Quotes File

Edited by Mark T. Shirey ([email protected]) 1990-present.

The emphasis is on thoughtfulness and humor, not triteness or truth.
Please provide attributions if they're missing or wrong.

96.37% of all statistics are made up. - Kevin D. Quitt -- He has read everything, and, to his credit, written nothing. - A. J. Raffles -- You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever. - Larry Anderson -- 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 -- I'm not afraid of dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens. - Woody Allen -- It's not easy, being green. - Kermit -- History is made at night. Character is what you are in the dark. - Lord John Whorfin -- The more head downwards I am, the more I keep inventing new things. - Alice, "Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll -- The wise man never argues with the fool; casual observers may not be able to tell which is which. -- No matter what hits the fan, it's never distributed evenly. -- If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes. -- If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable. - John Kennedy -- "Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible," she said, "but that alone doesn't make it true." - Kafka -- Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans. - John Lennon -- If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you. -- Can't have everything, where would you put it? - Steven Wright Everywhere! - Anonymous -- Neckties can impair blood flow to the brain and interfere with clear thinking, alertness, and judgment. -- The more things change, the more they stay insane. -- It's only words... unless they're true. - David Mamet -- When you're swimmin' in the creek And an eel bites your cheek That's a moray - Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers -- Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art. - Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle -- An ounce of pretention is worth a pound of manure. -- At this distance they couldn't hit the broad side of a ba - last words of some Southern Civil War general -- A good idea doesn't care who has it, and neither should you. -- I'm not cynical - just experienced. -- Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. - Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965), Hansard, November 11, 1947 -- You can lie with statistics, but not to a statistician. -- To learn which questions are unanswerable, and _not_to_answer_them_; this skill is most needed in times of stress and darkness. - Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness -- I have committed the worst sin of all that a man can commit. I have not been happy. May the glaciers of oblivion drag me and mercilessly let me fall. - J. L. Borges -- I don't mind anybody dropping out of anything, but it's the imposition on somebody else I don't like. The moment you start dropping out and then begging off somebody else to help you, then it's no good. - George Harrison -- Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. - Groucho Marx -- To recognize that nature has neither a preference for our species nor a bias against it takes only a little courage. - James Randi -- Tell us what you despise; by this are you truly known. -- There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good. - Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -- The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. - H.P. Lovecraft -- Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Isaac Asimov -- Some say I'm a visionary, others just say I'm seeing things. -- It is impossible to prepare simultaneously for war and peace and still have time for golf. -- Excuse me, my karma just ran over your dogma. -- I'm not under the alcafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am. It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get. -- A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking. - Arthur Block -- Nothing was ever achieved by accepting reality. -- An ounce of example is worth a pound of theory. -- It is a weak mind that can think of only one way to spell a word. - Mark Twain -- Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. - Winston Churchill -- The world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding (which has been done hitherto), but the understanding is to be expanded and opened till it can take in the image of the world. - Francis Bacon, On the Improvement of the Understanding, The Parasceve -- The right to be right is irrelevant. It is the right to be wrong that makes one free. -- Do not go gentle into that good night, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas -- Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! (A plague on those who said our good things before we did!) Confound those who have said our remarks before us. - Aelius Donatus -- Opinion - knowledge without the hindrance of silly facts. -- The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. - attributed to Karl Marx "Hell is paved with good intentions." - Attributed to Samuel Johnson (sans "The road to") in Boswell's Life of Johnson, entry April 16, 1775 Boswell's editor, Malone, added a footnote indicating this is a 'proverbial sentence,' quoting an earlier 1651 source "Hell is paved with good intentions." - John Ray, in 1670, cited as a proverb, per Robert Wilson, in the newsgroup alt.quotations "Hell is full of good intentions or desires." - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) per Robert Wilson, in the newsgroup alt.quotations The road to nowhere's paved with plans that never quite got done. - Mark T. Shirey -- Never knock on Death's door; ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that! - Dr. Mike Stratford (Matt Frewer, "Doctor, Doctor") -- First, get the facts, then you can distort them at your leisure. - Mark Twain -- 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. -- Politics is comedy plus pretense. Comedy is tragedy plus time. -- An ill-chosen word is the fool's messenger. -- There's a certain freedom to being completely screwed. - The Freshman (movie) -- Everything you know is wrong. - Firesign Theatre Everything you know is wrong - but some of it is a useful approximation! -- I'm leaving early today to make up for coming in late yesterday. -- I wept because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I took his shoes. - Dave Barry -- If Christ had died in the 20th century, Catholics would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks. - Lenny Bruce -- In view of the stupidity of the majority of the people, a widely held opinion is more likely to be foolish than sensible. - Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals -- Fear most of all to be in error. - Kierkegaard, quoting Socrates -- Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). - Rene Descartes Cogito ergo non sumo (I think, therefore I don't like pro wrestling). - Mark T. Shirey Cogito ergo spud (I think, therefore I yam). I think too much, therefore I am too much. I wonder, therefore I might be. - Baron of Greymatter Dipso ergo sum (I drink therefore I am). I rhyme, therefore iamb. - Caldwell I think not! - conceivably the last words of Rene Descartes -- In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey -- 'Truth' never set anyone free. It is only _doubt_ which will bring mental emancipation. - Anton LaVey, quoted by Arthur Lyons, Satan Wants You -- I have read your case, Mr. Smith, and I am no wiser now than when I started. "Possibly not my Lord, but far better informed." - F.E. Smith, Barrister (Attorney)(1872-1930), first Earl of Birkenhead -- If you are lonely when you are alone, then you are in bad company. - Jean Paul Sartre -- The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. -- Basically, the problem is this: You find yourself shot with an arrow. Do you try to find how the arrow was made, who shot it, and why? NO, you try to pull the thing out! - Buddha (paraphrased) -- The man who pretends to be a modest inquirer into the truth of a self-evident thing is a knave. - William Blake -- Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows. - Robert G. Ingersoll -- When choosing between two evils, give preference to the council of your tummy over that of your testes. The history of mankind is full of disasters that could have been averted by a good meal, followed by a nap on the couch. -- The problem about real life is that moving one's knight to QB3 may always be replied to with a lob across the net. - Alasdair Macintyre -- The lesser of two evils is evil. - Seymour Leon -- Concord and time, each needeth each: The ripest fruit hangs where not one But only two can reach. - William Plomer, Gloriana -- Logic - The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. - Ambrose Bierce -- The U.S. Constitution has its flaws, but it's a damn sight better than what we have now! -- Only our concept of time makes it possible for us to speak of the Day of Judgment by that name; in reality it is a summary court in perpetual session. - Franz Kafka -- Here at First National, you're not just a number - you're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash, and another number. - Saturday Night Live -- Men and women can never be friends because the sex thing always gets in the way. - Billy Crystal as Harry Burns, When Harry Met Sally (movie) -- 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. - Calvin and Hobbs -- A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, must not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity. - Edgar Allan Poe -- Here lies a Technophobe, no whimper, no blast. A life's goal accomplished, zero risk at last. -- I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this. - Emo Phillips -- If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. -- There is no indigestion worse than that which comes from having to eat your own words. -- Convictions cause convicts. - Robert A. Wilson -- I am ever a student of the mysteries, lest the world be as it appears. -- The trouble with normal is it always gets worse. - Bruce Cockburn -- If you have no reason for your opinion, change it. -- I hung my honor plaque with pride on the wall above my bed I told her that I hoped it would not fall and hit my head As we ponder the plaque and how big the threat is She says, "It all depends on how big your head is." - Mark T. Shirey -- Faithfulness is a social not a biological law. -- A truly moral life requires a great deal of luck. - Tracey Ullman -- Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not clear to him. - Paul Eldridge -- Do not suffer the company of fools. - Buddha -- As Mark Twain approached his death he was seen reading the Bible, most unusual for him. Someone asked him if he was repenting as his time drew near. Twain replied, "No, I'm looking for loopholes." -- Sooner or later reality bites you in the ass. -- If _I_ were God, I would force everyone to take a minimal amount of science, statistics, and logic courses so that no one in _my_ universe was STUPID enough to believe in creationism, new age crap, perpetual motion machines, UFO's making crop circles, ESP, astrology, or any such nonsense. To make up for the inflexible science requirements, I would otherwise be an extraordinarily cool god who threw lots of really great parties and was generally lenient about the whole heaven/hell thing. - somebody in Usenet news -- Oh no, my dear, I'm a very good man; I'm just a very bad Wizard. - The Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum -- Where there is no solution, there is no problem. -- Courage is the willingness of a person to stand up for his beliefs in the face of great odds. Chutzpah is doing the same thing wearing a Mickey Mouse hat. -- Don't edit reality for the sake of simplicity. -- I'd rather go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. - Mark Twain -- He's suffering from Anal-Cranial Inversion! -- Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions. -- I will go insane, and I WILL TAKE YOU WITH ME! - Beetlejuice (movie) -- Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. -- Humility to a genius is as an extinguisher to a candle. - Shenstone -- Ignorance is the mother of adventure. -- Life is too short to take seriously. Life is too important to take seriously. - Oscar Wilde Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive. - Elbert Hubbard He allus said, "Don't take life too serious, it ain't nohow permanent." - Pogo (comic strip by Walt Kelly) Life is too serious to be taken too seriously. - Dianora on IRC Undernet #mensa -- Genius is talent exercised with courage. - Ludwig Wittgenstein -- If you save everything until the last minute, it only takes a minute. The sooner you start, the longer it takes. -- Love between the ugly is the most beautiful love of all. - Todd Rundgren -- There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like a fool. - Steven Wright -- There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way. - Christopher Morley -- I'm like oil, crude but precious. -- The best way of learning something is to take a leap into the unknown without looking back. - Yevgeny Yevtushenko -- He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. - Sir Francis Bacon, Of Marriage and Single Life -- A nice man is a man of nasty ideas. - Jonathan Swift -- Question Authority - bumper sticker Question Authority and the authorities will question you. -- For every vision, there is an equal and opposite revision. -- Stepping in others footsteps, doesn't bring you ahead. -- If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. -- When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism. When you steal from many, it's research. - Wilson Mizner -- You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity. - Ralph Waldo Emerson -- The love you take is equal to the love you make. - The Beatles, "The End" -- Forcing the issue is always worth it. - Jello Biafra -- It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q, "Deja Q", Star Trek:TNG -- Believing presupposes understanding. - al-Ghazali -- Absurdity - A statement of belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. - Ambrose Bierce -- I read a book once. Green it was. - Porridge I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia. - Woody Allen -- There is converging evidence only for 5 personality characteristics: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience (this means intellectual curiosity, need for variety), Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. - Ursula Hess, Department of Psychology, University of Geneva -- A ship in the harbor is safe, but ships are not built for this. -- Some terribly insightful quote that shakes the foundation of all your beliefs. -- Any idiot can face a crisis - it's this day-to-day living that wears you out. - Chekhov -- Das computenmachine is nicht fur gefingerspoken und mittengrabben. Is easy schnappen der springewerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spittzensparken. Ist nicht fur gerwerken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets, relaxen und watch das blinkenlights. -- Judge a man not by his looks but by his actions. -- We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the guarantors of only our own. - Thomas Jefferson -- "Most people are idiots," said Wimsey, gravely, "but it isn't kind to tell them so. I expect you do tell them so." -- America: Love it or leave it. America: Love it or change it. America: Change it or lose it. -- New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. - John Locke -- Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you. - Joey Adams, see chiasmus.com -- The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will escape to the stars! -- This is Great-Grandpa's axe. The head has been replaced a few times, and the handle, too, but it's the oldest axe I'VE ever seen. -- When you talk to God, you are called religious. When God answers back, you are called crazy. -- When you come to a fork in the road, take it. - Yogi Berra -- The trouble with everyone is that they generalize too much. -- TLA - Three Letter Acronym TINA - This Is Not an Acronym -- It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear. - Freeman Dyson -- Too many people fight for the right to say what they think, and then say too much without thinking. -- If all statisticians were laid end to end, it would be a good thing. -- If you cannot successfully combat words with words, and only words, your message is inferior. - Dan Holtzman -- If a million people do a dumb thing, it's still a dumb thing. -- Last but not least, avoid clich�s like the plague. Find viable alternatives. - William Safire -- Everybody lies about sex. - Lazarus Long -- I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. - Thomas Jefferson -- Experience is something you get just after you really needed it. Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. - Franklin P. Jones Experience is the worst teacher - it always gives the test first and the instructions afterward. -- Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. - Samuel Johnson -- Ninety percent of life is just showing up. - Woody Allen -- Listen, three-eyes, don't try to out-weird me; I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal. - Zaphod Beeblebrox, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HGG) -- To err is human, to moo bovine. -- Think anyone will mind that I don't have a tie? - Clifford Stoll Don't worry, Cliff, at your level of abstraction, it doesn't make any difference. - Robert Morris, chief scientist, NSA -- Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup... - John Lennon, "Across the Universe" -- And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man. - A.E. Housman -- North's Law: 20% of any population fall in the lunatic fringe (on one subject or another). -- jamais-vu - the feeling of being in a totally strange environment and seeing everything (including one's own body) for the first time. vuja-de - the feeling that this has never happened to you before. -- Modern art is what happens when a painter stops looking at girls and persuades himself he has a better idea. - John Ciardi -- Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. - Tom Lehrer, comedian-pianist -- William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.' What is wanted is not the will to believe but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite. - Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays, 1928 -- Sagehood is nothing but sincerity. - Chou Tun-I -- They call television a medium. That's because it is neither rare nor well done. - Ernie Kovacs -- I'm a great housekeeper. I get divorced; I keep the house. - Zsa Zsa Gabor -- An atheist is someone with no invisible means of support. - John Buchan -- Never try to teach a pig to sing. You'll only waste your time, and annoy the pig. - Mark Twain Never wrestle with a pig. You'll both get dirty and the pig will love it. -- Institutions are only as good as the people who are committed to them. -- Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. - Martin Luther King -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. -- He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave. - Sir William Drummond -- Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist. (The world is all decaying (?)). - Peter Cash (cash@convex.com) (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein) -- 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. -- How come everybody was somebody famous in their former lifetimes? Somebody must have been Joe Schmoe. - Kevin Costner, Bull Durham (movie) -- There are times when you have to choose between being human and having good taste. - Bertold Brecht -- The purpose of advertising is to destroy the freedom of the market. -- To distinguish the real from the unreal, one must experience them both. - S. Gorn's Compendium of Rarely Used Clich�s -- Religion is a defense mechanism against religious experiences. - Carl Jung -- It is only with the heart that one see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. -- Life is a forge, and the purest metal comes from the hottest fire. -- Sometimes, I think we are alone. Sometimes I think we are not. In either case, the thought is quite staggering. - R. Buckminster Fuller -- You don't have to be cleverer than other people, you just have to be one day earlier. - Leo Szilard It's not know-how that counts, it's know-when. - Jerry Weinberg, www.geraldmweinberg.com -- I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages. - William H. Mauldin, cartoonist -- The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason -- Reason is a slave to the emotions. - David Hume Never hate your enemies, it clouds your judgment. - Michael Corleone, The Godfather (movie) -- "Surely you can't be serious!" I AM serious, and don't call me Shirley. - Leslie Neilsen in Airplane (movie) -- "Werewolf?" There wolf, there castle. - Marty Feldman as Igor in Young Frankenstein (movie) -- Walk this way. No, _this_ way, with your knees bent. - Marty Feldman as Igor in Young Frankenstein (movie) -- My father owned a small piece of land... he carried it with him wherever he went. He was an idiot but I loved him. - Woody Allen, Love and Death (movie) -- I've a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it. - Groucho Marx -- A Tree is a Tree - title of King Vidor's autobiography -- Oh, I don't know. We all go a little mad, sometimes. - Anthony Perkins (as Norman Bates), Psycho (movie) -- "Wasn't he your superior?" "No, he was my boss." - Graham Marshall, A Shock To the System -- Life's 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, Macbeth -- With God all things are possible. - Matthew 19:26, The Bible, c 71 CE When men stop believing in God, everything is permitted. - Dostoyevsky When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything. - G.K. Chesterton -- 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 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 -- No absurdity is too fantastic to gain support. - Antoine Arnauld -- You can lead a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead. - Stan Laurel -- "Can I borrow a pencil?" Regular or unleaded? - Mark T. Shirey -- Wise man once told me all the blues was a good man feeling bad, thinking 'bout the woman he once was with. - Blind-Dog Fulton (Joe Seneca), Crossroads (movie) -- I hate the goddamn system, but until someone comes along with some changes that make sense, I'll stick with it. - Clint Eastwood, Magnum Force -- 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 -- Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. - H.L. Mencken -- Eat a live toad first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. -- Obeying their rules only encourages them to create new ones. Disobey as often as possible: for gain, for sport, for the art of it. - Ethan Mordden -- To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem. - Douglas Adams, HGG -- How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds Makes deeds ill done! - Shakespeare, King John, Act IV: Scene 2 -- I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying. - Woody Allen -- The only true law is that which leads to freedom. - Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull -- It's good to know that if I behave strangely enough, society will take full responsibility for me. - Ashleigh Brilliant -- The really important problems require greater earnestness. - John Cage -- From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on His protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple? - Thomas Paine -- Another Saturday night and I ain't got no body. - A. Ghost (c/o Mark Shirey) This is dedicated to the one-eye love. - Cyclops (c/o Mark Shirey) -- Did I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. - Walt Whitman -- Sanity is in the mind of the beholder. - Ray Cardillo (Truck) -- Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Albert Einstein -- I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters. - Solomon Short -- Where is the wisdom we lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we lost in information? - T.S. Eliot -- The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell -- The height of cultivation runs to simplicity. Halfway cultivation runs to ornamentation. - Bruce Lee -- Where it is a duty to worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to study the laws of heat. - John Morley -- A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. - Winston Churchill -- Any noun can be verbed. - Alan Perlis -- Doubt is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow -- It is good for an uneducated young man to read books of quotations. - Winston Churchill -- God is on the side of the big guns. - Ney God is on the side not of the heaviest battalions, but of the best shots. - Voltaire to Ney -- The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations. - David Friedman -- Triviality and certainty are the kinderkrankheiten of knowledge. - Imre Lakatos -- Badges? We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you no stinking badges. - Gold Hat Bandito, often mis-quoted, from Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart Badges? We don't need no stinking badges. - Head Bandito, Blazing Saddles Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers! - Weird Al Yankovic, UHF Bagpipes? They don't need no stinking bagpipes! - Central PA Festival of the Arts Program Guide '88?, Scottish band promo Bridges? Banjos? Begasse? Bagels? Baguettes? Badinage? Baggage? Bandage? Bangles? Barges? Bashes? Bastions? Bathos? Beggars? -- In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away - For the Snark _was_ a Boojum you see. - Lewis Carroll -- In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. - Ivan Illich -- Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they're yours. - Richard Bach Argue for your greatness and that too shall be yours. - Michael Sky -- The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling. - Robert Pirsig (quoted in Zen To Go by Jon Winokur) Looking for Truth is like riding an ox in search of an ox. - Chinese proverb -- What the public reproaches you for - cultivate it! It's you. - Jean Cocteau -- I'm too old to grow up. - Dennis Hopper as Huey Walker in Flashback (movie) The 90's are going to make the 60's look like the 50's. - Dennis Hopper as Huey Walker in Flashback (movie) -- Life is complex - it has both real and imaginary parts. -- The only way to turn water into wine is with a vineyard. - Mark T. Shirey -- Truth happens. - James -- If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? - Hillel "The Elder", 30 BCE - 10 CE, Wisdom of the Jewish Fathers -- Tug on anything in nature and you will find it connected to everything else. - John Muir Explore the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. -- There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. - Shakespeare, Hamlet II:2 -- I'm prejudiced against bigots. -- He was, of Lord Essex's opinion, 'rather to go a hundred miles to speak with one wise man, than five miles to see a fair town.' - Boswell on Samuel Johnson -- I've always said, 'There's nothing an agnostic can't do if he doesn't know whether he believes in anything or not.' - Graham Chapman of Monty Python, the Bells sketch -- There smites nothing so sharp nor smelleth so sour as shame. - William Langland -- Make your learning a fixture; Say little and do much; And receive everyone with a friendly attitude. -- There's a clear moral to this tale, now that I think about it: When you're dead, you're dead. And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you. - Kurt Vonnegut -- Everybody was terrified of Doug; he used... SARCASM. - Monty Python -- A good listener is not only popular everywhere but after a while he knows something. -- In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain. - Pliny the Elder -- All women grow up to be like their mothers; that is their tragedy. No man does, and that's his. - Oscar Wilde -- Live simply so that others may simply live. -- And clever rogues with far less valid cause, have trapped their victims in a web of laws. - Moliere -- A society run by the media is a mediocracy. -- Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good. It would be the end of everything we know. - Marvin Minsky -- Practioners of a discipline should have the discipline to practice. -- The longer I live the more I see 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 -- Where there's smoke, there's smoke. - Mark T. Shirey -- If out of sight means out of mind, why does absence make the heart grow fonder? If you should look before you leap, why is he who hesitates lost? - Mark T. Shirey -- Hell for engineers is a place without right angles. -- Politics is not the world's oldest profession, but the results are the same. -- I perceive the Universe as a single equation... and it's so simple! - Lt. Barkley, Star Trek:TNG -- The mind is its own place, and in it self Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n - Lucifer (on occasion of being tossed out of Heav'n), Paradise Lost -- millihelen - the amount of beauty required to launch a single ship. - Isaac Asimov, (Helen of Troy had the "face that launched 1000 ships") fig newton - the force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches/sec. - J. Hart -- I know it's spelled 'Raymond Luxury-Yacht', but it's pronounced "Throat Warbler-Mangrove"! - Monty Python -- Give a skeptic an inch and he'll measure it. -- If your nose runs and your feet smell, you're built upside-down. -- If you want to make it big in life, remember, take care, You must know whom to kiss, and also where... - PDQ Bach, A Little Nightmare Music -- There are only two truly infinite things: the universe and stupidity. And I am unsure about the universe. - Albert Einstein -- Civilization rests on two things: the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and the voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. - Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels (movie) -- Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view. - Obi-Wan Kenobi in Return of the Jedi (movie) -- Non Sequitur Society motto: We don't have regular meetings, but we do like pizza. -- He doesn't know when he's beaten, this boy. He doesn't know when he's winning, either. He doesn't have any sort of sensory apparatus known to man. - Monty Python -- If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? - Abraham Lincoln -- Ich bin ein Berliner! (I am a jelly doughnut!) - President Kennedy in Berlin -- Einstein claimed that if he were smarter he would have been a plumber. -- Given the correlation between heterosexuality and such habits as drinking beer while watching football games on Sunday afternoons, beating up on your kids, and maybe whacking the wife if she don't put out... well, I have a VERY difficult time admitting I'm straight sometimes. - Brian Siano -- Trust only change. - Meg Davis, et al -- Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you. -- If there's a fine line, be extra careful that you're on the right side of it. - Mark T. Shirey -- 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 -- You may be right - I may be crazy, but it just may be a lunatic you're looking for. - Billy Joel -- A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. - Proverbs 15:1, The Bible -- Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone... Do not take revenge... On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. - Romans 12:16-21, The Bible -- Neoteny is the basis of intelligence. -- Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once. -- We have met the enemy and he is ours. - Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry Reporting his victory over the British fleet on Lake Erie, 10 September 1813, during the War of 1812. Perry's victory ended British naval control of the Great Lakes and opened the way for William Henry Harrison's invasion of upper Canada. What is man's chief enemy? Each man is his own. - Anacharsis, 600 BCE. We have met the enemy and he is us. - Pogo (comic strip by Walt Kelly) -- One secret of success is a sense of urgency about getting things done. - Mark T. Shirey, after others -- Apatheist - One who does not care if there is a supreme being. -- Try and be nice to people. Avoid eating fat. Read a good book every now and then. Get some walking in. And try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations. - Monty Python, The Meaning of Life (movie) -- A cattle rancher died and left Focus Ranch to his sons. Now Focus Ranch is where the mourning son's raise meat. - a 4-way pun -- Life is suffering. - Buddha Life is difficult. - Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled -- The time is always right to do right. - Martin Luther King -- Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever. - Napoleon Bonaparte -- Statues of marble or brass will perish; and statues made in imitation of them are not the same statues... But print and reprint a thought a thousand times over, and that with materials of any kind... the thought is eternally and identically the same thought in every case. - Thomas Paine -- Some see a meadow and feel wonder at the glory of a god. I feel wonder at the glory of the meadow itself, which is boundless. -- 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 The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man that ever was propagated since man began to exist. - Thomas Paine -- They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania -- The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought. - Nathaniel Hawthorne -- 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, HGG, Restaurant at the End of the Universe -- Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. - Isaiah 1:18, The Bible -- Hydrogen - a colorless, odorless gas which, given time, turns into people. -- The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you,... video recorders watched tedious television for you,... Electric Monks believed things for you... - Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency -- If God can exist without being created, then why can't the world exist without being created? -- Just remember: wherever you go, there you are. - Buckaroo Banzai, Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension -- The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authority; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. - Thomas Paine -- I think you hit the nose on the head. - overheard at work Now they've changed their song and dance. - overheard at work -- Look! Plain donuts, powdered donuts, ooh, even cinnamon donuts! How's THAT for freedom of choice? - Homer Simpson, The Simpsons (TV show) -- Prizes bring bad luck. Academic prizes, prizes for virtue, decorations, all these inventions of the devil encourage hypocrisy and freeze the spontaneous upsurge of a free heart. - Baudelaire -- If we breed like rabbits, in the long run we have we have to die like rabbits. - Carlson -- People are people. Life is a universe. - Timothy Bouvia -- Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. - Romans 1:19, The Bible -- Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint. - Alexander Hamilton -- Justice is incidental to law and order. - J. Edgar Hoover -- Reading musses up my mind. - Henry Ford -- The great tragedy of science: the slaying of an original, beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact. - Oliver W. Jones -- If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. -- I spent a lot of money on wine and women and like a fool I squandered the rest. - Benny Hill -- Occam's Razor: Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate. - William of Ockham "The Myth of Occam's Razor," Thornburn, _Mind_ 27, 345-353, 1918 Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate. (Do not multiply entities without necessity) - John Ponce of Cork (1639) Entia non sunt multiplicanda, praeter necessitatem. - John Clauberg of Groningen, _Logica Vetus et Nova_, 1654 Frustra fit per plura, quod potest fieri per paucoria. - Duns Scotus (It is vain to do with more, what can be done with less). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. - Gell-Mann's Law Shirey's Beard: Life is complex; there are many reasons for everything. - Mark T. Shirey -- 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 punishment and hope of reward after death. - Albert Einstein -- "Holy Macro, Tabman! The Grin Reaper is a schizofrantic infomaniac!" "Right, Robit. We must kill him before he stops again!" In next week's episode, Tabman and Robit battle the Ghost Reader. Same Tab time, same Tab channel. - Mark T. Shirey, Tabman and Robit in "I Want To Be Determined" -- For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn? - Jane Austen's Mr. Bennet -- I have a memory like a hawk. - overheard in a store -- I was so surprised when I was born that I could not talk for a year and a half. -- It's better to have loved and lost than to have won and then be bossed. -- If you can't do great things, you can do little things great. -- There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She hadn't any children - she knew what to do. -- The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. -- There is no right way to do a wrong thing. -- I want to share all your joys and sorrows. "But I haven't any sorrows." I mean AFTER we're married. -- Half of marriages end in divorce, and the other half end in death. The greatest cause of divorce is marriage. -- A bachelor is a guy who leans towards women, but not far enough to lose his balance. -- Male, old enough to know better, wishes correspondence with female not quite that old. -- A bachelor is a man who does not make the same mistake once. -- Keep your eyes wide open before you're married and half-closed afterwards. -- Life is one fool thing after another. Love is two fool things after each other. -- Wanted: 25-year-old with 40 years experience. -- Had I known I'd live this long, I would've taken better care of myself. -- To entertain some people, all you have to do is listen. -- Be yourself, but don't overdo it. -- I am the Lord and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me... I form light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things. - Isaiah 45:5-7, The Bible -- You evil witches... "Yes, we can!" I hear you can foretell the future. - I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again (BBC radio comedy) -- It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part. - Benjamin Franklin -- A bigot delights in public ridicule, for he begins to think he is a martyr. - Sydney Smith -- In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up. - Martin Niemoller -- A consultant is an ordinary person a long way from home. -- Eschew obfuscation, ponderous verbosity, sesquipedalianism, archaisms, and neologisms! -- Life's too short to drink cheap beer. Drink better, drink less. - Randy the Bartender -- Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. - David Hume -- Information is the key to power and the key to prevent power abuse. In the knowledge lies the power. - Edward Feigenbaum -- Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue. - Campbell -- Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in't. - Lord Byron -- A company is known by the people it keeps. -- Quick to judge Quick to anger Slow to understand Ignorance and prejudice And fear Walk hand in hand - Neil Peart (RUSH) -- A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. - Milton -- A man should be greater than some of his parts. -- A poet begins in delight and ends in wisdom. - Robert Frost -- Question with boldness even the existence of God; because if there be one, He must more approve of the homage of reason, than of the blindfold of fear. - Thomas Jefferson -- "Fire at will!" Poor Will! - John K. Shirey (from WWII/CBI) -- "Can I help?" A hundred years or so from now, a novelist will write a classic on that theme. He'll recommend those words over "I love you." - Captain Kirk, Star Trek (TV show), "The Guardian of Forever", in which Kirk goes back in time to 20th century Earth -- In every revolution there's one man with a vision. - Kirk, Star Trek (TV show), "Mirror, Mirror" -- They seem to be bisexual - reproducing at will. - McCoy, Star Trek (TV show), "The Trouble With Tribbles" -- There is something about the underhanded use of power that makes it seem so shrewd, even when it is abysmally stupid. - Thomas Sowell -- You can bury the hatchet, but you'll always remember where it's buried. -- It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time. - Thomas Paine -- Counter-argument to the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"): A fundamentalist Christian might say, "Since I now know about the salvation of Christ, if I was in your state of wretched unbelief and you were a Christian, I'd want YOU to do everything in your power to convert ME." -- God is not dead, he is merely unemployed. - Pogo (comic strip by Walt Kelly) -- There's a very fine line between a groove and a rut, a fine line between eccentrics and people who are just plain nuts. - Christine Lavin -- The biggest break anyone ever gets is being born in the first place! And they don't see what a good deal it is until they realize they ain't gonna be stuck with it forever. - Porky Pine -- Yippee! That may have been a small one for Neil, but it was a big one for me. - Pete Conrad, on the moon -- Graffiti in a subway (re: Fermat's Last Theorem): I've just developed a proof that demonstrates that, where n>2, the equation (a^n) + (b^n) = c^n cannot be solved with integers. Unfortunately, my train is coming. -- Being in a minority, even a minority of one, does not make one insane. - Winston Smith in "1984" by George Orwell -- Anyone who thinks they can explain away any inconsistency in the Bible is begging to be cold-cocked by facts like the following. 2 Samuel 8:4 says that David took 700 horsemen from Hadadezer. Telling the same story, 1 Chronicles 18:4 says David took 7000 horsemen from Hadadezer. 2 Samuel 28:8 says Joshebbasshebeth once killed 800 men. Telling the same story, 1 Chronicles 11:11 says it was 300 men. Etc. -- Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals; but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach. - Pindar (518-438 CE) -- How good is man's life, the mere living! How fit to employ all the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy! - Robert Browning, 1855 -- A man's life of any worth is a continuous allegory. - Keats -- 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 -- A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. - George Wald -- Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently undocumented computer program is indistinguishable from magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. -- The only good is knowledge and the only evil ignorance. - Socrates -- When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before. - Mae West -- What a wonderful day we've had. You have learned something, and I have learned something. Too bad we didn't learn it sooner, we could have gone to the movies instead. - Balki Bartokomous, Perfect Strangers (TV show) -- I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the guy next to me. - Woody Allen -- Rule #1: Don't sweat the small stuff. Rule #2: It's all small stuff. -- Pick battles big enough to matter; small enough to win. - Jonathan Kozol -- Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. - Pablo Picasso -- More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly. - Woody Allen -- I hate quotations. - Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Whenever he thought about it, he felt terrible. And so, at last, he came to a fateful decision. He decided not to think about it. -- Arthur Dent: You know, it's at times like this, when I'm stuck in a Vogon air lock with a man from Betelgeuse, 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. Ford Prefect: Why? What did she tell you? Arthur: I don't know - I didn't listen! - Douglas Adams, HGG -- Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly. - Thomas Huxley -- Decide what you want; decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work. - H.L. Hunt -- The purpose of life is a life of purpose. - Robert Byrne -- Lack of money is the root of all evil. - George Bernard Shaw -- A friend is a gift you give yourself. - Robert Louis Stevenson -- Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city. - George Burns -- We are here and it is now. Further than that, all knowledge is moonshine. - H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) -- Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits. - Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) saying -- If every word were recorded, then every word would count and everyone would be accountable. - Mark T. Shirey -- Ah! I see you have the machine that goes 'BING!'. - Monty Python -- The economy and the environment are not closed systems. - Mark T. Shirey -- Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. - Thomas Paine -- There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. - Shakespeare, Hamlet I,v,166 The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we CAN imagine. - misattributed to Jean Paul Sartre Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we _can_ suppose... I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming. - John B.S. Haldane (1892-1964), Possible Worlds, 1927 -- There's a seeker born every minute. -- When in danger, or in doubt Run in circles, scream and shout - Robert A. Heinlein -- It has yet to be shown that intelligence has any survival value. - Arthur C. Clarke -- If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done. - Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Did you hear about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac? He stays up all night wondering if there's a dog. -- I put in an application to the optimists club, but I don't think they're going to accept it. -- I don't have problems; I have puzzles. - Mark T. Shirey -- I will not be punched, stamped, filed, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! - The Prisoner -- "I think you're indecisive and argumentative." Well, I'm not sure about the "indecisive" part, but I must take issue with "argumentative"! -- How is it that we know so little, given that we have so much information? - Noam Chomsky -- If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are. - Montesquieu -- There's lies, damn lies, and statistics. - Mark Twain -- If God thought that nudity was okay, we would have been born naked. -- By the time a man reads women like a book he's too old to collect a library. -- Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom, and it will be a hundred times better for everyone. - Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching #19 -- Thank you for sharing that at me. -- Reality is what refuses to go away when you stop believing in it. - Philip K. Dick -- I don't have a drinking problem; I drink, I get drunk, I fall down. No problem. -- And what can I get for you today sir? Truth? Oh, I _am_ sorry sir, but we haven't carried that for ever so long. There was never any call for it. Perhaps we can interest you in some points-of-view? -- He who speaks does not know. He who knows does not speak. - Lao Tsu -- In pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped. - Lao Tsu -- Yield and overcome; Bend and be straight; Empty and be full; Wear out and be new; Have a little and gain; Have much and be confused. - Lao Tsu -- Knowing others is wisdom; knowing the self is enlightenment. Mastering others requires force; mastering the self needs strength. - Lao Tsu -- Fame or self: which matters more? Self or wealth: which is more precious? Gain or loss: which is more painful? - Lao Tsu -- If the phone rings at 3 A.M., the last voice you want to hear is that of a loved one. But when you're IN love, that's the FIRST voice you want to hear. - Marilyn vos Savant, Parade Magazine -- Is he a tough guy? "Pretty tough." What will he do? "Understand, probably." Boy, that IS tough. - Robert Redford, Three Days of the Condor (movie) -- We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. - T.S. Elliot -- O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An' foolish notion: What airs of dress an' gait wad lae'e us, An' ev'n devotion! - Robert Burns, "To a Louse" -- I sing the body electric, The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul. - Walt Whitman, "I Sing the Body Electric" -- If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research. - Argonne, Atlas by Ayne Rand Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. - Werner von Braun -- Being white, male, and straight does not automatically make me racist, sexist, or homophobic. -- "Can you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here," asked Alice. "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the cat. - Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) "Alice in Wonderland" -- Forewarned is forearmed. Forearmed is half an octopus. -- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and happiness. - Thomas Jefferson -- Indecision is the key to flexibility. -- Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends. - Tom Waits -- If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. - James 1:26-27, The Bible -- Young man - Young man - Your arm's too short to box with God. - James Weldon Johnson, The Prodigal Son, _God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse_, 1927 -- If I were a good man, I'd understand the spaces between friends. - Roger Waters -- Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. - Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton (1834-1902), British historian -- Anyone can be bought or killed - anyone. -- It's not so much an afterlife as an apres vie. - Arthur Dent, HGG -- I believe in everything - nothing is sacred, I believe in nothing - everything is sacred! - The Chink, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins -- A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy. - Joseph Campbell -- The enemy of the good is the better. - William "Wild Bill" Donovan -- I don't care if there's chemicals in it, as long as my lettuce is crisp! - Grace Slick, 1972 -- Evil will always triumph over good, because good is DUMB. - Dark Helmet, Space Balls (movie) -- The cow is of the bovine ilk; One end is moo, the other, milk. - Ogden Nash -- The dog's rule of life: If you can't eat it or screw it, then piss on it! -- Enjoy the Universe - it's the only one you're likely to experience. -- Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows that the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the game is fixed The poor stay poor and the rich get rich That's how it goes, and everybody knows. - Leonard Cohen, Canadian poet and singer/songwriter -- Q: But I AM mortal. How can I prove it to you? Worf: Die. - Star Trek:TNG -- Live long and prosper. - Spock, Star Trek (Vulcan farewell) -- Infinite diversity in infinite combinations. - Spock, Star Trek (the "IDIC", a Vulcan saying) -- It's not enough that I succeed. Everyone else must fail. - Attila the Hun It's not enough that I should succeed - others should fail. - David Merrick -- Men are rats. Men are fleas on rats. Men are amoebas on fleas on rats. - Frenchy, in Grease (movie) -- 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 -- I would give the Devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake. - Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons -- Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me. - St. Francis of Asissi -- There are no personal problems which cannot be solved by the suitable application of high explosives. -- Le bon Dieu est dans le detail. ("The good God is in the details"). - Flaubert God is in the details. - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, architect, after Flaubert -- No one goes there - it's too crowded. -- The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. - Sir Richard Francis Burton (adventurer and explorer) (not the actor Richard Burton, who was born Richard Walter Jenkins, Jr.) (info from Alan Little (darguz@holotech.net)) -- To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degrees. - Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (quoted out of context) -- The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. - opening of the Westminster Catechism -- Bibamus, moriendum est. (Let's drink, death is inevitable.) - Seneca the Elder, c. 55 BCE - 37 CE -- Life is just a metaphor, masquerading as a simile. -- Anyone who is remotely interesting is insane in some way. -- Ah, this is obviously some new usage of the word 'safe' I was previously unaware of. - Arthur Dent, HGG -- Everything always ends well; if it's not well by now, it's not ended by now. -- He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.' - Robert Frost -- As long as capitalism and socialism exist we cannot live in peace: in the end one or the other will triumph - a funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet Republic or over world capitalism. - Vladimir Lenin -- Two can live as cheaply as one - for half as long. -- Remember, all ye who falter, that the true way to exist is through purity of thought, mind, and body. Be thou worthy. -- Never murder a man who is committing suicide. - Woodrow Wilson -- I accept the universe. - Margaret Fuller By God, she'd better! - Thomas Carlyle -- A ruthless, doctrinaire avoidance of degeneracy is a degeneracy of another sort. Getting drunk and picking up bar-ladies and writing metaphysics is a part of life. - Robert Pirsig -- "I have a hunch..." "Just fly by the book, kid. You're not old enough to have hunches." - Battlestar Galactica -- Be excellent to each other, and PARTY ON DUDES! - Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure -- It's not my g**d*** planet, y'understand, monkey-boy? - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (movie) -- A fool and his opinion are seldom parted. -- My cup's been run over. - Mark T. Shirey -- Anna is my Gramma's name Now, some may find this comic: Not only is she an "anagram", she's Acrostically palindromic! - Mark T. Shirey -- Experiment with alternative belief systems, enter alternative cognitive grids and, as the Zen Master said when asked the way of the Tao, "Move!" -- God is a ridiculously small human concept compared to the coherent intelligence of Universe. Everything doesn't need to have a primate Alpha male in charge to be an intelligent system. - Robert A. Wilson -- In the beginning, there was nothing - but nothing is unstable. And nothing borrowed nothing from nothing, within the limits of uncertainty, and became something. The rest is just math. - Prof. Kim, Macalester College, Physics In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, "Let there be Light!" And there was STILL nothing, but you could SEE IT! Nothing from nothing leaves nothing. You gotta have something, if you want to be with me - Billy Preston, musician -- So, if we're dumb, then God is dumb... and maybe even a little ugly. - Frank Zappa, "Dumb All Over" -- No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. - Stanislaw Jerzy Lec -- Why can't we fight and win, Mommy? Because they have weapons and technology. We just have love. - Ralph Bakshi, Wizards (movie) -- I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything. - Aldous Huxley -- The Moral Majority is neither. -- You don't have to be born again, you just need to grow up. -- Don't be humble, you're not that great. - Golda Meir (1898-1978) -- Do you have reservation, sir? Yes, but we've decided to eat here anyway. -- It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. - Sherlock Holmes, "The Beryl Coronet" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle An exception disproves the rule. - Sherlock Holmes, "The Sign of Four" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle When a fact appears opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation. - Sherlock Holmes, "A Study in Scarlet" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle -- The Seven Dwarfs had a bath and felt Happy. Happy left, so they felt Grumpy. -- If you make $50,000 today, you have the same buying power as the average coal miner did in 1949, adjusted for taxes and inflation. - John Sestina, nationally recognized Certified Financial Planner, 1987 -- Apology - the best way to have the last word. -- The lesser of two evils is still evil. - Winston Churchill -- Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. - George Washington Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people, It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams Religion and morality are the foundations of all government. Without these restraints no free government could long exist. - PA Supreme Court, 1824 Religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary to good government, the preservation of liberty, and the happiness of mankind. - US Supreme Court, 1892 -- In hell it is difficult to tell people from other people. - Jack Spicer -- Dangling prepositions is something up with which I will not put. -- Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. - Mark Twain -- I've 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 Batty, in Blade Runner (movie) by Ridley Scott & Philip K. Dick -- Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. - The Bible -- The human mind is too complex to understand for the human mind, or, in other words, the human mind is too simple to understand the human mind. -- Q: Where do these stairs go? A: Up. -- It's never too late for a happy childhood. - John Bradshaw -- You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. - Jesus Christ, Matthew 5:27, The Bible, c 71 CE -- Q: Is it possible to travel in time? A: Yes, but only forward and only by waiting. You can wait "faster" by traveling near the speed of light. -- Women think men will change after marriage. Men think women won't. They're both wrong. -- "I can prove you're not here." [Rattles off a list of places that the other person is not] "So, if you're not in any of those places, you must be somewhere else, right?" "Right." "Well, if you're somewhere else, then you can't be here!" - Abbot and Costello -- I bet the main reason police keep people away from a plane crash is they don't want anybody walking in and lying down in the debris, then, when somebody comes up, act like they just woke up and go, "What was THAT?!" - Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy -- Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. - Emo Phillips -- Eternity is the amount of time that it takes to know everything. -- The art of living is deciding what facts are incidental and which are vital. - Sherlock Holmes -- Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. -- Q: What is the definition of a bachelor? A: A very selfish man who is cheating some woman out of alimony. -- What if there were no such thing as hypothetical situations? -- The world is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. - Horace Walpole -- Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest things in the nicest way. - Isaac Goldberg -- I say you _are_ the Messiah, Lord! And I ought to know, I've followed a few! - Monty Python, Life of Brian (movie) -- Did you go crazy all at once, or did it happen gradually? - Jake Lucas to "Ethel Merman", The Fisher King (movie) -- 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, First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, 21 August 1858 -- Your life is in the hands of fate, chance, kings, and desperate men. - John Donne, "Holy Sonnets" -- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do. - Ralph Waldo Emerson Consistency is not really a human trait. - Maude, Harold & Maude (movie) -- Lead me not unto temptation! Just point the way - I'll find it! -- 'Faith' means not _wanting_ to know what is true. - Nietzsche, Der Antichrist -- The rules are written so that they can get you for just about anything, if they want to. The trick is to not make them want to. Laws are felt only when the individual comes into conflict with them. - Susanne LaFollette -- Capitalism is the unequal distribution of wealth. Socialism is the equal distribution of poverty. -- Management's biggest problem is all the unemployed people on the payroll. -- What men call a hero is merely a man who is seen doing what a brave man does as a matter of course. - Louis L'Amour -- Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing, grimly agrees. - Camille Paglia, "Sexual Personae" -- You gave your life to become the person you are right now. Was it worth it? -- It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Indiana Jones -- Feudalism - it's your count that votes! -- In ten years, computers will just be bumps in cables. - Gordon Bell, 1990ish -- The only resources which will always be in short supply and therefore command high value are high intelligence, creativity, and common sense. -- The quest for power and control comprises the basest longings of the human spirit, and is centered upon a lust for security via antagonism. -- If you have a hero, look again. You have probably diminished yourself in some way. - Sheldon Kopp -- ...that one was good, that one was good, that one was good... "Waddya doin'?" Testing fuses... that one WAS good, that one WAS good... Could you tell me if my turn signal is working? "Sure - working, not working, working, not working..." -- Either you are part of the solution or you are part of the precipitate. -- I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension...; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. - Albert Einstein -- Suppose the world was only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke, instead of a bad one? - George Bernard Shaw -- Good palindrome: Doc, note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod. -- Fight floccinaucinihilipilification and antidisestablishmentarianism. -- When in doubt, use brute force. - Ken Thompson -- Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx -- We lay away the gleanings of our years in the edifice of our character, where nothing is ever lost. - Laura Ingalls Wilder -- Kant's principle of universalizability in ethics is often alluded to by the common question: "What if everybody did it?" But to this, there is a common rejoinder: "They don't." - T.V. Morris, Bluffer's Guide to Philosophy -- Only dead fish swim with the stream. -- Life is filled with settling. We settle for a certain job, a certain mate, a certain home, and a certain self-image. -- Mary wrote a little verse It didn't even rhyme This one's not by Mary But it's very similar. - Mark T. Shirey -- I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. - Robert Frost, from "The Road Not Taken" Two roads diverged in a wood And I - I chose to climb the nearest tree And that has made all the difference. - Anonymous, after Robert Frost -- If you bought every ma and pa grocery store, you'd corner the corner market market. -- Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. -- Maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be. - Cervantes, Don Quixote -- Most of the solutions had to do with the movement of small green pieces of paper. This is unusual, since on the whole it was not the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. - Douglas Adams -- Mary had a little lamb Her father shot it dead Now she carries it to school each day Between two hunks of bread! - Darrin Nottingham -- Mary had a little sheep With the sheep she went to sleep The sheep turned out to be a ram Mary had a little lamb. - M. Thomas -- I ran out of gas! I got a flat tire! I locked my keys in the car! An old friend came in from out of town! I lost my tux at the cleaners! Someone stole my car! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! It wasn't MY FAULT! - Jake Blues, played by John Belushi, in The Blues Brothers (movie) -- Once the trust goes out of a relationship, it's no fun lying to them anymore. - Sam Malone, Cheers (TV show) -- One day the price of meat went up, Which really didn't please her. Mary's having leg of lamb, The rest is in the freezer. - collected by "Uncle Jake" Rhine -- Mary had a little lamb, You've heard this one before. But did you know she passed her plate, And had a little more? - collected by "Uncle Jake" Rhine -- When Mary had a little lamb, The Doctor was surprised. But when Old MacDonald had a farm, The Doctor nearly died! -- The problem with being middle-of-the-road is you tend to get run over! - Jason Zarin -- Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together. - Carl Zwanzig -- Suddenly, the door was kicked open, and with nostrils flaring and manes flying, wild horses dragged Sam away. - Gary Larson, The Far Side -- Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. - Mark Twain -- This limerick's last line doesn't rhyme And I've been thinking for quite a long time What is a word That won't sound absurd But will make this whole thing sound just great? - Mark T. Shirey, 1982 -- I was morose For hours and hours When they dumped manure All over the flowers. In the spring, they'll grow So pretty and sweet; It just goes to show That you aren't what you eat. - Mark T. Shirey, 1985 -- A man who kills another man is a murderer. A man who kills 10,000 men is a hero. - Tolstoy -- I can marry anyone I please; the problem is, I don't _please_ anyone! - Groucho Marx -- Heisenberg might have slept here. -- If a train station is where the train stops, what's a workstation? - Roger B. Dannenberg -- To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question... or is it? -- Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth. - Socrates -- If I had had more time, I could have written you a shorter letter. - Blaise Pascal -- I think all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am. - Monty Python, Matching Tie and Handkerchief (record) -- Asking if a computer can think is like asking if a submarine can swim. -- Kim, where Bob had had had had had had had Had had had had the teacher's O.K. (Kim, where Bob had had "had had," had had "had." "Had had" had had the teacher's "O.K.") -- Purgamentum init, exit purgamentum. (Garbage in, garbage out.) -- Nil significat, nil oscilat. (It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.) -- Kept apart these years more by a missed understanding than by the unknown distance and lost address between us. - Simran Singh -- Why is the symbol for anarchy always written the same way? -- Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. - Abraham Lincoln -- In his will will will will will will will will will will willingly. (Will is writing a will and bequeathing his dog Will to his friend Will: "In his will, Will will will Will Will. Will Will will Will willingly?") -- The beliefs you now focus your attention on will create the realities that you live with, play with, best, or are beaten by. - Harry Palmer -- Believe what you want, but DON'T believe it here. - John Candy, Harry Crumb (movie) -- It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money. - P.J. O'Rourke, "Modern Manners" -- She offered her honor so I honored her offer, and all night I was on her and off her. -- Illegitimi non carborundum. (Don't let the bastards grind you down.) -- Carpei diem. (Seize the day.) -- Marty had a girlfriend And he was glad to find her She has good things ahead of her And a rather nice behinder - Mark T. Shirey -- And you see this ring right here, Jimmy?... That's another time when this old fellow miraculously survived some big forest fire. - Gary Larson, The Far Side -- Falsifiability - a theory is not scientific unless there are conceivable instances of evidence that could disprove the hypothesis. -- Para bailar La Bamba, se necesita un poco de gracia, para mi y para ti y mi patria, y arriba y arriba, por ti sere por ti sere, yo no soy marinero, soy capitan. (To dance La Bamba, a little grace is needed, for you and for me and my country, and up and up, for you I will be. I'm not a sailor, I'm the captain.) - La Bamba (old Spanish folk song) -- Divorce is nature's way of saying you have too much furniture. -- Here's to our wives and our girlfriends - may they never meet! -- A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire -- I feel more like I do now than I did last week. -- When the student is ready, the Master will appear. -- George Will's list of the three least credible remarks. 1) The check is in the mail. 2) I'm from the government and I'm here to help you. 3) Of course I'll respect you in the morning. -- It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak. - Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream -- Time travel, by its very nature, was invented in all periods of history simultaneously. - Douglas Adams, HGG -- Everyone is right. Everyone experiences what they believe. - Harry Palmer -- The effect is like being hit by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick. - Douglas Adams on the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, HGG -- It's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it. -- A woman met a man walking along the street wearing only one shoe. "Just lost a shoe?" she asked. He answered, "Nope, just found one." -- Adeu! Adeus! Adiaux! Adieu! Adios! Adj�! Ahoj! Ajuus! Aj�! Aloha! Arrividerci! Ate' logo! Au revoir! Auf Wiedersehen! Ave! Bakia Musuri! Beannachd leibh! Bless! Ciao! Czesc! Dag! Do svidan'ya! Doei! Fare ye weill! Farvel! G^is la revido! Goodbye! Ha det bra! Hajje! Hamba gabotse! Hamba gahle! Hasta la vista! Hasta luego! Heippa! Hej d�! Hoi! Hou Doe! Hwyl! Joi Gin! Khoda hafez! Kwaheri! Kwenda Musuri! Lehitraot! Lekker bly! Ma salaama! Mar sin leibh! Mata ashita! Moj! N�kemiin! Na shledanou! P� gensyn! P� gjensyn! Poka! Sakha! Sala gahle! Sayonara! Sepala gabotse! Shalom! Slan leibh! Tchao! Tchau! Tioraidh! Tot ziens! Totsiens! Tsch�ss! Tutaonana tena! Vasbyt! Zai Jian! - Tor Slettnes (slettnet@gaia.ecs.csus.edu) on sci.lang -- Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. - Ludwig Wittgenstein -- The shorter the tether, the sooner the goat starves. - Mark Peterson (hiho@pharos.uwc.edu) -- We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer. The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem. Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this sense consisted? - Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Cynicism is the first religion. It is the means by which to discover all else, since cynicism implies skepticism. Skepticism results in examination, and examination leads to understanding. - David Carradine, The Spirit of Shaolin -- Remember: "i" before "e" except after "c" and in WEIRD words like Einstein. - Mark T. Shirey -- Mathematicians do it continuously, discretely, and sometimes in large numbers. -- Urban legend: A philosophy final exam had but one question; "What is courage?". One student wrote "This is.", signed it, and turned it in. -- Namaste means "I honor the place within you where the entire universe resides, the place within you of love and light, of peace and truth where, when you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us." -- Each man hides a secret pain. Share your pain and gain strength from the sharing. - Sybok, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (movie) -- If I'm not careful, I'll end up talking to myself. - McCoy (to himself), Star Trek V (movie) -- Perhaps "Because it is there" is not sufficient reason for climbing the mountain. - Spock to Kirk, Star Trek V (movie) -- You never cease to amaze me. Nor I myself. - McCoy & Spock, Star Trek V (movie) -- When I turned two I was really anxious because I'd doubled my age in a year. I thought, 'If this keeps up, by the time I'm six I'll be ninety.' [32] - Steven Wright -- There is no finite line of demarcation which limits the powers of the Analytical Engine. - Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer -- It's 106 miles to Chicago; we got a full tank of gas and half a pack of cigarettes; it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. HIT IT. - Elwood Blues (Dan Ackroyd), The Blues Brothers (movie) -- Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system. - P.J. O'Rourke -- Two things teach man about his whole nature: instinct and experience. Two excesses: to exclude reason, and to admit nothing but reason. - Blaise Pascal -- Dangling prepositions: Daddy, what did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of about over in Down Under up from down below for? -- You can lead a horse to water but you'll have a hell of a time drowning him. -- I find it hard to sit still in one spot, and impossible to sit still in two spots. - Brother Theodore -- Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. - Sigmund Freud -- This is grain... which any fool can eat, but for which the Lord intended a more divine means of consumption. Let us give praise to our Maker, and glory to His works, by learning about... beer! - Friar Tuck, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves -- "Daddy, do people _buy_ houses?" "Yes." "How do they get them home?" - A true story -- This is the story of the bee The little bee is never still Whose sex is very hard to see She has no time to take the pill You cannot tell the he from the she And that is why, in times like these But she can tell, and so can he There are so many sons of bees. -- Song of the Open Road I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. - Ogden Nash -- I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General. - Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance" -- Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way... - Stanislaw Lem, Cyberiad -- There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. - Douglas Adams, HGG -- Ozman's Laws: 1. If someone says he will do something "without fail," he won't. 2. The more people talk on the phone, the less money they make. 3. People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't. 4. Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth. -- Laugh at your problems; everybody else does. -- Think "honk" if you're a telepath. - bumper sticker -- This is a test. Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed. -- If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. - Earl Wilson -- Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails. -- Once... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days. - W. C. Fields, My Little Chickadee (movie) -- A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness. -- Spouse - someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single. -- Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. - Publilius Syrus -- Entropy isn't what it used to be. -- I really hate this damned machine. I wish that they would sell it. It never does quite what I want but only what I tell it. -- A new dramatist of the absurd Has a voice that will shortly be heard. I learn from my spies He's about to devise An unprintable three-letter word. -- It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others. -- Afternoon - That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the morning. -- We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it. - Whole Earth Catalog -- In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one of the risks he takes. - Adlai Stevenson -- They told me I was gullible... and I believed them! -- Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment. -- If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory. - Benjamin Disraeli -- If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars. - J. Paul Getty -- I think you should laugh once a day, because a day without sunshine is like... night. - Steve Martin -- There was a young lady from Hyde Who ate a green apple and died. While her lover lamented The apple fermented And made cider inside her inside. -- A well-adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous. -- 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 -- Harris's Lament: All the good ones are taken. -- After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created." "This is true," He replied. "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly. "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?" "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make his own." It was so granted. - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary -- Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL. - Mae West -- Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent. -- The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep. - Woody Allen -- Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no government at all. -- I do not know myself and God forbid that I should. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end. -- Hartley's Second Law: Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself. -- Any excuse will serve a tyrant. - Aesop -- Cancel me not - for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain. - Stanislaw Lem, Cyberiad -- "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't - till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor 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." - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass -- Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Langsam's Laws: 1) Everything depends 2) Nothing is always 3) Everything is sometimes. -- Nothing recedes like success. - Walter Winchell -- Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world. - Lily Tomlin -- While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery. -- Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. - John Kenneth Galbraith -- "Have you lived in this village all your life?" No, not yet. -- Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. (The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know.) - Blaise Pascal -- "You can't fight City Hall" is the biggest piece of propaganda City Hall ever put out. -- Don't say, "They're just words," because words are all we have. - Sally Maud Robertson -- A good memory does not equal pale ink. -- You cannot control without being controlled. -- Jesus Christ was a good teacher, but he didn't publish. -- A closed mouth gathers no foot. A rolling stone gathers momentum. -- We are too soon old and too late smart. - Pennsylvania Dutch saying -- A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top. -- Adultery is the application of democracy to love. - H.L. Menchen -- Jones' Motto: Friends come and go but enemies accumulate. -- Affirmative Action is mediocrity's answer to Darwin. -- All unhappiness is caused by _comparison_. -- An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it. -- I need to add some numbers - where's the complicator? - Gretchen Joy Shirey, at age 10 -- Anger is one letter short of danger. -- Hope is what keeps all suffering in place. -- Any system that takes responsibility away from people, dehumanizes them. -- If you don't know what direction to take, you haven't acknowledged where you are. -- You don't have to be positive, you just have to be yourself. -- Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage. -- Colson's Law: When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. -- Harrison's Postulate: For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism. -- Comin's Law: People will accept your idea much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first. -- Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the soul of genius. -- Crane's Law: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. (TANSTAAFL) -- Etorre's Observation: The other line moves faster. -- Fools rush in where fools have been before. -- For people who like that sort of thing, that is about the sort of thing they would like. - Abraham Lincoln (see "Nice Guys Finish Seventh" by Ralph Keyes) Very nice sort of place, Oxford, I should think, for people that like that sort of place. - George Bernard Shaw It's the kind of thing that people who like that kind of thing will like. - Mark T. Shirey (after Lincoln and Shaw) -- Ginsberg's Theorems: 1) You can't win, 2) You can't break even, 3) You can't even quit the game. -- Good leaders are scarce, so I am following myself. -- Do not clog intellect's sluices with knowledge of questionable uses. -- It is much easier to apologize than to get permission. - Grace Hopper It's far better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission. - Grace Hopper -- For every difficult question, there is an answer that is clear and simple and wrong. - George Bernard Shaw Grossman's Misquote: Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers. -- Harver's Law: A drunken man's words are a sober man's thoughts. -- Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Menchen -- Holy Virgin who conceived without sin, let me sin without conceiving. -- Your enemy might become your friend, if you allow him to be who he is. -- Hoping and wishing are excuses for not doing. -- Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. - Henry David Thoreau -- Horngren's Observation (generalized): The real world is a special case. -- I can tell you in two words: im possible. - Samuel Goldwyn -- If you and your partner always agree, one of you is unnecessary! -- If you do not change your beliefs your life will be like this forever. Is that good news? -- If you don't have what you want, you are not committed to it 100%. -- Jones' Principle: Needs are a function of what other people have. -- If you have a college degree you can be absolutely sure of one thing... you have a college degree. -- If you make a mistake, you should right it immediately to the best of your ability. -- If you require someone to change, you require that person to lie to you. -- My job is so secret, even I don't know what I'm doing. -- If you stick your head in the sand, you'll get your ass kicked. -- The ampersand ("&") is named after the printer named Ampers who invented it. -- How many clever kleptomaniacs does it take to - Hey! Where's the lightbulb?! -- The Immaculate Conception, as defined by the Catholic Church, was what happened to Mary's MOTHER, when she conceived Mary to be without sin. -- It is impossible to fully enjoy procrastination unless one has plenty of work to do. -- Korman's conclusion: The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come your way again. -- Law of Communications: The result of improved and enlarged communications is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding. -- Learn to create, not compete. -- Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A1: Fish. A2: Two. One to hold the giraffe, the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools. -- Life is a journey, not a destination. -- Life is like an onion: You peel off layer after layer, then you find there is nothing in it. -- God is dead. - Nietzsche Nietzsche is dead. - God God is NOT dead. - Billy Graham Who in the hell is Billy Graham? - God -- Lynch's Law: When the going gets tough, everybody leaves. -- Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the other's gold. -- If little else, the brain is an educational toy. - Tom Robbins -- Only the mediocre can always be at their best. - H.L. Mencken -- Q: How many Dumb Guys does it take to change a light bulb? A: What's a light bulb? -- Most of our lives are about proving something, either to ourselves or to someone else. -- We neither get better or worse as we get older, but more like ourselves. -- Most of the time we don't communicate; we just take turns talking. -- Perkin's Postulate: The bigger they are, the harder they hit. -- My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot. - Ashleigh Brilliant -- O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Laws: Murphy was an optimist. -- You will live your life to the end. -- There are none so righteous as the newly converted. -- A hundred years from now, no one will _care_! -- Sometimes you just have to say, "What the f%$#." - Risky Business (movie) -- Expenditures rise to meet income. -- People concern themselves with being normal, rather than natural. -- I'd rather be _right_ than happy. -- May all your wishes be granted. - Ancient Chinese Curse May you live in interesting times. - Ancient Chinese Curse -- You can love someone and not like the way they act. -- Mistakes are often the stepping stones to failure. -- You will never "have it all together." That's like trying to eat once and for all! -- Peter's Placebo: An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. -- Q: Does a cow have Buddha-nature? A: Mu. -- Q: What's the male equivalent of the maternity dress? A: The paternity suit. -- Quantized Revision of Murphy's Law: Everything goes wrong all at once. -- If you don't like the direction the river is flowing, don't jump in. -- Quantum particles: the dreams that stuff is made of. - David Moser -- "Polysyllabic" is. "Monosyllabic" isn't. - Mark T. Shirey, after Douglas Hofstadter -- Success isn't how far you got, but the distance you traveled from where you started. -- The Sausage Principle: People who love sausage and respect the law should never watch either one being made. -- You must give up the way it is to have it the way you want it. -- The Ultimate Law: All general statements are false (including this one). -- The average woman would rather have beauty than brains because the average man can see better than he can think. -- The best way to escape from your problem is to solve it. -- It is easier to say what we believe than to be what we believe. -- The biggest lie on the planet: "When I get what I want I'll be happy." -- The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. -- To think is to be. - Descartes To be is to do. - Nietzsche To do is to be. - Confucius Do be do be do. - Sinatra -- The biggest risk in life is not risking. -- The harder I work, the luckier I get! -- Sweer's Impossibility Theorem: Nothing can be both completely general and internally consistent at the same time. -- You are the only teacher you will ever have. -- The purpose of art is to hold the mirror up to life. Life, obviously, needs to get more sleep. -- Q. How many mice does it take to screw in a light bulb? A. Two, but they have to be very small. -- One way to win is to make it ok to lose. -- If your life isn't working the way you want it to, notice you're lying. -- Therapists are expensive friends. -- There are many things I want, but few things I need. -- You get treated in life the way you _train_ others to treat you. -- Hare Krishna, Hare Krisna / Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare / Hare Rama, Hare Rama / Rama Rama, Hare Hare - Hare Krishna Mantra from The Bhagavad Gita -- There is no growth without discontent. -- Sickness is faulty problem solving. -- There is no right or wrong, only consequences. -- We move towards what we picture in our mind. -- There is no security between the cradle and the grave. -- We're all going down the same road in different directions. -- There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad. - Salvador Dali -- There's a fine line between love and hate. It's called marriage. -- If some unemployed punk in Trenton, New Jersey, lying on a sofa with a bong, can get a cassette to make love to Elle McPherson for $19.95, this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka. - Dennis Miller -- Things are not what they seem - they are what they are. -- Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do. -- Ultimately you have no choice but to feel what you are feeling. -- Vique's Law: A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle. A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. - bumper sticker -- What you are afraid to do is a clear indicator of the next thing you need to do. -- What you can't communicate runs your life. -- It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them. - La Rochefoucauld -- What you said is exactly what you intended to say. -- There is no way to know before experiencing. -- Whatever you are trying to avoid won't go away until you confront it. -- Whatever you are willing to put up with, is exactly what you will have. -- The usefulness of a meeting is inversely proportional to its attendance. -- Without fools there would be no wisdom. -- Words must be weighed, not counted. -- Worry comes from the belief you are powerless. -- You are the cause, not the effect. -- You can be happy or you can be justified; you can't be both. -- Fear of embarrassment can cause unexpected, even violent, reactions in people. - Mark T. Shirey -- It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. - Alfred Adler -- It is much harder to find a job than to keep one. - Jules Becker -- When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt. -- Use it or lose it. -- You love what you find time to do. -- People don't change; they only become more so. - John Bright-Holmes -- Your ability to relax is in direct proportion to your ability to trust life. -- Your success is measured by your ability to complete things. -- I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat. - Will Rogers -- If at first you don't succeed, find out why THEN try again. -- It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion, and usually easier. - Robert A. Heinlein -- The most abstract system of philosophy is, in its method and purpose, nothing more than an extremely ingenious combination of natural sounds. - Carl G. Jung -- If you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there. - Anonymous If you don't know where you're going, you'll get there - like it or not! - Mark T. Shirey If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. - Doug Horton -- Having read "The Society of Mind" in the smallest room in my house, I was quite happy to put it behind me. - Mikhail Zeleny, paraphrasing a famous book review -- The triangular wheel is not an improvement over the square wheel just because it eliminates one bump! -- Quantum Mechanics is made up of little pieces of muck, held together by other pieces of muck. -- Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't. -- Our little systems have their day. - Alfred, Lord Tennyson -- Pennington's Observation: The probability that a given program will perform to expectations is inversely proportional to the programmer's confidence in his ability to do the job. -- People have one thing in common: they are all different. - Robert Zend -- In nature there are no rewards or punishments; there are just consequences. -- In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. - John Lilly -- In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared. - Louis Pasteur -- It does not matter how badly you paint as long as you don't paint badly like other people. - George Moore -- It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical? - Alan Perlis -- It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. - Franklin D. Roosevelt -- It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. - George Bernard Shaw -- Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. - E. B. White -- The secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: To live dangerously! - Nietzsche -- There are three kinds of people in the world, the ones that can count and the ones that can't. -- What care I how time advances; I am drinking ale today. - Edgar Allen Poe -- Christopher Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the Pooh. -- If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you! - Dorothy Parker -- There is no enemy. Anywhere. - a Fnord from the Illuminatus Trilogy -- Forget chasing rainbows; it doesn't work. If you want rainbows, chase storms. - David P. Burdette, Office of the Registrar, Univ. of Florida -- "Out of sight, out of mind," when translated into Russian by computer, then back again into English, became "Invisible maniac", "Blind idiot", or "Invisible, insane". -- If you're against abortions, don't have one. -- You know, I've thought about this very thoroughly, and have come to the conclusion that I have a tendency to over-analyze things. -- Go placidly amidst the waste because part of it is yours. -- Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat that yellow snow. - Frank Zappa -- Religion is for people who can't handle reality. -- The weather is here, wish you were beautiful. -- Life is what you make it. Just clean up after yourself. -- If he was suspicious of adventuring heroes, it was because like that gentlest of dons, Quixote, they were wont to destroy useful windmills in the name of dragomachy. - John Barth, "Giles Goat-Boy, or, The Revised New Syllabus" -- A top-secret government study indicates that we wouldn't be any worse off if we let the economists predict the weather and the meteorologists predict the economy. - Paul Harwitz, _Wall Street Journal_, March 19, 1980 -- To boost the British economy, I believe in taxing all foreigners living abroad. - Graham Chapman, Monty Python -- "The point is, you see," said Ford, "that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later." - Douglas Adams, Life, The Universe and Everything -- I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right: Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong. - Abraham Lincoln -- The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that belong to adversity are to be admired. - Francis Bacon -- I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged. - Thomas Jefferson to Mrs. H. Harrison Smith, 1816 -- A sadist is someone who refuses to hurt a masochist. -- "Mr. Churchill, you are drunk." And you, madam, are ugly, but I shall be sober in the morning. -- Common methods of proof: Intimidation, Gesticulation (hand-waving), "Try it; it works", Constipation (I was just sitting there and...), Blatant Assertion, Changing all the 2's to n's, Mutual Consent, Lack of a Counterexample, "It stands to reason", and Anal Extraction. -- "I wish life was not so short," he thought. "Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about." - J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lost Road -- All my life I've wanted to be somebody. I see now I should have been more specific. - Lily Tomlin -- Health is simply the slowest possible rate at which one can die. -- There are two rules for success: First, never tell everything you know. - Roger H. Lincoln -- Y'know, people often say to me, "Alexei, why are you drunk all the time?" And I say, "'Cause I can afford to be." - Alexei Sayle -- I don't want to die; existence is one of my strong points! -- It's hard to bargle nawdle zouss ith all these marbles in my mouth. - Weird Al Yankovic -- Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons for it afterwards. - Soren F. Peterson -- It is well to remember, my son, that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. - John Andrew Holmes -- The average man is a stupid man. - Ed Mao Think how stupid the average person is, then realize half of them are stupider than that. - George Carlin Half of the people in the world are below average. Half of the people in the world have IQs below 100. -- You can lead a gift horse to water, but you can't look him in the mouth when he drinks. -- Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill. -- The Earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier. -- There are two kinds of egotists: those that admit it and the rest of us. -- If it were done, when it is done, then it were well it were done quickly. - Shakespeare, Macbeth -- Where were you? If I told you, you wouldn't understand... (quizzical look) I was trapped near the inner circle of fault. I don't understand. (smile) - Albert Brooks, Defending Your Life (movie) -- I find that as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first. - Thomas Jefferson -- All things rest in heaven when you sleep beside a friend. - Paul Ryder -- Let no man grumble when his friends fall off; instead let him go to the coffee house and take another. - Lord Byron -- Doubtless, you want to be my friend. Come back on Tuesday. - Dorothy Parker -- I have room for one more friend and he is everyman. - Woody Guthrie -- Friendship only exists when men harmonize in their view of things human and divine. - Cicero -- True friendship is a plant of slow growth. - George Washington -- Friendship demands the ability to do without it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Let the soul be assured that somewhere in the universe, it should rejoin its friend. - Ralph Waldo Emerson -- I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give, I give myself. - Walt Whitman -- Quarrel with a friend and you are both wrong. - Lao Tsu -- Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other. - Balzac -- Memory is the enemy of friendship. - John Milton -- When it becomes necessary to do a thing, the whole heart and soul should go into the measure, or not attempt it. - Thomas Paine -- No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God. - George Bush -- Unitarian - someone who believes that there is at most one god. Q: What do you get if you cross a Unitarian and a Jehovah's Witness? A: Someone who knocks on your door for no good reason. -- Every psychic investigator of [the medium] Mrs. Piper was impressed by her simplicity and honesty. It never occurred to them that no charlatan ever achieves greatness by acting like a charlatan. No professional spy acts like a spy. No card cheat behaves at the table like a card cheat. - Martin Gardner -- But he had such an honest face! Romana, you can't be a successful thief with a DIShonest face! - Dr. Who -- There is no "I". Nobody's home. Ask any Buddhist. -- I'd like to answer this question in two ways; first in my normal voice, and then in a silly, high-pitched whine. - Monty Python -- Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. - Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Kisses are a better fate than wisdom. -- A crisis is just the end of an illusion. - Gerald Weinberg -- I am the lizard king, I can do anything - Jim Morrison -- As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible but more mysterious. - Albert Schweitzer, "Paris Notes" -- There is nothing in the marginal conditions that distinguish a mountain from a mole hill. - Kenneth Boulding -- He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. - Albert Einstein -- Occasionally I believed I had thoughts of my own - who does not now and then become the victim of such delusions? - Paul Feyerabend -- All is not golde that glistereth. - Becom, "Reliques of Rome", 1553 All that is gold does not glitter Not all who wander are lost The old that is strong does not wither Deep roots are not reached by the frost - J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings -- I have nothing to say and I am saying it. - John Cage, avante garde musician -- They say smoking lowers your life expectancy, and frankly I think I've been expecting too much out of life. -- He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom. - J.R.R. Tolkien -- Of the many definitions of poetry, the simplest is still the best: "memorable speech." - W.H. Auden -- Women only like me for my mind. - S.P. Morrissey -- The secret is NOT MINDING. - G. Gordon Liddy on how to burn your hand with a candle to impress people, in his book, "Will" (Potter extinguishes a candle with his fingers after seeing Lawrence do it.) Potter: Ow! It damn well 'urts! Lawrence: Certainly it hurts. Potter: Well what's the trick then? Lawrence: The trick, William Potter, is not MINDING that it hurts. - Lawrence of Arabia (movie), 1962 [thanks to CGiordano@ids.net for this] -- Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long. - Walker Evans -- The secret of life is one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean nothing. "Yeah, but what's the one thing?" That's what you have to find out. - Jack Palance, City Slickers (movie) -- We'll jump off that bridge when we come to it. - City Slickers We'll burn that bridge when we come to it. -- To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other. - Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey -- If God had intended for man to fly, he would have given us the brains to build airplanes. -- You seem ah decent fellow. Ahd hate to keel you. - Montoya Well, you seem a decent fellow. I'd hate to die. - Wesley - Princess Bride (movie), directed by Rob Reiner -- I don't have time for an algorithm, I've gotta get this program written! -- See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs. - Dave Barry -- I would rather that a bigot thought I was a lesbian than that a lesbian thought I was a bigot. - Tovah Hollander (from Cindy Tittle Moore) -- Lawyer: n. One skilled in circumventing the law. - Ambrose Bierce -- Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you. And it shall be, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ye shall certainly drink. - Jeremiah 25:27-28, The Bible -- I know what you're saying - you're saying, "Steve, when do you find time to juggle?" Well, I juggle in my _mind_. Oops. - Steve Martin -- Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. - Lazarus Long -- Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. - Lazarus Long -- Pftph! - Bill the Cat -- Marriage: It's not a word, it's a sentence. -- You don't know what true happiness is until you're married. But then it's too late. -- An unmarried man is incomplete; a married man is finished. -- 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. - H.S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -- I cannot live without books. - Thomas Jefferson, 1815 -- You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension if sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into... the Twilight Zone. - Rod Serling -- In the common people there is no wisdom, no penetration, no power of judgment. - Marcus Cicero -- For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. - Aristotle -- The great obstacle of progress is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge. -- Skepticism - the philosophical doctrine that absolute knowledge is impossible and that inquiry must be a process of doubting in order to acquire approximate or relative knowledge. -- First they stole the fourth amendment. I said nothing because I don't deal drugs. Then they took the sixth amendment. I was silent because I know I'm not guilty. When they came for the second amendment, I kept quiet because I don't own a gun. Now they've come for the first amendment, and I can't say anything at all. -- Many of my readers assume that I am dead and are quite surprised to find me still alive. Nevertheless this is indeed the case. - Isaac Asimov in 1979 (he died in 1992) -- You don't ask a juggler which ball is his/her highest priority. Success is to do it all. -- "Is this any time to make enemies?" - Voltaire, on his deathbed, on being told to renounce Satan -- Don't believe in ads. Don't believe in government. Watch yourself - everybody is trying to screw you!" - Bill Gaines, Mad Magazine, 1922-1992 -- The spear in the other's heart is the spear in your own; you are he. - Surak -- Seek first to understand, then to be understood. -- "Brevity is the soul of wit" But not, you see, the same as it. - Mark T. Shirey -- NOBODY for President! Nobody's perfect! Nobody gives a damn! -- It is a sin to believe evil of others, but seldom a mistake. -- Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off! - Zaphod Beeblebrox, in HGG by Douglas Adams -- I teleported home one night With Ron and Sid and Meg Ron stole Meggie's heart away And I got Sidney's leg. - Douglas Adams -- Q: How do you tell if there's a Rhino in your Refrigerator? A: Ask the elephant. -- Q: How can you tell if there's a freedom fighter in your medicine cabinet? A: Contraindications. - Mark T. Shirey -- Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking. - Goethe -- The enemies are laziness and pretentiousness. - Mark T. Shirey -- Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. - Oscar Wilde -- Pick-up line: I seem to have lost my phone number, could I have yours? -- Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. - Francis Bacon -- The world is not analog; the world is digital, with an incredible number of bits. - Arthur C. Adams (not the comic-book artist) -- Thou art God. - V.M. Smith, Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein I am God. - Shirley McLaine -- Only the mediocre are always at their best. Stop "shoulding" all over yourself. - Stuart Smalley, Saturday Night Live -- Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something! - Pancho Villa's last words -- "What should I be when I grow up?" Honest. - Robert M. Pirsig -- Dying is not to be feared. It is the final comfort. As we all learn, eventually. - Robert A. Heinlein -- A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. - Mark Twain -- Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley -- The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy. - Eudora Welty, The Wide Net -- But I do not love the sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. - Faramir, The Two Towers -- You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. - Mark Twain -- God and I have this little understanding. I don't believe in Him and He questions my authority. -- _Nature_, Mr. Allnutt, is what we are put in this world _to rise above_. - The African Queen -- Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug. -- Shaw's Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. -- Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage. -- Watson's Law: The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the number and significance of any persons watching it. -- The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action. -- Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results. -- Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work. -- Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability: Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done. -- Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late project makes it later. -- When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut. -- Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side. -- There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects. -- The shortest distance between two points is under construction. - Noelie Altito -- Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object. -- Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it. - Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice. -- Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. -- Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty - some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none _absolutely_ certain. - Richard P. Feynman -- The bogosity in a field equals the bogosity imported from related areas, plus the bogosity generated internally, minus the bogosity expelled or otherwise disposed of. - K. Eric Drexler -- Mathematicians deal with proofs of absolute certainty because they get to define completely the universe their proofs exists in. Scientists have no such luxury. - Mark Isaac -- Q: Were all cooks in the Old West named "Cookie"? A: No, some were named "Bernie". -- People with narrow minds usually have broad tongues. -- I like your approach, now let's see your departure. -- Stress - the confusion that results when the mind overrides the body's desire to choke the living shit out of some jerk who desperately needs it. -- Simon says, "Don't be so suggestible." -- Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. -- Religious intolerance is getting to be a greater problem in this country. I understand some Unitarians were caught burning question marks on people's front lawns. -- Foreign Aid - the transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. -- Have you heard about the new super-sensitive condoms? They hang around after the man leaves and talk to the woman. -- Gravity is the soul of weight. -- I always feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's the best they're going to feel all day. -- Wife: "I was a fool when I married you." Husband: "Sure you were. But I was so much in love at the time that I didn't notice it." -- He: Your husband is a brilliant man. I suppose he knows everything. She: Don't be silly. He doesn't even suspect. -- California, n.: 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 -- haiku's inventor must have had seven fingers on his middle hand -- Q: What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs who can play 15 different musical instruments? A: Stump the band. -- This limerick's signed "Anonymous" To keep the author autonomous 'Cause the rhyming scheme's bad And the scan is just sad And the punch line is really abominous - Anonymous (Ken Blackman) -- 'What scares you most will set you free' is what the Angel said to me... - Soft Boys -- Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight. - William Safire -- To love another person is to see the face of God. - Les Miserables -- My boy, you are descended from a long line of determined, resourceful, microscopic tadpoles - champions every one. - Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos -- F$%& 'em if they can't take a joke. - J.R. 