from, obviously and properly enough, Rand Lindsly
rand@skydiver.eng.sun.com
I'd take a Bromo, but I can't stand the noise
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
He who has never envied the vegetable has missed the human drama.
E.M. Cioran
There's no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Happiness is not something you experience, it's something you remember
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
"For certain people after 50, litigation takes the place of sex."
-Gore Vidal
If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
"Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have
made an international reputation for myself by thinking once
or twice a week."
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid;
you must also be well-mannered."
Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism."
William James (1842-1910)
"Parades should be classed as a nuisance and participants
should be subject to a term in prison."
-Will (I never met a man I didn't like) Rogers
"If I had my way, any man guilty of golf would be ineligible for
any office of trust in the United States."
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on,
I go to the library and read a good book.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
Impiety, noun. Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)
Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. Its's
what you do with what you have left.
- Hubert Humphrey
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The amount of noise which anyone can bear undisturbed stands
in inverse proportion to his mental capacity.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space.
Rebecca West
An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.
Michael Korda
It does not matter much what a man hates provided he hates something.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever
turn it into a fact.
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
When an opera star sings her head off, she usually improves her appearance.
Victor Borge
Even paranoids have real enemies.
Delmore Schwartz
My only aversion to vice, is the price.
Victor Buono
If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.
-Kingsley Amis
If you are an author and give one of your books to a member of
the upper class, you must never expect him to read it.
Paul Fussell
I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Principles have no real force except when one is well fed.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
War is like love; it always finds a way.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
Know thyself? A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever
observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar
who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.
-Andre Gide (1876-1951)
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
-Nicholas Murray Butler
All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure
I'd sooner go to my dentist any day.
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work.
I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen
One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it and run.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
"The world began when I was born and the world is mine to win"
--Badger Clark
Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
Albert Schweitzer
I'm going to memorize your name and throw my head away.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
An optimist is a man who has never had much experience.
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he
could hate that too.
Peter De Vries
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated, but not signed.
Christopher Morley
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your
intelligence.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
"Understand that legal and illegal are political, and often
arbitrary, categorizations; use and abuse are medical, or
clinical, distinctions."
--Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Urine Test
Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the
utterly bewildered.
Al Capp
It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
Anatole France
The only really happy folk are married women and single men.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
James Reston
Virtue is insufficient temptation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and
deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken
She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
Thank heavens the sun has gone in, and I don't have to go out and enjoy it.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Philosophy teaches us to bear with equanimity the misfortunes of others.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
I have given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
James Thurber (1894-1961)
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It may not be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong - but that is the way to bet.
Damon Runyon
California is the only state in the union where you can
fall asleep under a rose bush in full bloom and freeze to death.
William Claude Dunkenfield ("W. C. Fields")(1880-1946)
If at first you don't succeed, try, try, and try again.
Then give up. There's no use being a damned fool about it.
William Claude Dunkenfield ("W. C. Fields")(1880-1946)
Start every day with a smile and get it over with.
William Claude Dunkenfield ("W. C. Fields")(1880-1946)
"The ant has made itself illustrious/by constant industry industrious. What?
Would you be calm & placid,/if you were full of formic acid?" --O. Nash,ca1935
"The pig if I am not mistaken/supplys us sausage ham and bacon.
Let others say his heart is big/I call it stupid of the pig." --O. Nash
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep
his mouth shut and his checkbook open.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
No good deed goes unpunished.
Clare Boothe Luce
It is always the best policy to tell the truth,
unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
Jerome K. Jerome
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
I once said cynically of a politician, "He'll
doublecross that bridge when he comes to it"
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
The more one is hated, I find, the happier one is.
Louis Ferdinand Celine
I'm not OK, you're not OK, and that's OK.
William Sloane Coffin
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that
bother me, it's the parts that I do understand.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all
brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are
all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.
Henry Miller (1891-1980)
"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..." Plato, _Phaedrus_
I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
You never realize how short a month is until you pay alimony.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Dinner theater is anti-culture.
John Simon
Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount
of time and causes the most amount of trouble.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils,
because it prolongs the torments of man.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Humanity is not a gift of nature,
it is a spiritual achievement to be earned.
Richard Bach
There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.
John Ciardi
Living in California adds ten years to a man's life. And
those extra ten years I'd like to spent in New York.
Harry Ruby
Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anybody else.
Heywood Broun
The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.
E.M. Cioran
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance
for the evil conscience of their parents.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our
race is indiscriminate charity.
Andrew Carnegie
NEITHER BLOODY NOR BOWED
They say of me, and so they should,
It's doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
accumulating dividends,
and making enviable names
in science, art, and parlor games.
But I despite expert advice,
keep doing things I think are nice,
and though to good I never come
inseperable my nose and thumb.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Children should neither be seen nor heard from - ever again.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
Television is for appearing on - not for looking at.
Noel Coward (1899-1973)
The country has charms only for those not obliged to stay there.
Edouard Manet
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to
others, they would no longer be fantasies.
Fran Lebowitz
I do not care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
The average trade book has a shelf life of between milk and yogurt,
except for books by any member of the Irving Wallace family - they
have preservatives.
Calvin Trillin
There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a
rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
Ross MacDonald
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Woody Allen
Chastity: the most unnatural of the sexual perversions.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian anymore than
going to the garage makes you a car.
Laurence J. Peter
A man must properly pay the fiddler. In my case it so
happened that a whole symphony orchestra had to be subsidized.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
Democracy: The substitution of election by the incompetent
many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
New York: where everyone mutinies but no one deserts.
Harry Hershfield
England has forty-two religions and only two sauces.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
My heart is pure as the driven slush.
Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)
God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Don't overestimate the decency of the human race.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Humility is no substitute for a good personality.
Fran Lebowitz
I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.
Jules Renard (1864-1910)
Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position
ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
You can't expect a boy to be depraved until he has been to a good school.
H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
Martin Mull
Faith, noun. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who
speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don't need it;
if you are sick, you shouldn't take it.
Henry Ford
And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting
fluttering significance, while he suffered its seeming
meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who
hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of
Chaos for revelation and God's presence?
It was the Steppenwolf
I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace
in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
Woody Allen
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.
The world owes you nothing. It was here first." -- Mark Twain
"A chic type, a rough type, an odd type -- but never a stereotype"
-- Jean-Michel Jarre
When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of
broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.
Peter De Vries
A farm is an irregular patch of nettles bounded by short-term notes,
containing a fool and his wife who didn't know enough to stay in the city.
S.J. Perelman
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
That all men should be brothers is the dream of people who have no brothers.
Charles Chincholles
There is one difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist-
the taxidermist leaves the hide.
Mortimer Caplin
A doctor's reputation is made by the number of eminent men who
die under his care.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The English instinctively admire any man who has
no talent and is modest about it.
James Agate
Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
"One of these days, the people are going to demand
peace of the government, and the government is going
to have to give it to them." Dwight Eisenhower
I believe with all my heart that one cannot be America's
president without a belief in God, without the strength
that your faith gives you.
George Bush
to convention of National Religious Broadcasters
God must hate common people, because he made them so common.
Philip Wylie
Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days
on nothing but food and water.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing clanging
loudly and vainly as the train goes by.
Christopher Morley (1890-1957)
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting
the sincerity of other pessimists.
Jean Rostand
Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
Leonard Brandwein
Real programs don't eat cache.
Remember the generational battles twenty years ago? Remember all
the screaming at the dinner table about haircuts, getting jobs and
the American dream? Well, our parents won. They're out living the
American dream on some damned golf course in Vero Beach, and we're
stuck with the jobs and haircuts.
-P. J. O'Rourke
The avarice of the old: it's absurd to increase one's luggage as
one nears the journey's end.
-Cicero
If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup.
-Turkish proverb
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute
rejection of authority.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only
earthly certainty is oblivion.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the
palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Sexual enlightenment is justified insofar as girls cannot learn
too soon how children do not come into the world.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Nothing spoils a confession like repentance.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
I.F. Stone
Communism is like one big phone company.
Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)
It isn't necessary to be rich and famous to be happy.
It's only necessary to be rich.
Alan Alda
"Destiny...is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice;
it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved"
William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
"Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation
wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any
certainty in our hands is the care of our own time".
- Edmund Burke
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Australia, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and
commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate
dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"
"The bonds that links your true family is not one of blood, but of
respect and joy in each others life.
Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof."
-- Richard Bach
Health food makes me sick.
Calvin Trillin
A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Grub first, then ethics.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.
Nancy Mitford
The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold
of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
Quentin Crisp
Hell is for other people.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Happiness is seeing your mother-in-law's picture on the back of a milk carton.
Anonymous
I don't think Christians should use birth control. You consummate
your marriage as often as you like and if you have babies, you have
babies.
-Randall Terry
Executive Director, Operation Rescue
We are totally opposed to abortion under any circumstances. We are
also opposed to abortifacient drugs and chemicals like the Pill and
the IUD, and we are also opposed to all forms of birth control with
the exception of natural family planning.
-Judie Brown
President, American Life Lobby
Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest.
-Jimmy Swaggart
I listen to the feminists and all these radical gals - most of them
are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have married, but
they've married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to
the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all
they need. Most of these feminists need a man to tell them what time
of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad
at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men --
that's their problem.
-Jerry Falwell
Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like the
way we're made you've got to take it up with God.
-Phyllis Schlafly
The argument that making contraceptives available to young people
would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That's like offering a
cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight.
-Jerry Falwell
It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by
fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer,
or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or
brain damaged baby (even ten years later when she may be happily
married).
-Phyllis Schafly
I think contraception is disgusting -- people using each other for pleasure.
-Joseph Schiedler
Director, Pro-Life Action League
"For every problem, there is one solution which is simple,
neat and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken
Mabey this world is another planet's hell.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would undoubtedly do it again.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
It has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep,
and never to refrain when awake.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawer.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
"Obviously something slipped through here."
Reverend John Vaughan
Financial administrator for the Archdiocese of Miami
(when asked why they held stock in companies
that manufacture contraceptives)
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
The lion and calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.
Whosoever shall not fall by the sword or by famine, shall fall by pestilence,
so why bother shaving?
The wicked at heart probably know something.
Whosover loveth wisdom is righteous, but he that keepeth company with fowl is
weird.
My Lord, my Lord! What hast Thou done, lately?
From "Without Feathers" by Woody Allen
I do not believe in God. I believe in cashmere.
Fran Lebowitz
Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.
Woody Allen
"Wait here, Audrey. This is between me and the vegetable."
Rick Moranis, 'Little Shop of Horrers'
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on
the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) _Note Books_
Cabbage, n.:
A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
a man's head.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)"The Devil's Dictionary"
Grief is a species of idleness.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a
new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new ones.
-Machiavelli
Early to rise and early to bed
Makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead
James Thurber (1894-1961)
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. 'Yes' is the answer.
-Swami X
Democracy: The worship of jackals by jackasses.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Perhaps God is not dead; perhaps God is himself mad.
R.D. Laing
War is like love; it always finds a way.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
There are three terrible ages of childhood - 1 to 10, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30.
Cleveland Amory
"The ability to understand a question from all sides meant one was totally
unfit for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of the real man."
Thucydides on the Athenian mood during the Peloponnesian war
(circa 455-400 B.C., the eve of the decline of Athens' power)
There is no great concurrence between learning and wisdom
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Finance is the art of passing currency from
hand to hand until it finally disappears.
Robert W. Sarnoff
If all the economists in the world were laid end to
end, they wouldn't reach any conclusion.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Anybody caught selling macrame in public should be dyed a natural color and
hung out to dry.
Calvin Trillin
Wife: a former sweetheart.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Californians invented the concept of life-style.
This alone warrants their doom.
Don DeLillo
God seems to have left the receiver off the hook and time is running out.
Arthur Koestler
Oh God, how do the world and heavens confine themselves,
when our hearts tremble in their own barriers!
Goethe (1749-1832)
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.
Gore Vidal
"The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right."
William Safire
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable
that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
What the world needs today is a definite, spiritual mobilization
of the nations who belive in God against this tide of Red agnosticism.
...And in rejecting an atheistic other world, I am confident that the
Almighty God will be with us.
President Herbert Hoover
in proposing the abolition of the United Nations
in favor of a "cooperation of God-fearing free nations"
Address upon the American Road 1948-1950 p66
Democracy is, first and foremost, a spiritual force, it is built upon a
spiritual basis - and on a belief in God and an observance of moral
principle. And in the long run only the church can provide that basis.
Our founder knew this truth - and we will neglect it at our peril.
President Harry Truman
Public Papers of the President of the United States:
Harry S. Truman - 1951 U.S. Gov. 1966 p1063
Our religious faith gives us the answer to the false beliefs of Communism...
I have the feeling that God has created us and brought us to our present
position of power and strength for some great purpose.
President Harry Truman
Public Papers of the President of the United States:
Harry S. Truman - 1951 U.S. Gov. 1966 pp548-549
It sure does, Ben, it definitely does...this is definite...it specifically
clearly, unequivocally says that Russia and other countries will enter
into war and God will destroy Russia through earthquakes, volcanoes...
Pat Robertson when asked the question
"Does the Bible specifically tell us
what is going to happen in the future"
"700 Club" December 2, 1981
America has begun a spiritual reawakening. Faith and hope are being
restored. Americans are turning back to God. Church attendance is
up. Audiences for religious books and broadcasts are growing. And
I do believe that he has begun to heal our blessed land.
President Ronald Regan
to the National Association of Evangelicals
Columbus, Ohio
No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor
should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
President George Bush
to Robert Sherman of American Atheist Press
at the Chicago airport while announcing
federal disaster relief for Illinois
"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on
the Christian religion."
George Washington
"I believe with all my heart that one cannot be America's
president without a belief in God, without the strength
that your faith gives you."
George Bush
to convention of National Religious Broadcasters
Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.
Danny Kaye
Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Curiosity killed the cat, but for awhile I was a suspect.
Steven Wright
If you can't take the heat, get out of the gene pool.
unknown
The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius is limited.
unknown
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard
This was found in another alias and thought it might apply...Rand
The actual origins of the Annual Adolph Eichmann's Evil Cake Contest
are probably better off lost in the hall-closet of history, but the
legend remains.
The contest was born out of a student paper on Hannah Arendt which was
submitted as an assignment in The Schoolhouse (a writing program).
The only extant fragment of that immortal paper is part of its final
sentence: "...but the icing on Adolph Eichmann's evil cake was..."
which spawned a tradition of writing unknown to man before its time,
and which has been reverently memorialized by an annual event.
Excerpts from this year's contest entries rate no more introduction:
"In short, Socrates seems to be the philosophical napkin with which
the ensuing cultural thinkers of history wipe their mouths of pedantic
ooze."
"The Syracusans defeated the Athenians on their own turf, the sea."
"Like raisins in a bread pudding, the moments lie within the body
of Henry."
"As a domestic animal, Othello is a child."
"Morality is ubiquitous in everything that is good or bad."
"Why should someone be penalized because he has studied diligently and
deciduously in high school."
"`Tyranny of the majority' as a dangerous and omnipotent force is
still a dangerous issue - we see it manifest itself in our culture in
such things as florescent biker shorts and Motley Crue."
"In the upcoming times of cutbacks, the defense industry can turn to
making stimulation devices."
"Today, the world is teetering on the brink of nuclear Agamemnon."
"But when the chips are down, women hold the reins."
A plan is just a tangent vector on the manifold of reality.
"Skratch" Garrison
This just goes to show you can halve your cake and eat it two.
Jay Osborn (in response to yesterday's "Eichmann's evil cake" posting)
Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties,
and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.
Joseph Addison
"What are politicians going to tell people when the
Constitution is gone and we still have a drug problem?"
-- William Simpson, A.C.L.U.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor
to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
Conservative. noun. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as
distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
-- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
doubt.
-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
Life is a zoo in a jungle.
Peter De Vries
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable. H.L. Mencken
DISCLAIMER: A society where such disclaimers are needed is saddening.
Unknown
In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward mobile.
Hunter S. Thompson
I like the word `indolence.' it makes my laziness seem classy.
Bern Williams
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It's a man's world, and you men can have it.
Katherine Anne Porter
I don't want to wrap myself in the flag, because I'm afraid I'll get burned.
former Chief Justice Warren Burger
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Here's some words of wisdom sprayed painted on a wall in Berkeley:
Bush: Read my labia
The music at a wedding procession always reminds
me of the music of soldiers going into battle.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
I grew up to have my father's looks - my fathers speech patterns -
my father's posture - my father's walk - my father's opinions and
my mother's contempt for my father.
Jules Feiffer
I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it,
the more it begins to make sense.
Harold S. Kushner
I'm an idealist: I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
Carl Sandburg
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out
the trees, then names the streets after them.
Bill Vaughan
I will say this about being an optimist-- even when
things don't turn out well, you are certain they
will get better.
Frank Hughes
I like children. If they're properly cooked.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
The entire sum of existence is the magic of being needed
by just one person.
VII Putnam
The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
Gore Vidal
Rene Descartes was in this bar, and the bartender asked
him "Would you like another drink?"
Rene replied, "I think not" -- so he disappeared.
We all learn by experience but some of us have to go to summer school.
Peter De Vries
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Liberal: a power worshipper without power.
George Orwell (1903-1950)
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"You can convince anyone of anything if you just push it at them 100%
of the time. They may not believe it completely, but they will still use
it to form opinions, especially if they have nothing else to draw on."
- Charles Manson
One man's religion is another mans' belly laugh.
Isacc Azimov
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing
between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
J. K. Galbraith
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)
For certain people after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.
Gore Vidal
Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
Jules Renard (1864-1910)
History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)
Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.
Andy Warhol
Canada: A few acres of snow.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
It strkes me as singularly inappropriate for a school to use its
students for fund-raising. It reminded me of the first time I saw
a gypsy mother send her baby out to beg.
William Hamilton
Its okay to get jacked up and head out onto the highway, but I've been there
and I can tell you that the fast lane is littered with countless smoldering
wrecks.
H.S.Thompson
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts
to bite people themselves.
August Strindberg
If the headache would only precede the intoxication,
alcoholism would be a virue.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind
only the slime of a new bureaucracy
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced
to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
Brendan Behan
I can't take a well-tanned person seriously.
Cleveland Amory
Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have
been born is of course the miracle.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
Creator: a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
I was never ruined but twice: once when I lost
a lawsuit, and once when I won one.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
To err is human; to forgive is simply not our policy
MIT Assasination Club slogan
The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate,
but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"Robspierre replied softly, 'the question is to know where is the enemy.'
'He is out there, and I have hunted him,' said Danton.
'He is within, and I am watching him,' said Robespierre."
V. Hugo, "Ninty-three"
Paying alimony is like feeding hay to a dead horse.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
It has been proven that the pig is the only homosexual animal.
As this perversion is most prevalent in pork-eating nations,
it is obvious that it gets into your genes through the meat.
Tasleem Ahmed - Islamic missionary
from a Muslim mission in Galaway Ireland
first quoted in London's "Freethinker" magazine
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly
from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)
(also attributed to Oscar Wilde)
Insanity: aperfectly rational adjustment to the insane world.
R.D. Laing
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance,
and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were
not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.
Henry David Thoreau, "Walden," the Conclusion
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and
pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather
preserve its life than destroy it.
Henry David Thoreau, "Maine Woods," `Chesuncook'
I think I think, therefore, I think I am.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Excerpts from the notebooks of Lazarus Long
from Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love"
----------------------------------------------------
History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any
rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to
stand up to the unknown without help. But, like dandruff, most people
do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive
considerable pleasure from fiddling with it.
No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and
in the rong run no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their
sons: "Come back with your shield, or on it." Later on, this custom
declined. So did Rome.
Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites.
Moderation is for monks.
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
(incorrectly quoted in previous curmudgeon - ed)
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves.
Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than
one man. How's that again? I missed something.
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million
men. Let's play that over again too. Who decides?
What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts?
Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars
fortell", avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind
the unguessable "verdict of history" - what are the facts, and to how many
decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your
single clue. Get the facts!
Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation.
Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity
is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal
and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor
jerk who is shy and half slug who must tighten his belt.
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility.
And vice versa.
Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.
You live and learn. Or you don't live long.
One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a null word.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher
a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts,
build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders,
cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch
manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die
gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
The phrase "we (I) (you) simply must..." designates something that need
not be done. "That goes without saying" is a red warning. "Of course"
means you had best check it yourself. These small-change cliches and
others like them, when read correctly, are reliable channel markers.
Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.
Tom Stoppard
Television: chewing gum for the eyes.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)
Morality is the weakness of the mind.
Arthur Rimbaud
New York: A third-rate Babylon.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian
principle of the survival of the vulgarist.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Advertising is legalized lying.
H.G. Wells (1885-1946)
If the world were a logical place, men would ride sidesaddle.
Rita Mae Brown
Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are
a conqueror. Kill all and you are a God.
Jean Rostand
If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.
Kinsgley Amis
Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.
Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)
The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.
Peter De Vries
Unless you hate your father and mother and wife and
brothers and sisters and, yes, even your own life,
you can't be my disciple.
Jesus Christ (0?-32?) if St. Luke is to be believed
see Luke 14:26
The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Man is a dog's idea of what God should be.
Holbrook Jackson
We have not lost faith, but we have transferred
it from God to the medical profession.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
What's reality anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch.
--- Lily Tomlin ---
"Neither liberty nor property is safe while the legislature is in session."
Red is grey and yellow white
We decide which is right
and which is an illusion.
---Moody Blues, "Tuesday Afternoon"---
What's reality anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch.
WRITTEN by Jane Wagner, only spoken by Lily Tomlin.
Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It has no mother.
Germaine Greer
Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence.
Jules Feiffer
"Let's face it...most relationships you have in life don't work out."
Alex Bennett
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson (1865-1959)
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845)
Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children.
Sam Levenson (1911-1980)
The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)
I don't really trust a sane person.
Pro football lineman Lyle Alzado
Whis is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone
suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
Fred Allen
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its
refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most
curious manner to make use of it? These and other suchlike
considerations, always have, and always will prevail with
mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things,
who has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be
feared."
Isaac Newton
Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)
"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming"
Wernher von Braun commenting on bureaucracy
"If you torture data long enough, it will tell you anything you want !"
unknown
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad.
People are either charming or tedious.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must
be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
Miss Manners (Judith Martin)
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.
Andre Malraux
Man is more ape than many of the apes.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
I have found little that is good about human beings. In my
experience most of them are trash.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.
Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939)
Progress might have been all right once but it has gone on too long.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so
those with irrational fear of life become publishers.
Cyril Connolly
The main difference between men and women is
that men are lunatics and women are idiots.
Rebecca West
Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within
the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
How can one conceive of a one party system in
a country that has over 200 varieties of cheese.
Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of
purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.
Fran Lebowitz
Isn't there any other part of the matzo you can eat?
Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) on being served
matzo ball soup three meals in a row
The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.
Norman Mailer
God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place.
J.D. McCoughey
"Men have become fools with their tools"
Thomas Elisha Stewart (1963-)
"Men have become the tools of their tools"
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation
to which the filing system has been lost?
Quentin Crisp
For flavor, instant sex will never supercede
the stuff you have to peel and cook.
Quentin Crisp
Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
Quentin Crisp
France is the only country where the money falls apart and
you can't tear the toilet paper.
Billy Wilder
In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America,
but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use,
which they have obtained from books of travel.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
France was a long despotism tempered by epigrams.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
If my film makes one more person miserable, I've done my job.
Woody Allen
The length of a film should be directly related to the
endurance of the human bladder.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything
and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.
Miyamoto Musashi, 1645
Clergyman, n. - A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual
affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Lawers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
Jeremy Bentham
A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
Benjamin Franklin
Whatever their other contributions to our society,
lawyers could be an important source of protein.
Guindon cartoon caption
If you laid all of the lawyers in the world, end to end, on the equator ----
It would be a good idea to just leave them there.
Unknown
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
George Orwell (1903-1950)
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"I have seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched
C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All
those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Time to die."
Roy Baty, Nexus6, N6MAA10816, Combat
One of the delights known to age, and beyond
the grasp of youth, is that of Not Going.
J.B. Priestley (1894-1984)
When I was young there was no respect for the young, and now that
I am old there is no respect for the old. I missed out coming and going.
J.B. Priestley (1894-1984)
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party
when the masks are dropped.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
H.G. Wells (1885-1946)
Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts
you in your effort to believe it.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
Jack Paar
I'm a scientist; nothing shocks me.
Indiana Jones
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport;
when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
One murder makes a villain, millions a hero.
Beilby Porteus (1731-1808)
Death, A Poem
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he
comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he
next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from
that to incivility and procrastination.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)
Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts - 1827
Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
A Day at the Races - 1936
Animals have these advantages over man:
they never hear the clock strike,
they die without any idea of death,
they have no theologians to instruct them,
their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies,
their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms
with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Fork, n. An instrument used chiefly for the
purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the
work he's supposed to be doing at that moment.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945)
It is impossible to enjoy idling unless there is plenty of work to do.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you're still a rat.
Jane Wagner/Lily Tomlin
Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
Charlie McCarthy (Edgar Bergen, 1903-1978)
Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
A cult is a religion with no political power
Tom Wolfe
The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat
beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945)
There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
I find women with well developed flesh very attractive. The scrawny
little things doing commercials on my television set are slightly
repulsive -- like famine victims.
Dana Hatch
My schoolmates would make love to anything that moved,
but I never saw any reason to limit myself.
Emo Philips
A promiscuous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are.
Victor Lownes
I caused my husband's heart attack. In the middle of lovemaking I
took the paper bag off my head. He dropped the Polaroid and keeled
over and so did the hooker. It would have taken me half an hour to
untie myself and call the paramedics, but fortunately the Great Dane
could dial.
Joan Rivers
Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.
Woody Allen
Jesus was a crackpot.
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh - San Francisco Chronicle 12/17/85
Let Bhagwans be Bhagwans
Headline considered by the Washington Post
according to William Safire in his 12/8/85 column
Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would
have repudiated his doctrine.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) "Thus Spake Zarathustra"
Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) "What is Religion"
I'm not going to climb into the ring with Tolstoy.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) from a letter
Hemingway was a jerk.
Harold Robbins as quoted in Leslie Halliwell's The Filmgoer's Companion, 1984
Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.
Dave Barry
Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and
disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture
professors who when their turn comes, will manufacture professors.
Simone Weil
When I hear the word "culture" I reach for my gun.
Hans Johst (c. 1939)
It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.
Dick Cavett
========================================================================
Average Iraqi
Has visited the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates, cradle of
the ancient civilization founded by his ancestors
Average American
Once got really sick on the Wild Mouse ride at Six Flags theme
park
Average Iraqi
Willing to participate in Holy War for his nation
Average American
Willing to participate in People's Choice Awards
Average Iraqi
Lines up by the thousands to die for country
Average American
Will go to any extreme to avoid jury duty
Average Iraqi
Has endured many food shortages during wars with Iran and embargo
by West
Average American
Shoves McDonalds cashier if their Happy Meal doesn't include
McCookies
Average Iraqi
Believes if he dies in battle, he will go straight to Paradise
Average American
Believes if, in a dream, you don't wake up before hitting the
ground, you die
Average Iraqi
Has friend or relative wounded in ruthless wars of conquest
Average American
Has beer guzzling uncle who shot self in foot on hunting trip
Average Iraqi
Thinks Saddam Hussein is a political genius
Average American
Thinks Saddam Hussein makes Dan Quayle seem like Einstein
========================================================================
College football would be more interesting if the faculty played
instead of the students - there would be a great increase in
broken arms, legs and necks.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.
Rita Mae Brown
Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart.
John Updike
Nothing fails like success.
Gerald Nachman
Success and failure are equally disastrous.
Tennessee Williams
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure
is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby
Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
So little time, so little to do.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.
Dick Gregory
A pessimist is a person who has to listen to too many optimists.
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
We are given children to test us and make us more spiritual.
George F. Will
It could probably be show by facts and figures that there is
no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Courage is the fear of being thought a coward.
Horace Smith
What is virtue but the trades unionism of the married.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.
Philip Sheridan
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
Woody Allen
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of
the not worth knowing.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people
who ate too much and had nothing to think about.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you and education.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
When in doubt, duck.
Malcolm Forbes
"Our best work is done when it needs to be."
F. Phelps
Economists are people who work with numbers but
who don't have the personality to be accountants.
Unknown
An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
There is no free lunch.
Milton Friedman
A husband is what's left of the lover once the nerve has been extracted.
Helen Rowland (1876-1950)
Mahatma Gandi was what wives wish their husbands were: thin, tan and moral.
Unknown
There is so little difference between husbands you might as well keep the first. Adela Rogers St. Johns
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And he answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was too.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
If you want to read about love and marriage, you
have to buy two separate books.
Alan King
Marriage is based on the theory that when man
discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste he
should at once throw up his job and go work in the brewery.
George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)
"Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even
Science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe
unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when
his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is Nought. His less
accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in
the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not
very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well
as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger
at Nought really sets off _in medias res_. No retrospect will take us
to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on
earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which
our story sets out."
-George Eliot (1819-1880)
from _Daniel Deronda_
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast
enough." -- Mario Andretti
"The cowards never start and the weak die along the way." -- Kit Carson
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established
authorities are wrong." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)
Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Sin is geographical.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.
J.B. Priestley
Philanthropy is the refuge of rich people who
wish to annoy their fellow creatures.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
A small, 14-seat plane is circling for a landing in Atlanta. It's totally
fogged in, zero visibility, and suddenly there's a small electrical fire in the cockpit which disables all of the instruments and the radio. The pilot
continues circling, totally lost, when suddenly he finds himself flying next to a tall office building.
He rolls down the window (this particular airplane happens to have roll-down
windows) and yells to a person inside the building, "Where are we?"
The person responds "In an airplane!"
The pilot then banks sharply to the right, circles twice, and makes a perfect
landing at Atlanta International.
As the passengers emerge, shaken but unhurt, one of them says to the pilot,
"I'm certainly glad you were able to land safely, but I don't understand how
the response you got was any use."
"Simple," responded the pilot. "I got an answer that was completely accurate
and totally irrelevant to my problem, so I knew it had to be the IBM building."
Man is a hating rather than a loving animal.
Rebecca West
The people are that part of the state that does now know what it wants.
Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest
outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.
Joseph Conrad
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is
sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that
actions speak louder than words.
Fran Lebowitz
My work is done, why wait?
Suicide note left by Kodak founder George Eastman (1854-1932)
All right, then, I'll say it: Dante makes me sick.
Last words of Spanish playwright Lope de Vega on being
assured on his deathbed that the end was very near
I don't feel good.
Last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)
Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.
Last words of Pancho Villa (1877?-1923)
Go away. I'm all right.
Last words of H.G. Wells (1885-1946)
Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult.
Actor Edmund Gwenn (1875-1959) on his deathbed
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults
by confessing our parents' shortcomings.
Laurence J. Peter
Psychiatry is the care of the id by the odd.
Unknown
Psychoanalysis is that mental illnes for which
it regards itself a therapy.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980)
No statue has ever been put up to a critic.
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics
is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.
Christopher Hampton
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how its done, they've
seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
Brendan Behan
My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked.
Peter Stack in a movie review
in the San Francisco Chronicle-Jan 2, 1983
Television is democracy at its ugliest.
Paddy Chayefsky (1923-1982)
Television is more interesting than people. If it were not,
we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms.
Alan Corenk
The cable TV sex channels don't expand our horizons, don't
make us better people, and don't come in clearly enough.
Bill Maher
Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.
A.J. Liebling
Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by
the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough
to be accepted as a serious person by the British public.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about
anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to
verify my notions have only wasted my time.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) (in a letter to H.G. Wells)
I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously
at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact they do so.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
All movements go too far.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Optimism is the content of small men in high places.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Writers aren't exactly people...they're a whole
lot of people trying to be one person.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself
would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
How could I lose to such an idiot?
A shout from chess grandmaster
Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)
I believe that people would be alive today if
there were a death penalty.
Nancy Reagan
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect
can only advise his client to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)
A doctor can bury his mistakes but a supplier based engineer
can only advise the product designer to specify a heavier
texture.
Mick Lloyd Kerman (MT 1055-9+)
How do you like that guy? Can't run six balls and he's
President of the United States.
Pool hustler Johnny Irish on Nixon
Nixon is a shifty-eyed goddamn liar....He's one of the few
in the history of this country to run for high office talking
out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out
of both sides.
Harry S Truman (1884-1972)
I don't give a shit about the Italian lira.
President Richard M. Nixon on being asked by
H.R. Haldeman if he wanted to hear a report
on the decline of the Italian lira
I would have made a good Pope.
Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain
Lily Tomlin
If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't
hesitate to do so.
Andre Gide (1876-1951)
Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women
at the Mayo Clinic.
Roy Blount, Jr.
Sometimes when reading Goethe I have a paralyzing suspicion
that he is trying to be funny.
Guy Davenport
Television is now so desperately hungry for material
that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
Gore Vidal
Puritanism...helps us enjoy our misery while we are
inflicting it on others.
Marcel Ophuls
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in
fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Practice freedom of religion. Set fire to the church of your choice.
National Lampoon, _Radio Dinner_, 1972
Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person
standing between Nixon and the White House.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) in 1960
As given in A. Schlesinger Jr's, "A Thousand Days"
I'm not sure I've even got the brains to be President.
Barry Goldwater in 1964
Gerry Ford is a nice guy, but he played too much football
with his helmet off.
Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973)
Sometimes when I look at my children I say to myself,
"Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin."
Lillian Carter, mother of Jimmy and Billy
The thought of being President frightens me and I do
not think I want the job.
Ronald Reagan in 1973
Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan - a Mount Rushmore of incompetence.
David Steinberg
I see the world in very fluid, contradictory, emerging, interconnected
terms, and with that kind of circuitry I just don't feel the need to
say what is going to happen or will not happen.
California Govenor Jerry Brown
San Francisco Examiner, Oct 12, 1980
Well, I would - if they realized that we - again if - if we led them
back to that stalemate only because that our retaliatory power, our
seconds, or strike at them after our first strike, would be so
destructive that they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
Ronald Reagan when asked if nuclear
war could be limited to tactical weapons.
Verbatim transcript from a press conference.
Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)
Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find
out the right thing to do. Now, it is not only necessary to do the right
thing, but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is
what is the right thing to do and what is the right way to do it. That is
the problem. But this economy of ours is not so simple that it obeys to
the opinion of bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual,
even to the President. This is an economy that is made up of 173 million
people and it reflects their desires, they're ready to buy, they're
to spend, it is a thing that is too complex and too big to be affected
adversely or advantageously just by a few words or any particular - say
a little this and that, or even a panacea so alleged.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) in response
to the question: "Has government been lacking
in courage and boldness in facing up to the recession?"
Verbatim transcript from a press conference.
Almost all reformers, however strict their social
conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)
Romance should never begin with sentiment.
It should begin with science and end with a settlement.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
Gioacchino Rosini
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents,
gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
Socrates (470-399 BC)
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
Plato (427?-348? BC)
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Children are guilty of unpardonable rudeness when they spit
in the face of a companion; neither are they excusable who
spit from windows or on walls or furniture.
St. John Baptist de La Salle
The Rules of Christian Manners and Civility (c. 1695)
Until a child is one year old it is incapable of sin.
The Talmud (c. 200)
A statesman is a successful politician who is dead.
Thomas B. Reed
All religions are founded on the fear of the many
and the cleverness of the few.
Stendhal
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting
human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
There are times when you have to choose between being a human
and having good taste.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
Bibo, ergo sum. - I drink, therefore I am
Fredirect Toyou
Cogito ergo spud. - I think, therefore I yam
Graffito reported by Herb Caen
San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 1980
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep.
That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?
Jean Kerr
Most religions do not make men better, only warier.
Elias Canetti
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
What a beautiful fix we are in now; peace has been declared.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) after the Treaty of Amiens, 1802
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.
Unknown
Vote early and vote often.
Al Capone (1899-1947)
"An honest election, under democracy, is an act of innocence
which does not take place more than once in the history of a given nation."
(Jose Marie Gil Robles; speech in Madrid, 1933)
"Voting for the right is doing nothing for it."
(H.D. Thoreau, "An Essay on Civil Disobedience," 1849.
Politics: "The conduct of public affairs for private advantage."
(Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary," 1906)
>From the California Civil Code, "Object of a Contract":
#1597. Everything is deemed possible except that which is impossible in
the nature of things.
>From the California Civil Code, "Maxims of Jurisprudence":
#3528. The law respects form less than substance.
#3529. That which ought to have been done is to be regarded as done.
#3530. That which does not appear to exist is to be regarded as if it
did not exist.
#3532. The law neither does nor requires idle acts.
#3533. The law disregards trifles.
#3535. Contemporaneous exposition is in general the best.
#3537. Superfluity does not vitiate.
#3546. Things happen according to the ordinary course of nature and
the ordinary habits of life.
#3547. A thing continues to exist as long as is usual with things of
that nature.
Being in politics is like being a football coach;
you have to be smart enough to understand the game
and dumb enough to think it's important.
Eugene McCarthy
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are
punished by being governed by those who are dumber.
Plato (427?-347 BC)
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a
member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon
minds wallow in sluice of their own making.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Do we really deserve top billing?
Fred Allen (1894-1956) to Henry Morgan
at a meeting of the National Conference
of Christians and Jews
What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
"The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act.
A general association takes place, and common interest
produces common security."
Thomas Paine in his "The Rights of Man," (1791):
"The less government we have the better."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these
ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the
right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute
new government..."
Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence)
[bracketed comment added for clarity]
"...a revolution of government is the strongest proof that
can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense."
John Adams (Diary, 1786)
"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
Thomas Jefferson (Motto on his seal)
"A little rebellion now and then...is a medicine necessary
for the sound health of government."
Thomas Jefferson (Letter to James Madison, 1787)
"I know not what course others may take, but as for me,
give me liberty, or give me death."
Patrick Henry (Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775)
Dictatorship is without a doubt the most satisfying form of
government...as long as I'm the dictator.
Phil Stromer 11/9/90-
Never argue with a fool. Listeners can't tell which is which.
Unknown
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.
Charles De Gaulle (1890-1970)
Look for the ridiculous in everything and you find it.
Jules Renard (1864-1910)
Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers
merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure
you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), 1850
Bad spellers of the world, untie!
Grafitto
Fix this sentence: He put the horse before the cart.
Stephen Price
I can't seem to bring myself to say, "Well, I guess I'll be
toddling along." It isn't that I can't toddle. It's that
I can't guess I'll toddle.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945)
A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
Max Weinreich (1894-1969)
"Phreblitt, n. a word used to describe someone in immediate danger of
losing his/her life in a violent, painful manner that will
immensely satisfy those who witness the deed. e.g. Timothy
Miller is a phreblitt."
In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the
world it is a fact.
Marlene Dietrich
When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When
you have money, it's sex. When you have both, it's health.
If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death.
J.P. Donleavy
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an
actual life, you would have received further instructions
as to what to do and where to go.
Unknown
Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being
nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.
John Updike
Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
John Lennon (1940-1980)
"The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative."
Edward Abbey (Vox Clamans in Deserto)
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"
To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
Quentin Crisp
The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is
a most depressing and humiliating reality.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that
some men should be happier than others.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good
and not quite all the time.
George Orwell (1903-1950)
What a time! What a civilization!
Cicero (106-43 BC)
Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!
Catullus (87?-54? BC)
How little you know about the age you live in if you think
that honey is sweeter than cash in hand.
Ovid (43? BC - AD 18)
It is sometimes expedient to forget who we are.
Publilius Syrus (c. 42 BC)
There is no glory in otustripping donkeys.
Martial (40-102)
The school of hard knocks is an accelerated curriculum.
Menander (342? - 292? BC)
There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.
Cicero (106-43 BC)
A man with his belly full of the classics is an enemy of the human race.
Henery Miller (1891-1980)
Tropic of Cancer 1934
(Of Jesus): "A parish demogogue."
Shelley (Queen Mab)
He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he
who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
A great many people think they are thinking when
they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James (1842-1910)
Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street
musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any
citizen may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols,
or bombs without incurring any penalties.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
When two dogs fight for a bone, and the third runs
off with it, there's a lawyer among the dogs.
German proberb
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
out of a divorce.
Don Quinn
When it is a question of money, everyone is of the same religion.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
the risk of boring everyone to tears, I thought I'd post an insightful
passage on the psychology of business meetings from the book, "The Great Crash",
by John Kenneth Galbraith. He wrote the book in '54, before he became famous as
one of JFK's "best and brightest". The context is, "what Hoover was doing after
the market crashed."
"...he was conducting one of the least understood rites in American life. This is
the rite of the meeting which is called not to do business, but to do no business.
It is a rite which is still much practiced in our (1950s) time."
"Men meet together for many reasons in the course of business. They need to
instruct or persuade each other. They must agree on a course of action. They find
thinking in public more productive or less painful than thinking in private. But
there are at least as many reasons for meetings to transact no business. Meetings
are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium
of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which accrues to the man who presides
over meetings, and this leads them to convoke assemblages not because there is busi-
ness to be done, but because it is necessary to create the impression that business
is being done. Such meetings are more than a subsitute for action. They are widely
regarded as action."
"The fact that no business is transacted at a no-business meeting is normally not a
serious cause for embarrassment to those attending. Numerous formulas have been devised
to prevent discomfort. Thus scholars, who are great devotees of the no-business meeting,
rely heavily on the exchange-of-ideas justification. To them, the exchange of ideas is,
an absolute good. Any meeting at which ideas are exchanged is, therefore, useful. This
justification is ironclad. It is very hard to have a meeting of which it can be said
that no ideas were exchanged." (Note - Galbreath was a professor of economics at Dart-
mouth at the time.)
"Salesmen and sales executive, who are important practitioners of the no-business
meeting, commonly have a different justification, and one that has strong spiritual
overtones. Out of the warmth of comradeship, the interplay of personalities, the
stimulation of alcohol, and the inspiration of oratory comes a compulsive rededica-
tion to the daily task. "
"The no-business meetings of the great business executives depend, for their il-
lusion of importance, on something quite different. Not the exchange of ideas or
spiritual rewards of comradeship, but a solemn sense of assembled power gives
significance to this assemblage. Even though nothing of importance is said or done,
men of importance cannot meet without the occasion seeming important."
I thought this was choice.
A two-pound turkey and a fifty-pound cranberry -
that's Thanksgiving dinner at Three-Mile Island.
Johnny Carson
Blow in it's ear.
Johnny Carson on the best way to thaw a frozen turkey
Cogito ergo spud. - I think, therefore I yam
Graffito reported by Herb Caen
San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 1980
On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to
dinner at the same moment - halftime.
Unknown
Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors.
La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
>From macd@EBay Wed Nov 21 11:57:51 1990
The Pilgrim Fathers landed on the shores of America and fell
upon their knees. Then they fell upon the aborigines.
(Anon.)
A ship in harbor is safe--- but that is not what ships are for.
John A. Shedd
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now
I'm beginning to believe it.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
Bert Whitney
Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours.
Richard Bach
The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly
on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.
P.G. Wodehouse
THE JOYS OF SCIENCE
The compiler of these gems is Ben Stewart, a retired elementary school science
teacher, who found each of these answers in the essays, tests, and discussions
he conducted over the years with fifth- and sixth-graders.
"Humidity is the experience of looking for water and finding air."
"Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're
there."
"Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so
sometimes it's brother against brother."
"Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never
been able to make out the numbers."
"We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets
blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on."
"The main value of tornadoes is yet to be discovered."
"To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions
are things that are still all mixed up."
"When the fuel in a rocket starts burning gasses rush out the nozzle. So
would anybody."
"I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how and that is the
important thing."
"When a wave rolls over on itself it's called a breaker. Of just about
anything I guess."
"Thunder is a rich source of loudness."
"Question: In what ways are we dependent on the sun? Answer: We can always
depend on the sun for sunburns and tidal waves."
"Wind is like the air, only pushier."
"Hard mud is called shale. Soft mud is called gooey."
"You can listen to thunder after lightning and tell how close you came to
getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind."
"When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy.
When planets do it we say they are orbiting."
"Rainbows are just to look at not really to understand."
"South America has cold summers and warm winters, but somehow they still
manage"
"Most books say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into
a sun in the daytime."
"Isotherms and Isobars are even more important than their names sound."
"A vibration is a motion that cannot make up it's mind which way it wants to go
"Many dead animals of the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be
oil."
"Genetics explain why you look like your father and if you don't why you
should"
"Although Edison was once considered a great inventor, we now know of many
inventions he overlooked."
"Talc is found in rocks and on babies."
"Our mother Earth has small poles and a large equator because of the tremendous
speed as she hurdles through space. Since we are along for the ride, we also
get to be flat at our poles and rounded at our equators."
"A planet cannot have an axis until it can get a line to run through it."
"Everybody leans to the sun in the summer and away in winter. We are all a
little tipsy that way."
"We get our temperature three different ways. Either farenheit, celcius or
centipede."
"Question: In free fall, how long would it take to reach the ground from a
height of 1000 feet? Answer: I have never performed this experiment."
Love is a dirty trick played on us to achieve the
continuation of the species.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were
followed after a certain interval by a baby.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman
giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
Sam Levenson (1911-1980)
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy
by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to
resort to physics or chemistry.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.
From The Last Goon Show of All
RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHIES OF THE WORLD EXPLAINED
Taoism: Shit Happens.
Confucianism: Confucius say, "Shit Happens".
Buddhism: If shit happens, it is not really Shit.
Zen Buddhism: What is the sound of Shit Happening?
Hinduism: This Shit has Happened before.
Islam: If Shit Happens it is the will of Allah.
Protestantism: Let Shit Happen to someone else.
Catholicism: If Shit Happens you deserve it.
Judaism: Why does Shit always Happen to us?
New Age: Love your Shit, let it Happen!
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal
rather than the victim.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Life is a God-damned, stinking, treacherous game and nine
hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are bastards.
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)
quoting an unnamed newspaper editor
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another-
it is one damn thing over and over.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
Erica Jong
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
Gloria Steinem
Woman was God's second mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
Timothy Leary
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
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
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the
living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children,
and by children to adults.
Thomas Szasz
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman nor an Empire.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
"What we choose to call sanity is a big house where the
mad have no mothers."
(The Clown Prince of Darkness, correspondence, 1988)
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government
except all the others that have been tried.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
Robert Byrne
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
Henry Kissinger
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism
by those who have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
J.P Morgan, when asked what the stock market will do, replied,
It will fluctuate.
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 (1854-1900)
Walking women want to see the southern cross at night
And so they set aside a sock, and tie their laces tight
Yes mournful is the melody that echoes in their heads
Without a beat they march along, believing Bach is dead.
The Residents "Duck Stab":Bach is Dead
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
Trotsky
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
Robert Byrne
If law school is so hard to get through...
how come there are so many lawyers?
Calvin Trillin
Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign
Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
Peter Ustinov
I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only
a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
A person in a uniform is merely an extension of another person's will.
Philip Slater
Brides aren't happy - they are just triumphant.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
We have to distrust each other. It's our only defense against betrayal.
Tennessee Williams
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)
Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because
they are more certain they are their own.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
The gods too are fond of a joke
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
He was a wise man who invented God.
Plato (427?-348? BC)
Wit is educated insolence.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these
Ovid (43 BC-AD 18)
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
Alfred Jarry
If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling
grenades in people's faces.
Paul Fussell
Don't be humble, you're not that great.
Golda Meir
The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to
Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons.
Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in
wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people
was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most
oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the
Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this
oppression upon us.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Crucifixes are sexy because there's a naked man on them
Madonna
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
We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to.
Arnold H. Glasgow
Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting.
Alan Dean Foster "To the Vanishing Point"
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Sigmund Freud
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and
some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Joseph Heller
The good die young - because they see it's no use living if
you've got to be good.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is
second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little
scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds
if we felt like it.
Dave Barry
The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves,
only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that
there may be something to them we are missing.
Gamel Abdel Nasser
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
People are so busy lengthening their lives with exercise they
don't have time to live them.
Johathan Miller
Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral.
Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
Saint, noun. A dead sinner revised and edited.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
What can you say about a society that says God is dead and Elvis is alive?
Irv Kupcinet
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
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere
in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
Bill Watterson, cartoonist
All my life I said I wanted to be someone...I can see now that
I should have been more specific.
????
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.
Sigmund Freud
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that
nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for
which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important
than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no
chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of
better men than himself.
John Stewart Mill
Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language.
You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more,
you should never wish to do less.
General Robert E. Lee
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance
in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a
most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted,
baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a
fricassee, or a ragout.
Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal"
We will occasionally use this arrow notation unless there is danger of
no confusion.
Ronald Graham, "Rudiments of Ramsey Theory"
I'm free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in
the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find
that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are
dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes,
to make it possible.
T. E. Lawrence _The Seven Pillars of Wisdom_
It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more
true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are
usually attracted by other things than power. When they
do act, they think of it as service, which has limits.
The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insa-
tiable, implacable.
David Brin _The Postman_
The will to win is worthless if you don't get paid for it.
Reggie Jackson
In accordance with our principles of free enterprise and
healthy competition, I'm going to ask you two to fight to
the death for it.
Monty Python
In the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, it's often useful to have a nice,
solid piece of wood in your hands.
Ian Faith, manager of Spinal Tap
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
James Russell Lowell
Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.
Eric Berne
I'm a born-again atheist.
Gore Vidal
Read my lips--NO NEW TAXES!
George Herbert Walker Bush,
Nov. 1988
If the bloodbath must come, then let's get on with it!
Gov. Ronald W. Reagan to
the U.C. Board of Regents
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient
while nature cures the disease.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
A witty saying proves nothing.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory,
decreased short term memory, and I forget the third.
Timothy Leary
Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk.
"Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance."
- Robert Quillen
"Men make history, and not the other
way around. In periods where there is
no leadership, society stands still. Progress
occurs when courageous, skillful leaders
seize the opportunity to change things for
the better."
Harry S Truman (1884-1972)
Santa Claus had the right idea. Visit everyone once a year.
-- Victor Borges
Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed.
I.F. Stone 1907-1989
Blessed be the meek, for they shall inherit six feet of the earth.
The Clown Prince of Darkness, corresponsdence
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
Andrew Jackson
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
speak it to?
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
"I've had nothing yet", Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I ca'n't
take more."
"You mean you ca'n't take *less*. It's very easy to take *more* than nothing."
the Mad Hatter's response to Alice (Lewis Carroll)
Come quickly, I am tasting stars!
Dom Perignon (1638-1715)
at the moment of his discovery of champagne
"Oh well, it's six dozen of one, half the other."
-Bus Driver, NYC, 19 Dec 1990
(overheard by my sister)
"A donut without a hole...is a danish."
-Chevy Chase on "SNL's Weekend Update"
"Never play leapfrog with a unicorn."
-Benny Hill
"I'm not drunk. I can see perfectly well that cat coming toward me
has only one eye."
-Benny Hill
"That cat's not coming toward you, he's walking AWAY from you."
-The little old man from the Benny Hill show.
People are far more sincere and good-humored at
speeding their parting guests than on meeting them.
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Holidays are an expensive trial of strength.
The only satisfaction comes from survival.
Jonathan Miller
Gifts are like hooks.
Martial (40?-102?)
Eat as much as you like - just don't swallow it.
Steve Burns
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want,
drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away.
Robert Orben
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
Frank Zappa ( -Dec 4, 1993)
Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
Tom Stoppard
Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank
where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
In California everyone goes to a therapist, is a
therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist.
Truman Capote (1924-1984)
Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
New York is the only city in the world where you can get
deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.
Russell Baker
Happiness, noun. An agreeable sensation arising from
contemplating the misery of another.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat
is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy.
Peter De Vries
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
I knew her before she was a virgin.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more
a virtue than malnutrition.
Alex Comfort
Celibacy is not hereditary.
Guy Goden
"Virginity is in the lies of the beholder."
The Clown Prince of Darkness
Aliter catuli longe olent, aliter sues.
("Puppies and pigs have a very different smell.")
Plautus
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents."
H.P. Lovecraft
A host is a host from coast to coast & no one will talk to a host that's close
Unless the host (that isn't close) is busy, hung or dead
wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu
"Cover a war in a place where you can't drink beer or talk to a woman?
"Hell no!"
Hunter S. Thompson
"Swat my hind with a mellon rind,
That's my penguin state of mind."
Opus
History, n. An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are
brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Stay outta churches son, all they got the key to is the shithouse.
last words of Mortimer Carsons
I was, and still am, the world's first Atheist. Can anyone else make
that claim? I thought not! That's why I am who I am!
God
Reality is the original Rorschach.
