from the eclectic head of Thomas M. Swiss
tms@ziggy.tis.com
%%
"If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it." -- Stanley Garn
%%
"Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest
men in national government too." -- Richard M. Nixon
%%
"Assuming that the left wing or the right wing gained control of the
country, it would probably fly around in circles." -- Pat Paulsen
%%
"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average
star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very
special." -- Stephen W. Hawking, Der Spiegel, 1989
%%
"We're all nothing but unified arrangements of atoms and particles, drifting
around, enjoying consciousness every now and then for a second or so before
splitting up to become bits and pieces of trees and stars and french fries."
-- Alan Dean Foster, character Rail in _Glory Lane_, 1987
%%
Zimmerman's Law of Complaints:
Nobody notices when things go right.
%%
"Burnt Sienna. Thats the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas."
-- Ken Weaver
%%
Fourth Law of Thermodymanics:
If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is
damn near zero.
-- David Ellis
%%
"You may think you're smart, Pierce, but you're STUPID! But, you've met your
match in ME!" -- Col. Flagg
%%
"Good tea. Nice house." -- Worf
%%
"To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you
hit the target." -- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"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
%%
"If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution
inevitiable." -- John F. Kennedy
%%
Elwood: "It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank
of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, It's dark and we're wearing
sunglasses."
Jake: "Hit it!"
-- _The Blues Brothers_
%%
"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -
but thats the way to bet." -- Damon Runyon
%%
"Her life was saved by rock and roll." -- Lou Reed
%%
"Time is just nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once."
%%
"If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice?"
%%
"Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die."
%%
"Do it today, tomorrow it will be illegal."
%%
"The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity.
The rest is overhead for the operating system."
%%
"All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas." -- Kingfish
%%
"Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there
is some ordinance under which you can be booked."
-- Robert D. Sprecht (Rand Corp)
%%
Thoreau's Law: If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of
doing you good, you should run for your life.
%%
Vique's Law:
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
%%
"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
%%
"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, _Spinal Tap_
%%
All obvious theorems are true.
-- Pommersheim's Principle
All true theorems are obvious.
-- Keane's Kriterion
%%
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains
a fool forever.
-- Old Chinese saying
%%
Monty Python: "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."
%%
"Ho! Ha-ha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!"
--Daffy Duck
%%
"Consequences, shmonsequences! So long as I'm rich!"
-- Daffy Duck
%%
"Mine! Mine! It's all mine!"
-- D. Duck
%%
"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_
%%
"Always do what you are afraid to do."
-- Emerson
%%
"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 insatiable, implacable."
-- David Brin, _The Postman_
%%
"Hankerin' for trouble, eh? Well I would like--"
[aside] "I would like? I would like a trip to Europe!"
"--I would like..."
-- Daffy Duck, "Dripalong Daffy"
%%
"Go on! Shoot me again! I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers
and gunpowder and cordite!"
-- Daffy Duck, "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!"
%%
"Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And
East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them
like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know." -- Groucho Marx, "Animal Crackers"
%%
"Go! And never darken my towels again!"
-- Groucho Marx, "Duck Soup"
%%
"Oh, I know it's a penny here and a penny there, but look at me. I worked
myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty."
-- Groucho Marx, "Monkey Business"
%%
"The shortest distance between two points is through Hell."
-- Brian Clark
%%
"There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory,
decreased short term memory, and I forget the third."
-- Timothy Leary
%%
"A witty saying proves nothing."
-- Voltaire
%%
"Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry."
%%
Hartley's First Law:
You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
on his back, you've got something.
%%
"The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action."
%%
"Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk."
%%
Winston Churchill: "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs
treat us as equals."
%%
James Thurber: "I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we
would get somewhere."
%%
Johnny Hart's comic strip "B.C.": "If man evolved from the ape, how come
there are still apes around? Some of them were given choices."
%%
"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in
the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
-- _Calvin and Hobbes_
%%
"My life needs a rewind/erase button." -- _Calvin and Hobbes_
%%
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
%%
"The world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."
-- Sean O'Casey
%%
"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about."
%%
"There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"There is no limit to the amount of good that people can accomplish,
if they don't care who gets the credit." -- Anonymous
%%
"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
working for you." -- Will Rodgers
%%
"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
not hereditary." -- Thomas Paine
%%
"While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
correctness never does."
%%
"You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."
%%
"You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a
taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a
minute and a huff." -- Groucho Marx
%%
"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
know how seldom they do." -- Olin Miller.
%%
"You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
about 10-12 to 1." -- Ernest Rutherford
%%
"The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle, they're
on TV!" -- Homer Simpson
%%
"A pig ate his fill of acorns under an oak tree and then started to root
around the tree. A crow remarked, `You should not do this. If you lay bare
the roots, the tree will wither and die.' `Let it die,' said the pig. `Who
cares so long as there are acorns?'" -- Anonymous
%%
"You oughtn't yield to temptation."
"Well, somebody must, or the thing becomes absurd!" --- Anthony Hope
%%
"Only a brave person is willing honestly to admit, and fearlessly to face,
what a sincere and logical mind discovers." -- Rodan of Alexandria
%%
"Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that we cannot
get on without it any more than we can without potatoes." -- Louisa May Alcott
%%
"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be
serious when people laugh." -- George Bernard Shaw
%%
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you
count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet."
-- Dave Barry
%%
"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Mark Twain
%%
"There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the
existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any
marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat
engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is
obviously impossible."
-- Richard Davisson
%%
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
If you wish to know
Why there are disasters
Of Armies and Weapons in the world
Listen to the piteous cries
From the slaughterhouse at midnight
-- Old Chinese Saying
%%
"If you understand, things are as they are.
If you do not understand, things are as they are."
-- Gensha, Zen Master
%%
"Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time
to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete.
Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would
take as long?"
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%%
"Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers."
-- Leonard Brandwein
%%
A Law of Computer Programming:
"Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
will find that programmers cannot write in English."
%%
Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
%%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
corner of the workshop.
Corollary:
On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike your toes.
%%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
first two laws.
%%
Arthur C. Clarke's Law :
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
%%
Brooke's Law:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or
expands it beyond recognition.
%%
Bucy's Law:
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%%
"But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved
that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed....The evidence...is still
unimpeachable. The judges' decisions...were sound in logic and in law. Nothing
in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of
witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no
witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value."
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Captain Penny's Law:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
%%
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
there is nothing important to do.
%%
Finagle's first Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%%
Finagle's second Law:
No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c)
believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
%%
Finagle's third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
%%
Finagle's fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only
makes it worse.
%%
First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
wind.
%%
First Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who
imposed the deadline).
%%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
Celibacy is not hereditary.
%%
Flon's Law:
There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%%
Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.
%%
Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%%
Lowery's Law:
If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing
anyway.
%%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.
%%
Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
disposed of.
%%
Main's Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite government
program.
%%
Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%%
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
damnfoolproof.
%%
"Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of
conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival
of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in
situations where he is most likely to be creamed?"
-- Solomon Short (David Gerrold's _War Against the Chtorr_ series)
%%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
%%
"The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread." -- Anatole France
%%
The Third Law of Photography:
If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of
the dark leaks out.
%%
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."
-- Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
%%
Weinberg's First Law:
Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%%
Weinberg's Second Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy
civilization.
%%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross references.
%%
Wethern's Law:
Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
%%
"When I grow up, I want to be an honest lawyer so things like that
can't happen." -- Richard Nixon as a boy (on the Teapot Dome scandal)
%%
"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
-- Jeremy S. Anderson
%%
"You wake me up early in the morning to tell me I am right? Please
wait until I am wrong." -- John von Neumann, on being phoned at 10 a.m.
%%
"The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad"
-- S. Dali
%%
"Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by
deterministic means is, of course, living in a state
of sin."
-- John von Neumann
%%
"Statistics in the hands of an engineer are like a lamppost
to a drunk--they're used more for support than illumination."
-- Bill Sangster, Dean of Engineering, Georgia Tech
%%
"Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress."
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%%
"The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
and color, but also on ability."
-- Tom Lehrer
%%
"The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend."
-- Lincoln
%%
"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
brings wisdom."
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
"The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt
the one who is doing it."
%%
"The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
until 5 or 6 p.m."
%%
"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
%%
The Peter Principle:
People are promoted until they reach their level of incompetence.
%%
"The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone." --Ibsen
%%
"The universe is not indifferent to intelligence,
it is actively hostile to it."
%%
"Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the
argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave" - William Pitt, 1763
%%
"The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogren and stupidity."
-- Harlan Ellison
%%
"Your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched
only by its ingenuity in destroying itself." -- The 7th Doctor Who
%%
Thomas Edison is alleged to have remarked about his laboratory, "There ain't
no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish something."
%%
"Only those who attempt the absurd...will achieve the impossible"
%%
Subject: longest turnaround time in the world
"Rumor has it that when they closed down the 7094 at MIT in 1973, they
found a low-priority job that had been submitted in 1967 and had not
yet been run."
%%
Lie, n:
A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
known to date.
%%
"Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
probably parked."
%%
Meeting, n:
An assembly of people coming together to decide what person
or department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
%%
"Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood."
-- Louise Beal
%%
Miss, n.:
A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate
that they are in the market.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
"Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are."
%%
"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"
(_Illusions_, R. Bach)
%%
"A day without sunshine is like night."
%%
"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the
people are right more than half the time."
-- E. B. White
%%
Admiration, n.:
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:
Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the
Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emporer of Siberia" or
"Director of Corporate Planning".
%%
Wethern's Law:
Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
%%
Spouse, n:
Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
%%
Westheimer's Discovery:
A coupla months in the laboratory can save a coupla hours
in the library.
%%
Those whom computers must destroy, they first drive mad.
%%
Command, n:
Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer
in such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in
control.
%%
"It's not by amusing oneself that one learns."
-- Anatole France
"It's only by amusing oneself that one can learn."
-- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
%%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
handle.
%%
"A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular."
-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice
without getting nervous.
%%
Machine-independent, adj:
Doesn't run on any existing machine.
%%
"The good christian should beware of mathematicians and all those
who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that
mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the
spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell"
--St. Augustine
%%
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member
of congress. But I repeat myself."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms."
-- George Wald
%%
"You should emulate your heroes, but don't carry it too far.
Especially if they're dead."
%%
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
Magic."
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a
rigged demo."
%%
Van Roy's Law:
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%%
Sweater, n:
Garment worn by child when it's mother is feeling chilly.
%%
The Meta-Turing Test:
I'll call something intelligent when it attempts to
construct objects and apply Turing tests to them.
-- Lew Mammel, Jr.
%%
"It's impossible to make something foolproof because fools are so
ingenious."
%%
Idiot, n:
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in
human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "Devil's Dictionary"
%%
"An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it."
%%
"There are some microorganisms that exhibit characteristics of
both plants and animals. When exposed to light, they undergo
photosynthesis and when the lights go out, they turn into
animals. But then again, don't we all?"
%%
"Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within."
%%
"Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery."
%%
"All men are poets at heart"
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"All poets are mad"
--Robert Burton
%%
"If we applied government standards for determining the amount of salt in food
to the question of how much matter there is in the universe, we would conclude
that the universe is matter-free." -- Kolak & Martin, _Wisdom without Answers_
%%
"The number of UNIX machines has grown to 10 with more expected."
-- The UNIX manual, *1972*
%%
"The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete." -- Lao Tzu
%%
"If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at
the same time, insight into and understanding of many things." -- Van Gogh
%%
"Nature has neither kernel nor shell; she is everything at once." -- Goethe
%%
"To know and to act are one and the same." -- Samurai maxim
%%
"The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what
they think, not what they see." -- Huang Po
%%
"Words, as is well known, are great foes of reality" -- Joseph Conrad
%%
"All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream." --Edgar Allan Poe
%%
"Man's many desires are like the small metal coins he carries about in his
pocket. The more he has the more they weigh him down." -- Satya Sai Baba
%%
"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving
and that's your own self." -- Aldous Huxley
%%
"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth."
-- Alan Watts
%%
"There's no present. There's only the immediate future
and the recent past." -- George Carlin
%%
"Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced."
-- Kierkegaard
%%
"There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval."
-- Santayana
%%
"We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or that if they have
existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in
the future." -- Max Planck
%%
"What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived
at to make life more livable." -- Louise Nevelson
%%
"An independant reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be
ascribed to the phenomenon nor to the agencies of observation."
-- Niels Bohr
%%
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain;
as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." -- Albert Einstein
%%
"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
%%
"Monk: Where can I enter Zen?
Master Gensha: Can you hear the babbling brook?
Monk: Yes, I can hear it.
Master Gensha: Then enter it there."
%%
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old;
seek what they sought." -- Basho
%%
"I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder _why_ I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!" -- Richard P. Feynman
%%
"If you know that fundamentally there is nothing to seek, you have settled
your affairs." -- Rinzai
%%
"The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp."
-- John Berry
%%
"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
%%
"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."
-- Former 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."
-- Former Vice President (and space program coordinator) 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." -- Former 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."
-- Former 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."