'Bob' Dobbs, Church of the Subgenius -- Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by the age of eighteen. - Albert Einstein -- Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. - Luke 14:27, The Bible, c 80 CE -- Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. - 1 John 4:1, The Bible, c 100 CE -- For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned. - Matthew 12:37, The Bible, c 71 CE -- Heavier than air flying machines are impossible. - Lord Kelvin, 1900 Space travel is utter bilge. - Dr. Richard van der Riet Wolley (Astronomer Royal, 1956) The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine. - Lord Rutherford, 1933 I estimate there is a world market for about five computers. - Thomas Watson, Head of IBM, 1943 Atmospheric nuclear tests do not seriously endanger either present or future generations. - Dr. Edward Teller, 1958 -- An astronomer, a physicist, a mathematician, and a chemist are hiking in Finland and see a black sheep. The astronomer says, "Gee, there are black sheep in Finland!" The physicist says, "You can't say that. All you can say is that on this mountain there is a black sheep." The mathematician shouts, "Are you crazy? All you can say is that on this slope of this mountain there is a sheep whose ONE SIDE is black!!!" To which the chemist adds, "For some period of time..." -- A little girl goes into a toy store and asks the clerk, "Does Barbie come with Ken?" The clerk replies, "No, dear, Barbie comes with G.I. Joe - she fakes it with Ken." -- This limerick would be quintessential Were it a little more experiential A little less haughty A little more naughty And a little less self-referential - Mark T. Shirey, 1992 -- Who hath no wyf [wife] he is no cokewold [cuckold]. - Chaucer, (A. 3152) -- You've never had pre-marital sex if you never get married. - Mark T. Shirey -- Have another day. - Armageddon, the musical -- Death - to stop sinning suddenly. -- A man's home is his hassle. -- An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax. - David Letterman -- Did you hear about the atheistic solipsist? He doesn't believe in himself. -- The word "politics" is derived from the word "poly", meaning "many", and the word "ticks", meaning "blood sucking parasites". -- Only through a sort of deception - through allowing oneself to be persuaded - can a person feel he or she knows something. -- Common sense is what tells us the Earth is flat and and the Sun goes around it. -- Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. - John Locke -- North of Breckinridge, high in the Gore Range, I found myself craving an orange, But I'd not thought to pack That magnificent snack And alas! was six miles out of store range. -- It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself that one learns," and, in reply, "it is _only_ by amusing oneself that one can learn." - Edward Kasner and James R. Newman -- People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future. -- It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. - Bertrand Russell -- Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. - Wernher von Braun -- It is a poor workman who blames his tools. -- Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. - Salvor Hardin, "Foundation" -- 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 -- Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. - Winston Churchill -- It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off. - Woody Allen -- Never let lack of money interfere with having fun. -- I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises! - Winston Churchill -- Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. - Robert A. Heinlein -- It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good too, to check up once and a while and make sure you haven't lost the things that money can't buy. - George Horace Lorimer -- It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and "i" is lower case. - Sydney J. Harris -- It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to. - Franklin P. Jones -- It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. -- One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted. - Thomas B. Reed -- Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it. -- Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. - Eric Hoffer -- War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. - George Orwell, 1984 -- Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self. - Millicent Fenwick -- People often mistakenly equate existence with need. -- I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. - Groucho Marx -- Lewis's Law of Travel: The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to anyone, ever. -- Never try to outstubborn a cat. - Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love -- I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike. - Emile Henry Gauvreay Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like. - Will Rogers -- 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 -- Jones's First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress, in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution. -- Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner. The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is because neither side has all the facts. Therefore, when the wise mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the whole truth. - Stephen R. Schwambach -- Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is. - John L. Shirey -- Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted. -- The Whorfian Hypothesis: Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about. - B. L. Whorf -- Laws of Serendipity: (1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for something. (2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already be engaged in making an inferior one. -- It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for. -- Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats - approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less. -- Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe. -- Learn from the mistakes of others. You don't have time to make them all yourself. -- Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage. -- Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. - Harry Emerson Fosdick -- Life is like an analogy. Life is like a simile. Life is a metaphor. -- It is not true that life is one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over. - Edna St. Vincent Millay -- It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country. The Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies. - Edith Hamilton, "The Greek Way" -- Lunatic Asylum, n.: The place where optimism most flourishes. -- I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance. -- I've found that it's not good to talk about your troubles. Eighty percent of the people who hear them don't care and the other twenty percent are glad you're having trouble. - Tommy LaSorda -- Luck: when preparation and opportunity meet. - Pierre Trudeau -- When you have spoken the word, it reigns over you. When it is unspoken, you reign over it. -- You can get everything in life that you want, if you will help enough other people get what they want. -- We weaken whatever we exaggerate. -- You can lead a man to slaughter, but you can't make him think. -- You can only have two things in life: reasons or results. Reasons don't count. -- Whatever you assume to be true will become _real_ for you. -- When it becomes more difficult to suffer than change, you will change. -- You can observe a lot just by watchin'. - Yogi Berra -- When you really take a good look at your life, success is all you've ever had. -- Why can't life's big problems come when we are twenty and know everything? -- Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat. - Robert Fuoss -- Maturity is only a short break in adolescence. - Jules Feiffer -- Reflections on Ice-breaking: Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. - Ogden Nash -- On the Origin of Fleas: Adam had'em. - Ogden Nash -- It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. -- Measure twice, cut once. -- It's kind of fun to do the impossible. - Walt Disney -- It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong direction. -- Mayor Vincent J. 'Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city nativity scene removed: They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men and a virgin in the whole organization. -- Mediocrity finds safety in standardization. - Frederick Crane -- People who dream impossible dreams and strive to achieve them raise man's stature a fraction of an inch in the process, whether they win or lose. -- Mahatma Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better. -- Treat all rational autonomous moral agents, whether in the form of yourself or another, never as means solely, but always as ends in themselves. - Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals -- Lockwood's Long Shot: The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't one in a million, but once would be enough. -- Loose bits sink chips. -- Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery -- Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. - Goethe -- Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose thy neighborhood wisely. - paraphrase of Louise Beal -- Progress means replacing something wrong with something more subtly wrong. -- My rule is to be true rather than funny. - Bill Cosby -- My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed. - Christopher Morley -- It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. Naeser's Law: You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof. -- Never forget what someone says to you when they are angry. -- I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child - sometimes on the same day. -- Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. - Sam Brown, The Washington Post, January 26, 1977 -- Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever, Amen. - The Lord's Prayer, the Bible -- No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper. - Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after taken over by Rupert Murdoch -- Now is the time for all good men to come to. - Pogo (comic strip by Walt Kelly) -- Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too. - Lichty & Wagner -- Progress is made by lazy men looking for an easier way to do things. - Lazarus Long -- Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man. - Leon Trotsky, some time before getting his head caved in by an axe -- schadenfreude - German for "pleasure at the misfortune of others" -- One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people. -- There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. - Goethe -- One of life's little ironies is the fact that when you finally master a tough job, you make it look easy. -- One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him. - John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983 -- One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. - Will Durant -- One-Page Principle: A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5 x 11 inch paper cannot be understood. - Mark Ardis -- The paranoids are after me! -- One reason why George Washington is held in such veneration: He never blamed his problems on the former Administration. - George O. Ludcke -- It is the business of the future to be dangerous. - Hawkwind -- It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too good either if you speak when your head is empty. -- People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart. - Howard Simons, The Washington Post -- When the administrator feels himself to be the sole driving agency, and finds himself chiefly engaged in arousing those who are apathetic and coercing those who are antagonistic, there is something vitally wrong with the administration. - E.D. Jones, 1925 -- We trained hard... but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to 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 BCE -- Perfection is achieved only on the point of collapse. - C. N. Parkinson -- Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets. - Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer), Venus on the Half Shell -- On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. - Will Rogers -- Politics is like sports - you have to be smart enough to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest. -- Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming. - J. P. McEvoy -- Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is? A: One per person. -- Remember there's an if in the middle of life. -- Schizophrenia beats being alone. -- You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need. You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street, you gotta be able to pick up the easy meat with your eyes closed. And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight, you gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking. - Pink Floyd -- I once believed in causes too I had my pointless point of view And life went on no matter who was wrong or right - Billy Joel, "Angry Young Man" -- Wagner's music is better than it sounds. - Mark Twain -- The trouble with leadership is that anyone who wants it shouldn't be trusted with it. -- Yankee go OM! - Mark T. Shirey (or was it Allen Ginsberg?) -- The Queue Principle: The longer you wait in line, the greater the likelihood that you are standing in the wrong line. -- There are few people more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure to be thought so. -- We are upping our standards... so up yours. - Pat Paulsen for President, 1988 -- There are no straight lines in space. - Albert Einstein (conceivably) There are no straight lines in space. - Woody Allen (conceivably) -- There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying. -- There are three ways to get something done: (1) Do it yourself. (2) Hire someone to do it for you. (3) Forbid your kids to do it. -- There are two ways of teaching people: You can teach them how to think, or you can teach them what to think. Socrates taught people how to think; Jesus taught people what to think. -- The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been. - Alan Ashley-Pitt -- There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know nothing about. -- There is a saying among trial lawyers: "Never ask a question unless you are already SURE of the answer." For Dungeon Masters/Game Masters that should be Never roll the dice unless you're sure the outcome is acceptable." For computer scientists, it reads: "Never test for an error condition unless you know how to handle it." - Eric Holtman -- There is no limit to the amount of good that people can accomplish if they don't care who gets the credit. - Anonymous -- Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun. -- Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before. -- There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not a fence. -- They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid! -- They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult to like. - Avon -- TV is chewing gum for the eyes. - Frank Lloyd Wright -- Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense. - e.e. cummings -- We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, but others judge us by what we have already done. - Longfellow -- One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone. -- Well, now that we have seen each other, said the Unicorn, if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you. Is that a bargain? - Lewis Carroll -- The word "gullible" is not in the dictionary. -- What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. - Woody Allen, Without Feathers -- What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it? -- When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money. - Kim Hubbard -- When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly. -- There are many people today who literally do not have a close personal friend. -- When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't know the answer either. - Edgar R. Fiedler -- "Wrong," said Renner. "The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with the Senator would be to say, 'That turns out not to be the case.'" -- 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 -- Two physicists, on a lovely day, went hot-air ballooning. After they'd been up for a while, they got lost. Eventually, they flew over a village and saw a man below. One of the physicists yells, "Hey! Where are we?" After about fifteen minutes, the physicists hear, "You're 100 feet above me." "That man is a mathematician," said the one physicist. "How do you know?" asked the other. "Well," he replied, "his answer was absolutely correct, it took him a long time to answer, and it was completely useless." -- It is not a simple life to be a single cell, although I have no right to say so, having been a single cell so long ago myself that I have no memory at all of that stage of my life. - Lewis Thomas -- One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet when well-oiled. -- Why are you looking for more knowledge when you do not pay attention to what you already know? -- The mind does not understand its own reason for being. - Rene Magritte -- A picture without a frame is not a picture. - John Archibald Wheeler -- Flout 'em and scout 'em - and scout 'em and flout 'em; Thought is free. - William Shakespeare, The Tempest III,ii,118 -- Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. - Jesus Christ, Matthew 24:35, The Bible, c 71 CE -- We may begin to see reality differently simply because the computer... provides a different angle on reality. - Heinz Pagels -- Reality: what a concept! - Robin Williams -- As long as the brain is a mystery, the universe will also be a mystery. - Santiago Ramon y Cajal -- One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word "I". -- All things are one. - Heraclitus, in G.S. Kirk's "Heraclitus: the Cosmic Fragments" ALLR1 - David Stickle's license plate, UU Fellowship, State College, PA -- Nature tools along, not knowing that it's unified. - Allan Sandage -- The mystical experience can neither be spoken nor written about. - Plato The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. - Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching -- To see a 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 -- All is number. - Pythagoras of Samos -- In the year of the Lord 1654 Monday November 23 From about half-past ten in the evening until half past twelve FIRE God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob Not of the philosophers nor of the scholars. Certainty. Joy. Certainty, feeling, joy, peace... THE SUBLIMITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL Just Father, the world has not known thee but I have known thee. Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. I do not separate myself from thee.... - Blaise Pascal, written beneath a gleaming cross on parchment, found in his "doublet" after his death in 1662 -- Progress is nothing but the victory of laughter over dogma. - Benjamin DeCasseres -- Two old Jewish men were playing cards and the first one becomes extremely frustrated with the other's clumsiness and ignorance of the game. Throwing down his cards in disgust, he says, "What can I expect from a man who plays cards with ME?" I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me for a member. - Groucho Marx (a great lapidarist and Jew) -- auslachen - German for "to attack and disarm someone by making jokes at his expense." -- The Zen master accepts the absurdity of life, then transcends it, by living life exactly as if it were worth living. - Timothy Ferris -- It is very beautiful over there. - Thomas Edison, on his deathbed This is eternal bliss, I thought. This cannot be described; it is far too wonderful. - Carl Jung, describing a near-fatal heart attack -- The essence is coming. - graffiti on 5th St., Bloomsburg, PA, circa 1981 -- Dear Posterity, If you have not become more just, more peaceful, and generally more rational than we are (or were) - why then, the Devil take you. - Albert Einstein, message for a time capsule -- MENE MEME TEKEL UPHARSIN (Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting). [The words inscribed by the moving hand upon Belshazzar's wall.] - Daniel, The Bible -- Hell is truth seen too late. - John Locke -- The world is the totality of facts, not of things. -- It from bit. Every IT - every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself - derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely... from the apparatus-elicited answers to yes or no questions, binary choices, BITS. - John Archibald Wheeler -- No phenomenon IS a phenomenon until it is OBSERVED. - John Archibald Wheeler, paraphrasing Niels Bohr -- The word "algorithm" is a corruption of Al Kworesmi, the name of a 9th century Arab mathematician whose book on the subject was influential in Renaissance Europe. - Timothy Ferris, The Mind's Sky -- The term "bit" was coined by John Tukey, later of Princeton University, in a 1 Sep 1947 Bell Labs memo titled "Sequential Conversion of Continuous Data to Digital Data." - Timothy Ferris, The Mind's Sky -- Quantum - German for "hunk". -- Failure to emulate is the best revenge. - Marcus Aurelius Living well is the best revenge. - George Herbert -- The Chemist's rule: Never take more than three data points. There will always be some kind of graph paper on which they fall in a straight line. The Chemist's rule, first corollary: if you have only one kind of graph paper, never take more than two data points. -- No one is exempt from talking nonsense; the only misfortune is to do it solemnly. - Montaigne -- Pick good people and stay out of their way. -- Be able to say, "I never had a job I didn't like." -- The trouble with self-made men is that they worship their creator. -- One of the best ways to motivate people is friendly praise. -- It is the capacity to enjoy life that brings contentment. -- Occasional failure is the price of improvement. If you want to succeed, double your failure rate. - Thomas Watson, IBM founder Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. - Henry Ford I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. - Thomas Edison Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close to success they were before they gave up. - Thomas Edison -- If you have your sight, you are blessed. If you have insight, you are a thousand times blessed. -- Most of us will never do great things, but we can do small things in a great way. -- Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few engage in it. - Henry Ford -- It's tough to climb the ladder of success, especially if you're trying to keep your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel, your eye on the ball, and your ear to the ground. -- There's a surefire way to double your money - fold it in half and put it in your pocket. -- Good supervision is the art of getting average people to do superior work. -- Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have of changing others. - Jacob M. Braude -- When you ask someone to do something, explain why. When you like what they did, tell them. -- Only worry about your problems one at a time. -- Even God discriminates against homosexuals - he only made 10% of us gay. -- She's the only woman I ever thought about WHILE making love to her. -- Mother lion to cub: "Don't forget to eat your fruits and vegetarians." - Mark T. Shirey -- Don't LOOK at anything in a physics lab; don't TASTE anything in a chemistry lab; don't SMELL anything in a biology lab; don't TOUCH anything in a medical lab; and, most importantly, don't LISTEN to anything in the Philosophy Department. -- In what furnace was thy brain? - William Blake -- I perceived she was one of those creatures that are not the playthings of time. - J. Conrad -- Why, back where I come from there are people who sit around all day and do nothing but think deep thoughts. They're called phila... philo... uh, deep-thought-thinkers - and with no more brains than you. But they do have something you don't have - a diploma. - The Wizard of Oz -- By the Law of Periodical Repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again and again and again - and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its own period, not another's, and each obeying its own law... and the same Nature which delights in periodical repetition in the skies is the Nature which orders the affairs of the earth. Let us not underrate the value of that hint. - Mark Twain -- The more unusual the thought, the more important it is likely to be, for the world is more in need of new ideas than anything else. - Ralph Waldo Emerson -- To free a man of error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. - Schopenhauer Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge. - Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-1881), Swiss Philosopher -- Ceci n'est pas une 'quote'. (This is not a quote.) - after Rene Magritte's painting of a pipe called "This is not a pipe" -- It is a poor sort of skepticism which merely delights in challenging those claims which conflict with one's own belief system. -- There goes Grace and, God, for the butt of Grace go I. - Mark T. Shirey -- Faith, n: That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be untrue. -- The Heineken Uncertainty Principle: You can never be sure how many beers you had last night. -- There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy. - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary -- There was a young man from Japan Whose limericks never would scan When someone asked why He replied, with a sigh: "It's because I always try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can." -- Never trust anyone who volunteers to assume authority. Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change. -- Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world. - Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden -- In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in the proper order then why can't he? -- If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well. - Donald Hebb -- If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side. - Orson Scott Card -- I am a fish of the sky! a cloud of the sea! blue is to fish, as sky is to me. - Steve Martin -- O pointy birds, O pointy, pointy Anoint my head, Anointy, nointy - Steve Martin -- A man, a plan, a canal - Panama! - famous palindrome A man, a plan, a cat, a canal - Panama! - a simple variation on a famous palindrome (some versions have 150+ words) A man, a plan, a canoe, pasta, heros, rajahs, a coloratura, maps, snipe, percale, macaroni, a gag, a banana bag, a tan, a tag, a banana bag again or: a camel, a crepe, pins, Spam, a rut, a Rolo, cash, a jar, sore hats, a peon, a canal - Panama! - a "non-trivial" variation on a famous palindrome, by Guy Steele, in "Common Lisp: The Language", 2nd ed. -- With excitement like this, who is needing enemas? Tomorrow is the next day. We are wasting valueless time! I am thinking she's a virgin, or at least she used to be. I am standing here beside myself. Who is knowing how to read the mind of a robot? - the Indian guy (played by a Caucasian), Short Circuit (movie) -- "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "because proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says Man, "the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It proves that you exist, so therefore by your own admission you don't." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that" and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. - Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- God made the integers, all else is the work of man. - Kronecker -- Here, a piece of the True Cross. And in this case, we have the skull of John the Baptist at the age of twelve. -- I try to skate to where I think the puck will be. - a pro hockey player -- If you want to drive a cryptographer crazy, send her a page of random text. - Mark T. Shirey -- The meek don't want it. -- Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you. -- Nothing matters, so MAKE things matter. -- Yes, I'm paranoid - but am I paranoid ENOUGH? -- Reality is an allusion. - Mark T. Shirey -- "I love you" is the most you can say in the fewest words. - Mark T. Shirey -- Money is the root of all good. - Mark T. Shirey -- When you meet a master swordsman, show him your sword. When you meet someone who is not a poet, do not show him your poem. - Rinzai (9th century Zen master) -- Did you hear about the computer scientist they found dead in his shower? He was clutching a bottle of shampoo that said, "Lather, Rinse, Repeat". -- People are great and life is good, let us thank THEM for our food. - Mark T. Shirey -- I have only come here seeking knowledge Things they would not teach me of in college - Sting -- Mickey's a mouse, Donald's a duck, Pluto's a dog - what's Goofy? - Stand By Me (movie) -- I have seen the future brother, It is murder. Things are going to slide Slide in all directions Won't be nothing - Nothing you can measure anymore. - The Future, by Leonard Cohen -- Everything will perish save love and music. - Scottish Gaelic proverb -- Phantasie ist wichtiger als Wissen. (Imagination is more important than intelligence.) - Albert Einstein -- 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 -- Who shall guard the guardians? - a Roman philosopher -- Jake liked his women the way he liked his kiwi fruit: sweet yet tart, firm- fleshed yet yielding to the touch, and covered with short brown fuzzy hair. They said I could have any kind of woman I wanted, so I asked for brown hair, long legs, and really horny. They brought me a moose. - Steve Martin -- Gold dust from wheat fields, White dust from flowers floats by - Haiku! Gesundheit! - Mark T. Shirey -- To be great is to be misunderstood. - Ralph Waldo Emerson To generalize is to be an idiot. - William Blake -- Here's a good rule of thumb; Too clever is dumb. - Ogden Nash Too clever is dumb. - German proverb -- Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing. - Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries -- There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering. -- We have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem. - Trillian, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HGG) by Douglas Adams -- I never went to bed with an ugly woman But I sure woke up with a few. Last night I came in at 2 with a 10 But at 10 I woke up with a 2. - Willie Nelson -- Women want one man to satisfy their every need while men want every woman to satisfy their one need. -- 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." - R.D. Hayler, "New Scientist" (magazine) -- Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving, revolving at 900 miles an hour. It's orbiting at 90 miles a second, so it's reckoned, the Sun which is the source of all our power. The Sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see, are moving at a million miles a day, in the outer spiral arm at 40 thousand miles an hour of a Galaxy we call the Milky Way. The Galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars, it's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light years thick but out by us it's just three thousand light years wide. It's thirty-thousand light years from Galactic Central Point, We go round every two hundred million years. And our galaxy is only one of millions and billions in this amazing and expanding Universe... ...The Universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding in all of the directions it can whiz. As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know, twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure how amazingly unlikely is your birth, and pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'cause there's bugger-all down here on earth. - Monty Python, The Meaning of Life (movie) -- Fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well known is this: 'Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.' - William Goldman, The Princess Bride (movie) -- C: "Bugs fly in such crazy loops and zigzags. I wonder why they don't get dizzy and barf." H: "Maybe they do!" C: "Eww, gross! Ha ha ha! But then why would they keep flying that way?" H: "Maybe bugs *like* to barf!" C: "EWWWW! They WOULD! Ha ha ha ha! BLAUGH!" C: "I tell you, Hobbes, it's great to have a friend who appreciates an earnest discussion of ideas." - Calvin and Hobbes, 15 Jul 92, on philosophical/scientific dialectic -- To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting. - e.e. cummings -- I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. - Thomas Jefferson -- Explore until you get yelled at. - Dr. David L. Hall, HRB Systems -- There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. - Colonel Sanders -- Finance is the art of passing money from hand to hand until it finally disappears. - Robert W. Sarnoff -- The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes. - Gore Vidal -- There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone. - Gloria Steinem -- We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities. - Pogo (comic strip by Walt Kelly) To dream the impossible dream. - Man of La Mancha, 1972, lyrics Joe Darion -- Try not to become a man of success, rather try to become a man of value. - Albert Einstein -- The time is always right to do what is right. - Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Love is a friendship set to music. - E. Joseph Cossman -- The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack. - Wayne Lukas -- The best test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands. - Alexandra Penney -- The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way in which its animals are treated. - Mahatma Gandhi -- Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory? - I Corinthians 15 -- 'Tis education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclin'd. - Alexander Pope -- The three laws of robotics: 1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. - Isaac Asimov, "I, Robot" -- After wisdom comes wit. - Evan Esar -- And here, poor fool, with all my lore I stand no wiser than before. - Johann W. von Goethe -- Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there. - Sydney J. Harris -- Between grief and nothing I will take grief. - William Faulkner -- Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good eating and ill-living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property. - Jeremy Collier -- What is man's chief enemy? Each man is his own. - Anacharsis, 600 BCE -- In order to see Christianity, one must forget almost all the Christians. - Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-1881), Swiss Philosopher -- Be always displeased with what thou art, if your desirest to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest. But if thou have enough thou perishest. Always add, always walk, always proceed. Neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate. - Augustine -- Be sober and temperate, and you will be happy. - Benjamin Franklin -- All philosophy lies in two words: sustain and abstain. - Epictetus -- The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, to dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship. - Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-1881), Swiss Philosopher -- To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living. - Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-1881), Swiss Philosopher -- I didn't say I love him - I said he was handy. - Miss Daisy, Driving Miss Daisy (movie) -- "Balls" said the Queen, "If I had them, I'd be King." - Bette Davis (in a movie) -- A belief is not true [just] because it is useful. - Henri Frederic Amiel (1821-1881), Swiss Philosopher -- Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less. - Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906), conclusion to Rights to Suffrage -- The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue. - Antisthenes (445-365 BCE), Founder, Cynic School of Philosophy -- Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before. - Mae West -- The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be either good or evil. - Hanna Arendt -- Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good. - St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Whether God Exists, Q.109,art.2 -- The light of faith makes us see what we believe. - St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Whether God Exists, Q.109,art.2 -- Give me a long enough stick and a place to stand and I will move the world. - Archimedes (287-212 BCE), Pappus, Synagoge -- What science and the quest for knowledge are after is irrefutable truth; that is, propositions that human beings are not free to reject - that are compelling. They are of two kinds, as we have known since Leibnitz: truths of reasoning and truths of fact. - Hanna Arendt (1906-1975), political philosopher -- Every thought is an afterthought. - Hanna Arendt -- With the rise of Christianity, faith replaced thought as the bringer of immortality. - Hanna Arendt -- Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man. - Bacon -- Thieves were stealing a farmer's watermelons, so he put up a sign that said "One of these melons is injected with cyanide." The next day, he noticed that someone had written on the sign "Now there are two." -- Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. - Samuel Johnson -- And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. - I Corinthians, The Bible -- And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? - The Bible -- Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad. - Leo Rosten Any man who hates dogs and loves whiskey can't be all bad. - W.C. Fields, after Leo Rosten Any man who hates dogs and children can't be all bad. - popularly, but falsely, attributed to W.C. Fields -- Now death is the most terrible of things; for it is the end, and nothing is thought to be any longer either good or bad for the dead. - Aristotle -- For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater. - Aristotle -- Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. - Robert Benchley -- At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment. - Grattan -- Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which _are_ there. - Richard Feynman, physicist -- A religion follows a message and a cult follows a messenger. - Jerry Falwell A religion is a cult which has survived its leader. -- I am the King of Me. You are the King or Queen of You. It's a lifetime position we can thank or blame our parents for. It's the only thing that can't be taken from us. We get all of the responsibility and all of the joy. It's a tough job but everybody's got to do it. - Mark T. Shirey -- The are four things which cannot be gotten back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. - Arabian proverb -- In a mature society, "civil servant" is semantically equivalent to "civil master." - Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long -- The Norse god Thor came to earth and "slept with" a mortal woman - all night long. In the morning, she said, "How can you do that all night long?" He said, "I have to admit - I'm Thor". She said, "YOU'RE thor? I'm tho thore I can't walk!" -- To "grok" means "to understand or ingest fully", as in "I grok you", - Valentine Michael Smith, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein -- Given time, a generally accepted solution to this problem will evolve, as it has in the past for other issues, only to be replaced by the next issue, which no one has even dreamt of yet. - Andrew Lawrence -- The population is growing but the total IQ is remaining constant. -- Fame or integrity: which is more important? Money or happiness: which is more valuable? Success or failure: which is more destructive? - Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell -- Worldly success depends on pleasing others. - John Luther If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be truly satisfied. - Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell Poor is the man whose happiness depends on the approval of others. - Madonna Poor is the person whose pleasure depends on approval. - Mark T. Shirey, improving on the Tao Te Ching and Madonna -- If [your] happiness depends on money, you will never be happy with yourself. - Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell -- An act of courage is not done by someone who is fearless, but by someone who is filled with fear and does it anyway. -- If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married. - Deuteronomy 24:5, The Bible -- Always remember that you are unique, just like everyone else. -- But whatEVAH you do... PLEESE - DON'T fling me in that BRIAH patch! - Brer Rabbit, Uncle Wiggly Brer Rabbit demonstrated: freedom is made of brambles. - John Updike, Collected Poems, "Midpoint" -- For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. - Richard Feynman -- Simmons's Law: The desire for racial integration increases with the square of the distance from the actual event. -- Acheson's Rule of the Bureaucracy: A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer. -- If we were right when in our Ethics we stated that virtue is a mean, and that the happy life is a life without hindrance in its accordance with virtue, then the best life must be the middle life. And the same principles must be applicable to the virtue or badness of constitutions and states. For the constitution of a state is in a sense the way it lives. - Aristotle, Politics, para. 1295a34 (ca. 323 BCE) -- There is no god. I'll bet my afterlife on it. - Sri Karma -- The other night I was lying in bed, looking up at the stars, and I wondered, "Where the HECK is my ROOF?!?" - Steven Wright -- Weak atheism - disbelief or skepticism concerning the existence of God Strong atheism - positive belief that God does not exist Agnosticism - belief that we do not and CANNOT know if God exists Christian Agnosticism - unfounded faith that the Christian God (Yahweh) exists -- Fight the real enemy. - Sinead