1090 hits
Never moon a werewolf.
Maybe cybergoths are just cyberpunks who get laid.-- Sourcerer
"God is my co-pilot, but the Devil is my bombardier."-- Bumper sticker
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.-- Eric Hoffer
Never try to lick a glacier.
"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other."-- Eric Hoffer
"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."-- Eric Hoffer
"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt."-- Herbert Hoover
"We have enough youth, how about a fountain of smart?"-- Bumper sticker
"When people are bored, it is primarily with their own selves that they are bored."-- Eric Hoffer
Hermits have no peer pressure.
ERROR: Hit any user to continue
"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture"-- Bumper sticker
"Que sera, seratonin! (Meep.)"-- Mercy
Every silver lining has a cloud.
The bigger they are, the harder they hit.
Oh, soddit, blackmail is too much like work.-- Roger BW
Where there is great love, there are always wishes.-- Willa Cather
My karma ran over my dogma.
To err is human. And stupid.
"I find imperfection the most interesting thing about a person"-- Jodi Foster
The older I get, the more I think you ever learn is either further subtleties, or further distractions.
"Unrequited love. It's fantastic! It never has to change, it never has to grow up, it never has to die."-- Vince Tyler (Queer as Folk)
"Grand ennui" sounds so much nicer than "annoyance."-- Eric P. Scott
What luck for the rulers that men do not think.-- Adolf Hitler
Guru, n: A computer owner who can read the manual.
To err is human, to moo bovine.
"It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."-- Fred Adler
Cat, n: Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.
The more things change, the more they stay insane.-- Tom Weller
Never send a monster to do the work of an evil genius.
Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.-- Dave Butler
"When solving a kernel panic you must first ask yourself what you were doing that could possibly frighten an operating system."-- Peter van der Linden
I don't suffer from stress. I'm a carrier.
A bit of tolerance is worth a megabyte of flaming.-- Henry Spencer
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.-- Alfred Adler
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.-- Erica Jong
Most people deserve each other.
"In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from."-- Peter Alexander Ustinov
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.-- Alfred Adler
Beauty lies in the hands of the beer holder.
"Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them."-- Louis B. Nizer
I thought I was in love once, and then later I thought maybe it was just an inner-ear imbalance.-- Fraser (Due South)
"You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."-- Dorothy Parker
Headline: Miners Refuse to Work after Death
Sometimes I wake up grumpy, other times I let her sleep.
The only good strategy is one that no one else understands.-- Tracy Kidder
Rehab is for quitters.
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together-- Herbert Prochnow
Life may seem unfair, but Life never cheats the way people do.-- Stewart Kramer
The loom works perfectly well without the steam powered wig darner and shortbread cutter stapled to the side.-- Peter da Silva
"Good old days: Beer foamed and drinking water didn't."
"The biggest disease today isn't leprosy or tuberculosis, but the feeling of being unwanted."-- Mother Theresa
"One person can trigger a million thoughts."
"I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough."-- M. C. Escher
I bet that 'Trouble with Tribbles' episode would have been different if Shatner had had a flame-thrower handy.-- R. M. Weiner
"Tell him I've been too fucking busy - or vice versa."-- Dorothy Parker
She's not my girlfriend. I find her interesting because she's a client and she sleeps above her covers. Four feet above her covers.-- Dr. Peter Venkman (Ghostbusters.)
Never underestimate the falseness of a generalisation.
X.400 is the mail system of the future, and I hope it stays that way.-- Erik Fair
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.-- Edsger Dijkstra
You don't have to think too hard while talking to teachers.-- J.D. Salinger
I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert.
Every time I have to pipe something into awk I get this mental picture of a big fat seagull with stdin connected at the wrong end.-- Arther van der Harg (a.s.r.)
Be the person you needed when you were younger.
A writer is someone who writes, and a stinger is something that stings. But fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, haberdashers don't haberdash, hammers don't ham, and humdingers don't humding.-- Richard Lederer (Crazy English)
"What's reality anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch."-- Jane Wagner
"We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists ... in the loved one, perfection."-- Sidney Poitier
"I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn't itch."-- Gilda Radner
Whenever you fall, pick someone up.
Few people are successful unless a lot of other people want them to be.-- Charles Brower
They call television a medium. That is because it is neither rare nor well done.-- Ernie Kovacs
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.-- Henry Kissinger
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.-- Laurance J. Peter
I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.-- Carol Leifer
Dad taught me everything I know, but he didn't teach me everything he knows.-- Al Unser Jr.
What is dignity without honesty?-- Cicero
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter.
Rhetorical subtlety doesn't work on people with the perceptive powers of an eggplant.-- Spencer Sun
Be alert. The world needs more lerts.
You can tell how far we have to go when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers.-- Steven Feiner
He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring to its own merits.
One nice thing about egotists: They don't talk about other people.-- Lucille S. Harper
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: No one to blame.-- Erica Jong
You can be a professional without being constipated about it.-- David Keyser
"When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home."-- Erma Bombeck
"Reality is the leading cause of stress for those in touch with it."-- Jack Wagner
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.-- A. H. Weiler
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.-- Dorothy Parker
The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony #9.-- Erwin Dietrich
Emacs is a good operating system, but I prefer Unix.
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
Men forget, but never forgive. Women forgive, but never forget.
Real Programmers never work from 9 to 5. If any real programmer is around at 9 a.m., it's because they were up all night.-- Some computer geek
Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
"The more I watch television, the more I wonder why I'm not already supreme ruler of Earth."-- Dogbert (Dilbert)
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with RAISINS in it.-- Dorothy Parker
I know Karate, Kung Fu, and 47 other dangerous words.
Well, there's a quantum computer that can factor [the number] 15, so those of you using 4-bit RSA should worry.-- Bruce Schneier
I'm an apatheist. The question is no longer interesting, and the answer no longer matters.-- petro (a.s.r)
"Dreams are the answers to questions that we haven't yet figured out how to ask."-- Fox Mulder (The X Files)
"Microsoft is not the problem. Microsoft is the symptom."-- Eric S. Raymond
"Man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road."-- Alexander Smith
Eiffel Tower: The Empire State Building after taxes.
"Not a Morning Person" doesn't even begin to cover it.
If you don't know where you are going, you'll probably end up somewhere else.-- Laurence J. Peter
"The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums."-- Peter De Vries
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.-- Helen Keller
Remember that you are unique, just like everyone else.
"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy."-- Louis Kronenberger
Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself.-- Potter Stewart
Enjoy yourself. If you can't enjoy yourself, enjoy somebody else.-- Jack Schaefer
"Alcohol is the cause and the solution to many of life's problems."-- Homer Simpson
Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs.-- Tom Lehrer
Maybe life is a grindstone; whether it polishes you or wears you down depends on what you're made of.-- Kay Fletcher
Power corrupts, but we need electricity.
Cat: Ethereal music wreathed in mystery.
"Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work."-- Clive Barker
Headline: Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
"Speak when you're angry and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret."-- Henry Ward Beecher
Just because you're not paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.-- The Register
I'm not a perfectionist. That would be a character flaw.
They say that every man has a price at which he'll do anything. I like to think it's the other way around; every man has a line, a line he won't cross over, no matter what the cost.-- Fraser Sr. (Due South)
Hartley's second law: Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
It's only by NOT taking the human race seriously that I retain what fragments of my once considerable mental powers I still possess.-- Roger Noe
To be understood is a luxury.
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.-- Will Rogers
Lies, damned lies and user documentation.
Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.-- Susan Ertz
Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.-- Pete Seeger
"It's 5:50 a.m., Do you know where your stack pointer is?"
Q: What's tiny and yellow and very, very, dangerous?
A: A canary with the super-user password.
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.-- George Bernard Shaw
"Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them."
Seagull Manager: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps over everything and then leaves.
"Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals."-- Henry Spencer
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves.-- John Berger
"Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month."-- Wernher von Braun
"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness."-- Eric Sevareid
The haunting fragrance of her mysterious perfume lingered with me long after the blinding sting of her pepper spray had faded.-- Nick DeCamp
You're probably the sort who would have Dorothy arrested for throwing water on the Wicked Witch of the West.-- Eric Holeman
Q: What do you call a principal female opera singer whose high C is lower than those of other principal female opera singers?
A: A deep C diva.
"A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer."-- Robert Frost
Headline: Never Withhold Herpes Infection from Loved One
Most of us ask for advice when we know the answer but we want a different one.-- Ivern Ball
Answer the phone naked. Callers will hear it in your voice.
Morris dancing is an exercise in fertility.
"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."-- Walter Bagehot
The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly. I would rather use them to mimic something better.-- Edsger Dijkstra
Lust comes at first sight, love comes after staring at the same person for elongated periods of time.-- lj user slvrstarlight
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."-- Ernest Hemingway
"Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words."-- Dorothy Parker
I like Frenchmen very much, because even when they insult you they do it so nicely.-- Josephine Baker
Please storyteller, pull a tale from your pocket,
Spin me a story from your coat-tails so bare,
For my heart has turned cold, and my dreams are too old,
And I need to know the magic's still there-- Heather Alexander (Storyteller)
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
"Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Become a Librarian."
Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.
All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.-- Samuel Butler
Imagine a stegosaurus wearing rocket powered roller skates, and you'll get a fair idea of its elegance, stability and ease of crash recovery.-- Lionel Lauer
Aftermath, n: The period following algebra.
Never only doubt or only believe your doubts.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
The BeOS takes the best features from the major operating systems. It's got the power and flexibility of Unix, the interface and ease of use of the MacOS, and Minesweeper from Windows.-- Tyler Riti
High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.-- Christopher Morley
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.-- Will Rogers
"Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief."-- Arthur Schnitzler
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.-- Samuel Butler
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.-- Erich Fromm
Headline: 'Two sisters reunited after eighteen years at checkout counter'
Much learning does not teach understanding.-- Heraclitus
Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.-- Terry Pratchett
Nothing is better than Sex.
Masturbation is better than nothing.
Therefore, Masturbation is better than Sex.
"It's foolish to be prejudiced. There are so many reasons to hate people on an individual basis."-- Dennis Miller
If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.-- Dorothy Parker
(A)bort (R)etry (T)oss computer across room?
"The imposition of stigma is the commonest form of violence used in democratic societies."-- R. A. Pinker
"The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands."-- Alexander Penney
"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."-- Barry Goldwater
Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.-- James Thurber
"Sometimes the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstone of humiliation."-- Fox Mulder (The X-Files)
"Fast, fat computers breed slow, lazy programmers."-- Robert Hummel
[Perl] isn't a programming language, it's a thousand special case rules flying in close formation.-- Peter da Silva
"It's a small apartment, I've barely enough room to lay my hat and a few friends."-- Dorothy Parker
There must be more to life than sitting there wondering if there is more to life.
You're never too old to learn something stupid.
"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy."-- Robert Anthony
Today was a really, really great day, on the "aaagh fuck me!" scale.-- Steve VanDevender
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.-- Albert Einstein
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff.-- Peter de Vries
Honk if you've slept with Riker.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.-- Dorothy Parker
A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.
We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.-- John Gardner
Magrat shivered. She told herself that a witch had absolute control over her own body, and the goosepimples under her thin nightdress were just a figment of her own imagination. The trouble was, she had an excellent imagination.-- Terry Pratchett (Wyrd Sisters)
To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, your're overdoing it.-- J. Jenkins
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."-- Oscar Wilde
If the pen is mightier than the sword then how can actions speak louder than words?
"If you are a human being, you might as well face it. You are going to rub a lot of people the wrong way."-- Jane Wagner
Some days I think it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. Like Saturdays, when I don't have to go to work.-- R. M. Weiner
God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion.-- Homer Simpson
You will trip and fall over a three-eared cat today
"Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
...as usual, some long-dead guy said what I meant to say far better than I ever could.
There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.-- Flannery O'Connor
The commercial availability of software to check spelling, grammar, and style does serve quite well as a form of stupidity tax.-- Amanda Walker
If the moon hit your eye like a big pizza pie, it might be amor�, but I'd be more worried about the interplanetary gravitational effects from this cataclysmic event.-- Paul Paternoster
On going to war over religion:
You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.
Seattle reminds me a lot of London, where people will drink 12 beers but they never act drunk. Which makes you wonder what the point is of drinking 12 beers, if you're not going to put the lampshade on your head. You're killing your liver and still having no fun.-- Peter Bagge
Never underestimate the human capacity for cognitive dissonance.
Democracy is the form of government where everyone gets what the majority deserves.
"I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me."-- Hunter S. Thompson
ADAPTABILITY:
Excellent: Walks on water
Good: Walks on water in emergencies
Average: Washes with water
Fair: Drinks water
Poor: Passes water in emergencies
"Nothing in the world is friendlier than a wet dog."
Terror: A female Klingon with PMS.
"The main differences between a computer salesman and a used car salesman is that the used car salesman can probably drive and knows when he's lying."-- Peter da Silva
All right brain, I don't like you and you don't like me - so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer.-- Homer Simpson
"Do you kids want to be like the real UN, or do you want to squabble and waste time?"-- Principal Skinner
Smile, it makes people wonder what you're thinking.
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.-- Jeremy S. Anderson
"In each of us are places where we have never gone. Only by pressing the limits do you ever find them."-- Dr. Joyce Brothers
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
"An artist is a creature driven by demons. He don't usually know why they chose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why."-- William Faulkner
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.-- Laurence J. Peter
"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action."-- Frank Herbert
Music Teacher's Door: "Out Chopin"
Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
Do unto others before they undo you.
Arachnoleptic fit, n: The frantic dance performed just after you accidentally walk through a spider web.
"We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person, perfectly."
What do you mean, "If a woodchuck could chuck wood"? What's the point in calling it a "woodchuck" if it can't ?-- David Gunter
My ancestors wandered lost in the wilderness for forty years because even in biblical times, men would not stop to ask for directions.-- Elayne Boosler
"I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild."-- Keats
"Children are like TV sets. When they start acting weird, whack them across the eyes with a big rubber basketball shoe."-- Hunter S. Thompson
You're about as accurate as an archer in a centrifuge.
In case of nuclear war, prayer in schools will be okay.
A age is called dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.-- James Michener ("Space")
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
Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction after all has to make sense, right?
"Indifference is isolation. In difference is texture and wonder."-- Edwin Schlossberg
Things will get better, despite our efforts to improve them.-- Will Rogers
Only a monomaniac gets what we commonly refer to as results.-- Albert Einstein
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.-- George Bernard Shaw
The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.-- Gamel Abdel Nasser
"What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager asked her mother.
"Encouragement, dear..." she replied.
"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
'Impossible' tends to be an opinion rather than a fact.
Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.-- Robert A. Heinlein
"[The] human mind was like a compass. No matter how much you shook it up, no matter what happened to it, sooner or later it'd carry on pointing the same way."-- Terry Pratchett (Johnny and the Dead)
But more frustrating are the ones who say "I could never / I would never." Let's be honest--you don't know. You don't know if you'll ever win a lottery, you don't know if you'll ever be in the position where you'll have to kill someone, you don't know if you'll ever fall in love with someone, anyone, regardless of gender.-- Elf Sternberg
There's a nut loose on your keyboard.
We accept the love we think we deserve
Don't you think that with the proper amount of manpower, pliers, ropes, belts and duct tape, you actually COULD lead a horse to water AND make it drink?-- Andy Overman
Men are all alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.-- Moliere
I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things.-- Dorothy Parker
"Life at the top is financially rewarding, spiritually draining, physically exhausting, and short."-- Peter C. Newman
Q: Why did the germ cross the microscope?
A: To get to the other slide.
"When the people fear their government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."-- Thomas Jefferson
Giving help doesn't mean dashing in and doing what seems like a good idea to you. It means doing what the other person wants. If what the person wants is for you leave them alone, it means doing that.-- John Fisher
The Four Food Groups: Coffee, ice cream, beer and pizza.
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it.
It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.-- Jerome K. Jerome
The world is your oyster, you know. it smells like seawater and it might clamp shut on your finger and inside there's a glob of something that's like a big living glob of snot, and maybe - *if* you're lucky! - a little deformed pearl.-- Lisa Kellner
"I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better."-- G. C. Lichtenberg
The guests giggled, and floated down to the bottom of the garden to inspect the herbaceous borders, and snatch a quick snog before the crudities.-- Stephen Foster
Unfortunately, there are like five people in the world who understand the X keyboard model--I'm not one of them--and three are insane. It's that bad.-- Tim Showalter
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.-- Albert Einstein
I trusted him like a brother -- which is to say, not at all.
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
It swims through a sublogical fantasy world where there are no rules that can't be violated by the set designer, where everybody is really thin and beautiful and wears really cool clothes, and where death is everywhere.-- Stephen Hunter (The Washington Post, review of 'The Cell')
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?-- Ernest Gaines III
Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.-- Henry Peter Brougham
Selfish, adj.: Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.-- Ambrose Bierce
The question is not so much whether there is life on Mars as whether it will continue to be possible to live on Earth.
Adolescence, n: The stage between puberty and adultery.
Your powers are useless, I'm wearing tin foil underwear!
"The spam wars are about rendering email useless for unsolicited advertising before unsolicited advertising renders email useless for communication."-- Walter Dnes / Jeff Wynn
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong
And I am Marie of Roumania.-- Dororhy Parker
Reporter, n: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.-- Ambrose Bierce
All goverments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathalogical personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.-- Frank Herbert
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
NASA doesn't have any live weapons; we can only drop management paperwork on those who peeve us--but with a B-52 we can drop a lot of it!-- Mary Shafer
Proof by omission: The reader may easily supply the details. The other 253 cases are analogous.
Politics: strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.-- Ambrose Bierce
As the main says, it has yet to be proven intelligence has any survival value.
Whether it deserves some respect is another matter.
"The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be."-- Raymond Chandler
"He'd never realized that, deep down inside, what he really wanted to do was make things go splat."-- Terry Pratchett (Reaper Man)
Writing novice-friendly documentation is a lot of work. We'd like to do it someday. Holding of breath is not advised.-- Henry Spencer
Brandolini's law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.
Baby-sitter, n: A teenager acting like an adult, while the adults are out acting like teenagers.
Fool-proof implies a finite number of predictable fools.
"Warning: Dates in Calendar are closer than they appear."
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.-- Robert Frost
There's old proverbs to suit about anything you want to do.
Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all--the apathy of human beings.-- Helen Keller
In case of emergency, speak in cliches.
I have yet to meet a C compiler that is more friendly and easier to use than eating soup with a knife.
Adult, n: One old enough to know better.
If you insist that you know what's right for a person, you are precious close to saying that their feelings aren't real, just because you don't understand them. The next stop after sentimentality is cruelty.-- John Fisher
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
This must be morning. I never could get the hang of mornings.
It's a mistake to underestimate the human capacity for self-delusion.-- Robert Park
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 W. Gardner
"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing."-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Seeing is forgetting the name of that which one sees.-- Paul Valery
There are many ways to define our fragile existence; many ways to give it meaning. But it is our memories that shape its purpose and give it context.-- Mohinder Suresh (Heroes)
"No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes she were not."-- H.L. Mencken
It is better to have loved and lost than to have hated and won.
"A conservative is someone who admires radicals a century after they're dead."
The voters have spoken, the bastards...
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.-- Mark Twain
One can overstate anything. Your advertising depends on it.
Headline: Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Time in 10 Years
"The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little."-- Porterfield
"Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right."
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.-- George Bernard Shaw
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
"Here's a horrible thought: You know how dumb the average person is? Well, half the human race is even dumber than that..."
There are only two industries that refer to their customers as 'users.'-- Edward Tufte
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."-- Robert R. Coveyou
I think the strangest (or, perhaps, at least the most inappropriate) conversation I've ever had during sex with anyone was a long discussion (punctuated by the obvious noises) of analytic means of setting a bound on the primality of generalised Fibonacci numbers.-- Kay Dekker
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.-- Rich Cook
Insofar as possible, I surround myself with pleasant, tolerant, intelligent people. Life's too short to spend it with people who don't like what you are.-- Eric Holeman
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
The public seems incapable of distinguishing between your garden variety idiot and your genuine lunatic. It is the same confusion the public has had over the last five Presidents.-- Mark Leeper
"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it."-- Stephen Butler Leacock
Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.-- Alexander Woollcott
> 0C is freezing, 100C is boiling, 70F is a nice day, and 110C is a nice
> sauna.
This is the same logic that took out the Mars Polar Lander, I see.-- Peter da Silva
"Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student."-- George Iles
Stenderup's law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up.
Bagdikian's Observation:
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion' on a ukelele.
Customer: Cute cat. What's its name?
Randal Graves: Annoying customer. (Clerks)
"Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States."-- J. Bartlett Brebner
If practice makes perfect and nobody's perfect, why practice?
"Loved by some, accepted by others and misunderstood by most."
War does not determine who is right, war determines who is left.
"Life's a bitch, then you die. Then your necromancer daughter resurrects you, and life is still a bitch."
Q. What's the difference between an aerobics instructor and a well-mannered professional torturer?
A. The torturer would apologize first.
Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.-- Arnold Bennett
"Be kinder than necessary 'cause everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."
"Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim."-- Bertrand Russell
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer `yes' without having asked any clear question.-- Albert Camus
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.-- Albert Camus
Teacher's First Law of Grading Lab Papers: If an experiment has perfect results, the student has cheated.
Brain: Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: Uhh, yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?
People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.-- Albert Einstein
Q: Why did the astrophysicist order three hamburgers?
A: Because he was hungry.
The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.-- Jean Kerr
The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows that the average man can see much better than he can think. (Ladies' Home Journal)
Lost: gray and white female cat. Answers to electric can opener.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.-- George Bernard Shaw
America was founded by drug smugglers -- rum was the drug, but smugglers nonetheless.
Consult: To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.-- Ambrose Bierce
Reconsider, v: To seek a justification for a decision already made.-- Ambrose Bierce
[Disk] quotas are evil; they discourage users from learning how their greed impacts others. We're not here to parent users, we just provide a model electronic ecosystem. If they deplete their resources, they become extinct. A very simple concept.-- Eric P. Scott
Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.-- Steve Wozniak
"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."-- G. K. Chesterton
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.-- Mark Twain
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
"Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for a little order, will lose both, and deserve neither."-- Thomas Jefferson
"There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it."-- George Bernard Shaw
The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take.-- Roy Carlson
The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than it is in theory.
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?-- Will Rogers
"I have always thought that it would be a funny thing if all these self-righteous Evangelicals were right, but went to hell anyways for being such dicks about it."-- lj user abunai
Ad Nauseam: Commercials that make you puke.
God made us sisters. Prozac made us friends.
It's 3:30 A.M. Do you know where your mail is?
Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.-- Robert Green Ingersoll
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired-- Robert Frost
First law of debate: Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.
"This site is intended for people over 18, but only because kids shoot each other if they hear the word 'fuck'."
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.-- Robert Bly
You see, the conditional modifers depend on certain variables like the day of the week, the number of players, chair positions, things like that. [...] There can't be more than a dozen or two that are pertinent.-- Robert Asprin ("Little Myth Marker")
I have so little sex appeal that my gynecologist calls me 'sir.'-- Joan Rivers
I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. Especially Bob Dylan.-- Jim Rosenberg
Most Gracious Queen we thee implore,
To go away and sin no more,
But if that effort be too great,
To go away at any rate.-- Lord Colchester
Saying that Java is better just because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is better just because it works on all genders
There's a difference between knowing something and realizing it.
"All truth passes through three stages: first, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; third, it is accepted as being self-evident"-- Schopenhauer
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
"Remember the Golden Rule: Those who have the gold make the rules."
"Make lots of money", "enjoy the work", "operate within the law": choose 2-- Brian Anderson
"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."-- G. K. Chesterton
Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused, but on a higher level.-- Enrico Fermi
Rational, adj: Devoid of all delusions save those of observation, experience and reflection.-- Ambrose Bierce
Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.
As far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.-- Bertrand Russell
Then who's been going through my garbage?
-- Andrew Solovay
Usually we call it "reading your postings"; your terminology is so much more succinct, though.-- Roger Klorese
Reporter to Ghandi: What do you think of western civilisation?
Ghandi: I think it would be a very good idea.
The UNIX system has a command, 'nice', which allows a user to voluntarily reduce the priority of his process, in order to be nice to other users. Nobody ever uses it.-- Andy Tanenbaum
UNIX is a scrawny kid from New Jersey who became something of a local hero, but is now middle-aged with a beer gut. Mach tries to turn modern UNIX into RoboCop; POSIX is an attempt to make UNIX more attractive to corporate America with silicone implants and Tammy Fay Bakker's double-parked Maybelline truck.-- Eric P. Scott
The fewer clear facts you have in support of an opinion, the stronger your emotional attachment to that opinion.
Acute Angle: A very attractive early Briton.
Don't intterupt me when I'm talking to myself
Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.
Many times one is asked to "listen" to the same dusty old set of lies, factual errors, hate and stupidity that some fool thinks is an acceptable ethical system. Why bother? Believe me, it gets old real fast.-- Bob Lodenkamper
"I'd probably be famous now if I wasn't such a good waitress."-- Jane Siberry
"You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it."-- Wendell Berry
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."-- Thomas Jefferson
"Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers."
"I think we better split up."
"Good idea. We can do more damage that way." (Ghostbusters)
Power doesn't always corrupt. Power always reveals. When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.
Please... there is a 'u' after every 'q' in French. (Well, almost; the exceptions are 'cinq', 'iraqien', 'coq'--five Iraqi cocks.)-- Frederic Maffray
"Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself."-- Harvey Fierstein
If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh.
"I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world."-- Russell Baker
Never wrestle with a pig. You'll both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
"I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her."-- Ellen DeGeneres
"I don't have to choose, nyaah, nyaaah, nah nyaah nyaah."-- Sandra Hereld
"Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed."-- R.S. Ingersoll
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.-- Oscar Wilde
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.-- Emerson
In order to become the master the politician poses as the servant.-- Charles De Gaulle
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.-- George Bernard Shaw
The door opened. It opened very slowly, and with the maximum amount of creak. Simple neglect wouldn't have caused that depth of groan; you'd need careful work with hot water over a period of weeks.-- Terry Pratchett (Wyrd Sisters)
It seems more people are bitten by new yorkers per year than by sharks.
More to the point, new yorkers can be anywhere, not being limited by water. Fear them.
Imagination, n: A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.-- Ambrose Bierce
"There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have."-- Don Herold
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.-- La Bruyere
"And is it right, butterfly, they like you better framed and dried?"-- Tori Amos (Butterfly)
We have gone from a world of concentrated knowledge and wisdom to one of distributed ignorance. And we know and understand less while being increasingly capable.
-- Peter Cochrane
"Everyone makes mistakes. It is what you do afterwards that counts."
Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time. (A coffee cup)
"I am amazed at radio DJ's today. I am firmly convinced that AM on my radio stands for Absolute Moron. I will not begin to tell you what FM stands for."-- Jasper Carrott
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.-- Ambrose Bierce
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
If you're not part of the freaks, you're part of the boredom.-- Perry Farrell
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.-- Elbert Hubbard
Humor is just another defense against the universe-- Mel Brooks
There's an argument to be made that beneath every cynic there is a frustrated romantic. (Fringe)
Nobody ever forgets where he buried a hatchet.-- Kin Hubbard
What is inconceivable about the universe is that it is at all conceivable.-- Albert Einstein
Organized Religion is like Organized Crime; it preys on peoples' weakness, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate.-- Mike Hermann
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.-- Albert Einstein
People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."-- Frank Herbert
Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit.-- Elbert Hubbard
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.-- Anais Nin
Sodd's Second Law: Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur.
Economics exists merely to employ economists.
Serving drinks on aircraft causes turbulence.
Brain, n: The apparatus with which we think that we think.-- Ambrose Bierce
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?-- Albert Einstein
Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.-- Albert Einstein
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.-- Kipling
"If hackers ran the world, there'd be no war. Lots of accidents, maybe."
If I had a degree, it would be in Literary Criticism and Cinema Studies. I would never consider a technical degree; how-to stuff, I think, should be self-taught or trade school taught. Training has nothing to do with education, which is what belongs in universities.-- Roger Klorese
It's okay. Life doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be lived. (Dexter)
To learn who rules over you, find out who you are not allowed to criticize
Erotic is when you use a feather. Kinky is when you use the whole chicken.
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.-- Samuel Butler
Law of Cat Elongation:
A cat can make her body long enough to reach just about any counter top that has anything remotely interesting on it.
The water under the lid was inky black and, according to rumour, bottomless; the Ogg grandchildren were encouraged to believe that monsters from the dawn of time dwelt in its depths, since Nanny believed that a bit of thrilling and pointless terror was an essential ingredient of the magic of childhood.
In summer she used it as a beer cooler.-- Terry Pratchett (Wyrd Sisters)
"A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity."-- Robert Frost
You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him think.-- Elbert Hubbard
A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is to computing what a McDonalds Certified Food Specialist is to fine cuisine.
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.-- Edsger Dijkstra
The weirder you are, the better you have to be if you still want to get paid.-- Ben Aveling
PROGRAM, n.: A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages. v. tr.: To engage in a pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
Future: That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.-- Ambrose Bierce
"To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation."-- St. Augustine
Scientists find wonder in everything, except extremely dull papers on quality assurance.
-- Telo (#xkcd)
"I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy."-- Bern Williams
"O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?"-- Dante Alighieri
The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are going to the stars.-- Robert A. Heinlein
Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
Christianity poisoned Eros, but Eros did not die, it merely degenerated into a vice.-- Friedrich Nietzsche
If the pen is mightier than the sword, what happens when you run out of ink?
"Writers aren't exactly people...they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person."-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world."
Pride is what we have. Vanity is what others have.
Half of the people in the world are below average.
I'm sure we can arrange an academic scholarship for Detritus. Troll cheerleaers would be nice: 'Two... four.... er.. many... lots'.-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful-- just stupid.)-- Robert A. Heinlein
In a cemetery:
"Persons are prohibited from picking flowers from any but their own graves."
Let's get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.-- Robert Benchley
I maintain that it is my studies of humanities subjects that have given me my analytical abilities and the empathy it takes to work on user satisfaction issues, and the enabling technology of computers is a minor nuts'n'bolts thing, overvalued as "education."-- Roger Klorese
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matter compared to what lies within us.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.-- Albert Einstein
In business, your judged by what you say... nothing can kill the confidence of a perspective client faster then a proposal littered with grammatical, usage or punctuation errors. (Ad for RightWriter, The Grammar Checker)
Use the best: Linux for servers, Mac for graphics, Windows for Solitaire.
Reason, v.i: To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.-- Ambrose Bierce
Ad from newspaper:
'Dinner Special--Turkey $2.35; Chicken or Beef $2.25; Children $2.00.'
"Whenever I say something they find hard to hear /
they chalk it up to my anger and never to their own fear."-- Ani Difranco (Pretty Girl)
May you get to Heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you're dead.-- Irish Proverb
The more we disagree, the bigger the chance that at least one of us is right.
"My work is much richer than my life."-- Tori Amos
Love is like a fruit. It may look good, but you shouldn't bite in it until it's ripe.-- Nick Hertl
I don't like to spread gossip, but what else can you do with it?-- Sandy Hereld
Don't you talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster.-- Terry Pratchett
Ah, twitter, where people will be deeply outraged for one to six hours, before forgetting forever.
Everybody is clever nowadays. You cannot go anywhere without meeting clever people. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.-- Oscar Wilde
Ask a man which way he is going to vote and he will probably tell you. Ask him however why and vagueness is all.-- Bernard Levin
"I think your cats need tuning - according to a couple of quick measurements on a recently calibrated reference cat, the dominant frequency of a correctly adjusted cat should be 12Hz +/-20%."-- Lionel Lauer (a.s.r)
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.-- Albert Einstein
"Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind."-- Terry Pratchett
The singing wasn't particularly good. The only word the singer appeared to know was "la," but she was making it work hard.-- Terry Pratchett (Wyrd Sisters)
At a doctors office in Rome:
"Specialist in women and other diseases"
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.-- H. L. Mencken
"Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after."-- Anne Lindbergh
Adultery - two wrong people doing the right thing.
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
A poet is someone who is astonished by everything.
"She who has the biggest sword gets to be the biggest bitch."-- Kymberli Morris
"It's a strange thing, but every sentient race has its own version of these Swedish meatballs. I suspect it's one of those great universal mysteries which will either never be explained or which would drive you mad if you ever learned the truth."-- G'Kar (Babylon 5)
The two women exchanged the kind of glance women use when no knife is handy.-- Ellery Queen
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.-- Albert Einstein
Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I need more tact. I never say anything I want to say very well. I'm even worse at what I don't want to say.
The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield.-- Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)
No matter what temperature the room is, it's always room temperature.-- Steven Wright
"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."-- Ingrid Bergman
"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good."-- Robert Graves
"As long as the music's loud enough, we won't hear the world falling apart."-- Derek Jarman
I try to make computers say things like "You have 60 seconds to achieve safe distance".-- Terry Pratchett
Law of Hydrodynamics: When a body is immersed in water, the telephone rings.
"Life was so much easier when your clothes didn't match and boys had cooties"
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.-- Albert Einstein
"I'll fight for you, but I will not compete for you... There's a difference."
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
"This was, apparently, beyond her ken. So far beyond her ken that she was well into barbie territory."-- J.D. Baldwin
What goes around usually gets dizzy and falls over.
If the mind were exercised as much as the mouth, we would be a race of geniuses.
Nerb, n: a noun used as a verb. For example: ''They didn't language the proclamation very well''. nerb, nerbing, nerbed v. the act of using nouns as verbs in a sentence.-- Rich Hill
The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.-- Chinese Proverb
You, along with other heterosexuals, clearly have the power to ensure that my child be taught by her teachers that homosexuality is wrong or to pretend that we don't exist. You, collectively, have the power to deny her the protection of her stepmother's health insurance should I become unable to work. You have the power to make sure that my pension benefits are unavailable to my partner. You have the power to ensure that in order to protect my family I must pretend in public that my partner and I do not have the deeply committed relationship that we do in fact share. You have the power to send my child the message that her family is not real and her parents are bad people. I do not believe that it is in your best interest to do these things. More importantly, I will never, ever, acquiesce in them. I cannot.-- Doretta Schrock
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.-- Bertrand Russell
Being abstract is something profoundly different from being vague... The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.-- Edsger Dijkstra
When I hear someone say they give '110%' to whatever they're doing, it makes me feel good inside, because I know I'm not as big a moron as that person is.-- Jim Rosenberg
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.
Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.-- Woody Allen
Common sense: The collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.-- Albert Einstein
"At age 20, we worry about what others think of us.
At 40, we don't care what they think of us.
At 60, we discover they haven't been thinking of us at all."-- Ann Landers
Accountant - someone who can put two and two together and make a living from it.
If you put a frog in a pot of boiling water it will jump to safety, but if you put that same frog in a pot of cold water and turn on the heat, it will stay and be scalded to death.-- Everett Dirksen
Law of diminishing IQ:
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group.
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future.
"Bother," said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
"The first thing to remember about Unix is that nothing is ever spelled correctly."-- Steve Lidie
Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
Hang in there, retirement is only thirty years away!
"It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny."-- James Fenimore Cooper
Don't publicly appear clever. It is a real nuisance.
"If angst were a popsicle, I'd be suckin' the stick."
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.-- Robert A. Heinlein
"There's very little advice in men's magazines, because men think, 'I know what I'm doing. Just show me somebody naked.'"-- Jerry Seinfeld
Secret, n: Something you tell to one person at a time.
"In California everyone goes to a therapist, is a therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist."-- Truman Capote
"A nuclear power plant is infinently safer than eating, because 300 people choke to death on food every year."-- Dixy Lee Ray
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation.
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.-- George Bernard Shaw
"And really, what's so important that it can't wait until after noon, anyway?"
"I don't know who Jim Henson is but I've heard he has his hand in a lot of things around here."-- Kermit the Frog (in 1972)
If it wasn't for the optimist the pessimist would never know how happy he isn't.
Moral behavior is survival behavior above the individual level.-- Robert Heinlein
"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."-- Mark Twain
Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding.-- Mahatma Gandhi
Life is like a dog-sled team; If you ain't the lead dog, the scene never changes.
�We have a saying, my people. �Don�t kill if you can wound, don�t wound if you can subdue, don�t subdue if you can pacify, and don�t raise your hand at all until you�ve first extended it.��-- Wonder Woman
The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen.-- Tommy Smothers
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.-- Oscar Wilde
WITTICISM, n. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke."-- Ambrose Bierce
"Ergotism is what you get if you overuse the word "therefore". Egotism on the other hand is a form of "I" strain."-- Paul Martin
I want to die like my grandfather, peaceful and in my sleep - not screaming like the other people in the car.
"The west won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-westerners never do."-- Samuel P. Huntington
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.-- Albert Einstein
I have had solemnly explained to me the audible differences between digital data (S/PDIF) carried over coax and carried over optical (coax is bassier, apparently).
-- Tag
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses.-- Michael Swaine
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.-- Andy Rooney
"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.-- Elbert Hubbard
Great Lover, n: A man who can breathe through his ears.
There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast.
There are multitudes in me. But not if I have to behave.
Patageometry, n: The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant under brain transplants.
There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.-- Francis Bacon
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
"Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent."
The person discriminated against -- whether black or white -- is undoubtedly hurt, but there is a real difference between the institutional impact and intensity of the hurt suffered as part of an invidious pattern or racial subordination and as part of a benevolent pattern of racial equalization. As Oliver Wendell Homes once put it: "Even a dog understands the difference between being stumbled over and being kicked."-- Alan Dershowitz
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown, but only 4 to extend your middle finger and tell someone to "bite me!"
Romano: You're one Grade A bitch. You know that, Kerry?
Weaver: No, Robert. I'm your boss. And as long as I am, you're my bitch. Now, get your ass back to work. (ER)
I pity you if you feel that the 'support' of such fair-weather 'friends' is more important than self-respect. Such friends offer no support, but rather slavery in a different cell: that of their approval.-- Clay Bond
The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for being right.
Monster AI is still in development. Some monsters may seem to be ignoring you until you actually shoot them. This is because as small aliens they refused to eat their humans and as a result suffered brain damage. We will be taking measures to ensure that all aliens receive a proper diet before the final release.-- Quake 2 Demo disclaimer
Is there anything safer than TV-style seriousness--i.e., delivering the conventional wisdom as if it were the deeply important truth?-- Pauline Kael
"Well, let's just say, 'if your VCR is still blinking 12:00,you don't want Linux'".-- Bruce Perens
These lovers of esoterica seem to derive a great deal of intellectual satisfaction out of not quite understanding what they are doing.
"If houses were built the way software is built,
the first woodpecker would bring down civilization."
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't make eight cats pull a sled through the snow.
A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.-- Albert Einstein
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.-- Woody Allen
Adventure: The land between entertainment and panic.
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.-- W. Somerset Maugham
The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.
Wit is a form of arousal.
We challenge one another to be funnier and smarter.
It's high-energy play.
It's the way friends make love to one another.-- Anne Gottlieb
"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."-- Umberto Eco
To be modest is to understand oneself as being capable of all men's weaknesses.-- Bernard of Clairvaux
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava let 'em go because, man, they're gone.-- Jack Handey
Love will find a way. Indifference will find an excuse.
If I'm not back in five minutes, wait longer. (Ace Ventura)
"Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons for it afterwards."-- Soren F. Petersen
I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.-- Kierkegaard
Every four seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this woman and stop her.
The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.-- Robert Frost
You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing things with logic. True power is restraint. If words control you that means everyone else can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.
A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.-- J. Pierpoint Morgan
Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.-- Henry Miller
"If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him."-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"Goldilocks is about property rights. Little Red Riding Hood is a tale of seduction, rape, murder, and cannibalism."-- Bernard J. Hibbits
"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."-- Mark Twain
Academe, n:
An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.
Academy, n:
[from Academe] A modern school where football is taught.-- Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
Headline: Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
Join the army: meet interesting people, then kill them.
He who laughs last probably didn't understand the joke.
"I wish I could drink like a lady
I can take one or two at the most.
Three and I'm under the table --
Four and I'm under the host!"
You think Oedipus had a problem--Adam was Eve's mother.
The best way to accelerate hardware is at 9.8 m/sec/sec.
You should have quit while you were only slighly behind.
We've built a deep, dark hole for your mind, and you get down in there and stay there no matter what, because if you don't obey, we'll take away everything and you'll be good and sorry, and no complaining either. Shut up! Don't EVER think. We're your mommy and your daddy and your teacher and your preacher, and we love you so much, that's why we're setting your switch to OFF. When you're older, you'll realize what a sacrifice you made for us, er, I mean, we made for you.-- Jess Anderson
To some extent any use of language (and conceptual categories) distorts reality by coercing instances into types.-- Rob Bernardo
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.-- Bertrand Russell
AFPer: Terry, what the heck was going on at the end of Strata? I've just re-read the ending again and come up with another possible explanation which takes the total number into double figures.
TP: See? Other people would just have given you one or two. Amazing value, I think.-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.-- Dr. Seuss
Quality without creativity is pompous;
Creativity without quality is infantile.-- John Cerruti
Arithmetic: An obscure art no longer practiced in the world's developed countries.
Never run from anything immortal. It only attracts their attention. (The Last Unicorn)
"Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they find laughable."
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves but wiser people are full of doubts.-- Bertrand Russell
Odo: That's a very personal question.
Jadzia Dax: I'm sorry, but after seven lifetimes, impersonal questions aren't much fun anymore. (Star Trek: DS9 (Shadowplay))
"The stone age was marked by man's clever use of crude tools; the information age, to date, has been marked by man's crude use of clever tools."
The experience of programming Windows vs the experience of programming NeXTStep is like going to the dentist and having a root canal without anaesthetic vs going to the dentist and having your gums cleaned with some nitrous oxide thrown in for the entertainment side of things.-- Bill Bumgarner
If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.-- Albert Einstein
A winning formula can be obliterated simply by the change to an ingorant new manager.
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr
He believes in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who does not understand them.-- George Bernard Shaw
"Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ..."
Adultery: Putting yourself in someone else's position.
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.-- K (MiB)
The use of either 'PC' or 'lighten up' is usually enough to cause me to junk an article: the former indicates that the writer is a raving moron incapable of original thought, while the latter is a pretty clear indication that the writer is an insensitive clod.-- Melinda Shore
Only the good die young. Note the average age in Congress.
By working faithfully 8 hours a day you may eventually get to be a boss and work 12 hours a day.-- Robert Frost
"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs."-- Joseph Weizenbaum
Private faces in public places /
Are wiser and nicer /
Than public faces in private places.-- W.H. Auden
Grandpa: "I'm an old man, no one listens to me."
Lisa: "I'm a young girl, no one listens to me."
Homer: "I'm a white male aged 18 to 49, everyone listens to me, no matter how dumb my suggestions are."
*homer walks over to the cabinet and takes out a can labeled "Nuts and Gum: Together At Last"* (The Simpsons)
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion-- Ambrose Bierce
"Don't keep a man guessing too long--he's sure to find the answer somewhere else."-- Mae West
I used to have an internal modem, but it made me walk funny.
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.-- Abraham Kapla
Robin: I wanna make sure you're serious about turning over a new leaf. I need a sign.
Poison Ivy: How about "Slippery When Wet"? (Batman & Robin)
"I hate it when people quote the Bible to defend themselves, because it's not like Jesus wrote the Bible. His friends did. And you know how your friends always fuck up stories. Jesus is probably like, 'I didn't walk on water. You were drunk, and I was in a puddle.'"-- S.L. Pouthier
"Not all moderators and FAQ-compilers eventually become power-mad and insane. Some of them started out that way."
Murphy's Eleventh Law of Computing:
A computer program will follow your orders, but rarely your intentions.
"There are very few personal problems that cannot be resolved by application of suitable quantities of duct tape."
Even if you're paranoid, maybe the guy with the chainsaw really is after you.
Descartes described how his father taught him how to swim by throwing him into the Seine: "I sink, therefore I swam."
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.-- Otto von Bismarck
I save about twenty drafts -- that's ten meg of disc space -- and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped.-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
This idea (of not noticing the identity of certain repetitive events) is interesting when we apply it to ourselves. Are there highly repetitive events which occur in our lives time and time again, and which we handle in the identical stupid way each time, because we don't have enough of an overview to perceive their sameness?-- Douglas Hofstadter
"I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end."-- Douglas Adams
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing milk bone underwear."-- Norm (Cheers)
Dead men tell no tales, but then, neither do mimes.-- Wade Kwon
It's a joke. Like the funny kind, but different.
Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Destinesia: The act of entering a room and forgetting why.
Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
"Relationships are hard. It's like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay, and before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp."-- Bob Ettinger
People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I once listed all the good things I did over the past year, and then turned them into resolution form and backdated them. That was a good feeling.-- Robert Fulghum
"Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe."-- Edmund Burke
The goodness of morals depends upon what the morals say, not just the fact that they are morals.-- Rob Bernardo
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
"If you think about it, somewhere there's a Logrus master with Amelia Earhart, a whole squadron of P-51's, and a mile-high pile of socks and keys."
"Love is not the dying note of a twisted violin - it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring."-- S.J. Perelman
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
"Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."-- Hermann Goering (at the Nuremberg Trials, April 18, 1946)
I'm a daughter of a minister and I love chasing the dark. That which is hidden. I like licking it like ice cream.-- Tori Amos
Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Relationships are like sharks, Liz. If you’re not left with several bite marks after intercourse, then something’s wrong.-- Jenna
Quality Of Life: What an industrialized nation is said to offer when enough of its citizens are suffering from terminal stress. (Cynic's Dictionary)
If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside.-- Robert Cringely ("InfoWorld")
There is no CyberSpace, just a lot of people pretending.-- Sam Kass
Magrat looked up guiltily. She had been deep in conversation with the Fool, although it was the kind of conversation where both parties spend a lot of time looking at their feet and picking at their fingernails. Ninety per cent of true love is acute, ear-burning embarassment.-- Terry Pratchett (Wyrd Sisters)
When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad I'm better.-- Mae West
If you think that mental illness interferes with financial success, just look at the average television evangelist.
Many topics summarily dismissed as "idiocy" here have been brought up on a regular basis for far too long by a seemingly endless succession of half-wits who think their feculant pearls of wisdom are somehow new, and deserving of a carefully crafted response.-- Bob Lodenkamper
"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand."-- Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle)
Modern times are an awkward spectacle. On the one hand, our public selves compete for scarce window space, for the opportunity to see in and to where power is decided and used. On the other, private life recedes like a glacier, a translucent corner of heaven meant only to be photographed, never settled.-- Revel
Antisocial arrogance is only for those of us who deserve it.
The Two Rules of Success: 1. Don't tell everything you know.
Thinking is not a panacea, but to paraphrase Gandhi, maybe it would be a good idea to try some.-- Jess Anderson
"The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience."
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there. A theologian is the one who finds it.
"If you're one in a million, there are ten of you in New York."
A conscience is what hurts when everything else feels good.
Occam's eraser: The philosophical principle that even the simplest solution is bound to have something wrong with it.
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.-- Carl Sagan
History, n. An account, mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.-- Ambrose Bierce
"There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other."-- La Rouchefoucauld
The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."-- Mark Twain
Why do people settle their minds? When they see or while they know that about 3 billion other people don't agree with them, why do they hardly consider a serious talk with one of them?
Reasonable, adj: Accessible to the infection of our own opinions. Hospitable to persuasion, dissuasion and evasion.-- Ambrose Bierce
"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila."-- Mitch Radcliffe
"There comes a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide."-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I read somewhere that 77% of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23% who are apparently doing quite well for themselves."-- Jerry Garcia
"Public opinion sets bounds to every government, and is the real sovereign in every free one."-- James Madison
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.-- Bertrand Russell
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead. (RFC 1925)
What I am saying is that gay is good because it is, not because we can't help it. Love is good because it's love, not because we can't choose to love in any other fashion.-- Cory Kerens
That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?"-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.
Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time.
"Virtue has never been as respectable as money."-- Mark Twain
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.-- Mark Twain
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
Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists.
"Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know, most people's fantasies are pretty sad."-- Frederik Pohl
So where are all the lust-crazed engineering groupies that my college recruiter talked about ?-- James Knowles
"My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful."-- Hermann Weyl
"I understand your question and the answer is 'You're thinking too hard.'"-- Jose Garcia
I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.-- Mark Twain
98% of us Americans are hard-working people. It's the other 2% that give us a bad reputation. Then again, we did elect them.
"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."-- George Bernard Shaw
I used to get high on life, but I've built up a tolerance.
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur." (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
You can't remember the plot of the Dr. Who movie because it didn't have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together. It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
I had a deprived childhood, you see. I had lots of other kids to play with and my parents bought me outdoor toys and refused to ill-treat me, so it never occurred to me to seek solitary consolation with a good book.-- Terry Pratchett
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry.
Hence University education.-- George Bernard Shaw
"People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use."-- Kierkegaard
PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals.-- Jon Ribbens
Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.-- Confucius
The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.-- Gloria Leonard
"The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."-- Robert Frost
Lecture, n: Where the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either one.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet renounce controversy are people who want crops without ploughing the ground.-- Frederick Douglass
Lunatic Asylum, n: The place where optimism most flourishes.
Sometimes before bed, I look in the mirror and wonder just what I'll be doing in ten years. Then I look at the clock and think, 'Probably flossing.'-- April Van Scherpe
"A photograph never grows old. You and I change, people change all through the months and years, but a photograph always remains the same. How nice to look at a photograph of mother or father taken many years ago. You see them as you remember them. But as people live on, they change completely. That is why I think a photograph can be kind."-- Albert Einstein
Good sex is like good bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.-- Mae West
I think that sick people in Ankh-Morpork generally go to a vet. It's generally a better bet. There's more pressure on a vet to get it right. People say "it was god's will" when granny dies, but they get angry when they lose a cow.-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.
The way some people find fault, you'd think there was a reward.
"It stands for 'Sales and Marketing', you depraved monkeys."
"A rose by any other name, Stef."
(userfriendly.org)
And even priests were coming to spend some time in it, because of the collection of religious books. There were one thousand, two hundred and eighty-three religious books in there now, each one--according to itself--the only one any man need ever read. It was sort of nice to see them all together.-- Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)
“If you ever need a reminder of how awesome you are, just ask. I think everyone is awesome. I think the garbage man is awesome.”-- Amanda Firefox
Rincewind rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced him that he wasn't mad because, if he was mad, that left no word at all to describe some of the people he met.-- Terry Pratchett (Sourcery)
Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it.-- Terry Pratchett
If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.
"Ah! How sweet coffee tastes! Lovelier than a thousand kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! I must have coffee..."-- J. S. Bach
No need crying over spilt milk. Unless, of course, you're a truck driver and you just lost nearly 3800 gallons on the interstate - then it's okay to cry.-- Dan Lantz
I got my driver's license photo taken out of focus on purpose. Now when I get pulled over the cop looks at it (moving it nearer and farther, trying to see it clearly)... and says, "Here, you can go."-- Steven Wright
"I wanted to make a little spot in the context of the record where there was this break in the action. In the midst of this buildup of these ever-growing, terrible machines, I just wanted to remember that there is somewhere... else."-- Trent Reznor
"The fickleness of the women whom I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me."-- George Bernard Shaw
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The job of the poet is to render the world -- to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.-- Mark Van Doren
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.-- Dr. Who ("Face of Evil")
Choconiverous, adj: Biting off the head of the chocolate Easter bunny first.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
"I always say it was great for God to send his only son, but I'm waiting for him to send his only daughter. Then things will be really great."-- Candace Pert
"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."
There are three sorts of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.-- Oscar Wilde
I listen so that I may decipher the mystery of myself and become more whole.-- Richard Moss
Computers save man a lot of guesswork, but then, so do bikini's.
"In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... That would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."-- Martin Luther King
"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell."-- Joan Crawford
In the end, man is not entirely guilty — he did not start history. Nor is he wholly innocent — he continues it.-- Albert Camus
"Y'ever notice how Man is often likened to a virus or a cancer, spreading across the globe, using up resources, changing ecosystems? How come these people never talk about the prehistoric plants and trees that spread across the earth, converting all that carbon dioxide to oxygen and leaching nitrogen and other nutrients out of the soil? As their dead carcasses piled on top of each other over the millenia, they decomposed into pools of hydrocarbons, forming petroleum and coal. Directly and indirectly, plants are the true despoilers of the planet, taking pure and sweet solar energy and perverting it into hideous (dare I say, evil) carbon compounds.
"'Green' alternatives my ass! Kill a plant today and stop the destruction of Earth's pristine beauty!"-- Gerry Deckert
Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.-- Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)
When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.-- Dave Barry
The course of true love never did run smooth.-- Shakespeare
Computer Science without FORTRAN and COBOL is like birthday cake without ketchup and mustard.
Virtue does not always demand a heavy sacrifice -- only the willingness to make it when necessary.-- Frederick Dunn
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.-- Oscar Wilde
Stand and fight, you misbegotten spawn of the perverse breeding between a pixie and a squirrel!
Patience is something you admire greatly in the driver behind you but not in the one ahead of you.
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.-- John Cleese
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.-- William James
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."-- Carl Jung
I like the kind of people that can hold on to the the feeling they have after the song or movie ends.
Therapy is expensive. Poppin' bubble wrap is cheap! You choose.
What part of "AWW C'MON, PLEASE??" don't you understand? (T-Shirt)
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow they may cancel your VISA.
Those who say money can't buy happiness don't know where to shop.
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.-- Dick Brandon
Dear Miss ---
I have read about sixteen pages of your manuscript ... I suffered exactly the same treatment at the hands of my teachers who disliked me for my independence and passed over me when they wanted assistants ... keep your manuscript for your sons and daughters, in order that they may derive consolation from it and not give a damn for what their teachers tell them or think of them. ... There is too much education altogether.-- Albert Einstein (To a student)
For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.-- Terry Pratchett
The Pet Principle:
No matter which side of the door your dog or cat is on, it is the wrong side.
"Doesn't anyone remember one of the biggest problems the Super Conducting Super Collider project ran into during construction in Texas? It wasn't politics... It was the Mecca of fire ants in all the extremely high-voltage conduits, junctions, transformers, and other high-strength field areas. The ants would eat the insulating compounds off and sit there basking in the emf high they apparently got. Occasionally, an ant would offer itself as sacrifice, prompting some Damn Big Breakers to blow..." -- RISKS
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
VB is very useful for allowing non programmers to prove they cant program.-- Druck
I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses.
That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines writtenby the hand of a master and recognize them as our own,
as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faithto believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.
Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself,
Is capable of uttering profound truths.
We all derive from the same source.
There is no mystery about the origin of things.
We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians;
we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.-- Henry Miller, Sexus
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life."-- Terry Pratchett
We may begin to see reality differently simply because the computer ... provides a different angle on reality.-- Heinz Pagels
What is wanted is not the will to believe but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.-- Bertrand Russell
Education, then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great machinery.-- Horace Mann
"Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength."
Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.-- Dandemis
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
"You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone."-- John Ciardi
"The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it."-- Doug Larson
Murphy's First Law of Computing:
Whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.
For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.-- R. Clopton
"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."-- Tom Stoppard
Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.-- Earl Wilson
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.-- Mae West.
"Never go off on tangents, which are lines that intersect a curve at only one point and were discovered by Euclid, who lived in the 6th century, which was an era dominated by the Goths, who lived in what we now know as Poland." (Nov. 1998 issue of Infosystems Executive)
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.-- Thomas Jefferson
"I figured out why I'm not getting seriously rich. I write newspaper columns. Nobody ever makes newspaper columns into Major Motion Pictures starring Tom Cruise. The best you can hope for, with a newspaper column, is that people will like it enough to attach it to their refrigerators with magnets shaped like fruit."-- Dave Barry
IF YOU CAN'T FIX IT WITH A HAMMER, YOU'VE GOT AN ELECTRICAL PROBLEM
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."-- Voltaire
Man in helicopter: Excuse me, where am I?
Passerby: You're in a helicopter about 20 ft. off the ground.
Man in helicopter: You must be in tech support.
Passerby: I am. How did you know?
Man in helicopter: Your answer was technically correct but completely useless.
Passerby: You must be a businessman.
Man in helicopter: I am. How did you know?
Passerby: Because you don't know where you are or where you need to go, but you expect me to be able to help. You're no worse off than you were before, but now you think it's my fault.
At any time, at any place, our snipers can drop you. Have a nice day.
Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."-- Groucho Marx
I'm always making a comeback, but nobody ever tells me where I've been.-- Billie Holiday
"I would rather believe that God did not exist than believe that He was indifferent."-- George Sand
In art, as in no other form of endeavor, there is meaning apart from success.-- Joseph Conrad
Writing a Haiku
in seventeen syllables
is very diffic-
"We are the flaming, exploding, CGI-movie saturated MTV generation after all. If it isn't bright pink and green, naked, on fire and computer animated, I just yawn and walk away." (Someone on Slashdot)
"I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?"-- Jean Kerr
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that your wife will give you for free.
You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you have to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.-- Fred Rogers
Mort isn't fashionable UK movie material -- there's no parts in it for Hugh or Emma, it's not set in Sheffield, and no one shoves drugs up their bum...-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surely curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.-- Robert A. Heinlein
"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he's supposed to be doing at that moment."-- Robert Benchley
All New: The software is not compatible with any previous version.
"Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged about forever."
I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.-- Rob Pike (on X)
"Greek mythology says that whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. I'd never been sure whether 'mad' meant crazy or angry. Either way, the gods were working on me pretty good right now."-- Darien Fawkes (The Invisible Man)
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."-- Mario Andretti
"Some would sooner die than think. In fact, they often do."-- B. Russell
The music is the magic carpet that the other things take naps on.-- Tori Amos
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the world.
Pedaeration, n: Achieving the perfect body heat by having one leg under the sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."-- Robert A. Heinlein
There's no problem so large it can't be solved by killing the user off, deleting their files, closing their account and reporting their REAL earnings to the IRS.-- Bastard Operator From Hell
"How many of you ever started dating somene because you were too lazy to commit suicide?"-- Judy Tenuta
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.-- Oscar Wilde
"I'm the Queen of the nerds. I love nerds- by which I mean, not a cool, bitchin' person. I guess I was a cool nerd. I wasn't shuffling my feet in the corner of the playground, I was the homecoming queen, but then, all the nerds voted for me."-- Tori Amos
His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, `You can't trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink.'-- Terry Pratchett
The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It's a good non-specific symptom. I'm a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you a good phoney fever is a deadlock, but you get a nervous mother, you could wind up in a doctor's office - that's worse than school. You fake a stomach cramp, and when you're bent over, moaning and wailing, you lick your palms. It's a little childish and stupid, but then so is high school.-- Ferris (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.-- Robert Hutchins ("Great Books", 1954)
"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."-- T. S. Eliot
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor): That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have gotten.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud. After a while, you realise the pig is enjoying it.-- Jamie Lawrence
Sign in a Nairobi restaurant:
"Customers who find our waitresses rude ought to see the manager."
"If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd everytime, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side."-- Orson Scott Card
"Our country was founded on a distrust of government. Our founding fathers gave power to the people to keep an eye on government. So when politicians say "Trust me" they're actually being very unamerican."-- David Duchovny (X Files)
Materialism: buying things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people that don't matter.
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you
I once talked a guy out of blowing up the Sears tower, but I can't talk my wife out of the bathroom or my daughter off the phone. (The Negotiator)
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.-- George Bernard Shaw
Is there no accounting for taste? There isn't even a budget for it.-- Sean Levy
One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence.-- Bertrand Russell
When in danger, when in doubt,
run in circles, scream and shout.
"Aaaarghhhh."
This was the noise made as he missed the lurching Thing by several meters and was realising that, if you have tied a rope to the top of a very high and extremely solid stone tower and are now swinging towards it, failing to hit something on the way is an error which you will regret for the rest of your truncated life.-- Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)
2000 B.C. - Here, eat this root.
1000 A.D. - That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.
1850 A.D. - That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.
1940 A.D. - That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.
1985 A.D. - That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic.
2000 A.D. - That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.-- Brian Kernighan
"Men are like pumpkins. It seems like all the good ones are either taken or they've had everything scraped out of their heads with a spoon."
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.-- Confucius
Ad: Vacation special: Have your home exterminated. Get rid of aunts.
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."-- Albert Einstein
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.-- Goethe
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.-- H. L. Mencken
Boys are cute, but food is cuter.-- Tori Amos
PMS, n: the short period of time when women act like men do all the time.
Too much of a good thing is wonderful.-- Mae West
Whoever said women don't like porn just isn't talking to the right women. Or showing them the right porn.
"For flavor, instant sex will never supercede the stuff you have to peel and cook."-- Quentin Crisp
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 bizarrely inexeplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.-- Douglas Adams (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio scripts)
'The main reception foyer was almost empty but Ford nevertheless weaved his way through it.'
(Ford making his way out of Milliways whilst under the influence of enough alchol to make a rhino sing) (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
"The BBC is like a sausage machine: whatever you put in one end, you get Dr. Who out the other".-- Neil Gaiman
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives by make-believe.-- W. Somerset Maugham
After a time, you may find that "having" is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as "wanting." It is not logical, but it is often true.-- Spock (Star Trek, "Amok Time")
A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten.-- Doug Larson
Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead
Just walk beside me and be my friend-- Albert Camus
"No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved."-- Mignon McLaughlin
Abnormal, adj:
Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.-- Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
"The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood."-- George Bernard Shaw
"Everybody winds up kissing the wrong person good night."-- Andy Warhol
The ballast of factual information, so far from being just about to sink us, is growing daily less. The factual burden of a science varies inversely with its degree of maturity. As a science advances, particular facts are comprehended within, and therefore in a sense annihilated by, general statements of steadily increasing explanatory power and compass--whereupon the facts need no longer be known explicitly, that is, spelled out and kept in mind. In all sciences we are being progressively relieved of the burden of singular instances, the tyranny of the particular. We need no longer record the fall of every apple.-- Peter Medawar ("Pluto's Republic")
Perpetual motion, illustrated: Try putting a slinky on an escalator.
"Does it occur to you, the fallibility of CIT thinking? Flux-thinking. You have prophetic dreams, remember? You can dream about a man drinking a glass of milk. A week later you can see Yanni drinking tea at lunch and if seeing him do that has a high shock-value, you'll super the dream-state right over him, you'll swear you dreamed about him doing that, exactly at that table, and even psychprobe can't sort it out after that."-- C.J. Cherryh (Cyteen, Grant ALX)
A good listener is usually thinking about something else.-- Kin Hubbard
That your decision was right doesn't in any way mean your reasons were.
Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent.
Ellen Ripley: Whenever he says anything, you say, "right," Brett. You know that?
Brett: Right. (Alien)
"I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves."-- August Strindberg
Ignoranus, n: A person who is not only ignorant, but an asshole to boot.