that we permanently close down the U.S. mail
on the grounds that it can kill you. That is sheer hysteria. I think we should
permanently close down the U.S. mail on the grounds that it has been making us
sick for quite a while.
        ― Gene Weingarten, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist
%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
        ― Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B
very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People
living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder
what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to
get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A
are so keen to get THERE. They often wish that people would just once and for
all work out where the hell they wanted to be.
        ― Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western
Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a
distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant
little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly
primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea ...
        ― Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha
Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Spirits were
brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man had split before. Thus was the
Empire forged.
        ― "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams
%
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big
it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's,
but that's just peanuts to space.
        ― "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The word "spine" is, of course, an anagram of "penis". This is true in almost
fifty percent of the languages of the Galaxy, and many people have attempted to
explain why. Usually these explanations get bogged down in silly puns about
"standing erect".
        ― Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the
Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced
by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which
states that this has already happened.
        ― Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
        ― "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it. 
        ― Madeleine L'Engle
%
That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how
obvious they've been all along. 
        ― Madeleine L'Engle
%
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no
longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive
is to be vulnerable.
        ― Madeleine L'Engle
%
Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth,
you are.
        ― Madeleine L'Engle
%
A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
        ― Ansel Adams
%
A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.
        ― Ansel Adams
%
A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
        ― Ansel Adams
%
Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in
establishing tonal relationships.
        ― Ansel Adams
%
In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of
exploration.
        ― Ansel Adams
%
These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were
captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys,
standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their
windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me.
        ― Ansel Adams
%
When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds
eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm
interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just
extracted from without.
        ― Ansel Adams
%%
When in doubt, tell the truth.
        ― Mark Twain
%
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
        ― Mark Twain
%
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read.
        ― Mark Twain
%
[He was] a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you
nothing. It was here first.
        ― Mark Twain
%
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
        ― Mark Twain
%
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
week sometimes to make it up.
        ― Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't know.
        ― Mark Twain
%
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
        ― Mark Twain
%
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits:
freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
        ― Mark Twain
%
It is the difference of opinion that makes horse races.
        ― Mark Twain
%
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Man is the only animal that blushes ― or needs to.
        ― Mark Twain
%
My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got.
        ― Mark Twain
%
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
        ― Mark Twain
%
It could probably be shown, by facts and figures, that there is no distinctly
native criminal class except Congress.
        ― Mark Twain
%
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
        ― Mark Twain
%
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
        ― Mark Twain
%
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners always spell
better than they pronounce.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
        ― Mark Twain
%
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not;
but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any
but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we
all have to do it.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you
are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of the Atlantic
with his verb in his mouth.
        ― Mark Twain in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
        ― Mark Twain in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
%
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved.
        ― Mark Twain
%
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
        ― Mark Twain
%
A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
        ― Mark Twain
%
A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
        ― Mark Twain
%
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common
humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
        ― Mark Twain
%
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any
other way you can manage it.
        ― Mark Twain
%
I can live for two months on a good compliment.
        ― Mark Twain
%
If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes
there ten years later.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is
hollering about.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I 
repeat myself.
        ― Mark Twain
%
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
        ― Mark Twain
%
There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and
people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
        ― Mark Twain
%
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no
trouble.
        ― Mark Twain
%
To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that
it ain't so.
        ― Mark Twain
%
We have the best government that money can buy.
        ― Mark Twain
%
When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
        ― Mark Twain
%
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart
no man much respects himself.
        ― Mark Twain
%
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands
explained.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and
reflect.
        ― Mark Twain
%
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived
to have any relation.
        ― Mark Twain
%
[Silvio Berlusconi] is so thoroughly corrupt, every time he smiles, an
angel gets gonorrhea.
        ― Dylan Moran
%
[Adulthood] feels like ... walking around in a desert, with a bag over
your head, bumping into people who rob you as they bore you.
        ― Dylan Moran
%
Tequila isn't even a drink. It's just a way of getting the police round,
without using the phone.
        ― Dylan Moran
%
I basically think I'm what would've happened if James Dean had lived,
and discovered carbohydrates and orthopedic shoes.
        ― Dylan Moran
%
When did ignorance become a point of view?
        ― Dilbert (Scott Adams)
%
There's no kill switch on awesome.
        ― Dilbert (Scott Adams)
%
You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You
don't wanna know about it, believe me.
        ― Walter to The Dude ("The Big Lebowski")
%
Hey, careful, man, there's a beverage here!
        ― The Dude ("The Big Lebowski")
%
"The Dude abides." I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good
knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I
sure hope he makes the finals.
        ― The Stranger ("The Big Lebowski")
%
We’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and
"success", defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically
and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education
is to make minds, not careers. A culture that does not grasp the vital
interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques
for wisdom, which fails to understand that the measure of a civilization
is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself
to death.
        ― Chris Hedges, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the
          Triumph of Spectacle"
%
Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not
revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in
the anonymity of the Corporate State. It purports to cherish democracy,
patriotism, and the Constitution while manipulating internal levers.
        ― Chris Hedges, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the
          Triumph of Spectacle"
%
Washington has become our Versailles. We are ruled, entertained,
and informed by courtiers―and the media has evolved into a class of
courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are mostly courtiers. Our
pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms,
are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political
theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors,
tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception.
        ― Chris Hedges, "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the
          Triumph of Spectacle"
%
The split in America, rather than simply economic, is between those who
embrace reason, who function in the real world of cause and effect, and those
who, numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world
of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic.
        ― Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War
          On America 
%
Hope has a cost. Hope is not comfortable or easy. Hope requires personal
risk. It is not about the right attitude. Hope is not about peace of
mind. Hope is action. Hope is doing something. The more futile, the more
useless, the more irrelevant and incomprehensible an act of rebellion is,
the vaster and more potent hope becomes.  Hope never makes sense. Hope is
weak, unorganized and absurd. Hope, which is always nonviolent, exposes in
its powerlessness, the lies, fraud and coercion employed by the state. Hope
knows that an injustice visited on our neighbor is an injustice visited on
all of us. Hope posits that people are drawn to the good by the good. This
is the secret of hope's power. Hope demands for others what we demand for
ourselves. Hope does not separate us from them. Hope sees in our enemy
our own face.
        ― Chris Hedges
%
Racism towards Muslims is as evil as anti-Semitism, but try to express
this simple truth on a partisan Palestinian or Israeli website.
        ― Chris Hedges, Death of the Liberal Class 
%
A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its
liberty and freedom.
        ― Chris Hedges
%
Really, the comforting side in most conspiracy theory arguments is the
one claiming that anyone who's in power has any plan at all.
        ― xkcd #1081 (mouseover text)
%
A person who is nice to you, but rude to a waiter, is not a nice person.
(This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)
        ― Dave Barry
%
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations
and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot
actually masturbate.
        ― Dave Barry
%
Styling mousse, which is gunk that looks like shaving cream ... was invented
by a French hair professional whom, if you met him, you would want to punch
directly in the mouth.
        ― Dave Barry
%
There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect the
sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the sunlight
that hits your neighbors' homes, too.
        ― Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra than on
Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2030, there should be a large
elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no
recollection of what to do with them.
        ― Dave Barry
%
It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical
need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as
some kind of recreational activity.
        ― Dave Barry
%
No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
        ― Dave Barry
%
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants,
today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
        ― Dave Barry
%
People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want
you to share yours with them.
        ― Dave Barry
%
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
If A equals success, then the formula is:
   A= X + Y + Z
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The
latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to
hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we
created them.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else, unless it is an
enemy.
        ― A. Einstein
%
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
        ― Albert Einstein, as quoted by Virgil Henshaw in
           "Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist" (1949)
%
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason
for existing.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates
empirically.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Dear Posterity, If you have not become more just, more peaceful, and generally
more rational than we are (or were) ― why then, the Devil take you.
        ― Albert Einstein, message for a time capsule
%
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For
force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an
invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.
        ― Albert Einstein, The World As I See It (1931)
%
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
        ― Albert Einstein
%
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but
World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
        ― Albert Einstein
%
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity
for development accorded the individual. 
        ― Albert Einstein
%
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a
touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue. 
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all
technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and
equations.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine
are still greater.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in
school.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that
counts cannot necessarily be counted.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre
minds.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the
spinal cord would suffice.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the
years of maturity.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
        ― Albert Einstein
%
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his
ears. I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
        ― Steven Wright
%
I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys...and
the building started up. So I took it out for a drive. A cop pulled me over
for speeding. He asked me where I live. I said, "Here."
        ― Steven Wright
%
I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards. I got a full house
and 4 people died.
        ― Steven Wright
%
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo of
the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here".
        ― Steven Wright
%
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
        ― Steven Wright
%
You know that feeling when you're leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip
over? Well, that's how I feel all the time.
        ― Steven Wright
%
I'm making wine at home, but I make it out of raisins, so it'll be aged
automatically.
        ― Steven Wright
%
Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see 'em at the beach. Pisses me off.
        ― Steven Wright
%
Sponges grow in the ocean. That kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean
would be, if that didn't happen.
        ― Steven Wright
%
It doesn't matter what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature.
        ― Steven Wright
%
I remember the day the candle shop burned down. Everyone just stood around
and sang, "Happy birthday."
        ― Steven Wright
%
If you shoot a mime, should you use a silencer?
        ― Steven Wright
%
Once I stayed in a hotel where the pool was on the 23rd floor. I couldn't
believe how deep it was.
        ― Steven Wright
%
There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking like
an idiot.
        ― Steven Wright
%
What's another word for, "thesaurus?"
        ― Steven Wright
%
Whenever I think about the past, it's just bring back so many memories.
        ― Steven Wright
%
Once I was walking through the woods, and I saw a rabbit standing in front
of a candle, making shadows of people on a tree. I said, "Don't be so
sarcastic."
        ― Steven Wright
%
I'm a peripheral visionary. I can see into the future, but just way off to
the side.
        ― Steven Wright
%
It's hard for me to buy clothes, 'cause I'm not my size.
        ― Steven Wright
%
Small keyboards make for big mistakes. 
        ― Joe Gunn
%
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.
        ― Leonard Cohen
%
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is
just the ash.
        ― Leonard Cohen
%
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A
scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
        ― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game
%
I don't consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who
is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.”
        ― Leonard Cohen
%
The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.
        ― Leonard Cohen
%
Deprivation is the mother of poetry.
        ― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game 
%
We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.
        ― Leonard Cohen
%
There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
        ― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968
%
This is a broken world, and we live with broken hearts and broken lives,
but still that is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand
up and say, "Hallelujah," under those circumstances.
        ― Leonard Cohen
%
A human is a system for converting dust billions of years ago into dust
billions of years from now via a roundabout process which involves checking
email a lot.
	— Randall Munroe (xkcd #1173)
%
Among the many invectives I invent when people piss me off, this is my
current favorite: 'Fuck yer own throat, you piss-dribbling monkey dick!'
I'm hoping it catches on with you folks.
	— Jon Miller, a.k.a., Doc Spender
%
"Well, vegans, as you know, don't have eggs, meat, dairy, or senses of humor."
	— Peter Sagal, on NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" (21 Sep, 2013)
%
An ounce of perversion is worth a pound of pure.
        ― Dr. Mark Crislip
%
Holy water is often contaminated with bacteria and, as a result, I
hypothesize that Pasteur went to Hell, since, if he'd gone to heaven, all
the water would be clean."
	—Dr. Mark Crislip
%
It is ignoring the nuances of a complicated topic to grind your axe that
annoys me.
	—Dr. Mark Crislip
%
Anybody who thinks that homeopathy is appropriate therapy for anything but
thirst is ... unfit to care for patients.
	—Dr. Mark Crislip
%
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
        ― Dorothy Parker
%
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in
it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.
        ― Dorothy Parker
%
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second
greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The
Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now,
while they’re happy.
        ― Dorothy Parker
%
I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.
        ― Dorothy Parker
%
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she
went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
        ― Dorothy Parker
%
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
        ― Dorothy Parker
%
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
        ― Dorothy Parker
%
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with
great force.
        ― Dorothy Parker, on Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"
%
It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.
        ― Dorothy Parker
%
All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I
wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.
        ― Dorothy Parker
%
Sometimes, a grand adventure begins when you lick the evil. —Joe Pizzirusso
%
Angels are very good at math. That's why they call them arc-angels.
        ― Steven Novella (The Skeptics Guide to the Universe)
%
"Girls are complicated. The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800
pages, with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated,
hard to figure out."
	— Huge Laurie, on raising a girl
%
There is no material safety data sheet for astatine. If there were, it would
just be the word "NO" scrawled over and over in charred blood.
	— Randall Munroe, "What If?"
%
Telling a child that everyone dies is the hardest thing about being a party
clown.
	— James Ferace
%
Last night, I told my kid that the night light only makes it easier for
the monsters to find her.
	— James Ferace