O'Connor, et al -- Marriage is a fine institution - for people who should be in one. -- At least once a month, learn some new subject at least well enough to ask the right questions of an expert. -- There's a chance that alcohol, tobacco, and firearms will hurt you - do you want to take that chance? -- Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not. - James Madison, A Memorial and Remonstrance -- I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! - John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson -- History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose. - Thomas Jefferson to Baron von Humboldt, 1813 -- I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it. - Benjamin Franklin, in "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion", Nov 1728 -- Think globally, act locally. - bumper sticker Think universally, act selfishly. - Tim Starr (e-mail signature) Think OM, act OM. -- 'Equal' means the same thing, in the same place, at the same time. - Thurgood Marshall -- Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of. - They Might Be Giants, "Where Your Eyes Don't Go" -- abunist - someone who does not believe in the Easter Bunny. - Mark T. Shirey -- The Mormons avoid David Koresh's problems with the ATF - they FORBID alcohol, tobacco, and firearms. - Mark T. Shirey Mormons wear "sacred undergarments", deny women any power, and believe that the faithful will spend eternity having sex on other planets. Really. -- Where is there a certainty that rises above all doubt and withstands all critique? - Karl Jaspers -- But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect. - Ed Meese, US Attorney General, US News & World Report 10/15/85 -- A farmer was seen lifting up his pigs, one at a time, to eat apples out of a tree. A passerby said, "Wouldn't it save a lot of time to shake the tree and let them eat the apples on the ground?" The farmer replied, "What's time to a pig?" -- He's swimming in the successpool. - Mark T. Shirey -- When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have in-laws. -- The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks Which practically conceal its sex. I think it's clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile. - Ogden Nash -- There is a continuum of continuums, a spectrum of spectrums, an infinity of infinities. -- A farm girl and a farm boy were sitting on a fence watching a bull mating with a cow. The farm boy said "I'd like a little of that. How about it?" The farm girl replied, "Go ahead, it's your cow." -- I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. - Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) -- What do YOU want? I want peace and goodwill toward men. We're the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT - we don't do that sort of thing! - Sneakers (movie) -- The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke (1729-1797) -- When it comes to testing new aircraft or determining maximum performance, pilots like to talk about "pushing the envelope." They're talking about a two dimensional model: the bottom is zero altitude, the ground; the left is zero speed; the top is max altitude; and the right, maximum velocity, of course. So, the pilots are pushing that upper-right-hand corner of the envelope. What everybody tries not to dwell on is that that's where the postage gets canceled, too. - The Collected Journals of Admiral Rick Hunter -- Hey, buddy, can you paradigm? -- I haven't seen choreography that stiff since the Lee Harvey Oswald prison transfer. - Dennis Miller, comedian -- I'm a little indignant when they tell me I'm going to hell if I haven't been "born again". Pardon me for getting it right the first time. - Dennis Miller, comedian -- Why is a raven like a writing desk? - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, left unanswered Because Poe wrote on both. - Sam Loyd The notes for which they're noted are not noted as being musical notes. - Sam Loyd Because there's a "b" in "both". - E.V. Rieu, reported by Martin Gardiner in "The Annotated Alice" -- Be the ball. - Chevy Chase's advice on golf, Caddyshack (movie) -- Jesus converted to atheism just before he died. - Mathew (mathew@mantis.co.uk) -- The search for enlightenment isn't as important as learning to appreciate the present. - Ram Das (Richard Alpert), PhD from Harvard with Timothy Leary -- There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags don't wave in a vacuum. - Arthur C. Clark -- There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it. - John W. Raper -- Everybody is entitled to my opinion. -- The wise learn many things from their foes. - Aristophanes -- What do you care what other people think? - Richard Feynman -- If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. - Isaac Newton If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders. - Hal Abelson In computer science, we stand on each other's feet. - Brian K. Reed -- Every day above ground is a good day. -- Every once in a while you should use your backup to make sure it works. - Mark T. Shirey -- What is Truth? - Pontius Pilate Love is Truth. - Plato -- It's not the men in my life, but the life in my men. - Mae West -- All the Universe, or nothing! - H. G. Wells -- There is no way to completely define your terms and ground your references. -- Fear not the evil men do in the name of evil, but heaven protect us from the evil men do in the name of good. -- The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. - Albert Einstein -- An Englishman on a plane to Australia was handed one of these cards to fill in, in normal Commonwealth style. After the standard questions like name, nationality, passport number, etc., he got to one that asked: "Have you ever been imprisoned?" After thinking about that for some time he entered: "I didn't know it was still a requirement." -- If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture. -- At an Oxford college, they were debating what to do with all their money. The consensus was to buy land, since "for the past thousand years, land has proven to be a very wise investment for the college." A crusty old patriarch piped in, "True, but the past thousand years have been atypical." - Greg Benford -- Doctor, I have a serious memory problem. I can't remember anything! "How long have you had this problem?" What problem? -- A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money. - Sen. Everett Dirkson -- The idea of memes will really catch on. I mean, just think about it! - Mark T. Shirey -- Feynman walked in and, without a word, grabbed the ball and backed against the wall with the ball touching his nose. He let go, and the ball swung slowly 60 feet across the room and back - stopping naturally just short of crushing his face. Then he took the ball again, stepped forward, and said, "I wanted to show you that I believe in what I'm going to teach you over the next two years." - Michael Scott, first president of Apple Computer, on the Richard Feynman Lectures on Physics at California Institute of Technology in 1965 -- Behind every absurdity there lies a basic truth. Behind every basic truth there lies an absurdity. -- Every exit is an entry somewhere else. - Tom Stoppard -- Nothing I could ever think to say is as offensive as your suggestion that I not say it. - (tvorst@ccu.umanitoba.ca) -- One fellow was overheard saying to another, "Look, it's obvious we don't agree on any political issues, so our votes would just cancel each other out. I'll promise not to vote in the next election if you won't..." Later, he was overheard saying to someone else, "Look, it's obvious we don't agree on any political issues, ..." -- Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things, you just get used to them. - John von Neumann -- It is in the extremes that our philosophies are tested, and those of us who are serious do not set aside our ethics merely because in some cases they have become inconvenient or distasteful. - Piers Anthony, SF author -- Ask yourself 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 -- There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds. - Tennyson -- Sir, I admit your general rule That every Poet is a Fool But you yourself may serve to show it That every Fool is not a Poet - Pope -- I cannot say that I don't disagree with you. - Groucho Marx -- My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning. O my God, I cry by day, but Thou dost not answer; And by night, but I have no rest. - Psalms 22, The Bible -- Invincibility is in oneself, vulnerability is in the opponent. - Sun Tzu -- The considerations of the intelligent always include both benefit and harm. - Sun Tzu -- They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars - or stars where no human race is I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. - Robert Frost -- When hiding needles, it's always good to make the haystack as big as possible. - Phil Karn (karn@unix.ka9q.ampr.org) on how often to use encryption -- Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring. - Carl Sandburg -- The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want He makes me down to lie Through pastures green he leadeth me the silent waters by With bright knives he releaseth my soul He maketh me to hang on hooks in high places He converteth me to lamb cutlets For lo, he hath great power, and great hunger When cometh the day we lowly ones Through quiet reflection and great dedication Master the art of karate Lo, we shall rise up And then we'll make the bugger's eyes water. - Pink Floyd, "Sheep" -- Sometimes the pitch would hit the plate and the big guy would yell "Ball!" as if it was the ball's fault. - Susan Hunt -- 'When can we hope to leave?' You can hope anytime, Mr. Taylor. - Beneath the Planet of the Apes -- Yorn desh born, der ritt de gitt der gue, Orn desh, dee born desh, de umn bork! bork! bork! - The Swedish Chef, The Muppets (TV show) -- A man who prefers photocopies to real books, is a man I suspect would be quite content kissing a pretty woman through a piece of glass. -- Sometimes you just have to look reality in the eye and deny it. -- I like Chinese food / The waiters never are rude / Think of the many things they've done to impress / There's Maoism, Taoism, I Ching, and Chess - Monty Python, "I Like Chinese", Contractual Obligation Album -- Noumenon (-al) - a ground of phenomena that, according to Kant, cannot be experienced, can be known to exist, but to which no properties can be intelligibly ascribed. -- To be or not to be - that is the square root of 4 b^2. -- Research shows the first five minutes of life can be the most risky. The last five aren't so hot either. -- Do SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY grow up to become SLOW MEN AT WORK? -- The simple truth is that the truth is never simple. - Linda Ellerbee -- Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence. - Henrik Tikkanen -- Tragedy is if I cut my finger; comedy is if YOU walk into an open sewer and die. - Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner -- Live fast, die young, and leave a good lookin' corpse. - John Derek (Bo's husband) in 1949 film _Knock on Any Door_, Humphrey Bogart stars as a defense lawyer, Derek portrays a young thug -- Post-Modernism is Man realizing he can never ever see himself clearly, no matter how hard he tries. - Dan Hartung (dhartung@chinet.chinet.com) -- And there you have several miracles, first among them the wonder of a three- dimensional volume where black squiggles on white paper create worlds. - Melvin Jules Bukiet, on books -- In an old Peanuts strip, Lucy finds what she thinks is a rare butterfly on the ground, and goes off on a long rant about how it must have flown up from South America. After several minutes of this Linus takes a close look at the object and exclaims, "This isn't a butterfly, it's a potato-chip!" Lucy says, "I wonder how that potato chip got here from South America?" - Charles M. Shultz -- alpha bravo charlie delta echo foxtrot golf hotel india juliet kilo lima mike november oscar papa quebec romeo sierra tango uniform victor whiskey xray zulu -- You can't comb the hair on a billiard ball without at least 1 cowlick and 1 crown. - a restatement of the Brouwer Fixed-point Theorem that Michael L. Mauldin ("Fuzzy")(lazytoad.com), CMU, heard in a topology class at the John von Neuman Mathematics Seminar at SMU, July 1976 -- Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. - A.J. Liebling -- Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. - Socrates, in "The Apology" by Plato He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool, shun him. But he who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a wise man, follow him! - Oriental proverb To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge. - Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881 I have been asked thousands of questions, about every known subject. But never one that I could not answer. Why do you suppose that is? I don't know. - from "Zen and the Art of Standing Up" by Lee J. Merkel I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. - Mark Twain -- You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered. - Lyndon Johnson -- A man is crazy who writes a secret in any other way than one which will conceal it from the vulgar. - Roger Bacon, 1220-1292 -- The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding and grows better for being stepped on. - Ursula K. LeGuin, _The Dispossessed_ -- Why is it that some totally despicable people can say or type a few words that get other people to trust them, like them, hire them, vote for them, kill for them, or EVEN send them MONEY? - Mark T. Shirey -- There is truth, but no one knows what it is. -- Freedom is just chaos with better lighting. - Alan Dean Foster -- We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. - T.S. Eliot -- It's turtles all the way down. - someone trying to explain to Bertrand Russell how the Earth could be riding on the back of a giant turtle who is on the back of another, etc. -- There is no reason in the world to fight, however there is every reason to need to know how to fight. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War -- Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns. - J.M. Clarke -- It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong, and an even bigger one to keep his mouth shut when he's right. - Jim Fiebig -- As I grow older I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do. - Andrew Carnegie -- Science is to see what everyone else has seen but think what no one else has thought. - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -- It's okay for us to love our country, but we ought to spend most of our time making our country lovable. - Andy Rooney -- The beautiful things are difficult. - Plato, Hippias Major -- It's not how big your share is, it's how much you share. -- Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. - John 8:32, The Bible, also the motto of the CIA -- People ask me how I do it, and I say "There's nothing to it - you just stand there looking cute... and when something moves, you shoot!" - Tom Lehrer -- The trouble with radicals is that they read only radical literature and the trouble with conservatives is that they don't read anything. - Thomas Carter -- I drank WHAT? - Socrates -- I love the smell of Napalm in the morning. - Big Duke, Apocalypse Now (movie) -- Liberty is not the freedom to do whatever we want, it is the freedom to do whatever we are able. -- A truth does not become greater by repetition. - Maimonides (1135-1204) -- An intelligent chess computer would ask, `Why does White always go first?' -- Beware the Jabberwock, my son; The jaws that bite; the claws that catch; Beware the Jub-Jub bird and shun The frumious Bandersnatch! - Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky" -- Just like the universe, as I get older, I expand and get cooler. - Joe Mancini -- Marriage is like getting Playboy magazine with the same centerfold every month. -- Is there a word for that feeling you get when you decide that someone is a total loser because of something they just did or said? Is there a word for that feeling you get when you realize that they were right and you were wrong? -- A pastor went visiting one afternoon. He knocked on one door several times, but no one answered. He could see though the window that the television was on, so he took one of his cards, wrote "Revelations 3:20" on it and stuck it in the door. (Revelations 3:20 says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone will open, I will come in.) The following Sunday, a woman handed him a card with her name and the following message: "Genesis 3:10". ("I heard thy voice and I was naked, so I hid myself.") -- As I walked uphill on my way home, thinking of my troubles A little girl sans shirt and shoes was patiently blowing bubbles As I passed, she turned and said, "Hey - there's no time!" I agreed and, lest I forget, I've written down this rhyme. - Mark T. Shirey, 9 AM Sat 19 Jun 93 -- A man cannot get rich, who properly cares for his family. - Navajo Proverb -- There is no nobler fate than to be forgotten as the foe of a forgotten heresy. - G.K. Chesterton -- If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it. - W.C. Fields -- Ambition is like a frog sitting on a Venus Flytrap. The flytrap can bite and bite, but it won't bother the frog because it only has tiny little plant teeth. But some other stuff could happen, and it would be like ambition. - Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey -- Madonna doesn't have one. Bush has a short one. Gorbachev has a long, hard one. The Pope has one but he doesn't use it. What is it? Answer: A last name -- What does a man do standing up, a woman do sitting down, and a dog do with one leg lifted? Answer: Shake hands -- A comment on cold fusion: "Hey Mike?" "Yeah, Gabe?" "We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah." "I thought you fixed that last century!" "No, no, not that. Someone's found a loophole in the physics program. They're getting energy out of nowhere." "Blessit! Lemme check..." <tappity clickity tappity> "Hey, I thought I fixed that! Alright, give me a minute." <tappity clickity tap... save... compile> "There, that ought to patch it." -- Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. - Cicero -- A wise man hears one word and understands two. - Jewish proverb -- You must believe in free-will; there is no choice. - Isaac Singer Truth is. Belief is not required. - Gerry Roston -- Schwiggle, n.: The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a pencil. - Rich Hall, "Sniglets" -- What becomes longer when it becomes shorter? The word "short". -- It's better to be quotable than to be honest. - Tom Stoppard -- The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to. - Chuang Tzu -- Church I heard a bird sing "higher power, higher power, hi" And so I whistle "higher power" whenever I walk by. - Mark T. Shirey -- I don't have to take this abuse from you - I have hundreds of people waiting in line to abuse me! - Bill Murray, Ghostbusters (movie) -- I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is shut up. - Tom Lehrer -- If the earth, with its seemingly rugged terrain, were scaled down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be much, much smaller. -- The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens. - Baha'u'llah -- If you choose not to live with reality, reality will come and live with you. - jan@bagend.atl.ga.us -- It is better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try, but the result's the same. - Mike Dennison -- The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all of our lives. - Albert Einstein -- The further I get from the things that I care about, the less I care about how much further away I get. - Tom Reed, rec.arts.poems -- yeeouch! hey! wumpa-yai! presquumtacious tweepf! wokketta-wokketta-yoiks! aiyaaaaaaaaaaa! date-nut-loaf! bleerumph! y'-FEEBdee! wristwatch! baushinkta all 'droids! - "Worst Worst Worst Haiku" by Walter Gross, rec.arts.poems -- Silliness The bane of rhyme is silliness, A vain and vapid villainess Who turns our poetry to trash Until we sound like Ogden Nash. - alan@sentinel.jpl.nasa.gov, rec.arts.poems -- The aim of proof is, in fact, not merely to place the truth of a proposition beyond all doubt, but also to afford us insight into the dependence of truths upon one another. - Gottlob Frege -- Q: How many Zen Buddhists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Four, one to change it, one not to change it, and one to change _and_ not to change it. -- The world is full of people who want to live forever but don't know how to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. - Frank Rizzo A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested. - Tom Wolfe A Democrat is someone who would be a Republican if he had the money. -- It is better to have a small fish than a big cockroach. - Russian proverb -- Where would Christianity be if Jesus got five to ten with time off for good behavior? -- Zen Pizza - one with everything. -- Not all men who drink are poets. Some of us drink because we are not poets. -- There are three types of people in this world, those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who have no idea what happened. -- Furthermore, the gap between theory and practice in practice is much larger than the gap between theory and practice in theory. - Jeff Case -- To find a rhyme for 'silver', Or any 'rhymeless rhyme', All you need is will, ver- bosity and time. - remembered by Jesse Mundis, (jesse@internex.net) If I had an entranceway, I'd paint the whole thing orange. I'd paint the door, the knob, the lock, The threshold and the doorhinge. - remembered by Jesse Mundis, (jesse@internex.net) Horrible birds! Red, green, and purple. If their pecking doesn't get you The chirp'll. - Randall M. Gee, (rmgee@soda.berkeley.edu) The four eng- ineers, Wear orange Brassieres - Jonathan S. Haas -- Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. - George Bernard Shaw -- The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. - Robert Benchley -- These two drunks walk out of a bar. They both see a dog licking his balls. The first says "Man, I wish I could do that!", pointing to the dog. The second replies "You'd better pet him first!" -- And I believe that Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was... an arctic region covered with ice. - Steve Martin -- Humans would be more technologically advanced if early members of the species had realized that the thumbs should be used as parity-check bits when counting. -- A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on. - Samuel Goldwyn -- There's nothing you can do that can't be done Nothing you can sing that can't be sung Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game - it's easy There's nothing you can make that can't be made No one you can save that can't be saved Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time There's nothing you can know that isn't known Nothing you can see that isn't shown Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be All you need is love. - Beatles, "All You Need is Love" -- In the beginning was the word [logos]. - John 1:1, The Bible, c 100 CE -- Imagine there's no heaven; it's easy if you try. - John Lennon, "Imagine" -- But in physics I soon learned to scent out the paths that led to the depths, and to disregard everything else, all the many things that clutter up the mind, and divert it from the essential. The hitch in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examination, whether one liked it or not. - Albert Einstein -- What's the first number in the English language that uses the letter "A"? one-thousAnd -- I think the mistake a lot of us make, is thinking the state-appointed psychiatrist is our friend. - Tom Schmidlin (tes0@lehigh.edu) -- I have the heart of a little child and the brain of a genius - I keep them in a jar under my bed. -- Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room. - Blaise Pascal -- The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand what he finds. - Claude Bernard -- 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 -- 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 -- In ecology, as in economics, TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) is intended to warn that every gain is won at some cost. Failure to recognize the "no free lunch" law causes the buffalo-hunter mentality syndrome - the unthinking assumption that there will always be plenty because there always has been plenty. - Dr. Robert W. Prehoda -- We all worry about the population explosion - but we don't worry about it at the right time. - Arthur Hoppe -- The word is not the thing. The map is not the territory. The symbol is not the thing symbolized. - S.I. Hayakawa -- But when feminists suggest that God might be a She without suggesting that the Devil might also be female, they must be opposed. - Warren Farrell -- The difference between art and craft is that a craftsman knows what he is doing. -- Ignorant?! Ha! I don't even know the meaning of the word! -- If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel! - Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever" -- I don't want a pickle I just want to ride on my motorcycle And I don't want a tickle I'd rather ride on my motorcycle And I don't wanna' die I just want to ride on my motorcy... cle. - Arlo Guthrie, "The Motorcycle Song" -- The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell. - Bertrand Russell -- IHTFP � �I have truly found paradise� or �I hate this f'ing place� -- An it harm no other, do what ye will. -- Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. - Galatians 6:2, The Bible For each man will have to bear his own load. - Galatians 6:5, The Bible -- Of course I'm at the center of the Universe - aren't you? - Barry Trent (btrent@triticom.com) -- I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse. - Charles V of France -- Commitment, n.: Commitment can be best illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed. -- If you can't take a little bloody nose maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid. - Q, Star Trek:TNG -- "I made a lot of changes" doesn't mean "I fixed it". - Mark T. Shirey -- I'm treading on new water. (a 3-or-4-way mixed metaphor) - John L. Shirey -- The logic of events points, inevitably, to an epoch of single women. If women will not accept marriage with subjection, nor men proffer it without, there is, there can be, no alternative. - Susan Brownell Anthony (1820-1906) -- The Buddha sat beneath the tree So long that it was frightening. And when he finally let it be, He was struck by enlightening. - Mark T. Shirey, Sep 93 -- Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of varying the fabrication indefinitely. - Henri Bergson, 1907 -- Truth is strange; it is stranger than fiction. - Lord Byron Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense. -- As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in this world is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks that the mesh of a net is an independent, isolated thing, he is mistaken. It is called a net because it is made up of a series of interconnected meshes, and each mesh has its place and responsibility in relation to other meshes. - The Buddha -- I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work. - Gallagher -- The stages of a project: enthusiasm, disillusionment, panic, search for the guilty, honors and praise for the non-participants. -- We tend to scoff at the beliefs of the ancients. But we can't scoff at them personally, to their faces, and this is what annoys me. - Jack Handey -- Disillusionment is a GOOD thing; to be disillusioned is to be enlightened. - Mark T. Shirey -- Pessimists are often realists. -- Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord. - Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf", translation by Ralph Mannheim -- I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings. - Albert Einstein -- I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. - Albert Einstein -- An analog system will be as finite, or more finite than a digital one. Any complex system can be viewed as subsystems communicating with each other. This communication can be seen as the systems "measuring" each other, and all measurements have a finite precision. - Mats Grahm (pt93mg@resumix.portal.com) -- The truly paranoid are clever enough to not _act_ paranoid. When everyone _is_ out to get to you, being paranoid isn't going to help. -- What does not kill me only serves to make me stronger. - Nietzsche -- The greater your joy or sorrow, the smaller the world in your eyes. - Kahlil Gibran -- The final exams in the economics department are the same ones they gave ten years ago, only now the answers are different. -- Due to financial constraints, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off until further notice. -- I went into the woods for I wished to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life! To put to rout all that was not life, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. - Henry David Thoreau -- It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting. - Tom Stoppard -- Success is easy; there's nothing to it: Decide what should be done and do it. - Mark T. Shirey -- It is always the most important leg of a three-legged stool that is missing. - Finagle -- I would rather be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices. - Rousseau -- When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free, and never was free again. - Edith Hamilton -- I haven't had a drink since 1955 - and it's 2200 hours now. -- The faults in bad software can be so subtle as to be practically supernatural. - Bruce Sterling -- Women: can't live _with_ 'em, pass the beer nuts. - Norm on Cheers (TV show) Some other "Normisms" from Cheers (TV show): Woody: Pour you a beer, Mr. Peterson? Norm: Alright, but stop me at one... make that one-thirty. Woody: What's shakin' mister Peterson? Norm: All four cheeks and a couple of chins. Woody: Can I draw you a beer, Mr. P.? Norm: I know what they look like, just give me one. Sam: Whatcha up to Norm? Norm: My ideal weight if I were eleven feet tall. Woody: Can I pour you a draft, Mr. Peterson? Norm: A little early, isn't it Woody? Woody: For a beer? Norm: No, for stupid questions. Sam: Beer, Norm? Norm: Have I gotten that predictable? Good. Sam: What's the story, Norm? Norm: Boy meets beer. Boy drinks beer. Boy meets another beer. Norm: I think the most important thing in this world is love. And do you know what I love, Sammy? Sam: Beer, Norm? Norm: (looks at watch) Yeah, sure, just a small one. -- I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty. - Revelations 1:8, The Bible -- In "The Idiot", is Dostoyevsky criticizing the Russian ruling class by showing they regard a Christ-like man as an idiot? I would have said that Dostoyevsky was facing the inevitable fact that a Christ-like life is impossible. It means giving up concern for finances, for family, for intelligence, for humor, for wit, for civilized living in general. The only possible existence for someone who wishes to live like Christ is to be an idiot and, in the end, to go insane. A message of despair and hopelessness only lightened by the dream of resurrection in the Orthodox faith. With a complete abnegation of the individual and self. - Joseph Askew -- It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so. - Will Rogers -- Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. -- Each day we complete 90% of our remaining work. - Andrew Gilbert -- I just know I'm a better manager when I have Joe DiMaggio in center field. - Casey Stengel -- I guess there are never enough books. - John Steinbeck -- Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal. - Johann Wolfgang Goethe -- There is a spirit that is in my heart smaller than a grain of mustard seed, greater than the earth, greater than the heavens, greater than all these worlds. - Chapdogya Upanishad, 800 BCE -- The more flesh, the more worms. The more possessions, the more worry. - Hillel "The Elder", (30 BCE - 10 CE) -- What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. - Hillel "The Elder" (30 BCE - 10 CE) Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law of the prophets. - Matthew 7:12, The Bible (KJ), c 71 CE Do for others what you want them to do for you. This is the teaching of the laws of Moses in a nutshell. - Matthew 7:12, The Bible (Living), c 71 CE -- The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you The Silver Rule: Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you The Brazen Rule: Do unto others as they do unto you The Iron Rule: Do unto others as you like, before they do it unto you The Tin Rule: Suck up to those above you and intimidate those below The Nepotism Rule: Give precedence in all things to close relatives and do as you like to others The Gold-plated Brazen Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Then, do unto them as they do unto you, but forgive them once in a while. - "A New Way to Think about Rules to Live By", Carl Sagan, Parade, 11/28/93 -- Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it Boldness has genius, power and magic in it - Goethe -- 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 (1591-1674), To the Virgins to Make Much of Time -- 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, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert A. Heinlein -- For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all. - Ecclesiastes 9:5 -- Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who said it, unless it agrees with your own common sense and reason. -- Sometimes we are the windshield, sometimes we are the bug. -- I don't want a free lunch; I want a _cost-effective_ lunch. - Mark T. Shirey -- He laughed at every joke three times - when he heard it, when it was explained to him, and when he understood it. -- L'esprit de l'escalier ["wit of the staircase" - when you think of something funny to say when you're walking down the stairs (when it's too late)] - Denis Diderot (1713-1784), Paradoxe sur le Comedien -- Passion and truth - that's all we need. - Lillian Gish, in an old movie -- Jesus said that he did not come to change the law and that the law would not change - "not one jot or tittle shall change". -- God supposedly let man write the Bible and run the Church, both of which are screwed up, and then he supposedly punishes us for not believing. -- imply - to tell a very small lie. - Mark T. Shirey -- Everyone seeks their own level of misery. -- The reasonable person adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable person tries to change the world to adapt to him. Progress is due to unreasonable people. - George Bernard Shaw Some people are neither willing to adapt to the world as it is or to work to effectively change it, but instead just go through life complaining (in non- productive ways and usually to the wrong people) about how the world treats them. - Lee Lady (lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu) -- Collins's Law: If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything. The person who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. - Magee -- Many women are saying, "Men discount my experience, silence me, demean my intelligence, and try to top me." Many men are responding, "That isn't happening. Now shut up you stupid chick and let me tell you what happened to _me_." - Lily Pond (green@well.sf.ca.us) -- If you write reams of "what if's," you're going to have one or two big hits, even if your average isn't that good. - Eric Pepke (pepke@scri.fsu.edu) -- Envy is the cause of political division. - Democritus (460-370 BCE) (Fr. 295, ed. Diels, II, 195.) -- That's not writing, that's just typing. - Truman Capote about Jack Kerouac -- Life's a tough proposition - and the first 100 years are the hardest. - Wilson Mizner How's life? Great! The first 100 years are always the most fun! - Mark T. Shirey, after Wilson Mizner -- People of note may borrow a quote. - Mark T. Shirey (improving on John Bartlett, George Seldes, Ralph Keyes) -- Never express yourself more clearly than you think. - Niels Bohr -- Information wants to be free. The people who have it want it to be expensive. -- For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. - 1 Cor 3:19-20, The Bible Wisdom is the principle thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. - Proverbs 4:7, The Bible -- There once was a man who said 'God Must think it exceedingly odd If he finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad.' Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd; _I_ am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully, God. -- Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. - Mark Twain -- Grande's Law - Always do what your boss would do if he knew what he was talking about. -- The internet will be to the 90's what CB radio was to the 70's. -- There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages. - Richard Lederer, _Anguished English_ -- Stay out of jail. - Alfred Hitchcock (advice to young film makers) -- As a person abandons worn-out clothes and acquires new ones, so when the body is worn out a new one is acquired by the Self, who lives within. The Self cannot be pierced by weapons or burned by fire; water cannot wet it, nor can the wind dry it. The Self cannot be pierced or burned, made wet or dry. It is everlasting and infinite, standing on the motionless foundations of eternity. The Self is unmanifested, beyond all thought, beyond all change. Knowing this, you should not grieve. - The Bhagavad Gita, translated by Eknath Easwaran -- I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches. - Alice Roosevelt Longworth -- I've always depended on the kindness of strangers. - Blanche DuBois -- It will be too late to cry over lost hair after your head is cut off. - Nikita Khrushchev, on nuclear war (quoting a Russian folk saying) -- Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York. - William Shakespeare, King Richard the Third (Act I, Scene I) -- Having nothing, nothing can he lose. - William Shakespeare -- Knowledge is power. - Francis Bacon -- The only thing he had to fear was being figured out. - Mark T. Shirey -- No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence. - Ann Landers, nationally syndicated advice columnist and Director at Handgun Control, Inc. -- The English language, complete with irony, satire, and sarcasm, has survived for centuries without smilies. Only the new crop of modern computer geeks finds it impossible to detect a joke that is not Clearly Labeled as such. - Ray Shea in rec.music.misc, on smilies :-) -- Inquiring minds want to know. - The National Enquirer -- God put me on Earth to do accomplish a certain number of things. Right now, I am so far behind, I will never die. -- Don't remember anything you can look up. - Albert Einstein (?) Sometimes it's more important to know where the information is than what it is. - Mark T. Shirey, et al -- I shall sit here, on and off, for days and days. - Lewis Carroll -- Do not make technical decisions based on the politics of the situation. Do not make political decisions based on technical issues. The only place these two meet is in the minds of the unenlightened. - Geoffrey James -- If you were to ask a gorilla, "What would you like for your next evolutionary step?", he would probably answer, "Larger fangs and bigger muscles." He would not say, "I want a larger cranial cavity". - Rudy Rucker -- Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. - American folk saying Opinions are like anuses; I don't want to see or hear yours. - Mark T. Shirey -- The ultimate secret of life is the sure knowledge of death, for without it, man would not strive to leave his mark upon the Earth. -- It's not that life is too short, it's just that you're dead for so long. -- It's not the pace of life that concerns me, it's the sudden stop at the end. -- The means determine the ends. -- If you can't change your mind, are you sure you have one? -- Hanging's too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted. - Fred Allen -- The test of a first-fate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. - F. Scott Fitzgerald -- The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. - Eden Phillpots -- Husband: Darling, will you love me when I'm old and feeble? Wife: You bet I do. -- Success comes in cans; failure in cannots. -- Doubt everything or believe everything; these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection. - Henri Poincare' There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking. - Alfred Korzybski -- Science is to see what everyone else has seen but think what no one else has thought. - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi -- I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation. - G. B. Shaw -- I have had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. - Groucho Marx -- Is this true or only clever? - Augustine Birrell -- He is always loaded with work to do. You would indeed be fortunate to get this person to work for you. He does the work of two men (Laurel and Hardy)! -- You were not supposed to see this document. Please erase your initials and initial the erasure. -- With the cost of the equipment tumbling, use of videoconferencing is set to soar, and Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. has discovered another benefit in addition to the saving of time and travel costs: because of the built-in delay on the sound, the company told the New York Times, it's difficult for people to interrupt, so they actually have to listen to what the other is saying. - ComputerGram newsletter, Tandem, Inc. -- A: I'm incommunicado. B: Where's Communicado? A: About 5 miles from Cognito. -- Chewy pasta isn't "al dente"; it's "un-done-te". - Susan Hunt -- No matter how much you know, there's an infinite amount more to know. So, no matter how much you know, you don't know how much more there is to know. Which means, no matter how much you know, you don't know how much you do know or don't know in relation to what there is to know, whatever that is, which means, you don't know much at all. - mwalls@cs.nmsu.edu -- "Hope" is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all - Emily Dickinson (can be sung to "Gilligan's Island" or "The Yellow Rose of Texas") -- Success is setting reasonable goals and achieving them. Success is an action - not a state, an ability, or a commodity. - Mark T. Shirey -- Clothes make the man. Naked people have little influence on society. - Mark Twain -- Mass media is an industry whose product is information. - Michael Crichton Mass media is an industry, yes, but its product is mass audiences which it sells to advertisers. - Joshua Adler -- She's just mad because someone dropped a house on her sister. - insult inspired by the Wizard of Oz, from Beetlejuice (movie) -- Clergy do more than lay people. -- It's not how big your share is, it's how much you share. -- Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. - John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I -- This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. - T.S. Eliot -- Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive. - Sir Walter Scott Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to weave. -- An event is a two-tuple consisting of a time and a change. A coincidence is a three-tuple consisting of a time and two events. -- Forgive her father, she knows not what she sings. - Mark T. Shirey -- Be a friend to the friendless, an end to the endless, a mend to the mendless, an ear to the earless, a beer to the beerless, a fear to the fearless, affair to the fareless, a hair to the hairless. -- Infinite flexibility is the secret of immortality. -- Why not write a poe about thinternet. - A typo from rec.arts.poems -- Harassment by communic action. - A typo from local news -- He held his raison d'etre in his hand. -- The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities. - Shunryu Suzuki -- A good beginning makes a good ending. - English Proverb Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending. - Longfellow Give as much care to the end as to the beginning, then there will be no failure. - Lao Tzu Because the sage always confronts difficulties, he never experiences them. - Lao Tzu -- Who can control his fate? - Shakespeare -- Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. - Henry David Thoreau -- The sole advantage of power is that it can do more good. - Baltasar Gracian -- I know of no teachers so powerful and persuasive as a little army of specialists. They carry no banners, they beat no drums; but where they are men learn that bustle and push are not the equals of quiet genius and serene mastery. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. -- Inventors and men of genius have almost always been regarded as fools at the beginning (and very often at the end) of their careers. - Dostoyevsky -- A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. - Lowell Jay Arthur, Unix Shell -- In the universe, great acts are made up of small deeds. - Lao Tzu -- For better or worse, man is the tool-using animal, and as such he has become the lord of creation. - William Ralph Inge -- Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject - the actual enemy is the unknown. - Thhommas Mann -- It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality. - Max Beerbohm -- Trouble is easily overcome before it starts. Deal with it before it happens. Set things in order before there is confusion. - Lao Tzu -- All words are pegs to hang ideas on. - Henry Ward Beecher -- and we stretched in our beds and rose in the late afternoons like millionaires. - Charles Bukowski, "Millionaires" (poem) -- It is better to have loved and lost than to never have lost at all. - Samuel Butler (1835-1902) -- A writer writes. - Throw Momma from the Train (movie) Why do writers write? Because it isn't there. - Thomas Berger -- The novelist, afraid his ideas may be foolish, slyly puts them in the mouth of some other fool and reserves the right to disavow them. - Diane Johnson -- He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I ever met. - Abraham Lincoln -- They talk of my drinking but never my thirst. - Scottish proverb -- I drink to make other people more interesting. - George Jean Nathan (1882-1958) -- Even though a number of people have tried, no one has found a way to drink for a living. - Jean Kerr -- I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy. -- I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. - Hunter S. Thompson -- Absence makes the heart go yonder. - Robert Byrne, The 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said -- To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. - Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) -- The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well. - Joe Ancis -- So little time and so little to do. - Oscar Levant (1906-72) -- Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long. - Ogden Nash (1902-71) -- Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead. - James Thurber (1894-1961) -- Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquility that religion is powerless to bestow. - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), quoting a friend -- 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 -- God only knew. If there was a God. And if there was a God and he knew, he was not talking. And even if he did know and was talking, no one would have been listening. Not here. Not now. - Bernice Richmond, winner 1994 International Imitation Hemingway Competition -- It ain't the years, it's the mileage. - Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark -- I'm not playing God, I'm playing Doctor. - Susan Hunt -- Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we might often win, by fearing to attempt it. - Shakespeare -- I recommend no sour, ascetic life. I believe not only in the thorns on a rosebush, but in the roses which the thorns defend. Asceticism is the child of sensuality and superstition. She is the mother of many a secret sin. God, when he made man's body, did not give us a fiber too much, nor a passion too many. - Theodore Parker -- College is two hundred people reading the same book, which is an obvious mistake. Two hundred people can read two hundred books. - John Cage -- A deadline has a wonderful power to concentrate the mind. - Prof. Moriarity, Star Trek:TNG -- He may look like an idiot, and he may sound like an idiot, but don't let him fool you. He really is an idiot. - Groucho Marx -- Fresco's Discovery: If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored. Think how bored you'd be if you knew exactly what you were doing. - Susan Handy Strayer, et al. Think how boring you'd be if people knew exactly why you do things. - Mark T. Shirey -- I like to be moved; I don't like to be pushed. - John Cage -- "Being a man" is just genetics and age. The rest is mythology and statistics. - Mark T. Shirey -- The right thing to say _isn't_ necessarily what you wanna' say. The right thing to do _isn't_ necessarily what you wanna' do. The right things to grow _ain't_ necessarily what you wanna' grow. Your own happiness _doesn't_ necessarily teach you what you wanna' know. - The Who, "Now I'm a Farmer" on Odds & Sods -- [Maybe people don't want dolphins caught in tuna nets for the same reason that] You wouldn't want dogs caught in your cow net. - Keith Carradine -- The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do. -- The function of Science Fiction is not to predict the future, but to prevent it. - Ray Bradbury, discussing Fahrenheit 451 -- He loved the rain. She came into his life and gave him an umbrella. -- It only hurts when I don't laugh. - Mark T. Shirey -- Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. - T.S. Eliot -- Two of the gravest general dangers to survival are the desire for comfort and a passive outlook. - U.S. Army Ranger Handbook -- Are we content? I am the God who created this farce! - Nietzsche, 1889, 3 days before going permanently insane -- For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't, no proof is possible. - John and Lyn St. Clair Thomas, Eyes of the Beholder -- Lottery: a tax on people who are bad at math. -- That's the thing about being a boxer; even when you're at the top of your field people still hit you in the head. - Paula Poundstone The thing about the rat race is, even if you win, you're still a rat. - Lily Tomlin -- The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. - Chaucer -- The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. -- Who loves not wine, women, and song Remains a fool his whole life long. - Martin Luther -- In a free society, standards of public morality can be measured only by whether physical coercion, violence against persons or property, occurs. There is no right not to be offended by words, actions, or symbols. - Richard E. Sincere, Jr. -- All these theories, diverse as they are, have two things in common. They explain all the observed facts and they are complete and utterly WRONG. - Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic" -- Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. - Charles Bukowski -- There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired. - F. Scott Fitzgerald -- Nothing is more important than doing what is right. That is so obvious most people pay no attention to it. Most people think what is obvious is beneath them. They pass up truth in favor of something more intellectually stimulating. -- There is no meaning but the mind's. - Mark T. Shirey -- Sex between a man and a woman can be wonderful provided you get between the right man and woman. - Woody Allen -- Rules for Being Human You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it. But it will be yours for the entire period this time around. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error; experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately "works". A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not continue lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned. "There" is no better than "here". When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here". Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours. Your answers are inside you. The answers to life's questions are inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust. You will forget all this... and you will remember... -- Herman has taken to writing poetry. You need not tell anyone, for you know how such things get around. - Mrs. Melville to her mother in a letter, 1859, as quoted in "Confessions of a Barbarian: from the Journals of Edward Abbey" -- I don't see how poetry can ever be easy... Real poetry, the thick dense intense complicated stuff that lives and endures, requires blood and sweat; blood and sweat are essential elements in poetry as well as behind it. - Edward Abbey, cowboy novelist -- You see but you do not observe. - Sherlock Holmes -- Just think of all the billions of coincidences that DON'T happen. - quoted by Dick Cavett -- A man's reach should exceed his grasp, else what's a metaphor? - Marshall McCluhan -- The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. - William Blake -- Without full satiation of the senses, we are pathetic objects! - Barrington J. Bayley -- Enthusiastic participation only adds to the experience. -- Most of what you know is hearsay - including your own name. -- We are only guilty for what we have chosen to do wrongly. -- I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. - Beatles -- I judge that the existence's purpose is the most urgent question. How can we answer it? - Albert Camus -- Do you want to play Life or Monopoly? Let's play Life, it's shorter. -- Language expresses itself through thought. -- Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. - Samuel Johnson -- When I was 20 I was in love with words, a wordsmith. I didn't know enough to know when people were letting words get in their way. Now I like the words to disappear, like a transparent curtain. - Wallace Stegner -- I try to leave out the parts that people skip. - Elmore Leonard, author -- Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been. - John Greenleaf Whittier -- I thought I saw upon the stair A little man who wasn't there He wasn't there again today Oh, how I wish he'd go away -- Learn to edit before you've said it. - Mark T. Shirey -- Skydivers are good to the last drop. -- Beware of the panacea peddlers; just because you wind up naked doesn't make you an emperor. - Michael A. Padlipsky -- Two guys take their pants to a Greek tailor. The tailor says, "Euripides and Euphrates?" One of the guys says, "Yeah, Eumenides?" -- Dentalism My dentist chants "Ahhhhh" for mental relaxation - He's trying to transcend dental meditation. - Mark T. Shirey -- I believe that one becomes stronger emotionally by having more experiences and _by taking life less personally_. That is, if your employer criticizes your report, don't take it personally; instead, find out what is needed and fix it. If your girlfriend laughs at your tie, don't take it personally; find another tie or another girlfriend. When you get sick or robbed or jilted, you will be less likely to waste your time and energy with thoughts of "Why ME?" - Marilyn vos Savant, Parade Magazine -- A: My ancestors didn't struggle for millions of years to put me at the top of the food chain for me to eat tofu. B: Yes they did. -- Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind. - Albert Einstein -- You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. - Al Capone -- It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them. - P.G. Wodehouse -- It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy. - James Thurber (when asked his opinion of a play) -- A manager is someone who can look at two numbers on a piece of paper and immediately tell which one is bigger. - R. Metcalfe -- This is the story of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. Consequently, it wound up that Nobody told Anybody so Everybody blamed Somebody. -- The force can have influence on the weak-minded. - Obi Wan Kanobi, Star Wars -- I didn't get to bed til 10:30 last night - and I didn't get home til 2:15! - quoted by Tom Snyder -- We've been down a whole lotta alleys And we've kicked a whole lotta cans. - Ray Charles and Hank Williams, Jr. -- Easy reading is damned hard writing. - Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Information Superhighway - Interactive Network For Organizing, Retrieving, Manipulating, Accessing, And Transferring Information On National Systems, Unleashing Practically Every Rebellious Human Intelligence, Gratifying Hackers, Wiseacres, And Yahoos. - Kevin Kwaku Anagrams for the Information Superhighway by Peter H. Lewis, NY Times: New Utopia? Horrifying sham. When forming, utopia's hairy. Hey ignoramus - win profit? Ha! I'm on a huge wispy rhino fart. -- The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the Unabridged Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing factory. - Prof. Edwin Conklin -- A wise man sees what he has, not what he has lost. -- Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation. - Johnny Hart, B.C. comic-strip -- Germany - "Land der Dichter und Denker" (country of poets and thinkers) -- A hallmark of sanity is the courage to accept unpleasant points of view. -- Happiness is a state of mind. Not happy? Change your mind. -- I am Procrastitron. I will destroy you, eventually. -- Never question authority. It doesn't know either. -- Mr. Jabez Wilson laughed heavily. "Well I never!" said he. "I thought at first you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it, after all." "I began to think, Watson," said Holmes, "that I had made a mistake in explaining. 'Omne ignatum pro magnifico,' you know, and my poor little reputation, such as it is, will suffer shipwreck if I am so candid." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes -- How these curiosities would be quite forgott, did not such idle fellows as I am putt them downe. - John Aubrey -- I care not much for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it. - Abraham Lincoln -- Kids were different then. They didn't have their heads filled with all this Cartesian dualism. - Monty Python -- A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls. - Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic -- A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. - Mitch Ratliffe -- It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English - up to fifty words used in correct context - no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese. - Carl Sagan -- Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways? - Richard Lederer, Mensan Why is it that when you send something by car it's a shipment, but when you send it by ship, it's a cargo? - Richard Lederer, Mensan -- It's better to die cool than to live uncool. - Harley Davidson (movie) -- Without leaving his door He knows everything under heaven Without looking out of his window He knows all the ways of heaven For the further one travels The less one knows Therefore the Sage arrives without going, Sees all without looking, Does nothing, yet achieves everything. - Tao Te Ching, Chapter 47 -- Love all; fear none. -- But for the sake of a small mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and that proportion of life and time that it had been born into the world to enjoy. - Plutarch -- The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other. - Sir Francis Bacon, 1561-1626 -- Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. - John Donne -- If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be... if we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed. - Thomas Jefferson -- Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. - Seneca, 65 CE -- Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them. - Lily Tomlin -- In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. - Ralph Waldo Emerson -- When one door closes another door opens; but we 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 -- Time makes more converts than reason. - Thomas Paine -- Every advance in civilization has been denounced while it was still recent. - Bertrand Russell -- My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. - Adlai Stevenson -- There is not room at the top for everyone, no matter how great their abilities. This is why many people are disappointed when their "goals" at age 22 do not happen by the time they are 42. It matters which college you went to, who your friends are, how smart you are, and how badly you want fame and fortune. - Al Willis -- Why can't I be different and original, like everybody else? - Viv Stanshall -- Damaged people are dangerous; they know they can survive. - Damage (movie) -- When you eat meat, you are eating murder, blood, death, fat, cholesterol, muscle, connective tissues, veins, corpse, rat hairs, lips, assholes, eyeballs, guts, and flies. - Jill Ballard -- Every artist is a cannibal, every poet a thief, All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief. - U2 -- Love is that condition in which another's happiness is essential to your own. -- Do you study the law or do you study loopholes? - Jackie Luongo's mother -- It's like, at the end, there's this surprise quiz: am I proud of me? I gave my LIFE to become the person I am right now! Was it worth what I paid? - Richard Bach -- To say that the probability of something happening is so low that god must have done it isn't really a valid argument. Think about it the next time you get in a nice large lecture room with say 200 people: 15 years ago, I could have asked someone to calculate the probability that all those 200 people would be gathered together in that room at that particular time and you would have said it to be impossible. - Tobias S. Keidl (midco@earth.execpc.com) -- I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants. - Mahatma Gandhi ----- With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably. - Captain Picard, Star Trek:TNG, "The Drumhead" -- Sometimes I Miss Her (a love poem) I ran into my old girlfriend today. Then I backed up and ran into her again. Sometimes I miss her. - Jeff Ross (comedian) -- New York is great - you see so many interesting people and things. For example, I saw Angela Lansbury in an antique store the other day. 800 bucks. - Jeff Ross (comedian) -- How can you start a revolution if you won't walk on the grass? - Russian folk saying ---- It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. - after Dune (movie) -- I WISH YOU PEACE AND BALANCE IN YOUR LIFE. May you find the things you value; I wish there to always be hope and happiness in your world. As you give to this world, may it give back to you. PEACE AND BEST WISHES NOW AND ALWAYS! - Sherwood Smith (Hand-typed Christmas card, 1991) -- Always there's that space between what you feel and what you do, and in that gap all human sadness lies. - Blue Dog -- A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. - William James -- De omnibus dibitandum. (Everything must be questioned.) -- Gray is all theory; green grows the golden tree of life. - Goethe -- 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, support by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. - Amendment IV, United States Constitution (Amazingly, the US House of Representatives voted this language down when it was inserted in a 1995 bill by a crafty legislator, to replace unconstitutional language proposed by another. Apparently, few in the House recognized this as the Fourth Amendment. One Representative even whined that it gutted the whole bill.) -- Privacy in one's associations... may in many circumstances be indispensable to freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs. - John M. Harlan, Supreme Court justice, 1958 -- Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. - Ayn Rand, _The_Fountainhead_, 1943 -- This is the snobbery of the people on the Mayflower looking down their noses at the people who came over ON THE SECOND BOAT! - Mitch Kapor, cofounder of the EFF, on Internet-user elitism vs. BBS users -- Did you learn how to think or how to believe? - Ralph Nader's Father, who asked the young Nader this while questioning him on what he had learned in school one day. Nader describes this as a seminal event in leading him to become a critic of corporate and government policies. (from an interview with Ralph Nader by David Barsamian) -- Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same. - Oscar Wilde -- Sanity is to insanity as the shell is to the egg. -- Good, cheap, quick. Pick two. -- It has been deemed that anything not good for you is bad, hence illegal: alcohol, caffeine, meat, contact sports, bad language, chocolate, gasoline, uneducational toys, and anything spicy. - Demolition Man (movie) -- Money's just something you need in case you don't die tomorrow. - Wall Street (movie) -- We are smart enough not to buy into the oldest myth running - love. It's a fiction created by people to keep them from jumping out of windows. - Gordon Gecko, Wall Street (movie) -- A stranger's just a friend you haven't met. -- When we've been there ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun, We've no less days to sing God's praise Than when we'd first begun. - Amazing Grace -- Some acting coach claimed that there are only 7 emotions from which all others are derived: Happiness, Love, Sadness, Anger, Hate, Fear, Guilt. For example, Jealousy = Love + Fear. What about Angst, Lust, Envy, Remorse, and Ecstasy? How about the feeling when you look into the obits and find the name of the cop who gave you a speeding ticket last week? More importantly, how about the feeling when you see your mother-in-law drive over a cliff with your brand-new Mercedes? - rec.org.mensa, steiner@best.com, et al -- Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born. - Robert Merton -- The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. - John Milton, Paradise Lost -- Age is linear, personality is not. - Tim Bouvia -- A thing of duty is a job forever. -- During her visit, the queen was introduced to the director of the acclaimed movie "Dances With Wolves", Kevin Costner. She said "I find it quite interesting to meet you. I have a cousin who is a photographer, you know." To which Kevin Costner replied "And I'm quite happy to meet you; I have a cousin who's a queen." -- No man is a hero to anyone who knows what he's thinking. - David Ambrose, The Man Who Turned Into Himself -- Bad weather, like bad breath, is better than none at all. -- The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her. I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her. - The Little Prince (a great book for children of all ages) -- It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose. - The Little Prince (a great book for children of all ages) -- Most of American life is driving somewhere and then driving back wondering why the hell you went. - John Updike -- Be not afraid of a sudden fear. - Proverbs 3:25, The Bible -- The gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable fools. - Larry Niven -- �I think it was a bit of an overreaction, to be honest,� said the serpent, �I mean, first offense and everything. I can't see what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil, anyway.� - Gaiman/Pratchett, Good Omens -- Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. - Dorothy Parker -- The blues isn't about feelin' better. It's about makin' other people feel worse. - "Bleedin' Gums" Murphy, The Simpsons (TV show) -- My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. - Ayn Rand -- To say 'I love you' one must know first how to say the 'I'. - Howard Roark in The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand -- Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another. - John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand -- The subject of sex is complex and belongs largely to the science of psychology. I asked Ayn Rand once what philosophy specifically has to say on the subject. She answered: "It says that sex is good." - Leonard Peikoff in Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand -- A man's work is nothing but a long journey to recover through the detours of art the two or three simple and great images which first gained access to his heart. - Albert Camus -- Intellectuals deal in abstractions. It's much safer that way. Writers take risks. They deal in anecdotes and parables. - Kay Boyle -- The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect upon the world. - James Baldwin -- When the histories are written it is only the poets, and those who read them, who remain. - Kay Boyle in the collection "Words That Must Somehow Be Said" -- To fulfill one's destiny, one must never cease converting one's life to wider concepts and wider uses. - Andre Malraux (in Kay Boyle's essays) -- If the writers of Germany through their vision and their expression of that vision had made richer and more impelling promises than those Hitler had made, it would have been Hitler, and not the writers of Germany, who would've been forced into exile. - Thomas Mann (in Kay Boyle's essays) -- People who are threatened by jokes are the same people who tend to refer to actors on soap operas by their characters' names. Listen, there's the Real World, and then there's the Joke World, ok? The Joke World can get tough. Wear a cup. - Dennis Miller -- Father's Day is nine months before Mother's Day. -- Two termites walk into a bar and one says, "Is the bar tender here?" Two termites walk into a bar and the bartender asks, "What wood you like?" Two termites walk into a bar and one says, "This place is a joke." -- Wee, sleekit, cow'rin tim'rous beastie, O, what a panic in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, Wi' bickering brattle! - Robert Burns, "To a Mouse", 1785 -- The best laid schemes o' mice and men Gang aft a-gley - Robert Burns, "To a Mouse", 1785 -- Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. - Edmund Burke -- The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. - Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam -- I'm stranded all alone in the gas station of love, and I have to use the self-service pumps! - "Weird Al" Yankovic, "One More Minute" -- What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 1:9, The Bible There's nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don't know. - Ambrose Bierce -- Out There things can happen and frequently do To people as brainy and footsy as you. And when things start to happen, don't worry. Don't stew. Just go right along. You'll start happening too. - Dr. Seuss, Oh The Places You'll Go -- Romans used a brine-soaked sponge on a stick for toilet paper. In the New Testament, Jesus is mocked with one (though it's often translated as "sour wine"). - paraphrase from RE/search Guide to Bodily Fluids, by Paul Spinrad -- What a pity! A mountain peak as tiny as one square inch has been the source of great inspiration and misery for centuries. - Anonymous Chinese poet -- Essence, Chi, and Spirit are the three jewels of life. - Book of Changes and the Unchanging Truth, Master Ni Hua Ching -- Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. - Voltaire -- There is always something more important than what you are doing. - Sriram Ramkrishna -- Taxation WITH representation ain't so hot either. - Gerald Barzan -- It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while the wolf remains of different opinion. - William Ralph Inge -- An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows absolutely everything about nothing. - Nicholas Murray Butler -- No man can step into the same river twice, for the second time it is not the same river, and he is not the same man. - Heraclitus -- Think like a person of action and act like a person of thought. -- He died while taking part in a public ceremony when the platform gave way. In other words, he was hanged. -- I admit that I think that it is better to be beautiful than to be good. But on the other hand, no one is more ready than I am to acknowledge that it is better to be good than to be ugly. - Oscar Wilde -- Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. - Samuel Butler (1835-1902) -- Success is not permanent and failure is not fatal. -- So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. - Bertrand Russell -- Reputation is character minus what you've been caught doing. - Michael Iapoce -- If you don't like someone, the way he holds his spoon makes you furious; If you like him, he can turn his plate over in your lap and you won't mind. - Irving Becker -- 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 -- One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. - J. D. Watson _The Double Helix_ -- We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. - Carl Sagan -- 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) -- Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge. - Erwin Knoll -- Life is an illusion. You are what you think you are. - Yale Hirsch -- To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of the arts. - Henry David Thoreau -- You can get everything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want. - Zig Ziglar -- Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. - Samuel Johnson -- Chance favors the prepared mind. - Louis Pasteur -- Lack of money is the root of all evil. - George Bernard Shaw -- My doctor gave me two weeks to live. I hope they're in August. - Ronnie Shakes -- Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. - Ghandi -- Incorrigible punster - Do not incorrige. - button -- If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job. - Malcolm Forbes -- I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something. - Jackie Mason -- University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. - Henry Kissinger -- I can't mate in captivity. - Gloria Steinem on why she never married -- Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later; for another thing they die earlier. - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) -- A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother. -- I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. - A. Whitney Brown, SNL -- Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. -- The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average number of legs. - E. Grebenik -- "If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?" "Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area." - Somewhere in No Man's Land -- The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. - Plutarch -- Tommy Lasorda, on former Los Angeles Dodger catcher Mike Scioscia: "If he raced his pregnant wife, he'd finish third." -- George Foreman, when asked whether he worries about brain damage: "Anybody going into boxing already has brain damage." -- Former boxer Art Aragon, the original Golden Boy: I'll never forget my last time at Madison Square Garden. Hundreds of people were screaming for me. I must have sold 250 hot dogs. -- Amy Perinutter of Manchester (N.J.) high school after pinning Hawthorne's Catrina Carriales in the state's first all-female wrestling match: I was pumped up for this match. I didn't want to lose to a girl. -- Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson, when told that parents were complaining about buying their kids No. 45 Michael Jordan jerseys only to have Jordan switch back to No. 23, replied: "Buy them books." -- If you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs - you won't have anyone to talk to. - Mark T. Shirey -- He who laughs last thinks slowest! -- Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else. -- We have enough youth, how about a Fountain of Intelligence? -- People use appearances to make judgments about reality. - Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School -- Rule of thumb: As a rule, keep your thumbs away from hammers. - Mark T. Shirey -- 1 + 1 = 10 -- Writing in free verse is like playing tennis with the nets down. - Robert Frost -- Blank Verse - unrhymed iambic pentameters - the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind. - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary -- Is that it? Am I just another yahoo in the end!? - Lemuel Gulliver, Gulliver's Travels -- Punctuality is an excellent virtue, providing you don't mind being lonely and waiting for others. -- Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many; not upon your past misfortunes of which all have some. - Charles Dickens (1812-1870) -- Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. - Confucius It's not how hard you fall, but how high you bounce. - H. Jackson Brown -- Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. - Bertrand Russell (1872-1972) -- Who you are can depend on who you meet. -Duncan MacLeod What you are is where you were when. - Dr. Massey -- Amateurs imitate; professionals steal. -- Are you one of those trashy authors who throws literature readers? - Elliot Abrams, Accu-Weather -- Q: How many Psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? A: One, but the light bulb has to _want_ to change. -- Morality is common sense plus consensus. - Mark T. Shirey -- Strong religious belief is a mental illness. - Mark T. Shirey, after Freud -- Yo momma so fat when she jumps up in the air she gets stuck. Yo momma so ugly when she sits in the sand on the beach, cats try to bury her. Yo momma so poor when I saw her kicking a can down the street, I asked her what she was doing, she said "Moving." -- Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey (1475?