-- Former Vice President Dan Quayle, to the American Samoans,
whose capital Quayle pronounces "Pogo Pogo"
%%
"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and
democracy - but that could change."
-- Former Vice President Dan Quayle
%%
"One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president,
and that one word is 'to be prepared'."
-- Former Vice President Dan Quayle
%%
"If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure."
-- Former Vice President Dan Quayle, to the Phoenix
Republican Forum, March 1990
%%
"I want to be Robin to Bush's Batman."
-- Former Vice President Dan Quayle
%%
"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.
-- Former Vice President Dan Quayle
%%
"Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things."
-- Former Vice President Dan Quayle
%%
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
-- The Constitution of the United States of America
%%
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be
violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported
by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
-- The Constitution of the United States of America
%%
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand
Jury... nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be
twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in
any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived
of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
shall private property be taken for public use, without just
compensation."
-- The Constitution of the United States of America
%%
"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to
a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and
district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which
district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be
confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory
process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the
Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
-- The Constitution of the United States of America
%%
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not
be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
-- The Constitution of the United States of America
%%
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people. "
-- The Constitution of the United States of America
%%
one with nintendo
halcyon symbiosis
hand thinks for itself
-- Damon Koronakos and Brian Roberts: HI-TECH HAIKUS
%%
cold matsushita
their technology stronger
enslaves our people
-- Damon Koronakos and Brian Roberts: HI-TECH HAIKUS
%%
midori ito
girl finds glory, is broken
they can rebuild her
-- Damon Koronakos and Brian Roberts: HI-TECH HAIKUS
%%
honda seatcovers
winter warm and summer cool
little lambs no more
-- Damon Koronakos and Brian Roberts: HI-TECH HAIKUS
%%
the sand remembers
once there was beach and sunshine
but chip is warm too
-- Damon Koronakos and Brian Roberts: HI-TECH HAIKUS
%%
oh no godzilla
guns and planes cannot stop him
tokyo is ablaze
-- Damon Koronakos and Brian Roberts: HI-TECH HAIKUS
%%
samurai fighter
keyboard and mouse are his sword
digital battles
-- Damon Koronakos and Brian Roberts: HI-TECH HAIKUS
%%
DAT arrives
frequency notch treachery
people are not fooled
-- Damon Koronakos and Brian Roberts: HI-TECH HAIKUS
%%
young sony worker
innocent hands build walkman
tears run down faces
-- Damon Koronakos and Brian Roberts: HI-TECH HAIKUS
%%
"Either I've gone nuts, or all this is really happening. If I'm nuts,
I'll be the last to know. So I might as well act as if everything is
just the way it looks." -- Keith Laumer, _The Ulitmax Man_
%%
"...and remember you're a Man, not just god, and for you there aren't
and never will be any easy answers, only questions, and no reasons,
only causes, and no meaning, only intelligence, and no destination
and no kindly magic smiling down from above, and no fires to goad you
from below, only Yourself and the Universe and what you make out of
the interface between the two equals."
-- Keith Laumer, _Night of Delusions_
%%
"Baby, after considerable thought I've reached the conclusion that the
only conceivable legitimate answer to the Universe as constituted is
a peal of hysterical laughter." -- Keith Laumer, _Night of Delusions_
%%
"I wasn't ready, man. I - I still believed in justice."
"Your world entertains many quaint superstitions."
-- Victor Milan, "Madman across the Water"
(in _Jokertown Shuffle - Wild Cards IX_)
%%
"Laws are only words words written on paper, words that change on
society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians,
lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should
always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who
believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or
economic status, is a fool."
-- John J. Miller, "And Hope to Die"
(in _Jokertown Shuffle - Wild Cards IX_)
%%
"[There is] a duty in refusing to cooperate in any undertaking that
violates the Constitutional rights of the individual. This holds in
particular for all inquisitions that are concerned with the private
life and the political affiliations of the citizens..."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"We care a lot / About the welfare of all you boys and girls
We care a lot / About you people 'cause we're out to save the world.
It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it..."
-- Faith No More
%%
"Quick to judge, quick to anger / Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice / And fear walk hand in hand..."
-- Rush, "Witch Hunt"
%%
"When they turn the pages of history
When these days have passed long ago,
Will they read of us with sadness
For the seeds that we let grow?"
-- Rush, "A Farewell to Kings"
%%
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude
better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace.
We ask not your councels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands
which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity
forget that ye were our countrymen." -- Sam Adams
%%
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation
as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases
which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."
-- C.A. Beard
%%
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control
a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not
crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our
government was founded." - Abraham Lincoln
%%
"And all should cry, Beware! Beware! / His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honeydew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise."
-- "Kubla Khan", Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%%
My opinions are definitive; reality is frequently inaccurate.
%%
"You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit
and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car." -- Harvey Diamond
%%
"Gee, but I'd like to be a G-Man / And go Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Just like Dick Tracy, what a "he-man" / And go Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
I'd do as I please, act high-handed and regal
'Cause when you're a G-Man there's nothing illegal."
-- Harold Rome, from "The G-Man Song",1937
%%
"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
%%
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man
would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and
punshiment and hope of reward after death." -- Albert Einstein
%%
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian,
or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up
to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
-- Thomas Paine
%%
"...[T]he lesson [comic books] taught children- or this child, at any rate-
was perhaps the unintentionally radical truth that exceptionality was the
greatest and most heroic of values; that those who were unlike the crowd were
to be treasured the most lovingly; and that this exceptionality was a treasure
so great that it had to be concealed, in ordinary life, beneath what the comic
books called a 'secret identity'." -- Salman Rushdie
%%
"Take off all your clothes and walk down the street waving a machete
and firing an Uzi, and terrified citizens will phone the police and
report: `There's a naked person outside!'" -- Mike Nichols
%%
"A vegetarian diet can prevent 97% of our [society's] coronary
occlusions." - "Diet and Stress in Vascular Disease," Journal of
the American Medical Association, Vol 197, No. 9., 1961, pg 806.
%%
"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will
come when men will look upon the murder of animals as they now look
upon the murder of men." -- Leonardo Da Vinci
%%
"To be a vegetarian is to disagree -- to disagree with the course of
things today. Nuclear power, starvation, cruelty -- we must make a
statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I
think it is a strong one." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer
%%
"With our combined strength we can end this destructive conflict
and bring order to the galaxy." -- Darth Vader
%%
"Heard a lot of talk about this Jesus
A man of love, a man of strength
But what a man was two thousand years ago
Means nothing at all to me today." -- "Operation Spirit", Live
%%
"If you fall down seven times, get up eight times." -- Japanese proverb
%%
"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 on the prejudices
of the people...until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands...and the
republic is destroyed." -- Abe Lincoln
%%
"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
%%
"When in doubt, use brute force" -- Ken Thompson
%%
Murphy's Law: "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of
those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it."
-- Edward A. Murphy, Jr
%%
"In hardware engineering, Ohm's law and Maxwell's equations pale in
importance and influence next to Murphy's Law" -- Gordon Bell
%%
"... A socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to
leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy
capitalism and become lesbians." -- Pat Robertson on feminism
%%
"Naturally the common people don't want war... but after all it is the
leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple
matter to drag the people along ... All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering,1936
%%
"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
%%
"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
%%
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves
up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -- Winston Churchill
%%
"When two tigers fight, one is certain to be maimed, and one to die."
-- Master Funakoshi
%%
"Without music life would be a mistake." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
"When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never
tried before." -- Mae West
%%
"Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL." -- Mae West
%%
Virtue is its own reward, but then so is sin!
%%
"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so
regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for
us." -- Alexander Graham Bell
%%
"I'm a simple man. All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough
whiskey for three, and enough women for four."
-- Walter Slovotsky, _The Warrior Lives_ by Joel Rosenberg
%%
"Whatever you want too much, you can't have, so when you REALLY want
something, try to want it a little less."
-- Walter Slovotsky, _The Sleeping Dragon_ by Joel Rosenberg
%%
"Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive." -- Bugs Bunny
%%
"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if it
were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."--Lewis Carroll
%%
"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
%%
"In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him."
-- "Aqualung", Jethro Tull
%%
"I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or
whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." -- Chang-tzu
%%
"I am endeavoring, ma'am, to construct a mnemonic memory circuit, using
stone knives and bearskins." -- Spock
%%
"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature."
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine."
-- George Washington
%%
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no
god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman
church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant
church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."
-- Thomas Paine
%%
"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
%%
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin
%%
"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action"
-- _You Only Live Twice_, Ian Fleming
%%
"Earth is the cradle of human kind, but one cannot live in a cradle
forever." -- Konstantin Tsiokovsky
%%
"They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may
oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no
trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the
new doctrine from the very pulpit..." - Galileo Galilei, 1615
%%
"If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud." -- Arlo Guthrie
%%