??????
A philosopher once said 'It is necessary for the very existence
of science that the same conditions always produce the same results'.
Well, they do not. You set up the circumstances, with the same
conditions every time, and you cannot predict behind which hole
you will see the electron.
Richard Feynman
When she was a small girl, Amanda hid a ticking clock in an old, rotten tree
trunk. It drove woodpeckers crazy. Ignoring tasty bugs all around them, they
just about beat their brains out trying to get at the clock. Years later,
Amanda used the woodpecker experiment as a model for understanding capitalism,
Communism, Christianity, and all other systems that traffic in future rewards
rather than in present realities.
Tom Robbins
What torture, this life in society! Often someone is obliging enough
to offer me a light, and in order to oblige him I have to fish a
cigarette out of my pocket.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man
never worshipped anything but himself"
Sir Richard F. Burton
"Justice is incedental to law and order."
J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972)
"Reading musses up my mind."
Henry Ford
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
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
Ursula K. LeGuin
If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave.
Cato, Roman statesman and historian (234 b.c. - 149 b.c.)
Proof by example:
The author gives only the case n = 2 and suggests that
it contains most of the ideas of the general proof.
Proof by intimidation:
'Trivial.'
Proof by cumbersome notation:
Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special symbols.
Proof by exhaustion:
An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful.
Proof by omission:
'The reader may easily supply the details.'
'The other 253 cases are analogous.'
'...'
Proof by obfuscation:
A long plotless sequence of true and/or meaningless
syntactically related statments.
Proof by wishful citation:
The author cites the negation, converse, or generalization
of a theorem from the literature to support his claims.
Proof by funding:
How could three different government agencies be wrong?
Proof by eminent authority:
'I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-complete.'
Proof by personal communication:
'Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete
[Karp, personal communication].'
Proof by reduction to the wrong problem:
'To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is
decidable, we reduce it to the halting problem.'
Proof by reference to inaccessible literature:
The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found in a
privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian Philological Society, 1883.
Proof by importance:
A large body of useful consequences all follow
from the proposition in question.
Proof by accumulated evidence:
Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample.
Proof by cosomology:
The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or meaningless.
Popular for proofs of the existence of God.
Proof by mutual reference:
In reference A, Theorem 5 is said to follow from Theorem 3
in reference B, which is shown to follow from Corollary 6.2
in reference C, which is an easy consequence of Theorem 5 in
reference A.
Proof by metaproof:
A method is given to construct the desired proof. The correctness
of the method is proved by any of these techniques.
Proof by picture:
A more convincing form of proof by example. Combines well
with proof by omission.
Proof by vehement assertion:
It is useful to have some kind of authority relation to the audience.
Proof by ghost reference:
Nothing even remotely resembling the cited theorem appears
in the reference given.
Proof by forward reference:
Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author,
which is often not as forthcoming as at first.
Proof by semantic shift:
Some standard but inconvenient definitions are changed for
the statement of the result.
Proof by appeal to intuition:
Cloud-shaped drawings frequently help here.
(With apologies to G. Polya and contributions form the Yale Computer
Science department.)
Science is good furniture for one's upper chamber, if there
is common sense below.
Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894)
It is better to be hated for what you are
than to be loved for what you are not.
Andre Gide (1876-1951)
What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the
matter with the rich is uselessness.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without
working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this
sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom
of choice, but nothing to choose from.
Peter Ustinov
America is a large friendly dog in a small room.
Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.
Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)
The United States is like the guy at the party who gives
cocaine to everybody and still nobody likes him.
Jim Samuels
"When I get smitten, I stay smut." -- Charlie McCarthy
The English think incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.
Quentin Crisp
I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts
and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that
I already belonged to the Diner's Club.
Gore Vidal
War is the biggest ego trip of all time.
Molly Wiest
Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Didn't I ever tell you? Bumbles Bounce!
Yukon Cornelius.
The main thing is you and I should exist, and that we should be you and I.
Apart from that let everything go as it likes. The best order of things to my
way thinking, is the one I was meant to be part of, and to hell with the most
perfect of worlds if I am not in it. I would rather exist, even as an impudent
argufier, than not exist at all.
Jean-Francois Rameau
...all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no
difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward
dreamings, and (there is) no cause to value one above the other."
H.P. Lovecraft
You have dreamed too well, O wise archdreamer, for you have drawn dream's gods
away from the world of all men's vision to that which is wholly yours,...
H.P. Lovecraft
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
of being a damned fool.
Bellamy Brooks
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created jerks.
H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples;
in others, sex laws.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not
have any significant first person, present indicative.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
Florynce Kennedy
Disney, of course, has the best casting. If he
doesn't like an actor, he just tears him up.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.
It's already tomorrow in Australia.
Charles Schultz
Responsiblity is a unique concept. It can only reside and inhere in a
single individual.
You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished.
You may delegate it, but it is still with you.
You may disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it.
Admiral Hyman Rickover
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
John Galsworthy
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
always worked for me.
Hunter S. Thompson
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
George Wald
Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light
so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.
Maurice Chevalier
Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting
of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum
shows that faith does not prove anything.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man,
which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
G. Gordon Liddy
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
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had
to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
It's a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
My Early Life - 1930
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
All children are essentially criminal.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Thank God kids never mean well
Lily Tomlin
Young people are more hopeful at a certain age than adults, but I suspect
that's glandular. As for children, I keep as far from them as possible.
I don't like the sight of them. The scale is all wrong. The heads tend
to be too big for the bodies, and the hands and feet are a disaster. They
keep falling into things. The nakedness of their bad character! We adults
have learned how to disguise our terrible character, but children, well,
they are like grotesque drawings of us. They should be neither seen nor
heard, and no one must make another one.
Gore Vidal
Conversations With Gore Vidal - 1981
Dentist, n.:
A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
coins out of one's pockets.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)"The Devil's Dictionary"
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny--
Did you ever try buying them without money?
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
You kids today have it easy. When I was a kid everything was HUGE.
My dad was nearly four times bigger than me. You couldn't even see
the tops of counters.... Then gradually everything became smaller
until it was the manageable size it is today.
Bizarro (comic strip)
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"
No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)
Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy?
I don't know and I don't care.
William Safire
Shut up he explained.
Ring Lardner (1885-1933)
The Young Immigrants, 1920
Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquility
that religion is powerless to bestow.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), quoting a friend
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak.
Jay Leno
Some of the greatest love affairs I've known have
involved one actor - unassisted.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn't
want to shake hands with him.
Jacqueline Susann (1921-1974)
after reading Portnoy's Complaint
I'll probably never have children because I don't
believe in touching people for any reason.
Paula Poundstone
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The family is a court of justice which never shuts down for night or day.
Malcolm De Chazal
Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
day as it comes.
Donald Kaul
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to
have nothing whatever to do with it.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood
and you find the real tinsel underneath.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract
instead of under observation.
Walter Winchell (1897-1972)
The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars."
Johnny Carson
"Hello," he lied.
Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent
However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
manner ... sulking and nausea.
Tom K. Ryan
Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Higgeldy Piggeldy,
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
Dropping this bomb:
"Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis --
Oedipus, Schmoedipus,
I just loved Mom."
Anon.
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
Paul Beatty
I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of people
waiting to abuse me.
Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
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
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
Beckett
I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
Once the people begin to reason, all is lost.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the
faithless who know love's tragedies.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be - a Christian.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It is well to write love letters. There are certain things for which it
is not easy to ask your mistress face to face, like money for instance.
Henri De Regnier
What is more enchanting than the voices of young people
when you can't hear what they say?
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)
He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
George Washington as a boy was ignorant of the commonest
accomplishments of youth - he could not even lie.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"All I ask for is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy"
I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.
Charles Schultz
I can't mate in captivity.
Gloria Steinem
on why she never married
Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.
Savielly Grigorievitcyh Tartakower (1887-1956)
Exit, pursued by a bear.
Stage direction in Shakespeare's
The Winter's Tale (1611)
The trouble with Oakland is that when you
get there, there isn't any there there.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
In San Francisco, Haloween is redundant.
Will Durst
Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angles to San Francisco live there?
Herb Caen
There are two million interesting people in New York and
only seventy-eight in Los Angles.
Neil Simon
in Playboy, Feb. 1979
New York now leads the world's great cities in the number
of people around whom you shouldn's make a sudden move.
David Letterman
From "Late Night with David Letterman"
Feb. 9, 1984
The trouble with Oakland is that when you
get there, it's there.
Herb Caen
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom
that he can no longer be led by the nose.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The only man, woman, or child who ever wrote a simple
declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.
e. e. cummings (1894-1962)
on the death of Warren G. Harding, 1923
Harding was not a bad man, he was just a slob.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980) Teddy Roosevelt's daughter
from Mrs. L. Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.
Ralph Nader
The Pacific Sun, March 21, 1981
"Who's Virginia?"
Rose Kennedy when asked why her
daughter-in-law Joan lived in Boston
while her son Ted lived in Virginia.
"No"
President Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy when
asked by a reporter if she had any message
for the children of America.
I never trust a man unless I've got his pecker in my pocket.
Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973)
A bore is a fellow talking who can change the subject back to his
topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours.
Laurence J. Peter
Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but
anything can get dirty without something else getting clean.
Laurence J. Peter
The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
Cyril Connolly
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
Will Durant (1885-1981)
The first human being who hurled an insult instead of
a stone was the founder of civilization.
Attributed to Sigmund Freud (1871-1922)
I think it would be a good idea.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) when asked
what he thought of Western civilization
Jury: a group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their
hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
He who does not desire power is fit to hold it.
Plato (427?-348? BC)
There is no law against composing music when one has no ideas
whatsoever. The music of Wagner, therefore, is perfectly legal
The National, Paris, 1850
The prelude to Tristan and Isolde sounded as if a bomb had fallen into
a large music factory and had thrown all the notes into confusion.
The Tribune, Berlin, 1871
The prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the Italian painting of the
martyr whose intestines are slowly being unwound from his body on a reel.
Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904) 1868
Wagner drives the nail into your head with swinging hammer blows.
P.A. Fiorentino (1806-1864)
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
Bill Nye (1850-1896)
(some say Mark Twain)
"9W"
Answer to the question: Do you spell your name with a V, Mr. Vagner?
Steve Allen, from the Question Man segment on the Steve Allen Show
Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks,
the more you beat them, the more tender they become.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Manners are especially the need of the plain.
The pretty can get away with anything.
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man.
Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell
A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
There are very few people who don't become more interesting
when they stop talking.
Mary Lowry in the Pacific Sun, November 15, 1985
LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food;
sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his
stomach flunked geography.
Robert Byrne
A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.
James Beard
It's so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone's fingers
have been all over it.
Julia Child on nouvelle cuisine
Obscenity is what happens to shock some
elderly and ignorant magistrate.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Under certain circumstances, profanity
provides a relief denied even to prayer.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It has been my experience that folks who
have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
Every man thinks God is on his side.
The rich and powerful know He is.
Jean Anouilh
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
Very few things happen at the right time and the rest do not happen
at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
Herodotus (484-425 B.C.)
Optimist, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five
years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern.
Every class is unfit to govern.
Lord Acton
Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as
they are, not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage -
he won't encounter many rivals.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way
by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on.
William Burroughs
I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing.
Conscience is the trade-name of the firm.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Spring makes everything look filthy.
Katherine Whitehorn
Screenwriters? Schmucks with Underwoods.
Jack Warner
The scenery in the play was beautiful, but the actors got in front of it.
Alexander Woollcott
Opera, n. A play representing life in another world whose inhabitants have
no speech but song, no motions but gestures, and no postures but attitudes.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Christian, n. One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar
as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)
The worshiper is the father of the gods.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the
extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children
smart.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Archbishop: a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained
by Christ.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The best way to keep children at home is to make the home
atmosphere pleasant - and let the air out of the tires.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an
effort to deserve the name.
A.A. Milne (1882-1956)
The people are to be taken in very small doses.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
day as it comes.
-- Donald Kaul
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer --
"If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me."
-- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920) --
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
-- Ogden Nash --
Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than receiving an Oscar.
Luis Bunuel
Actresses will happen in the best regulated families.
Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
I don't want to see the uncut version of anything.
Jean Kerr quoted by Gerald Nachman
San Francisco Chronicle 1/2/83
It was like passing the scene of a highway accident and being
relieved to learn that nobody had been seriously injured.
Martin Cruz Smith on being asked how he liked
the movie version of his novel Gorky Park.
A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
Michael Winner, British film director
You have to have a talent for having talent.
Ruth Gordon (1897-1985)
Yer beautiful in yer wrath! I shall keep you, and in responding
to my passions, yer hatred will kindle into love.
John Wayne as Genghis Kahn to Susan Hayward
in the move The Conqueror, 1956
Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
Norman Mailer
The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics
exam; I looked into the soul of the boy next to me.
Woody Allen - Annie Hall
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.
--Amelia Earhart
How could I lose to such an idiot?
A shout from chess grandmaster
Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.
Unknown
The trouble with born-again Christians is that
they are an even bigger pain the second time around.
Herb Caen
Why wouldn't an enhanced deterrent, a more stable peace, a better
prospect to denying the ones who enter conflict in the first place
to have a reduction of offensive systems and an introduction to
defensive capability. I believe that is the route this country
will eventually go.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
Mars is essentially in the same orbit... somewhat the same distance from the
Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals,
we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If
oxygen, that means we can breathe.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is IN
the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that
is right here.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle,
Hawaii, September 1989
What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind
at all. How true that is.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle winning friends while
speaking to the United Negro College Fund
You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy
campers you have been, and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you
will always be.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, to the American Samoans,
whose capital Quayle pronounces "Pogo Pogo"
Quayle stumbled in response to a question about his opinion of the
Holocaust. He said it was "an obscene period in our nation's history."
Then, trying to clarify his remark, Quayle said he meant "this century's
history" and added a confusing comment. "We all lived in this century,
I didn't live in this century," he said.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
We expect them [Salvadoran officials] to work toward the elimination
of human rights.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
El Salvador is a democracy so it's not surprising that there are many voices
to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans... I have heard a
single voice.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and
democracy - but that could change.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president,
and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, to the Phoenix Republican
Forum, March 1990
It's rural America. It's where I came from. We always refer to ourselves
as real America. Rural America, real America, real, real, America.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
Target prices? How that works? I know quite a bit about farm policy.
I come from Indiana, which is a farm state. Deficiency payments -
which are the key - that is what gets money into the farmer's hands.
We got loan, uh, rates, we got target, uh, prices, uh, I have worked
very closely with my senior colleague, (Indiana Sen.) Richard Lugar,
making sure that the farmers of Indiana are taken care of.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle on being asked to
define the term "target prices."
Quayle's press secretary then cut short the press
conference, after two minutes and 30 seconds.
rand
I not going to focus on what I have done in the past
what I stand for, what I articulate to the American people.
The American people will judge me on what I am saying and what I
have done in the last 12 years in the Congress.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
I want to be Robin to Bush's Batman.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed
without them in 'Red Storm Rising'.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
The US has a vital interest in that area of the country.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle Referring to Latin America.
Japan is an important ally of ours. Japan and the United States of
the Western industrialized capacity, 60 percent of the GNP,
two countries. That's a statement in and of itself.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
Who would have predicted... that Dubcek, who brought the tanks in in
Czechoslovakia in 1968 is now being proclaimed a hero in Czechoslovakia.
Unbelievable.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
Actually, Dubcek was the leader of the Prague Spring.
May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world.
-- The Quayle's 1989 Christmas card.
[Not a beacon of literacy, though.]
Well, it looks as if the top part fell on the bottom part.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle referring to
the collapsed section of the 880 freeway after
the San Francisco earthquake of 1989.
[this may be a joke; the source is unclear.
but it's still funny]
getting [cruise missles] more accurate so that we can have precise precision.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle referring to his legislative
work dealing with cruise missles
I can identify with steelworkers. I can identify with workers that
have had a difficult time.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle addressing workers at
an Ohio steel plant,1988
[I will never have] another Jimmy Carter grain embargo, Jimmy,
Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter grain embargo, Jimmy Carter grain embargo.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle during the Benson debate
Certainly, I know what to do, and when I am Vice President -- and
I will be -- there will be contingency plans under different sets of
situations and I tell you what, I'm not going to go out and hold a news
conference about it. I'm going to put it in a safe and keep it there! Does
that answer your question?
-- Vice President Dan Quayle when asked what he
would do if he assumed the Presidency,1988
Lookit, I've done it their way this far and now it's my turn. I'm
my own handler. Any questions? Ask me ... There's not going to be any more
handler stories because I'm the handler ... I'm Doctor Spin.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle responding to press reports of
his aides having to, in effect, "potty train" him.
I would guess that there's adequate low-income housing in this
country.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
The real question for 1988 is whether we're going to go forward to
tomorrow or past to the -- to the back!
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity,
family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 1988
We'll let the sunshine in and shine on us, because today we're
happy and tomorrow we'll be even happier.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 1988
We're going to have the best-educated American people in the
world.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
This election is about who's going to be the next President of the
United States!
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 1988
Don't forget about the importance of the family. It begins with
the family. We're not going to redefine the family. Everybody knows the
definition of the family. [Meaningful pause] A child. [Meaningful pause] A
mother. [Meaningful pause] A father. There are other arrangements of the
family, but that is a family and family values.
I've been very blessed with wonderful parents and a wonderful
family, and I am proud of my family. Anybody turns to their family. I have
a very good family. I'm very fortunate to have a very good family. I
believe very strongly in the family. It's one of the things we have in
our platform, is to talk about it.
I suppose three important things certainly come to my mind that we
want to say thank you. The first would be our family. Your family, my
family -- which is composed of an immediate family of a wife and three
children, a larger family with grandparents and aunts and uncles. We all
have our family, whichever that may be ... The very beginnings of
civilization, the very beginnings of this country, goes back to the family.
And time and time again, I'm often reminded, especially in this
Presidential campaign, of the importance of a family, and what a family
means to this country. And so when you pay thanks I suppose the first thing
that would come to mind would be to thank the Lord for the family.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle
Dan Quayle's Wondrful World
(Sung to the tune "Don't know much (bout history)")
Don't know much about history
Don't know much foreign policy
Don't remember how I got through school
I'm sure I didn't break the rules
But what's it matter 'cause what granny says
"Boy, if you want to you can be vice prez"
And what a wonderful world this would be
Don't know much about the women's vote
Don't know much about the bill I wrote
Don't know much about the foreign vets
I've never voted for 'em yet
But I do know if your dad tries hard
He can get you in the National Guard
And what a wonderful place this can be
Now, I never claimed to be an 'A' student
But what's wrong with C's?
And maybe by knowing the names of my cabinet
I can win their love for me
Don't know much about air pollution
Don't know much about the Constitution
Don't know much about th' economy
It never much affected me
But there's one thing that I know for sure
If the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor
What a wonderful place this would be
Don't know much about the national debt
I've never had to pay one yet
If we need to we can sell the States
To the Japanese at discount rates
But I do know if things get bad
George and I can always can always call my dad
And what a wonderful place it would be
--Ben White, Su Koester and Ken Whang
St Louis, 10/31/88
Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than
the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.
Quentin Crisp
The art of government consists in taking as much money as
possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is
wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Religion is for those who don't want to go to Hell.
Spirituality is for those of us who have already been through it.
Anonymous
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any
more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
There are many who dare not kill themselves
for fear of what the neighbors will say.
Cyril Connolly
Critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please
because nobody tries to please him.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
A liberal is a man who leaves the room when the fight begins.
Heywood Broun
The only "ism" Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
Dylan Thomas
There are times when parenthood seems nothing but
feeding the mouth that bites you.
Peter De Vries
Experience, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable
old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
"I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing
good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them."
Spinoza, Dutch Philosopher
"People and things do not upset us, rather we upset ourselves by
believing that they can upset us."
Albert Ellis, founder of
Rational Emotive Therapy
"Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come."
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
""We become what we think about all day long."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
"People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
"Change your thoughts and you change your world."
Norman Vincent Peale
"There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way."
Eykis
"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will
meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition
from mediocre minds."
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake."
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from
Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
(St. Luke 2:1)
Avoid falsehoods like the plague except in matters of taxation, which
do not count, since here your are not lying to take someone else's goods,
but to prevent your own from being unjustly seized.
(Giovanni Morelli)
Noah must have taken into the Ark two taxes, one male and one female. And
did they multiply bountifully! Next to guinea pigs, taxes must have been
the most prolific animals.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant:
Animals have instincts, we have taxes.
(Erving Goffman)
Why does a small tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and s
substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?
(Peg Bracken)
The point to remember is what the government gives it must first take
away.
(John S. Coleman)
The avoidance of taxes is the only pursuit that carries any reward.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
An income tax form is like a laundry list -- either way you lose
your shirt.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space
program: your dollar will go further.
(Wernher Von Braun)
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain
the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest amount
of hissing.
(Jean Baptiste Colbert)
Fashions are the only induced epidemics, proving
that epidemics can be induced by tradesmen.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument;
its function is to make the worse appear the better.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
At age 50, every man has the face he deserves.
George Orwell (1903-1950)
I wonder how so insupportable a thing as a bookseller was ever permitted
to grow up in the Commonwealth. Many of our modern booksellers are but
needless excrements, or rather vermin.
George Wither (1588-1667)
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
Lucille S. Harper
It is far more impressive when others discover
your good qualities without your help.
Miss Manners (Judith Martin)
Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.
Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)
If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)
Nobody's interested in sweetness and light.
Hedda Hopper
I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.
Katharine Whitehorn
There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.
Muhammad Ali on the occasion of one of his retirements
Hurting people is my business.
Sugar Ray Robinson
My toughest fight was with my first wife.
Muhammad Ali
I look at ordinary people in their suits, them with no scars, and I'm
different. I don't fit with them. I'm where everybody's got scar
tissue on their eyes and got noses like saddles. I go to conventions
of old fighters like me and I see the scar tissue and all them flat
noses and it's beautiful. Galento, may he r3est in peace. Giardello,
LaMotta, Carmen Basilio. What a sweetheart Basilio is. They talk like
me, like they got rocks in their throats. Beautiful!
Willie Pastrano
The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
A novel is a piece of prose of a certain length with something wrong with it.
Unknown
In every fat book there is a thin book trying to get out.
Unknown
A big book is a big bore.
Callimachus (c. 260 B.C.)
This book fills a much needed gap.
Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review
Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.
Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a letter
I have read your book and much like it.
Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
(Moses Hadas was a professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia)
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
Even Bach comes down to the basic suck, blow, suck, suck, blow.
Mouth organist Larry Adler
I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with
symphonies, quartettes, chamber music, and cantatas.
S.J. Perelman (1904-1979)
Cogito ergo dim sum. (Therefore I think these are pork buns.)
Robert Byrne
Cogito ergo spud. - I think, therefore I yam
Graffito reported by Herb Caen
San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 1980
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
I think I think, therefore, I think I am.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
I think, therefore ackphthh
Bill the Cat
A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck,
a good physique and not too much imagination.
Christopher Isherwood
I feel a very unusual sensation - if it is not
indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
I might be President by now if it weren't for this 'queer' thing
Gore Vidal
Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
The fickleness of the women whom I love is only equalled
by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes.
J.B. Priestley
God is love, but get it in writing.
Gypsy Rose Lee
I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God.
John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
A billion here, a billion there - pretty soon it adds up to real money.
Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969)
Money is good for bribing yourself through the inconveniences of life.
Gottfried Reinhardt
A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without
making a fool of himself about her.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and
another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.
Helen Rowland (1876-1950)
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness,
but after that he begins to bunch them.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Every law is an infraction of liberty.
Jeremy Bentham
When men are pure, laws are useless;
when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.
Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)
No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the
grounds that it was human nature.
A.A. Milne (1882-1956)
I propose getting rid of conventional armaments and replacing
them with reasonably priced hydrogen bombs that would be
distributed equally throughout the world.
Idi Amin
What luck for rulers that men do not think.
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
One of a hostess's duties is to act as procuress.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since
as soon as a choice exists, it can only be bad.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
The only paradise is paradise lost.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
I don't think I'll get married again. I'll just find
a woman I don't like and giver a house.
Lewis Grizzard
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
George Orwell (1903-1950)
Sigmund Freud was a half baked Viennese quack. Our literature,
culture, and the the films of Woody Allen would be better today
if Freud had never written a word.
Ian Shoales
It is most unwise for people in love to marry
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.
Dr. Karl Bowman (1888-1973)
Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in,
you take it out, you lose interest.
Professor Irwin Corey
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.
Richard Burton
Decency...must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its
opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.
Quentin Crisp
Sleep is an eight-hour peep show of infantile erotica.
J.G. Ballard
Nice guys finish last, but we get to sleep in.
Evan Davis
Mother is the dead heart of the family, spending father's earnings
on consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats,
sleeps, and watches television.
Germaine Greer
I married beneath me - all women do.
Nancy Astor
If I've done anything I'm sorry for, I'm willing to be forgiven.
Edward N. Westcott
The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television.
Unknown
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
Eric Hoffer
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't
intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.
Neil Armstrong
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday,
lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
Redd Foxx
I get my exercise acting as a pallbearer to my friends who exercise.
Chauncey Depew (1834-1928)
****************************************************************************
* "People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? *
* Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and *
* about love, the way others do? *
* They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful *
* to the honor of my craft. *
* The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. *
* But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, *
* for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined *
* that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it *
* happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and *
* the hunger for it ... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality *
* of hunger satisfied ... and it is all one. *
* -- M. F. K. Fisher "The Art of Eating" *
****************************************************************************
Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
This poem will never reach its destination.
Voltaire (1694-1778) on Rousseau's "Ode to Posterity"
May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
My mother loved children - she would have given anything if I had been one.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
There is no sweeter sound than the crumbling of one's fellow man.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)
War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.
Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)
Being in the army is like being in the Boy Scouts, except
that the Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
Blake Clark
"The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion.
I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of
Christian dogma."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.
Maurice Chapelain
It is even harder for the average ape to
believe that he has descended from man.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
In an age when the fashion is to be in love with
yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody
else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved.
Russell Baker
Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex.
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
If only it was as easy to banish hunger by rubbing
the belly as it is to masturbate.
Diogenes the Cynic (412 to 323 B.C.)
I was going to buy a copy of "The Power of Positive Thinking",
and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?
Ronnie Shakes
I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of
plotting to make me happy.
J.D. Salinger
A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
When there are two conflicting versions of a story, the wise course
is to believe the one in which people appear at their worst.
H. Allen Smith (1906-1976)
Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he
has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is
almost as silly as getting married just because you do.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Our ignorance of history makes us libel our
own times. People have always been like this.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
History is bunk.
Henry Ford
Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's
full. Scratch where it itches.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)
Socrates seems to be the philosophical napkin with which the ensuing
cultural thinkers of history wipe their mouths of pedantic ooze.
Unknown
If you can stay in love for more than two years, you're on something.
Fran Lebowitz
Being a woman is of special interest to aspiring male transexuals.
To actual women it is simply a good excuse not to play football.
Fran Lebowitz
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.
Fran Lebowitz
All God's children are not beautiful. Most of
God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.
Fran Lebowitz
California is a great place to live if you're an orange.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
A married man with a family will do anything for money.
Charles De Talleyrand (1754-1838)
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power
of conversation but not the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Few great men could pass Personnel.
Paul Goodman (1911-1972)
Great men are not always idiots
Karen Elizabeth Gordon
There's a great woman behind every idiot.
John Lennon (1941-1980) on Yoko Ono
The basic fact about human existence is not that
it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
There is more to life than increasing its speed
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval
George Santayana (1863-1952)
If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
I have an existential map. It has "You are here" written all over it.
Steven Wright
Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.
Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)
For the preservation of chastity, an empty and rumbling
stomach and fevered lungs are indispensable.
St. Jerome (340?-420)
Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations.
St. Augustine (354-430)
The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing
and the image of fulfillment.
Malcolm Muggeridge
I hate women because they always know where things are.
James Thurber (1894-1961)
Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime?
Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
P.G. Wodehouse
The only charm of marriage is that it makes
a life of deception necessary for both parties.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting;
it has been found difficult and left untried.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
A memorandum is written not to inform
the reader but to protect the writer.
Dean Acheson
A detective digs around in the garbage of people's lives.
A novelist invents people and then digs around in their garbage.
Joe Gores
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Truth is shorter than fiction.
Irving Cohen
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?
Lily Tomlin
In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
Saul Bellow
Love will find a lay.
Robert Byrne
If all these sweet young things were laid end to end,
I wouldn't be the slightest bit suprises.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will
live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
In a review of a book by Margot Asquith
One more drink and I'll be under the host.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
SANCTUARY
by Dorothy Parker
My land is bare of chattering folk;
the clouds are low along the ridges,
and sweet's the air with curly smoke
from all my burning bridges.
Favorite animal: steak.
Fran Lebowitz
In Mexico we have a word for sushi: bait.
Jose Simon
I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead-
not sick, not wounded - dead.
Woody Allen
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of
humanity - gunpowder and romantic love.
Andre Maurois
To be a successful father there's one absolute rule:
when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory?
They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
In the long run we are all dead.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
People who have no faults are terrible;
there is no way to take advantage of them
Anatole France (1844-1924)
We would have broken up except for the children.
Who were the children? Well, she and I were.
Mort Sahl
I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery.
I insist on believing that some men are my equals.
Brigid Brophy
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Paul Valery (1871-1945)
Most of our future lies ahead.
Denny Crum, Louisville basketball coach
The future is much like the present, only longer.
Don Quisenberry
It's a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do.
Walter Winchell
Do it big or stay in bed.
Opera producer Larry Kelly
Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as
baseball in Italian.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
People are wrong when they say that the opera isn't what it used
to be. It is what it used to be. That's what's wrong with it.
Noel Coward (1899-1973)
If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you,
you have schizophrenia.
Thomas Szasz
Even holligans marry, though they know that marriage
is but for a little while. It is alimony that is forever.
Quentin Crisp
Optimism, n. The doctrine or belief that everything
is beautiful, including what is ugly.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
I'm not going to climb into the ring with Tolstoy.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) from a letter
Hemingway was a jerk.
Harold Robbins as quoted in Leslie Halliwell's
The Filmgoer's Companion, 1984
In the mirrorlike relationship between wine and human beings,
Zinfandel owned more reflective properties than any other grape;
in its infinite mutability, it was capable of expressing almost
any philosophical position or psychological function. As a result,
its own "true" nature might never be known.
David Darlington from his novel
Angels Visits: An Inquiry into the Mystery of Zinfandel
Love ain't nothing but sex misspelled.
Harlan Ellison
Lie Down and Roll Over and 159 Other Ways To Say I Love You
Book title by Erskine & Moran - 1981
One of the advantages of living alone is that you
don't have to wake up in the arms of a loved one.
Marion Smith
Marriage is a wonderful institution, but
who would want to live in an institution.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperment
of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.
E.M. Cioran
Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges
of age, and retain the playthings of childhood.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The Country Weekly That Tells It Like It Is
Anderson Valley Advertiser
Fanning the Flames of Discontent
As long as I am an American citizen and American blood runs
in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to
write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject.
Elija Lovejoy (1802-1837)
Newspapers should have no friends.
Joseph Pulitzer
When vultures watching your civilization begin
dropping dead, it is time to pause and wonder.
David Brower
The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random
between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that
within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful
enough to deny our nothingness.
Andre Malraux
One watches them on the seashore, all the people, and there is something
pathetic, almost wistful in them, as if they wished their lives did not
add up to this scaly nullity of possession, but as if they could not escape.
It is a dragon that has devoured us all: these obscene, scaly houses,
this insatiable struggle and desire to possess, to possess always and in
spite of everything, this need to be an owner, lest one be owned. It is
too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides
of a ghastly disease. One feels a sort of madness come over one, as if
the world had become hell. But it is only superimposed: it is only a
temporary disease. It can be cleaned away.
D.H. Lawrence
Class is material consumed.
John Trudell
What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
Cyril Connolly
A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of
policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence
the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms.
A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific
war must necessarily cease to be democratic.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
I have to give it to my Jewish brothers and sisters; There may
be only 7 million of them here in America, but they can lobby like
motherfuckers. Say something they feel is anti-Semitic or against
the state of Israel and you know about it right away.
Spike Lee
In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour
as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible
unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who
have neither product utopian trash.
John Berger
Of course, the person I was fleeing most fearfully was myself, for I drive,
and I'm burning a collapsed barn behind the house next week because it is
much the cheapest way to deal with it, and I live on about four hundred
times the money that Thoreau conclusively proved was enough, so I've done
my share to take this independent, eternal world and turn it into a science
fair project.
Bill McKibbon, "The End of Nature"
Not everybody has to sing the melody.
Pete Seeger
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is
very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Robert Graves
Crude, immoral, vulgar and senseless.
Tolstoy (1828-1910) on Shakespeare
I know not, sir whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare,
but if he did not it seems to me that he missed the opportunity
of his life.
J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)
God damn a potato!
Chief Washakie of the Soshone tribe, responding to white
bureaucrats who were trying to convert his people to the
settled life of the farm.
Our land is more valuable than your money. As long as the sun shines
and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and
animals; therefore, we cannot sell this land. It was put here for us
by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us.
Blackfoot chief, (c. 1880)
The best hope is that one of these days the ground will get disgusted
enough just to walk away - leaving people with nothing more to stand
on than what they have so bloody well stood for up to now.
Kenneth Patchen
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real
bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
Edward Abbey
Any person of average intelligence could write a better commentary
than he does. He hasn't covered a story in years.
Liz Trotta on John Chancellor
He's a complete and total psychopath. I don't mean that in the criminal
sense, of course, but in a professional sense. People like that will do
anything to hold on to their jobs.
Liz Trotta on Dan Rather
By definition, a government has no conscience.
Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
What once were vices are manners now.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4? BC - 65 AD)
Women want mediocre men, and men are working
hard to become as mediocre as possible.
Margaret Mead
Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically
right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right
when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the
biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
Aldo Leopold
Canada is a country so square that even the female impersonators are women.
Richard Benner
I do not believe the expenditure of $2.50 for a book entitles
the purchaser to the personal friendship of the author.
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive
could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
No normal man ever fell in love after thirty
when the kidneys begin to disintegrate.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems
to be vastly greater than that of any other animals.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime.
Jimmy Cannon (1910-1973)
Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Hollywood is a sewer with service from the Ritz Carlton.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
Method acting? There are quite a few methods. Mine involves
a lot of talent, a glass and some cracked ice.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
I enjoy being a highly overpaid actor.
Roger Moore
England produces the best fat actors.
Jimmy Cannon (1910-1973)
If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job.
Malcolm Forbes
The only way to succeed is to make people hate you.
Josef von Sternberg (1894-1969)
Any new venture goes through the following stages: enthusiasm,
complication, disillusionment, search for the guilty, punishment
of the innocent, and decoration of those who did nothing.
Unknown
California: The west coast of Iowa.
Joan Didion
The secret of dealing successfully with
a child is not to be its parent.
Mell Lazzarus
The only man who is really free is the one who can turn
down an invitation to dinner without giving any excuse.
Jules Renard (1864-1910)
Since the whole affair had become one of religion,
the vanquished were of course exterminated.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Adolescence is the stage between infancy and adultery.
Unknown
What men call gallantry and gods adultery
Is much more common where the climate's sultry.
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people
to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
...You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless.
All you can do is control them or eliminate them.
Innocence is a kind of insanity.
Graham Green, *The Quiet American*
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown
is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
The only way to reform some people is to chloroform them.
Thomas C. Haliburton
The holy passion of Friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not
asked to lend money.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries
disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for
practice. Then he made school boards
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty
sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
John Morley
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back
yard and shot it.
Truman Capote (1924-1984)
Writers have two main problems. One is writer's block, when the words
won't come at all and the other is logorrhea, when the words come so
fast that they can hardly get to the wastebasket in time.
Cecilia Bartholomew
When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Henry James chews more than he bites off.
Mrs Henry Adams (c. 1880)
Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met.
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist
by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Henry James created more convincing women than Iris Murdoch put together.
Wilfred Sheed
You've got be careful about getting locked into open systems.
IBM salesman
Lawyer, n. One skilled in the circumvention of the law.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
How to win a case in court: If the law is on your side, pound
on the law; if the facts are on your side, pound on the facts;
if neither is on your side, pound on the table.
Unknown
I'm not an ambulance chaser. I'm usually there before the ambulance.
Melvin Belli
There are women whose infidelities are the only
link they still have with their husbands.
Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
Love: two minds without a single thought.
Philip Barry
The fellow that agrees with everything you say is
either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
Phonograph, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Religion consists in a set of things which the average
man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
When a man steals your wife, there is no
better revenge than to let him keep her.
Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
In Biblical times, a man could have as many
wives as he could afford. Just like today.
Abigail Van Buren
Here's to our wives and sweethearts - may they never meet.
John Bunny (1866-1939)
A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
Granville Hicks (1901-1982)
A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured
and then quietly strangled.
Sir Barnett Cocks (ca. 1907)
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings (1818-1885)
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you:
the one to slander you, and the other to bring the news to you.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting
what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to
see is what you would have wanted had you known.
Garrison Keillor
Two people kissing always look like fish.
Andy Warhol
Life is good, if you like that sort of thing.
overheard in Palo Alto...
Without an adequate theory, reality is irrelevant.
Kent "Sparky" Gregory
If you look good and dress well, you don't need a purpose in life.
Fashion consultant Robert Pante
Never despise fashion. It's what we have instead of God.
Malcolm Bradbury
I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
Gilda Radner
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
There are times when one would like to end
the whole human race, and finish the farce.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
I figure you have the same chance of winning
the lottery whether you play or not
Fran Lebowitz
Being in a ship is like being in a jail,
with the chance of being drowned.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all
possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)
I have been recently blessed with several more copies of the
Anderson Valley Advertiser....here are some selections from
the July 31, 1991 offering.....Rand
==========================================================================
Be as radical as reality.
Lenin (1870-1924)
Whenever people say "we mustn't be sentimental", you can take it they are
about to do something cruel. And if they add, "we must be realistic",
they mean they are going to make money out of it.
Brigid Brophy
The most annoying trait of Right-Wing Outlaws in general is a lazy
incuriosity about the real world. They know their lines, they're
sure who the good guys and the bad guys are. Therefore they view
the passing world as a kind of animated "Bartlett's Quotations" -
that is, as handy source material with which to illustrate, rather
than challenge, preconceived views.
James Fallows
No president in history has been more vilified or was more vilivied
during the time he was President than Lincoln. Those who knew him,
his secretaries, have written that he was deeply hurt by what was said
about him and drawn about him, but on the other hand, Lincoln had the
great strength of character never to display it, always able to stand
tall and strong and firm no matter how harsh or unfair the criticism
might be. These elements of greatness, of course, inspire us all today.
Richard Nixon (1913-1994)
Sometimes in my dreams there are women...When such dreams happen, immediately
I remember, 'I am a monk.'...It is very important to analyze 'What is the real
benefit of sexual desire?' The appearance of a beautiful face or a beautiful
body - as many scriptures describe - no matter how beautiful, they essentially
decompose into a skeleton. When we penetrate to its human flesh and bones,
there is no beauty, is there? A couple in a sexual experience is happy for
that moment. Then very soon trouble begins.
The Dalai Lama
Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it.
Andrew Young
We had parties that Nero would have been ashamed to attend
Ronnie Hawkins
It's been through three wives. To me a guitar is kind of like
a woman. You don't know why you like 'em but you do.
Waylon Jennings on his Telecaster
People may like what third-party candidates say, because often they are the
only ones saying anything, but they usually won't vote for someone who doesn't
have a chance. Since third-party candidates are not in the news, they are
considered to be not really in the race; and since they are not in the race,
this justifies treating them as if they are not news.
Michael Parenti
More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads
to utter hopelessness and despair, the other to total extinction.
Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
Woody Allen
If you take a dog which is starving and feed him and make
him prosperous, that dog will not bite you. This is the
primary difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words,
and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words. A recent federal directive
regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words.
According to an article in the New York Times
Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American
eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Americans adore me and will go on adoring me
until I say something nice about them.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Life is either always a tight-rope or a featherbed.
Give me a tight-rope.
Edith Wharton
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems
to be vastly greater than that of any other animals.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
No normal man ever fell in love after thirty when the
kidneys begin to disintegrate.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent.
Mel Lazarus
Was all this bloodshed and deceit - from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro
the Puritans - a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery
to civilization? Was Morison right in burying the story of genocide
inside a more important story of human progress? Perhaps a persuasive
argument can be made - as it was made by Stalin when he killed pesants
for industrial progress in the Soviet Union, as it was made by Churchill
explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Truman explaining
Hiroshima. But how can the judgement be made if the benefits and losses
cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned
quickly?
Howard Zinn
Son, in war times it is not safe to think unless one travels with the mob.
Charles Lindberg Sr. to
Charles Lindberg Jr. in 1917
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
Phyllis Diller
The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive
fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Divorces are made in heaven.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain
to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)
I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a
man from catching the complaint a second time.
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Of children as of procreation - the pleasure momentary, the
posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) (I assume in reference to
the similar Lord Chesterfield quote)
For the first year of marriage I had basically a bad attitude.
I tended to place my wife underneath a pedestal
Woody Allen
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The major sin is the sin of being born.
Samuel Beckett
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
Gloria Steinem
Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.
Charles Bukowski
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing,
and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved it.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means
he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.
Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)
I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
The 100% American is 99% an idiot.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
I like to think of us as Clearasil on the face of the nation.
Jim Morrison would have said that if he was smart, but he's dead.
Lou Reed on his band
Speculations and loans in foreign fields are likely to bring us
into war... The war-for-profit group has counterfeited patriotism.
Charles Lindberg Sr., 1915
America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
Don't get the idea the I'm knocking the American system.
Al Capone (1899-1947)
Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for
anything we allow them short of hanging.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days
later you're hungry again.
George Miller
Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucini, but sharing the
burden of finding the fettucini restaurant in the first place.
Calvin Trillin
Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.
Sophia Loren
I don't trust him. We're friends.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the
part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
My father and he had one of those English friendships which begin
by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether.
Jorge Luis Borges
Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished
from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
No, I haven't read the New Testament, but I read the
Old Testament and liked it very, very much.
One sheperd to another in a New Yorker cartoon
When a book and a head collide and there is a hollow
sound, is it always from the book?
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
One hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong.
Graffito - as given in The Penguin Dictionary
of Modern Quotations, 2nd ed.
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges
Favorite color: I hate colors.
Ian Shoales
A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.
Christopher Morley (1890-1957)
Television is a device that permits people who haven't
anything to do to watch people who can't do anything.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
The days just prior to marriage are like
a snappy introduction to a tedious book.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
Laurence J. Peter
You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.
H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
A careless speech writer includes the word "paradigm" in President Reagan's
speech on superconductivity. Yes, he pronounces it "paradijum."
from _The_Clothes_Have_No_Emperor_ by Paul Slansky
Lawer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Nobody wants justice.
Alan Dershowitz
Lawers, I suppose, were children once.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
A dramatic critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve
you; after marriage, he won't even lay down his newspaper to talk to you.
Helen Rowland
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful
girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"Make no mistake about it: Operation Desert Storm truly was a victory
of good over evil, of freedom over tyranny, of peace over war."
Vice President J. Danforth Quayle,
remarks at Arlington National Cemetery.
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
David T. Wolf
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
Lillian Hellman (1907-1984)
The cynics are right nine times out of ten.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.
Lily Tomlin
Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
Fran Lebowitz
Straight men need to be emasculated. I'm sorry. They all need to be
slapped around. Women have been kept down for too long. Every straight
guy should have a man's tongue in his mouth at least once.
Madonna
I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the
best of them, and I know how bad I am.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
...a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or
sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable.
James Mellon, who paid $300 for a
civil war Union army deferment.
As if there were safety in stupidity alone.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless
energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past,
uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix.
The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have
been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence.
Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman
find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of
the planet.
Jeremy Rifkin
I saw the same dynamic in our family - a dysfunctional family - mirrored
in the country in the 1980's. If you take this family, and you put them up
there as the First Family - if you look at what the dynamic is in the family
- you might have a pretty good sense of how it's going to trickle down.
Patty Davis
Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
I epitomize America.
John Denver
I think every woman is entitled to a middle husband she can forget.
Adela Rogers St.John
The only thing good about it is you're not dead.
Lillian Hellman (1907-1984) on aging
Can women imagine anything finer than to experience centuries and
millennia with the beloved husband in a cozy home in reverent
attention to the inner workings of creative motherhood?
Curt Rosten, "The ABC's of National Socialism," 1933
Sometimes I get bored riding down the beautiful streets of L.A.
I know it sounds crazy, but I just want to go to New York and see
people suffer.
Donna Summer
For manipulation to be most effective, evidence of its presence should
be nonexistent... It is essential, therefore, that people who are
manipulated believe in the neutrality of their key social institutions.
Herbert Schiller
Metric is definitely communist. One monetary system, one language, one
weight and measurement system, one world - all communist! We know the
West was won by the inch, foot, yard, and mile.
Dean Krakel, Director of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame
What people call insincerity is simply a method
by which we can multiply our personalities.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection
that English women only hope to find in their butlers.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in
the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
It means that you have, as performers will call it, 'fuck you' money...
All that means is that I don't have to do what I don't want to do.
Johnny Carson on success
The [Interstate Commerce] commission, as its functions have now been
limited by the courts is, or can be made, of great use to the railroads.
It satisfies the public clamor for a government supervision of
railroads, at the same time that that supervision is almost entirely nominal.
Richard Olney - a lawyer for the Boston & Maine and
Attorney General under Grover Cleveland,
advising a railroad president
It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common
sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible
for public office.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already
earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake,
since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace
to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at
command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble
war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base
an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war
is nothing but an act of murder.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war.
William Randolph Hearst, to Frederic Remington
That's a hell of an ambition, to be mellow.
It's like wanting to be senile.
Randy Newman on middle of the road music
Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into
the indifferent by the incompetent.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
The big mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or
fourteen, and all of a sudden they've reached puberty, they believe
that they like women. Actually, you're just horny. It doesn't
mean that you like women any more at twenty-one than you did at ten.
Jules Feiffer
If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never
get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find
outstanding people among those you don't particularly like.
Soichiro Honda
For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make
the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance
of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their
wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left
was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the
poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class.
Hans Konig
Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's
the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world.
Werner Herzog
The only problem with drawing Nixon is restraint. Your tendency is to let
your feelings come out. He's such a loathsome son of a bitch, and he looks
so loathsome.
Bill Mauldin
The only thing that stops God from sending another flood
is that the first one was useless.
Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794)
The world is proof that God is a committee.
Bob Stokes
Because I'm Jewish, a lot of people ask why I killed Christ.
What can I say? It was one of those parties that got out of
hand. I killed him because he wouldn't become a doctor.
Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)
How should they answer?
Abigail Van Buren in reply to the question:
"Why do Jews always answer a question with a question?"
We were married by a reformed rabbi in Long Island.
A very reformed rabbi. A Nazi.
Woody Allen
If I had been the Virgin Mary, I would have said "No."
Margaret "Stevie" Smith (1902-1971)
Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm, and
yet he will be making gods by dozens.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)
A pious man is one who would be an athiest if the king were.
Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696)
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
Paul Valery (1871-1945)
From "The Tonight Show Staring Johnny Carson" on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 1991.
(C) 1991 Carson Productions, Inc.
A tribute from Johnny Carson to all the Soviet republics seeking freedom
("The Battle Hymn of the Republic" playing softly in the background).
"What Democracy Means to Me" by Johnny Carson
To me, democracy means placing trust in the little guy, giving the
fruits of nationhood to those who built the nation. Democracy means
anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can
be vice president.
Democracy is people of all races, colors, and creeds united by a single
dream: to get rich and move to the suburbs away from people of all
races, colors, and creeds. Democracy is having time set aside to
worship -- 18 years if you're Jim Bakker.
Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't
have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism,
democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it
means having two ineffective political parties.
Democracy means freedom of sexual choice between any two consenting
adults; Utopia means freedom of choice between three or more consenting
adults. But I digress. Democracy is welcoming people from other lands,
and giving them something to hold onto -- usually a mop or a leaf blower.
It means that with proper timing and scrupulous bookkeeping, anyone can
die owing the government a huge amount of money.
Democracy means a thriving heartland with rolling fields of Alfalfa,
Buckwheat, Spanky, and Wheezer. Democracy means our elected officials
bow to the will of the people, but more often they bow to the big butts
of campaign contributors.
Yes, democracy means fighting every day for what you deserve, and
fighting even harder to keep other weaker people from getting what they
deserve. Democracy means never having the Secret Police show up at
your door. Of course, it also means never having the cable guy show up
at your door. It's a tradeoff. Democracy means free television, not
good television, but free.
Democracy is being able to pick up the phone and, within a minute, be
talking to anyone in the country, and, within two minutes, be interrupted
by call waiting.
Democracy means no taxation without representation, and god knows, we've
just about had the hell represented out of us. It means the freedom to
bear arms so you can blow the "o" out of any rural stop sign you want.
And finally, democracy is the eagle on the back of a dollar bill, with
13 arrows in one claw, 13 leaves on a branch, 13 tail feathers, and 13
stars over its head--this signifies that when the white man came to this
country, it was bad luck for the Indians, bad luck for the trees, bad
luck for the wildlife, and lights out for the American eagle.
I thank you.
To be clever enough to get a great deal of
money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Many books today suggest that the mass of
women lead lives of noisy desperation.
Peter S. Prescott
Love is like an hourglass, with the heart
filling up as the brain empties.
Jules Renard (1864-1910)
When I think of the number of disagreeable
people that I know who have gone to a better
world, I am sure hell won't be so bad at all.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days
which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
P.D. James
Being a newspaper columnist is like marrying a nymphomaniac -
It's great for the first two weeks.
Lewis Grizzard
We trained hard....but every time we formed up teams we would be
reorganized. I was to learn that we meet any new situation by
reorganizing. And a wonderful method it can be for creating the
illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and
demoralization.
Petronius Arbiter, 210 bc
We trained hard, but it seemed every time we were beginning to form
up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life
that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful
method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing
confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.
From Petronii Arbitri Satyricon AD 66.
(Attributed to Gaius Petronus, a Roman General
who later committed suicide)
How much of the national news that you report to the public each night
consists of information you've actually gone out and dug up on your own?
Johnny Carson to Connie Chung
In all honesty, Johnny, we are often at the mercy of the White House for the
news we report. Frequently, we simply repeat verbatim what the White House
tells us.
Connie Chung to Johnny Carson
You're aware the boy failed my grade school math class, I take it?
And not that many years later he's teaching college. Now I ask you:
Is that the sorriest indictment of the American educational system
you ever heard? [pauses to light cigarette.] No aptitude at all
for long division, but never mind. It's him they ask to split the
atom. How he talked his way into the Nobel prize is beyond me. But
then, I suppose it's like the man says, "It's not what you know..."
Karl Arbeiter: former teacher of Albert Einstein
Interpreter: 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 (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"
What's the difference between a Dice Clay concert and a Klan rally?
Nothing. Trick question.
Bob Goldthwait
I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate,
to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents,
but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to
learning, not D.N.A.
Gregory Bateson, "Mind and Matter"
Oscar Wilde
If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
The pure and worthy Mrs. Stowe
Is one we all are proud to know
As mother, wife and authoress -
Thank God, I am content with less!
Charles Dickens
Who call him spurious and shoddy
Shall do it o'er my lifeless body.
I heartily invite such birds
To come outside and say those words!
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Should Heaven send me any son,
I hope he's not like Tennyson.
I'd rather have him play a fiddle
Than rise and bow and speak an idyll.
Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
California, the department store state.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The mistakes are all there waiting to be made.
Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitcyh Tartakower (1887-1956)
on the game's opening position.
Moral victories don't count.
Savielly Grigorievitcyh Tartakower (1887-1956)
Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.
Savielly Grigorievitcyh Tartakower (1887-1956)
"Years ago my mother said to me, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so
smart or oh so pleasant.' For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant."
- Elwood P. Dowd, "Harvey"
When a woman behaves like a man, why
can't she behave like a nice man?
Dame Edith Evans
I only drink to make other people seem interesting.
George Jean Nathan
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical
belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart
enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
-Eugene McCarthy
Old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
-Bernard M. Baruch
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -
the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Everything in Los Angeles is too large,
too loud and usually banal in concept...
The plastic asshole of the world.
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
When women kiss, it always reminds me of prizefighters shaking hands.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The world is divided into people who do
things and people who get the credit
Dwight Morrow
You have to work years in hit shows to make people sick and tired of
you, but you can accomplish this in a few weeks on television.
Walter Slezak
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
"The Good Book" - one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined.
Ashley Montague
The happiest time of anyone's life is just after the first divorce.
John Kenneth Galbraith
It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose
one point of your IQ every year.
Truman Capote (1924-1984)
Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
Unknown
Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that
man doesn't have to experience it.
Max Frisch
Max Frisch, `Homo Faber'
Art is I; science is we.
Claude Bernard (1813-1878)
If women didn't exist, all the money in the
world would have no meaning.
Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
How much fame, money, and power does a woman have to
achieve on her own before you can punch her in the face?
O.J. O'Rourke
Nothing is more intolerable than a wealthy woman.
Juvenal (60? - 140?)
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the
earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell
cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means
that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We
have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
A man must marry only a very pretty woman in case he
should ever want some other man to take her off his hands.
Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
Both the cockroach and the bird could get along very well
without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.
Joseph Wood Krutch
A bachelor never quite gets ove the idea that
he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.
Helen Rowland
Home life as we understand it is no more natural
to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest
outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.
Joseph Conrad
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered
America, that he ever mentioned it.
Margot Asquith
Illegal aliens have always been a problem
in the United States. Ask any Indian.
Robert Orben
A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
Living with a conscience is like driving a car
with the brakes on.
Budd Schulberg
In order to preserve your self-respect, it is
sometimes necessary to lie and cheat.
Robert Byrne
He without benefit of scruples
His fun and money soon quadruples.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
We don't want to start a nuclear war unless we really have to, now do we Jack?
Group Capt. Mandrake (Peter Sellers)
to Col. Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove
(Clemenceau) once said that war is too important to be left to the generals.
When he said that, 50 years ago, he may have been right...but now, war is
too important to be left to the politicians. They have neither the time,
the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought...And I can no longer,
sit around and allow Communist subversion, Communist corruption, and Communist
infiltration of our precious bodily fluids.
Col. Jack Ripper, commander of Burpleson AFB
to Group Capt. Mandrake (Peter Sellers) in Dr. Strangelove
I've been to one world's fair, a picnic and a rodeo and that's the
stupidest thing I've ever heard come over a set of headphones.
Major Kong (Slim Pickins) in Dr. Strangelove
Well boys, looks like it's nu'clr combat, toe-to-toe with the Rooskies.
Major Kong (Slim Pickins) in Dr. Strangelove
You can't fight in here....this is the War Room!!
President Muckley (Peter Sellers)
to Gen. Buck Turgeson (Geroge C. Scott) while
wrestling with Russian ambasador in Dr. Strangelove
I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed...but I am saying
that we'll have no more than 15-20 million killed....depending
on the breaks.
Gen. Buck Turgeson (Geroge C. Scott) to
President Muckley (Peter Sellers) while trying to
convince him to "launch an all out nuclear sneak attack"
in Dr. Strangelove
Well boys, we're running low on fuel, we got more holes in us than a
horse trader's mule, and if we was flying any lower we'd need sleigh
bells on this thing....but we do have one thing going for us....at
this altitude, they may harpoon us but they're sure not going to spot
us on any Rooshian radar.
Major Kong (Slim Pickins) in Dr. Strangelove
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
C.G. Jung (1875-1961)
Half of analysis is anal.
Marty Indik
Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) on psychoanalysis
Childhood, n. The period of human life intermediate between the
idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin
of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Marriage is a triumph of habit over hate.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply
has to go out and kill something.
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity.
Mortimer Adler
Name me and emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball.
Charles V (1500-1558)
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make
the other bastard die for his.
General George Patton (1885-1945)
I have already given two cousins to the war and I
stand ready to sacrifice my wife's brother.
Artemus Ward (1834-1867)
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973)
Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball.
Charles V (1500-1558)
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little,
to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom
they know nothing.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse - as a man shoots himself.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse
us, but for ours to amuse them.
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
in Journal, Jan. 3, 1861
It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant.
Richard J. Ferris, president, United Airlines
The odds against there being a bomb on a plane are a million
to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to
one. Next time you fly, cut the odds and take a bomb.
Benny Hill
The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President.
All he has to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?"
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
The vice-presidency ain't worth a pitcher of warm spit.
Vice President John Nance Garner (1868-1967)
Women are being considered as candidates for Vice President of the
United States because it is the worst job in America. It's amazing
that men will take it. A job with real power is First Lady. I'd
be willing to run for that. As far as the men who are running for
President are concerned, they aren't even people I would date.
Nora Ephron, from her San Francisco lecture, November 4, 1983
Traditionalists often study what is taught, not what there is to create.
Ed Parker, Grandmaster, American Kenpo.
I know a mother-in-law who sleeps with her glasses on,
the better to see her son-in-law suffer in her dreams.
Ernest Coquelin
I don't believe man is woman's natural enemy.
Perhaps his lawyer is.
Shana Alexander
Good taste is the enemy of creativity
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it
out on yourself; in reviewing you take it out on other people.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain
kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the
concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects.
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
in The Mariposa Bank Mystery, 1912
Nobody ever committed suicide while reading a good
book, but many have while trying to write one.
Robert Byrne
Ducking for apples - change one letter and it's the story of my life.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied,
but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss,
renders conversation insipid and vulgar.
Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616)
I hate quotations.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Whoever said, "It's not whether you win or lose that counts," probably lost!
M. Navratilova
The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
Andrew A. Rooney
Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman
makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp.
Joan Rivers
Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses.
H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
I'm against group sex because I wouldn't know where to put my elbows.
Martin Cruz Smith
I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning.
Proverbs 7:17-18
Democracy is a process by which the people are
free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Laurence J. Peter
Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.
Frank Dane
In America, anyone can become president.
That's one of the risks you take.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
Too bad the only people who know how to run the
country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.
George Burns
Promise me that if you become a Christian you'll
become a Presbyterian.
Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964) to
Josef Stalin in 1941
I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother's side.
Stanley Ralph Ross
What if there had been room at the inn?
Linda Festa on the origins of Christianity
Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom
meaningless by not committing them?
Jules Feiffer
Religions change; beer and wine remain.
Hervey Allen (1889-1949)
When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will
see things as they truly are, infinite.
William Blake (1757-1827)
There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either.
Robert Graves
I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out
of all this tumbling around.
Poet Louise Bogan (1898-1970) on her love
affair with poet Theodore Roethke
To read your own poetry in public is a kind of mental incest.
Brendan Behan's father quoted by Shay Duffrin in his
one-man show "Confessions of an Irish Rebel" 1984
They devoted the city to the lord and destroyed with the sword every
living thing in it - men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and
donkeys.
The Book of Joshua 6:21
Remarriage is an excellent test of just how amicable your divorce was.
Margo Kaufman
A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to
comprehend his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it.
Israel Zangwill
Immortality is the condition of a dead man who
doesn't believe he is dead.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
I have the true feeling of myself only when I am
unbearably unhappy.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think
they can be happy without money.
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in
your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home.
David Frost
In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Lawsuit n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Love: The delusion that one woman differs from another.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together...
Carl Zwanzig
Alimony: the ransom the happy pay to the devil.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
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 (1879-1955)
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
that would be clearly understood.
Alexander Haig
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 his
atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
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.
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
Any given program will expand to fill available memory.
God is real, unless declared integer.
If a train station is where the train stops, what's a work station?
Programming just with goto's is like swatting flies with a sledgehammer.
Real programs don't eat cache.
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
The charms of a passing woman are usually in
direct relation to the speed of her passing.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference
between one person and everybody else.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our
enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
"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!"
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898)
Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they
are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
Jules de Gaultier
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"
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
people.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
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 (1879-1955)
This world is a comedy for those who think
and a tragedy for those who feel.
Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
in students.
John Ciardi
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 (1854-1900)
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
Walt Kelly
I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!
Paul McCracken
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
George Saunders' dying words
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him.
John Barrymore's dying words (1882-1942)
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions
per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
One reason the human race has such a low opinion
of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.
Wilfrid Sheed
The Puritans gave thanks for being preserved from the Indians,
and we give thanks for being preserved from the Puritans.
Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and
conform at the same time. They have now solved this by
defying their parents and copying one another.
Quentin Crisp
In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under
thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
Ben Hecht
The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist.
Stendhal
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
haven't what they want that they don't want it.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny--
Did you ever try buying then without money?
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
"Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Ogden Nash
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
"The Pig"
Ogden Nash
The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
Supplies us sausage, ham, and Bacon.
Let others say his heart is big,
I think it stupid of the Pig.
I told you 'bout the fool on the hill
I tell you man he livin' there still
Now here's another place you can be
Listen to me
Fixin' a hole in the ocean
Tryin' to make a dovetail joint
Look into a glass onion.
The Beatles "Glass Onion"
Getting kicked out of the American Bar Association is
like getting kicked out of the Book-of-the-Month-Club.
Melvin Belli on the occasion of his getting
kicked out of the American Bar Association
I always turn to the sports pages first, which record people's
accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974)
It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose.
Darin Weinberg
I'm glad we don't have to play in the shade.
Golfer Bobby Jones (1902-1971) on being
told that it was 105 degrees in the shade
If you stay in Beverly Hills too long you become a Mercedes.
Robert Redford
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a
principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose
status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and
university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.
Paul Fussell
When I get to the bottom
I go back to the top
of the slide
and I stop
and I turn
and I go for a ride
then I get to the bottom
and I see you again!!!
The Beatles "Helter Skelter"
discussing the effect of Sun
re-orgs on Sun employees
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Henry Kissinger
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre
but they are more deadly in the long run.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
Irwin Edman (1896-1954)
Teach children 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.
Unknown
How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats
tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions.
Robert Ardrey
You can't say civilization don't advance...in every war they kill you a new way.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which
He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.
Alexandre Dumas, fils
When you leave New York, you are astonished at how
clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.
Fran Lebowitz
Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity.
Charles Ives
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth Galbraith
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half
as good. Luckily this is not difficult.
Charlotte Whitton
It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging
you with the same godlike and superior imapartiality.
Arnold Bennett
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human
thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that
you would lie if you were in his place.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves
up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and
they never believe me.
Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810-1861)
Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date.
Unknown
It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.
Unknown
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art.
Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle
Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle
for a diamond-studded wheelchair.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past,
he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
Sidney J. Harris
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one works.
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free variable."
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
Vegetarianism is harmless enough, although it is apt to fill a man with
wind and self-righteousness.
Sir Robert Hutchison
It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their
experiments on journalists and politicians.
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best".
H. Allen Smith (1906-1976)
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I
have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
James Thurber (1894-1961)
I went to a convent in New York and was fired finally for my
insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept
of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th.
Roy Blount, Jr.
A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't
any Santa Claus, and he's still upset.
James Gould Cozzens (1903-1978)
Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.
Unknown
... and thereof do I repent: I only plucked an occasional flower when
I might have gathered an ample harvest of fruit -- such are the just
grounds for the regrets I have ...
D. A. F. Sade,
"Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man"
Avarice is the sphincter of the heart.
Matthew Green (c. 1737)
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 (1879-1955)
Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
E.M. Cioran
An idealist is onw who, on noticing that a rose smells better
than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The more violent the body contact of the
sports you watch, the lower your class.
Paul Fussell
God is the Celebrity-Author of the World's Best-Seller. We have made
God into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.
Daniel Boorstin
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Most men do not mature, they simply grow taller.
Leo Rosten
In our family we don't divorce our men - we bury them.
Ruth Gordon (1897-1985)
I have just returned from Boston. It is the only
thing to do if you find yourself up there.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Social confusion has now reached a point at which the pursuit of immorality
turns out to be more exhausting than compliance with the old moral codes.
Denis de Rougemont
Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to
borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
"Pathetic," he said. "That's what it is. Pathetic." (crosses stream)
"As I thought," he said, "no better from this side."
Eeyore
The consumer's side of the coffin lid is never ostentatious.
Stanislaw J. Lec
If England treats her criminals the way she has
treated me, she doesn't deserve to have any.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Behind almost every woman you ever heard of stands a man who let her down.
Naomi Bliven
Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to
borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Women's liberation will not be achieved until a woman can become paunchy
and bald and still think that she's attractive to the opposite sex.
Earl Wilson
There's not a woman in the book, the plot hinges on unkindness to animals,
and the black characters mostly drown by Chapter 29.
P.J. O'Rourke (commenting on _Moby Dick_)
He grounds the warship he walks on.
John Bracken on Captain Barney Kelly
who ran the USS Enterprise into the
mud of San Francisco Bay in May 1983
I don't understand anything about the ballet; all I know is
that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
You must believe in God in spite of what the clergy say.
Benjamin Jowett
"Changing a college curriculum is like moving a graveyard--you never
know how many friends the dead have until you try to move them!"
Calvin Coolidge or Woodrow Wilson
Be careful in revising those immigration laws of yours.
We got careless with ours.
advice given to Herbert Humphrey
by an American Indian from New Mexico
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence
as you can find outside an advertising agency.
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's
going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Actions lie louder than words.
Carolyn Wells
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking.
Jerome Lettvin
American husbands are the best in the world; no other husbands
are so generous to their wives, or can be so easily divorced.
Elinor Glyn
Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with
a tempest of words.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
The great masses of the people . . . will more easily fall victims to a
great lie than to a small one.
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave
him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.
Paul Valery (1871-1945)
God made man, and then said I can do better than that and made woman.
Adela Rogers St. Johns
I believe that much of the world's sorrow is caused by people who
are this, but allow themselves to be treated like that.
Maude - (Ruth Gordon)
from the movie "Harold & Maude"
Everybody should be able to make some music...That's the cosmic dance!
Maude - (Ruth Gordon)
from the movie "Harold & Maude"
The police.....always wanting to play games.
Maude - (Ruth Gordon)
from the movie "Harold & Maude"
Vice...Virtue...It's not good to be too moral. You
cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality.
Maude - (Ruth Gordon)
from the movie "Harold & Maude"
Maude - "The earth is my body, my head is in the stars...Who said that?"
Harold- "I don't know."
Maude - "Well, I suppose I did."
Maude - (Ruth Gordon)
Harold - (Bud Cort)
from the movie "Harold & Maude"
The idea of.....intercourse.....the fact of your firm....young.....body
.......comingling with the.....withered flesh.....sagging breasts......
flabby buttocks.....makes me want to............vomit.
The priest from the movie "Harold & Maude"
counciling Harold on his plan to marry Maude
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may
as well make it dance.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The public doesn't want new music; the main thing
it demands of a composer is that he be dead.
Arthur Honegger
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining
individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
If a child shows himself to be incorrigible, he should be decently
and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity
marry, and perpetuate his kind.
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
The major concrete achievement of the women's
movement of the 1970's was the Dutch treat.
Nora Ephron
Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing they were dead
and in heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in hell.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The only difference between sex and death is, with death you
can do it alone and nobody's going to make fun of you.
Woody Allen
Death: To stop sinning suddenly.
Elbert Hubbard
I have always loved truth so passionately that I have
often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into
the minds which were ignorant of its charms.
Giovanni Jacopo Casanova (1725-1798)
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
Brendan Gill
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bernard Berenson (1865-1959)
"If I ask a woman if she has suffered sexual harassment,
could this be considered sexual harassment?"
Sally Forth, Jan. 28, 1991
Our Constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U.S. senators.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
The classes that wash most are those that work least.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
As it is more blessed to give than receive, so it must be
more blessed to receive than to give back.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
An editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he'd
have someone to look up to.
Gene Fowler (1890-1960)
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet
of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler (1890-1960)
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Marriage; a long conversation chequered by disputes.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
An appeal is when you ask one court to show its
contempt for another court.
Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always
came together, who would escape hanging?
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the
freedom of thought which they avoid.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music,
and silence.
Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)
That orgy of wishful thinking that has passed for logic in the present century.
F.W. Lawvere
Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The following is an intro to an article in Time (2/10/92, p25) by
Michael Duffy, about President Bush's State of the Union address:
A fem days after the embattled President delivered his State of the
Union message, a little-known member of the opposition party appeared
on prime-time television to decry almost everything the Commander in
Chief had said. "The nation faces this year, just as it did last year,
a tremendous deficit in the federal budget," the Congressman intoned.
"But in the President's message there was no sense of sacrifice on the
part of the government, no assignment of priorities, no hint of the
need to put first things first."
The year was 1968. The President was a Democrat named Lyndon Johnson.
The Republican backbencher was Texas Congressman George Bush. And the
"tremendous" deficit was $25 billion. Twenty-four years later, the
deficit has climbed to $399 billion, and every complaint Bush lodged
against LBJ's speech could be applied to his State of the Union
address...
You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their
eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.
Michael Wilding
It's our fault. We should have given him better parts.
Jack Warner on hearing that Ronald Reagan
had been elected governor of California
Working in the theater has a lot in common with unemployment.
Arthur Gingold
One should always be wary of anyone who promises
that their love will last longer than a weekend.
Quentin Crisp
The first half of our lives is ruined by our
parents and the last half by our children.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
Virtue is its own punishment.
Aneurin Bevan
Honesty: the most important thing in life. Unless
you really know how to fake it, you'll never make it.
Bernard Rosenberg
Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.
Claud Cockburn (1904-1981)
Everybody gets so much information all day
long that they lose their common sense.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Most people enjoy the inferiority of their friends.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)
I am a deeply superficial person.
Andy Warhol
Don't jump on a man unless he's down.
Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
William Feather
Anybody who thinks of going to bed before 12 o'clock is a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Do Not Disturb signs should be written in the language of the hotel maids.
Tim Bedore
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name.
Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger may have wished I had presented him as a combination
of Charled DeGaulle and Disraeli, but I didn't....out of respect for
DeGaulle and Disraeli. I described him as a cowboy because that is
how he describes himself. If I were a cowboy I would be offended.
Oriana Fallaci
Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love.
Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979) to Henry Kissinger
No one travelling on a business trip
would be missed if he failed to arrive.
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)
Men are the only animals that devote themselves,
day in and day out, to making one another unhappy.
It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called
altruists.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
A loving wife will do anything for her husband except
stop criticizing him and trying to improve him.
J.B. Priestley (1894-1984)
The woman who cannot tell a lie in defense
of her husband is unworthy of the name of wife.
Elbert Hubbard
My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child.
We can't decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.
Rita Rudner
I'm a controversial figure: my friends either dislike me or hate me.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
She's afraid that if she leaves, she'll become the live of the party.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
What a blessing it would be if we could open and
shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Ignorance is the mother of admiration.
George Chapman (1599?-1634)
Giving a man space is like giving a dog a computer:
the chances are he will not use it wisely.
Bette-Jane Raphael
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 drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Outer space is no place for a person of breeding.
Lady Violet Bonham Carter (1887-1969)
Men should not try to overstrain their
goodness more than any other faculty.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Life is like playing the violin in public
and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Man is the only animal that laughs and
has a state legislature.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
To fall in love you have to be in the state
of mind for it to take, like a disease.
Nancy Mitford
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Better to have loved and lost a short
person than never to have loved a tall.
David Chambless
I derive no pleasure from talking with a young
woman simply because she has regular features.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice
would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
Peter Ustinov
The love of money is the root of all virtue.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
To some lawyers all facts are created equal.
Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965)
I'm no different from anybody else with two
arms, two legs and forty-two-hundred hits.
Pete Rose
Any pitcher who throws at a batter and
deliberately tries to hit him is a communist.
Alvin Dark, former baseball coach
I was not successful as a ballplayer, as it was a game of skill.
Casey Stengel (1891-1975)
I like a friend better for having faults that one can talk about.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830)
I do not want people to be agreeable, as
it saves me the trouble of liking them.
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Tell us your phobias, and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945)
Reverence: the spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an
officer resigns a commission.
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
A child of my own! Oh, no, no, no! Let my flesh perish with me, and
let me not transmit to anyone the boredom and ignominiousness of life.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be
thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable
to its possessor unless it is kept under control.
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world.
Ed McMahon
The Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
In response to "A little knowledge is dangerous." comes...
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where
is the man who has so much to be out of danger?
T.H. Buxley (1825-1895)
The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a
beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
T.H. Buxley (1825-1895)
Marriage: putting one's hand into a bag of
snakes on the chance of drawing out an eel.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
We tolerate shapes in human beings that would
horrify us if we saw them in a horse.
W. R. Inge (1860-1954)
I wasn't kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth.
Chico Marx (1891-1961)
I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
The average man does not know what to do with his life,
yet wants another one which will last forever.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
Everyone would like to behave like a pagan,
with everyone else behaving like a Christian.
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody.
W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have,
and I think he's a dirty little beast.
W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
There are few sorrows in which a good income is of no avail.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)
It is no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.
Jim Grue
Business is a good game - lots of competition and
a minimum of rules. You keep score with money.
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell
Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did.
They`s have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.
Robertson Davies
Contrary to popular belief, English women
do not wear tweed nightgowns.
Hermione Gingold
Once I make up my mind, I'm full of indecision.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and
I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Money is always there, but the pockets change.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of
the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
Robert Orben
I am not sincere, not even when I say I am not.
Jules Renard (1864-1910)
This is the day upon which we are reminded of
what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Sometimes a fool makes a good suggestion.
Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711)
All my life, affection has been showered upon me, and every
forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
There are two kinds of people. Those who say there are
two kinds of people and those who don't.
Woody Allen
Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance.
Plato (427?-347 BC)
Boys don't make passes at female smartasses.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
It is better to be beautiful than to be good,
but it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government,
and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
A dollar saved is a quarter earned.
John Ciardi
Save a little money each month and at the end of the
year you'll be surprised at how littly you have.
Ernest Haskins
I'm living so far beyond my income that
we may almost be said to be living apart.
e. e. cummings (1894-1962)
A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.
A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid
of intelligence.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats
a strange protein; it rejects it.
Biologist P. B. Medawar
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous,
the sensible man hardly anything.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
Now I may tell you that it's love and not just lust.
And if we live the lie, let's lie in trust.
On golden daffodils, to catch the silver stream
That washes out the wild oat seed on Velvet Green.
Jethro Tull - "Velvet Green"
Moving forward...using all my breath....making love to you was
never second best...I saw the world crashing all around your
face...never really knowing it was always...mesh and lace...
Modern English - "I'll Stop The World"
Now we all have a face, that we hide away forever
and we take them our and show ourselves when everyone has gone.
Some are satin, some are steel, some are silk and some are leather
They're the faces of the Stranger but we love to try them on.
Billy Joel - "The Stranger"
Boot leather flashing and spur-necks the size of my thumb.
This high-born hunter had tastes as strange as they come.
Unbridled passion: I took the bit in my teeth.
Her standing over: me on my knees underneath.
Jethro Tull - "Hunting Girl"
The Green Party is like a watermelon -- green on
the outside and red on the inside.
Rep. Bill Dannemeyer, R-Fullerton
I knew I'd been living in Berkeley too long when I saw a sign that said
'Free firewood" and my first thought was "Who was Firewood and what did
he do?'
John Berger
One's need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits
at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
Henry Adams
The first thing I do in the morning is brush
my teeth and sharpen my tongue.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
He marries best who puts it off until it is too late.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
We'll dream as lovers under the stars:
Of civilizations raging afar.
And the ragged dawn breaks on your battle scars
As you walk home cold and alone upon Velvet Green.
"Velvet Green" Jethro Tull
One dusky half-hour's ride up to the north.
There lies your reputation and all that you're worth.
Where the scent of wild roses turns the milk to cream.
Tell your mother that you walked all night on Velvet Green.
"Velvet Green" Jethro Tull
I'll make love to you
in all good places
under black mountains
in open spaces.
By deep brown rivers
that slither darkly
through far marches
where the blue hare races.
"Acres Wild" Jethro Tull
"Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to
it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an over-
dose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic apathy,
doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an
appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a steroid-free
fitness center."
Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
Etymology, n.:
Some early etymological scholars come 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
Resistance is irrelevant. You will become one with the Borg.
Locutus
In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of
speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
I know what love is: Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall,
Romeo and Juliet, Jackie and John and Marilyn....
Ian Shoales
Nowadays a citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and
a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
The wages of sin are unreported.
Unknown
Let me tell you how it will be,
There's one for you nineteen for me.
Cause I'm the tax man
Should 5% appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
The Beatles
To a woman the first kiss is just the end of the beginning
but to a man it is the beginning of the end.
Helen Rowland (1876-1950)
Kissing is a means of getting two people so close together
that they can't see anything wrong with each other.
Rene' Yasenek
Oh, what lies there are in kisses!
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
They have Easter egg hunts in Philadelphia, and
if the kids don't find the eggs, they get booed.
Bob Uecker
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which
probably never happened and those which do not matter.
W. R. Inge (1860-1954)
Dubito ergo sum - I doubt therefore I am
Kayvan Sylvan
Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the
nonsense of those who think they talk sense.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The continued propinquity of another human being cramps the style after a
time unless that person is somebody you think you love. Then the burden
becomes intolerable at once.
Quentin Crisp
I shall be breakfasted before you are afield.
In short, I shall astonish you all.
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Far From the Madding Crowd
Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
My illness is dut to my doctor's insistence that I drink
milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading
him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
I am not young enough to know everything.
J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)
There are scores of thousands of human insects who are ready at a
moment's notice to reval the will of God on every possible subject.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The impotence of God is infinite.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
One of the simple but genuine pleasures in life is getting up in
the morning and hurrying to a mousetrap you set the night before.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
Except during the nine months before he draws his first
breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.
Isaac Stern
Only sick music makes money today.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) in 1888
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
Democracy means government by discussion, but it
is only effective if you can stop people talking.
Clement Richard Atlee (1883-1967)
British prime minister (1945-1951)
An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country.
Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639)
A communist is a person who publicly airs his dirty Lenin.
Jack Pomeroy
Instead of conceiving of society as something established for the defense
of individual rights, fair contracts, and due process of law, we are invited
to see it in terms of the biblical vision. This way of living, thinking,
and acting where autonomy and related rights take priority has seriously
jeopardized the meaning and values of all institutions in our society.
Detroit Archbishop Adam J. Maida
in a speech to Catholic judges including
Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, and O'Connor
Obviously no country can claim a special place in God's heart,
yet we are better as a people because He has a special place in
ours...I want to thank you for helping America, as Christ ordained,
to be a light unto the world...
President George Bush
commending the National Religious Broadcasters for
their support in the war to drive Iraq from Kuwait
I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once again
governed by Christians...and Christian values. What Christians have
got to do is take back this country, one precinct at a time, one
neighborhood at a time, and one state at a time.
Ralph Reed
Executive Director
the Christian Coalition
An ideal wife is one who remains faithful to you
but tries to be just as charming as if she weren't.
Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
Judge: a law student who marks his own papers.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder.
Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)
I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
I never did give anybody hell. I just told the
truth and they thought it was hell.
Harry S Truman (1884-1972)
I can think of nothing more boring for the American people
than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half
hour looking at my face on their television screens.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)
The trouble with wedlock is that there's
not enough wed and too much lock.
Christopher Morley (1890-1957)
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
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
Peggy Joyce
Women dress alike all over the world:
they dress to be annoying to other women.
Elsa Schiaparelli
You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.
Dolly Parton
What you have when everyone wears the same playclothes for all occasions,
is addressad by nickname, expected to participate in Show And Tell, and
bullied out of any desire form privacy, is not democracy; it is kindergarten.
Miss Manners (Judith Martin)
No place affords a more striking conviction of
the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Any ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand
books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the
world in which it is possible to be happy.
Augustine Birrell (1850-1933)
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges
Carlyle said, "A lie cannot live"; it shows
he did not know how to tell them.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
A good listener is usually thinking about something else.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as
the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
She ain't my mother, so I ain't gonna get her nothin'.
Lee Trevino on a Mother's Day gift for his wife
America: the only country in the world where failing
to promote yourself is regarded as being arrogant.
Garry Trudeau
Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all
associations between people and has been transferred to
all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) on America
I love America. You always hurt the one you love.
David Frye impersonating Nixon
Personally, I think a fetus is about as much a life as a fish on a
hook. Maybe less. The fish doesn't need to feed off an umbrellical
cord. It's cordless, like my telephone.
-- Phil Stromer
Dictatorship is without a doubt the most satisfying form of
government...as long as I'm the dictator.
Phil Stromer 11/9/90-
Gas chambers are neat. They make the guy's bodily functions all
let go simultaneously. Just think, he'll whizz, doodoo, and hurl
all at the same time. It'll be like a Symphony in Gross, D-minor.
It'll be like a 600-pound person sitting on his face and farting until
he suffocates.
Phil Stromer on the Harris execution
Everyone should support the ERA. Without Earned Run Average, we
won't know which pitchers are the best. :)
-- Phil Stromer
So be careful out there folx, Sun is watching. If you say anything
that even remotely resembles political incorrectness, you are taking
a chance with your livelihood. I'd recommend that any employees of
Sun do NOT use the USENET for anything other than informational
purposes, such as to mention a conference or something along the
lines.
-- Phil Stromer
It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't
talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows anything
about we can discuss.
Richard Feynman
I passionately hate the idea of being with it. I think an artist
has always to be out of step with his time.
Orson Welles, 1966
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
Logic is like the sword: those who appeal to it shall perish by it.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the
success of those we don't like.
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in
operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945)
The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures
is that no other creature has ever denied it.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)
Autobiography is an unrivalled vehicle
for telling the truth about other people.
Philip Guedalla (1889-1944)
Muscles come and go; flab lasts.
Bill Vaughan
A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)
You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
I can't understand why a person will take a year to write
a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Only the winners decide what were war crimes.
Garry Wills
Wars teach us not to love our enemies but to hate our allies.
W.L. George
The ocean is a body of water occupying about two-thirds of
a world made for man - who has no gills.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
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
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
J. Paul Getty
When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in
nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course
there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like.
But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident...
or any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel
in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and
never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that
threatened to end in disaster of any sort.
E. J. Smith, 1907
Captain, RMS Titanic
To get the attention of a large animal, be it an
elephant or a bureaucracy, it helps to know what
part of it feels pain. Be very sure, though, that
you want its full attention.
Kelvin Throop
Try to live your life so that you wouldn't be
afraid to sell the family parrot to the town
gossip.
Will Rogers
You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.
Stanislaw J. Lec
Of all the unbearable nuisances, the ignoramus
that has travelled is the worst.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
Calamites are of two kinds: misfortunes to
ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon
to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
William James (1842-1910)
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
He, in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have
ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754), "Jonathan Wild"
I love my cigar but I take it out of my mouth once in a while!
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) from "You Bet Your Life"
in response to a man whos reason for fathering
10 children was: "Well, I love my wife"
No one can have a higher opinion of him than
I have - and I think he is a dirty little beast.
W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
I don't have a warm personal enemy left. They've all died off.
I miss them terribly because they helped define me.
Clare Boothe Luce
The enemy came. He was beaten. I am tired. Goodnight.
Message sent by Vicomte Turenne
after the battle of Dunen, 1658
I hate the pollyanna pest who says that all is for the best.
Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960)
There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country.
The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country
really needs is a good five-cent nickel.
Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960)
The best part of the fiction in many novels is the
notice that the characters are purely imaginary.
Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960)
The only thing I like about rich people is their money.
Lady Astor
The richer your friends, the more they will cost you.
Elisabeth Marbury (1856-1933)
It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)
Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf.
Lewis Mumford
It's a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just
so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God
the things that are God's; and unto human beings, what?
Stanislaw J. Lec
Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a
cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are
unable to detect it. It may help us to escape all criticism, we
may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our
obvious righteousness. But deep down, below the surface
of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering,
"There is something not right," no matter how much his
rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code.
Carl G. Jung in the introduction to Frances G. Wickes'
"Analysis der Kinderseele" (The Inner World of Childhood)
1931
When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and
I didn't like it and didn't inhale and never tried it again.
Gov. Bill Clinton
I like to play saxophone because you don't inhale.
Gov. Bill Clinton, on a radio talk show in New York
It's nice to see a Democrat blow something besides an election.
Arsenio Hall, after Clinton's saxophone debut on his show
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 (1895-1972)
Life changed after that jump...I'd suddenly stepped to the highest level
of daring, a level above even that which airplane pilots could attain.
Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974)
describing his first skydive
In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate
circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
If more than ten percent of the population likes
a painting it should be burned, for it must be bad.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
There is no sadder sight than a
young pessimist, except an old optimist.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
If we weren'g all so interested in ourselves, life
would be so uninteresting we couldn't endure it.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians,
and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
If Jerry Brown is the answer, it must be a very peculiar question.
Sen Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas
I've told you I don't live and die by the polls. Thus, I will refrain
from pointing out that we're not doing too bad in those polls.
President Bush, in the New Republic
A lot of people voting for Pat Buchanan say they are doing so to send a
message. Apparently that message is, "Hey, look at me, I'm an idiot."
Dennis Miller, talk-show host
Times are hard, you're afraid to pay the fee
So you find yourself somebody who can do the job for free
When you need a little lovin' cause you man is out of town
That's the time you get me runnin, and you'll know I'll be around.
I'm a fool to do your dirty work...
Steely Dan - Dirty Work
While the music played, you worked by candelight
Those San Francisco nights, you were the best in town.
Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
you turned it on the world, that's when you turned the world around
Did you feel like Jesus? Did you realize you were a champion in their eyes?
On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
But your's was kitchen clean
Everyone stopped to stare at your technical ability
Every "A" friend had your number on the wall
You must have had it all, You go to LA on a dare and you go it alone.
Could you live forever?
Could you see the day, could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away?
Steely Dan - Kid Charlemagne
Babs and Clean Willy were in love they said
So, in love, the preacher's face turned red
Soon everybody knew the thing was dead
He shouts, She bites, They wrangle through the night
She go crazy, got to make'm get away
Papa say, oh...oh, no hesitation,
No tears and no hearts breaking, no remorse.
Oh....oh Congratulations, this is your Hatian Divorce.
Steely Dan - Hatian Divorce
Making music should not be left to the professionals.
Michelle Shocked
A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties.
He should insult her in the privacy of the home.
James Thurber (1894-1961)
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
There ought to be one day - just one -
where there is open season on senators.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Nobody said it was going to be easy, and nobody was right.
President George Bush, quoted in Asiaweek magazine
Get this (economic plan) passed. Later on, we can all debate it.
President George Bush, to New Hampshire legislators
It's a weird year.
President George Bush
The world makes up for all its follies and injustices
by being damnably sentimental.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
No nation was ever drunk when wine was cheap.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
The wine seems to be very closed-in and seems to
have entered a dumb stage. Sort of a Marcel Meursault.
Paul S. Winalski
I only drink fortified wines during bad weather. Snowstorm, hurricane,
tornado--I'm not particular, as long as it's bad. After all, any storm
for a Port.
Paul S. Winalski
What profits a man if he keeps his eternal soul when he could have
lived life to the full and been forgiven at the end of it all anyway?
David Merritt, a.k.a. THE RED SHARK
People are much too solemn about things - I'm
all for sticking pins into episcopal behinds.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
The best reason I can think of for not running for President
of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
If voters don't have a stomach for me, they
can get one of those blow-dried guys.
Ross Perot, Time, April 6, 1992
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever
came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.
Stanislaw J. Lec
You must have taken great pains, sir; you could
not naturally been so very stupid.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
My father never raised his hand to any one of his
children, except in self-defense.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed
I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up.
James Gould Cozzens (1903-1978)
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking,
unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate how.
Frederick Winsor
The Preacher, the Politicain, the Teacher,
Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
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 (1859-1936)
Marriage: a book of which the first chapter is written
in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.
Beverly Nichols
One should never know too precisely whom one has married.
Nietzsche (1844-1900) on Lohengrin
Marriage is part of a sort of 50's revival package that's
back in vogue along with neckties and naked ambition.
Calvin Trillin
The comfortable estate of widowhood is the
only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits.
John Gay
He who marries a widow will often have
a dead man's head thrown in his dish.
Spanish proverb
Men have a much better time of it than woemn; for one thing,
they marry later; for another thing they die earlier.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Uncomfortable under the gaze, the MP explained, "I mean...well, it's
only a sort of chess or checkers or something isn't it?"
Intending to scorn this probe with his disdain for things Western,
Nicholais said, "Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to
double entry accounting." But obtuseness is its own protection against
both improvement and punishment. The sergeant's response was frank
and naive: "No shit?"
Trevanian from the novel Shibumi
The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
I don't like her. But don't misunderstand me: my dislike is purely platonic.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree
Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like
to listen to the sins of the father as well.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds
to have another should be sterilized at once.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold
fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.
Pierre Trudeau - Prime Minister of Canada 1968-1979
I've posed nude for a photographer in the manner of
Rodin's Thinker, but I merely looked constipated.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than on all other
days of the year put together. This proves, by the numbers left in
stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the
country has grown so.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion
of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
Goethe (1749-1832)
If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making
a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'
John Cleese
For a while we pondered whether to take a vacation or get a divorce.
We decided that a trip to Bermuda is over in two weeks, but a
divorce is something you always have.
Woody Allen
She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.
Tommy Manville (1894-1967)
Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.
Arthur Baer (1896-1975)
Ah yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip
out a man's genitals through his wallet.
Robin Williams
Where desire writhed there stands a stone;
the change was sudden and complete.
Maggie Roche
After a year in therapy, my psychiatrist said to me,
"Maybe life isn't for everyone."
Larry Brown
Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange
your temporal affairs. You may live.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
The first kiss is stolen by the man;
the last is begged by the woman.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be
true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It's hard to decide if TV makes morons out of everyone or if
it mirrors Americans who really are morons to begin with.
Martin Mull
I have never found in a long experience of politics
that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.
Harold Macmillan b. 1894
British prime minister (1957-1963)
Never get married while you're going to college;
it's hard to get a start if a prospective
employer finds you've already made one mistake.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like
making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.
Woody Allen
A sign of celebrity is that his name is often worth
more than his services.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and
an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door.
Marlo Thomas
As an anti-American, I thank you for your
rotten article devoted to my person.
Prince Sihanouk in a letter
to Time magazine
A painter should not paint what he sees but what should be seen.
Paul Valery (1871-1945)
When my love swears that she is made of truth, I
do believe her, though I know she lies.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin,
disect, and immediately you come to machinery.
Paul Valery (1871-1945)
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.
Henry Van Dyke
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Repeated catastrophe is instructive
William Glaston - Univ. of Maryland prof. of public affairs
refering to recent Democratic presidential election record
All professions are conspiracies against the laity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Nothing to me is more distasteful than that entire complacency and
satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a newly married couple.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
It's a really crappy sort of memory that only works backwards
The White Queen, "Through the Looking Glass".
Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.
Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity
chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
Politicians are the same the world over: they promise
to build a bridge even when there is no river.
Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971)
If the Prince of Peace should come to earth, one of the first
things he would do would be to put psychiatrists in their place.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
When I became President, what surprised me most was that
things were just as bad as I'd been saying they were.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could
become President; I'm beginning to belive it.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
I'd rather entrust the government of the United States
to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone
directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
There you stand like a duck in a thunderstorm again -
aren't you ever going to understand?
W.A. Mozart
While you're saving your face you're losing your ass.
Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973)
The trouble with my wife is that she is a
whore in the kitchen and a cook in the bed.
Geoffrey Gorer
I don't mind a little praise - as long as it's fulsome.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her
middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
There ought to be a room in every house to swear in.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.
Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called
upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
Orson Welles
Americans detest all lies except lies spoken in public or printed lies.
Ed Howe
It is often pleasant to stone a martyr, no matter how much we admire him.
John Barth
I think, therefore Descartes exists.
Saul Steinberg
The trouble with this country is that there are too many people
going about saying, "The trouble with this country is...."
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
Most vegetarians look so much like the food they
eat that they can be classified as cannibals.
Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)
Make money and the whole nation will conspire to call you a gentleman.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
There are three intolerable things in life - cold
coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women.
Orson Welles
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea;
but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled
by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Sun Microsystems openly acknowledges that we are not after
(employees seeking) the gold watch. That's an old notion.
Marianne Jackson, Director
Human Resources for Sun Microsystems
West Coast Operations
quote appeared in San Jose Mercury News
It's not his fault that he's the rear end of a pantomime horse.
Vincent Manis
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side,
and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Carl Zwanzig
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise
and free than Christianity has made them good.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Reason and Justice tell me that there is more love of man in
electricity and steam, than in chastity and refusal to eat meat.
Chekov of Tolstoy
There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.
Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)
Courtly love-poetry may first have been written during long periods
of abstinence on the Crusades, but it would not have flourished in
the cold of northern Europe without some help from the chimney.
James Burke
Excuse me, George Herbert irregular-heart-beating, read-by-line-lipping,
slipping-in-the-polls, do-nothing, deficit-raising, make-less-money-than-
Millie-the-White-House-dog-last-year, Quayle-loving, sushi-puking Bush!
I don't remember inviting your ass on my show.
Arsenio Hall in response to Bush's comment
that he would appear on any talk show except "Arsenio"
Reprinted from the Seattle Times, Tuesday, August 4, 1992, page B-1
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
George Ade (1866-1944)
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
National Health Insurance:
The compassion of the IRS
The efficiency of the Postal Service
All at Pentagon prices!!!!
Seen on a bumper sticker
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements
for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Never lie when the truth is more profitable.
Stanislaw J. Lec
It's scary to think that the infrastructure of the industrialized
world is increasingly based on software like this.
Stephen Wolfe quoted on page 11 of
the August 1992 CAD report
refering to AutoCAD rev. 12
Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.
Unknown
Melpomene was a substantial girl, thick of bosom, ankle, and forearm,
rosy of cheek, and clear of eye. She seemed somehow incomplete without
her hockey stick.
Trevanian from the novel "Shibumi"
Hana: What on Earth is a 'barbeque'?
Hel: A primitive tribal ritual featuring paper plates, elbows, flying
insects, encrusted meat, hush puppies, and beer.
Hana: I daren't ask what a 'hush puppy' is.
Hel: Don't.
Trevanian from the novel "Shibumi"
It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed
Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to
confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with
institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with
manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with
pleasure -- in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who
assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for
equals.
Trevanian from the novel "Shibumi"
It was the wrong answer. He should have given the Marilyn Quayle answer.
Angela Buchanan, sister of Pat Buchanan,
on Bush's remark that he would stand by a
grand-daughter's decision about abortion.
Mr. Gates is up to his eyeballs in his knowledge of this stuff.
US District Judge Royce Lambeth,
ordering CIA Director Robert Gates to
testify at the Clair George trial.
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
Milton Friedman
I was much distressed by next door people who had twin
babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died,
and the other has eaten the fiddle - so all is peace.
Edward Lear (1812-1888)
A lot of women are getting alimony who don't earn it.
Don Herold
When you consider what a chance women have to poison their
husbands, it's a wonder there isn't more of it done.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
When solving a "panic" you must first ask yourself what you
were doing that could possibly frighten an operating system
Peter van der Linden
I prefer the company of peasants because they have
not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a
delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in
case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
Climbing would be a great, truly wonderful thing
if it weren't for all that damn climbing.
John Ohrenschall
Higher emotions are what separate us from the lower orders of life...
Higher emotions, and table manners.
Deanna Troi, _Imzadi_
Start Trek - The Next Generation
Success is a great deodorant.
Elizabeth Taylor
What dreadful hot weather we have!
It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Everyone realized that Computervision stock was the golden goose. But one
grabbed the leg, another grabbed a wing, another got the neck, all pulling
hard, and they realize now they could kill the goose if they keep this up.
Charles Foundyller of Daratech
from 8/14/92 Wall St Journal
Consequences, shmonsequences! So long as I'm rich!
Daffy Duck
Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta.
Brian Aldiss
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one
lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.
John Ciardi
No one can earn a million dollars honestly.
William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.
Claude Levi-Strauss
'Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I
never had the courtesy to thank her for it.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses.
Drinks right out of the bottle.
Henny Youngman
The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before,
the more I look like her the morning after.
Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)
An Irishman is the only man in the world who will step over the
bodies of a dozen naked women to get to a bottle of stout.
Unknown
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think
of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.
Noel Coward (1899-1973)
The difference between man and animals is that we don't use our
tongue to clean our genitals.
Rimmer - Red Dwarf
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
The perfect host requires the perfect parasite.
Adopted from Lance Fusco.
The chief objection of playing wind instruments
is that it prolongs the life of the player.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Even in civilized mankind faint traces of
monogamous instincts can be perceived.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
People that are really weird can get into sensitive positions
and have a tremendous impact on history.
J. Danforth Quayle, 09/88
The wages of sin are death, but the benefits include dental, major
medical, two week paid vacation, pension fund, and stock options.
Actually, taken as a package, it's a rather attractive deal.
Tim Mefford
Jesus saves sinners ... and redeems them for valuable cash prizes!!!
And thou shalt smite thine enemy even unto the wall, gnashing thy teeth,
and he shall grow small in thy mirrors.
Jeff Zurschmeide
There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally
mandatory.
Michael Levin
Things are so bad in Massachusetts now they don't
even bother to plough Route 128 when it snows.
Scott McNealy
in the wake of Wang's going Chapter 11
Close your mouth, Michael; we are not a codfish.
Mary Poppins
While I am not a fan of corporal punishment, I am not a fan of his
friends Major Nuisance or General Disturbance.
Elaine Richards
A woman will buy anything she thinks the store is losing money on.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
Having the critics praise you is like having the
hangman say you've got a pretty neck.
Eli Wallach
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
You'll get a fair trial followed by a first class hanging.
Judge Roy Bean
The French are just useless. They can't organize a piss-up in a brewery.
Elton John
He's a fine friend. He stabs you in the front.
Leonard Louis Levinson
The place where optimism flourishes the most is the lunatic asylum.
Havelock Ellis (1859-1939)
I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Hel knew Hana was not going to get off that easily, and he grinned at her as
Miss Stern pursued, "I don't think you mean concubine. In English, concubine
means someone who is hired for...well, for her sexual services. I think you
mean 'mistress'. And even mistress is sort of old-fashioned. Nowadays people
just say they are living together."
Hana Looked at Hel for help. He laughed and interceded for her. "Hana's
English is really quite good. She was only joking about the asparagus.
She knows the difference among a mistress, a concubine, and a wife. A
mistress is unsure of her wage, a wife has none; and they are both amateurs."
Trevanian from the novel Shibumi
"Governor Bill Weld (R. Mass) was quoted as saying Dan Quayle had
the sharpest political mind in the White House."
"That's true. At the time, George Bush was out campaigning, and
Barbara was out walking Millie the dog."
Jay Leno from the Tonight Show a couple of weeks ago
"He doesn't have the greatest smarts in the world.
His main interests in school were broads and booze."
J. Danforth Quayle's Father, 08/23/88
No man should marry before he has studied
anatomy and dissected the body of a woman.
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
I pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.
John Waters
The only people who seem to have nothing to do
with the education of the children are the parents.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene
of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)
I don't worry about getting old. I'm old already. Only young people worry
about getting old. When I was 65 I had cupid's eczema. I don't believe
in dying. It's been done. I'm working on a new exit. Besides, I can't
die now - I'm booked.
George Burns
Someday Louisiana is going to get good government. And they ain't
gunna like it.
Earl K. Long
...they no longer felt like newlyweds, and even less like belated lovers.
It was as if they had lept over the arduous calvary of conjugal life
and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like
an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond
the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love.
For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love,
anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
from "Love in the Time of Cholera"
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The trouble with America is that there are far
too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth.
Charles Luckman
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may
eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
I don't need bodyguards.
Jimmy Hoffa
Playboy Interview - December 1975
I'll always stay connected with Apple.
Steven Jobs
Playboy Interview - February 1985
I really do plan to get out of show business within five years or so.
Bill Cosby
Playboy Interview - May 1969
I believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young.
Fidel Castro
Playboy Interview - January 1967
I'm not apt to be getting married in the near future and my lifestyle
isn't apt to dramatically change as a result of any new relationship.
Hugh Hefner
Playboy Interview - January 1974
The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion.
You'll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents.
Andrew Young
Playboy Interview - July 1977
I don't believe in leaving anything to be inherited.
Robert Maxwell
Playboy Interview - October 1991
If we burn ourselves out with drugs or alcohol, we
won't have long to go in this business.
John Belushi
Playboy Interview - May 1977
Who could follow Carson? Well, believe me, somebody can - and will.
Johnny Carson
Playboy Interview - December 1967
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been
enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the
money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working
upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few
hands and the Republic is destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln
quoted in Jack London's "The Iron Heel"
Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player.
Miles Davis
Playboy Interview - September 1962
I must admit, it would be nice if I had a few more
exciting personal qualities than I do.
George McGovern
Playboy Interview - August 1971
Ain't never been another fighter like me. Ain't never been no nothing like me.
Cassius Clay
Playboy Interview - October 1964
I'm a very oral person. I like licking a lot. I also like barking.
Erica Jong
Playboy Interview - September 1975
I'd like to be a song and dance man.
Walter Cronkite
Playboy Interview - June 1973
I've always wanted to be Brigitte Bardot.
Bob Dylan
Playboy Interview - March 1966
The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching
for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make
its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary
nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it
doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it! (It's rather
like getting tenure.)
Daniel Dennett
From CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED p. 177
Leona Helmsley is a truly evil human being.
Donald Trump
Playboy Interview - March 1990
Donald Trump is a snake.
Leona Helmsley
Playboy Interview - November 1990
I drink for the honorable purpose of getting bagged.
Jackie Gleason
Playboy Interview - December 1962
I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer,
tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.
Frank Sinatra
Playboy Interview - February 1963
The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Playboy Interview - March 1963
We are eliminating poverty in this country faster than any society ever.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
Playboy Interview - May 1970
Racism, pollution and the rest of it are themselves very close to extinction.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Playboy Interview - February 1972
No national political party is going to nominate
another right-wing candidate for a long time.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
Playboy Interview - May 1966
After all these investigations, that's exactly what
they're going to find out: This is a great department.
Daryl Gates
Playboy Interview - August 1991
I discovered masturbation to orgasm when I was about
13, and I was sure nobody else had ever done it.
Erica Jong
Playboy Interview - September 1975
I had a patent on masturbation when I was 12. I thought I invented it.
Roman Polanski
Playboy Interview - December 1971
When I was in junior high school, the teachers voted me
the student most likely to end up in the electric chair.
Sylvester Stallone
Playboy Interview - September 1978
Most of the class clowns in my high school are doing time now.
David Letterman
Playboy Interview - October 1984
I'm sure if somebody were pointing a gun at me and I were
standing there with a six-pack, I'd say, 'Care for one?'
Clint Eastwood
Playboy Interview - February 1974
Are there any writers on the literary scene whom I
consider truly great? Yes: Truman Capote.
Truman Capote
Playboy Interview - March 1968
How long can you be cute?
Goldie Hawn
Playboy Interview - January 1985
If I were courageous, I would have killed Qaddafi when I interviewed him
Oriana Fallaci
Playboy Interview - November 1981
Not one man has ever told me I'm beautiful - in my entire life. I
think that's what's made me the aggressive wreck I am today.
Joan Rivers
Playboy Interview - November 1986
I'm a nymphomaniac of the heart.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Playboy Interview - February 1983
I am a spy of life.
Lech Walesa
Playboy Interview - February 1982
I am a mass of contradictions
Barbra Streisand
Playboy Interview - October 1977
I am a mass of contradictions
Richard Burton
Playboy Interview - September 1963
I'm not a homosexual
Edward Koch
Playboy Interview - April 1982
I'm not a Japan basher.
Lee Iacocca
Playboy Interview - January 1991
I'm a meglomaniac.
Roman Polanski
Playboy Interview - December 1971
I'm a genetic mutant.
Dan Aykroyd
Playboy Interview - May 1977
I'm naturally throbbing
Woody Allen
Playboy Interview - May 1967
Bush is into the Contra business up to his eyeballs.
Gore Vidal
Playboy Interview - December 1987
The popular view of Eisenhower among educated
Eastern people was that he was a boob.
Pat Moynihan
Playboy Interview - March 1977
Ford is a fucking bimbo. Even in that famous picture of him making his
own breakfast, he was marmalading the wrong side of his English muffin.
Abbie Hoffman
Playboy Interview - May 1976
Death comes along like a gas bill one can't pay.
Anthony Burgess
Playboy Interview - September 1974
If I die tonight and you wake up tomorrow, don't send flowers.
Don't come around with your tears. Picket. To to PTA meetings.
Fight for higher wages. Make the most of it.
Jesse Jackson
Playboy Interview - November 1969
I had a dream that Connie Chung is doing a newscast
about my death and they show a clip from Soap.
Billy Crystal
Playboy Interview - March 1988
I shall never cease to be sensual - even on my deathbead.
If the doctor is young and handsome, I shall draw him into my arms.
Tennessee Williams
Playboy Interview - April 1973
Sometimes even powerlessness has a power of its own.
Who is it who took India? Some guy in his underwear.
Jerry Brown
Playboy Interview - April 1976
Big nations are like chickens. They like to make big
noises, but very often it is no more than squabbling.
Dr. Albert Schweitzer
Playboy Interview - December 1963
This country has been strip-mined by rich and powerful interests.
If you dont like what they're doing, don't just sit there. Vote them out.
Ralph Nadar
Playboy Interview - June 1992
When lip service to some mysterious deity permist bestiality on Wednesday
and absolution on Sunday - cash me out.
Frank Sinatra
Playboy Interview - February 1963
I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting.
Mel Brooks
Playboy Interview - October 1966
God is good when He gives us a grilled steak.
Anthony Burgess
Playboy Interview - 1974
I found Christ. I had a revelation while I was watching Monday Night Football.`
Terry Bradshaw
Playboy Interview - March 1980
Remember, Jesus was on Eighth Avenue with the prostitutes.
He wasn't uptown or in Washington, D.C.
Martin Scorsese
Playboy Interview - April 1991
At the moment of climax, there is a oneness with you and your
husband and God. When you come together, it's like when the
church is brought up to meet Christ in the air.
Anita Bryant
Playboy Interview - May 1978
When I was 16 years old, I fucked Warren Beaty. Just like that. I
did it because my girlfriends were so crazy about him, and so was my
mother.
Cher
Playboy Interview - December 1988
The great American formula for sex is: a kiss on the lips,
a hand on the breasts and a dive for the pelvis.
Dr. William Masters
Playboy Interview - November 1979
My reaction to porn films is as follows: After the first ten minutes,
I want to go home and screw. After the first 20 minutes, I never
want to screw again as long as I live.
Erica Jong
Playboy Interview - September 1975
I've never been to an orgy, honestly. If I was invited
to one, I'd be the guy they sent out for cold cuts.
Woody Allen
Playboy Interview - May 1967
Giving Head to your woman is dangerous because
it gives the Devil introduction into the vagina.
Norman Mailer
Playboy Interview - January 1968
There's an unfortunate obsession in this country with mammary glands.
No matter how fantastic a girl's breasts are, if that's all she's
got, they just hang there like two worthless tits.
Raquel Welch
Playboy Interview - January 1970
A man has a sense of detachment from his penis.
He walks around with a stranger in his pants.
Gay Talese
Playboy Interview - May 1980
I have nothing against homosexuals.
You should fuck whoever the fuck you feel like fucking.
Eddie Murphy
Playboy Interview - February 1990
The censors say they're protecting the family unit in America,
when the reality is, if you suck a tit, you're an X, but if you
cut it off with a sword, you're a PG.
Jack Nicholson
Playboy Interview - April 1972
I've looked on a lot of women with lust.
I've committed adultery in my heart many times.
Jimmy Carter
Playboy Interview - November 1976
A young man called and said, "Dr. Ruth, my girlfriend and I love each
other very much. We want to get married." I said, "Good. What's your
problem?" He said, "My girlfriend likes to toss fried onion rings
on my erect penis."
Dr. Ruth Westheimer
Playboy Interview - January 1986
I'm sort of hot-blooded. That doesn't mean necessarily
I'm promiscuous. It means I really enjoy sex.
John Travolta
Playboy Interview - December 1978
I'm not colorless - I'm black. It's not something I consciously think about.
It just is. It's like having a dick. You don't think about having a dick.
You just have one.
Whoopi Goldberg
Playboy Interview - June 1987
I've never seen black men with fine white women. They be ugly.
Mugly, dogs. And you always see white men with good-looking black women.
Spike Lee
Playboy Interview - July 1991
I don't feel guilty that five or ten generations ago these people
were slaves. Now, I'm not condoning slavery. It's just a fact of life.
John Wayne
Playboy Interview - May 1971
Christ wasn't white. Christ was black.
Malcolm X
Playboy Interview - May 1963
My fondest hope is that Roots may start black, white, brown, red, yellow
people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet
tall.
Alex Haley
Playboy Interview - January 1977
Whites in this country have reacted to the demands of blacks only after
disorder. Until Watts blew up, Los Angeles was not prepared to do much
about it.
William Sloan Coffin
Playboy Interview - August 1968
Our white brothers must be made to understand that nonviolence
is a weapon fabricated of love. It is a sword that heals.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Playboy Interview - January 1965
The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside
of a camel's mouth. That and watching a girl eat octopus or squid.
Marlon Brando
Playboy Interview - January 1979
I know that if you leave dishes in the sink, they get
stick and hard to wash the next day.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Playboy Interview - January 1988
When in doubt, go for the dick joke.
Robin Williams
Playboy Interview - January 1992
We always have been, we are, and I hope
that we always shall be detested in France.
Duke of Wellington
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
way of selling goods, especially if the goods are worthless.
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
Frank Zappa ( -Dec 4, 1993)
The right to vote is a *consequence*, not a primary cause, of a free
social system -- and its value depends on the constitutional
structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power;
unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
Ayn Rand
Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.
Andre Gide (1876-1951)
If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to?
Bette Midler
In order to fully realize how bad a popular play
can be, it is necessary to see it twice.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Sun is chuckling over a recent robbery in Silicon Valley:
seems the thieves broke into a place and ripped off five Sun
workstation, bypassing the new HP 700s and using a 705 as a door
stop.
From Unigram #405 (Oct 4, 1992)
Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about
himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
E.B. White (1899-1985)
Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
Frank Moore Colby
Show me a man who has enjoyed his school
days and I'll show you a bully and a bore.
Robert Morely
Democracy encourages the majority to decide things
about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.
John Simon
Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
No opera plot can be sensible, for people do
not sing when they are feeling sensible.
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope
to live in the memory of the commercial classes.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.
Alben W. Barkley (1877-1956)
U.S Vice President (1949-1953)
Scratch an actor - and you'll find an actress.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well
known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
Channing Pollock
It is a curious thing ... that every creed promises a paradise which
will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
'If a person were to try stripping the disguises from actors while they play
a scene upon stage, showing to the audience their real looks and the faces
they were born with, would not such a one spoil the whole play ? And would
not the spectators think he deserved to be driven out of the theatre with
brickbats, as a drunken disturber ?... Now what else is the whole life of
mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by
various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the
manager waves them off the stage ? Moreover, this manager frequently bids
the same actor to go back in a different costume, so that he who has but
lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes.
Thus all things are presented by shadows.'
(Erasmus, The Praise of Folly)
George Bush taking credit for the Berlin Wall coming
down is like the rooster taking credit for the sunrise.
Al Gore - during 1992 Vice Presidential debate
I'm out of ammunition on this.
James Stockdale - during 1992 Vice Presidential debate
concluding his answer to a question about health policy
I don't want to be charged with child abuse.
Pat Buchanan, saying he did not want to get into a
war of words with Vice President Dan Quayle
I came from a disadvantaged home. They were Republicans.
Paul Tsongas, campaigning in New Hampshire
There is no accountability in the public school system - except
for coaches. You know what happens to a losing coach. You fire
him. A losing teacher can go on losing for 30 years and then go
to glory.
Ross Perot, The Dallas Morning News, March 11, 1984
You want a wife who is intelligent, but not too intelligent.
President Nixon, on the best wife for a president (1913-1994)
The more you observe politics, the more you've go to admit that
each party is worse than the other.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Darling: the popular form of address used in speaking to a person
of the opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment recall
Oliver Herford (1863-1935)
Marriage is a bargain, and somebody has to get the worst of the bargain.
Helen Rowland (1876-1950)
Husbands are like fires - they go out when unattended.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Love is so much better when you are not married.
Maria Callas
A woman's place is in the wrong.
James Thurber (1894-1961)
What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs
in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Male heckler: Are you a lesbian?
Florynce Kennedy: Are you my alternative?
"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy
as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent
of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative
lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that.
1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."
Kurt Vonnegut : Breakfast of Champions
Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries
its own punishment with it, and that a very severe one.
Hannah Moore
Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
E.M. Cioran
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.
Victor Borge
At least when I was govenor, cocaine was expensive.
Jerry Brown
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian
to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Government expands to absorb revenue - and then some.
Tom Wicker
Congress consists of 1/3, more or less, scoundrels;
2/3, more or less, idiots; and three thirds, more
or less, poltroons.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim at the top.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
Frank Leahy
Irony is the hygiene of the mind.
Elizabeth Bibesco
Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit;
touch it and the bloom is gone.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Women! Ya can't live with 'em and ya can't
get 'em to wear skimpy little Nazi outfits.
Emo Phillips
Old wives don't dieif they're getting alimony
David Brown
The only time some fellows are ever seen with
their wives is after they've been indicted.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
If there were no husbands, who would look after our mistresses?
George Moore
Cal Thomas: Are you going to stay in Washington or move back to
Indiana?
Dan "Family Values" Quayle: I don't know. It depends on the kids.
For 16 years I've sort of done what I wanted to do
and I've got to think of them now.
- from an interview at the White House last Thursday Nov 5 92
= A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can =
= only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves =
= largesse (that is, excessive gratuities) from the public treasury. =
= From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates =
= promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the =
= results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, =
= always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's =
= greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have =
= progressed through this sequence: =
= =
= 1. From bondage to spiritual faith. =
= 2. From spiritual faith to great courage. =
= 3. From courage to liberty. =
= 4. From liberty to abundance. =
= 5. From abundance to selfishness. =
= 6. From selfishness to complacency. =
= 7. From complacency to apathy. =
= 8. From apathy to dependency. =
= 9. From dependency back again into bondage. =
= =
= Professor Alexander Tyler =
=
= The previous was written over 200 years ago while our original 13
= colonies were still a part of Great Britain. At the time, the author
= was writing about the fall of the Athenian Republic over 2000 years
= earlier.
More people out of work leads to higher unemployment.`
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)
If you were in a room with Kadaffi, Saddam Hussien, and John Sununu,
and you only had two bullets, what would you do. Shoot John Sununu
twice.
Paul Tsongas
A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment.
Willis Player
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Love, n - A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
The duration of passion is proportionate with the
original resistance of the woman.
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Love is two minutes fifty-two seconds of squishing noises.
It shows your mind isn't clicking right.
Johnny Rotten
The government has no source of revenue, except the taxes paid by the producers.To free itself - for a while - from the limits set by reality, the government
initiates a credit con game on a scale which the private manipulator could not
dream of. It borrows money from you today, which is to be repaid with money
it will borrow from you tommorrow, which is to be repaid with money it will
borrow from you day after tomorrow, and so on. This is known as "deficit
financing." It is made possible by the fact that the government cuts the
connection between goods and money. It issues paper money, which is used as a
claim check on actually eisting goodss - but that money is not backed by any
goods, it is not backed by gold, it is backed by nothing. It is a promissory
note issued to you in exchange for your goods, to be paid by you (in the form
of taxes) out of your future production.
Ayn Rand
Philosophy: Who Needs It
"Egalitarianism and Inflation"
You have to. I don't believe that an atheist could be President of the United
States - anybody that did not have something bigger than himself or herself.
And faith is the answer, and I've said this to friends. To some degree
religion for me has been a private thing. But I can tell you that when the
going is tough, and even when it's not - in our family we say our prayers.
We say our prayers at meals and we say our prayers when we go to bed. Barbara
and I do. but it's something that the more I'm there, the more I understood
what Lincoln meant.
President George Bush, in a August 27, 1992 "700 Club" interview.
in answer to "Abraham Lincoln said he couldn't handle the job except
on his knees. Have you found recourse to God in prayer often in
your presidency?"
The Godless would deny and destroy human rights .... the liberties of
a nation cannot be secure when belief in God is abandoned.
U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard (DICK) Halverson
Atheism has no room for human rights.
U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard (DICK) Halverson
addressing 600 people at a prayer breakfast,
March 1992 in Wisconsin
(Atheists) don't believe in liberty.....look at the Soviet Union
U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard (DICK) Halverson
At the same March 1992 breakfast
***(Curmudgeonmaster Note: The Senate Chaplain draws a salary of $112,000 a
year and the House Chaplain draws a salary of $119,810 a year. In light
of the congressional boondoggles and bounced checks, do you think that
a 1/4 million dollars a year for government sanctioned ministers is money
well spent?)
An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged
lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794)
Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis.
Robert Heilbroner
An economist is an expert who will know tommorrow why the
things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
Laurence J. Peter
All American cars are basically Chevrolets.
Herb Caen
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
Erma Bombeck
Take most people, they're crazy about cars. I'd rather have
a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.
J.D. Salinger
Television has raised writing to a new low.
Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information
about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
Working on television is like being shot out of a cannon.
They cram you all up with rehearsals, then someone lights
a fuse and - BANG - there you are in someone's living room.
Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)
When you have no basis of argument, abuse the plaintiff.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Cicero (106-43 BC)
I have no idea what White House statement was
was issued, but I stand by it 100 percent.
Richard Darman
Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past
the time when the quo has lost its status.
Laurence J. Peter
In archaeology you uncover the unknown.
In diplomacy you cover the known.
Thomas Pickering
Isn't it funny that anything the Supreme Court says is right?
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
A venturesome minority will always be eager to get off on their own... let
them take risks, for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded,
drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches- that is the right
and privilege of any free American.
16 Idaho Law Review 407, 420 - 1980.
===============================================================
But there is one matter I want to remind you about: that a wife is
responsible to her husband,...
1 Corinthians 11:3
Women should listen and learn quietly and humbly. I never let women
teach men or lord it over them. Let them be silent in your church meetings.
Why? Because God made Adam first, and afterwards he made Eve. And it
was not Adam who was fooled by Satan, but Eve, and sin was the result.
So God sent pain and suffering to women when their children are born, but
he will save their souls if they trust in him, living quiet, good, and
loving lives.
1 Timothy 2:11-15
Women should be silent during the church meetings. They are not to take part
in the discussion, for they are subordinate to men as the Scriptures also
declare. If they have any questions to ask, let them ask their husbands
at home, for it is improper for women to express their opinions in church
meetings.
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but
rather division; fo9r henceforth in one house there will be five divided,
three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against
son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against
mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against
her mother-in-law.
Luke 12:51-53
a man's worst enemies will be right in his own home! If you love your father
and mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you
love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine.
Matthew 10:36-38
Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory
rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with
the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.
P. J. O'Rourke
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms
with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
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
Over in Hollywood they almost made a great
picture, but they caught it in time.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks.
Eric Sevareid
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs,
perhaps you have misunderstood the situation.
Lurking in the November issue of Playboy:
Baby, can't you hear my heart? You've got it drowning out the radio.
I've been waiting so long for you to come along and have some fun.
And I gotta let you know, know you're never gonna regret it.
So open up your eyes, I got a big surprise, it will feel all right,
And I wanna make your motor run.
"Paradise By The Dashboard Light" -- Meatloaf
Before you can use your Woodie... if there is a plastic strip coming
out of it, please take hold of it and pull it out. If there is no plastic
strip, press down from above to operate.
Directions found on a toy
I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.
George Burns
I can understand companionship. I can understand bought
sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand the love affair.
Gore Vidal
Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to
an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly
unforgiving of carelessness, incapacity, or neglect.
Anonymous
Editor: a person employed on a newspaper whose business it is to seperate
the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
Elbert Hubbard
A newspaper consists of just the same number of words,
whether there be any news in it or not.
Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
What God hath joined together no man shall put asunder:
God will take care of that.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
I don't know if God exists, but it would
be better for His reputation if He didn't.
Jules Renard (1864-1910)
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 (1880-1956)
People would never fall in love if they had not heard love talked about.
La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
The reason that lovers never weary each other is
because they are always talking about themselves.
La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
When you're in love it's the most glorious two and a half days of your life.
Richard Lewis
"Love is what we call the situation which occurs
when two people who are sexually comptatible discover
that they can also tolerate one another in various
other circumstances."
-- Marc Maihueird
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of
ten thousand.
-- Hamlet II:ii
Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim
is not an honest man.
-- Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin
It may be risky to marry for love, but it's so honest that the Lord
just has to smile on it.
-- Josh Billings
Like the ski resort full of girls hunting for husbands and husbands hunting
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
Alan Mackay
The gambling known as business looks with austere
disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
A scout troop consists of twelve little kids dressed like
schmucks following a big schmuck dressed like a kid.
Jack Benny (1894-1974)
Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who
chats pleasantly while he's overcharging you.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.
Lily Tomlin
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds;
our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
Goethe (1749-1832)
there's a fine line between fishing and
just standing on the shore like an idiot.
Steven Wright
There is no expedient to which a man will
not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
An intelligence service is, in fact, a stupidity service.
E.B. White (1899-1985)
A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
Elbert Hubbard
The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.
Ronald Firbank
I and my public understand each other very well; it does
not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I
have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
James Thurber (1894-1961)
We've kept the good old vices and labored to invent a few,
With cake in vulgar surplus we can have it, and eat it too
Toy Matinee
Watch?? I'm gonna pray, man! Know any good religions?
Zaphod Beeblebrox
The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be
indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The modern computer is capable of answering, in a matter of seconds,
mathematical questions that would take millions of years for a human being
to answer (even longer if he stopped for lunch). How does the computer do
this? Simple. It makes everything up. It knows full well you're not going
to waste millions of years checking up on it. So you should never use
computers for anything really important, such as balancing your personal
checkbook. But they're fine for corporate use.
Unknown
I don't see any way that you can justify somebody making $1
million or more a year when the low-level workers aren't making
enough money to afford a house."
By chairman and CEO of Ben & Jerry's, Ben Cohen, who last
year kept his salary to $84,000 (the company limits its top
salaries to no more than seven times the pay of the lowest-paid
full-time worker):
O why was I born with a different face?
Why was I not born like rest of my race?
William Blake 1803
During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying
small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
A legal or religious ceremony by which two persons of the opposite sex
solemnly agree to harass and spy on each other...util death do them join.
Elbert Hubbard
Neither Heaven nor Hell. It is simply Purgatory.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
A ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through
the nose of the gentleman.
Herbert Spencer
Vox populi, vox humbug
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)
I don't drink; I don't like it - it makes me feel good
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed, and the rejected.
Jimmy Cannon (1910-1973)
Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up
and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
Mary Wortley Montagu
Most affections are habits or duties we lack the courage to end.
Henri de Montherlant
Everybody winds up kissing the wrong person good night.
Andy Warhol
Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose
odd numbers are the most effectual?
Pliny the Elder
You have to be deviant if you're going to do anything new.
David Lee
I am into parallel monogamy.
Seen on a button
It's a control freak thing. I wouldn't let you understand.
S.H. Underwood
Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact
that you choose to live - that productive work is the process by which man's
consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring
knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into
physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values - that all
work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if
done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from
others - that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your
mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human - that to
cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a
fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into
a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor
and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay - that your work is the
process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to
lose your ambition to live - that your body is a machine, but your mind is its
driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement
as the goal of your road - that the man who has no purpose is a machine that
coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch,
that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust,
that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to
the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no
driver should ever pick up - that your work is the purpose of your life, and
you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any
value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only
travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their
own power in the same direction.
Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"
from Galts speech
Take only pictures, steal only time, leave only footprints.
Unknown
The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions
and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes,
prejudices -- to be found in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices
can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search
for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children and the
children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be
confined to the Twilight Zone.
Rod Serling
All dogmas perish the thinking mind, especially ones you agree with.
Adam Richardson
Women remember the first kiss, men remember the last.
Unknown
No man is a hero to his wife's psychiatrist.
Eric Berne
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
Gloria Steinem
Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in
the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at
least twice as fast as that!
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898)
"Through the Looking Glass"
In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over
any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent
harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not
a sufficient warrant.
John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" 1859 (1806-1873)
Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read.
Button from the Computer Museum, Boston, MA
Usenet isn't a right. It's a right, a left, and a swift
uppercut to the jaw.
Button from the Computer Museum, Boston, MA
Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that
for some people it is a complete substitute for life.
Andrew Brown
Never judge a book by its movie.
J.W. Eagan
Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
The reason why so few good books are written is that so
few people who can write know anything.
Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)
Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange,
in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an
utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken.
Egyptian Inscription Recorded at the Time of the Invention of Writing.
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the
importance of turning around three times before lying down.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945)
If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.
Andrew A. Rooney
My empty waterdish mocks me.
Bob the Dog
Somebody once asked Niels Bohr why he had a horseshoe hanging above the front door
of his house.
"Surely you, a world famous physicist, can't really believe that
hanging a horseshoe above your door brings you luck?".
"Of course not," Bohr replied,
"but I have been reliably informed that it will bring me luck
whether I believe in it or not."
Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky. The glory of
science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy,
but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his
own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that
always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's
frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude
differs from a nude by Manet.
Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation
London, 1970, p. 253
A consistent pursuit of classical physics forces a
transformation in the very heart of that physics.
Werner Heisenberg, Philosophical Problems of Nuclear Science
New Youk: Fawcett 1966, p.13
Order, unity and continuity are human inventions
just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
We must avoid here two complementary errors: on the one hand that
the world has a unique, intrinsic, pre-existing structure awaiting
our grasp; and on the other hand that the world is in utter chaos.
The first error is that of the student who marvelled at how the
astronomers could find out the true names of distant constellations.
The second error is that of the Lewis Carroll's Walrus who grouped
shoes with ships and sealing wax, and cabbages with kings...
R. Abel, Man is the Measure
New York: Free Press, 1976
I was simply furnishing a home. I love music ... and I don't think
a $130,000 indoor-outdoor stereo system is extravagant.
Leona Helmsley - 1990
refuting charges that her lifestyle was excessive
Women! Can't live with them...pass the beer nuts.
Norm (Cheers)
There is nothing like good food, good wine, and a bad girl.
Fortune cookie
This is quite a three-pipe problem.
Sherlock Holmes quote
There is a level of cowardice lower than that
of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand
There was a young man of Dundoo,
Whose limericks stopped at line 2.
There was a young woman named Jenny,
Whose limericks weren't worth a penny.
Her rhythm and rhyme
Were perfectly fine
But whenever she tried to write any,
She always had one line too many.
There once was a young man from Lyme
Who couldn't get his limericks to rhyme
When asked "Why not?"
It was said that he thought
They were probably too long and badly structured and not at all very funny.
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with
larger cerebums and smaller adrenal glands.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent
less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her
sweetness and respecting her seniority.
E.B. White (1899-1985)
One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as
one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will
produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to
represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many ...
Anthony Chevins
The world of the commodity is a world updside-down, which bases
itself not upon life but upon the transformation of life into work.
Raoul Vaneigem
There is scarecely anything in the world that some man cannot make
a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys
on price alone is this man's lawful prey.
John Ruskin (1819-1900)
A financier is a pawnbroker with imagination.
Arthur Wing Pinero
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism,
But depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
A chinese philosopher once had a dream that he was a butterfly.
>From that day on, he was never quite certain that he was not a
butterfly, dreaming that he was a man.
found in a .sig
Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ
Anonymous
Content-Length: 108364
X-Lines: 2635
Status: RO
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
All professions are conspiracies against the laity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you.
Their tastes may not be the same.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
He who can, does. He who cannot teaches.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
He who has never hoped can never despair.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most me dread it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Nothing ever is done in this world until men are prepared to kill
one another if it is not done.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The Golden Rule is that there are no Golden Rules.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The liar's punishment ... is that he cannot believe anyone else.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire.
The other is to get it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that
they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Alan Watts
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while
I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its
thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink
deeper; fish fill the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I
cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I
have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
As if you could TELL time without injuring eternity.
Matthew Ryan
Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead.
It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
Charlotte P Gilman
There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he
was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)
People find life entirely too time-consuming.
Stanislaw J. Lec
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time
we have rushed through life trying to save.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly
useless manner, you have learned how to live.
Lin Yutang
Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of
youth for those of age.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
when you make it again.
F. P. Jones
Life is but a walking Shadow, a poor Player
That struts and frets his Hour upon the Stage,
And then is heard no more; It is a tall Tale,
Told by an Idiot, full of Sound and Fury,
Signifying nothing."
W. Shakespeare: Macbeth, Act V, Scene V (MacBeth)
If you were a gay illegal-alien looking for an abortion, it was a
humdinger of a week.
Kirk Fordice 1/29/93
Tipper and Al came to a show the last time we were in Washington.
They're nice people, a nice family. We made every effort not to frighten them.
Jerry Garcia, on rumors the Grateful Dead may play at
the Inaugural. Boston Globe, Dec 12,1992.
It's said that if you can't say something good about a dead person, don't
say it. Well, I consider him dead.
Former Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)
on President Bush
Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism
are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.
William F. Buckley, Jr., "The Wit and Wisdom of Vlad the Impaler"
But, my dearest Agathon, it is truth which you cannot contradict; you can
without any difficulty contradict Socrates.
Plato (427?-348? BC)
in Symposium
...for no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in
the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows
and the storied wall.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
There is no "royal road" to geometry.
Euclid to king Ptolemy I
It always takes longer than you expect, even
when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
Hofstadter's Law: by Douglas R. Hofstadter
from Go"del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
When you're not looking at it, this sentence is in Spanish.
Douglas R. Hofstadter
from Go"del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
The last thing I have to say is that ice is the past tense of water. I've
always wanted to write that sentence and now I have.
Rita Mae Brown
For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
Virginia Woolf
I don't like it and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.
Erwin Schrodinger commenting on Schrodinger's equations
Equation (1.2-9) is a second order, nonlinear, vector,
differential equation which has defied solution in its
present form. It is here therefore we depart from the
realities of nature to make some simplifying assumptions...
Bate, Mueller & White, 1971
"Fundamentals of Astrodynamics"
Beauty is the first test; there is no permanent place in the world for
ugly mathematics.
G.H. Hardy, in _A Mathematician's Apology_
All dimensions are critical dimensions, otherwise why are they there?
Russ Zandbergen
Just goes to show you. You can kill a guy, fold him up, stuff him in your
trunk, and still you don't *really* know him.
The Kids in the Hall
I may not agree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death
for your right to die in a fire of suspicious origin
author unknown
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
Muriel Rukeyser
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
This is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's
[IBM's] Galaxy-wide success is founded...their fundamental design flaws are
completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.
TH Nelson, Computer Lib., 1988, London: Penguin.
I'm a solipsist and, I have to say, I'm surprised there aren't more of us.
from a letter to Bertrand Russell
It's not that I don't enjoy it, but it's kind of like a trip to Disneyland.
You get so excited about a ride on the Matterhorn, and then when it's over,
you realize you wasted all that time in line for a minute and a half upside
down and the chance to throw up.
Murphy Brown, on "The Sex Thing"
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel
and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more
than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called
it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness
that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the
world ugly and bad.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
[W]e shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until
we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for
existence save to serve man.
Lynn White, Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our
Ecologic Crisis", Science V. 155 No. 3767 (10 March 1967),
pp. 1203-1207.
Strange how the older generations can't program a VCR if their life
depended on it, but they managed to operate the climate contol system
of their 1958 Ramblers, which consisted of six unmarked knobs, one
labeled "AirFloMatic" in unreadable cursive script, and four levers
underneath the dash, which you had to turn, then pull.
Dan Tasman
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to
conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in
the introduction of a new order of things.
Niccolo Machiavelli "The Prince" 1532
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffible game of his
own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the
other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker
in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer
who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.
Gaiman and Pratchett's "Good Omens"
Learning builds daily accumulation, but the practice of Tao builds daily
simplification. Simplify and simplify, until all contamination from
relative, contridictory thinking is eliminated. Then one does nothing,
yet nothing is left undone. One who wins the world does so by not
meddling with it. One who meddles with the world loses it.
Tao te Ching, 48. Lao-Tzu
Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrow - it empties today of strength.
Corrie ten Boom
Hell must be isothermal; for otherwise the resident engineers and physical
chemists (of which there must be some) could set up a heat engine to run a
refrigerator to cool off a portion of their surroundings to any desired
temperature.
Henry Albert Ben, _The Second Law_
You'll NEED someone to love while you're looking for someone TO love.
Selagh Delaney
Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
Lynda Barry
Have you ever dated someone because you were too lazy to commit suicide?
Judy Tenuta
Never date a woman you can hear ticking.
Mark Patinkin
I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
Women are cursed, and men are the proof.
Rosanne Barr
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an
infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without
even considering if there are men on base.
Dave Barry
I go from stool to stool in singles bars hoping to get lucky,
but there's never any gum under any of them.
Emo Philips
SURE-FIRE SINGLES AD:
Famous Writer needs woman to organize his life and spend his money.
Loves to turn off Sunday football and go to the Botanical Gardens with
that special someone. Will obtain plastic surgery if necessary.
Joe Bob Briggs
Women with pasts interest men... they hope history will repeat itself.
Mae West (1893-1980)
There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she
caught me with another woman. I won't stand for that.
Steve Martin
I'm dating a woman now who, evidently, is unaware of it.
Gary Shandling
My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married and I didn't want him to.
Rita Rudner
What do I know about sex? I'm a married man"
Tom Clancy
Warning signs that lover is bored:
1. Passionless kisses
2. Frequent sighing
3. Moved, left no forwarding address
Matt Groening
I said to my girl, 'Was it good for you too?'
And she said, 'I don't think this was good for anybody.
Gary Shandling
I married the first man I ever kissed.
When I tell my children that, they just about throw up.
Barbara Bush
The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy,
the single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead.
Ann Landers
Get married early in the morning.
That way, if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted a whole day.
Mickey Rooney
Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing happened,
so I said to her, 'What's the matter, you can't think of anybody either?
Rodney Dangerfield
Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
Mae West (1893-1980)
I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day.
I haven't had time for tobacco since.
Arturo Toscanini
A self-balancing, 28-jointed adaptor-based biped; an electro-chemical
reduction plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy
extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands
of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles
of capillaries....
R. Buckminster Fuller
A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow,
beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave;
a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing,
super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that
wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the
composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir
of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if
thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.
Earl of Kent, _The_Tragedy_of_King_Lear_
That's not scarey. What's scarey is what one can do with a gallon of
bleach, a frozen burrito, some string or wire, a butane lighter, aspirin,
match-heads, a box of latex condoms, and a bottle of SPF 18 sunblock.
Taken out of context in an Email
discussion of something irrelevant
...in the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacri-
fice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even
more of their income to Washington so that the political class
will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.
George Will - Newsweek, 2/22/93
Giving money and power to government is like
giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P.J. O'Rourke
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.
John W. Gardner
Everyone is chasing their own personal road runner...so when he shoots you
point blank in the face with a cannon, you have no choice...you've got to
just get up off your lazy ass, strap on that ACME jet pack and ghim!
Bayley 101, a personal philosophy
I mean, certainly no one actually wants to be whipped or spanked, right?
Bettie Page (50's pinup model) on bondage scenes:
Playboy, March 1993
...the fog is rising.
Last words of
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Now comes the mystery.
Last words of
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)
Friends applaud, the comedy is over.
Last words of
Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827)
Drink to me.
Last words of
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Why yes--a bulletproof vest.
James Rodges, a murderer,
on his final request before the firing squad
And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing
you the latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about
to see another first--an attempted suicide.
Chris Hubbock, who shot herself during a broadcast
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the
breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which
runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Crowfoot's last words (1890)
(Blackfoot warrior and orator)
This is no time to make new enemies.
Voltaire, (1694-1778)
when asked on his deathbed to forswear Satan.
Goodnight
last word of Lord Byron (1788-1824)
Jefferson still survivies.
John Adams (1735-1826)
last words after a lifetime competing with Thomas Jefferson
Is it the Fourth?
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
More light! Give me more light!
Goethe (1749-1832)
Dieu me pardonnera. C'est son metier.
(God will forgive me. It's his job.)
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance.
last words of Gen. John Sedgwick 1864
This isn't Hamlet, you know, It's not meant to go into the bloody ear.
Lawrence Olivier's last words spoken to his nurse, who spilt
water over him while trying to moisten his lips.
Reported by his son Tarquin
Die my dear Doctor? That's the last thing I shall do!
last words of Henery John Temple Palmerston (1784-1865)
Prime Minister of GB (1855-1858 and 1859-1865)
Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.
Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), to his executioner
It is well, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go.
Last words of
George Washington, 14 December 1799.
I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
Last words of
Nathan Hale, 22 September 1776.
Thank God, I have done my duty.
Kiss me, Hardy.
Last words of
Adm. Horatio Nelson, 21 Oct 1805.
This is the last of earth! I am content.
Last words of
John Quincy Adams, 21 February 1848.
Chief of the Army.
Last words of
Napoleon I [Napoleon Bonaparte], 1821.
I still live.
Last words of
Daniel Webster, 24 October 1852.
I now have no time to be tired.
Last words of
Wilhelm I, 8 March 1888.
Strike the tent.
Last words of
Robert E[dward] Lee, 12 October 1870.
Now comes the mystery.
Last words of
Henry Ward Beecher, 8 March 1887.
Let us cross the river, and rest under the trees.
Last words of
Thomas Jonathan [Stonewall] Jackson, 10 May 1863.
I have tried so hard to do the right.
Last words of
Grover Cleveland, 1908.
So little done--so much to do.
Last words of
Cecil John Rhodes {Founder of the Rhodes Scholarships}, 1902.
Put out the light.
Last words of
Theodore Roosevelt, 6 January 1919.
Turn up the lights--I don't want to go home in the dark.
Last words of
O. Henry [William Sydney Porter], 5 June 1910.
I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or
bitterness towards anyone.
Last words of
Edith Cavell, before her execution by the Germans, 12 October 1915.
How is the Empire?
Last words of
George V, 21 January 1936.
"....I've got to get to the top of the hill.."
Last words of
John Pierpont Morgan (1913)
Some rainy winter Sundays when there's a little boredom, you should
always carry a gun. Not to shoot yourself, but to know exactly that
you're always making a choice.
Lina Wertmuller
There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things
which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand.
Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny
blasts of tiny trumpets, we have met the enemy, and not only may he be
ours, he may be us.
Walt Kelly
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that
lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of
the grace of tragedy.
Steven Weinberg
Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective
memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can
never examine more than minority of them - never become conscious of
them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
>Sun Release 4.1 Last change: 5 July 1990 2
>
>TUNEFS(8) MAINTENANCE COMMANDS TUNEFS(8)
>
> You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish.
Found in the online Sun doc for the "tunefs" command
"... it is important to realize that any lock can be picked with
a big enough hammer."
Sun System & Network Admin manual
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should,
therefore, be reguarded as a criminal offense.
E.W. Dijkstra
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
This document describes the usage and input syntax of the Unix Vax-11
assembler As. As is designed for assembling code produced by the "C"
compiler; certain concessions have been made to handle code written
directly by people, but in general little sympathy has been extended.
Berkeley Vax/Unix Assembler Reference Manual (1983)
Now that we have all this useful information, it would be nice to do something
with it. (Actually, it can be emotionally fulfilling just to get the
information. This is usually only true, however, if you have the social life
of a kumquat.)
Unix Programmer's Manual
Do not expose your LaserWriter to fire or intense heat
Apple LaserWriter manual
This manual contains information about DCL commands and qualifiers,
system services, RTL routines, and VMS utilities and components that
are now obsolete. The manual also contains an appendix of DCL commands
and qualifiers, system services, RTL routines, and VMS utilities and
components that have been eliminated from VMS."
DEC Manual, order number : AA-LB25A-TE
April 1988
VMS Obsolete Features Manual
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the
parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't
get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a
hammer.
IBM maintenance manual, 1925
program -- A set of instructions, given to the computer, describing
the sequence of steps the computer performs in order to accomplish a
specific task. The task must be specific, such as balancing your
checkbook or editing your text. A general task, such as working for
world peace, is something we can all do, but not something we can
currently write programs to do.
From Unix User's Manual Manual, Supplementary Documents, p. 14-3:
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
Call my dad, my mom's too busy.
Chelsea Clinton, when the school nurse told her parental permission
would be necessary for her to take some aspirin.
The anatomical juxtaposition of 2 orbicularis oris muscles
in a state of contraction.
Dr. Henry Gibbons
I bet the human brain is a kludge.
Marvin Minsky
If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
Tom Robbins
Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)
O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!
Othello
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.
I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity
-- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
I just found out that the brain is like a computer. If that's true, then
there really aren't any stupid people. Just people running DOS.
Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.
Lewis Grizzard
Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the
greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.
Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
"Off days" are a part of life, I guess, whether you're a cartoonist, a
neurosurgeon, or an air-traffic controller.
Gary Larson.
Life? Don't talk to me about life!
Douglas Adams (Marvin the Paranoid Android)
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Last words are for people who haven't said anything in life.
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises
in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral
justification for selfishness.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid,
but most stupid people are conservatives.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)
The modern definition of 'racist' is someone
who is winning an argument with a liberal.
Peter Brimelow, National Review (2/1/93)
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds,
The pessimist fears it is true.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)
They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment.
Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn't name its price.
A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but
sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell
remembered.
Graham Greene, _The Heart of the Matter_
Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel
libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Nobel prize money is a lifebelt thrown to a swimmer
who has already reached the shore in safety.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
She just came in, pounced around this thing with me for a few years
enjoyed herself, gave it a sort of beautiful quality and left. Excited a
few men in the meantime.
Patrick Macnee, reminiscing on Diana Rigg's involvement in
"The Avengers" (interview, Washington Post, Sept. 6, 1987)
For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to
infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between
nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The
ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed
from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of
seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite
in which he is engulfed.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Through and through the world is infested with quantity. To talk sense
is to talk quantities, It is no use saying the nation is large- how
large? It is no use s aying that radium is scarce- how scarce? You can
not evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music and quantity and
number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
Can machines have souls? You ask me that and I ask you if souls can
learn. If they can't -- then of what importance is this concept?
Sterile and empty and unchangeable for eternity. How much more preferable
it is to understand that we create ourselves. Slowly and painfully, shaped
basically by our genes, modified steadily by everything we see and hear and
attempt to understand. That is the reality and that is how we function,
learn and develop.
Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky
The Turing Option
If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so
simple we couldn't.
Lyall Watson
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"Jack, Jack," I said, "you don't want to do it. Remember what
happened to the guy who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima? He went crazy!"
"That asshole? He was not properly brainwashed. I," he said with
great pride, "have been properly brainwashed."
Spalding Gray
from Swimming to Cambodia: The collected works of Spalding Gray
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Los Angeles, it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the
contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be
advertised and sold to the people of the United States like
automobiles, cigarettes and mouth wash.
-Morrow Mayo
Here is an artificial city which has been pumped up under forced
draught, inflated like a balloon, stuffed with rural humanity like a
goose with corn...endeavoring to eat up this too rapid avalanche of
anthropoids, the sunshine metropolis heaves and strains, sweats and
becomes pop-eyed, like a young boa constrictor trying to swallow a
goat. It has never imparted an urban character to its incoming
population for the simple reason that it has never had any character to
impart. On the other hand, the place has the manners, culture and
general outlook of a huge country village.
-Morrow Mayo
You can rot here without feeling it.
-John Rechy
>From Mount Hollywood, Los Angeles looks rather nice, enveloped in a
haze of changing colors. Actually, and in spite of all the healthful
sunshine and ocean breezes, it is a bad place - full of old, dying
people, who were born old of tired pioneer parents, victims of America
- full of curious wild and poisonous growths, decadent religious cults
and fake science, and wildcat enterprises, which, with their aim for
quick profit, are doomed to collapse and drag down multitudes of
people.
-Louis Adamic
I was one of Them: the Strange Ones. The Funny People. The Odd Tribes
of autograph collectors and photographers. The Ones who waited through
long days and nights, who used other people's dreams for their lives.
-Ray Bradbury
On thinking about Hell, I gather
My brother Shelley found it was a place
Much like the city of London. I
Who live in Los Angeles and not in London
Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be
Still more like Los Angeles.
-Bertolt Brecht
In the South of California has gathered the larges and most
miscellaneous assortment of Messiahs, Sorcerers, Saints and Seers known
to the history of aberrations.
-Farnsworth Crowder
When he got through with science and religion, they were so wrapped up
in each other that a Philadelphia lawyer could never untangle them.
The closest this great scientist ever came to a definite stand was a
full gallop on a supernatural race-track running from Fundamentalism to
theism, but his powers of occult observation would have done credit to
any crystal-gazer in Los Angeles....The whole thing was a
conglomeration of metaphysical aphorisms and theological sophistry,
suffused in a weird and ghostly atmosphere of obscurantism, with
occasional and literal references to Santa Claus.
-Morrow Mayo, talking of physicist and
then-president of Cal Tech, Robert
Millikan and his transformation into a
'Christian-Scientist'
LA needs the cleansing of a great disaster or founding of a barricaded
commune.
-Peter Plagens
Los Angeles seems endlessly held between these extremes: of light and
dark - of surface and depth. Of the promise, in brief, of a meaning
always hovering on the edge of significance.
-Graham Clarke
Nothing is as Nice as Developing Fontana
-Current official slogan of city of
Fontana
It's tacky, very, very tacky. But maybe I should be grateful. People
tell me it used to be worse.
-Recently arrived Fontana resident
We're not a security guard company. We sell a *concept* of security.
-Michael Kaye, president of Westec, a
residential security company.
As part of it's 'Astro' program LAPD helicopters maintain an average
nineteen-hours-per-day vigil over 'high crime areas', tactically
coordinated to patrol car forces, and exceeding even the British Army's
aerial surveillance of Belfast.
-Mike Davis "City of Quartz"
Tonight we pick 'em up for anything and everything.
-LAPD spokesman
This is war...we're exceedingly angry....We want to get the message out
to the cowards out there, and that's what they are, rotten little
cowards - we want the message to go out that we're going to come and get them.
-Ex-LAPD chief Daryl Gates
This is the era of the police. If I were chief, I'd ask for as many as I could.
-Councilmember Richard Alatorre
We may be finding that in some Blacks when [the carotid chokehold] is
applied the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do in normal people.
-Chief Gates explaining the rash of
deaths of young blacks while being held
in custody
People in the neighborhood instead of being on our side, make all kinds
of accusations.
-LAPD spokesperson complaining after a
police supersweep done as part of
Operation HAMMER
We're telling the real story of what it's like living in places like
Compton. We're giving [the fans] reality. We're like reporters. We
give them truth. People where we come from hear so many lies that the
truth sticks out like a sore thumb.
-Eazy-E, lead rapper of NWA
I think people believe that the only strategy we have is to put a lot
of police officers on the street and harass people and make arrests for
inconsequential kinds of things. Well, that's part of the strategy, no
question about it.
-Chief Gates
Gangs are never goin' to die out. You all goin' to get us jobs?
-16 year old Grape Street Crip
Gang-member
Quotes courtesy of "City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los
Angeles" by Mike Davis
Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels;
only when the clock stops does time come to life.
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all
the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Of Beauty
The affections are like lightning; You cannot tell where they
will strike till they have fallen
Jean Baptiste Lacoraire
It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered
recently is four times bigger then the previous record.
John Blasik
Water generally flows downhill in this area.
Bob Bennett, WDIV News 4, Detroit, reporting on a flood that
destroyed some suburban basement apartments.
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899
They have, and bring with them, that upper-body strength. They have
apparently developed that in their childhood and growing up, and
they've further advanced in that regard.
Former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates
on lesbians in the LA Police Dept.
Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner.
Tactics is getting her to drink it.
Frank Muir
I have never been drunk, but often I've been overserved.
George Gobel
This coffee plunges into the stomach...the mind is aroused, and
ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field
of battle.... Memories charge at full gallop...the light cavalry
of comparisons deploys itself magnificently; the artillery of logic
hurry in with their train of ammunition; flashes of wit pop up like
sharp-shooters.
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Do you deny recurring rumors of topless sunbathing and wild lesbian
polygamous skinhead devil-worshipping adulterous underage racist
cross-dressed kitten juggling?
_Dirty Work_, by Dan McGirt
You have to be deviant if you're going to do anything new.
David Lee
The only unnatural sexual act is that which you cannot perform.
Alfred Kinsey
If you are ever in an S&M relationship, make damn sure you are the S.
Found in a .sig quoting his mother
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
I'm an experienced woman; I've been around...
well, alright, I might not've been around, but I've been... nearby.
Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore Show)
I'm a man of the world, Andy. Why, I've even been to Raleigh!
Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts on the Andy Griffith Show)
You make 'em, I amuse 'em. [children]
Dr. Seuss a.k.a. Theodore Giesel
... Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.
Dr. Seuss a.k.a. Theodore Giesel
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have,
the man looked honest enough.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Whenever you fall, pick up something
Oswald Theodore Avery
Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
Reality's failure rate is similar to [that of] other barrier contraceptives.
Quote from Science News
Models are to be used, not believed.
H. Theil `Principles of Econometrics'
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
(Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.)
William Occam
Theories should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955) (paraphrase)
Tongue - a variety of meat, rarely served because it clearly crosses
the line between a cut of beef and a piece of dead cow.
Bob Ekstrom, Pitt, MN
Bisonburger from the herd that appeared in 'Dances With Wolves.'
On the menu at Al's Oasis in Oacama, South Dakota
I once complained to my father that I didn't seem to be able to do things
the same way other people did. Dad's advice? 'Margo, don't be a sheep.
People hate sheep. They eat sheep.'
Margo Kaufman
We gladly feast on those who would subdue us ... not just pretty words, Fester.
Morticia Addams - from the Addams Family movie
If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love
but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be
dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be
permissible, even cannibalism.
Brothers Karamazov, Pt 1, Bk i, Ch 6
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
Rita Mae Brown
Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our
lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the
anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.
J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)
A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.
Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers, "Gaudy Night")
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Confound those who have said our remarks before us.
Aelius Donatus
With just enough of learning to misquote.
Lord Byron (1788-1824)
A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed
only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.
Robert Chapman
Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Quotations (such as have point and lack triteness) from the great old
authors are an act of reverence on the part of the quoter, and a blessing
to a public grown superficial and external.
Louise Guiney
The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his
phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers...but in the
number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds.
Thomas Higginson
He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would
enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for.
Alexander Smith
Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
Simeon Strunsky
The most familiar quotations are the most likely to be misquoted...
Some have settled down to false versions that have obscured the true ones.
They have passed over from literature into speech.
Carl Van Doren
What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
Doctor Who
Life is like quotations. Sometimes, it makes you laugh.
Sometimes, it makes you cry. Most of the time, you don't get it.
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) on Shakespeare
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?): The Devil's Dictionary
I improve on misquotation.
Cary Grant
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions,
their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
By neccessity, by proclivity, -- and by delight, we all quote.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
I believe that religion can make a well-rounded person, or it can make
an idiot. What we've go going on here is an idiot.
Purchasing agent for Baylor Baptist University, Waco,
Texas, commenting on David Koresh and the Branch Dividians.
I have done some indiscreet things in my day, but this thing of playing
myself for a prophet was the worst. Still, it had its ameliorations. A
prophet doesn't have to have any brains. They are good to have, of
course, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but they are no use in
professional work. It is the restfulest vocation there is. When the
spirit of prophecy comes upon you, you merely take your intellect and
lay it off somewhere in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and
leave it alone; it will work itself. The result is prophecy.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
In one celebrated incident, 300 members of Church of the New Song requested
$6000 worth of filet mignon and Harvey's Bristol Cream for a crucial
religious ceremony at the federal prison in Atlanta.
Legal Times, 2/15/93
At the annual Girdiron Club dinner in Washington this weekend, after he did
a turn on his sax, Clinton said, "I might have to pick an FBI Director, and
it's going to be hard to fill J. Edgar Hoover's pumps."
Bob Dole, the Senate Republican leader, called Bush's re-election attempt
"Dr. Kevorkian's first effort as a campaign manager." Noticing Al Gore's
position leading environmental policy, Sen. Dole had this to say: "Al, I think
the lawn looks great."
Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.
Christopher Fry
Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
Norweigen Playwright
When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds
him of the richness and diversity of his existance. When power
corrupts, poetry cleanses.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money, either.
Robert Ranke Graves (b. 1895)
It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condenced,
the deeper they burn.
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be
the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the
amusement and delight of the few.
John Masefield (1878-1967)
Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
R.Z. Sheppard, book critic
Do not commit your poems to pages alone, sing them I pray you.
Virgil (70-19 BC)
The most merciful thing in the world . . . is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
H.P. Lovecraft
That all our knowledge begins with experience, there is indeed no
doubt....but although our knowledge originates WITH experience, it does
not all arise OUT OF experience.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary
nor even advantageous to know what it means....[A] machine might be
imagined where the assumptions were put in at one end, while the theormems
came out at the other, like the legendary Chicago machine where the pigs
go in alive and come out transformed into hams and sausages.
No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he does.
Henri Poincare
The fathers of the field had been pretty confusing: John von Neumann
speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies
sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker, and Alan
Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether
machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about
as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
Professor Edsger Dijkstra at the
ACN South Central Regional Conference
Austin, Texas, 16 to 18 Novemver 1984
I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is magical and not
to be lightly tinkered with. The difference between a great design and
a lousy one is in the meshing of the thousand details that either fit or
don't, and the spirit of the passionate intellect that has tied them together,
or tried. That's why programming-- or buying software-- on the basis of
"lists of features" is a doomed and misguided effort. The features can be
thrown together, as in a garbage can, or carefully laid together and
interwoven in elegant unification, as in APL, or the Forth language,
or the game of chess.
Ted Nelson
For every living creature that succeeds in getting a footing in life
there are thousands or millions that perish. There is an enormous
random scattering for every seed that comes to life. This does not
remind us of intelligent human design. "If a man in order to shoot a
hare, were to discharge thousands of guns on a great moor in all
possible directions; if in order to get into a locked room, he were to
buy ten thousand casual keys, and try them all; if, in order to have a
house, he were to build a town, and leave all the other houses to wind
and weather - assuredly no one would call such proceedings purposeful
and still less would anyone conjecture behind these proceedings a
higher wisdom, unrevealed reasons, and superior prudence."
J.W.N. Sullivan
Everybody's got plans...until they get hit.
Mike Tyson, heavyweight champ
on "plans" released by Tyrell Biggs' camp
on how they would defeat the champ.
Reality isn't what it used to be.
Walter Truett Anderson
A reasonable probability is the only certainty.
E.W. Howe
We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but
nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Werner Heisenberg
What happens depends on our way of observing it or on the fact
that we observe it.
Werner Heisenberg
My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer
than we suppose, but queerer than we *can* suppose.
J.B.S. Haldane
"On Being the Right Size"
in the (1928) book "Possible Worlds"
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the
rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its
radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their
lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self
congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and
the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or
phatasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.
Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)
[F]or academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape.
All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock
coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand,
affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless
amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.
Battaille
The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has
made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Douglas Adams - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway
would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Dick Cavett: "Do you consider yourself a disciplined guy? Do you get up
every day and `go to work'?"
Jimi Hendrix: "Well, yeah. I try to get up every day."
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Where imagination is sucked out of children by a cathode ray nipple
T.V. is the only wet nurse that would create a cripple
On television, the drug of a nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.
Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
The hallucenogenic drugs such as psilocybin, Mescaline, and peyote are not
rude per se. But it can be difficult to observe all the niceties of manners
when you're being chased down the street by a nine-headed cactus demon.
.sig of geoffw@cwis.unomaha.edu (Geoff E. Wiggs)
Stay away from needle drugs. Richard Nixon is the only dope worth shooting.
Abbie Hoffman
Reality is for those who can't take drugs.
Reality is a crutch for those who can't handle hard drugs.
If you want to solve the drug problem, improve reality.
Reality is what won't go away when you stop beliving in it.
Phillip K Dick
There are, however, people in this world who seldom pick
up a newspaper, people who, when watching television, sneer
in displeasure and change channels at the first glimpse of an
anchorperson. While such willfully uninformed citizens are rare,
emerging from seclusion only to serve on juries in trials of great
national significance, they do exist.
Joe Keenan
I have not seen a newspaper in over a month, and feel much the better for it.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the
words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on page of
a newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page.
Neil Postman
Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges
toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually
incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each
single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection
forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing,
via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness.
Paul Feyerabend
Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and
though, perhaps, somethimes the force of a clear argument may make some
impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy,
truth, that would captivate or disturbe them.
John Locke (1632-1704)
This place makes Mayberry look like a think tank.
Dennis Miller (told to me by a CV employee)
Who cares who's captain after the wings have fallen off.
Scott McNealy on IBM Corp's
new chief executive officer Louis Gerstner
Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive,
difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-
boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.
Gene Spafford, 1992
found in a .sig of: tom coradeschi <+> tcora@pica.army.mil
Right now I'm a freshman in my fourth year at U.C.L.A., but my goal is
to become a veternarian, 'cause I love children.
Julie Brown
If we were the Monkees, we'd be ready by now.
Frank Zappa, while band is tuning instruments ( -Dec 4, 1993)
I have the distinction of speaking to you from one of the few countries
that still has a communist party.
Dennis Miller, MCing the 1991 Emmies
PS. Did you ever realize that Peter O'Toole has a double-phallic name?
Dick Cavett quoting Groucho Marx
Why can't they invent something for us to marry instead of WOMEN?
Fred Flintstone
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Heisenburg may have been here.
I've got one word for the eighties. One word. Handguns. Disposable Handguns.
Bobbi Harlow's father to
Steve Dallas in Bloom County
For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if
there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is
administered with subhuman inefficiency.
Eric Ambler
When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes
mistakes they call it Nature!
Jack Nicholson's character in
The Witches of Eastwick
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics,
for instance; let us ask, "Does it contain any abstract reasoning
concerning quantity or number?" No. "Does it contain any experimental
reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?" No. Commit it then
to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
David Hume (1711-1776)
The idea of an incarnation of God is absurd: why should the human race
think itself so superior to bees, ants, and elephants as to be put in
this unique relation to its maker? . . Christians are like a council
of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking and
squeaking "for our sakes was the world created."
Julian The Apostate
I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
...that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a
great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That
is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and
said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.
He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is
a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make
your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a
madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can
spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and
call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising
nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that
open to us. He did not intend to.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
from _Mere_Christianity_
Monty Python's usual schoolboy humour is here let loose on a period
of history appropriately familiar to every schoolboy in the West, and
a faith which could be shaken by such good-humoured ribaldry would be
a very precarious faith indeed.
The British Board Of Film Censors
In their report on _Life of Brian_
Our main advantage is fear and surprise. Our two main advantages are fear,
surprise, and ruthlessness. Our three main advantages are fear, surprise,
ruthlessness and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Nobody expects
the Spanish Inquisition!
Monty Python's Flying Circus
The only good cat is a stir fried cat.
ALF
Radioactive cats have 18 half lives.
anonymous
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick
to anger. Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy
and taste good with ketchup. Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for
they are subtle and will piss on your computer.
anonymous
Women and cats do as they damned well please, and men and dogs had best
learn to live with it.
Alan Holbrook
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.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
when asked to describe radio
If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet,
what happen if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?
Stephen Wright
When I was in therapy about two years ago, one day I noticed that I
hadn't had any children. And I like children at a distance. I
wondered if I'd like them up close. I wondered why I didn't have any.
I wondered if it was a mistake, or if I'd done it on purpose, or what.
And I noticed my therapist didn't have any children either. He had
pictures of his cats on the wall. Framed.
Spalding Gray
from Swimming to Cambodia: The collected works of Spalding Gray
The more people I meet, the more I like my cat.
anonymous
In a cats mind, all things belong to cats
anonymous
The only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to
become a domesticated animal
Sir Compton MacKenzie
Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!
Theophile Gautier (1811-1872)
If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man
but deteriorate the cat
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Even overweight cats instinctively know the cardinal rule:
when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses
John Weitz
God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure
of caressing the lion
Fernand Mery
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape,
then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air
Doris Lessing
I think not, therefore I am a cat
your cat, sleeping on the stairs in the dark...
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that
the cat has only nine lives.
-- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
Cats seem to go on the principle that it never
does any harm to ask for what you want.
Joseph Wood Krutch
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
informing, stimulating and ennobling.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
if it rains?"
Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
the government in less than a second.
Jim Fiebig
Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high taxes.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss.
Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope
they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is
I could be just as proud for half the money.
Arthur Godfrey
If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
he should see how bad it is with representation.
Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often
overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of
dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your
tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to
spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe
money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will
probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care?
It's not his money.
Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us
to pay income taxes, too?
Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
F. J. Raymond
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"
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."
Russell Long
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know
when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.
So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never
pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough
voters to win the next election.
The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,
respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones
from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
milestones are lifted.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
The subspace W inherits the other 8 properties of V. And there aren't
even any property taxes.
J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
"The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
it's just a tired feeling:"
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out
twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form.
The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
names. Here's the complete text:
"(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT)
"(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)
"(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to
send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"
The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long form.
Dave Barry, "Sweating Out
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate
into their own laguage, and forthwith it is something entirely different.
Goethe (1749-1832)
Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is
irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get
along without it for a week.
Eric Temple Bell
All the limitative Theorems of metamathematics and the theory of computation
suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a
certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can
never represent yourself totally. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Church's
Undecidability Theorem, Turing's Halting Problem, Turski's Truth Theorem--
all have the flavour of some ancient fairy tale which warns you that "To seek self-
knowledge is to embark on a journey which . . . will always be incomplete, cannot
be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described."
Douglas R. Hofstadter
I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot of news--
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
Gilbert & Sullivan
The Pirates of Penzance
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate,
often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of
the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it
favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try
to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely
one of their own.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The idea of hunting and gathering as the best way for life has become quite
popular recently, much more populare in some circles than the idea of simple
farming as the best way of life. Many of the new primitives regard the
beginnings of agriculture as one of humanity's major steps in the wrong
direction. Most of the people who are drawn to such ideas do their actual
hunting and gathering in grocery stores, but the *feeling* is there; it takes
the form of a religion...expressed by particpating in American Indian rituals -
or primitive-style rituals that are created anew.
Walter Truett Anderson - "Reality Isn't What it Used to Be"
There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a
crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people.
That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a
thousand guys exactly like you."
A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture"
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)
If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist it's
another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of
nonconformity.
Bill Vaughan
No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent,
a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of
thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
John Donne (1571? - 1631), _Meditation XVII_
There is as much difference between us and ourselves
as there is between us and others.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)
Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical
instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without
this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)
Because he did not have time to read every new book in his field, the
great Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski used a simple and
efficient method of deciding which ones were worth his attention: Upon
receiving a new book, he immediately checked the index to see if his
name was cited, and how often. The more "Malinowski" the more
compelling the book. No "Malinowski," and he doubted the subject of
the book was anthropology at all.
Neil Postman
A book of quotations . . . can never be complete.
Robert M. Hamilton
If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism;
if you steal from many, it's research.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
Perhaps the reader may ask, of what consequence is it whether the author's
exact language is preserved or not, provided we have his thought? The
answer is, that inaccurate quotation is a sin against truth. It may appear
in any particular instance to be a trifle, but perfection consists in small
things, and perfection is no trifle.
Robert W. Shaunon
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
Unknown
A friend is someone you call to help you move. A best
friend is someone you call to help you move... a body.
Anonymous
Few things in life are more embarrassing than the necessity of having
to inform an old friend that you have just got engaged to his fiancee.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly,
caught in the web of duty.
Stephen King
Roland from "The Last Gunslinger"
Truth, springs from agrument amongst friends.
David Hume (1711-1776)
Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
Anais Nin
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers
it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are
at their best in moments of defeat.
Henry Miller (1891-1980)
The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.
Alexander Penney
The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might;
to eat with apple tart.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
I meant what I said, and I said what I meant.
An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent.
Horton - from Dr. Seuss's "Horton Hears a Who"
After several minutes of utterly dull conversation I began to think of her
not as a woman but as a human, then not as a human but as an animal, then
not as an animal but as a source of high-grade protein.
Mark Gooley
It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible
to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with
such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.
John Von Neumann (ca. 1949)
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
Ken Olsen , CEO DEC 1977
No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris ... [because] no
known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping.
Orville Wright (1871-1948)
(c. 1908)
Inventions reached their limit long ago,
and I see no hope for further development.
Julius Frontinus, 1st century A.D.
What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out
of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stagecoaches?
The Quarterly Review (England), March 1825
I can see the time when every city will have one.
An American mayor's reaction to the
news of the invention of the telephone
Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser,
more liberated and luminous state of being; to return to Eden, make friends
with the snake and set up our computers among the wild apple trees.
Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical
evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable
force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations,
religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely
counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison these pointless
preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible
ecstasy. Or, barring that, to turn out a good, juicy cheeseburger and a
strong glass of beer.
Tom Robbins
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered.
But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers
don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We
are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God.
We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational
system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to
laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
Charles Bukowski
I find the question "Why are we here?" typically human. I'd suggest
"Are we here?" would be the more logical choice.
Leonard Nimoy
Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
Why think? Why not try the experiment?
John Hunter
The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only
what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek.
Claude Bernard (1813-1878)
You know how it is when you go to be the subject of a psychology
experiment, and nobody else shows up, and you think maybe that's
part of the experiment? I'm like that all the time.
Steven Wright
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.
Our view. . . is that it is an essential characteristic of experimentation
that it is carried out with limited resources, and an essential part of the
subject of experimental design to ascertain how these should be best applied;
or, in particular, to which causes of disturbance care should be given, and
which ought to be deliberately ignored.
Sir Ronald A. Fisher
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one
begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent,
unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one
wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
Edward Teller
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
(Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Facts are stupid things.
Ronald Reagan '88
slight misquote of John Adams, "Facts are stubborn things."
To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size.
The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern.
I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra
or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll
than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could
find them, would make Belgium Ltd. or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while
nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest
of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire
or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping
a hedge.
J.B.S. Haldane
"On Being the Right Size"
in the (1928) book "Possible Worlds"
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
John Kenneth Galbraith
We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit, He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair, Must be a pacifist.
What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
Arlo Guthrie
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 David Eisenhower (1890-1969) April 16, 1953
Plumpick?: Don't you understand, the whole town will blow up in three minutes!
Columbine: Yes--they will be wonderful, those three minutes.
_The King of Hearts_
A nation is a society united by delusions about its
ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors.
Dean Inge
No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making
other bastards die for their country.
General George Patton (1885-1945)
Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable. The
highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy.
Sun Tze Ancient Chinese Warlord
Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
you have sand. [There is no need to worry about a protracted war because]
from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time.
Vice President Dan Quayle, 10/2/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)
[The U.S. victory in Gulf war was] a stirring victory for the
forces of aggression.
Vice President Dan Quayle, 4/11/91 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)
Very little is known about the War of 1812 because the Americans lost it.
Eric Nicol
".... You ask, What is our policy? I will say; "It is to wage
war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the
strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous
tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of
human crime. That is our policy." You ask, What is our aim? I
can answer with one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory
in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road
may be; for without victory there is no survival."
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940 in his first
address as the newly appointed Prime Minister.
It is [the] belief in absolutes, I would hazard, that is the great
enemy today of the life of the mind. This may seem a rash
proposition. The fashion of the time is to denounce relativism as the
root of all evil. But history suggests that the damage done to
humanity by the relativist is far less than the damage done by the
absolutist - by the fellow who, as Mr. Dooley once put it, "does what
he thinks th' Lord wud do if He only knew th' facts in th' case."
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments
to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals.
It's just that they need more supervision.
Lynn Lavner - as published in PFLAG
After all, he thought he was God.
FBI agent on why it was difficult to negotiate with David Koresh
God created sex. Priests created marriage.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve
the French in place of a state religion.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
An apology for the devil:it must be remembered that we have heard one side
of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him.
"Aqualung" - Jethro Tull
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor.
Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured
upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos,
his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy
nonsense issuing from his mouth every night.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) - The Allied Arts
Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better,
let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.
Pierre Trudeau - Prime Minister of Canada 1968-1979
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence
of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Mad, adj: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"
Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.
Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915)
The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many
accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more.
Ed Parker, Grandmaster, American Kenpo.
Over the past ten years, for the first time, intelligence had
become socially correct for girls.
Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities"
That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life
forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.
Marvin, _Life, the Universe, and Everything_ by Douglas Adams
A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
The system, you see,
Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.
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
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual
pursuit that still carries any reward.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
If you look up 'Intelligence' in the new volumes of the Encyclopeadia
Britannica," he said, "you'll find it classified under the following
three heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence,
Military. My stepfather's a perfect specimen of Intelligence, Millitary."
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
There is no place for the incompetent - there are few hiding places in
these organizations. Do not look to the new intelligent organizations
with their intelligent machines and their cultures of consent for days
of gossipy coffee breaks or for boring but untaxing jobs. The culture
of consent is not, as the British would say, going to be everyone's cup
of tea unless they are educated and prepared for it. There lies the
challenge for our society.
Charles Handy - The Age of Unreason
...a science is said to be useful if its development tends to
accentuate the existing inequalities in the destribution of wealth, or
more directly promotes the destruction of human life.
-G.H. Hardy
Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition
above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition
by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare
scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual
welfare of the settled disciplines.
Benoit Mandelbrot
...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is
escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness,
from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered
nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective
perception and thought.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret,
they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct
which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes
observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct
is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
John Von Neumann
What can I wish to the youth of my country who devote themselves to science?
...Thirdly, passion. Remember that science demands from a man all his life.
If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your
work and in your searching.
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human
mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance
in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should
voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto
harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge
will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position
therein, that we shall either go mad from the relevation or flee from the
deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate
the human race.
Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
Scientists are the easiest to fool. They think in straight, predictable,
directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is
the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they
appear to be. Children and conjurors--they terrify me. Scientists are no
problem; against them I feel quite confident.
Zambendorf, _Code of the Lifemaker_ by James P. Hogan
The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a
torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an
oracle, is inborn in us.
Paul Vale'ry (1871-1945) in 1895
What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising?
Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical
advertising uses truth to deceive the public.
Vilhjalmur Stefanss
I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt,
nor a truth that anybody would believe.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
I want to know the truth, however perverted that may sound.
Stephen Wolfram
In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out
in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets
out with a sieve.
Sir Arthur Eddington
Truth I have no trouble with, it's the facts I get all screwed up.
Farley Mowat
"Well, now, hold onta yer horses, there, Frazier. I mean, as a psychiatrist,
isn't it your job to, uh, `seek and uphold the truth'?"
"Oh, get real, Cliff."
Cheers
The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards
Alexander Jablokov "The Place of No Shadows"
I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it.
Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
Your motivation? Your motivation is your pay packet on Friday. Now get on with it.
Noel Coward (1899-1973) to an actor.
You have a part-time job, and that's better than no job at all.
Vice President Dan Quayle after the manager of the
Burger King had said that the jobs offered were part-time
minimum wage jobs, which didn't pay enough to live on,
and that "It's hard to find people who want to actually
show up for the job."
It was just a job. It wasn't any special interest in consumer affairs.
I needed a paycheck and the Attorney General said that I would be best
to go down there, because he knew I was anti-consumer.
Vice President Dan Quayle and talking about his job as
Chief investigator, consumer protection division of the
Indiana Attorney General's office from 1970-1971
When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes.
Henry Miller (1891-1980)
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why
the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
Dom Helder Camara
I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price
for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
> Although there is no meaningful content in this, I would like to
> share my favorite excuse story that I heard as an undergraduate at Duke. I
> don't know if it actually happened (it seems suspiciously like "urban
> legend"), but I sincerely hope that it did...
>
> Introductory Chemistry at Duke has been taught for about a zillion
> years by Professor Bonk (really), and his course is semi-affectionately
> known as "Bonkistry." He has been around forever, so I wouldn't put it
> past him to come up with something like this. Anyway, one year there were
> these two guys who were taking Chemistry and who did pretty well on all of
> the quizzes and the midterms and labs, etc., such that going into the final
> they had a solid A. These two friends were so confident going into the
> final that the weekend before finals week (even though the Chem final was
> on Monday), they decided to go up to UVirginia and party with some friends
> up there. So they did this and had a great time. However, with their
> hangovers and everything, they overslept all day Sunday and didn't make it
> back to Duke until early monday morning. Rather than taking the final
> then, what they did was to find Professor Bonk after the final and explain
> to him why they missed the final. They told him that they went up to UVa
> for the weekend, and had planned to come back in time to study, but that
> they had a flat tire on the way back and didn't have a spare and couldn't
> get help for a long time and so were late getting back to campus. Bonk
> .thought this over and then agreed that they could make up the final on the
> following day. The two guys were elated and relieved.
> So, they studied that night and went in the next day at the time
> that Bonk had told them. He placed them in separate rooms and handed each
> of them a test booklet and told them to begin. They looked at the first
> problem, which was something simple about molarity and solutions and was
> worth 5 points. "Cool" they thought, "this is going to be easy." They did
> that problem and then turned the page. They were unprepared, however, for
> what they saw on the next page. It said:
>
> (95 points) Which tire?
>
> Needless to say, they did not pass the final.
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality
at any point.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to
suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
Carl Sagan, "Contact"
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never
worshipped anything but himself.
Sir Richard F. Burton
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make
us love, one another.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to
create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness,
friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh
start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes
are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that
has no finish line."
Tom Robbins, _Skinny Legs and All_, 1990, p. 305.
The Baptists' basic theology is that if you hold someone under water long
enough, he'll come around to your way of thinking. It's a ritual known as
'Bobbing for Baptists.'
A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture"
"The Baptists believe in The Right to Life before you're born. They also
believe in Life After Death, but that is a privilege and you have to earn it by
spending the interim in guilt-ridden misery. At an early age I decided that
living a life of pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when it's over is
a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting
your money back at the end."
A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture"
If there is, in fact, a Heaven and a Hell, all we know for sure is
that Hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix...
Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine
What is there left to a generation that has been told that there is
poison in the rain and sex is death? Nothing but TV and relentless
masturbation.
Hunter S. Thompson
It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but
an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
Janov Pelorat in Asimov's Foundation's Edge
Before I go out to take a picture of someone, I just stop at the city desk and
say, 'Do you want him gazing out toward the sunset or picking his nose?'
Calvin Trillin
Safewords: Pronounce the consonants. A string of vowels doesn't sound all
that different from the noises you're making anyway.
Troy H. Cheek
Life's too short for chess.
H.J. Byron _Our Boys_
This is why God invented network television.
Ted Harbert, pres. of ABC Entertainment, opining on
Oprah Winfrey's interview of Michael Jackson.
There are two types of people, those who can be categorized into one
of two kinds of people, and those who can't.
Actually there are THREE types of people: those who can count,
and those who can't.
Actually there are two types of people. Those who finish what
they're doing, and so on....
COSE is a verb not a noun.
Scott McNealy
If debugging is the art of removing bugs, then programming must be the art
of inserting them.
Unknown
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
Unknown
Some compilers allow a check during execution that subscripts do not
exceed array dimensions. This is a help, but not sufficient. First,
many programmers do not use such compilers because "They're not efficient."
(Presumably, this means that it is vital to get the wrong answers quickly.)
Kernighan & Plauger - The Elements of Programming Style
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 process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially
attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically
rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like
composing poetry or music.
Donald E. Knuth
We have come through a strange cycle in programming, starting with the
creation of programming itself as a human activity. Executives with the
tiniest smattering of knowledge assume that anyone can write a program,
and only now are programmers beginning to win their battle for recognition
as true professionals. Not just anyone, with any background, or any
training, can do a fine job of programming. Programmers know this, but
then why is it that they think that anyone picked off the street can do
documentation? One has only to spend an hour looking at papers written
by graduate students to realize the extent to which the ability to
communicate is not universally held. And so, when we speak about computer
program documentation, we are not speaking about the psychology of
computer programming at all -- except insofar as programmers have the
illusion that anyone can do a good job of documentation, provided he is
not smart enough to be a programmer.
Gerald Weinberg, "The Psychology of Computer Programming"
Opportunity for all means making taxes fair. I'm not out to soak the rich.
But I do believe the rich should pay their fair share. For twelve years,
the Republicans have raised taxes on the middle class. It's time to give
the middle class tax relief.
Candidate Bill Clinton
Announcement Speech, October 3, 1991
Ronald Reagan and George Bush pushed through programs that raised taxes on
the middle class. I think it's time to cut them. And in my administration
I'll offer a middle-income tax cut that will cut rates on the middle class.
Candidate Bill Clinton
Georgetown University, November 20,1991
We have to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share again. Their
incomes went up in the 1980s and their taxes went down. We can't ask the
middle class to pay more; their incomes went down and their taxes went up.
Candidate Bill Clinton
U.S. Conference Of Mayors, Houston, June 22, 1992
[George Bush] has raised taxes on the people driving pickup trucks
and lowered taxes on the people riding in limousines. We can do better.
Candidate Bill Clinton
Democratic National Convention, July 16, 1992
We will lower the tax burden on middle-class Americans by asking the very wealthy
to pay their fair share. Middle-class taxpayers will have a choice between a
children's tax credit or a significant reduction in the income tax rate.
Candidates Bill Clinton and Al Gore
"Putting People First", 1992
No wonder Americans hate politics when, year in and year out, they hear
politicians make promises that won't come true because they don't even mean
them - campaign fantasies that win elections but don't get nations moving again.
Candidate Bill Clinton
Detroit Economic Club, August 21, 1992
I'm not going to raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for the
programs I've recommended.
Candidate Bill Clinton
Presidential Debate, October 19, 1992
!!ELECTION TIME!!
Winner - Bill Clinton!! Losers - Middle Class!!
I had hoped to invest in your future by creating jobs, expanding
education, reforming health care and reducing the debt without asking
more of you... But I can't - because the deficit has increased so
much beyond my earlier estimates and beyond even the worst official
government estimates from last year. We just have to face the fact
that to make the changes our country needs, more Americans must
contribute today so that all Americans can do better tommorrow."
President Bill Clinton
The Oval Office, February 15, 1993
To middle-class Americans who have paid a great deal for the last 12 years and
from whom I ask a contribution tonight, I will say again... you're not going
at it alone anymore - you're certainly not going first, and you're not going
to pay more for less as you have too often in the past.
President Bill Clinton
Joint session of Congress, February 17, 1993
The Clintonites, like pod people from a "Star Trek" adventure, have peeled off
the thin layer of centrist rhetoric that they wore for the presidential
campaign. We now learn that they are people genetically bred to inhabit the
public sector. Their oxygen source is the moisture of taxes, which are
remitted by the aliens in the private sector.
Wall Street Journal, February 19, 1993
It is blatantly false... It is a disgrace to the American people that the
President of the United States would make a claim that is so baseless, that is
so without foundation, so shameless in its attempt to get votes under false
pretenses.
Candidate "Lying Bill" Clinton, on Bush's charge that Clinton
would increase taxes on all Americans making > $36,600/year
Be humble for you are made of dung. Be noble for you are made of stars.
Serbian proverb
Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock.
Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps
of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in
the early morning of our April day.
Stephen Jay Gould
The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things
that lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it
some of the grace of tragedy.
Steven Weinberg
Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking
reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop
of water, suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man
would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he
dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows
nothing of this.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), quoted by Rebecca West in
BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON: A JOURNEY THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA, 1940.
Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive
what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body
should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and
yet it is his very being.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees(II,72)
This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by
yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish,
selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world
will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my
life belongs to the whole community and as I live it is my privilege -
my *privilege* to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used
up when I die, for the harder I work the more I love. I rejoice in life for
its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch
which I've got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly
as possible before handing it on to future generations.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
How would it be if we discovered that aliens only stopped by earth to let
their kids take a leak?
Jay Leno
Separate together in a bunch. [And don't] stand around so
much in little bundles!
director Michael Curtiz to movie extras
Equal Rights were created for everyone.
contesant in 1990 Mr. New Jersey Male pageant
Once they were men. Now they are land crabs.
dialogue from 'Attack of the Crab Monsters'
For John Caputo, hermeneutics means radical thinking without transcendental
justification: attending to the ruptures and irregularities in existence before
the metaphysics of presence has a chance to smooth them over. Radical
Hermeneutics forges a closer collaboration between the hermeneutics and
deconstruction than has previously been attempted.
ad for 'Radical Hermeneutics, Repetition,
Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutics Project'
I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue.
Richard Nixon, discussing Watergate (1913-1994)
I love California. I grew up in Phoenix.
Dan Quayle
Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.
ad slogan 'Pepsi Comes Alive' as initially translated into Chinese
I desire the Poles carnally.
President Jimmy Carter's mistranslation in a 1977 speech in Poland
1. At the rise of the hand of the policeman, stop rapidly. Do not pass
him or otherwise disrespect him.
2. If pedestrian obstacle your path, tootle horn melodiously. If he
continue to obstacle, tootle horn vigorously and utter vocal warning
such as "Hi, Hi."
[...]
5. Beware of greasy corner where lurk skid demon. Cease step on,
approach slowly, round cautiously, resume step on gradually."
from an official Japanese guide for English-speaking drivers, 1936
The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known
forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical
machine by which man shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the
writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical
fact to be.
Simon Newcomb (declared in 1901)
"Things are more like they are now than they have ever been".
President Gerald Ford
"That's part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality,
I think, breeds freedom and gives a man opportunity".
Lester Maddox, ex-governor of Georgia
"Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans".
Alf Landon, during his speech in his presidential campaign against FDR
"You're a parasite for sore eyes"
actor Gregory Ratoff
"I paint paintings because I can't get the experience in any other way
but there are many more experiences that are equally satisfying to me
and equally inept at answering all my questions, but hover in exactitude
in describing themselves and defying me to define their logic".
Julian Schnabel
"My fellow astronauts"
Vice-President Dan Quayle, beginning a speech at an Apollo 11 anniversary
celebration
"Half this game is 90% mental"
Danny Ozark, manager of the Phillies
"I've been traveling so much, I haven't had time to grow it".
Bob Horner, Atlanta Braves third baseman, on why he hadn't grown a beard
"Isn't it a blessing of God it didn't hit him in the eye" ?
an elderly woman, when she and two others found a dead robber on the road,
shot through the right temple
"If we didn't have bonuses, we wouldn't have had anybody working for us".
Drexel Burnham Lambert spokesperson, explaining why the company gave over
$195 million in bonuses just before it filed for bankruptcy
"I first saw President Reagan as a foot, highly polished brown cordovan
wagging merrily on a hassock. I spied it through the door. It was a
beautiful foot, sleek. Such casual elegance and clean lines! But not a
big foot, not formidable, maybe a little ...frail. I imagined cradling
it in my arms, protecting it from unsmooth roads".
Peggy Noonan, speechwriter for the Reagan administration
"Captial punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life".
Orrin Hatch, Republican senator
"While you are away, movie stars are taking your women. Robert Redford is
dating your girlfriend, Tom Selleck is kissing your lady, Bart Simpson is
making love to your wife".
Baghdad Betty, Iraqi radio announcer, to gulf war troops
"The boys never meant any harm against the girls. They just meant to rape".
Joyce Kithira, deputy principal of a Kenyan boarding school, commenting on
a raid of a girls' dormitory by a gang of boys who raped 71 girls and
killed 19
"This country needs a spear chucker, and I think we've got him up on this podium".
Eugene Dorff, mayor of Kenosha, Wisconsin, introducing presidential candidate
Jesse Jackson. He said later he had intended to say "straight shooter"
"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on".
movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn
"I want to gain 1,500 or 2,000 yards, whichever comes first".
George Rogers, Saints running back
"If crime went down 100%, it would still be 50 times higher than it shoud be"
Councilman John Bowman commenting on the high crime in Washington
I believe that mink are raised for being turned into fur coats and if we
didn't wear fur coats those little animals would never have been born. So
is it better not to have been born or to have lived for a year or two to
have been turned into a fur coat? I don't know.
Barbi Benton ex-playboy bunny
The choice before us is plain: Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise,
discipline or disintegration. I am rather tired of hearing about our rights
and privileges as American citizens. The time is come - it now is - when we
ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship.
America's future depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God's government.
Reverend Peter Marshall, on being elected Chaplain
of the U. S. Senate in January 1947
[He] looks at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) (of Chamberlain)
Who will relieve me of this Wuthering Height
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)(of Sir Stafford Cripps at a dinner party.)
If heaven is going to be full of people like Hardie, well, the
Almighty can have them to himself.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) (of Keir Hardie)
There but for the grace of God goes God.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) (of Cripps)
It might be said that Lord Rosebery outlived his future by ten
years and his past by more than twenty.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
[On recognizing China] But if you recognize anyone it does not
mean you like them. For instance, we all recognize the right
honourable gentleman the member for Ebbw Vale.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) (on Mr Bevan)
Mother Theresa epitomizes for me the blinkered charitableness upon
which we pride ourselves and for which we expect reward in this world
and the next. There is very little on earth that I hate more than that.
Germaine Greer
Plato had slaves...George Washington had slaves... So, do I feel
intrinsically better than these two men? Of course I do! They're dead!
Todd Andrew Reid
But what about Bill Cosby ... the man who is to fathers
what Marla Maples is to slutty chorines?
Bruce Handy
FROM ERMA
IN MY ELEVEN YEARS OF SERVICE TO THE BANK OF AMERICA, I HAVE BEEN PRIVILEGED TO
WORK WITH SOME OF THE BANK'S FINEST EMPLOYEES. FROM PEOPLE LIKE EMMETT JENKINS,
DICK DAVIS, JOHN COOMBS, AND MANY MORE WHO WERE WITH ME FROM THE BEGINNING, TO
BOB LEE AND ALL OF MY CURRENT CO-WORKERS WHO ARE ASSISTING ME IN THE PROCESSING
OF TRAVELLERS CHEQUES---MY FINAL APPLICATION---I CAN ONLY SAY THANK YOU.
TOGETHER WE HAVE MADE GREAT STRIDES IN BANKING. AND I CANNOT HELP BUT FEEL, AS
THE FIRST COMPUTER SYSTEM TO BE USED FOR BANKING APPLICATIONS, THAT MY
RETIREMENT BRINGS TO CLOSE AN HISTORIC ERA. TO BE THE FIRST IN SOMETHING IS A
GREAT ACHIEVEMENT, AND I AM VERY PROUD. BUT MY SUCCESS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN
POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE HELP OF SO MANY FINE PEOPLE.
ALTHOUGH THE END OF AN ERA IS NEAR, AND WE WILL SOON PART, I WILL NEVER FORGET
MY FRIENDS, AND I WISH YOU ALL THE GREATEST SUCCESS IN THE FUTURE.
TO MY CURRENT---AND FINAL---ASSISTANTS, I BID FAREWELL---
MY BEST TO ALL,
ERMA
Here are the last words of a historic computer. ERMA (Electronic Recording
Method of Accounting), developed by Bank of America and Stanford Research
Institute between 1950-1959, for check processing.
Then there was LSD, which was supposed to make you think you could fly.
I remember it made you think you couldn't stand up, and mostly it was right.
PJ O'Rourke
I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.
M.C.Escher
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
Henry Miller (1891-1980) _Tropic_Of_Capricorn_
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
Henry Miller (1891-1980) _Tropic_Of_Capricorn_
There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.
Henry Miller (1891-1980), _The_Colossus_Of_Maroussi_(1941)
I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)
My teen angst has a body count.
Veronica - "Heathers"
Philosophy is the highest music.
Plato (427?-348? BC)
No Voice; but oh! the silence sank like music on my heart.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Music is sound's cognitive apologist.
Stephen Smoliar
I see music as the augmentation of a split second of time.
Erin Cleary
Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent
note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an
instrument. For there is music wherever there is harmony,
order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music
of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular
paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the
understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)
How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press.
Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.
David Brinkley
Political language - and with variations this is true of all political
parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies
sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of
solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell (1903-1950) "Politics and the English Language", 1946
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
Arthur C. Clarke
Hypocrisy is the vaseline of political intercourse.
Billy Connolly on ABC's "Head Of the Class"
I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first
lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of
infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was
Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political
statistic.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.
Dalton Camp
We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon
the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of
all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind of
self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern
ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to
the Ten Commandments of God.
James Madison (1751-1836)
State Rep. Doug Teper has introduced legislation which would require the
Georgia laws against fornication, adultery, and sodomy to be posted in hotel
rooms. For those who don't comprende English, Teper has called for
"International Symbols" describing these fun activities. Get out your
drafting tools, let your imagination run wild, and send us the results.
We'll publish the winning entry.
From _Southern Voice_, a local weekly:
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity
that corporations and other organizations habitually engage
in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
Alain van der Heide
People ask me if I've ever been called a Nazi. I answer that no
one has ever had dreams of being tied down and sexually ravished
by someone dressed as a liberal.
P.J. O'Rourke
A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the
remark, "You should make a point of trying every experience
once, excepting incest and folk dancing."
Sir Arnold Bax
I can't see the point in the theatre. All that sex and violence.
I get enough of that at home. Apart from the sex, of course.
Baldrick - Sense and Senility
Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has
left it out of his heaven.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
CALIFORNIA: From Latin 'calor', meaning "heat" (as in English
'calorie' or Spanish 'caliente'); and 'fornia', for "sexual
intercourse" or "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land
of hot sex."
Ed Moran, Covina, California
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us
wordy evidence of the fact.
George Eliot (1819-1880)
Language exists only on the surface of our consciousness. The great human
struggles are played out in silence and in the ability to express oneself.
Franz Xavier Kroetz
There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness
and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken
English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can
tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and
done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly.
Annie Dillard, _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_
If it is true that words have meanings, why don't we throw away
words and keep just the meanings?
Ludwig Wittgenstein via Anatol Holt
...exaggerated turns of speech conceal mediocre affections: as if the fulness
of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since
no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his
conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the human word is like a cracked
cauldron upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we
are trying to move the stars to pity.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
_Madame Bovary_, ch. 12
Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts...
Robert Fulghum
For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and big words Bother me.
Winnie-the-Pooh
The words `I am...' are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to.
The thing you're claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you.
A. K. Kitselman
It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase
'As pretty as an Airport' appear.
Douglas Adams
O words of love, O words divine!
The silver thought, the golden line!
Of all men's words, there's none so fine,
As these three words: 'I've got mine!'
Hagar the Horrible
There is nothing outside the text.
Jacques Derrida
the quote is the foundation of Deconstruction
"Where did you put it?"
"Put what?"
"You know?"
"Where do you think?"
"Oh."
Nicholas Negroponte
Director of the MIT Media Lab
stating his ideal model of human-computer interaction
"Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana."
Example of why it is difficult to get
computers to understand human speech
"It's hard to recognize speech."
Example of why it is difficult to get
computer to recognize human speech.
(phonetically equivilant to:
It's hard to wreck a nice beach.)
We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all
about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we have still to
make of a study of 'and.'
Sir Arthur Eddington
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. "It
means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many
different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898)
Before emphasizing what I believe, perhaps I should point out what I do not
believe, or what I no longer believe: I no longer believe in the magic of the
spoken word. It signifies not order but disorder. It does not eliminate chaos,
it only conceals it. It no longer carries men's hopes but distorts them. It
has ceased to be a vehicle, only to become an obstacle. It does not signify
sharing but compromise.
Elie Weisel,
From the Kingdom of Memory
I have found you an argument: but I am not obliged to find you an
understanding.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that he sometimes has
to eat them.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)
I think I am a verb.
R. Buckminster Fuller
What you are shouts so loud in my ears I cannot hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
All last year we tried to teach him English, and the only word he learned
was million.
Tommy Lasorda, on pitcher Fernando Valenzuela
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker,
that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.
We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never
talk to them of our own neccessities but of their advantages.
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for
centuries. It is an invention of civilization.
Mikhail Gorbachev (June 8, 1990)
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
said in 1885
The worst crime against working people is a company which
fails to operate at a profit.
Samuel Gompers (1850-1924)
said in 1908
Fine art and pizza delivery, what we do falls neatly in between!
David Letterman
I like less the story that a frog if put in cold water will not
bestir itself if that water is heated up slowly and gradually and
will in the end let itself be boiled alive, too comfortable with
continuity to realize that continuous change at some point may
become intolerable and demand a change in behavior.
Charles Handy - The Age of Unreason
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil
is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to
paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps.
In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered
(moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and
well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails
and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence,
naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of
a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see
him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
Shirley Temple
The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'Yes'
merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
...Clean up complexion, soften eye lines, soften smile line, add color to
lips, trim chin, remove neck lines, soften line under ear lobe, add
highlights to earrings, add blush to cheek, clean up neck line, remove
stray hair, remove hair strands from dress, adjust color and add hair on
top of head, add dress on side to create better line... Total: $1,525.00.
The invoice for retouching the cover photo of
Michelle Pfeiffer in the December, 1990, issue
of Esquire magazine, obtained by Harper's.
The photo's caption reads, "What Michelle Pfeiffer
Needs...Is Absolutely Nothing."
Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him
that brought her birth.
John Milton (1608-1674)
I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest
complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if
it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which
they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly
taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the
fabric of their lives.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
A technique succeeds in mathematical physics, not by a clever trick, or a
happy accident, but because it expresses some aspect of a physical truth.
O.G. Sutton
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 (1885-1962)
Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure
I'll never find out the truth.
Ashleigh Brilliant
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.
Harry S Truman (1884-1972)
>From adamr@decon Mon Jun 14 09:42:18 1993
To: phoenix@skydiver
Subject: Backlashmudgeon
Cc: adamr@decon
Content-Length: 6183
X-Lines: 161
Status: RO
Some quotes excerpted from "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against
American Women" by Susan Faludi
The politics of despair in America has typically been the politics
of backlash.
Seymour Martin and Earl Raab
I don't get it really. Sometimes I like to sneak into the teater in
the last twenty minutes of the movie. All these men are screaming,
"Beat that bitch! Kill her off now!" The women, you never hear them
say anything. They are all just sitting there, real quiet.
Sabrina Hughes, teenage movie-theatre usher, on
audience reactions to "Fatal Attraction"
My wife has never worked. She's the least ambitious person I've ever
met. She's a terrific wife. She hasn't the slightest interest in
doing a career. She kind of lives this with me, and it's a terrific
feeling. I come home and she's there.
Adrian Lyne, director of "Fatal Attraction"
If you want to know, I'm really tired of feminists, sick of them.
They've really dug themselves into their own grave. Any man would be a
fool who didn't agree with equal rights and pay but some women, now,
juggling career, lover, children [childbirth], wifehood, have spread
themselves too thin and are very unhappy. It's time they looked at
*themselves* and stopped attacking men. Guys are going through a
terrible crisis right now because of women's unreasonable demands.
Michael Douglas, male lead in "Fatal Attraction"
The demand that women "return to femininity" is a demand that the
cultural gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time
when everyone was richer, younger, more powerful. The "feminine" woman
is forever static and childlike. She is like the ballerina in an
old-fashioned music box, her unchanging features tiny and girlish, her
voice tinkly, her body stuck on a pin, rotating in a spiral that will
never grow.
Susan Faludi, "Backlash"
The advertising industry thus encourages the pseudo-emancipation of
women, flattering them with its insuating reminder, "You've come a long
way, baby" and disguising the freedom to consume as genuine
autonomy....It emancipates women and children from patriarchal
autonomy, however, only to subject them to the new paternalism of the
advertising industry, the industrial corporation, and the state.
Christopher Lasch, "The Culture of Narcissism"
All that embellishment, the ruffles, lace and frills, women don't seem
to want that much. They seem to want quieter, more realistic things.
They want clothes to be taken seriously in. I guess they don't like
looking superfluous.
Lawrence Wilsman, buyer for Saks's Fifth Avenue
Women get a little pip, a little perk out of it. It's like, "Here I am
at this very serious business meeting and they really don't know that
I'm wearing a garter belt!"
Howard Gross, president of Victoria's Secret
My field is day-to-day street life. I don't want to create fake
pictures.
Paul Marciano, on why only real men are used in Guess
advertisements
We always use models. It's difficult to find real women who fit what
we're trying to say. Real women, they aren't as cooperative as real
men.
Paul Marciano, on why no real women are used in Guess
advertisements
[T]here are people who want a different political order, who are not
necessarily Marxists. Symbolized by the women's liberation movement,
they believe that the future for their political power lies in the
resturcturing of the traditional family, and particularly in the
downgrading of the male or father role in the traditional family.
Paul Weyrich
Women's liberationists operate as Typhoid Marys carrying a germ.
Phyllis Schlafly
A woman's nature is, simply, other-oriented....Women are ordained by
their nature to spend themselves in meeting the needs of others.
Connaught C. Marshner, "The New Traditional Woman" 1982
The woman who is truly Spirit-filled will want to be totally submissive
to her husband...This is a truly liberated woman. Submission is God's
design for women.
Beverly LaHaye, "The Spririt-Controlled Woman"
[D]eal with your own personal crisis. What might *you* be doing to
make intimacy with a man impossible? What attitudes are keeping *you*
unavailable for marriage?....The desire to avoid a submissive status in
relationship to men can lead you into a loveless life.
Stephen and Susan Price, therapists, in their book
"Loneley Nights"
Real boring.
Robin Norwood, author of "Women Who Love Too Much: When
you Keep Wishing and Hoping He'll Change", describing
her third husband
I never claimed those were case studies. Some are really fictional.
The point is not which parts are me and which aren't.
Robin Norwood, explaining that "many" of the patients
described in "Women Who Love Too Much" are in fact
herself.
I was conceived out of wedlock. I could've been aborted. I hope and
think that my parents wouldn't have, but I'm just real glad they didn't
even have the choice.
Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue
Radical feminism gave birth to child killing. They were the ones out
in the streets demanding their rights - NARAL, NOW, with their lies and
their false propaganda that the media lapped up obediently and spewed
back out to the American people. Lies.
Randall Terry
Now with the abortion death squads allowed to run rampant through our
country I wonder how many future champions will be killed before they
see the light of day.
Mark Bavaro, player for the NY Giants, in a video
titled "Champions for Life", produced by Giants owner
Wellington Mara, and distributed to schoolchildren
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
Chuq Von Rospach
"Rich Rosen's Rules of Net.Debate deal with this in the Hitler
clause, which (paraphrased) states that as soon as someone brings
up Hitler or Nazi Germany, the subject is dead (and I would
further submit that the person who brings it up should be
considered to have conceded defeat)."
Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies:
As a USENET discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
Sircar's Corollary:
If the USENET discussion touches on homosexuality or Heinlein, Nazis
or Hitler are mentioned within three days. [Your propagation may vary.]
"I must've seen it in a USENET posting"; that's sort of like hearsay
evidence from Richard Nixon.
Blair Houghton
It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view,
or strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left
as an exercise for your kill-file.
unattributed truth from r.g.frp
Live TV died in the late 1950s, electronic bulletin boards came along in the
mid-1980s, meaning there was about a 25-year gap when it was difficult to put
your foot in your mouth and have people all across the country know about it.
Mark Leeper
network: anything reticulated or decussated, with
interstices between the intersections
from the Dictionary of Samuel Johnson
There is nothing more practical than a good theory.
Leonid Ilich Brezhnev,
quoted in V Rich, Nature, 1977, 270, pp470-1
He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
M.C. Escher
Nature is earlier than man, but man is earlier than natural science.
von Weizsacker
'Virtual Reality' is a name being slapped on almost anything
these days, especially if it's lame.
Mark Hamilton
Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that
the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
"Ceaser and Cleopatra"
It is fatal to be right when the rest of the world is wrong.
Brother Theodore
A thing can be true and still be desperate folly.
Richard Adams, _Watership Down_
Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly
tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand
it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone
switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that
Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain
worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to
hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill,
and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like
a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer.
John R. Searle MINDS, BRAINS AND SCIENCE, p 44
So finally the fact is, that to come to this, to make a thing which
has the character of nature, and to be true to all the forces in it,
to remove yourself, to let it be, without interference from your
image-making self - all this requires that we become aware that all of
it is transitory; that all of it is going to pass.
Of course nature itself is also always transitory. The trees, the
river, the humming insects - they are all short-lived; they will all
pass. Yet we never feel sad in the presence of these things. No matter
how transitory they are, they make us feel happy, joyful.
But when we make our own attempt to create nature in the world
around us, and succeed, we cannot escape the fact that we are going
to die. This quality, when it is reached, in human things, is always
sad; it makes us sad; and we can even say that any place where a man
tries to make the quality, and be like nature, cannot be true, unless
we can feel the slight presence of this haunting sadness there, because
we know at the same time we enjoy it, that it is going to pass.
Christopher Alexander - The Timeless Way of Building, 1979
"The attempt to have a victory for a one-sided view of the world cannot
work anyway, even for the people who seem to win their point of view.
The forces which are ignored do not go away just because they are
ignored. They lurk, frustrated, underground. Sooner or later they
erupt in violence; and the system which seems to win is then exposed to
far more catastrophic dangers.
The only way that a pattern can actually help to make a situation
genuinely more alive is by recognizing all the forces which exist, and then
finding a world in which these forces can slide past each other.
Then it becomes a piece of nature.
When we see the pattern of the ripples in a pond, we know that this
pattern is simply in equilibrium with the forces which exist; without
any mental interference which is clouding them.
And, when we succeed, finally, in seeing so deep into a man-made
pattern, that it is no longer clouded by opinions or by images, then
we have discovered a piece of nature as valid, as eternal, as the
ripples in the surface of a pond."
Christopher Alexander, 1979
"The Timeless Way of Building"
Every culture has its distinctive and normal system of government.
Yours is democracy, moderated by corruption. Ours is totalitarianism,
moderated by assassination.
Unknown Russian
Practice safe government.
Use kingdoms.
The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced;
the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled.
Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't
want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living
on public assistance.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC (106-43 BC)
The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on
too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be
good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity
and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into
quicksand.
Richard P. Feynman
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain
occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to
burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
William H. Borah
What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.
Dave Barry
He is one of those peple who would be enormously improved by death
H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee
for the Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no
doubt a lively, intelligent bird... a social being... capable
of actual affection... nuzzling its young with almost human-
like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it.
Please give our respects to its family...
Berke Breathed
Bloom Country Babylon
The only completely consistent people are the dead.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
We bury with many different emotions. Rarely with intimations of
mortality. 'Buried' is the ultimate separation of them and us. As
other's lives are often only dreams to us, so also others' deaths.
Josephine Hart - "Sin"
Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary,
and adopt a new form. The phrase "being born" is used for beginning to
be something different from what one was before, while "dying" means ceasing
to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this,
yet the sums of things remains unchanged.
Ovid (43 BC-AD 18)
Metamorphoses
Anyway: I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do
and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young,
innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm
in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For
some folks death is a release and for others death is an abomination, a
terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them.
Neil Gaiman
The Sandman #20: Facade
When the Black Camel comes for me, I'm not going to go kicking and screaming.
I am, however, going to try to talk my way out of it.
"No, no, you want the other Walter Slovotsky."
Walter Slovotsky, _The Warrior Lives_
by Joel Rosenberg
We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the
human race: he brought death into the world.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
We are here to add to the sum of human goodness. To prove the thing
exists. And however futile each individual act of courage or
generosity, self-sacrifice or grace-it still proves the thing exists.
Each act adds to the fund. It needs replenishment. Not only because
evil flourishes, and is, most indefensibly, defended. But because
goodness is no longer a respectable aim in life. The hound of hell,
envy, has driven it from the house.
Josephine Hart - "Sin"
Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we
begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I
go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.
Cary Grant
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we
pretend to be.
Socrates (470-399 BC)
The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions,
givne style to his character, and become creative. Aware of
life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line
And "Up-and-down" by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom, I
Was never deep in anything but -- Wine.
from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
(Translation by Edward Fitzgerald)
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk.
That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.
Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)
Two sodium atoms are walking along the street when one
stops and says, "Oh my God, I think I've lost an electron!"
"Are you sure?" asks the other sodium atom.
"Yes," replies the first sodium atom, "I'm positive."
My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species.
Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future.
Ralph Abraham
Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of
atoms into the tracery of the finger of God.
Herbert Westren Turnbull
Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules.
Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.
Anonymous
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality.
Hermann Weyl
There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics...
We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in
that of Homer.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
The most extensive computation known has been conducted over the last billion
years on a planet-wide scale: it is the evolution of life. The power of this
computation is illustrated by the complexity and beauty of its crowning
achievement, the human brain.
David Rogers
Weather Prediction Using a Genetic Memory
I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without
profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting
Hamlet from the play which is named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous
to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia
is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
...it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our
self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore
of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics,
in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically
charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art.
John W.N. Sullivan
The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not
early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles
blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.
James Joseph Sylvester
How did Biot arrive at the partial differential equation? [the heat conduction
equation] . . . Perhaps Laplace gave Biot the equation and left him to sink or
swim for a few years in trying to derive it. That would have been merely an
instance of the way great mathematicians since the very beginnings of mathematical
research have effortlessly maintained their superiority over ordinary mortals.
Clifford Truesdell
There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full
Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to
the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them,
a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted,
as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into
concrete classical entities-- potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved
geometry-- that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside
the velvet glove of airy mathematics.
Gregory Benford - Timescape
What a price we pay for experience, when we must sell our youth to buy it.
Javan
There's no fool like an old fool --- you can't beat experience.
Jacob Braude
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable
must Man be of learning from experience.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in
it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove
lid. She will never sit on a hot stove lid again--and that is well; but also
she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.
Dan Stanford
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
anonymous
Experience is a hard teacher.
She gives the test first and the lessons afterwards.
anonymous
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.
Jim Horning
Experience consists of experiencing that which one does not wish to experience
quoted by Freud in "Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscience?"
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
equipment ruined.
Oliver's Law
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
...and the possibility of developing paranoia, slight memory loss and laziness.
But, it says, "the lethal dose of cannabis is a 2-kilo block dropped on your head
from the 25th floor of a high-rise building. In other words - cannabis can't kill
you, it is not a poison like alcohol, and not addictive like cigarettes.
from _Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Drugs,
but Were Afraid to Ask Your Children_
Chicken Soup: An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of
aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken
soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
Arthur Naiman
Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the
Universal Symphony with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums.
Hunter S. Thompson
Though one should be prepared to vomit rather frequently and disport
with pink elephants and assorted grotesqueries while trying often
unsuccessfully to make one's way to the toilet.
William F. Buckley Jr. - in response to previous statement
If God dropped acid, would he see people?
Steven Wright
Knowledge is expensive.
Hanna Gray, current president of the University of Chicago
Education is the best provision for old age.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy
to govern but impossible to enslave.
Baron Henry Peter Brougham
The two most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
Harlan Ellison.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to
entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead.
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)
It's not by amusing oneself that one learns.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
It's only by amusing oneself that one can learn.
Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that
curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.
Arnold Edinborough
A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.
Bob Edwards
If you sincerely desire a _truly_ well-rounded education, you must study
the extremists, the obscure and "nutty". You need the balance! Your
poor brain is already being impregnated with middle-of-the-road crap,
twenty-four hours a day, _no matter what_. Network TV, newspapers,
radio, magazines at the supermarket... even if you never watch, read,
listen, or leave your house, even if you are deaf and blind, the
_telepathic pressure alone_ of the uncountable normals surrounding you
will insure that you are automatically well- grounded in consensus reality.
Rev. Ivan Stang - High Weirdness By Mail
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells (1885-1946)
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks
anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring
this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper
into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender;
therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from
head to heels with official rubber-stamps.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Public display of mourning is no longer made by people of fashion, although
some flashier kinds of widows may insist on sleeping with only black men
during the first year after the death.
PJ O'Rourke
Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room.
The difference is, when you shout, 'Where's my clean socks?' no-one answers.
Terry Pratchett, "Eric"
"A penny for your thoughts?"
"A dollar for your death."
Felix and Oscar, from the Odd Couple
Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over...
Death is not anything...death is not...It's the absence of presence, nothing
more...the endless time of never coming back...a gap you can't see, and when
the wind blows through it, it makes no sound...
Tom Stoppard
Ros: Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
Guil: No, no, no...Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death
is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.
Ros: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guil: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.
Tom Stoppard
Rather, she [ Death ] simply is the Ultimate Hostess who tells
you when your table's ready. It's up to other powers what
section you're seated in (smoking or non-smoking).
John C. Straffin
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They
seem more afraid of life than death.
James F. Byrnes
Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am
the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.
Karl Cullinane _The Silver Crown_ by Joel Rosenberg
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)
Feminism is the radical concept that women are people.
Cheris Kramarae & Paula Treichler
Women constitute half the world's population, perform nearly two-thirds
of its work hours, receive one-tenth of the world's income and own less
than one-hundredth of the world's property.
United Nations report, 1980
I love the women's movement...especially when I'm walking behind it.
Rush Limbaugh
If men menstruated, they would brag about how much and for how long.
Gloria Steinem
No Woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor
Betty Friedan
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be
thought half as good. . . luckily, it's not difficult.
Charlotte Whitton
It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages
women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft,
destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
televangelist Marion "Pat" Robertson,
speaking of the Equal Rights Amendment
Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating
all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives.
But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things
which are very hard, very liable to be broken--and notwithstanding all
your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to free
ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both
your natural and legal authority at our feet.
Abigail Adams, Letter to John Adams [May 7, 1776]
Patriotism in the female sex is the most disinterested of all virtues.
Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to
the State or Government from having held a place of eminence. Even in
the freest countries our property is subject to the control and
disposal of our partners, to whom the laws have given a sovereign
authority. Deprived of a voice in legislation, obliged to submit to
those laws which are imposed upon us, is it not sufficient to make us
indifferent to the public welfare? Yet all history and every age
exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which
considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours.
Ibid [June 18, 1782]
Basically a dog person. I certainly, though, wouldn't want to offend my
constituents who are cat people, and I should say that being, I hope, a
sensitive person, that I have nothing against cats, and had cats when I
was a boy, and if we didn't have the two dogs might very well be interested
in having a cat now.
Incoming Missouri Congressman James Talent, responding
to the question "Are you a dog or a cat person?"
Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and
your dog would go in.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
In Washington, it's dog eat dog. In academia, it's exactly the opposite.
Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor
A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs.
It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person
can like both cats *and* dogs!
Sonjay Anand
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be
liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person
shall be deemed to be a cat.
Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London
When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog
that is news.
Charles Anderson Dana (1819-1897)
Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
Snoopy
(Charles Schultz)
Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when
pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked
by a mad notion.
Robertson Davies
It's not to keep him from running off our property. It's to protect my
putting green.
Vice President Dan Quayle telling a guest at his house
why his dog, Breezy, wears a special collar that emits
a painful jolt of electricity should the dog try to
run away. (reported in the NY Daily News, 6/30/92 -
taken from The Quayle Quarterly, Summer/Fall 92)
Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the
expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes.
Murray Edelman, _Politics as Symbolic Action_, p. 1
No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is
to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all-
disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report....
Woodrow Wilson, _Congressional Government_, p. 109
Today, a successful Congressman has the fundraising ability of a hooker
trying to raise cab fare home....
John L. Jackley, New York Times, 10/29/90, p. A15.
He's suffering from Politicians' Logic. Something must be done,
this is something, therefore we must do it.
YES, PRIME MINISTER
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
Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast
for a while, and then have a hell of a close.
Ronald Reagan to Stuart Spencer, 1966
from "There He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan's Reign of Error"
by Mark Green and Gail MacColl
Tortoise: But we must be careful in combining sentences. For instance,
you'd grant that "Politicians lie" is true, wouldn't you?
Achilles: Who could deny it?
Tortoise: Good. Likewise, "Cast-iron sinks" is a valid utterance,
isn't it?
Achilles: Indubitably.
Tortoise: Then, putting them together, we get "Politicians lie
in cast-iron sinks" ...
Douglas R. Hofstadter
"Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid"
A politician will always tip off his true belief by stating the opposite at
the beginning of the sentence. For maximum comprehension, do not start
listening until the first clause is concluded. Begin instead at the word
"but" which begins the second, or active, clause. This is the way to tell a
liberal from a conservative -- before they tell you.
Thus: "I have always believed in a strong national defense, second to
none, but ... " (a liberal, about to propose a $20 billion defense cut).
Frank Mankiewicz
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as
smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway."
Bernard Avishai
In a way, staring into a computer screen is like staring into an eclipse.
It's brilliant and you don't realize the damage until its too late."
Bruce Sterling
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree,
is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals.
We cause accidents.
Nathaniel Borenstein
And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead
by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business
product: a really sharp-looking report.
Dave Barry
An old puzzle asks how a barometer can be used to measure the height of a
building. Answers range from dropping the instrument from the top and
measuring the time of its fall to giving it to the building's superintendent
in return for a look at the plans. A modern version of the puzzle asks how
a personal computer can balance a checkbook. An elegant solution is to sell
the machine and deposit the money.
Jon Bentley, More Programming Pearls
It's a well known fact that computing devices such as the abacus were
invented thousands of years ago. But it's not well known that the first use
of a common computer protocol occured in the Old Testament. This, of course,
was when Moses aborted the Egyptians' process with a control-sea..."
Tom Galloway
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things
they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
Andy Rooney
If the automobile had followed the same development cyclee as the
computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per
gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside."
Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that
have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally
mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
Professor Edsger Dijkstra
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense.
Professor Edsger Dijkstra
PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
Professor Edsger Dijkstra
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Professor Edsger Dijkstra
Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the
ones in movies
Bill Bulko
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
Unknown
An apprentice carpenter may want only a hammer and saw, but a master
craftsman employs many precision tools. Computer programming likewise
requires sophisticated tools to cope with the complexity of real
applications, and only practice with these tools will build skill in their use.
Robert L. Kruse
Data Structures and Program Design
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of Fortran.
Alan Perlis
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
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
Kulawiec
Real Programmers don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for wimpy applications
programmers.
Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide
whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and
crystallography weenies.
Real Programmers don't write in PASCAL, or BLISS, or ADA, or any of those pinko
computer science languages. Strong typing is for people with weak memories.
Real Programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should
be hard to understand.
Real Programmers don't write specs -- users should consider themselves lucky to
get any programs at all and take what they get.
Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires you to
changer 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.
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes
and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum
tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons.
Popular Mechanics, March 1949
In pioneer days they used oxen for heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn't
budge a log, they didn't try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn't be trying
for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers.
G. Hopper
Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.
G. Hopper
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee
-- that will do them in.
Bradley's Bromide
I have a cat named Trash. In the current political climate it would seem
that if I were trying to sell him (at least to a Computer Scientist), I
would not stress that he is gentle to humans and is self-sufficient, living
mostly on field mice. Rather, I would argue that he is object-oriented.
Roger King
Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in
the world that just don't add up.
James Magary
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
thinks of complaining.
Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they
foul up there's no law against wacking them around a little.
Porterfield
pixel, n.: A mischievous, magical spirit associated with screen displays.
The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology: Witness the
sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial intelligence, and the
trolls in the marketing department.
Jeff Meyer
If we had less statemanship we could get along with fewer battleships.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Before a war military science seems a real science, like
astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.
Rebecca West
War is just to those to whom war is necessary.
Titus Livius
Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned
in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)
address at Guildhall, London, 7/12/45
Setting loose on the battlefield weapons that are able to
learn may be one of the biggest mistakes mankind has ever
made. It could also be one of the last.
Richard Forsyth - Machine Learning for Expert Systems
I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead
Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't inquire
too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has
more moral principle than the average Indian."
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
Some people imagine that nuclear war will mean instant and painless death.
But for millions this will not be the case. The accounts of the injured
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of the doctors who tried to tend them,
witness to the horrors and torments which would be magnified thousands
of times over in the kinds of attack we analyse here. . .
Stan Openshaw - Doomsday
Still other respected writes, such as Rufus Miles Jr. and Stanford
Univerity's Barton Bernstein, have effectively refuted Truman's
oft-repeated argument about the number of American lives saved by
the bomb. Citing the most recently de-classified materials, Bernstein
could not find a worst-case prediction of lives lost higher than
46,000-even if an invasion had been mounted, which, as noted, was
deemed highly unlikely by July 1945. Most estimates went no higher than
20,000 combat deaths. "The myth of the 500,000 American lives saved",
Bernstein concludes, "thus seems to have no bases in fact."
The Nation, May 10, 1993, pg. 641.
To conclude, all other living creatures live orderly and well, after
their own kind: we see them flock and gather together, and ready to
make head and stand against all others of a contrary kind: the lions
as fell and savage as they be, fight not with one another: serpents
sting not serpents, nor bite one another with their venomous teeth:
nay the very monsters and huge fishes of the sea, war not amongst
themselves in their own kind: but believe me, man at man's hand
receiveth most harm and mischief.
Pliny The Elder
We must be borne with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words
for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and
squalling with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass
there is but one direction, and time is it's only measure.
Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz)
Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude
in those about us, and in the brilliance of their gifts
some tragic dividing of forces on their ways is, on this
short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.
Walter Pater (1839-1894)
I have a dislike for the sanctimonious who enjoy taking away people's
pleasures with the excuse that it is good for them to be without it while all
the time they are indulging their pleasure in contemplating their own virtue.
Victoria Holt (from Daughter of Deceit)
Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with
their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle. . . chew the
cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are
the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number;
or that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre,
hopping, though loud and troublesome _insects_ of the hour.
Edmund Burke
Reflections on the Revolution in France
[D]esires cannot be observed, counted, or measured; they are inferred from
what people say and do. If each of us constructs a model of other minds by
analogy with his own, it may be easier to imagine that some external force
-- society, culture, etc. -- causes members of the opposite sex to act at
variance with their truest implulses than it is to imagine that males and
females have different impulses.
Donald Symons
Plasticity is a double-edged sword: the more flexibile an organism is the
greater the variety of maladaptive, as well as adaptive, behaviors it can
develop; the more teachable it is the more fiully it can profit from the
experiences of its ancestors and associates and the more it risks being
exploited by its ancestors and associates; the greater its capacity for
learning morality the more worthless superstitions, as well as traditions
of social wisdom, it can acquire; the more cooperatively interdependent the
members of a group become the greater is their collective power and the
more fulsome are the opportunities for individuals to manipulate one
another; the more sophisticated language becomes the more subtle are the
lies, as well as the truths, that can be told.
Donald Symons
The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former
the music is always greater than its performance - whereas the way jazz is
performed is always more important than what is being played.
Andre Previn
Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead
of their brains
John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)
Now I shall speak of evil as none has
Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;
The white-hosed moron torturing a black
Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;
Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;
Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;
Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,
Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) - from Pale Fire
Stay away from that jazz man, Lisa. Nothing personal, I just fear the unfamiliar
Marge Simpson (The Simpson's)
He should be most proud that the PMRC wants to put their obscene lyrics
sticker on his `Jazz From Hell' -- which is an instrumental album.
Tony Shepps
Does that mean that Calculus with Sets & mappings is Calculus S&M?
Professor Hrusa (CMU)
I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be
beating a dead horse.
Woody Allen
Bondage on a budget is much more satisfying.
Kevin A. Geiselman
Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.
Senator Dan Quayle
US News and World Report (10/10/88)
Now, if you play straight with me, you'll find me a considerate employer.
But cross me, and you'll soon discover that under this playful, boyish,
exterior beats the heart of a ruthless, sadistic maniac.
Edmund Blackadder - Head
I finally found a bank I can really enjoy. It's S&M banking, at Naughty
American Savings & Moan. It's great. They give you like a free whipping
with every deposit. And they have dominatrix tellers and crawl-up banking-my
favourite. I went in to see my customer sadist representative the other day,
and she said "Shut up! Sit Down! Give me that!" It felt great. It kept me
tied up there all day. I applied for a loan. I was turned down. I felt
humiliated. I just *loved* it. Naughty American Savings & Moan.
The bank that gives you what you *really* deserve.
Marilyn Pitman, "All Out Comedy"
The life of human beings is very short. We are all going to die.
Why should we cling so much to power?
Algerian President Muhammad Boudiaf,
seconds before being assassinated. Newsweek July 13, 1992
Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was
going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and
then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.
Joseph Campbell, _Creative Mythology_
Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live, but which
of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God.
Socrates, in the Apology
Look, I really don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if
you're alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around
alot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite
of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quite, you're not living.
You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and
colorful and lively.
Mel Brooks
Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
in the real world.
Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
You only live once, so live under as many false names as possible.
Dana McManus
Life is one long process of getting tired.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.
Kathy Norris
It seems to me to be a typical triumph of modern science to find the
only part of Randolph that was not malignant, and remove it.
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), when Randolph Churchill had a
benign tumour removed from his lung
I was far too polite to ask.
Gore Vidal, when asked whether the first person
he had slept with was male or female
Thank you
Whistler (1834-1903), when approached by a man who said
"I passed by your house this morning, Mr Whistler"
I've had a wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing;
if you can fake that, you've got it made.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem.
If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
John Paul Getty
My boy, when I want to play with a prick, I'll play with my own.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946) , when Louis B. Mayer (head of MGM)
invited him to a round of golf
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all
other philosophers are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should
add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks - 1956 (p.48)
Cartesian, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of
the celebrated dictum, _Cogito ergo sum_. . . The dictum might
be improved, however, thus: _Cogito cogito _ _ergo cogito sum_--
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am"; as close
an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) - The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary
Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for
science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and
probably wrong.
Richard P. Feynman
University President: "Why is it that you physicists always require so
much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires
nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers . . . and the Department
of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers."
Told by Isaac Asimov
It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a
philosopher to speak her mind.
Kahlil Gibran
By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy.
If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates (470-399 BC)
If you want to get the plain truth, Be not concerned with right and wrong.
The conflict between right and wrong Is the sickness of the mind.
Seng-Ts'an
Quite a number of people also describe the German classical author, Shakespeare
as belonging to the English literature, because - quite accidentally born at
Stratford-on-Avon, he was forved by the authorities of that country to write
in English.
"Deutshcer Weckruf und Beobachter," 1940
Oh damn. Another clever plan shot to hell by its transparency.
Mike Shappe
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.
W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in
a mystery inside an enigma.
future Prime Minister of the UK, Winston Churchill
broadcast on October 1, 1939
Winston Churchill - Radio Speech, 1. Okt. 19
My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows
enough about what's really going on to be scared.
P.J. Plauger
Aviation is proof, that given the will,
we have the capacity to achieve the impossible.
Eddie Rickenbacker
If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22,
it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation.
Tom Stoppard
This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He's doomed.
Harry Guggenheim, millionaire aviation enthusiast
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
Marechal Ferdinand Foch,
Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre
Quayle was very enthusiastic about signing author Tom Clancy to the National
Space Council as an unpaid consultant (see his quote re: Red Storm Rising).
Clancy, however, was not Quayle's first choice; that honor went to famed
aviator Clutch Cargo. A plan to approach him and offer him the position was
scuttled when it was discovered that Mr. Cargo is a fictional character.
reported in The New Republic, 7/3/89
Life is merely the slowest possible rate at which you can die.
Unknown
Your life is a Fellini movie lacking only Anita Ekberg with a cat on her head.
Camille Paglia - Spy Magazine
There is a difference between art and life and that difference is readability.
Marian Engel
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries
disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Since this Galaxy began, vast civilizations have risen and fallen, risen
and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think
that life in the Galaxy must be (a) something akin to seasick-- space-sick,
time sick, history sick or some such thing, and (b) stupid.
Douglas Adams - Life, the Universe and Everything
My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit
nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths. . .
Harlan Ellison
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes
wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Douglas Adams - Life, the Universe and Everything
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
Eric Hoffer
The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
Ralph W. Sockman
Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me.
That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know
that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a
stubbornly persistent illusion.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
. . .those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe
of the poetry by which they are surrounded . . . Sad, indeed, is it to see
how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the
grandest phenomena-- care not to understand the architecture of the heavens,
but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the
intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!
Herbert Spencer
By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of
course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat,
they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice
nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes
are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race,
politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who
both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they
are peculiarly the virtues of science.
Jacob Bronowski
Those cave paintings are wonderful, but like everything we know, they are
not too wonderful to be true. It is their reality that gives them wonder,
and while there will never come a time when some of us will not wish for
more than we can have, the happiest of us will wait confidently for other
tangible finds. We treasure the cave at Altamira where a century ago a
little girl first saw the great painted bison. New caves will be found,
year after year, in lab or clinic or sky or ocean depth, or even in ancient
markings. That is the promise of real science, which cannot allow wish to
rule mind, but nonetheless finds unendingly wonderful things.
Philip Morrison
The true poet and the true scientist are not estranged. They go forth
into nature like two friends. Behold them strolling through the summer
fields and woods. The younger of the two is much the more active and
inquiring; he is ever and anon stepping aside to examine some object
more minutely, plucking a flower, treasuring a shell, pursuing a bird,
watching a butterfly; now he turns over a stone, peers into the marshes,
chips off a fragment of rock, and everywhere seems intent on some special
and particular knowledge of the things about him. The elder man has more
an air of leisurely contemplation and enjoyment, is less curious about
special objects and features, and more desirous of putting himself in
harmony with the spirit of the whole. But when his younger companion has
any fresh and characteristic bit of information to impart to him, how
attentively he listens, how sure and discriminating is his appreciation!
The interests of the two in the universe are widely different, yet in no
true sense are they hostile or mutually destructive.
John Burroughs
The view of "technological progress" as a linear development, in which
some restless metaphysical impulse marches inexorably westward, is
inaccurate, implausible, but deeply ingrained.
Barry Katz, "Technology and Culture: A Historical Romance"
Place on one side of the scales the actual advantages of the most
sublime sciences, and on the other side the advantages of the
mechanical arts.... You will discover that far more praise has been
heaped upon those men who spend their time making us believe we are
happy, than on those who actually bring us happiness. How strangely we
judge!
Denis Diderot, (1713 - 1784)
Prometheus, most crafty god of all
You are happy that you stole the fire and tricked me
But it will be a great sorrow to you
And to men who come after
Hesiod, "Works and Days"
8th Century BC (?)
Man alone is brought forth naked and unarmed, his reason shines forth
much more brilliantly in inventing these things than ever it would have
if man had naturally possessed them.
Hugh of St. Victor (1096 - 1141)
[W]hatever in the arts you can learn, understand, or devise, is bestowed
on you by the grace of the seven-fold Sprit.
Theophilus, "On Divers Arts"
12th Century AD
I have heard from my master that those who have cunning devices use
cunning in their affairs, and that those who use cunning in their
affairs have cunning hearts. Such cunning means the loss of pure
simplicity. Such a loss leads to restlessness of the spirit, and with
such men the Tao will not dwell.
Chuang Tzu, 3rd Century BC
And if they despise me who am an inventor, how much more should they be
blamed who are not inventors but trumpeters and reciters of the works
of others.
Leonardo da Vinci
This operator did his office after a different manner from those of his
trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant, and then,
with rule and compasses, described the dimensions and outlines of my
whoe body, all which he entered upon paper, and in six days brought my
clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake
a figure in the calculation.
Jonathon Swift, "Gulliver's Travels"
They know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life
is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to
dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible,
have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of
nature, and show how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into
the heavens: They have discovered how the blood circulates, and the
nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost
unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the
earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.
Mary Shelley, "Frankenstein"
Gentleman! What do you think you are doing? You can't fight in here,
this is the War Room!
Peter Sellars, "Dr. Strangelove"
The bourgeoisie, in its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created
more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all
preceding generations together. Subjugation of nature's forces to man,
machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam
navigation, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for
cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of
the ground...
Marx and Engels, "The Communist Manifesto"
The day is long since past when one had to decide whether to cast one's
lot with "pro-technological" or "anti-technological" forces. Serious
thinkers understand that technology, for better or for worse, is part
of the human condition, that it always has been, and that it presumably
always will be. The task at hand is to render it servicable to human
life.
Barry Katz, "Technology and Culture"
Men are proud of [their technological] achievements.... But they seem
to have observed that this newly won power over space and time, this
subjugation of the forces of nature which is the fulfillment of a
longing that goes back thousands of years, has not increased the
amount of pleasurable satisfaction which they may expect from life and
has not made them feel happier.
Sigmund Freud
The equipment-free aspect of reality has become the height of artifice;
the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of
technology.
Walter Benjamin
The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes.
"Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. WE HAVE KILLED HIM - you
and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How
could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the
entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from
its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from
all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward,
foreward, in all direction? Is there still any up or down? Are we not
straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of
empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually
closing in on us? Do we not need to light candles in the morning? Do
we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying
God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too,
decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.
Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Gay Science"
God created the world out of nothing, but the nothingness still shows through.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
When you aim at nothing, you hit it.
Anonymous
Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.
William Faulkner (1897-1962)
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
Edward Dahlberg (1900-1977)
There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want
Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson
Begin slowly and lightly with a very relaxed wrist movement, and beat
steadily... Various special tools, like wire 'incorporatoprs' and spatulas,
have been suggested for this process, but nothing can compare for
efficiency with the human hand.
The Joy of Cooking - 1964 Edition p 516
To describe the beating of Egg Whites is almost as cheeky as advising how
to lead a happy life.
same source, p 515
When compelled to cook, I produce a meal that would make a sword swallower gag.
Russell Baker
Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.
Storm Jameson
I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking.
Katherine Cebrian
This is the trick, I give it to you, you can use it. We looked at the
program and divided it into the essential elements, which turned out to
be thirty odd. And we proceeded methodically to make one hundred
studies of each element. At the end of the hundred studies we tried to
get the solution for that element that suited the thing best, and then
set that up as a standard below which we would not fall in the final
scheme. Then we proceeded to break down all logical combinations of
these elements, trying to not erode the quality that we had gained in
the best of the hundred single elements; and then we took those
elements and began to search for the logical combinations of
combinations, and several of such stages before we even began to
consider a plan. And at that point, when we felt we'd gone far enough
to consider a plan, worked out study after study and on into the other
aspects of the detail and the presentation.
It went on, it was sort of a brutal thing, and at the end of ths
period, it was a two-stage competition and sure enough we were in the
second stage. Now you have to start; what do you do? We reorganized
all elements, but this time, with a little bit more experience, chose
the elements in a different way (still had about 26, 28, or 30) and
proceeded: we made 100 studies of every element; we took every logical
group of elements and studied those together in a way that would not
fall below the standard that we had set. And went right on down the
procedure. And at the end of that time, before the second competition
drawings went in, we really wept, it looked so idiotically simple we
thought we'd sort of blown the whole bit. And we won the competition.
This is the secret and you can apply it.
Industrial designer Charles Eames describing the
"trick" process that he and Eero Saarinen used in
designing a chair for a competition.
Spring
======
To what purpose April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted steps.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Macbeth, Act V, Scene V (MacBeth)
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island
of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not
meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its
own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing
together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas
of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either
go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace
and safety of a new dark age.
from "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft
"This is Just to Say"
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with
noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), _Count Robert of Paris_
Question with boldness even the existance of God; because if there be one,
He must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfold fear.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out,
which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
To doubt has more of faith ... than that blank negation of all such thoughts
and feelings which is the lot of the herd of church-and-meeting trotters.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and
torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half
the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called it the word of
a demon than the word of god. It is a history of wickedness that has served to
corrupt and brutalize mankind.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last
I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit
my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and hearses to one common pool! and
since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee,
though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!
Herman Melville (1819-1891) - Moby Dick
Wer mit Ungeheuern ka mpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
Und wenn du lange in einem Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.
(Translation)
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And
if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by
the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated
and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity
at the illiteracy of scientists, Once or twice I have been provoked
and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second
Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative.
C. P. Snow, "The two Cultures"
The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly
being split into two polar groups.... Literary intellectuals at one pole--at
the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists.
Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.
C.P. Snow, _The Two Cultures_ and the Scientific Revolurion_
(1959 Rede Lecture) p. 3
The Creation of the Universe was made possible by a grant from Texas Instruments.
Credits, "The Creation of the Universe"
(A PBS scientific documentary)
I wish I could drink like a lady
I can take one or two at the most.
Three and I'm under the table --
Four and I'm under the host!
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
[when asked to compose a poem on the spot, after four drinks]
Higgeldy piggledy, my white hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen.
You cannot persuade her with gun or lariat
To come across for the proletariat.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
"...a certain gentleman who shall be nameless, being
already possessed of all the other characteristics
of one born out of wedlock..."
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
[About a bridge partner]
He is beyond question a writer of power; and his power lies in his ability
to make sex so thoroughly, graphically, and aggressively unattractive that
one is fairly shaken to ponder how little one has been missing.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
[From a book review]
"Where does she find them?"
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) Upon hearing
Clare Boothe Luce admit she:
"was always kind to her inferiors"
`You did what you thought was right,' she said, surprisingly sympathetically.
But then she added, `Do be careful not to do what you think's right again. It
does seem to have disasterous results.'
John Mortimer,
"Rumpole for the Prosecution", p.246 (hb)
As an old man, Bill, looking back on one's life, it's one of the things that
strikes you most forcibly--that the only thing that's taught anyone anything
is . Not success, not happiness, not anything like that.
Malcolm Muggeridge, 9/5/80, in Buckley's , p.464
What if a demon crept after you one day or night in your loneliest solitude and
said to you: `This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to
live again and again, times without number; and there will be nothing new in it,
but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably
small and great in your life must return to you, and everything in the same
series and sequence... The eternal hour-glass of existence will be turned again
and again--and you with it, you dust of dust!'--Would you not throw yourself
down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? Or have you
experienced a tremendous moment in which you answered him: `You are a god and
never did I hear anything more divine!' If this thought gained power over you
it would, as you are now, transform and perhaps crush you; the question in all
and everything: `do you want this again and again, times without number?' would
lie as the heaviest burden upon your actions.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, [1977],
edited and translated R.J. Hollingdale, pp.249-250
Live long and prosper, die short and in poverty, makes no difference to me.
Marian Dodson/Anna Woodruff
Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.
Andre Gide (1876-1951)
Heaven preserve me from littleness and pleasantness and smoothness.
Give me great glaring vices, and great glaring virtues, but preserve
me from the neat little neutral ambiguities.
Violet Trefusis
In a letter to Vita Sackville-West, October 25, 1918
If you're going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.
Leo Rosten
There is scarcely an occurrence in nature which, happening at a certain
time, is not looked upon by some persons as a prognosticator either of
good or evil. The latter are in the greatest number, so much more
ingenious are we in tormenting ourselves than in discovering reasons
for enjoyment in the things that surround us.
Charles Mackay
Extraordinary Popular Delusions. . .
It's not peace I want, not mere contentment.
It's boundless joy and ecstasy for me.
Kugell
The bigger the real-life problems, the greater the tendency for the
discipline to retreat into a reassuring fantasy-land of abstract theory
and technical manipulation.
Tom Naylor
Theorists almost always become too fond of their own ideas. It is
difficult to believe that one's cherished theory, which really works
rather nicely in some respects, may be completely false.
Francis Crick
No theory is good except on condition that one uses it to go beyond.
Andre Gide (1876-1951)
There are. . . scientific works-- star catalogues, for example-- which are
not art; but the theoretical structures of Gauss, Einstein, or Maxwell are
original, individual, "very personal" responses and expressions of exactly
the same kind as the creative works of Beethoven or Dostoievski.
James R. Newman
To hate is to study, to study is to understand,
to understand is to appreciate, to appreciate is to love.
So maybe I'll end up loving your theory.
John A. Wheeler
Eagles soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
Elf Sternberg
.. postmodernity, once the plaything of smarty-pants French guys, in
truth belongs to the engagingly stupid.
Newsweek
That is no ordinary rabbit... 'tis the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered
rodent you ever set eyes on
Tim the Enchanter (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
To my daughter Leonora without whose never failing sympathy and
encouragement this book would have been completed in half the time.
P.G. Wodehouse, quoted in Pepper's , p.199, #14
Nothing is guaranteed, except 3-D porn.
Mike Kuniavsky, President, Ann Arbor Film Cooperative on the
difficulties of running a successful film series.
(Village Voice, 5/25/93)
You are worth your weight in popcorn husks stuck between my teeth,
and nobody needs you like I do.
Meryn Cadell
"ABC News will be right back with the Great Quake of '89,
brought to you by Subaru."
ABC News, October 18, 1989.
If you are not a part of the solution then you are a part of the precipitate.
Unknown
Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and
spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute
geometry that even stones -- maybe only the stones -- understood.
Annie Dillard _An American Childhood_
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room
looking for a black cat which isn't there.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Creditable arguments by respected scientists have led to the
unfortunate conclusion that we cannot exist.
Stuart Kaufmann in "The Origins of Order"
I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that
they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that
disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation... It is
precise mathematically, but the mathematics is far too difficult for
the individuals that are doing it, and they don't draw their conclusions
with any rigour. So they just guess.
Richard P. Feynman - on superstring theory
Now is the time for everyone who believes in the rule of reason to speak
up against pathological science and its purveyors.
John A. Wheeler
But then . . . it used to be so simple, once upon a time.
Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the
scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain
stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason,
the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming
things of superstition.
Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like "Hurrah,
I've discovered Boyle's Third Law." And everyone knew where they stood.
But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially
big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter
and creation, and people stopped patiently building their little houses
of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting
interested in the chaos itself-- partly because it was a lot easier to
be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns
that you could put on a t-shirt.
Terry Pratchett - Witches Abroad
There has to be some way to measure success in the Service.
British Leyland can measure success by the size of its profits.
.... However, the Civil Service does not make profits or losses.
, we measure success by the size of our staff and budget.
Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay, [1988], p.59
When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like
the environment ... it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, on the Falklands Conflict.
I admire his confidence in talking about a subject of which he has taken
the trouble to learn so little.
Ernest Rutherford on Lord Kelvin
We seem to have achieved the remarkable situation where nearly half the
population is telling the other half what it should be doing and thinking,
and checking up that it is doing it.
Phillip, The Duke of Edinburgh,
[1982]: 5. Community Health, p.99
Women's liberationists spread the work that...the only peaceful family is
one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband in androgynous.
R. Emmett Tyell, [1984], p.127
Psychographic marketing techniques helped Raid roach spray marketers discover
that the reason low-income Southern women were the heaviest users of roach
spray was that "a lot of their feelings about the roach were very similar to
the feelings that they had about the men in their lives," said the advertising
executive on the account. They said the roach, like the man in their life,
"only comes around when he wants food." The act of spraying roaches and seeing
them die was satisfying to this frustrated, powerless group.
American Demographics, Nov. 1991
There are worse things to be than a bigot. I'd rather keep company
with a bigot who lets me go my own way than a well-intentioned man
who presumes to know what is good for me.
Wendy Thrash
The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet
been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine
soul, is "What does a woman want?"
Freud, Letter to Marie Bonaparte, in Ernest Jones's
[1955] v.2, pt.3, ch.16;
quoted in the electronic Oxford Dict. of Quotations [1991]
I found out that when you get married the man becomes the head of the house.
And the woman becomes the neck, and she turns the head any way she wants to.
Yakov Smirnoff
I have seen the future and it doesn't work.
Robert Fulford
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on the
human face-- forever . . . And remember that it is forever.
George Orwell (1903-1950) - 1984
We cannot prove that those are in error who tell us that society has
reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said
all before us, and with just as much reason. On what principle is it
that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect
nothing but deterioration before us?"
Lord Thomas B. Macaulay (1800-1859)
English historian and statesman
Time is like a river, flowing endlessly through the universe. And if
you poled your flatboat in that river, you might fight your way against
the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and
rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste
dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of
empty hours, wasted minutes, years of repetition and time that has been killed.
Harlan Ellison
They say the veil that holds the future from us was woven by an angel of mercy.
Josephine Hart - from the book "Sin"
We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not
unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of
thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what
we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.
Richard P. Feynman
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 way
is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
C.A.R. Hoare
A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a
one-way street.
Doug Linder
As a wise programmer once said, "Floating point numbers are like sandpiles:
every time you move one, you lose a little sand and you pick up a little dirt.
And after a few computations, things can get pretty dirty.
Kernighan & Plauger
The Elements of Programming Style
Fast, fat computers breed slow, lazy programmers.
Robert Hummel
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Rich Cook
In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented
six feet downward and covered with dirt.
Blair P. Houghton, regarding C Code indentation
They HATE my father! They filled his well with
manure and made him talk to lawyers!
Jane Fonda in "Cat Ballou"
There is an old Vulcan saying: only Nixon could go to China.
Spock (Leanord Nimoy), Star Trek VI
Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges.
I don't have to show you any stinking badges!
"Treasure of the Sierra Madre",
the movie written and directed by John Huston
Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges.
In fact, we don't need badges. I don't have to show you any
stinking badges, you god-damned cabron and ching' tu madre!
Come out there from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you.
"The Treasure of Sierra Madre"
the book written by B. Traven (1935),
(page 161 of the Modern Library edition)
The love we hold back is the only pain that follows us here. And the
memory of that love shouldn't make you unhappy for the rest of your life.
From the movie "Always"
It's got cop tires, cop shocks, cop suspension, a 440 cubic inch power
plant with no catalytic converter, so it'll run good on regular gas,
is it the new Blues Mobile or what?
Elwood Blues, _The Blues Brothers_
It wasn't my fault. An old friend came in from out of town. My suit didn't
come back from the cleaners. I got a flat tire. My cab didn't show.
There was an earthquake, a terrible flood, locust!! IT WASN'T MY FAULT!!!
Jake Blues (John Belushi), _The Blues Brothers_
Well, I believe in the soul. The cock, the pussy, the small of a
woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch,
that the novels of Susan Sontag are overindulgent, overrated crap...
I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone! I believe that there oughta be a
constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter.
I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your
presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in
long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Good night.
Crash Davis, (catcher) played by Kevin Costner
to Annie Savoy, played by Susan Sarandon
in the movie Bull Durham
Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales, in a few short weeks it will be
spring. The snows of winter will flee away. The ice will vanish. And the
air will become soft and balmy. In short, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales,
the annual miracle of the years will awaken and come to pass, but you won't
be there.
The rivulet will run its soaring course to the sea. The timid desert
flowers will put forth their tender shoots. The glorious valleys of this
imperial domain will blossom as the rose. Still, you won't be here to see.
From every tree top some wild woods songster will carol his mating
song. Butterflies will sport in the sunshine. The busy bee will hum happy
as it pursues its accustomed vocation. The gentle breeze will tease the
tissels of the wild grasses, and all nature, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales,
will be glad but you. You won't be here to enjoy it because I command the
sheriff or some other officers of the country to lead you out to some remote
spot, swing you by the neck from a knotting bough of some sturdy oak, and let
you hang until you are dead.
And then, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales, I further command that
such officer or officers retire quickly from your dangling corpse, that the
vultures may descend from the heavens upon your filthy body until nothing
shall remain but bare, bleached bones of a cold-blodded, copper-colored,
blood-thirsty, throat-cutting, chili-eating, sheep-herding, murdering
son-of-a-bitch.
United States Vs. Gonzales (1881)
United States District Court, New Mexico Sessions.
Reprinted in Peter W. Lewis and Kenneth D. Peoples,
The Supreme Court and the Criminal Process: Cases and Coments
(W. B. Saunders Co.: Philadelphia, 1978), pp. 1036-1037
Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him.
Paul Eldridge
No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
Sir Frederick G. Banting
An idea is not responsible for the people who think it.
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all
others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking
power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively
possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it
is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone,
and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it... He who
receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself
without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine,
receives light without darkening me. That ideas should be
spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and
mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition,
seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by
nature...
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
It's not whether you win or lose, but who gets the blame.
Blaine Nye - former Dallas Cowboy
I'm in favor of it.
John McKay - Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach
following a loss to Cleveland when asked
what he thought of his team's execution
Because if it didn't work out I didn't want to blow the whole day.
Paul Hornung - Green Bay Packers
when asked why he got married before noon
My best score ever is 103, but I've only been playing for 15 years.
Alex Karras - Detroit Lions defensive lineman on his golf game
Welcome to The Lou Holtz Show. Unfortunately, I'm Lou Holtz.
Lou Holtz - Arkansas football coach
opening his weekly television program
during one particularly tough stretch
I'm glad we're not going to the Gator Bowl.
Lou Holtz - Arkansas football coach
after being showered with oranges thrown by fans celebrating
the Razorbacks' invitation to the Orange Bowl
Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics.
I'd already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy.
Jack Kemp - Former Buffalo Bills quarterback
and U.S. House Representative
Anbybody with ability can play in the big leagues today, but
to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did,
I think that's a much greater feat.
Bob Uecker
The way to catch a knuckle ball is to wait until
the ball stops rolling and then pick it up.
Bob Uecker
I've never cut a guy hitting that high before. But he
was making the rest of us look bad with that average.
Earl Weaver - manager Baltimore Orioles after
cutting outfielder Drungo Hazewood who was
hitting .583 in spring training
You've got to remember - I'm seventy-three.
Ty Cobb - in 1960 explaining why he would
only hit .300 against modern day pitching
In ten years, Ed Kranepool has a chance to be a star.
In ten years, Greg Goossen has a chance to be thirty.
Casey Stengel on a pair of twenty-year-olds
on his New York Mets squad
In game one of the 1954 World Series against Cleveland, New York Giants
manager Leo Durocher summoned left hander Don Liddle from the bullpen
with one out in the eighth inning, score tied, Clevland with a pair of
runners on base, and slugging first-baseman Vic Wertz at bat. Wertz
blasted a drive some 440 feet to the deepest part of the Polo Grounds,
only to have Giants center fielder Willie Mays turn his back on the
plate and make a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch on the dead run,
one of the most famous plays in baseball history. Replaced immediately
by another pitcher; Liddle walked to the dugout, laid down his glove,
and announced, "Well, I got my man."
If they were faked, you would see me in more of them.
Rod Gilbert - New York Rangers
when asked if hockey fights were faked
I went to a fight the other day and a hockey game broke out.
Rodney Dangerfield
When I said my prayers as a kid, I'd tell the Lord I wanted to
be a pro hockey player. Unfortunately, I forgot to mention
National Hockey League, so I spent sixteen years in the minors.
Don Cherry - Boston Bruins coach
At my lemonade stand I used to give the first glass away free and charge
five dollars for the second glass. The refill contained the antidote.
Emo Philips
I discovered my wife in bed with another man, and I was crushed.
So I said, 'Get off me, you two!'
Emo Philips
I'm from Downers Grove, Illinois. We had a blackout there the other day, but
fortuantely the police made him get back into his car before he got too far.
Emo Philips
The IRS sent back my tax return saying I owed $800. I said 'If you'll notice,
I sent a paper clip with my return. Given what you've been paying for things
lately, that should more than make up the difference'
Emo Philips
A friend of mine gave me a Philip Glass record. I listened to it for five hours
before I realized it had a scratch on it.
Emo Philips
You know, a lot of girls go out with me just to further their careers...
damn anthropologists.
Emo Philips
Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
Emo Philips
I was at a bar nursing a beer. My nipple was getting quite soggy.
Emo Philips
I was walking down the street, something caught my eye...
and dragged it fifteen feet.
Emo Philips
I went into Gus's artificial organ and taco stand. I said "Give me a bladder
por favor." The guy said "Is that to go?" I said "Well what else would I
want it for?"
Emo Philips
I was in a bar the other night, hopping from barstool to barstool,
trying to get lucky -- but there wasn't any gum under any of them.
Emo Philips
The other day a woman came up to me and said, "Didn't I see you on
television?" I said, "I don't know. You can't see out the other way."
Emo Philips
In our age... men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with
knowledge, and knowledge with information, and to try to solve
problems of life in terms of engineering.
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
An "empowered" organization is one in which individuals have
the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed
in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
Stephen R. Covey - Principle-centered Leadership
The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom...for we never know what is
enough until we know what is more than enough.
William Blake (1757-1827)
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 (1879-1955)
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 - Joe's Garage ( -Dec 4, 1993)
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through
ignorance that we can solve them.
Isaac Asimov
It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward.
Ignorance is never better than knowledge.
Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)
Trying is the internalization of the failure of omnipotence.
Brian O'Shaugnessy
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man
confines himself within ancient limits.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
There's an old saying: He who plays with fire sometimes throws light
on the situation.
Perry Mason - Raymond Burr
Clarke's Second Law: The only way to discover the limits of the
possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"
I could be chasing an untamed ornithoid without cause.
Lt. Commander Data - Star Trek, TNG
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"
I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant
little starbursts of _writing_ from the Book of Revelation than
anything else in the English language-- and it is not because
I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith,
but because I love the wild power of the language and the
purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music."
Hunter S. Thompson
_Generation of Swine_
That is the problem with this rich and anguished generation.
Somewhere a long time ago they fell in love with the idea that
politicians-- even the slickest and brightest presidential
candidates-- were real heroes and truly exciting people. That
is wrong on its face. They are mainly dull people with corrupt
instincts and criminal children.
Hunter S. Thompson
- Generation of Swine
At the end of the decade, no one will be sure of anything except sex
will kill you, politicians lie, rain is poison, and the world is run by
whores. These are terrible things to accept, even if you are rich.
Hunter S. Thompson
The only aesthetic question that working artists discuss is
where to buy decent turpentine.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
The history of art is the history of revivals.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Art history is the nightmare from which art is struggling to awake.
Robert Fulford
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us
who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people
might think we're stupid.
Jules Feiffer
An unwarlike Marine is as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the
black flag and begin slitting throats.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows
to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Conscience: the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere,
to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose,
pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the
assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs
are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a
definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they
begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
[1927]: "Life under Bureaucracy", pp.241-2
Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution.
Edward Teller
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
Douglas Adams
"Welcome to Occupied Mexico"
seen spray painted on underpass in Salinas, California
Conjugation of the verb "firm"
I am firm. You are stubborn. He is pig-headed.
Dr. K. J. Stavrinides
"There is no singular historic distinction to this particular
rest area site, other than it is part of the stage for
greater happenings. A witness to the tides of history."
an excerpt from an actual rest area site in South Dakota:
If the truth were self-evident, eloquence would be unnecessary.
Cicero, De Oritare
A preacher named Gaskin once said, "Between ego and
entropy, there is no need for a Devil."
Spider Robinson _Time Pressure_
I've been a chief executive for something for 15 years and now that
I have some time to myself, I realize working is overrated.
Fay Vincent
We have our brush and colors - paint Paradise and in we go.
Nikos Kazantzakis
I hate to hunt down a tired metaphore.
Lord Byron (1788-1824) "Don Juan"
Oh wait, I think I'm going to be able to use the word 'opium' in a
sentence. I opium mother is feeling better. No, I guess I'm not, either.
Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) from a book review
Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.
W. Edwards Deming
Old age is a shipwreck.
Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
The last years of life are the best, if you are a philosopher.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
Children are a great confort in your old age -
and they help you reach it faster, too.
Lionel Kauffman
Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives.
Maurice Chevalier
Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.
Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one
who has seen its brutality, its futility, its _stupidity_.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)
Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but never hit softly.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
You will kill ten of our men and we will kill one of yours,
and in the end it will be you who tire of it.
Ho Chi Minh
Give me an Army of West Point Graduates, and I'll win a battle. Give me
a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war.
General George Patton (1885-1945) West Point graduate
The price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood:
the person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost
it to the first scoundrel who is willing to risk dying to violate that
person's liberty. Are you free?
Andrew Ford
Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite
number of worlds...he said: `Do you not think it lamentable that with
such a vast multitude of worlds, we have not yet conquerrd one?'
Plutarch c. AD 46 - 120
On the Tranquility of the Mind
Start slow and taper off.
Walt Stack
Avoid running at all times.
Satchel Paige (1906?-1982)
Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will give you back the lever.
Marc Drexler - at a very crowded party
Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
Jules Renard (1864-1910)
It takes a lot of time being a genius.
You have to sit around so much doing nothing.
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day
listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across
the sky, is hardly a waste of time.
Sir J. Lubbock
The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people.
Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more.
Woody Allen
If comfort were the goal of evolution,
the process would have stopped with the clam.
Unknown
If you know that fundamentally there is nothing to seek,
you have settled your affairs.
Rinzai
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog:
Nobody really enjoys it and the frog generally dies as a result.
Anonymous
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not;
a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
The Right Honorable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests,
and to his imagination for his facts.
Richard Sheridan (1751-1816)
(Speech in reply to Mr. Dundas T. Moore)
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall
into an open sewer and die.
Mel Brooks
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
We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) - The Devils of Loudun
At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of
comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical
comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a
safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is
part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be
excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of
humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity
from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.
Eric Idle
Mathematicians are the people you don't want to meet at cocktail parties.
John D. Barrow
In order to solve this differential equation you look at it until a
solution occurs to you.
George Polya
It is unnecessary to understand electromagnetic theory before wiring a lamp
or to study physics in order to repair a pump. We count on our fingers and
give no heed to the proliferating implications of the act.
James R. Newman
Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our
equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are
only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Mathematical concepts and facts gain in vividness and clarity if they are
well connected with the world around us and with general ideas, and if we
obtain them by our own work through successive stages instead of in one lump.
George Polya
A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?
Ronald Reagan - Governor of California
Sacramento Bee, 3/12/66
...115,000 acres of trees in the state park system is
a lot to look at. How long can you look?
Ronald Reagan - Governor of California
Sacramento Bee, 4/28/66
I'm a fellow who bleeds every time a tree is cut down.
Ronald Reagan - Governor of California
Fresno Bee, 4/28/66
I don't believe a tree is a tree and if you've seen one you've seen them all.
Ronald Reagan - Governor of California
Sacramento Bee, 9/14/66
I just didn't say it.
Ronald Reagan - Governor of California
Associated Press, 10/5/66
War is nothing but the continuation of politics with a mixture of other means.
Karl von Clausewitz - Vom Kriege (On War)
Soldiers are the tradesmen of killing,
but officers are the managers of violence.
Harold Lasswell
If we had less statemanship we could get along with fewer battleships.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
He who uses force unsparingly, without reference against the bloodshed
involved, must obtain a superiority if his adversary uses less vigour in
its application.... To introduce into a philosophy of war a principle of
moderation would be an absurdity. War is an act of violence pushed to its
utmost bounds.
Karl von Clausewitz, 1819
Blessed be those happy ages that were strangers to the dreadful fury of
these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor I am satisfied is
now in hell, receiving the reward of his cursed invention, which is the
cause that very often a cowardly base hand takes away the life of the
bravest gentleman.
Don Quixote
"Streaking. Mooning. Ballwalking. Leg Shaving. Belly/Navel Shots.
Chicken Fights. Butt Biting."
Chapter headings from the Pentagon's Tailhook report
Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.
George Carlin's version of an old patriotic classic:
I pledge a lesson to the frog of the United States of America. And to
the wee puppet for witch's hands. One Asian, under God, in the vestibule,
with little tea and just rice for all.
Bette Bao Lord, age 8. [Newsweek, 7/6.]
I plead alignment to the flakes of the untitled snakes of a merry cow,
and to the Republicans for which they scam, one nacho, underpants,
invisible, with licorice and jugs of wine for owls.
Matt Groening's version, reproduced from _School Is Hell_
Bookstore avis screen deans ago, our fort fathers brownies
front it on fits continent a new nation, concerned in in berry
and bridge area to fire proposition that air me fire created erasers.
Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
if he'd been writing his notes on a Newton instead of paper.
To be or not to be is true.
apocrypha of George Boole
Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.
Lord Dunsany "My Ireland" 1938
It is one Thing, to show a Man that he is in an Error,
and another, to put him in possession of Truth.
John Locke "An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding" 1690
Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
Saint Exupery
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
Rabindranath Tagore
Lucas cannot consistently assert this sentence.
C. H. Whitely
"Shut up and tell me what that other idiot ish doing!"
"No, but look, if I've got to shut up, how can I --"
The knife at his throat became a hot streak of pain and Rincewind decided
to give logic a miss.
Cohen the Barbarian interrogates Rincewind
(Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)
I end with a word on the new symbols which I have employed. Most writers
on logic strongly object to all symbols. . . I should advise the reader
not to make up his mind on this point until he has well weighed two facts
which nobody disputes, both separately and in connexion. First, logic is
the only science which has made no progress since the revival of letters;
secondly, logic is the only science which has produced no growth of symbols.
Augustus De Morgan
For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve
the quality of life, please press three.
Alice Kahn
Television has raised writing to a new low.
Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject
matter, but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining.
Neil Postman
It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products
need people to survive.
Nicholas Johnson
[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.
Joseph Campbell
What scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying.
Nikita Krushchev
Ever since our love for machines resplaced the love we used to
have for our fellow man, catastrophes proceed to increase.
Man Ray
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that
men will begin to think like machines.
Sydney G. Harris
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of
the future is man may become robots.
Erich Fromm
I have heard my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work
like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like
a machine and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses
his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the
strivings of his soul. Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is
something which does not agree with honest sense.
Tzu-Gung
Real happiness, in politics, is a wide-open hammer shot on some
poor bastard who knows he's been trapped, but can't flee.
Hunter S. Thompson
A recent poll tells why the people of New Hampshire are supporting
George Bush. Forty percent like my foreign policy. Forty percent
support my economic policy. And 20 percent believe I make a good
premium beer.
George Bush campaigning in NH in 1988
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it
and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
It is fast approaching the point where I don't want to elect anyone stupid
enough to want the job.
Erma Bombeck
Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
Harry S Truman, Apr 28, 1959
I am against Government by crony.
Harold Ickes, on resigning as
Secretary of the Interior (Feb 1946)
In view of all the deadly computer viruses that have been spreading lately,
Weekend Update would like to remind you: when you link up to another
computer, you're linking up to every computer that that computer has ever
linked up to.
Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update
EMAIL - when it absolutely positively has to get lost at the speed of light.
Unknown
While modern technology has given people powerful new communication tools,
it apparently can do nothing to alter the fact that many people have
nothing useful to say.
Lee Gomes, San Jose Mercury News
Forget computers; it's hard enough getting humans to pass the Turing test.
David Bedno
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as
smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.
Bernard Avishai
Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of
the steamroller, you're part of the road.
Stewart Brand
This compact disc is made from analog masters recorded without noise
reduction. Half the tracks, in fact, were recorded in a dismal, cheap
basement eight-track studio with puddles of water on the floor.
Digital technology will now faithfully reproduce these noisy, low-fi,
un-professional masters at great expense.
Disclaimer on a CD
... Perhaps of even greater significance is the continuous and profound
distrust of science and technology that the environmental movement displays.
The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be
relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that
is safe, or even bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread
contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however,
it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement
displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and
technology, an area in which, until recently, no one -- even the staunchest
supporters of science and technology -- had ever thought to assert very
much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds,
that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have
unlimited confidence in them is FORECAST THE WEATHER!
-- for the next one hundred years...
George Reisman, "The Toxicity of Environentalism"
Ending a sentence with a preposition is
something up with which we will not put.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
We are bound by a language that makes up in
obscurity what it lacks in style.
Tom Stoppard
Obscurity _is_ its style.
Warren Pyecraft
It's only words . . . unless they're true.
David Mamet
Eros and language mesh at every point. Intercourse and discourse, copula
and copulation, are sub-classes of the dominant fact of communication.
George Steiner
Language is a virus from outer space.
William S. Burroughs
We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a
very grave danger they will be misinterpreted.
H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense.
....one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected
with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some
improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English,
you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of
the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark, its stupidity
will obvious, even to yourself. Political language- and with variations
this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists--
is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give
an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a
moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time,
one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless
phrase-- some _jackboot_, _Achilles' heel_, _hotbed_, _melting pot_, _acid
test_, _veritable _ _inferno_ or other lump of verbal refuse-- into the
dustbin where it belongs.
George Orwell (1903-1950) "Politics and the English Language", 1946
And since the stench of death will always attract flies and vermin,
the arrival of Geraldo was perhaps inevitable.
Gary Trudeau
I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used.
Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian
I have looked into the Abyss, and the Abyss has lookd into me.
Neither liked what we saw.
Brother Theodore
The tendency to believe that things never change, the inertia of daily
existence, is a staple of living. It has always been a delusion.
Donald A. Wollheim
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great
ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
No, no, no...you've got it all wrong...you can't act death. The
*fact* of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen--it's not gasps
and blood and falling about--that isn't what makes it death. It's
just a man failing to reappear, that's all--now you see him, now
you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and
gone the next and never coming back--an exit, unobtrusive and
unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until,
finally, it is heavy with death.
Tom Stoppard
Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I
think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves
you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried,
you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-
five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive
stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the
streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go
into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk
and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and
BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.
Denis Leary
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when
everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in
short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down,
at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization
does. In place of this we have death.
Charles Sanders Peirce
I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the
people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is
not to take power from them, but to inform them by education.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in 1820
There is no knowledge that is not power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
...when all government... in little as in the great thing, shall be
drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless
the checks provided of one government on another and will become as
venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in 1821
When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds
him of the richness and diversity of his existance. When power
corrupts, poetry cleanses.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you
want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
One grows tired of jelly babies, Castellan. One grows
tired of almost everything, Castellan, except power.
The Doctor - The Invasion of Time
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of
thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If
only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat.
Hermann Goering (1893-1946)
"If EasyFlow doesn't work: tough. If you lose millions because
EasyFlow messes up, it's you that's out the millions, not us. If
you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do
the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing.
This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software
packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese.
We didn't want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted."
Disclaimer from Haventree Softwares's Easy Flow package
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 a God-given humility to recognize
our fallibility and limitations.
Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. - The Mythical Man-Month
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I
must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want
to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to
share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way.
Richard Stallman - The GNU Manifesto
I have a friend who told me that the greatest computer system ever built
by mankind was by the Druids at Stonehenge. Well, that's an old story.
But what I like was that he felt that the Druids didn't die out, they
just went bankrupt trying to debug the software.
James Finkle
There is nothing that can be said by mathematical symbols and
relations which cannot also be said by words. The converse, however,
is false. Much that can be and is said by words cannot successfully
be put into equations, because it is nonsense.
C. Truesdell, _Six Lectures on Modern Natural Philosophy_
(Springer-Verlag, 1966)
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide
I have the terrible feeling that, because I have a white beard and am
sitting in the back of the theater, you expect me to tell you the truth
about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.
Orson Welles, "Someone to Love."
When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute
lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care
anything about the trifling lies told by individuals.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.
Viscout Bolingbroke
Sir Howard. It is the truth, Cicely, and nothing but the truth. But
the English Law requires a witness to tell the whole truth.
Lady Cicely. What nonsense! As if anybody ever knew the whole truth
about anything!
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Captain Brassbound's Conversion
Nun-beating? Good Lord, man, I can't condone THAT!
Opus
"He sez that only comic books offer the mature environment he needs as a
literate cartoon actor..."
"Notice, Opus, that EVERY woman in these things looks like Dolly Parton
in zero gravity!"
BLOOM COUNTY: The Final Days
"*I*... am undergoing `male bonding' with your father."
"DADDY!"
"...Apparently, it involves repeated vomiting!"
Opus
"Dear Chap, when was your last emotionally intimate interpersonal
experience with a female?"
"Me? ... My birth."
The Date Man and Opus
The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
It must have blown through someone's feet,
Like those of Caspar Weinberger.
Opus
"First," said Opus, reading from the government manual,
"Gather shovels. Second, quickly and without panic, take
refuge in countryside. . . Dig shallow trenches. Lie down in
trenches, cover self with wooden door or like object and await
blast. After shock wave passes, emerge and go to nearest
emergency Civil Defense Center and fill out emergency change
of address forms."
Bloom Country Babylon
Grpl blapt oot mipt speeb! Oot piffoo blabbo!
Opus, running for office
Grown men do not need leaders.
Edward Abbey
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise
enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
Edward Abbey
Great men can't be ruled.
Ayn Rand, _The_Fountainhead_
As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government,
so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it.
John Adams (1735-1826)
In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and
individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary.
Kathleen Norris
You simply *must* stop taking advice from other people.
Melissa Timberman
Ambition has but one reward for all:
A little power, a little transient fame,
A grave to rest in, and a fading name.
William Winter
To create a community of radical scholars, men and women who recognize
that rules and social conventions are arbitrary, but have mastered
them nonetheless-- a community which shares such a scorn and disrespect
for the present society that it can embrace the whole bundle of rules
and subvert them thereby-- that should be our goal.
Howard Adelman
Ask youself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting
for us in our graves--or whether it should be ours here and now and on
this earth.
Ayn Rand
Making fun of born-again christians is like hunting dairy cows with a
high powered rifle and scope.
P. J. O'Rourke
It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity, and fanaticism when they
come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to
get out, if only to preserve one's sanity.
Adam Dalgliesh
In the early years of the sixteenth century, to combat the rising tide
of religious unorthodoxy, the Pope gave Cardinal Ximinez of Spain
leave to move without let or hinderance throughout the land, in a
reign of violence, terror and torture that makes a smashing film.
from Monty Python's ``Spanish Inquisition,'' (episode 15)
What is it the Bible teaches us? - rapine, cruelty, and murder.
What is it the New Testament teaches us? - to believe that the
Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married,
and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Must then Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that
have no imagination?
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
Let us start a new religion with one commandment, "Enjoy thyself."
Israel Zanguill (1864-1929)
I once asked a Christmas Eve group of children if they believed in Santa
Claus. The very smallest ones answered without hesitation, "Why, of
course!" The older ones shook their heads. The little girls smiled but
said nothing. One future scientist asserted boldly "I know who it is";
and a little make-strong with his eye on gain said: "I believe in it all;
I can believe in anything." That boy, I realized, would one day be a
bishop.
Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
The Middle Eastern states aren't nations; they're quarrels with borders.
P. J. O'Rourke
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
Paul Erds
[The theory] seems a very dramatically appealing and simple explanation to me,
which therefore should be regarded with deep suspicion.
Roger M. Squires
The purpose of the present course is the deepening and
development of difficulties underlying contemporary theory. . .
A. A. Blasov
The aim of this article has been to show that our most successful theories in
physics are those that explicitly leave room for the unknown, while confining
this room sufficiently to make the theory empirically disprovable. It does
not matter whether this room is created by allowing for arbitrary forces as
Newtonian dynamics does, or by allowing for arbitrary equations of state for
matter, as General Relativity does, or for arbitrary motions of charges and
dipoles, as Maxwell's electrodynamics does. To exclude the unknown wholly as a
"unified field theory" or a "world equation" purports to do is pointless and of
no scientific significance.
Sir Hermann Bondi
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 which states that this has already happened.
Douglas Adams - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
It's an act of faith to be a writer in a postliterate world.
Rita Mae Brown
Writers will happen in the best of families.
Rita Mae Brown
I wanted my novel to be so witty that even
Republicans would be forced to enjoy it.
Rita Mae Brown
Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous.
I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual.
Rita Mae Brown
You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners.
Rita Mae Brown
Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda,
and entertainment without moral passion is television.
Rita Mae Brown
The last thing I have to say is that ice is the past tense of water.
I've always wanted to write that sentence and now I have.
Rita Mae Brown
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is
suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best
friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
Rita Mae Brown
Good judgment comes from experience, and often
experience comes from bad judgment.
Rita Mae Brown
I am one. Let me become many.
Rita Mae Brown - "Writer's Prayer"
Contrasting this modest effort [of Seymour Cray in his laboratory to build
the CDC 6600] with 34 people including the janitor with our vast development
activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership
position by letting someone else offer the world's most powerful computer.
Thomas J. Watson, IBM President, 1965
It seems Mr. Watson has answered his own question.
Seymour Cray
If introductory physics were taught the way that introductory computer
science seems to be taught, students would not see equational statements
of Newton's Laws until their first semester of graduate school.
Jerry Kuch
Law I: The difficulty of using a program is proportional
to its usefulness, inversely proportional to its speed, size,
and ease of learning, and is a constant.
Law II: When multitasking applications on a personal
computer, difficulty is conserved and is a constant.
Law III: Creativity is inversely proportional to the memory
size of a computer.
Robert Hummel
Jargon: Jargon consists of words, phrases and syntactic usages which
make communication easier between insiders in any field of study while
making it harder for outsiders, thereby linguistically enforcing the
elitism of expertise. Unless you use jargon liberally your career is
likely to stagnate, especially in the computer industry.
Forsyth & Rada - Machine Learning, Glossary
Comedy is tragedy plus time.
Carol Burnett
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
Edward Abbey
We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all.
Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696)
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but
among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for
others to laugh at him.
Thomas Szasz, [1973], p.58
. . . I think Bergman would never have been celebrated as
much had he made films in English because the language is so
cynical. If you say "I'm full of fear," or "I'm full of pain,"
in an English movie, people fall out of the seats with laughter.
Paul Cox
Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
Victor Borge
If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit
of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.
Herodotus (484-425 B.C.)
The muse of humor has once again looked down upon me, and found me worthy to
carry out the deeds of her noble cause.
Michael S. Rosenberg
What do they call a comedian who doesn't get any laughs?
A philosopher.
Phil Proctor
You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open
country under fire, and drop into your grave.
Quentin Crisp
If the end does not justify the means - what can?
Edward Abbey
Television is to news as bumperstickers are to philosophy.
Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
Organizing is an expression of self on many levels.
"Skratch" Garrison (aka. Ben Daniels)
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations,
if you live near him.
J.R.R. TOLKIEN
I find it extraordinary, Mr. Richards, that a man of
your stature only has one pair of pants.
Judge speaking to Keith Richards in 1977
Overfunded research is like cocaine. It corrupts the soul,
weakens the spirit and leads to prostitution.
Unknown
A beaver does not, as legend would have it, know which direction the
tree will fall when he cuts it, but counts on alacrity to make up for
lack of engineering expertise.
Anne Zwinger - Beyond the Aspen Grove, 1970
As one psychologist remarked, Humans are a dark cellar in which a maiden aunt
and a sex-crazed monkey are locked in mortal combat, the affair being refereed
by a rather nervous bank clerk.
A book (forgotten author & title) concerning the Jonestown colony.
Candidate Clinton promised to 'raise taxes on the people who did well
in the 1980's.' Since practically every American benefited from that
era of low inflation and strong growth and since President Clinton
wants to raise the taxes of nearly every citizen, I guess in a roundabout
way this is a promise he's actually trying to keep.
Ronald Reagan, New York Times editorial, Aug. 3, 1993
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
Will Durant (1885-1981)
Somewhere there is a great deal of squealing and grinding. The Great
Wheel of humanity has just lost a bearing
Christopher Knopf
speaking at Gene Roddenberry's memorial service
Several errant electrons jumped when they shouldn't have at a place they
shouldn't have, resulting in what shouldn't have. In short, a short.
Berke Breathed
Bloom County
The birth of an idea is that happy moment when everything appears
possible and reality has not yet entered into the problem.
Rudolph Diesel - Written shortly after one of his early
engine models had blown up and nearly killed him.
Football combines two of the worst things about American life.
It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
George Will
I've never met a human being who would want to read 17,000 pages of docu-
mentation, and if there was, I'd kill him to get him out of the gene pool.
Joseph Costello, President of Cadence
In this chapter, the present tense includes the past and future tenses,
and the future, the present; the masculine gender includes the feminine,
and the feminine, the masculine, and the singular includes the plural,
and the plural the singular.
Code of Dept. of Consumer Affairs, CA
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows
what they are.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
e. e. cummings (1894-1962)
Librarians are like crack dealers when it comes to hooking small children.
Spider Robinson
A poet who reads his own verse in public may have other nasty habits.
Robert Heinlein
Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly,
and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie
and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the
dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read
immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their
shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to
want concubines-- not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their
master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.
Robertson Davies - Tempest-Tost
The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as
can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned
secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by
M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows
of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-
sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy =
matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how
to read.
Terry Pratchett - Guards! Guards!
The skeptic may be pardoned for thinking that hypertext encourages
irrelevance. What the user can end up with is little more than a series
of footnotes, marginalia, and "see also" references-- items that have
historically been relegated to second-class citizenship in the good old
book format, with the added benefit of not having to stare at a lousy
screen display to read them. . . Indeed, when you boil it down to its
rudiments, hypertext seems to make one major claim: it makes computers work
almost as well as books.
Stephen Manes
Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the
month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people
are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either
(depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax
tadpole".
Bite the wax tadpole.
There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's
hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to
bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad,
but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
-- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle
I want to suggest to you today, that unless we have a tolerant attitude
toward mistakes - I might almost say "a positive attitude toward them" -
we shall be behaving irrationally, unscientifically, and unsuccessfully.
Now, of course, if you now say to me, "Look here, you weird Limey, are you
seriously advocating relaunching the Edsel?" I will reply, "No."
There are mistakes - and mistakes. There are true, copper-bottom mistakes
like spelling the word "rabbit" with three Ms; wearing e black bra under a
white shirt; or, to take a more masculine example, starting a land war in Asia.
These are the kind of mistakes described by Mr. David Letterman as
Brushes With Stupidity, because they have no reasonable chance of success.
John Cleese
It is regrettable for the education of the young that war stories are
always told by those who survived.
Louis Scutenaire
Power belongs to the titled few. Anyone can be strong.
James P. Carse "Finite and Infinite Games"
Strategic thinking is the art of outdoing an adversary always
remembering that he is trying to do the same to you.
Dixit & Nalebuff (Strategic Thinking)
To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies
the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane
system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say,
a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or an authority on Danish place names
and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but the weather or
the war (if there happened to be a war in progress, which is usual in this
barbaric age).
Robert Graves
[John] Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed
during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living
who are killed in war.
Isaac Asimov
Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia,
you have sand. [There is no need to worry about a protracted war because]
from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time.
Vice President Dan Quayle, 10/2/90
(reported in Esquire, 8/92)
TABLESPOONS
Teas Willis, and the sticky tours
Did gym and Gibbs in the wake.
All mimes were the borrowers,
And the moderate Belgrade.
"Beware the tablespoon my son,
The teeth that bite, the Claus that catch.
Beware the Subjects bird, and shred
The serious Bandwidth!"
He took his Verbal sword in hand:
Long time the monitors fog he sought,
So rested he by the Tumbled tree,
And stood a while in thought.
And as in selfish thought he stood,
The tablespoon, with eyes of Flame,
Came stifling through the trigger wood,
And troubled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and though,
The Verbal blade went thicker shade.
He left it dead, and with its head,
He went gambling back.
"And host Thai slash the tablespoon?
Come to my arms my bearish boy.
Oh various day! Cartoon! Cathay!"
He charted in his joy.
Teas Willis, and the sticky tours
Did gym and Gibbs in the wake.
All mimes were the borrowers,
And the moderate Belgrade.
Lewis Carrol's JABBERWOCKY as "recognized" by the Apple Newton, (c) 1993
Robert McNally. Permission is granted to reproduce this if the copyright
remains intact.
If Abraham Lincoln Had an Apple Newton
---------------------------------------
"Betty's urge At rest"
Foyer scrota and severe heavers ago our flashovers brought force on thy
cosmetician a new notion conceives in lubricate and deducted to the
prosecution that all men are crated quail.
Newer are unseated in a greased civil wear, toasting wealthier that
notion or andy otter nodding so conceptive and so detoxicated can loading
ensure. Wise are most on a great battle field of thatch war. Was have
cameo to deducted a prison of thatch flaccid, as a fiscal roasting palace
for those that here gaffs their levis that that nation might love. It is
altogether fetishist and perspire that we shushed dozes.
Butane a lawyer sense, weaken riot detected - weaken inert congregate -
weaken inert Harley - this ground. The brief men, lavishing and dished, who
squiggled here, have concentrated it. The world we'll little note, insuring
remember, what we sail here, but it can enslave forget wheat their did
here. It is for the living, wither, focus tube dislocated hearse to the
unfastened work which they who foisted Harvey thesauri snobby divorced. It
is rather forms to be here dissected to the great task romancing beefier us
- that from these humored dead we take incrusted deviating to that cause
frolic they gave the last full masseur of devotion - that we here highly
erosive that those diode she'll not have died in van - that this notion,
under God, shall heave a new birdie of freedom - and the government offish
people, bathe people, endeavor the pileup, shall not Persia vermouth
breath.
It seems that truth is progressive approximation in which the relative fraction
of our spontaneously tolerated residual error constantly diminishes.
R. Buckminster Fuller
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers,
you know something about it, but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot
express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make
the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry
about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea at first, and
so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you
actually did in order to get to do the work.
Richard Feynman (1918-88), 1966 Nobel Lecture.
A chicken is one egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
E.B. White (1899-1985)
Look, we're travelling faster than the speed of light. That means, by the
time we see something, we've already passed through it. Even with an IQ of
6000, it's still brown trousers time."
Holly, Red Dwarf
What the deuce is the Solar System to me? You say that we go round the sun.
If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me
or to my work.
Sherlock Holmes, in Doyle's , p.21
I'm not comparing myself to Newton or Aristotle. They didn't have a synthesizer.
Chip Davis (Mannheim Steamroller),
commenting on the idea of turning light into sound.
An idea Sir Isaac Newton came up with in 1666 based on Aristotle's work.
Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them
by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by
the immobility of our conceptions of them.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
A murder is nothing more than an extroverted suicide.
Monty Python
The essence of suicide is despair.
from the movie: Ninth Configuration -Vincent
The essence of suicide is ya don't collect the insurance.
from the movie: Ninth Configuration -Cutshaw
The Bible doesn't forbid suicide. It's a Catholic directive, intended
to slow down their loss of martyrs.
Ellen Blackstone
Suicide: Don't knock it if you ain't tried it.
Edward Abbey
The ready availability of suicide, like sex and alcohol, is
one of life's basic consolations.
Edward Abbey
There are circumstances in which suicide presents a viable option;
a workable alternative; the only sensible solution.
Edward Abbey
Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you
missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in
prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living.
Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the dead
Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives.
Unknown
If you want to commit suicide you can use my razor; it's electric, but you
can hang yourself with the cord.
Unknown
The passion for science and the passion for music are driven by the
same desire;to realize beauty in one's vision of the world.
Heinz Pagels
I had always loved beautiful and artistic things, though before
leaving America I had had a very little chance of seeing any.
Emma Albani
One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes
to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke rising from the
chimney and continue on their way.
Vincent Van Gogh
Animation is not the art of drawings that move, but the art of movements that
are drawn. What happens between each frame is more important than what happens
on each frame. Animation, therefore, is that art of manipulating the invisible
interstices between each frame.
Norman McLaren, of the National Film Board of Canada
The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and
seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end.
Henry Elsworth, US Patent Office, 1844
The greatest damage done by advertising is precisely that it incessantly
demonstrates the prostitution of men and women who lend their intellects,
their voices, their artistic skills to purposes in which they themselves
do not believe and that it teaches the essential meaninglessness of all
creations of the mind; words, images and ideas.
Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy
. . . there are those who think that Zeffirelli's Hamlet is the way to
treat Shakespeare. I think that cinema can handle much more. We somehow
expect cinema to provide us with meaning, to console us. But that's not
the purpose of art.
Peter Greenaway
I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before,
but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all
dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I
think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist
with respect to that which they destroy.
Peter Greenaway
For the difference between art and entertainment is, finally, one not so much
of direction as of degree: though all entertainment is not art, all art must
include entertainment. "Entertaining" means interest-holding, and what bores
and fails to involve has no real artistic value. Granted, art makes demands;
it entertains those who are willing and able to feel, perceive, and think more
deeply and arduously-- more courageously if you will-- rather than those who
always want to leave their thoughts behind, most likely because thought has
abandoned them.
John Simon
Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof.
Ashley Montague
Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket,
a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What have we to offer in exchange?
Uncertainty! Insecurity!
Isaac Asimov
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such
a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything
in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.
Isaac Asimov
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be
perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to
rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Stephen Jay Gould
There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are
scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is
imperfect. We have to treat it with humility. That is the human conditions;
and that is what quantum physics says. I mean that literally.
Jacob Bronowski
Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can
be counted counts.
Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton
In the world of human thought generally, and in physical science particularly,
the most important and fruitful concepts are those to which it is impossible
to attach a well-defined meaning.
H.A. Kramers
Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal
problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of
facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
Ernst Mach
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow
where only one grew before."
Thorstein Bunde Veblen-(1919) (1857-1929)
Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.
Karl Popper (1957)
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided
missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1965)
Science has 'explained' nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the
world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification.
Karl Popper (1982)
If the lord had meant us to have faith, he'd have given us lobotomies.
Zlatko
Seek simplicity, and distrust it.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
John Dewey
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows
enough about what's really going on to be scared.
P.J. Plauger, Computer Language, Programming on Purpose, p.29, March 1983
At an early age I decided that living a life of pious misery in the hope
of going to heaven when it's over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all
through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end.
A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture"
Thinking the world should entertain you leads to boredom and sloth.
Thinking you should entertain the world leads to bright clothes,
odd graffiti and amazing grace in running for the bus.
Ann Herbert
Happiness lies in conquering one's enemies, in driving them in front of
oneself, in taking their property, in savoring their despair, in outraging
their wives and daughters.
Genghis Khan (1162?-1227)
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a
body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is
to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? That one hundred
and fifty lawyers should do business together, ought not to be expected.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) "Autobiography" (1821)
Who does not know that... tight-lacing around the waist keeps the blood from
returning freely to the heart, and retains it in the bowels and neighboring
organs, and thereby inflames all the organs of the abdomen, which thereby
excites amative desires?"
Orson Fowler from an 1846 text on corsets
Ode To Spot
by DATA
(Note: DATA is an android on Star Trek: TNG and Spot is his cat.)
Felix Catus is your taxonomic nomemclature.
An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature
Your visual, olefactory and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations.
Your singular development of cat communications,
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rythmic stroking of the fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents.
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotions.
Oh, Spot....
The complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot
And do not comprehend.
I nonetheless consider you
A true and valued friend.
The perfect civil servant is the man who has a
valid objection to any possible solution.
A.H. Heats, 16 May 1965, quoted in Pepper's
[1987], p.58/15
Just because information has been published doesn't
mean it shouldn't be classified.
NSA director Lincoln D. Faurer
The direct use of force is so poor a solution to the problems of limited
resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.
David Friedman
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of
a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
Communism possesses a language which every people can understand - its
elements are hunger, envy, and death.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
It is more noble to give yourself completely to one person than to
labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.
Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961)
Because of a new government ban on chlorofluorocarbons, the US Air
Force is to refit all its nuclear missiles with new cooling systems
which don't use CFCs. This is to protect the environment while they
wait to deliver terminal global warming. The Environmental Protection
Agency concedes that it may be 'ironic' to make nuclear missiles more
eco-friendly, but regulations are regulations.
{Source: Internet with ""}
I repeat: our practical choice is not between a tax-cut deficit and a surplus.
It is between two kinds of deficits; a chronic deficit of inertia, as the
unwanted result of inadequate revenues and a restricted economy, or a temporary
deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy,
increase tax revenue and achieve - and I believe this can be done - a future
budget surplus. The first type of deficit is a sign of waste and weakness.
The second reflects an investment in the future.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
in a speech to the Economic Club of New York, Dec 14, 1962
The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort; with it a calm
passage is to be made across many a bad night.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Have you ever talked to a corpse? It's *boring*!
from An American Werewolf in London
I never see that prettiest thing---
A cherry bough gone white with Spring---
But what I think, "How gay 'twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree."
Dorothy Parker, "Cherry White"
from _Death_and_Taxes_
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
Stanislaw J. Lec
Death was in that poison'd wave -
And, in it's gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining --
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
If enough people told enough people to put their heads under trucks, I'm
sure they would do so. I wonder why no-one has thought of doing that?
Noel Coward (1899-1973)
Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Elanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real.
Perhaps they are.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a
journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Never lose your sense of the superficial.
Lord Northcliffe
The world, I have come to believe, is a very queer place, but we have
been part of this queerness for so long that we tend to take it for
granted. We rush to and fro like Mad Hatters upon our peculiar errands,
all the time imagining our surroundings to be dull and ourselves quite
ordinary creatures...
Loren Eiseley, _The Immense Journey_
I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came
from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
I live in my own place
have never copied nobody even half,
and at any master who lacks the grace
to laugh at himself -- I laugh.
inscribed over the door to Friedrich Nietzsche's house
No human thing is of serious importance.
Plato (427?-348? BC)
The last Christian died on the cross.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
The major contribution of Protestant thought to the knowledge of
mankind is its massive proof that God is a bore.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality
at any point.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse,
yet he has left it out of his heaven.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
1. Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good
for a man not to touch a woman.
2. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own
wife, and let every woman have her own husband...
8. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them
if they abide even as I.
9. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to
marry than to burn.
St. Paul, I Corinthians
The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral
was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the
view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is
regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological
facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration.
The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity
throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders
and unwholesome views of life.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Marriage and Morals"
I could prove God statistically.
George Gallup
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
Fletcher Knebel
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
Wallace Irwin (1875-1959)
The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are
extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive
displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every
case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts
down anything he damn well pleases.
Sir Josiah Stamp
"Give us a copper, Guv" said the beggar to the Treasury statistician,
when he waylaid him in Parliament square. "I haven't eaten for three
days." "Ah," said the statistician, "And how does that compare with
the same period last year?"
Russell Lewis
Like other occult techniques of divination, the statistical method has a private
jargon deliberately contrived to obscure its methods from non-practitioners.
G. O. Ashley
The masses seem to me worthy of notice in only three respects: first
as blurred copies of great men, produced on bad paper with worn plates,
further as a resistance to the great, and finally as the tools of the
great; beyond that, may the devil and statistics take them.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Statistical Analysis: Mysterious, sometimes bizarre, manipulations performed
upon the collected data of an experiment in order to obscure the fact that the
results have no generalizable meaning for humanity. Commonly, computers are
used, lending an additional aura of unreality to the proceedings.
Masturbation is nothing to be ashamed of. It's nothing to be
particularly proud of, either.
from "Basic Sex Facts For Today's Youngfolk" in
LIFE IN HELL by Matt Groening
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an
important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
from "Basic Sex Facts For Today's Youngfolk" in
LIFE IN HELL by Matt Groening
I'm going to Iowa for an award. Then I'm appearing at Carnegie Hall,
it's sold out. Then I'm sailing to France to be honored by the French
government -- I'd give it all up for one erection.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either.
Joseph Fischer
Slovotsky's Law number Twenty-Three:
Trouble with you Jewish girls is that your desire to DO
is in inverse proportion to your willingness to TALK about it.
Walter Slovotsky, _The Sleeping Dragon_ by Joel Rosenberg
Leave it to a girl to take the fun out of sex discrimination.
Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson
In some of the poorer areas of the world it is sadly true that sex
is the only luxury available to the ordinary man. Whether the
ordinary woman also considers it a luxury is open to question.
Hugh L. Keenleyside
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
There ain't no rules around here, we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of
a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee:
out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with
thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the night cometh,
wherein no man can work.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not
enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls
and looks like work.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don't.
Carrie Fisher
All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.
David Brower
50% of everything is below average.
Yogi Berra
Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there
have been interludes between wars.
John Christian Falkenberg
One who contends with immortals lives a very short life.
Homer, Book V of the Iliad
Always keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
Robert Heinlein
We would like to have Jerry Fallwell, Lyndon LaRouche, and Pat Robertson
chained to a radiator while Harlan Ellison reads them the U.S.Constitution.
Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's Christmas wish
from The Comic Buyer's Guide
Santy Claus, why? Why are you taking our Christmas tree? Why?
Cindy Lou Who
Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning
of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer conglomerates. Who'd
have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and
spirituality would mix so harmoniously? It's a beautiful world all right.
Calvin's Dad
Wretches hang that jurymen may dine.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Don't talk to me about Naval tradition. It's nothing but
rum, sodomy, and the lash.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
as reported by Sir Peter Gretton in "Former Naval Person," 1968.
The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.
Jack London (1876-1916)
Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
I become a whiny bitch. I want to know where he is and what he's doing
all the time and why isn't he with me. You do more for that person
than you would for anyone else. Falling in love is nice, but after
you've fallen in love it's not so nice because most guys are scum and
they always ruin it.
Aleta Blakely (18), in response to question "What's a
Telltale Sign You're Falling in Love?" (SF Chronicle)
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the
best, you very often get it.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive. One must
never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
Coco Chanel
Whatever you can do,
Or dream you can do,
Begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Begin it now.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.
Henry Van Dyke
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line
between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on
earth. So what the hell, leap.
Cynthia Heimel
"Lower Manhattan Survival Tactics" in Village Voice
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong
man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The
credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred
by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes
short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions,
and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the
triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails
while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.
James Randi
We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found
ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool;
and he who dares not, is a slave.
William Drummond
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not
reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out.
Sydney Smith (1771-1845)
When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing,
he has one good reason for letting it alone.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)
Just because I'm famous doesn't mean I have to take any crap.
Charles Barkley
You can's achieve anything without getting in someone's way.
Abba Eban
I don't know. I don't care. And it doesn't make any difference.
Jack Kerouac
Q: What's the difference between ignorance and indifference?
A: I don't know and I don't care.
One good thing about apathy, is you don't have to exert yourself
to show you are sincere about it.
Unknown
Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitude
toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I become that life
is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond to it.
Charles R. Swindoll
Scientists study the world as it is,
engineers create the world that never has been.
Theodore Von Karman
A scientist can discover a new star, but he cannot make one.
He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him.
Gordon L. Glegg
An engineer is an unordinary person who can do for one dollar
what any ordinary person can do for two dollars.
Anonymous
Thousands of engineers can design bridges.....,but the great
engineer is the man who can tell whether the bridge.....should be built at all.
Eugene C. Grace
All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which
train engineers will privail over those which train lawyers.
No nation has ever sued its way to greatness.
Richard Lamm
Adding engineers to a late project makes it later.
Brooke's First Law
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Rich Cook
There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some
temptation resisted.
James Branch Cabell
The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come again.
Anonymous
I can resist anything, except temptation.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
Mae West (1893-1980)
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Don't worry about temptation--as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.
Old Farmer's Almanac
Yield to temptation - it may not pass your way again.
Robert Heinlein
Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions.
It combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Man & Superman (c 1905).
Saintleness is also a temptation.
Jean Anouilh (b. 1910)
Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -
in nothing great or small, large or petty - never give in
except to convictions of honour and good sense.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Things forbidden have a secret charm.
Tacitus (55-118 AD)
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Nature is what she is, amoral and persistent.
Stephen Jay Gould
If God can create a stone too heavy for Him to lift, there is
something He cannot do; and if He cannot create a stone too heavy
for him to lift, there is something He cannot create. If there's
something God cannot do He is not omnipotent, and if there's
something He cannot create He is not omnipotent. Therefore God is
not omnipotent.
Elementary Symbolic Logic, 2nd Ed. Gustason & Ulrich
Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage.
Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed.
Soon, they became more like aquariums, and then hatcheries.
>From farm fingerling to frozen fishstick is a short swim.
Tom Robbins - Skinny Legs and All
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely
between Man and his G-d, I contemplate with sovereign reverence
that act of the whole American people which declared that their
legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus build-
ing a wall of separation between church and state.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
From a letter written to the Baptist congregation of
Danbury, Connecticut, January 1, 1802.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it
is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
I quote others only to better express myself.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)
Quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Wise men make proverbs but fools repeat them.
Samuel Palmer (c. 1710)
Nothing is said that has not been said before.
Terence (185 - 159 BC)
Quotations are a columnist's bullpen. Stealing someone else's
words frequently spares the embarrassment of eating your own.
Peter Anderson
Walt Disney - a typical sun-belt neo-fascist.
Orson Welles
In Cyberspace, the 1st Amendment is a local ordinance.
John Perry Barlow
Children are like TV sets. When they start acting weird, whack them
across the eyes with a big rubber basketball shoe.
Hunter S. Thompson, "Generation of Swine"
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
John Galsworthy
People shouldn't think that it's better to have loved and lost than to have
never loved at all. It's not, it's better to have loved and won.
All the other options really suck.
Dan Redican
The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
Salvador Dali
The Hitch Hiker's Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a
tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry.
Douglas Adams
"Could you really persuade," he said, "if we don't listen?"
Plato, Republic, 327c
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
He said, in feeble alarm, "You're trying to kill me!"
She said, "No, my dear. I simply don't want you to die a virgin."
Joanna Russ - Souls
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley:
LSD and UNIX. We don't belive this to be a coincidence.
Jeremy S. Andersen
"The William Tell Misfire Consolation Trophy: to Israeli tourism officials
for placing an ad (since withdrawn) stating that Jerusalem is `only a
stone's throw' from Tel Aviv."
People's Daily World's 2nd Annual Awards
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
B.F. Skinner
Every calculation based on experience elsewere fails in New Mexico.
Lew Wallace, Governor of Teritorial New Mexico 1878-1881
My work has been directed towards scientific research. I have never
engaged in what is termed 'production'.
Louis Lumiere
Giving a man space is like giving a dog a computer:
The chances are he will not use it wisely.
Bette-Jane Raphael
In Sweden, an empty automated Saab factory jump-started itself and assembled
24 cars and rolled them off the assembly line into the factory wall. A
worker finally discovered the mishap and found an impressive pile of chrome
and steel. A Saab official noted the damage was minimal. `Our assembly
lines run slowly, and we have big bumpers,' he said." I like it. The
robustness here was mechanical, and obviously was able to accommodate an
unintended run of at least 24 cars without major damage...
From Road & Track, November 1993:
For the man who studies to gain _insight_, books and studies are merely rungs
of the ladder he climbs to the summit of knowledge. As soon as a rung has
raised him one step, he leaves it behind. On the other hand, the many who
study to fill their memories do not use the rungs of the ladder for climbing,
but take them off and load themselves with them to take away, rejoicing at the
increasing weight of the burden. They remain below forever, since they are
carrying what ought to have carried them.
A.Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, ii.80
Byan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Oxford Univ. Press 1983
(reprinted, ppbk, 1987, 1989, ISBN 0-19-824484-3), (pp. 47)
My propositions serve as ellucidations in the following way:
anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical,
when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to
speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed it up.) He must transcend
these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
L.Wittgentstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.54
Byan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Oxford Univ. Press 1983
(reprinted, ppbk, 1987, 1989, ISBN 0-19-824484-3), (pp. 295)
To every man is given the key to the gate of heaven; the same
key opens the gates of hell.
Richard P. Feynman
"What Do _You_ Care What Other People Think?"
From the chapter entitled "The Value of Science"
Ken doesn't spell very well. Fortunately, he has other virtues.
Dennis Ritchie
[It] was the kind of place where they spell trouble TRUBIL,
and if you try to correct them, they kill you.
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Poor spelling does not prove poor knowledge,
but is fatal to the argument by intimidation.
Gene Ward Smith
Let us knot coin gnu werds huitch are spelld rong.
Rik Fischer Smoody
But I want credit for all the words I spelled *right*!
Beetle Bailey
Collaboration: A literary partnership based on the false assumption
that the other fellow can spell.
Unknown
Nothing you can't spell will ever work.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Yabi was
cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched
turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a
mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically
dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods
later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Yabi are renowned
for being remarkably short and bad-tempered.
Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.
Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
All men of action are dreamers.
James G. Huneker
To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream;
not only plan, but also believe.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
In order to invent the airplane you must have at least a
thousand years' experience dreaming of angels.
Arnold Rockman
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which
escape those who dream only by night
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
Eleonora
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and
dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts
are dust and ashes, and forgot.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman #19: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Living that can be a smile
Carrying me just for a while
A hand to hold me
A dream to guide me
Frank Duval/Kalina Maloyer: Living Like a Cry
What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have
become but unruly, stormy innnovators and dreamers of useless
dreams, if not for the efforts of their schools?
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
"Beneath the Wheel"
And they all agreed that the expression _on_ the face was not
one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for
that expression, but no one would have said terror, for it was
not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was
not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense
of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them
would have felt that the expression said, with great finality:
a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but
only, _only_ if he is worthy of those dreams.
Harlan Ellison - Delusion for a Dragon Slayer
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words
left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
When words leave off, music begins.
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
Communication is something so simple and difficult
that we can never put it in simple words.
T.S. Matthews
The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power
of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere
else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis.
So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water.
Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
If you travel to the States . . . they have a lot of different
words than like what we use. For instance: they say "elevator",
we say "lift"; they say "drapes", we say "curtains"; they say
"president", we say "seriously deranged git".
Alexei Sayle
At the bidding of a Peter the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves
against the East; the words of an hallucinated enthusiast such as Mahomet
created a force capable of triumphing over the Graeco-Roman world; an
obscure monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The voice of a Galileo
or a Newton will never have the least echo among the masses. The
inventors of genius hasten the march of civilization. The fanatics and
the hallucinated create history.
Gustave Le Bon
Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
"The Devil's Dictionary"
Some people think football is a matter of life and death...But
they are wrong...It's far more important than that...
Shankley
Husband: a man who buys his football tickets four months in advance
and waits until December 24 to do his Christmas shopping.
unknown
One week you're drinking wine, the next week you're stomping grapes.
This is my week to stomp grapes.
OSU football coach John Cooper, after losing to Wisconsin ('92)
[Jay Hilgenberg] will play a critical role in, well,
protecting the *life* of Bernie Kosar.
Art Modell ('92)
Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen;
soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts;
football is a beastly game played by beasts.
Henry Blaha
I suppose that rusty nail for my coat still is there.
Atlanta Falcons coach Jerry Glanville
on Cleveland Stadium locker rooms ('92)
We put in a new nail for him - with yellow neon on it so he'll
know which one it is. It's a special one for him - it has a
little dent in it and a little bend. It's a big one so he can
put his belt buckle and his boots up there.
Browns coach Bill Belichick on Jerry Glanville's
comments about Cleveland Stadium locker rooms ('92)
There seems to be a strong correlation between people who relish tough
football and people who relish intimidating and beating the hell out of
Commies, hippies, protest marchers and other opposition groups. Watching
well-advertised strong men knock other people around, make them hurt, is
in the end like other tastes. It does not weaken with feeding. It grows.
John McMurtry
...the genes almost _always_ accurately reproduce. If they don't, you
get one of the following results: One, monsters-- that is, grossly malformed
babies resulting from genetic mistakes. Years ago most monsters died, but
now many can be saved. This has made possible the National Football League.
Cecil Adams
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 (1880-1956)
I want to find out who I am and give up letting everyone else define me.
Judith
I am as frustrated with society as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest.
A. Whitney Brown
The trouble with our age is it's all signposts and no destination.
Loius Kronenberger
Depression runs deep in the souls of many who read life and know its
purposelessness. Yet these are among the most powerful and dangerous of
all people, for they hold in their own hands the worth of their lives,
and create it with every breath.
Matt Ryan - mbr2@kimbark.uchicago.edu
Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter
what we are doing? What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?
If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken, get
to work on that.
Epicetus
I remember friends from wars all but we forgot,
All of them distilled into each wound we caught.
Those wounds are all the painful places where we fought.
Battles better left behind, ones we never sought.
What was it we spent, and what was it we bought?
Frank Herbert "Songs of the Scattering", _Heretics of Dune_
Tears, idle tears,
I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair,
Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)
To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then
one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to
love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To
be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy.
Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from
too much happiness.
Woody Allen
In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown
came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded.
He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way,
I suppose, that the world will be destroyed--amid the universal hilarity
of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
from Diapsalmata
If I had in my service a submissive jinni... I would dismiss him until he
learned that the enjoyment consists not in what I enjoy but in getting
my own way.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
from Diapsalmata
I say of my sorrow what the Englishman says of his house: My sorrow
is my castle. Many people look upon sorrow as one of life's conveniences.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
from Diapsalmata
I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe,
the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage
to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own anything.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
from Diapsalmata
The most beautiful time is in the first period of falling in love, when from
every encounter, every glance, one fetches home something new to rejoice over.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
from Diapsalmata
It is said that our Lord satisfies the stomach before the eyes. That is not
what I find: my eyes are surfeited and bored with everything, and yet I hunger.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
from Diapsalmata
I have only one friend and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because
I love my sorrow and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one
confident and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confident?
Because it remains silent.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
from Diapsalmata
The most inflexible rule in chess is the exception.
Alekhine - translated from:
"Die unerbittlichsten Regeln im Schach sind - die Ausnahmen."
There is only one mistake in chess: overestimating your oponent. Everything
else is just bad luck or weakness.
Alekhine - translated from:
"Im Schach gibt es nur einen Fehler: Uberschaetzung des Gegners.
Alles andere ist entweder Unglueck oder Schwaeche."
I feel as a chessman must feel when the opponent says of it: That
piece cannot be moved.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
from Diapsalmata
White to move and win in 24...
Cartoon caption in a magazine - accompaning picture
shows a chess board with none of the pieces moved
One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and
of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other
than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.
Anatol Rapoport
The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe;
the rules of the games are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the
other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and
patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or
makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)
In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games,
where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key
to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is
Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
Terry Pratchett - Wyrd Sister)
On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play
games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings.
It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end...
Terry Pratchett - Wyrd Sisters
Parity is for farmers.
Seymour Cray
The hardware was the easy part.
Seymour Cray
Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.
Seymour Cray commenting on virtual memory
The average pointer points somewhere in X.
Henry Spencer
The main difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman
is that the used car salesman can probably drive and knows when he's lying.
Peter da Silva
Most of the VAX instructions are in microcode,
but halt and no-op are in hardware for efficiency.
Unknown
One of the main advantages of Unix over, say, MVS, is the tremendous number
of features Unix lacks.
Chris Torek
The steady state of disks is full.
Ken Thompson
If an undetectable error occurs, the processor continues as if no error
had occurred.
IBM S/360 Principles of Operation
I think there is a world market for about five computers.
Thomas J. Watson, CEO, IBM Corporation, 1947
Artificial intelligences makes mistakes too, only faster.
Larry Wall [in comp.lang.perl]
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.
Alexandre Dumas pere (1802-1870)
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.
Ayn Rand
We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.
David Russell
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) - Walden
You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open
country under fire, and drop into your grave.
Quentin Crisp
So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private in
dividuals will occasionally kill theirs.
Elbert Hubbard
Serious men are inevitably shallow, just as virtuous women are always dull.
One must be a bit of a scoundrel to know the depths of oneself."
Sigismundo Celine, Nature's God
(by Robert Anton Wilson)
Canadian consumers race across the border to buy the kind of cheap goods that
a country with low wages and a third-rate social security system can produce.
So empty are their lives, apparently, that a three-hour lineup of cars at the
border coming back is viewed as an acceptable trade-off.
Charles Gordon
I am part of all I have read.
John Kieran
Show me the books he loves and I shall know
the man far better than through mortal friends.
S. Weir Mitchell
The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll
get me a book I ain't read.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
When I get a little money, I buy books;
and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
Desiderius Erasmus (1466? - 1536)
The multitude of books is makiing us ignorant.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.
Thomas Fuller
>From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was
convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977) - The Book of Insults
The road to ignorance is paved with good books.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Books arn't written to be believed in, but to be questioned.
Umberto Eco
This will never be a civilized country until we spend more
money on books than on chewing gum.
Elbert Hubbard
Every time a new book comes out, read an old one.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The worst thing about new books is that
they prevent us from reading the old ones.
Joseph Joubert
Writing books makes horse racing look like a solid and safe business.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
Writing books is easy, you only need pen and ink and patient
paper. Printing books is more difficult, since geniuses often
have unreadable handwriting. Reading books is more difficult
yet, there's such a risk that you will fall asleep. But the
most difficult thing any man can undertake, is selling books.
Sir Stanley Unwin
A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us.
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
Any synopsis of a good book is a stupid synopsis.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)
Report writing, like motor-car driving and love-making, is one of those
activities which almost every Englishman thinks he can do well without
instruction. The results are of course usually abominable.
Tom Margerison
reviewing Bruce M. Cooper's book "Writing Technical Reports" in 1965
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is
broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year.
Not all bits have equal value.
Carl Sagan
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are
well written or badly written.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
An apology for the devil:it must be remembered that we have
heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
A book is the product of a contract with the Devil that inverts the Faustian
contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two
dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and
gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least.
Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins.
Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses
Damn a man who doesn't read books.
The test of a man is his knowledge of humanity,
of the politics of human life,
his comprehension of the things that move men.
William Mulholland
God forbid that any book should be banned!
The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.
Dame Rebecca West, 1928
I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man.
Booker T. Washington
If a man writes a better book, preaches a better sermon,
or makes a better mousetrap than his neighbor,
the world will make a beaten path to his door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Neither men nor gods nor bookstalls have ever allowed poets to be mediocre.
Horace
Of all the needs a book has the chief need is that it be readable.
Anthony Trollope
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who
cannot read them.
Mark Twain
Wherever books are burned, men also, in the end, are burned.
Heinrich Heine
A study of the science of technology defines what is possible; a
study of the economics of technology establishes which of the
possibilities is practical and useful.
Montgomery Phister
Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion,
Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.
Unknown
All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect.
Each scientific discovery increases man's ability to predict the
consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events.
Laurence J. Peter
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
Ernest Rutherford (1871-1935)
And science, we should insist, better than any other discipline,
can hold up to its students and followers an ideal of patient devotion
to the search for objective truth, with vision unclouded by personal
or political motive.
Sir Henry Hallett Dalt
As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think,
free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science
can never regress.
J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)
But I have seen the science I worshiped and the airplane I loved
destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.
Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974)
By the time a social science theory is formulated in such a way that
it can be tested, changing circumstances have already made it obsolete.
Professor Charles P. Issawi
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of
outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but
they prevailed with irrefutable data. More often, egregious findings that
contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts. I have
argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, cosmic consciousness,
and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of
neuroscience. Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid
handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
offer more plausible alternatives.
Barry L. Beyerstein
If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)
The stature of a science is commonly measured by the degree to which
it makes use of mathematics.
S. S. Stevens
Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited
to open the way to the next better one.
Konrad Lorenz
He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess
them, needs religion.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don't understand.
Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)
Parkinson's Finding on Journals: The progress of science varies inversely
with the number of journals published.
In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not
to the man to whom the idea first occurs.
Sir William Osler
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
In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a
really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would
actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them
again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should,
because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it
happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that
happened in politics or religion.
Carl Sagan
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore, in the Old
Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three
hundred thousand miles long, seven hundred and forty-two years from now
the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. There is
something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of
conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively
proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand
only from those who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to
replace the religious catechism by something else, even it it be a scientific one.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science
made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection
of facts is not necessarily science.
Henri Poincare
I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race.
Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)
The social problems raised by science must be faced and solved by the humanities.
Harold Dodd
Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the
angels are debating the best way to use it.
Unknown
The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over. Every major
advance in the technological competence of man has enforced revolutionary
changes in the economic and political structure of society.
Barry Commoner
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)
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
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
Unknown
HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
Walt Kelley
I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a
very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom
everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or
at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade,
and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach
much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor
popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
Carl Sagan
If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible
and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But there is a kind
of Gresham's Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the
good. And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community
ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the
media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful. Every newspaper
in America has a daily astrology column. How many have even a weekly astronomy
column? And I believe it is also the fault of the educational system. We do
not teach how to think. This is a very serious failure that may even, in a
world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human future.
Carl Sagan
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
Thomas Berger
If you were a member of Jesse James's band and people asked you what you
were, you wouldn't say 'Well, I'm a desperado.' You'd say something like,
'I work in banks,' or 'I've done some railroad work.' It took me a long
time just to say 'I'm a writer.' It's really embarrassing."
Roy Blount, Jr.
All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us
go on to greater things.
Basketball coach Bobby Knight
I feel very old sometimes . . . I carry on and would not like to die before
having emptied a few more buckets of shit on the heads of my fellow men.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Our Father, which art in heaven, And has also written a book....
Unknown
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.
Leo Rosten
Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession,
and therefore are most economical in its use.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
I knew words were like chains, they held me back...
the act of description taints the description.
John Fowles (from "The Magus")
No great artist ever sees things as they really are.
If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
All our life is crushed by the weight of words: the weight of the dead.
Luigi Pirandello
Art isn't political because of a label, a theory, or a rejected grant
application; art is political because it has the power to change lives.
Peter Zeisler
We risk the greatest loss when we allow our questions to be made smaller.
Stephen Dietz (in an article debunking the oft-used advice
"you should only write what you know about")
James Joyce can be blamed on the Catholic Church.
Christopher Durang ("The Marriage of Bette and Boo")
The economic and technological triumphs of the last few years have not
solved as many problems as we thought they would, and, in fact, have brought
us new problems we did not forsee.
Henry Ford II
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
John Dewey
Whatever else scientists do, the most significant thing they do is to try
to find out things that are not known.
Dennis Flanagan
Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins.
Which of the two has the greater view?
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
The Wright brother's flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.
Charles F. Kettering
No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.
Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)
Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important
questions), few of us spendtime wondering why nature is the way it is; where
the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here...or whether there are
ultimate limits to what humans can know...But mch of science has been driven
by such inquire. An increasing number of adults are willing to ask
questions of this sort, and occasionally they get some astonishing answers.
Carl Sagan,
Introduction to _A Brief History of Time_ by Stephen W. Hawking
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives
alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on a land
is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his
shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of
his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death
in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be
told otherwise.
Aldo Leopold
Thought alone is eternal.
Owen Meredith
To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
William Blake - Auguries of Innocence
Here lies, extinguished in his prime,
a victim of modernity:
but yesterday he hadn't time--
and now he has eternity.
Piet Hein
I'm not religious at all, but I don't believe in death. Death is a very
beautiful thing. I believe _that_.... I won't ever see you, darling, but
it's been very nice talking to you. Life is very beautiful, you know.
Sheila Florance
I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're
always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...
I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than
moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds
don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle
like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.
Neil Gaiman - The Sandman #48: Journey's End
Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that
makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you
can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means,
but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe
in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an
exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but
what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.
Tom Stoppard, "Arcadia" 1993
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 (1879-1955)
When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of
the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I
seem to be living among the gods.
Leon Battista Alberti
My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional
sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence is provided by such a God.
We would be unappreciative of that gift . . . if we suppressed our passion
to explore the universe and ourselves.
Carl Sagan
It may be that our role on this planet is not to
worship God-- but to create him.
Arthur C. Clarke
I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
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
Chaplain: Let us praise God. Oh Lord...
Congregation: Oh Lord...
Chaplain: Oooh you are so big...
Congregation: Oooh you are so big...
Chaplain: So absolutely huge.
Congregation: So ab - solutely huge.
Chaplain: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here I can tell you.
Congregation: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here I can tell you.
Chaplain: Forgive Us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying.
Congregation: And barefaced flattery.
Chaplain: But you are so strong and, well, just so super.
Congregation: Fan - tastic.
Headmaster: Amen.
Monty Python
Books are the curse of the human race.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)
My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the
time, with my eyes hanging out.
Dylan Thomas
My early and invincible love of reading, which I would not
exchange for the treasures of India. . .
Edward Gibbon
Many people, other than the authors, contribute to the making of a book,
from the first person who had the bright idea of alphabetic writing through
the inventor of movable type to the lumberjacks who felled the trees that
were pulped for its printing. It is not customary to acknowledge the trees
themselves, though their commitment is total.
Forsyth & Rada - Machine Learning
We have beside us a mountain of Books, Magazines, Pamphlets and Newspapers,
that have been accumulating for the last two months, unopened and unread.
Like a Turk, in the dim twilight of his Harem, we scarcely know which to
choose, but, we shall commence at the apex of the pyramid, and dig downwards.
Joseph Howe
As a child I lived in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, and it was there
that I ran into the curious assumption that the world around me was full of
common people. This was never said in so many words. It was just understood
that greatness or extra value as a human being existed only among the dead, or
else it was an attribute of someone far away, whom one never met. I grew up
feeling the full weight of my insignificance, and slowly, slowly began to
build up my ego. Receiving no help from the environment, I withdrew from it
into a world of imagination which was particularly illuminated by fiction
stories which I read. . .
A.E. Van Vogt
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
Donald E. Knuth
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"
And so, the best of my advice to the originators and designers of Ada has been
ignored. In this last resort, I appeal to you, representatives of the programming
profession in the United States, and citizens concerned with the welfare and safety
of your own country and of mankind: Do not allow this language in its present state
to be used in applications where reliability is crucial, i.e., nuclear power stations,
cruise missiles, early warning systems, antiballistic missile 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 own 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.
Be vigilant to reduce the risk, not to increase it.
C. A. R. Hoare - 1980 Turing Award Lecture
Education is what remains after one has forgotten
everything he learned in school.
B.F. Skinner
What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have
become but unruly, stormy innnovators and dreamers of useless
dreams, if not for the efforts of their schools?
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
"Beneath the Wheel"
Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes
that he is no longer indispensible.
Admiral Byrd (1888-1957)
The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance.
P. B. Shelley (1792-1822)
Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
William Cowper (1731-1800)
Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the
great equalizer of the conditions of men,--the balance-wheel of
the social machinery.
Horace Mann (1796-1859), in 1848.
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 Jr. "Cat's Cradle"
Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find
it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
About the only people who don't quarrel over religion are
the people who don't have any.
Bob Edwards
It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4? BC - 65 AD)
Do you know about the Eleventh Commandment? It says, "Thou
shalt not bore God, or he will destroy your universe."
John Lilly
But I was not, to use the theological phrase, _receptive_. The great obstacle
to the influx of grace was my own perfect happiness, and it is well known that
God takes no thought for the happy, any more than He does for birds and puppies,
perhaps realizing they have no need of Him and mercifully letting them alone.
John Glassco
And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created
free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are
told to deny our senses and subject them to the will of others? When people
devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted
authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt
to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
Paul Dirac
If I were meta-agnostic, I'd be confused over whether I'm agnostic or not-- but
I'm not quite sure if I feel That way; hence I must be meta-meta-agnostic (I guess).
Douglas R. Hofstadter - Godel, Escher, Bach
I have said before, obviously our Medicaid system had to be developed by
a white male slave owner because our present system supports healthy,
uneducated people - which can only be slaves.
Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders,
before the Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn 2/25/94.
I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way
the social and political equality of the white and black races--I am
not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes,
nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, August 21, 1858
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
see it tried on him personally.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite
right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible,
uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible.
Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery,
on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the
lightning ain't distributed right.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived
with him, insists on tormenting the generations to come.
Montesquieu (1689-1755)
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely
foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Douglas Adams From _Mostly Harmless_
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may
going to prove one's self a fool.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him
and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
The country that draws a broad line between its fighting
men and its thinking men will find its fighting done by fools
and its thinking done by cowards.
Sir William F. Butler
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
Dale Carnegie
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn from no other.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always
so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of
fools. Let's start with typewriters.
Solomon Short
"Fishing baskets are employed to catch fish; but when the fish are got
men forget the baskets; snares are employed to catch hares, but when
the hares are got, men forget the snares. Words are employed to convey
ideas, but when the ideas are grasped, men forget the words." -- Chuang Tzu
Ideas are not responsible to the people who thought of them.
Matthew Ryan
There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.
Emile Chartier
_Boffin:_ A Puffin, a bird with a mournful cry, got crossed with a Baffin,
a mercifully obsolete Fleet Air Arm aircraft. Their offspring was a Boffin,
a bird of astonishingly queer appearance, bursting with weird and sometimes
inopportune ideas, but possessed of staggering inventiveness, analytical
powers and persistence. Its ideas, like its eggs, were conical and
unbreakable. You push the unwanted ones away, and they just roll back.
George Philip Chamberlain
In our impatience to test our ideological wings, too many students are trying
to fly before they even know what feathers are; too many students use half-baked
versions of some cultural theory they overheard in the cafeteria line-up as a
valid justification for their actions. Like Newman's ideal student, we too learn
as we go along-- only now students use an idea like a weapon, to intimidate and
destroy, instead of as one tool in a constructive tool box. How often have
students, speaking in class, either justified themselves or cudgelled some rival
into silence and submission by evoking a great name or theory?
Derek Webster
. . . here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First,
guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always
played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And
don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve
the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression.
Gerard K. O'Neill - 2081
It was Larry, of course, who started it. The rest of us felt too apathetic to
think of anything except our own ills, but Larry was designed by Providence to go
through life like a small, blond firework, exploding ideas in other people's minds,
and then curling up with cat-like unctuousness and refusing to take any blame for
the consequences.
Gerald Durrell - My Family and Other Animals
After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal,
the school department is extremely pleased to announce the appointment
of David Steele to the post.
Barrington, RI superintendent of (public) schools
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks
anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring
this uniformity up to the highest possible point.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It sometimes seems as though we were trying to combine the ideal of no
schools at all with the democratic ideal of schools for everybody by
having schools without education.
Robert Maynard Hutchins
When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who
has no aptitutde for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency,
the latter has completed the education of a genetleman.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Education is a private matter between the person and the world of
knoweledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.
Lillian Smith
What is it about universities that utterly saps the imagination from
otherwise intelligent people?
Jerod Pore
A degree, ... is a first step down a ruinous highway. You don't want to
waste it so you go on to graduate work and doctoral research. You end up a
thorough-going ignoramus on everything in the world except for one
subdivisional sliver of nothing.
Isaac Asimov, _The Dead Past_
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not
the same river and he's not the same man.
Heraclitas
An ending is no more than a point in sequence, a snip of the cutting shears.
John Fowles
So manifold are our interests in life that it is not uncommon that, on a
single occassion, the foundations of a happiness which does not yet exist
are laid down simultaneously with the aggravations of a grief from which we
are still suffering.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
For a man cannot change, that is to say, become another person, while he
continues to obey the dictates of the self which he has ceased to be.
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
I know I'm going to get old and be one of those crazy women who sits on
balconies and spits on people and screams, 'Get a haircut!' I know this,
and I don't really fear it. I'd just like to move toward it with as much
grace and dignity as possible.
Carrie Fisher, "Postcards..."
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
"Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson lines 18-21
There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes
necessary to shoot the engineers and begin production.
MacUser, November 1990
We're engineers. What's Pi? Oh, about three.
Jen Quiren
Engineering induction: if it works for n = 1, 2, and 3, that's good enough for me.
Ric Hehner
DEC achieved this by an aggresive design that uses a lower-than-usual voltage
(3.5V), unusually thick metal layers in a three-layer design, and very high power
consumption (30 watts---one DEC engineer, in response to a question about whether
this chip would be suitable for palmtops, replied that it might be more suited for
building a toaster oven).
Matthew Smosna and Robert B. K. Dewar,
"Analyzing Alpha's Architecture", _Open_Systems_Today_
While today's digital hardware is extremely impressive, it is clear that
the human retina's real time performance goes unchallenged. Actually to
simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve
cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous
nonlinear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several
minutes of time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10
million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it
would take a minimum of 100 years of Cray time to simulate what takes place
in your eye many times each second.
John K. Stevens, "Reverse Engineering the Brain", Byte
Imitation of nature is bad engineering. For centuries inventors tried to fly
by emulating birds, and they have killed themselves uselessly. . . You see,
Mother Nature has never developed the Boeing 747. Why not? Because Nature
didn't need anything that would fly at 700 mph at 40,000 feet: how would such
an animal feed itself? . . . If you take Man as a model and test of artificial
intelligence, you're making the same mistake as the old inventors flapping their
wings. You don't realize that Mother Nature has never needed an intelligent
animal and accordingly, _has never bothered to develop one._ So when an
intelligent entity is finally built, it will have evolved on principles different
from those of Man's mind, and its level of intelligence will certainly not be
measured by the fact that it can beat some chess champion or appear to carry on a
conversation in English.
Anonymous, in Jacques Vallee's _The Network Revolution _
Every St. Patrick's Day every Irishman goes out
to find another Irishman to make a speech to.
Shane Leslie
I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)
I have enjoyed great health at a great age because
every day since I can remember I have consumed a bottle
of wine except when I have not felt well. Then I have
consumed two bottles.
A Bishop of Seville
Sparkle, sparkle, little twink,
What the heck you are I think,
From the alcofluence of incohol,
Some thinkle peep I are,
I fool so feelish sitting here,
The drunker I sit the longer I get.
Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many
worthwile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-
playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this
simple fact.
Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
To many total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
St. Augustine (354-430)
They who drink beer will think beer.
Washington Irving (1783-1859)
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the
point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Bacchus, n.:
A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"
Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity.
Eric Hoffer
What is the world coming to when we ignore the opportunities to
remove idiots from our surroundings?
Dan Sorenson
There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that all employees are
going to be required to have lobotomies . . . at least at the
prices we were quoted.
Dilbert
If the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems begin to look like nails.
Abraham Maslow
I push for excellence in writing, but when a killer
removes the victim's intestines, it's fascinating.
Rose Mandelsberg, editor of "True Detective"
PC Bulletin: Henceforth, sentient computers would like to be known as
"Silicon Intelligences." "Artificial Intelligence" is a pejorative term
invented by humans based on the mistaken belief that computers are some-
how not "natural." - elf@halcyon.com
It is impossible to objectively experience one's death and still carry a tune.
Woody Allen
Hollywood: A dreary industrial town controlled by hoodlums of enormous wealth.
S.J. Perelman
Everything has a boolean value, if you stand far enough away from it.
Galena Alyson Canada
I know nothing about sex, because I was always married.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Experience is one thing you can not get for nothing.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it.
John Keats (1795-1821)
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
You can not create experience. You must undergo it.
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life,
the clearer we should see through it.
Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove- lid again - and that
is well; but she will also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability
to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable
for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams
One learns every day. Experience is a great teacher. By experience you
learn. But as I enter office, I'm prepared now. Obviously, I will be more
prepared as time goes on. I will know more about the office of the presidency.
But I'm prepared now and I will be more prepared as time goes on.
Vice President Dan Quayle
(reported in the NY Times, 1/14/89)
A narcissist is someone better-looking than you are.
Gore Vidal
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate
with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the
strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
When men lack a sense of awe, there will be disaster.
Lao Tse, _Tao Te Ching: 72_
The Social Sciences are good at accounting for disasters once they have taken place.
Claude T. Bissell
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in
a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave
national emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to
gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the
exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem
never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) 1957
Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents,
he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance
than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values.
Gerald Brenan
If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment,
other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Complete possession is proved only by giving.
All you are unable to give possesses you.
Andre Gide (1876-1951)
What I spent, is gone; what I kept, I lost;
but what I gave away will be mine forever.
Ethel Percy Andrus
Many wealthy people are little more
than janitors of their possessions.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)
You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.
P. J. O'Rourke
Economists tell us how to make money; psychiatrists give us a place to spend it.
Allan Bloom _The Closing of the American Mind_
I cannot afford to waste my time making money.
Jean Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)
I am opposed to abortion and government funding of abortions. We should not spend
state funds on abortions because so many people believe abortion is wrong.
Bill Clinton, to Arkansas Right to Life, September 26, 1986
I owned an El Camino pickup in the '70s. It was a real sort of southern
deal. I had Astroturf in the back. You don't want to know why, but I did.
Bill Clinton 2/8/94, later he said it was to protect his luggage.
No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should
have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they
may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war which, in any
case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation.
Bill Clinton, December 1969
Instead of a backbreaking federal gas tax, we should try conservation,
increased use of natural gas, and increased use of alternative fuels.
Bill Clinton, PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST, June 20, 1992
I told you when I announced for Governor...I'm gonna serve four years.
That's the job I want -- that's the job I'll do for the next four years.
Bill Clinton, Gubernatorial Debate, October 15, 1990
I'm not for gun control.
Bill Clinton - Arkansas Gazette, Nov. 2, 1990
I was an early and strong supporter of the Brady Bill.
Bill Clinton - NBC, Oct. 17, 1991
But there are a few major plans before the Congress now. Only one of them deals
with long-term care and prescription drugs for the elderly - our proposal.
Bill Clinton to seniors in Edison, NJ, 2/16/94.
The White House later admitted that the a competing proposal
also contained extensive provisions for both.
There have been no scandals in this administration.
Bill Clinton - PBS's "Washington Week in Review," 2/25/94
I want to make it very clear that this middle class tax cut, in my view, is
central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short-term economic strategy.
Bill Clinton, January 19, 1992
[New York] is the place where if you have talent, and you believe in yourself,
and you show people what you can do, then some day, maybe -- just maybe --
you could get shoved in front of a moving subway train.
Dave Barry
According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to live in
America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came in twenty-fifth.
Here in New York we really don't care too much, because we know that we could
beat up their city anytime.
David Letterman
It's all painfully obvious to me -- there's nothing wrong with
New York that a sound thrashing, a hot bath, and about $20 billion
in federally guaranteed loans wouldn't cure.
The Badger
New York: where everyone mutinies but no one deserts.
Harry Hershfield
The main thing I like about New Yorkers is that they understand
that their lives are a relentless circus of horrors, ending in death.
As New Yorkers we realize this, we resign ourselves to our fate, and
we make sure that everyone else is as miserable as we are. Good town.
Kyle Baker, "Why I Hate Saturn"
I think my favorite sport in the Olympics is the one in which you make your
way through the snow, you stop, you shoot a gun, and then you continue on.
In most of the world, it is known as the biathlon, except in New York City,
where it is known as winter.
Michael Ventre, LA Daily News
New York: The only city where people make radio requests like
"This is for Tina - I'm sorry I stabbed you"
Carol Leifer
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
For most men life is a search for the proper manila
envelope in which to get themselves filed.
Clifton Fadiman
If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in
the other direction.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, _The Way to Freedom_
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers
is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
Ben Hecht
It seems paradoxical beyond endurance that a manufacturer of shampoos
may not endanger a student's scalp but a premier educational institution
is free to stuff his skull with nonsense.
George J. Stigler
He had forgotten this piece of information: children tie one another to
trees. ... Here is a solid planet, he thought, stocked with mountains and
cliffs, where stone banks jut and deeply rooted trees hang on. Among these
fixed and enduring features wander the flimsy people. The earth rolls down
and the people die; their survivors derive solace from clinging, not to the
rocks, not to the cliffs, not to the trees, but to each other. It was
singular. Loose people clung in families, holding on for dear life.
Grasping at straws! One would think people would beg to be tied to trees.
Annie Dillard, _The Living_
Those who have nver seen two well-trained armies drawn up for battle,
can have no idea of the beauty and brilliance of the display. Bugles,
fifes, oboes, drums, and salvoes of artillery produced such a harmony
as Hell itself could not rival. The opening barrage destroyed about
six thousand men on each side. Rifle-fire which followed rid the best
of all worlds of about nine or ten thousand villains who infested its
surface. Finally, the bayonet provided `sufficient reason' for the
death of several thousand more. The total casualties amounted to about
thirty thousand. Candide trembled like a philosopher, and hid himself
as best he could during this heroic butchery.
Voltaire (1694-1778), _Candide_
All those years of effort.
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
reflecting on his studies of Colonial American History
Bolivia Exports Tin.
A student from Saydel H.S. in des Moines Iowa after being asked,
"Have you learned ANYTHING in this class?"
History has the relation to truth that
theology has to religion - i.e. none to speak of.
Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)
History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other.
Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)
I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything
useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a
monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of
any admirable human qualities. I failed history.
Sting
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that,
from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) - The Devils of Loudun
K is for Kenghis Khan. _He_ was a very _nice_ person. History has no
record of him. There is a moral in that, somewhere.
Harlan Ellison - From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet
The slinky of destiny is making it's way back to the top of the stairs.
H.M. Murdock, "A Team"
You look into his eyes, and you think someone else is driving.
David Letterman
Never date a man whose belt buckle is bigger than his head.
"Grace Under Fire" ABC-TV (Casey Werner Co)
Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others.
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
I don't like war. I've never been in a war, but I have seen _The Killing Fields._
Fawn Hall
I once told Fordie [Ford Madox Ford] that if he were placed naked and
alone in a room without furniture, I would come back in an hour and find
total confusion.
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality
in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the Ready-
Aim-Aim-Aim Syndrome. You must be willing to fire.
T. Boone Pickens
Journalism consists largely in saying "Lord Jones died"
to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Writers live the sad truth just like everyone else.
The only difference is, they file reports.
_Naked Lunch_
She really wasn't my type - a hard-looking, untalented reporter for the
local cat-box liner; but the first second that third-rate representative
of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of Scotch, my sixth sense
said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's 'Ninth
Symphony, ' so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming
for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and while humming
'The Twelfth Of Never,' I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth.
William W. "Buddy" Ocheltree of Lilburn GA
top honors submission to
the 12th annual Bulwer-Lytton contest for bad fiction,
There is nothing I desire more to be informed of, than the death of men:that
is to say, what words, what countenance, and what face they show at their death...
Were I a composer of books, I would keep a register, commented of the diverse
deaths, which in teaching men to die, should after teach them to live.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)
Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily.
La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as
death, should ever have been devised by Providence as an evil to mankind.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that
natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) - Of Death
And since the stench of death will always attract flies and vermin,
the arrival of Geraldo was perhaps inevitable.
Gary Trudeau
Thoreau on his deathbed and sinking fast was asked by his aunt
who'd long worried about her nephew, "Have you made your peace
with your God?" Thoreau, still alert, replied, "I never quarreled
with my God." This is one of the great deathbed quotes if we
excuse any put-down element in it. But the story does not end
there. There's an addition which seems, to me, even better.
Thoreau's aunt pursued the matter, asking, "But aren't you concerned
about the next world?" Thoreau, impatient now, said, "One world at
a time."
This is an entire sermon, an entire religion, an entire philosophy
condensed into one short sentence. This world, this life. It is
enough. It is of cosmic relevance.
W. Edward Harris, minister emeritus of All Souls Unitarian Church Indianapolis
from _A_Garage_Sale_of_the_Mind_
People who take issue with control of population do not understand that
if it is not done in a gracefull way, nature will do it in a brutal fashion.
H. Kendall
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments - there are consequences.
Robert Ingersoll (Lectures and Essays, 3d Series, Some Reasons Why, iii)
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most
exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the
production of the higher animals, directly follows.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Such is the life of man: brief moments of joy,
soon obliterated by unforgettable sorrows.
narrative from "Le Chateau de ma Mere", un film de Yves Robert (1990)
...But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature
makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is
enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or
most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better
than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not
think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the
cat by getting to the grave first.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) - _Orthodoxy_.
The principle of maximum diversity operates both at the physical and at the
mental level. It says that the laws of nature and the initial conditions are
such as to make the universe as interesting as possible. As a result, life is
possible but not too easy. Always when things are dull, something new turns
up to challenge us and to stop us from settling into a rut. Examples of things
which make life difficult are all around us: comet impacts, ice ages, weapons,
plagues, nuclear fission, computers, sex, sin and death. Not all challenges
can be overcome, and so we have tragedy. Maximum diversity often leads to
maximum stress. In the end we survive, but only by the skin of our teeth.
Freeman Dyson - Infinite in All Directions
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the
only end of life.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual,
you also have an obligation to be one.
Elanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is
an adventure wrongly considered.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
He who is not busy being born is busy dying.
Bob Dylan
He felt he was in posession of some impossible good news, which made
every other thing a triviality, but an adorable triviality.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), _The Man Who Was Thursday_
The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It
works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his
nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.
P.J. O'Rourke, "Give War a Chance"
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by.
R. Browning
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of
certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything,
and many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means
anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might
think about it a little bit, but if I can't figure it out, then I go on to
something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't have to...
I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious
universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as
I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
Interview with Richard Feynman, NOVA: "The Best Mind Since Einstein"
A rook on the eighth rank is a bone in the throat.
Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935), _My System_
The passed pawn is a criminal, who must be kept under lock and key.
Mere surveillance is not enough.
Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935), _My System_
...for chess, that superb, cold, infinitely satisfying anodyne to life, I feel
the ardour of a lover, the humility of a disciple.
Herbert Russel Wakefield
Inexperienced players often have confused notions about sacrificial
combinations. Such moves are brilliant if they are the strongest available,
but they are anything but brilliant if they are objectively inferior moves.
The master, if he is a true artist, will seek perfection rather than fireworks
whose chief object is to lead his opponent astray.
Jose Raoul Capablanca
Chess has always struck me as the most fanatical, sanguinary, and time-
consuming of games, not healthful enough for a sport or productive enough for
social or artistic significance. It is sequestered and sterile, the
antithesis of a humanistic pursuit.
John Simon
But the chess they [God and the Devil] play is not the little ingenious game
that originated in India; it is on an altogether different scale. The Ruler of
the Universe creates the board, the pieces, and the rules; he makes all the
moves; he may make as many moves as he likes whenever he likes; his antagonist,
however, is permitted to introduce a slight inexplicable inaccuracy into each
move, which necessitates further moves in correction. The Creatos determines
and conceals the aim of the game, and it is never clear whether the purpose of
the adversary is to defeat him or assist him in his unfathomable project.
Apparently the adversary cannot win, but also he cannot lose so long as he can
keep the game going. But he is concerned, it would seem, in preventing the
development of any reasoned scheme of the game.
H.G. Wells (1885-1946), The Undying Fire
Les pawns sont l'ame du jeu.
(The pawns are the soul of the game)
Danican Philidor (1726-95)
I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.
Bobby Fischer
Even if we could teach a machine to play chess merely as well as a- to use
Norbert Wiener's simile- majority of the human race (no offense meant),
we would be furnishing definite proof that a machine can solve problems of
sufficient complexity to defy the reasoning ability of millions of people
throughout their lives.
Edward Lasker, The Adventure of Chess
I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the
reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the
unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of
chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and _bizarre_
motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex, is
mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) - The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's
readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of
some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet
reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led
the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well
known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at
Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program
of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of
psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three
Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That
these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a
further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want
something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from
the Russians.
Marshall Brickman, Playboy, (April 1973)
... when you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains,
however improbable, must be the truth.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), _The_Sign_Of_Four_
The only way to discover the limits of the possible
is to go beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke
"There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your
age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed
as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898)
Through the Looking-Glass [1872], ch. 5
Incompossible,adj. Unable to exist if something else exists.
Two things are incompossible when the world has scope enough for one of
them, but not enough for both -- as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's
mercy to man. Incompossibility, it will be seen, is only incompatibility
let loose. Instead of such low language as "Go heel yourself -- I
mean to kill you on sight," the words, "Sir, we are incompossible,"
would convey an equally significant intimation and in stately courtesy
are altogether superior.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), _The_Devil's_Dictionary_
Don: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was
she pretty?
W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven
miles of bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don,
she used to have to sleep with her head in a safe.
She died in Bolivia.
Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
W. C.: It's almost impossible.
W.C. Fields (1880-1946)
"The Further Adventures of Larson E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
Familiarity breeds attempt.
Goodman Ace (1899-1982)
I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes
me claustrophobic and the others give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.
Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)
I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on
the same day. I haven't had time for tobacco since.
Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957)
I only like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign.
Mae West (1893-1980)
Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn.
Garrison Keillor
Of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.
Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915)
Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
Gore Vidal
A friend is a present you give yourself.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.
Samuel Paterson
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your
acquaintances will know you in a thousand years
Richard Bach, Illusions
Never judge someone by who he's in love with; judge him by his
friends. People fall in love with the most appalling people.
Take a cool, appraising glance at his pals.
Cynthia Heimel
Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling
as any other fragile and precious thing.
Randolph S. Bourne
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 (1857-1938)
Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache:
Do be my enemy--for friendship's sake.
William Blake (1757-1827)
I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods
when I nod; my shadow does that much better.
Plutarch c. AD 46 - 120
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because
there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it,
those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship,
for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a
healthy love for him.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller,
richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party
that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
P.J. O'Rourke
A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth,
no property, and vulgar employments.
Aristotle (384-322 BC)
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from
the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for
the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with
the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy
always followed by dictatorship.
Alexander Tyler from "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic"
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror,
murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci,
and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had
five hundred years of democracy and peace--and what did they produce? The
cuckoo clock.
_The Third Man_
Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that
it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the
performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as
a matter of common decency.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented
systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of
Governments to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one
are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up
with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was
the Man; he had the Vote.
Terry Pratchett - Discworld politics explained
For that moment she shared an overwhelming sense of wonder and elation--
the joy and beauty of pure mathematics. It was the only language possible
in that narrow instant of triumph. And yet it also carried love.
David Brin - Dr. Pak's Preschool
Numbers and lines have many charms, unseen by vulgar eyes, and only
discovered to the unwearied and respectful sons of Art. In features
the serpentine line (who starts not at the name) produces beauty and love;
and in numbers, high powers, and humble roots, give soft delight.
E. De Joncourt
Chemistry is physics without thought; mathematics is physics without purpose.
Anonymous
It is strange that we know so little about the properties of numbers.
They are our handiwork, yet they baffle us; we can fathom only a few of
their intricacies. Having defined their attributes and prescribed their
behaviour, we are hard pressed to perceive the implications of our formulas.
James R. Newman
Real-world problems are often "high-dimensional", that is, are described by
large numbers of dependent variables. Algorithms must be specifically
designed to function well in such high-dimensional spaces.
David Rogers - Weather Prediction Using a Genetic Memory
My eyes have been opened in the most surprising manner. If you disregard
the very simplest cases, there is in all of mathematics not a single infinite
series whose sum has been rigorously determined. In other words, the most
important parts of mathematics stand without foundation. It is true that most
of it is valid, but that is very surprising. I struggle to find the reason
for it, an exceedingly interesting problem.
Niels Abel - 1826 in a letter to his former high school teacher
He died of TB three years later, aged 27.
Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics,
died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died
similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.
Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously.
David L. Goodstein, _States of Matter_ (1975).
Women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours;
ambition is the serious business of life.
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Ivanhoe
Women who insist upon having the same options as men would do well
to consider the option of being the strong, silent type.
Fran Lebowitz
We will have equality when a female schlemiel moves
ahead as fast as a male schlemiel.
Estelle Ramey
You know, sometimes a man just can't satisfy all of a woman's desires. Which
is why God invented dental floss.
Susanne Kollrack
But what is woman? -- only one of Nature's more agreeable blunders.
Hannah Cowley (1743-1809)
One of the busiest areas of feminist research today is the gender critique of
the sciences. ... Students are taught ... that Newton's Law of Mechanics and
Einstein's relativity are gender-laden. Regarding the latter, Sandra Harding
says that the only remedy is "to reinvent science and theorizing itself to
make sense of women's social experience."
Christina Hoff Sommers
How is it... that some feminists still feel able to draw on biological
determinist arguments... to claim that women are naturally, biologically,
innately superior to men? ... There is no uniquely feminine essence, existing
above and beyond social conditioning, that makes us creative, empathetic,
intuitive, nurturant, non-violent, and at one with Mother Earth.
Celia Kitzinger
Michael W. Fox, vice-president of the Humane Society, said that, "to call an
animal with whom you share your life a 'pet', is reminiscent of men's magazines
where you (a figure of speech, don't take it personally) have the Pet of the
Month." It is supposed that the continued use of the word "pet" to designate
dogs or cats threatens to reduce their level of respect to the current status
of twentieth century North American women. Now that's radical.
The McGill Red Herring
In the past decade or so, the women's magazines have taken to running
home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as
well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption
that _men_ know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is
_look_ at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood
Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job
requiring them to transfer to another home.
Dave Barry
Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the
way to your execution is not generally understood by less
advanced life forms, and they'll call you crazy.
"Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a
Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of
asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to
what my mother told me when I was young!"
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen!"
Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
Old time is still a-flying,
and this same flower that smiles today,
tomorrow will be dying.
Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time"
Poets live in dreams and die in hunger.
Augustine (ma Mere) in "Le Chateau de ma Mere"
un film de Yves Robert (1990), script by Lucette Andrei
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
Redd Foxx
The difficulty with this is, of course, that Modern Man does not see, hear, or
most importantly _believe_ anything which does not take place before the glassy
stare of the television camera. How inconvenient, then, that millions of starving
children and fallen heroes lack the foresight to die in the right places for the
right causes.
Zaccariah Michaelson, _Essays_on_the_Inhuman_Race_
We who are about to die, are going to take one hell of a lot of the bastards with us.
Karl Cullinane, _The Silver Crown_ by Joel Rosenberg
A woman in love will do almost anything for a man,
except give up the desire to improve him.
Nathaniel Branden
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
Stephen Leacock
I'm tired of love, I'm still more tired of rhyme,
but money gives me pleasure all the time.
Hilaire Belloc
A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's
love, however badly he may have treated her.
Holmes, in : "The Musgrave Ritual"
...An Idealist in love. Worse than a romantic. Oh, infinitely. An idealist.
Always faithful. Loyal. Trustworthy. Rare, of course, but not treasured.
Few buyers.
Josephine Hart, from "Sin"
There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when
they no longer love each other.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
Love is the answer, but while you're waithing for the answer,
sex raises some pretty good questions.
Woody Allen
Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.
George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)
Love is like a snowmobile flying over the frozen tundra that suddenly flips,
pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasles come.
Matt Groenig
Love is not an emotion, it's a decision.
Scott Peck during an interview on KTKK radio (Utah),
Sunday, Oct. 18, 1992
Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.
Alexander Smith
Life-the way it really is - is a battle not between
Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse.
Joseph Brodsky
I'd rather be a meteor, blazing across the sky, every atom in me in magnificent
glow, than to be a sleepy and permanent planet. Life is to be lived, not to exist.
Jack London (1876-1916)
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
Danny Kaye
The first half of our life is ruined by our parents
and the second half by our children.
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)
I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life,
particularly if he has income and she is pattable."
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
Every person, all of the events of your life are there because you have
drawn them there. What you do with them is up to you.
Richard Bach _Illusions_
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been a real life
you would have been instructed where to go and what to do.
Unknown
>From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
Arthur Ashe
All of life's riddles are answered in the movies.
Davis in Grand Canyon (1991)
Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you; fear not your friends,
for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the
killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth.
Edward Yashinsky
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
You can judge a man by his enemies.
Edward Stuyvesant Bragg,
1884 Democratic national convention
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their
good characters and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot
be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
The art of leadership.....consists in consolidating the attention of
the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing
will split up that attention.
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
Enemies are so stimulating.
Katharine Hepburn
To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike.
Diane de Poitiers
Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically.
Mao Tse-tung
No man would dare say a bad word against Mother's
Day in public, or a good word for it in private.
Alistair Cooke
I looked on child-rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a
profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable
profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.
Rose Kennedy
A woman who can cope with the terrible twos can cope with anything.
Judith Clabes
When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who
helped me give birth to myself.
Nancy Friday
A mother is neither cocky, nor proud, because she knows the school principal
may call at any minute to report that her child had just driven a motorcycle
through the gymnasium.
Mary Kay Blakely
I am dismayed by the paucity of presentable children.
T.H. White
Sexual enlightenment is justified insofar as girls cannot
learn too soon how children do not come into the world.
Karl Kraus (1874-1936)
The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.
Quentin Crisp
Childbirth is _not_ a miracle. Life is _not_ sacred. When you
have twenty thousand nomads huddled between two rivers in the
Middle East and that's it for Homo sapiens, when one in five
children is a live birth, one in ten living past the age of ten,
then childbirth is a miracle and life is sacred. When the
average age of a grandmother in Philadelphia's housing projects
is twenty-five, to call childbirth a miracle is at least a
tasteless joke and at worst a true obscenity.
Dave Sim - Cerebus #142
Always do what you are afraid to do.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.
H.G. Wells (1885-1946) ("The Time Machine")
In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not
always an easy sacrifice.
Richard Bach, Illusions
It's only in uncertainty that we're naked and alive.
Peter Gabriel
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains
a mad and lamentable experiment.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had
acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now.
Victor Frankl
There are two roads, of abandoning resolutely one's present life in order
to make the life of one's dreams come true, and renouncing the dream in
order to throw oneself wholeheartedly into one's present situation.
Paul Tournier
God knows, when I go to the theater I don't want to emerge from it as
exactly the same person. I want to be made to think about something,
I want to be changed in some way - at least be forced to reconsider my
perceptions. Because life is very short. Why waste your time?"
Edward Albee
Death and grief are little things. They are transient. Life must be
before death, and joy before grief. Else there are no such things as
death or grief. These are only negatives. Life is positive. Death is
only the absence of life, just as night is only the absence of day, and
if this is so, there is no such thing as death. There is only life, and
the supression of life, that we, foolishly, say is death. "Suppression,"
I say, not extinction. I do not say that life returns. Life never
departs. Life simply _is_.
Vanamee from Frank Norris' _The Octopus_, 1901
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)
I think that is really the basis of our marriage, apart from our deep love
for each other, for we have never interfered with each other, and strangely
enough, never been jealous of each other. And now, in our advancing age,
we love each other more deeply than ever, and also more agonizingly, since
we see the inevitable end. It is not nice to know that one of us must die
before the other.
Vita Sackville-West
In a letter to Harold Nicolson, 1960
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after
that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) _Afterthoughts_, 1931
You only need to take it personally if it's your life.
Tom Steinmetz
We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of a whirling snow and blinding
mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be
deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the
wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether
there is any right one. What must we do? Be strong and of good courage.
Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes....If death ends
all, we cannot meet death better.
Fitz James Stephen
Warning
by: Jenny Joseph
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me,
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausage at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay the rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a litle now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.
If you tell people the truth you'd better make them laugh or they'll kill you.
Charles Ludlam
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), _Annajanska_.
It's the truth even if it didn't happen.
Ken Kesey, _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_.
Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), _Words_.
Sanity is a cozy lie.
Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation."
Of course I shall go astray often...for who does not make mistakes?...
but I cannot go far wrong for I have seen the truth."
Fedor Mikhallovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Many people would be more truthful were it not for their uncontrollable desire to talk.
Edward Watson Howe
George Washington as a boy was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments
of youth - he could not even lie.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Take note, take note, O world,
To be direct and honest is not safe.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) _Othello_
It's not always honesty,
That is _the_ best policy.
Styx, "Double Life," on _Kilroy Was Here_
Between truth and the search for thruth, I opt for the second.
Bernard Berenson, _Essays in Appreciation_.
There are people who think that honesty is always the best
policy. this is a superstition; there are times when the
appearance of it is worth six of it.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important
knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth
lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops
where she is found.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) - The Murders in the Rue Morgue
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been
only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then
finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great
ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)
(quoted in Brewster's _Memoirs of Newton_, Vol. 2, Ch. 27).
People think a liar gains victory over his victim. What I've learned is
that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's
reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master,
condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's
view requires to be faked. And if one gains the immediate purpose of the
lie-- the price one pays is the destruction of that which the gain was
intended to serve. The man who lies to the world, is the world's slave
from then on.
Henry Reardon in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Every life should have nine cats.
Unknown
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it
than to consume wealth without producing it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Best hundred million I ever spent.
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, when asked
about his state of California mediated 50% property split.
How would you like a job where, if you made a mistake, a big red light goes
on and 18,000 people boo?
Former Hocky Goalie, Jacques Plante
I suppose I should get a VCR, but the only thing I like about television
is its ephemerality.
PJ O'Rourke
The course of true love never did run smooth.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Lysander, Act I, Scene i, line 134,
"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of travelling.
M.L. Runbeck
"What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator, Dr. Haldane?"
JBS Haldane: "I'm not sure, but he seems to be inordinately fond of beetles."
Winner, "Papers I wish I hadn't written" contest:
Montagnino, Lucian A., "Test and Evaluation of the Hubble Space
Telescope 2.4 Meter Primary Mirror" Proc. SPIE, Large Optics
Technology, Vol. 571, August 1985
Limousines used to be reserved for the ruling class or, on special occasions,
for the working class. Today, limousines are like taxicabs with the
door handles still intact.
Erma Bombeck
What is flirtation? One might say that it is behavior leading another to
believe that sexual intimacy is possible, while preventing that possibility
from becoming a certainty. In other words, flirting is a promise of sexual
intercourse without a guarantee.
Milan Kundera "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898) , _Alice_In_Wonderland_
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in
a very narrow field.
Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
[Quoted in A.L. Mackay, _The Harvest of a Quiet Eye_]
An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until
they know nearly everything about next to nothing."
Norman Dann, Ph.D Soc. Sci.
My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about
what's really going to be scared.
P.J. Plauger, Computer Language, Programming on Purpose, p.29, March 1983
Weinberg's Corollary: An expert is someone who avoids the
small mistakes while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish
a reputation as an expert.
Laurence J. Peter
The more efficient computers become at inducing new knowledge, the more
widely that knowledge will be applied, even in matters of life and death.
It is essential that such knowledge be open to inspection. This means
that designers of learning systems have a public duty to use comprehensible
description languages-- even if that means sacrificing performance.
Otherwise we run the risk of generating truly "unknowable knowledge.
Richard Forsyth - Machine Learning for Expert Systems
Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelics drugs is
like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did
it in the first century A.D., and besides, telescopes are unnatural.
Timothy Leary, "The Politics of Ecstasy"
There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory,
decreased short term memory, and I forget the third.
Timothy Leary
"Have some whiskey," returned Cronshaw, passing over the bottle.
"There's nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be
thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer."
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), _Of Human Bondage_
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"
Heroin wasn't around then. It was introduced as a "safe" alternative to
morphine, just as methadone was then introduced as a "safe" alternative to
heroin. As usual, the drug problem had to be continuously invented, or
there would not be one.
Christopher Pettus
Lou Reed was singing about scoring drugs. Tom Robinson was singing about
scoring sex. I don't know what she's singing about, Dolly Mixtures probably.
Nicky Campbell on Vanessa Paradis' cover of "Waiting for the man"
Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy
Where imagination is sucked out of children by a cathode ray nipple
T.V. is the only wet nurse that would create a cripple
On television, the drug of a nation
Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.
Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to stop my work in the laboratory
in the middle of the afternoon and to go home, as I was seized by a peculiar
restlessness associated with a sensation of mild dizziness. Having reached
home, I lay down and sank in a kind of drunkenness which was not unpleasant
and which was characterized by extreme activity of imagination. As I lay in
a dazed condition with my eyes closed (I experienced daylight as disagreeably
bright) there surged upon me an uninterrupted stream of fantastic images of
extraordinary plasticity and vividness and accompanied by an intense
kaleidoscope-like play of colors. This condition gradually passed off after
about two hours.
Albert Hoffman, describing what was probably the first lsd experience.
People who meet me are always surprised that I'm congenial. I guess they
expect me to pull out a .44. Well, I can't. I don't even own a gun.
Clint Eastwood
When I was drafted I had a clear understanding with the Pentagon: no guns.
I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on,
carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old
Virginia, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!
Hawkeye Pierce,
M.A.S.H. episode - "Officer of the Day"
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Mao Tse-Tung
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who
approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but
downright force. Whenever you give up that force you are ruined. The
great object is that every man be armed... Everyone who is able may have a gun.
Patrick Henry (1736-1799),
During Virginias ratification convention, 1788
A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I
advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the Body, it
gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with
the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp
no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion
of your walks.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.The strongest reason for
the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort,
to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Proposed Virginia Constitution, 1776, Jefferson Papers
..arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and
preserve order in the world as well as property...Horrid mischief
would ensue were the law-abiding deprived the use of them.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Thoughts on Defensive War, 1775
...a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to
effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous becoming an
accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian
nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by
criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves
free and independent, and act accordingly.
Jeffrey R. Snyder, "A Nation of Cowards"
Man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
Alexander Smith
Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
W.H. Murray
It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than
to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.
Arthur Machen - The Hill of Dreams
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a
light in the darkness of mere being.
C.G. Jung (1875-1961) _Memories, Dreams, Reflections_.
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and the one was of the contrary,
mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if
he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
It is curious that nobody derives some kind of mystical satisfaction by
saying, 'the benzene molecule is more than the sum of its parts,' whereas
too many people are happy to make such a statement about the [human] brain
and nod their heads wisely as they do so.
Francis Crick, _The_Astonishing_Hypothesis_
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will
certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of
keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an
animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid
all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your
selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will
change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable,
irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of
tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be
perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) Four Loves_, p. 169 (Charity)
Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
A man who could make so vile a pun, would not scruple to pick a pocket.
John Dennis (1657-1734)
Language exists to conceal true thought.
Charles De Talleyrand (1754-1838)
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.
Confucious, _Analects_ (tr. James Legge), Bk. XX.
Take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then
say it with the utmost levity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
We are students of words: we are shut up in schools and colleges
and recitation-rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last
with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882),
_Essays, Second Series: New England Reformers_.
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a
fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832),
_Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_, V, I.
If the English language has been properly organized, then there would be a word
which mean both "he" and "she," and I could write "If John or Mary comes, heesh
will want to play tennis," which would save a lot of trouble.
A.A. Milne (1882-1956)
_The Christopher Robin Birthday Book_.
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring
on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he
thinks that _you_ must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now
that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if
this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him
overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
Dave Barry
And now it seems she's on my wavelength. That's all I need. My mind isn't much
of a comfort to me but at least I thought it was private.
Russell Hoban, _Turtle Diary_.
WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she
holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the
service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"
"I am going to see her," is my first cry in the morning when I rouse
myself and gaze at the glorious sun in a perfectly serene mood, "I am
going to see her!" And thus I have no other wish for the rest of the
day. Everything, everything is drowned in this prospect.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)
_The Sorrows of Young Werther_
On the seashore, with storm impending,
how envious was I of the waves
each in tumultuous turn descending
to lie down at her feet like slaves!
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) _Eugene Onegin_
I imagine the ball to be alive, sensitive, responding to the touch
of my foot, to my caresses, like a woman with the man she loves.
Eric Cantona.
She'd taken the harlot century she'd been born into for
granted, knowing no other, but now-- seeing it with _his_ eyes,
hearing it with _his_ ears-- she understood it afresh; saw just
how desperate it was to please, yet how dispossessed of
pleasure; how crude, even as it claimed sophistication; and,
despite its zeal to spellbind, how utterly unenchanting.
Clive Barker - Weaveworld
Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene I
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) in a letter to Josiah Quincy, 11 Sept. 1773
In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons.
Herodotus (484-425 B.C.)
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
George McGovern
This is a picture of the British High Command at the beginning of World War I.
These aren't evil men -- some of them aren't even stupid.
Gwyn Dyer from his PBS miniseries WAR
I regard even a victorious war as an evil, that
politics must strive to spare the people from.
Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)
When a war breaks out, people say, "It's too stupid; it can't last
long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't
prevent its lasting. Stupidity has knack of getting its way . . .
Albert Camus - The Plague
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those
who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded
who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;
help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the wounded, writhing in pain;
help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to
wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;
help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended
through wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sport of
the sun-flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with
travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it --- for our
sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their
bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain
the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask of one who is the
Spirit of love and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore
beset, and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Grant our prayer, O Lord,
and Thine shall be the praise and honor and glory now and ever, Amen.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) - War Prayer
War is much too serious a thing to be left to the military.
-- Clemenceau
Every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace.
-- Augustine
Without war, the world would slide dissoloutely into materialism.
-- von Moltke
In war, nothing is ever as bad, or as good, as it is reported to
Higher Headquarters.
-- George S. Patton
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind,
a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
-- Spinoza
The end of war's uncertain.
-- Corialanus, v:3
In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory magnanimity;
in peace, goodwill.
-- Winston Churchill
They now _ring_ the bells, but they will soon _wring_ their hands.
-- Robert Walpole,
on declaration of War
They shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks:
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
-- Isaiah 2:4
To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.
-- Winston Churchill
Will you again unknit the churlish knot of all-abhorred war?
-- I Henry IV, v:1
Bulwer-Lytton 94
(from the San Jose Mercury News, 5/18/94, pgs. 1B & 5B)
Grand Winner, 1994 Bulwer-Lytton (bad) Writing Contest
"As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window
blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised
at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the
bloodless tyrant that had mocked him day after day, and then he
shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the
shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo
left to rot on the information highway."
Larry Brill, Austin, Texas
Winner, Adventure category
"Fierce, icy winds mercilessly whipped the naked trees into
splinters and sent birds wheeling into the horizon as Nick Savage
mushed his heavy sled on through the blinding whiteness and
thought wearily, 'Next time I'm hooking up the dogs'."
Leann Roberts, Iron Station, N.C.
Winner, Vile pun category
"The ex-weightlifter/director started the rehearsals by telling
us, 'Okay, ve gonna be baroque composers in dis one; you be
Telemann, you be Vivaldi, and I'll be Bach.'"
Richard Patching, Alberta, Canada
Miscellaneous dishonorable mentions
"Yeah, they called him Rocky Stagecoach, 'cause that's where he
was born...on the bumpy trail between Conception and Contusion."
Rix Quinn, Fort Worth, Texas
"Remember this, foolish mortals, when ye stare headlong into the
mind-paralyzing void, the inky black nothingness of existence,
the hellish yawning maw of the abyss -- it's pretty damn dark,
so give it a few minutes for your eyes to adjust."
Frank M. Carrano, Branford, Conn.
"We had been married long enough that Fifi's burning gaze and
flaring nostrils told me _exactly_ what she wanted, so I hurriedly
peeled off her tight satin dress, dispatched her lacy French
brassiere with a flick of the wrist, her garter belt became a
'ringer' on the furthest bedpost, and as I sent her imported silk
stockings arcing gracefully into the laundry hamper, I dropped to
my knees and promised never, _never_ to go into town wearing her
clothes again."
William "Buddy" Ocheltree, Georgia
(last year's grand prize winner)
"The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and
Selena fretted sulkily and, buffing her already impeccable
nails--not for the first time since the journey began--
pondered snidely if this would dissolve into a vignette of
minor inconveniences like all the other days spent with Basil."
Gail Cain of San Francisco:
1983 Winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
"The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to
the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian
tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong,
clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, "Flick
your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through
your last meal."
Steve Garman of Pensacola
1984 Winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
"Safeway wasn't open when Keegan pulled his Chevy into the
lot, its valves chattering, gun-blue cracked-ring smoke sputtering
from its tail pipe, to get eggs."
George Griffith of Chadron, NE
"The surface of the strange, forbidden planet was roughly
textured and green, much like cottage cheese gets way after the
date on the lid says it is all right to buy it."
Scott Jones of Sausalito, CA,
winner in Sci-Fi category some years ago
When I go home she will be waiting for me in her white dress
and I will drink salt water and lose my bad dreams.
Richard Peabody, Jr. _I'm in Love with the Morton Salt Girl_
"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."
A.A. Milne (1882-1956) *The House at Pooh Corner*
The Encyclopedia Galactica has much to say on the theory and practice of
time travel, most of which is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't spent
at least four lifetimes studying advanced hypermathematics, and since it
was impossible to do this before time travel was invented, there is a
certain amount of confusion as to how the idea was arrived at in the first
place. One rationalization of this problem states that time travel was, by
its very nature, discovered simultaneously at all periods of history, but
this is clearly bunk.
Douglas Adams _Mostly Harmless_
One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties
involved in trying to exceed it. You can't. Nothing travels faster than
the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its
own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to
build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn't work
particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived
anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there.
Douglas Adams _Mostly Harmless_
...Another person doing this was Benjamin Franklin, who, in a famous
experiment, sought to prove his theory that if you flew a kite in a
rainstorm, a huge chunk of electricity would come shooting down the
string and damage your brain. Sure enough, he was right, and he spent the
rest of his days making bizarre, useless, and unintelligible statements such
as: 'A penny saved is a penny earned.' Eventually he became so dodderingly
pathetic that he had to be placed in charge of the U.S. Postal Service.
Dave Barry
Cursed be the father of the bride of the blacksmith who forged the iron
for the axe with which the woodsman hacked down the oak from which the bed
was carved in which was conceived the great-grandfather of the man who was
driving the carriage in which your father met your mother.
Robert Desnos (a French poet)
_Word Abuse_ by Donna Woolfolk Cross (c) 1979:
"'Listen, Spalding. Take it easy. He won't drown, he's from South Africa.'
I was walking up and down the beach trying to interpret this, trying
to figure it out, when Judy Arthur spotted Ivan way out. He had drifted down.
Judy saw his head way out there and she called him in.
And I said, 'My God, Ivan! Ivan, listen man, I thought you'd
drowned. I really did.'
He said, 'Spalding, I'm really sorry, man. Listen, don't worry
about me, I won't drown. I'm from South Africa.'"
Spalding Gray
from Swimming to Cambodia: The collected works of Spalding Gray
These gargantuan beings once constituted a serious menace to
navigation in the Normal Sea, a vast prehistoric lake which is
currently occupied by Kansas but was then teeming with life.
Melanogaster J. Spigot, Ph.D.,
"On the Neurobiology and Endocrinology
of Some Prehistoric Coelenterates," in _American Pie_
In a manner which matches the fortuity, if not the consequence, of Archimedes'
bath and Newton's apple, the [3.6 million year old] fossil footprints were
eventually noticed one evening in September 1976 by the palaeontologist Andrew
Hill, who fell while avoiding a ball of elephant dung hurled at him by the
ecologist David Western.
John Reader - Missing Links: The Hunt for Earliest Man
POPULIST, n. A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found in
the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an uncommon
spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the power of flight,
though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing independent lines of thought,
have ingeniously pointed out that had he possessed it he would have gone
elsewhere. In the picturesque speech of his period, some fragments of which
have come down to us, he was known as "The Matter with Kansas."
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"
THE CLIMATIC THEORY. First advanced by Professor J. Elmer Szycyznski of
the University of Chicago in 1937. Szycyznski theorized that during the
Ice Age the Oral-Aural Coral froze to death, in consequence of having
neglected to put up the storm windows. Adherents of the Graposaurus theory,
however, immedi- ately objected (in 1961) that such modern conveniences as
storm windows could not have been in general use during the Silurian Era.
It is now generally accepted that the entire Ice Age was a myth, engendered
when some dinosaur left his air-conditioner running.
Melanogaster J. Spigot, Ph.D.,
"On the Neurobiology and Endocrinology
of Some Prehistoric Coelenterates," in _American Pie_
The Great Cowardly Hydra possessed no power of locomotion, a fact which
undoubtedly contributed to its paranoid behavior. As it seldom failed to reach
a height of fifty feet at matu- rity, its dietary requirements were comparable
to those of a modern hippopotamus. Fortunately it was totally omnivorous.
Unfortunately, being unable to move about, it never got anything to eat.
Melanogaster J. Spigot, Ph.D.,
"On the Neurobiology and Endocrinology
of Some Prehistoric Coelenterates," in _American Pie_
No, no, no--it's spelt Raymond Luxury Yach-t, but it's pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove.
You're a very silly man and I'm not going to interview you.
_Monty Python's Flying Circus_
Chapman, Graham (1941-1989), Cleese, John (1939-), Gilliam, Terry (1940-),
Idle, Eric (1943-), Jones, Terry (1942-) and Palin, Michael (1943-)
Everybody has a right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwcp is
pronounced Jackson.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.
Christopher Morley (1890-1957)
They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy;
foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
_The Innocents Abroad_ (1869) ch. 19
DEINOTHERIUM, n. An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the
Pterodactyl was in fashion. The latter was a native of Ireland, its
name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O'Dactyl, as the man
pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"
MAGDALENE, n. An inhabitant of Magdala. Popularly, a woman found
out. This definition of the word has the authority of ignorance, Mary
of Magdala being another person than the penitent woman mentioned by
St. Luke. It has also the official sanction of the governments of
Great Britain and the United States. In England the word is pronounced
Maudlin, whence maudlin, adjective, unpleasantly sentimental. With their
Maudlin for Magdalene, and their Bedlam for Bethlehem, the English may
justly boast themselves the greatest of revisers.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the
man who eats Grapenuts on principle.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
E-mail is like a clothespin. Once you figure it out,
you can't hang your clothes without it.
BBN's Heart as quoted in IEEE Spectrum (Oct 92, pg. 23)
Let desire reign and be willing to take the consequences.
Heard in a "POLITICS, LITERATURE & THE ARTS" course
(taught by Professor Bronner of Rutgers University Poli.Sci. dept.)
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a
deep delight of the blood.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the
sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry.
Nathalie Sarraute
Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely
visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.
P.J. O'Rourke
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you
find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite
different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
A. A. Milne, _The House at Pooh Corner_
When the next White House enemies list comes out, I want to be on it.
Hunter S. Thompson
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
John Gilmore
Practice makes perfect, except in Russian Roulette, where practice only
serves to make a big mess.
Alfred E. Neumann
The threat is often stronger than the execution.
Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935) (International Grandmaster Chess Player)
It's not enough to have a lot of respect for bishops in the abstract -
you've gotta watch out for them!
Shelby Lyman, chesscaster (NY Times)
The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle,
and the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.
Danny Kaye, in "The Court Jester"
As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the
flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth.
Philip Jose Farmer, _The Purple Book_, p. 84
Progress is the mother of all problems.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
'Change' is scientific, 'progress' is ethical; change is indubitable,
whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)
The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves
into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.
Mark Weiser, head of a computer science laboratory,
writing in Scientific American, September 1991
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness...
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana (1863-1952)
As enunciated today, "progress" is simply a comparative of which we have not
settled the superlative.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) _Heretics_
The progress of science is often affected more by the frailties of humans
and their institutions than by the limitations of scientific measuring devices.
The scientific method is only as effective as the humans using it. It does
not automatically lead to progress.
Steven S. Zumdahl
It is not real work unless you would rather be doing something else.
J. M. Barrie (1860-1937)
Rectorial address, 3 May 1992 St. Andrew's University, Scotland
It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?
Ronald Reagan (1911- )
Speech, 22 April 1987 Annual Gridiron Dinner, Washington DC
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him _whose_?
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
Put your talent into your work, but your genius into your life.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when
I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
Hermann Weyl
Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and
original in your work.
Clive Barker, "Jihad"
Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume; the hellish cycle
is complete.
Raoul Vaneigem (1934- )
The Revolution of Everyday Life Ch. 7, sct. 2 (1967; tr. 1983)
My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people:
those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try
to be in the first group; there was less competition there.
Indira Gandhi (1917- ?)
Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe,
grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges
ahead of his accomplishments.
John Steinbeck (1902-1968) _Grapes of Wrath_
As the finely honed points of the magnificent bull elk's antlers perforated
his spleen, lungs and lower colon, Lenny the Grifter wished he had stayed
working the street in Times Square, instead of going up to the Rockies where
this dumb animal had figured out that three-card monte was a con, and gored him.
Richard Patching of Calgary, Alberta top honors submission in the
adventure category to the 12th annual Bulwer-Lytton contest for
bad fiction
Hewlett Packard at one point had only three private offices. One belonged
to Hewlett, one to Packard, and the third to a guy named Paul Ely who
annoyed so many coworkers with his bellowing on the phone that the company
finally extended his cubicle walls to the ceiling.
Robert Cringley, _Accidental Empires_