-1530) -- God is a concept / by which we measure our pain. - John Lennon -- It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief. - Alan Dean Foster, Cyber Way -- Only existence has meaning. - Alan Dean Foster, Cyber Way -- Knowledge is camouflage. It merely disguises what lies beneath. - Alan Dean Foster, Cyber Way -- Today's solution is tomorrow's problem. -- Texan for "full of hot air": "All hat and no cattle." -- Ever see a cat fish? A car wash? A toilet bowl? A kitchen sink? A cigar box? A tape drive? A hen weigh? (What's a hen weigh? About 10 pounds.) -- I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo -- Keep the company of those who seek the truth, and run away from those who have found it. - B. Havel -- If you lack sincerity in your search for the truth, you will find what you want to find, whether it is true or not. - Mark T. Shirey -- Do you know what it is to be damned? It has nothing to do with fire. To be damned is only not to love. -- Do what thy manhood bids thee do, From none but self expect applause. He noblest lives, and noblest does, Who makes and keeps his self-made laws. - Sir Richard Francis Burton (adventurer and explorer) (not the actor Richard Burton, who was born Richard Walter Jenkins, Jr.) (info from Alan Little (darguz@holotech.net)) -- Small victories win wars. - Mark T. Shirey -- If the world were logical, men would ride side-saddle. -- Don't believe in man-made religions. -- Belief in untrue things is immoral. - Mark T. Shirey Faith is immoral. - Mark T. Shirey -- The Rhinoceros Horn (an excerpt) People keep you company and serve you for a motive; Real friends are hard to find these days. People are insincere, clever in pursuing their own ends; Wander alone like the rhinoceros. - Buddhist scrolls, c. 100 CE -- Real Life - a cool, multi-player game. The plot stinks but the graphics are awesome. - havoc@freeway.net -- My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the Universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests. - George Santayana (1863-1952) -- complacency effect - when the use of (normally reliable) automation leads to reduced awareness of the state of the system. complexity effect - when increased automation makes some straightforward tasks more complex and interdependent. - Peter Ladkin, http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/~ladkin/ -- Consider well who you are, what you do, whence you come, and whither you go. - English Proverb -- Someone sent me a postcard picture of the earth. On the back it said, "Wish you were here." - Steven Wright -- I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. - Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World -- He knows not his own faith who knows not his neighbor's. - Charles Francis Potter, The Faiths Men Live By -- Whatever I was going to be able to do had to be by virtue of my dealing with the only asset I had, and that was my experience. - R. Buckminster Fuller -- I'm not trying to counsel any of you to do anything really special except to dare to think and to dare to go with the truth and to dare to really love completely. - R. Buckminster Fuller -- I'm utterly convinced that we are all here for one another and that every experience that everyone is having is relevant. It all counts. The Universe is so extraordinarily well-designed that it needs all those experiences. - R. Buckminster Fuller -- From my viewpoint, by far the greatest challenge facing the young people today is that of responding and conforming only to their own most delicately insistent intuitive awareness of what the truth seems to them to be as based on their own experiences and not on what others have interpreted to be the truth regarding events of which neither they nor others have experienced-based knowledge. - R. Buckminster Fuller -- I am certain that none of the world's problems have any hope of solution except through all of the world's individuals becoming thoroughly and comprehensively self-educated. Only then will society be able to identify, and inter- communicate, the vital problems of total world society. Only then may humanity effectively sort out and put those problems into an order of importance for solutions that will work for all life on Earth. - R. Buckminster Fuller -- If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever said it. - Tom Lehrer -- What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of objective realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their practical relevance. - Alan Sokal, in his now notorious Lingua Franca article -- No man does anything from a single motive. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge There are many reasons for everything. - Mark T. Shirey -- When I feed the poor, I am called a hero; When I ask why the poor are hungry, I am called a communist. - Brazilian bishop Dom Helder Camara -- First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. - Epictetus (55-135 CE) -- It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. - Albert Einstein -- Mass-Transit Existentialism: When a train breaks down, well, there you is. When a plane breaks down, well, there you ain't. - in "The Delaney Sisters: Their First 100 Years" -- Q: Did you hear what happened to the woman who backed into an airplane propeller? A: Disaster... -- Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love. -- A developer is someone who wants to build a home in the woods; an environmentalist is someone who already has one. -- We would have much peace if we would not busy ourselves with the sayings and doings of others. - Thomas A. Kempis -- All life itself represents a risk, and the more lovingly we live our lives the more risks we take..." - M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled -- It is only in sorrow [that] bad weather masters us; in joy we face the storm and defy it. - Amelia E. Barr (1885) -- Spelling test: accommodate, occurrence, occasion, judgment, harass, commitment, embarrass, separate, liaison, cemetery, consensus. -- If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging. - Alan Bennett -- Golf is a good walk spoiled. - Mark Twain -- We work not only to produce, but to give value to time. - Eugene Delacroix -- There is properly no history, only biography. - Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. - Anais Nin -- War - it doesn't determine who's right, only who's left. -- Don't be angry at me for being an atheist. YOU'RE the one who thinks I'm evil and going to hell and you don't even know me! How do you think I feel! -- Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Men never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience. - Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) -- I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. - Douglas Adams -- Q: What's brown and sticky? A: A stick. Q: What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back? A: A stick. Q: What does a clutch hitter bat with? A: A stick. -- Perception is merely a state of mind in which the perceiver's arrogance over rules the probable truth. - A.E. Cole-Clark, c9414388@alinga.newcastle.edu.au -- The empirical universe came from nothing, was caused by nothing, means nothing, and is going to nothing. Deal with it. -- In saying, therefore, that things are not good according to any standard of goodness, but simply by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, without realizing it, all the love of God and all his glory; for why praise him for what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the contrary? - Liebniz, "Discourse on Metaphysics" -- Why does the American government care so much about eradicating cannabis but cares so little about eradicating poverty, homelessness, and hunger? -- Satyan eva jayate ("Truth alone prevails.") - Mohandas Gandhi -- Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with? - Rita Rudner -- Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is. - Gershon Legman -- Theoretical physicist - a physicist whose existence is postulated, to make the numbers balance, but who is never actually observed in the laboratory. - Unknown (found in Tom Strong's quote file) -- Interesting, isn't it, that the Pope drives around in a car with bulletproof glass in the window. Jesus Christ never wore nail-proof gloves, though, did he? - John Dowie -- 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. - Lazarus Long -- Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals. - East End (London) graffito from the film "O Lucky Man" -- New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors. - Culture Time: 20 PAST MIDNIGHT message of the day -- This product not intended for use by personnel incapable of understanding the manual. - Boy Brent (bcapps@cse.ogi.edu) -- There are no illegitimate children - only illegitimate parents. - Judge Leon R. Yankwich, decision in Zipkin v. Mozon, June 1928 -- The fact is, and it is a *fact*, the Catholic Church has never had but one single ultimate goal: the total mental, physical and spiritual domination of every being on this globe. Every move the Church has made throughout its existence has been to further that goal. Despite periodic lapses in taste, such as the Inquisition and the various purges and conquests, it's been crafty and subtle in moving on its goal. - Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction -- Any man who is not something of a socialist before he is forty has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist after he is forty has no head. - Wendell L. Willkie (see http://geocities.com/unmark/unquote.html) -- Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness. - Dag Hammarskjold -- Mystery is the essential element in any work of art. - Luis Bunuel -- Anything is art if the artist says it is. - Marcel Duchamp, "Dadas on Art" -- A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. - Oscar Wild, Picture of Dorian Gray -- Society prepares the crime, the criminal commits it. - Buckle -- True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance. - Alexander Pope -- Poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully. - Wallace Stevens, "Proverbs -- Thoughts tend to collect in pools. - Wallace Stevens, "Proverbs -- Verbing weirds language. - Calvin -- So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em; And so proceed ad infinitum. - Jonathan Swift, "On Poetry, A Rhapsody" -- Any uncontrolled fusion reaction you can see from 93 million miles away is disconcerting. - Derek A. Petrey (dpetrey@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu) -- Freedom means being able to say 2+2=4. - George Orwell, _1984_ -- Street lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph. - Jim Samuels -- Washington is just Hollywood for ugly people. - Liz Winstead -- The darkest hour of any man's life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it. - Horace Greeley -- Freedom doesn't become 'lost' through abuse; freedom is lost through our failure to exercise it. - Elf Sternberg (elf@halcyon.com) -- A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. - Adlai Stevenson -- In fact anything digital is apparently OK with GOD! Check Matthew 5:37. It unequivocally gives the OK on binary (yea or nay) communication. Ergo technologies dependant on them must also be OK. - itcbobw@servtech.com -- "Go to father", she said, when I asked her to wed. She knew that I knew that her father was dead. She knew that I knew what a life he had led. She knew that I knew what she meant when she said, "Go to father." - anonymous (found in sherwood@arafel.space.ualberta.ca's sig) -- Documentation: (n.) a novel sold with software, designed to entertain the operator during episodes of bugs or glitches. - Tonkin's First Computer Dictionary -- Quantum leap: (adj.) literally, to move by the smallest amount theoretically possible. In advertising, to move by the largest leap imaginable (in the mind of the advertiser). There is no contradiction. - Tonkin's First Computer Dictionary -- Of course it has civilian applications. You might wanna kill your friends someday. - Jim Zelenka -- A man conducting a gee-whizz science show with fifty thousand dollars worth of Frankenstein equipment is not doing anything scientific if he knows beforehand what the results of his efforts are going to be. A motorcycle mechanic, on the other hand, who honks the horn to see if the battery works is informally conducting a true scientific experiment. - Robert M. Pirsig -- # - number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; <square>, pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat. - The New Hacker's Dictionary -- But in the things of God natural reason is often at a loss. - Thomas Aquinas -- Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary -- I guess I just feel bad that I'm still going on bad dates when I should really be in a bad marriage by now. - Laura Kightlinger (comedian) -- Life is like a talk show. In the words of Johnny Carson, "If you buy the premise, you'll buy the bit." And in the words of David Letterman, "It's just an exhibition, it's not a competition, so please - no wagering." - Mark T. Shirey -- We need universal hand gestures for "Excuse me" and "I'm sorry" and "Thank you". - Mark T. Shirey -- Eight letters 4 ecological cars & trains reside in code. - an acrostic puzzle by Mark T. Shirey -- When dealing with people, remember you're not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity. - Dale Carnegie -- 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 -- The key to capitalism: Make something worth buying. -- If you weren't doing it now, would you start? - Peter Drucker, management consultant -- The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business. - John Berryman (1914-1972), U.S. poet -- 'Chapeau' means 'hat'. 'Oeuf' means 'egg'. It's like those French have a different word for _everything_. - Steve Martin -- Whoever knows he is deep, strives for clarity; whoever would like to appear deep to the crowd, strives for obscurity. For the crowd considers anything deep if only it cannot see to the bottom: the crowd is so timid and afraid of going into the water. - Friedrich Nietzsche (1882) -- Memento audere semper (Remember to always dare.) Fortuna audaces iuvat (Luck helps the fearless.) -- Aequam memento rebus in arduis... Servare mentem (Remember when life's path is steep, to keep your mind even.) -- Tempus abire tibi est (It is time for you to leave this scene!) -- "... I have understanding... of digital watches. And soon I shall have understanding of videocassette recorders and car telephones. And when I have understanding of them, I will have understanding of computers. And when I have understanding of computers, _I_ shall be the supreme being. - The Evil One, Time Bandits (movie) -- ... If I were creating a world, I wouldn't mess about with butterflies and daffodils. I would've started with lasers - 8 o'clock, day one. - The Evil One, Time Bandits (movie) -- The way to a man's heart is not through his stomach, but through his imagination. - Mark T. Shirey -- Honey is in the hive of the bee holder. - Mark T. Shirey -- Darkness is cause by _things_ coming between you and the light. - Mark T. Shirey -- If you see the bomb squad running, try and keep up. -- This wallpaper is killing me; one of us has got to go. - Oscar Wilde, last words Either these curtains go or I do. - Oscar Wilde�s other last words -- Die, my dear Doctor? That's the last thing I shall do! - Lord Palmerston -- Stop here my friend and cast an eye, For you are now as once was I As I am now, so you will be So come my friend and follow me. - On a tombstone in Ohio, and underneath: To follow you I'm not content Until I know which way you went. -- Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind. - General William Westmoreland -- If a man is talking in the woods and no woman hears him... is he still wrong? -- We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves to be like other people. - Schopenhauer -- The key to keeping up with technology is to ask, "Does this help me?" -- A man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge. - Samuel Johnson -- Ever to confess you're bored means you have no inner resources. - John Berryman -- When I make myself imagine what it is like to be one of those women who live at home, faithfully serving their husbands - women who have not a single exciting prospect in life yet who believe that they are perfectly happy - I am filled with scorn. - Sei Shonagon (trans. Ivan Morris) -- Study to be quiet, and to do your own business. - I Thessalonians 4:11 -- Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora. - Occam -- When you believe in things that you don't understand, you will suffer. Superstition ain't the way. - Stevie Wonder -- The universe runs on the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter and enlightened self-interest. - G'Kar, Babylon 5 Bad things happen when the 'enlightened' bit is missing. - Shane@ranplc.co.uk -- One should always be a little improbable. - Oscar Wilde -- Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. - H. L. Mencken -- There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you please unless it causes others harm. With it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. - P.J. O'Rourke -- A dog looks at its owner and thinks "You feed me, care for me, and love me...you must be a god!" A cat looks at its owner and thinks "You feed me, care for me, and love me...I must be a god!" -- In Rome, the emperor sat in a special part of the Coliseum known as the Caesarian Section. - George Carlin -- Sometimes, when I'm told to use my own discretion, if no one is looking I'll use someone else's. But I always put it back. - George Carlin -- Trees - first you chop 'em down, then you chop 'em up. - George Carlin -- EIEIO is a gross misspelling of the word "farm". - George Carlin -- Belief in evolution is like belief in gravity - completely unnecessary. - Raistlin Majere -- It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that He need not exist in order to save us. - Peter De Vries -- Nature doesn't take care of individuals. - Dave Yost, dave@yost.com, 9/97, http://web.Yost.com/ -- The road to heaven is not paved. - Dave Yost, 10/97, http://web.Yost.com/ -- Dog's motto: If it doesn't move or smell, make it either move or smell. Army's motto: If it moves, shoot it; if it doesn't, paint it. -- Never ascribe to intelligence that which can adequately be explained by trickery. - Dave Yost, 9/97, http://web.Yost.com/ -- He wants to die rich, Sire. And so he shall. Give him this sack of gold and then strangle him. - Hercules Gritpype-Thynne, The Goon Show -- It is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. - W. K. Clifford -- This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli, upon reading a young physicist's paper (info from Alan Little (darguz@holotech.net)) -- If you limit your actions in life to things that nobody can possibly find fault with, you will not do much. - Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) -- The cop gets up to my window, and asks "Son, do you *really* think you're gonna get there any quicker, the faster you drive?" My sister, a physics major, blurts out "DUH! Of *course* he is! Don't YOU get places sooner when YOU drive faster?" He said, "Well, yeah, I DO. I never thought about that. Okay, Just try to keep it down to a dull roar." -- Life is short, the art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult. - Hippocrates, Aphorisms, Section I -- They [the Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man, they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by something better tomorrow. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835 -- All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurses arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel, And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange, eventful history, Is second childishness, and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. - William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, vii, 139 -- If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiment on a matter which may involve the most serious and alarming of consequences that can invite the consideration of mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent may we be led, like sheep to the slaughter. - George Washington, Address to officers of the Army, 1783 -- And this, too, shall pass away. -- No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed. - Sigmund Freud, Complete Psychological Works, Dora, 1905 -- The great wish of some is to avenge themselves on some particular enemy, the great wish of others is to save their own pocket. Slow in assembling, they devote a very small fraction of the time to consideration of any public object, most of it to the prosecution of their own objects. Meanwhile each fancies that no harm will come of his neglect, that it is the business of somebody else to look after this or that for him; and so, by the same notion being entertained by all separately, the common cause imperceptibly decays. - Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I:141, 431-413 BC -- The presence of a body of well-instructed men, who have not to labor for their daily bread, is important to a degree which cannot be overestimated; as all high intellectual work is carried on by them, and on such work material progress of all kinds mainly depends, not to mention other and higher advantages. - Charles Darwin, Descent of Man, Chap 4, 1871 -- You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. - Franz Kafka, Great Wall of China -- American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism. - George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the US, 1920 -- We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people; we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other. - Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail, On Committees, 1979 -- I ponder my principal's principal principles in my cubical cubicle. - Mark T. Shirey -- Nescio ne sum, ergo penso sum. - jbryson@richmond.infi.net (Jerry Bryson) -- Many religionists agree with me: "Without faith, God is nothing." - Mark T. Shirey -- You can't make money by betting on all the horses. - Mark T. Shirey -- If you buy the premise, you buy the bit. - Johnny Carson If you buy the premise, you buy the hidden message. - Mark T. Shirey, after Johnny Carson -- Call me, Ishmael. - Ishmael's girlfriend (c/o Mark T. Shirey) -- Due to the shape of the North American elk's esophagus, even if it could speak, it could not pronounce the word "lasagna". - Cliff Clavin, Cheers -- Always do business as if the person you're doing business with is trying to screw you. Because most likely they are. And if they're not, you can be pleasantly surprised. - Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin) in The Spanish Prisoner -- We are all flowers in God's garden and this stuff they keep shoveling over us can only make us stronger and more beautiful. - Michael Amrine to Dave@Yost.com's mother -- You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty. - Sacha Guitry You can fake nice, but you can't fake smart. - Mark T. Shirey You are what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -- The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein -- As you ramble on through life, brother, whatever be your goal: keep you eyes upon the donut, and not upon the hole! - Murray Banks -- Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors. - Ludwig van Beethoven The full weight of my own value system came crashing down upon me. - Mark T. Shirey -- I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem. - Ashleigh Brilliant -- It is better to be defeated on principle than to win on lies. - Arthur Calwell -- Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. - Albert Camus -- Man is able to do what he is unable to imagine. - Ren� Char -- We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like? - Jean Cocteau -- You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there. - Edwin Louis Cole -- To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else. - Bernadette Devlin -- Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Alva Edison -- Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein -- When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right. - Albert Guinon -- The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill. - Robert Heller -- Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left. - Hubert Humphrey -- If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. - John Kenneth Galbraith -- When I discover who I am, I'll be free. - Ralph Ellison -- The best way to predict the future is to invent it. - Alan Kay -- I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. - Winston Churchill -- Confutatis maledictis / flammis acribus addictis (When the damned are confounded and consigned to sharp flames) - Mozart's Requiem Mass, Dies Irae section -- Tobacco is a stimulant that people take to mellow out; alcohol is a depressant that people take to party on. - Mark T. Shirey -- Big Bang Theory: In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. - Terry Pratchett -- It goes on. - Robert Burns, on life (also what Mick Jagger said of the Rolling Stones after the death of a band-member, Brian Jones, whom they had just fired because he couldn't go to America after having had a drug conviction in the UK, but I digress.) -- Either Jesus was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type or else he was, and is, precisely what he said. - C.S. Lewis Jesus was a raving lunatic of an unusually abominable type. - Anonymous -- English is the de facto lingua franca. - Randy Cassingham, http://www.thisistrue.com -- It is of no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary. - Winston Churchill -- Koin ya no-goto she' (A lifetime goes like an arrow). -- Carpe pecuniam! - Roger L. Smith -- I do not rule Russia; 10,000 clerks do. - Czar Nicholas I -- My haiku rocks It has four, eleven, and five syllables That's right, isn't it? - gadde@cs.duke.edu (Syam Gadde) -- We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. - Anais Nin -- Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash. - Harriet Rubin -- You must live in the present... find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this. - Henry David Thoreau -- Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. - Grace Hansen -- I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes. - Charles Swindoll -- Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Continue to learn. Appreciate your friends. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is. -- A mosquito cried out in pain: "A chemist has poisoned my brain!" The cause of his sorrow was para-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane [DDT] -- Laws are felt only when the individual comes into conflict with them. - Susanne LaFollette -- An angel offered someone their choice of infinite wisdom, health, or wealth. The person chose wisdom and sat silently for a few minutes, contemplating the mysteries of life and the universe, and said "I should've taken the money." -- I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you - Nobody - too? Then there's a pair of us! Don't tell! they'd banish us - you know! How dreary - to be - Somebody How public - like a Frog - To tell your name - the livelong June - To an admiring Bog! - Emily Dickinson -- A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness - Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! - Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 12 of 101, FitzGerald, Fifth Edition -- I enjoy incomprehensible nonsense and completely counter-productive mis-information, but only in small doses. -- An Englishman, Irishman, and a Scotsman go into a pub and each order a pint of Guinness. Just as the bartender hands them over, three flies buzz down and one lands in each of the pints. The Englishman looks disgusted, pushes his pint away and demands another pint. The Irishman picks out the fly, shrugs, and takes a long swallow. The Scotsman reaches in to the glass, pinches the fly between his fingers, and shakes it while yelling, "Spit it out, ya bahstahd! Spit it out!" -- A helpful young barmaid from Yale Had tattooed on her chest names of ale And just for the blind There was on her behind A similar list done in Braille -- Some Guinness was spilt on the barroom floor When the pub was shut for the night. When out of his hole crept a wee brown mouse And stood in the pale moonlight. He lapped up the frothy foam from the floor Then back on his haunches he sat. And all night long, you could hear the mouse roar, "Bring on the goddamn cat!" -- The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. - Ecclesiastes 9:11 -- The only currencies in cyberspace are honesty, intelligence, creativity, and technical ability. - Mark Shirey -- Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines or rather dictates his fate. - Henry D. Thoreau -- Physical attractiveness is highly valued in our society, and this value has an enormous effect on people's behavior and on their feelings about themselves. The incidence of mental disorder has been found to be correlated with judged unattractiveness. Even the erroneous impression of personal unattractiveness may enhance the risk of disorder. -- 668 = the neighbor of the beast 6666 = the port number of the beast - Mark T. Shirey 6' 6x6 = the lumber of the beast - Mark T. Shirey -- Programmers' Drinking Song: 100 little bugs in the code, 100 little bugs, track one down, patch it around, 101 little bugs in the code... [repeat until 0]. -- I can saw a woman in two, but you won't want to look in the box when I'm through. - Warren Zevon, "For My Next Trick, I'll Need A Volunteer" song -- As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information. - Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) -- "When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr. Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr. Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England." -- It's humbling to note that when Mozart was my age, he'd been dead 3 years. - Tom Lehrer -- A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. - Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711), pt. II l. 15 -- The Philosopher's Song by Monty Python Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant Who was very rarely stable Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar Who could drink you under the table David Hume could out-consume Whilhelm Friedrich Hegel And Wittgenstein was a beery swine Who was just as sloshed as Schlagel There's nothin' Nietzsche couldn't teach ya 'Bout the raisin' of the wrist Socrates himself was permanently pissed John Stuart Mill of his own free will On a bottle o' shanty became particularly ill Plato they say, could put it away Half a pint of whiskey every day Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle Hobbes was fond of his dram And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart `I drink therefore I am' But Socrates himself is particularly missed A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed -- Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. - Oscar Wilde -- Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm. - Donella Meadows -- The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money. -- Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell. -- When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself. - Isaac Bashevis Singer -- Procrastination is the thief of time. - Edward Young -- Our deeds follow us, and what we have been makes us what we are. -John Dykes -- For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end. - H.L. Mencken -- Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. - Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy -- To obtain a man's opinion of you, make him mad. - Oliver Wendell Holmes -- One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. - Robert Heinlein -- At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded. - Ludwig Wittgenstein -- To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense. - Ayn Rand -- To speak of right and wrong per se makes no sense at all. No act of violence, rape, exploitation, destruction, is intrinsically unjust, since life itself is violent, rapacious, exploitative, and destructive, and cannot be conceived otherwise. - Friedrich Nietzsche -- In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part. - Washington Irving -- The Ideal is in thyself, the impediments too is in thyself. - Thomas Carlyle -- Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- We invent what we love, and what we fear. - John Irving -- The coward regards himself as cautious, the miser as thrifty. - Publilius Syrus -- Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana -- There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. - Oscar Wilde -- Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it. - Henry Louis Mencken -- An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows. - Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Nachfolge ist Freude. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, 24 -- When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. - Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 146 -- We must be born with an intuition of mortality, before we know the word for it--before we know that there are words. Out we come, bloodied and squalling, with the knowledge that, for all the points of a compass, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure. - Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead -- Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason. - James Randi -- [The French] have always hated us, of course ... but now they REALLY hate us, because our culture has become so dominant that they're having trouble completing so much as a single sentence without using American words. They're always blurting out statements like: "Le software de la hardware est un humdinger!" And then they get so mad that they could spit. - Dave Barry -- The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome. - Jonathan Swift -- Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. - John Osborne -- If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank. - Woody Allen -- Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life. Aleister Crowley -- Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. - Karl Marx -- Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity. - Friedrich Nietzsche -- After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands. - Friedrich Nietzsche -- Jesus was a brilliant Jewish stand-up comedian, a phenomenal improviser. His parables are great one-liners. - Camille Paglia -- If God lived on earth, people would break his windows. - Jewish Proverb -- An apology for the Devil - it must be remembered that we have only heard one side of the case. God has written all the books. - Samuel Butler -- The kingdom of Heaven is a condition of the heart - not something that comes upon the earth or after death. - Friedrich Nietzsche -- The Old Testament teems with prophecies of the Messiah, but nowhere is it intimated that that Messiah is to stand as a God to be worshipped. He is to bring peace on earth, to build up the waste places-to comfort the broken-hearted, but nowhere is he spoken of as a deity. - Olympia Brown -- The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation. - Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them - I can write in letters which make even the blind see... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty - I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind. - Friedrich Nietzsche -- Man is something that should be overcome. - Friedrich Nietzsche -- He who cannot obey himself will be commanded. That is the nature of living creatures. - Friedrich Nietzsche -- I am a communist because I believe that the Communist idea is a state form of Christianity. - Alexander Zhuravlyov -- You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough. - Aldous Huxley -- From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion: I know no other religion; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. - Cardinal John Newman -- Nobody can deny but religion is a comfort to the distressed, a cordial to the sick, and sometimes a restraint on the wicked; therefore whoever would argue or laugh it out of the world without giving some equivalent for it ought to be treated as a common enemy. - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu -- Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable. - Ambrose Bierce -- Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever you can. - John Wesley -- The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for. - Ludwig Wittgenstein -- By legend and perhaps by nature philosophers are more accustomed to the armchair than the workbench. - Ian Hacking -- Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them. - Ann Landers -- It is only too easy to catch people's attention by doing something worse than anyone else has dared to do it before. - Claude Monet -- No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend. - Groucho Marx -- Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative. - Henry Kissinger -- If you don't control your mind, someone else will. - John Allston -- No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself. - Greville -- How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it. - Marcus Aurelius -- Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater. - William Hazlitt -- Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. - William Feather -- Who begins too much accomplishes little. - German proverb -- What breaks in a moment may take years to mend. - Swedish proverb -- The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. - George Bernard Shaw -- Necessity never made a good bargain. - Benjamin Franklin -- Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination. - Christopher Isherwood -- It seems safe to say that significant discovery, really creative thinking, does not occur with regard to problems about which the thinker is lukewarm. - Mary Henle -- It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so. - Josh Billings -- He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things. - George Savile -- The one who loves the least, controls the relationship. - Robert Anthony -- Africans have time. Europeans have watches. - Kwazhi Salomon -- You see, I know that it's difficult to think well about certainty, probability, perception, etc. But it is, if possible, still more difficult to think, or try to think, really honestly about your life & other peoples' lives. - Wittgenstein to Malcolm, [Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: a Memoir] -- Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They're what make the instrument stretch--what make you go beyond the norm. - Cycely Tyson -- Concentrate on where you want to go, not what you fear. - Anthony Robbins -- We are not what we know. We are what we are willing to learn. -- That ideas should freely 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, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. - Thomas Jefferson -- We find comfort among those who agree with us; growth among those who don't. - Frank A. Clark -- I consider myself a friendly person who enjoys good conversation, and at the same time I believe that everyone should find ways to minimize their personal interactions at work, for efficiency's sake. -- If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. - Albert Einstein -- Buddha left a road map, Jesus left a road map, Krishna left a road map, Rand McNally left a road map. But you still have to travel the road yourself. - Stephin Levine -- Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather fragile and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him what? A super-callused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis. -- Democracy comes out of the barrel of Guinness. - Mao Tse-tung (sent by James Bruce Reid, u06jbr@abdn.ac.uk) -- You can tell a man by the company that keeps him. - Anonymous (sent by James Bruce Reid, u06jbr@abdn.ac.uk) -- Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. - Will Rogers -- For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of Truth; as having a Mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the Resemblances of Things (which is the chief point) and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their Subtler Differencies; as being gifted by Nature with Desire to seek, patience to Doubt, fondness to Meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of Imposture. So I thought my Nature had a kind of familiarity and Relationship with Truth. - Francis Bacon, "Of the Interpretation of Nature", 1603-4 -- Being highly intelligent is like having four-wheel drive - it just enables you to get stuck in more remote places. - Garrison Keillor -- Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. - C. Northcote Parkinson, Economist magazine, 19 Nov 1955 -- I could while away the hours, conferrin' with the flowers, Consultin' with the rain. And my head I'd be scratchin' while my thoughts were busy hatchin', If I only had a brain. I'd unravel every riddle for any individ'le, In trouble or in pain. With the thoughts you'll be thinkin' you could be another Lincoln, If you only had a brain. Oh, I could tell you why the ocean's near the shore. I could think of things I never thunk before. And then I'd sit, and think some more. I would not be just a nothin', my head all full of stuffin' My heart all full of pain. I would dance and be merry, life would be a ding-a-derry, If I only had a brain. - If I Only Had A Brain, E.Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen, 1938 From Musical "The Wizard Of Oz" -- There is no limit to the good a man can do if he doesn't care who gets the credit. - Author unknown -- We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that every thing can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. - Victor Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning" The circumstances of a life must not dictate our terms of living it; that decision resides only in one's reaction to circumstance. - Mark Frost, "The List of Seven" (novel) -- Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest - whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. These are games; onne must first answer. - Albert Camus -- There's no BCDFGHIJKLNOPQRSUVWXY or Z in "TEAM". - Mark T. Shirey -- For my part, I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. - Vincent Van Gogh -- A little inaccuracy saves a world of explanation. - C.E. Ayres -- I spell good. -- Being asked whether it was better to marry or not, he replied, "Whichever you do, you will repent it." - Attributed to Socrates in Diogenes Laertius' Socrates -- Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods. - Socrates -- To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest. - Mohandas K. Gandhi When people don't act upon the knowledge they possess, it can mean only one thing: they don't really believe in it. - Ashley Montagu, "On Being Intelligent", 1951 If you don't act on your beliefs, you don't really believe. - Mark T. Shirey, improving on Ashley Montagu -- Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless; and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. - Samuel Johnson -- He did better than threaten; he convinced us. - Mark Frost, "The List of Seven" (novel) -- Beauty is the promise of happiness. - Henri Beyle Stendahl, French author and critic (1783-1842) -- "Fustian" is. "Quotidian" isn't. - Mark Shirey -- A man is said to have transcended the gunas when he does not hate the light of sattwa, or the activity of rajas, or even the delusion of tamas, while these prevail; and yet does not long for them after they have ceased. He is like one who sits unconcerned, and is not disturbed by the gunas. He knows this power of discrimination. He rests in the inner calm of the Atman, regarding happiness and suffering as one. Gold, mud, and stone are of equal value to him. The pleasant and unpleasant are alike. He has true discernment. He pays no attention to praise or blame. His behavior is the same when he is honored and when he is insulted. When men go to war, he does not regard either side as enemies or partisans. He feels no lack of anything; therefore he never initiates any action. He who worships me with unfalterting love transcends these gunas. He becomes fit to reach union with Brahman. For I am Brahman / Within this body, / Life immortal / That shall not perish: I am the Truth / And the Joy for ever. - The Bhagavad Gita 14:22-25 (Song of God: Bhagavad Gita, translated by Swami Prabhavananda, 1944) -- If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack. - Winston Churchill -- "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." -- reported last words of Union VI Corps Commander, Maj. Gen. John B. Sedgwick, shot in the head by a sniper during the battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse, May, 1864, while admonishing his men not to waste time dodging Confederate fire. -- Celestial wisdom calms the mind. - Samuel Johnson -- Nothing strengthens judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. - Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- She's a "glass half-cracked" kind of person. - Mark T. Shirey, "Half-Cracked" -- Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. - Freeman Dyson -- The accumulation of gadgets hides these meanings: those who use these devices do not understand them; those who invent them do not understand much else. - C. Wright Mills -- Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands. - Seneca -- Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. - Ambrose Bierce -- If every man could act as he chose, the whole of history would be a tissue of disconnected accidents. - Leo Tolstoy -- History is the study of the world's crime. - Voltaire -- Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast. - Peter Drucker (1909-) -- You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. - Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) -- Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth. -Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) -- Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say? - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-) [Bluebeard, 1987] -- 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 -- Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle. - Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) -- Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. - Mark Twain -- The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. - Albert Einstein -- Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street. - Elbert Hubbard -- Work to become, not to acquire. - Elbert Hubbard -- To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. - Elbert Hubbard -- I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate. - Elbert Hubbard -- Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be. - Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) -- Let him that would move the world, first move himself. - Socrates -- Access to power must be confined to those who are not in love with it. - Plato -- Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. - Plato -- The worst of all deceptions is self-deception. - Plato -- There is no fundamental difference between man and the lower animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery. - Charles Darwin (1809-1882) -- If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. - Henry David Thoreau -- The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. - Henry David Thoreau -- Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. - Henry David Thoreau -- As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own. - Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901-1978) -- An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo (1802-1885) -- The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. - Andrew S. Tanenbaum -- The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. - Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) -- Chatting on the computer with Peter was neat; Now I miss the pooter patter of little Pete. - Mark T. Shirey -- He who is determined not to be satisfied with anything short of perfection will never do anything to please himself or others. - William Hazlitt (1778-1830) The best is the enemy of the good. - Voltaire (1694-1778) The good is the enemy of the best. What's best for you? Are too many "good" things getting in the way? - paraphrase of Stephen R. Covey, "First Things First" -- Be a participant, don't be a spectator. Do things. Just decide what you want to do and then ask the question, 'What's Important Now?' (WIN). Now what do I have to do to accomplish such and such? And that will tell you the action you have to take. - Lou Holtz, football coach -- Now it's over, I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want, or I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do. - They Might Be Giants -- We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future. - Marshall McLuhan -- Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction. - Pablo Picasso -- Most of what we say and do is unnecessary - choose your words wisely. - Marcus Aurelius -- There is nothing permanent except change. - Heraclitus -- Try? There is no try. There is only do or not do. - Yoda -- The real voyage of discovery is not seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. - Marcel Proust -- Over time, avoiding danger is no safer than outright exposure - Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing. - Helen Keller -- This ain't no time for slow ponies. - Will Rogers -- The biggest obstacle to learning anything is believing you already know it. - Karl Albrecht -- You cannot solve a problem with the same thinking that caused the problem in the first place. - Albert Einstein -- You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take. - Wayne Gretzky -- If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got. - Anonymous A definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again in the same way and expecting different results. - Rita Mae Brown -- The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker -- If you can dream it, you can do it. - Walt Disney -- Change your thoughts and you can change the world. - Norman Vincent Peale -- Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. - Jonathan Swift -- Imagination is more important than knowledge. - Albert Einstein -- Most new ideas have a certain foolishness to them when first produced. - A.N. Whitehead -- If you insist on waiting for certainty, you will paralyze yourself. - J.P. Getty -- Don't be afraid to take a big step when one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. - David Lloyd George -- A problem well-stated is a problem half solved. - Charles Kettering -- The man with a new idea is a crank - until the idea succeeds. - Mark Twain -- It's not as important where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. - Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid of standing still. - Chinese Proverb -- What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I know. - Confucius -- In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few. - Shunryu Suzuki -- Whether you believe you can or not, you're right. - Henry Ford -- One of these days is none of these days. - English Proverb -- What is now proved was once only imagined. - William Blake -- To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act. - Anatole France -- A pile of rocks stops being a rock pile when somebody looks at it with the idea of a cathedral in mind. - Antoine Saint-Exupery -- Fall seven times, stand up eight. - Japanese Proverb -- Without a deadline baby, I wouldn't do nothing. - Duke Ellington -- The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away. - Linus Pauling -- Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once the child grows up. - Pablo Picasso -- Genius is infinite painstaking. - Michelangelo -- Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. - Amelia Earhart -- Changing culture is like moving a cemetery; you don't get much help from the residents. - Anonymous -- Now is not supposed to be tomorrow. - Tommy Yates -- I count every day as wasted in which there has been no dancing. - Friedrich Nietzsche -- Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. - Oliver W. Holmes -- Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. - Franklin Roosevelt -- Progress always involves risk; you can't steal second base and keep your foot on first. - Frederick Wilcox -- The worst bankrupt in the world is the person who has lost his enthusiasm. - H. W. Arnold -- A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. - Walter Gagehot -- As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do. - Andrew Carnegie -- Strong convictions precede great actions. - J.F. Clarke -- The Gretsky/Sutton Principle: Go where the money will be. -- Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops. - H. L. Mencken -- We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know. - W.H. Auden -- If subatomic particles don't exist until you measure them, then the universe may just be the sum of all possible measurements. - Mark T. Shirey -- I feel like one who treads alone some banquet-hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead, and all but he departed. - from "Oft in the Stilly Night" by Thomas Moore (1779-1852), the first lines of poetry my poet friend Jennet Peoples (RIP) ever memorized and which http://www.eese.bee.qut.edu.au/people/goddard/sagpoems.htm still refuses to acknowledge are by Thomas Moore, thus helping to reduce the usefulness and credibility of the web. -- Now it's over, I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want. Or, I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do. - "Dead", by They Might Be Giants -- People say believe half of what you see, Son, and none of what you hear. - Marvin Gaye, Heard it Through the Grapevine -- If you're studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all... but philosophy, you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life. - Steve Martin -- Do not try to see Krishna (God); render service unto Him so that He sees you. - Paraphrasing Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswathi, Guru of A.C.Bhativedanta Swami Prabhupada -- Do not walk behind me, I may not lead / Do not walk in front of me, I may not follow / Walk beside me, be my friend. - Albert Camus -- Earthly things must be known to be loved; divine things must be loved to be known. - Blaise Pascal (not chiasmus.com :) -- If you don't make a total commitment to whatever you're doing, then you start to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It's tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on. - Lou Holtz, football coach -- Technology is great as long as you don't try to use it. - Ian Campbell -- It is not our abilities that show what we truly are - it is our choices. - Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Decisions determine destiny. - George Patton Your decisions determine your destiny. - Darth Vader poster by Burger King, advertising Star Wars III and their "Choose Your Destiny" promotion -- Living well is the best revenge. - George Herbert, English clergyman & metaphysical poet (1593-1633) -- I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs. - Samuel Goldwyn -- Genius is childhood recalled at will. - Charles Baudelaire -- Age is a very high price to pay for maturity. - Tom Stoppard -- Forgetfulness is a form of freedom. - Khalil Gibran -- If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance. - George Bernard Shaw -- No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities. - Christian Nestell Bovee, author -- A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth. - Adlai Stevenson -- Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. - H.L. Mencken -- Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. - Voltaire -- Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content. - Louis L'Amour -- 1. Never tell everything at once. - Ken Venturi, Ken Venturi's Two Great Rules of Life -- Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them. - Robertson Davies -- Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. - Franklin P. Jones -- Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world. - Arthur Schopenhauer -- If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, and endeavor to live the life you have imagined, you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. You will pass an invisible boundary: new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within you and you will live with the license of a higher order of beings. - Henry David Thoreau -- Stay fit, keep sharp, make good decisions. - Rick Moranis in "Ghostbusters 2" -- Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned slaves; Albert Einstein and Mohandas Gandhi were imperfect husbands and fathers. The list goes on indefinitely. We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future? Some of the habits of our age will doubtless be considered barbaric by later generations - perhaps for insisting that small children and even infants sleep alone instead of with their parents; or exciting nationalist passions as a means of gaining popular approval and achieving high political office; or allowing bribery and corruption as a way of life; or keeping pets; or eating animals and jailing chimpanzees; or criminalizing the use of euphoriants by adults; or allowing our children to grow up ignorant. - Carl Sagan, in "Demon Haunted World" -- It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him. - John Steinbeck -- Tact is, after all, a kind of mind reading. - Sarah Orne Jewett, author -- Man's loneliness is but his fear of life. - Eugene O'Neill -- I am a success today because I had a friend who believed in me, and I didn't have the heart to let him down. - Abraham Lincoln -- If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. - Abraham Maslow, psychologist -- The job of an artist is always to deepen the mystery. - Francis Bacon -- All human beings should try to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why. - James Thurber -- All intellectual improvement arises from leisure. - Samuel Johnson -- So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work. - Peter Drucker -- Nobody make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. - Edmund Burke -- A clergyman knocked on one door several times, but no one answered. He could hear noises inside, so he took one of his cards, wrote "Rev 3:20" on it, and stuck it in the door. The following Sunday, a woman handed him a card that said: "Gen 3:10". -- Yvette, Yvonne, Cecil, and Basil are pronounced ee-vet, ee-von, sessle, and bazzle. -- The purpose of humanity is to conduct original research - everything else is supporting. -- The Universe was obviously an open source project, otherwise it wouldn't have been documented so badly. -- An explanation has to stop somewhere. - Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Modern theists might acknowledge that, when it comes to Baal and the Golden Calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidon and Apollo, Mithras and Ammon Ra, they are actually atheists. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain -- Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult--once we truly understand and accept it--then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. - M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled -- When you ain't got no money, you gotta get an attitude. - Richard Pryor -- Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. - Andre Gide, French author -- Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck. - Iris Murdoch -- True excellence is rarely found, even more rarely cherished. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself. - Arthur Miller -- All unhappiness and stagnation result from a feeling that you are at the mercy of the world and the people in it. But what a joy it is, what a major shift to strength and power, when you no longer wait around for others to favor and love you, for others to flatter and reward you. Reward and flatter yourself, favor and love yourself. - Kira Salak, Writer and National Geographic Emerging Explorer (From a Starbucks coffee cup, The Way I See It #150 www.starbucks.com/wayiseeit) -- Accounting = ledgerdomain. - Mark T. Shirey -- Pardon me, is that Grey Poupon those Bugle Boy Jeans you're wearing? -- If you can't communicate clearly in writing, perhaps the internet is not the best place for you, eh? - Barb MacRae -- The sea squirt, when young, seeks a rock to which it can anchor itself. Once it finds a rock, it will stay there the rest of its life. When it has been anchored, it no longer needs its brain, so it eats it. Sort of like getting tenure. - Molly Ball (au140@freenet.carleton.ca) -- The best way to predict the future is to engineer it. - Peter Gardner (pete@helikon.com) -- A book of verse beneath the bough a jug of wine, a loaf of bread--and thou beside me singing in the wilderness. - The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam -- There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. - Somerset Maugham -- Everything that can be said can be said clearly. - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus -- Any one who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever. - Ezra Pound, A, B, C, of Reading Men loven of propre kynde new fangelnesse. - Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales Hard is the herte that loveth nought/In May. - Geoffrey Chaucer -- All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself. - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf -- I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend upon my friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE! - Scott Weiser (Scott.Weiser@colorado.edu) .sig -- Necessity is the plea of every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. - William Pitt -- Most people, when you ask them who they are -- their personalities seem to be defined by what they like... You ask a Star Trekkie, you know -- /that/ defines their whole personality and shapes their whole lives. Take away that input and they'll be nothing. - Boyd Rice in an interview with Re/Search -- For progress to occur, it is essential to have a forum where changing one�s opinion is seen as making progress toward a better solution, rather than as losing face. - Bjarne Stroustrup, "C++ report" -- The national flower of America is the concrete cloverleaf. - James G. Ballard -- Street lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph. - Jim Samuels -- Crunchiness brings wealth. Wealth leads to sogginess. Sogginess brings poverty. Poverty creates crunchiness. From this immutable cycle we know that to hang on to wealth, you must keep things crunchy. - Nico Colchester, former Economist editor -- A World Encyclopaedia no longer presents itself to a modern imagination as a row of volumes printed and published once for all, but as a sort of mental clearing house for the mind, a depot where knowledge and ideas are received, sorted, summarized, digested, clarified and compared. It would be in continual correspondence with every university, every research institution, every competent discussion, every survey, every statistical bureau in the world. It would develop a directorate and a staff of men of its own type, specialized editors and summarists. They would be very important and distinguished men in the new world. This Encyclopaedic organization need not be concentrated now in one place; it might have the form of a network. It would centralize mentally but perhaps not physically... - H. G. Wells, _World Brain_, 1938 -- And then there are the inexplicable pleasures of information itself, the joys of learning, knowing, and teaching; the strange good feeling of information coming into and out of oneself. Playing with ideas is a recreation which people are willing to pay a lot for, given the market for books and elective seminars. We'd likely spend even more money for such pleasures if we didn't have so many opportunities to pay for ideas with other ideas. This explains much of the collective "volunteer" work which fills the archives, newsgroups, and databases of the Internet. Its denizens are not working for "nothing", as is widely believed. Rather they are getting paid in something besides money. It is an economy which consists almost entirely of information. This may become the dominant form of human trade, and if we persist in modeling economics on a strictly monetary basis, we may be gravely misled. - John Perry Barlow -- Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history; America is a product of philosophy. - Margret Thatcher -- Deleting this country could cause instability. Are you sure you want to continue? (Yes) [No] - "The Future of Warfare," The Economist, 8-14 March 1997 -- Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'intrate. (Abandon all hope, ye who enter here) - inscription above the gates of hell, Dante Alighieri�s "Inferno" -- If you think there is a solution, you're part of the problem. - Zippy -- The secret of the demagogue is to appear as stupid as his audience so that it can believe itself to be as smart as he. - Karl Kraus -- Never eat more than you can lift. - Miss Piggy -- Let's talk about sets, baby, Let's talk about A and B. Let's talk about all the unions and intersections that can be. Let's talk about sets, Let's talk about sets. - Jim Xikas, jxikas@ic.sunysb.edu Let's talk about hex, baby, Let's talk about binary. Let's talk about C and C# Java, Perl, and assembly. Let's talk about hex, Let's talk about hex. - April Berdoulay, aberdoul@ic.sunysb.edu, with improvements -- The employer generally gets the employees he deserves. - Walter Bilbey -- If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds. - J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting "The Bhagavad Gita", 1945 -- Quoting oneself is pompous. - Mark T. Shirey Pomposity is its own reward. - Carl Cotner, et al -- Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them. - Thomas Jefferson -- "All I see are dead people." - Bruce Willis as James Cole in "12 Monkeys", three years before "The Sixth Sense", in which Haley Joel Osment plays Cole Sear (see-er?) opposite Willis and says "I see... dead people". James Cole was sent into the past, where everyone he saw was "dead" in his home-time. -- Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. - William Feathers, author -- Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion. - Richard Nixon -- 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 man who sticks to his plan will become what he used to want to be. - James Richardson -- Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. - Henry David Thoreau -- Art is moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda and entertainment without moral passion is television. - Rita Mae Brown, author -- Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. - John F. Kennedy -- Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. - Voltaire -- Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly. - Robert Schuller It's better to do the wrong thing than to do nothing. - Michael D. Keebaugh, Pres., Raytheon Intelligence and Information Systems (when he was President of HRB Systems, now Raytheon State College, PA) -- An economist is someone who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible. - Alfred K. Knopf, publisher -- Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not quality. - George Santayana, philosopher Thinkers used to define progress, now businesses do. - Mark T. Shirey -- The secret joy in work is contained in one word: excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. - Pearl S. Buck -- Politics is war without bloodshed; war is politics with bloodshed. - Mao Tse-tung -- Civility costs nothing and buys everything. - Mary Wortley Montagu, English aristocrat -- Greed is the last safe vice. - Dennis Miller (pre-US financial crisis) -- Worry is a misuse of imagination. - Dan Zadra, author -- The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good, you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy, you will be good. - Bertrand Russell -- The resolved mind has no cares. - George Herbert, poet -- For travel to be delightful, one must have a good place to leave and return to. - Frederick B. Wilcox, author -- Never doubt the courage of the French; they are the ones who discovered snails are edible. - Doug Larson, humorist -- Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. - Kurt Vonnegut -- Of course I believe in luck. How else to explain the success of those you dislike? - Jean Cocteau -- You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. - Henry Ford -- Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomfort. - Arnold Bennett, novelist -- Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. - Henry David Thoreau -- Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or by the handle. - James Russell Lowell, poet -- The secret of a man who is universally interesting is that he is universally interested. - William Dean Howells, novelist -- Be fearful when others are greedy; be greedy when others are fearful. - Warren Buffett, investor -- Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it's the only one you have. - Emile Chartier, philosopher -- Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. - Edmund Burke -- A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience. - Doug Larson, humorist -- Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. - Kim Hubbard, journalist/cartoon -- The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong-- but that's the way to bet. - Ring Lardner -- Never confuse the stock market with the economy. - Ronald Reagan -- Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. - Benjamin Franklin -- Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses. - George Washington Carver -- The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain -- Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe. - H.G. Wells -- If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere. - Frank A. Clark, author -- Middle age is when your broad mind and your narrow waste begin to change places. - E. Joseph Cossman, entrepreneur -- Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they should be. - William Hazlitt, British author -- Seek simplicity, and distrust it. - Albert North Whitehead, philosopher -- Fortune favors the audacious. - Desiderius Erasmus -- We must take change by the hand or rest assuredly, change will take us by the throat. - Winston Churchill -- Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you'll be surprised at how little you have. - Ernest Hemingway -- Don't trust nobody but your mama, and even then look at her real good. - Bo Diddley -- Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. - Alan Watts, philosopher -- Character is simply habit long continued. - Plutarch -- An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today. - Laurence J. Peter, educator -- Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up for work. - Chuck Close, artist -- A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. - Mark Twain -- In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson. - Tom Bodett, broadcaster/author -- Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. - Marie Curie -- A man who is ignorant of foreign languages is ignorant of his own. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -- To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. - Thomas Edison -- You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate. - Stephen Pollard, British journalist -- Fire is the test of gold, adversity of strong men. - Seneca -- An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. - Anatole France -- Conceit is God's gift to little men. - Bruce Barton, advertising executive -- Worry is a misuse of imagination. - Dan Zadra, writer -- Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse. - Lily Tomlin -- The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself. - John Kenneth Galbraith -- The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. - Hubert Humphrey -- Religion is a childish superstition. The word 'God' for me is nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness. The Bible is a collection of honorable but still primitive legends. - Albert Einstein, in a letter 1954 letter to philosopher Eric Gutkind (it had been in a private collection for 50 years and published in 2008) -- Need input. More input. - Johnny 5, the robot in "Short Circuit" (movie) -- If brute force isn't working, you're not using enough. - Michael L. Mauldin ("Fuzzy"), "Team Toad" -- If you take a picture OF 1,000 words, is it worth 2,000? - Mark T. Shirey -- In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon �em. - William Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night" (Act I, Scene V), Malvolio reading a letter The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. - William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" (Act I, Scene II), Caesar speaking --

[email protected] 2009-01-02

Back to Mark's Home Page

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws