941 hits
You don't have to think too hard while talking to teachers.-- J.D. Salinger
There's an argument to be made that beneath every cynic there is a frustrated romantic. (Fringe)
Destinesia: The act of entering a room and forgetting why.
Serving drinks on aircraft causes turbulence.
Adolescence is when children start bringing up their parents.
We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.-- Alan Turing
"Nothing in the world is friendlier than a wet dog."
"Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed."-- R.S. Ingersoll
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
"'Stay' is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary."
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.-- Henry Kissinger
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
Headline: Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
"Good old days: Beer foamed and drinking water didn't."
"Friends don't let Friends drive Naked."
Your powers are useless, I'm wearing tin foil underwear!
The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.-- R. D. Laing
It's so strange how out of nowhere parents can turn psychic. It's unnerving.-- Angela Chase
Things written above an urinal: 'The future is in your hands!'
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.
There must be more to life than sitting there wondering if there is more to life.
He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring to its own merits.
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's a difference between knowing something and realizing it.
I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter.
A winning formula can be obliterated simply by the change to an ingorant new manager.
Don't sweat petty things... or pet sweaty things.
Every silver lining has a cloud.
Adultery - two wrong people doing the right thing.
This world doesn't need fixing. It needs changing.
A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention.
Brain: Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: Uhh, yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?
"Geologists will date anything."
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
Drink Canada Dry! You might not succeed, but it is fun trying.
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.-- Bill Gates
Terror: A female Klingon with PMS.
Insecurity is comparing our behind the scenes to others highlight reel.
Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.
Nothing true is popular, and nothing popular is true.
Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it.-- Max Frisch
If there is no such thing as justice then the best we can hope for is revenge
I like life -- it's something to do.
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
"I'll take Fucking Clues for $200."
Thinking always of trying to do more brings a state of mind in which nothing seems impossible.-- Henry Ford
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; happiness is doing it.
Our hope of immortality does not come from any religions, but nearly all religions come from that hope.-- Robert Green Ingersoll
Law of Hydrodynamics: When a body is immersed in water, the telephone rings.
Please do not duck the next time the clue-by-four swings your way.-- Ben Browning
The BEST part of waking up? Hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep.
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
Accuracy, n: The vice of being right.
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
"Every man has his follies, and often they are the most interesting thing he has got."-- Josh Billings
"Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy."
Fanfiction is just fixing things in post-post-production
Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine.
This must be morning. I never could get the hang of mornings.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.-- John Keats
Anti-paranoia is that eerie feeling that nothing is connected to anything else.
One can overstate anything. Your advertising depends on it.
Being called a poetess brings out the terroristress in me.-- Audre Lorde
Decafalon, n.: The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.-- Goethe
Television: the bland leading the bland.
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."-- Ernest Hemingway
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing milk bone underwear."-- Norm (Cheers)
"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."-- George Burns
Mirth prolongeth life and causeth health.
Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
He who laughs last found the dirty meaning.
In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.
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)
"Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
Microsoft: Re-inventing the square wheel.
"How many fingers am I holding up?" -- Kirk, making the Vulcan salute
"That's not very damn funny."-- McCoy (Star Trek III)
That's what friendship means: sharing the prejudice of experience.-- Charles Bukowski
Morris dancing is an exercise in fertility.
The only rose without thorns is friendship.
The more things change, the more they stay insane.-- Tom Weller
God made us sisters. Prozac made us friends.
Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself.-- Plato
Aftermath, n: The period following algebra.
I'm an apatheist. The question is no longer interesting, and the answer no longer matters.-- petro (a.s.r)
"To describe the beating of Egg Whites is almost as cheeky as advising how to lead a happy life."-- The Joy of Cooking
On going to war over religion:
You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend.
Don't intterupt me when I'm talking to myself
I'm not doing this just to be weird.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Renning's Maxim: Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.-- Redd Foxx
In a church bulletin: This evening at 7 P.M. there will be a hymn sing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.
The weirder you are, the better you have to be if you still want to get paid.-- Ben Aveling
Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent.
"I'm often silent when I'm screaming inside."
"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
"Success consists of doing the common things of life uncommonly well."
Be the person you needed when you were younger.
The haunting fragrance of her mysterious perfume lingered with me long after the blinding sting of her pepper spray had faded.-- Nick DeCamp
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."-- Hemingway
Machine learning, n: Automation of your biases
You're never too old to learn something stupid.
I have yet to meet a C compiler that is more friendly and easier to use than eating soup with a knife.
There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
Nothing is so smiple that it can't be screwed up.
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.-- William James
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Me, getting smart with you? How would you know?"
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
"I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough."-- M. C. Escher
Consciousness: that annoying time between naps.
Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.-- Mark Van Doren
The secret of happiness is not getting what you want but wanting what you get.
From the 'Rules for women':
Women wearing Wonderbras and low-cut blouses lose their right to complain about being stared at.
"One of the CIA's few endearing traits is its penchant for making headlines. It is the world's most fully headlined secret agency."
Last night you were unhinged. You were like some desperate, howling demon. You frightened me.
...do it again.-- Morticia Addams
A poet is someone who is astonished by everything.
It's only fun if you can get in trouble for doing it.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.-- H. L. Mencken
Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n: The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.-- Albert Einstein
A wolf in sheeps clothing needs professional help.
Emacs is a good operating system, but I prefer Unix.
"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities."-- Maya Angelou
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.-- Matt Groening
Catapult: device for throwing cats long distances.
Headline: Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.-- Art Leo
Smile, it makes people wonder what you're thinking.
If you're not confused you're not paying attention.
"If houses were built the way software is built,
the first woodpecker would bring down civilization."
Alimony: the fee a woman charges for name-dropping.
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
-- Josh Billings
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown, but only 4 to extend your middle finger and tell someone to "bite me!"
You can't make a program without breaking some egos.
When it comes to thought some people stop at nothing.
There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.-- Mary Little
It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for being right.
"Singing is a trick to get people to listen to music for longer than they would ordinarily."-- David Byrne
Secret, n: Something you tell to one person at a time.
I know Karate, Kung Fu, and 47 other dangerous words.
"Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music."-- Angela Monet
Eiffel Tower: The Empire State Building after taxes.
Don't torture yourself, that's what friends are for.
The intensity comes from meaning, not from extremes.
Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.-- Tom Stoppard
"Not a Morning Person" doesn't even begin to cover it.
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)
Notice in a hotel lobby in Bucharest:
"The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable."
First Law of Dieting:
Sex has negative calories.
BOMB SQUAD.
If I'm running, try to keep up. (T-Shirt)
I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so in whining poetry.-- John Donne
My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.-- Stephen Hawking
Human behavior changes only under the impact of new technology
(Paraphrase of Moon's First Law, from Schrodinger's Cat by R.A. Wilson)
Watching these guys trying to be wireheads is like watching old people fuck-- Mike Belt
"No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid."
If I'm not back in five minutes, wait longer. (Ace Ventura)
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
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.-- Emerson
Law of Refrigerator Observation:
If a cat watches a refrigerator long enough, someone will come along and take out something good to eat.
Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
The light at the end of a tunnel may be an oncoming train.
Politics: Poly (many) - tics (blood sucking parasites)
Landing: a controlled mid-air collision with a planet.
Friendship is Love without its wings. (l'Amiti� est l'amour sans ailes.)-- Lord Byron
Join the army: meet interesting people, then kill them.
Eat a live toad in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
'It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like.'-- Jackie Mason
"Love is not the dying note of a twisted violin - it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring."-- S.J. Perelman
A leading authority is someone lucky who guessed right.
Who cares whether the glass is half full or half empty? Shouldn't the question be who's been drinking out of my glass?
"Making the simple complicated is easy. Making the complicated simple is brilliant."
Adultery: Putting yourself in someone else's position.
Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend--or a meaningful day.-- The Dalai Lama ("Time," 11 April 1988)
'La vache qui rit est jolie.' (Laughing cows are pretty.)
Deja moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.
Some women get excited about nothing, and then marry him.
"You know how sometimes the last sentence you said, like, echoes in your brain, and it just keeps sounding stupider? and you have to say something else, just to make it stop?"-- Angela Chase (my so-called life)
A little knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but a little carnal knowledge rules.-- Wade Kwon
My psychiatrist told me I'm going crazy. I told him "If you don't mind I'd like a second opinion." He said "Alright; you're ugly too."-- Rodney Dangerfield
Occam's eraser: The philosophical principle that even the simplest solution is bound to have something wrong with it.
"The essence of intelligence is skill in extracting meaning from everyday experience."
"Warning: Dates in Calendar are closer than they appear."
"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."-- Ingrid Bergman
In the beginning was the word, and the word was "aardvark".
There's old proverbs to suit about anything you want to do.
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
"We're not exploiting women. We're exploiting middle-aged men with credit cards." (on porn)
"Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade since it consists principally of dealing with men."-- Joseph Conrad
Much learning does not teach understanding.-- Heraclitus
Some husbands are living proof that a woman can take a joke.
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.-- T. S. Eliot
Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time.
"Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only friends that they like."
"It stands for 'Sales and Marketing', you depraved monkeys."
"A rose by any other name, Stef."
(userfriendly.org)
Politics is storytelling. We just pick the one we like best.
The Two Rules of Success: 1. Don't tell everything you know.
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.-- Paul Biron
"Do you kids want to be like the real UN, or do you want to squabble and waste time?"-- Principal Skinner
"Professor Plum, you were once a professor in Psychiatry, specializing in helping paranoid and homocidal lunatics suffering from delusions of grandeur."
"Yes, but now I work for the United Nations."
"So, your work has not changed..." (Clue)
A conscience is what hurts when everything else feels good.
Everything ends this way in France, everything. Weddings, christenings, duels, burials, swindlings, diplomatic affairs -- everything is a pretext for a good dinner.-- Jean Anouilh
Nowadays, originality is the art of concealing your source.
Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope.-- Arnold Glasgow
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
"Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right."
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
Acceptance Testing, n: An unsuccessful attempt to find bugs.
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.-- Hannah More
"If you risk nothing, then you risk everything."-- Geena Davis
Bozone, n: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature... Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.-- Helen Keller
Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship us and are always bothering us to do something for them.-- Oscar Wilde
"You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone."-- John Ciardi
Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding.-- Mahatma Gandhi
"The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it."-- Doug Larson
Baby-sitter, n: A teenager acting like an adult, while the adults are out acting like teenagers.
The law should make men free. The problem is making the law free.
No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical.-- Niels Bohr
"I didn't want to come across as an industrial, snarling, Satan-singing entity"-- Trent Reznor
Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good.-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.-- Carl Sagan
Politics: strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.-- Ambrose Bierce
Majority, n: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow they may cancel your VISA.
Seeing is forgetting the name of that which one sees.-- Paul Valery
Elbonics, n: The actions of two people maneuvering for one armrest in a movie theater.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
"If I have any more caffeine, I'm going to end up running down the hallway naked." (Someone on Slashdot)
Christianity poisoned Eros, but Eros did not die, it merely degenerated into a vice.-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Work is a fine thing if it doesn't take too much of your spare time.
If I'm not always happy, that doesn't mean I'm doing something wrong. It means I am doing something real.-- Laurie Seligman
Writing a Haiku
in seventeen syllables
is very diffic-
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.
Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any.
Vizzini: Inconceivable.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. (The Princess Bride)
"Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion."-- Scott Adams
Additional: Our biggest enemy is going space crazy through loneliness. The only thing that helps me maintain my slender grip on reality is the friendship I share with my collection of singing potatoes.-- Holly (Red Dwarf II, Queeg)
"The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad."-- Friedrick Nietzsche
The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.-- Robert Frost
"There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one's mind."-- Marcel Proust
Writing novice-friendly documentation is a lot of work. We'd like to do it someday. Holding of breath is not advised.-- Henry Spencer
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
"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
"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us without words?"
Science is the belief that we don't need belief to know most things.
"In all our searching, the only thing we found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other" (Contact)
Materialism: buying things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people that don't matter.
Law of Cat Landing:
A cat will always land in the softest place possible; often the mid-section of an unsuspecting, reclining human.
I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code.
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")
"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."-- Eric Hoffer
"I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves."-- August Strindberg
How can I tell you what I think until I've heard what I'm going to say?
If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh.
You're just jealous because the voices are talking to me and not you.
Whoever said women don't like porn just isn't talking to the right women. Or showing them the right porn.
Being in a nudist colony probably takes all the fun out of Halloween.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
Calling George Bush shallow is like calling a dwarf short.-- Molly Ivins
A good listener is usually thinking about something else.-- Kin Hubbard
There's a million fine looking women in the world, dude. But they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you.-- Silent Bob (Clerks)
When in danger, when in doubt,
run in circles, scream and shout.
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of that old underwear you own.
"Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others."-- Fyodor Dostoevsky
"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial."-- Friedrich Nietzsche
'Truth' never set anyone free. It is only doubt which will bring mental emancipation.-- Anton LaVey
Too much of a good thing is wonderful.-- Mae West
You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.-- Edward Flaherty
Nobody's gonna believe that computers are intelligent until they start coming in late and lying about it.
"Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals."-- Henry Spencer
You go right on thinking that. Don't let reality stop you.-- dpm
Insanity is the exception in individuals. In groups, parties, people, and times, it is the rule.-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person, perfectly."
An unrestricted satisfaction of every need presents itself as the most enticing method of conducting one's life, but it means putting enjoyment before caution, and soon brings its own punishment.-- Sigmund Freud
"Every man is afraid of something.That`s how you know he`s in love with you;when he is afraid of losing you"
Perpetual motion, illustrated: Try putting a slinky on an escalator.
People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito.
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.-- Otto von Bismarck
"The worst thing about censorship is [deleted by censorship bereau]."
Thy sky is falling...no, I'm tipping over backwards.-- Steven Wright
Quality Of Life: What an industrialized nation is said to offer when enough of its citizens are suffering from terminal stress. (Cynic's Dictionary)
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea--massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.-- Gene Spatford
"Discretion is being able to raise your eyebrow instead of your voice."
"I don't mind you coming here and wasting all my time, 'cause when you're standing oh so near, I kinda lose my mind."-- The Cars
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice
The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!-- Ashleigh Brilliant
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.-- Terry Pratchett
The acceptable response to homosexuality is not "It's OK, it's not your choice," or, even, "It's OK, it is your choice," but rather, "So?"-- Amy Gorin
People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting.-- Andy Warhol
There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.-- Lily Tomlin
Indifference is the key when dealing with a narcissistic megalomaniac.
"I find imperfection the most interesting thing about a person"-- Jodi Foster
"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."-- Stephen King
C++, the language in which only friends can access your private members.
"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
Is there anything safer than TV-style seriousness--i.e., delivering the conventional wisdom as if it were the deeply important truth?-- Pauline Kael
"Before you find your handsome prince, you've got to kiss a lot of frogs."
I told my girlfriend last night how much I loved her, and she said that I must have been out drinking again. I asked her why she would say that, and she said, 'Because I'm your father.'-- Dave George
It was irritating to have one's physical shortcomings pointed out quite so plainly twice in one evening, once by a beautiful girl and once by a dying badger.-- Tom Holt
(After watching the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey)
Isaac Asimov : "HAL's breaking First Law! He's breaking First Law!"
Carl Sagan : "So, strike them with lightning, Isaac."
"I sound like a fruitcake sitting here saying all this shit."-- Trent Reznor
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
I'm tired of being this pristine little socially acceptable monstrosity
"Sure it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up. All you do is take all the sex out, and use little short words, and little dumb ideas, and don't be too scary, and make sure there's a happy ending. Right? Nothing to it."-- Ursula K. Le Guin
So where are all the lust-crazed engineering groupies that my college recruiter talked about ?-- James Knowles
In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead."
Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies:
As a USENET discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
Adult: A person that has stopped growing at both ends but not in the middle.
Thinking of Maud you forget everything else. -- hack v1.0.3
Who was that Maud person anyway? -- nethack v3.1.0
It is a good thing to in your mind be able to seperate the artist from the art.
If I sit here and stare at nothing long enough, people might think I'm an engineer working on something.-- S.R. McElroy
There are things so deeply personal that they can be revealed only to strangers.-- Richard Rodriguez
Conservative: a man who believes nothing should be done for the first time.
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
"All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway."-- Harry S. Truman
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and sometimes
fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus drivers.
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.-- Katharine Hepburn
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.-- Gandhi
To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your principles.
Any sufficiently optimistic statement is indistinguishable from sarcasm.
Bullshit, in contrast to mere nonsense, is something that implies, but does not contain, adequate meaning or truth.
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.-- Solomon Short
Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.-- Emo Philips
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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
TCP_UP - The 16-bit TCP Urgent Pointer, encoded as the hex representation of the value of the field. The hex string MUST be capitalized since it is urgent. (RFC 3093)
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")
Accountant - someone who can put two and two together and make a living from it.
...postmodernity, once the plaything of smarty-pants French guys, in truth belongs to the engagingly stupid. (Newsweek)
See my big frustration here is that my main squeeze has turned out to be a Late Blooming Nerd, and is in the habit of (in the midst of cuddling) saying sweet things like "you think if I disable the caching it would work?"-- Ro Reid
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")
"This space intentionally has nothing but text explaining why this space has nothing but text explaining that this space would otherwise have been left blank, and would otherwise have been left blank."
"I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue."-- Richard Nixon
You don't have to flaunt technical ability in order to benefit from it. If you have the capability to play a million notes, and then you play only three notes, that lends an amazing profundity to the three notes you did choose.-- Robert Fripp (paraphrased)
"Warning: Prosecutors will be violated."-- Rhonda R.
"If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?"-- Linda Ellerbee
"Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone."-- Mark Twain
Well, remember what you said, because in a day or two, I'll have a witty and blistering retort! You'll be devastated THEN!-- Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes)
IRC is not 'more than a toy'. It's LESS than... a belch on a windy day. IRC is a little ant exploring the inside of a microwave oven for all five seconds of its short, happy, exploding life."-- Kibo
Life is like a dog-sled team; If you ain't the lead dog, the scene never changes.
"The spam wars are about rendering email useless for unsolicited advertising before unsolicited advertising renders email useless for communication."-- Walter Dnes / Jeff Wynn
Nothing is better than Sex.
Masturbation is better than nothing.
Therefore, Masturbation is better than Sex.
"Life at the top is financially rewarding, spiritually draining, physically exhausting, and short."-- Peter C. Newman
Faith is not being sure. It is not being sure, but betting with your last cent... Faith is not a series of gilt-edged propositions that you sit down to figure out, and if you follow all the logic and accept all the conclusions, then you have it. It is crumpling and throwing away everything, proposition by proposition, until nothing is left, and then writing a new proposition, your very own, to throw in the teeth of despair... Faith is not making religious-sounding noises in the daytime. It is asking your inmost self questions at night and then getting up and going to work... Faith is thinking thoughts and singing songs and making poems in the lap of death.-- Mary Jean Irion (Yes, World: A Mosaic of Meditation)
Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs.-- Tom Lehrer
Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.-- Ashleigh Brilliant
Creepy music coming from a cemetery should always be investigated more closely.
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
"We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have"-- Buddha
"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."-- Mark Twain
On the menu of a Swiss restaurant:
"Our wines leave you nothing to hope for."
Auntie Em--Hate you. Hate Kansas. Taking the dog.-- Dorothy
Men are like parking spaces: the good ones are taken and the rest are handicapped.
"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."-- Agatha Christie
"I'd like to meet the person who invented sex and see what they're working on now."
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
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")
I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.-- Lily Tomlin
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward.
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things.-- Terry Pratchett ("Equal Rites")
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)
"Suffering for your art is most definitely overrated but I do get a certain, I don't know, satisfaction from being able to deal with my paranoia and insecurity."-- Beth Gibbons
People want stories about things they can relate to: life and death, good and evil.
Wreckless Driving -- You'd think that would be a good thing.-- Chris Sampson
Customer: Cute cat. What's its name?
Randal Graves: Annoying customer. (Clerks)
"There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it." (Niven's Law #16)
Make the most of yourself, because that's all the self you are going to get, buster.
WARNING:
Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of hair on your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of your favorite war.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud. After a while, you realise the pig is enjoying it.-- Jamie Lawrence
The principle difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.
"They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck."
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?-- Ernest Gaines III
"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."-- Carl Jung
"When you, the writer, integrate your own material in your psyche, it changes you forever. Some writers allow songs to come through them, but don't take it in, so they don't grow. If they don't let it bring up questions in their own beings, they're just translators."-- Tori Amos
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.-- Oscar Wilde
On-line, adj: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer.
Behaviorism is the art of pulling habits out of rats.-- O'Neill
Angst, n: A form of suffering caused by too much thinking; a phenomenon probably considered incomprehensible by those who own a recreational vehicle.-- Rick Bayan (The Cynic's Dictionary)
Never run from anything immortal. It only attracts their attention. (The Last Unicorn)
"A sense of humor is the only thing that keeps intelligent people from hanging themselves."-- Voltaire
"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)
Murphy's Seventh Law of Computing:
He who laughs last probably made a back-up.
Arithmetic: An obscure art no longer practiced in the world's developed countries.
I have no problem dealing with reality, but as a lifestyle I find it too confining.-- Lily Tomlin
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
"Be kinder than necessary 'cause everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."
Be good to your friends, or they may develop psychokinetic powers and destroy Tokyo.
"Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they find laughable."
Piety, n: Reverence for the Supreme Being, based on His supposed resemblance to man.
In a church bulletin: The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The Congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
A friend should be someone you don't have to prove things to, and with whom you can be yourself, whatever that is. A friend is also someone who should be able to tell you you are being silly or brain-damaged or making poor decisions about something without you being upset and offended, like when the love of your life is taking you to the cleaners, and you are completely blind to it.-- Joseph Francis
Practical or mean and sneaky? - getting a permanent heart tatoo on your arm and getting three-day temporary tatoos for the names.
Of all the truths in the world, humor is the most satisfying and often the healthiest.
"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
When rats leave a sinking ship, where exactly do they think they're going?-- Douglas Gauck
A sufficiently optimistic statement is indistinguishable from social sycophancy.
"The first thing to remember about Unix is that nothing is ever spelled correctly."-- Steve Lidie
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
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a man and a dog."-- Mark Twain
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.-- K (MiB)
"Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them."
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
The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.-- David Friedman
"Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth."-- Dave Barry
"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."-- Stephen Hawking
XML is like violence – if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it.
Be one of those upon whom nothing is lost.-- Henry James
For practical purposes we have agreed that sanity consists in sharing the hallucinations of our neighbors.-- Evelyn Underhill
Politicians should be changed frequently, like diapers - and for much the same reason.
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
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."-- Mario Andretti
What's wrong with being drunk in bed? Being drunk on the floor of the garage, I can understand someone objecting to. But drunk in bed?-- Brad DeLong
For longer than I can remember,
I've been looking for someone like you.
Someone with a head like yours,
and a torso too.
Birds sing and you're gonna pay.
The end.-- Tak (Invader Zim)
Dad taught me everything I know, but he didn't teach me everything he knows.-- Al Unser Jr.
"There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other."-- La Rouchefoucauld
"You mean it's all pretending?" said Victor.
The trolls exchanged a brief glance, which nevertheless contrived to say: amazing, isn't it, that things like this apparently rule the world.-- Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)
Morality is doing what's right regardless of what you're told.
Obedience is doing what you're told regardless of what is right.
Absent, adj: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered.
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
"Before I walk out on stage, I set my parameters for the room. It's kind of like a witch with her brew. I decide what I'm bringing to the party that night. And I bring different things with me in every city that I play. But I try and tune myself to the audience out there. And again it's smelling what's cooking in the kitchen. It always comes back to [sniff] a little garlic [sniff] she's got pudding in the oven [sniff]. And then, once you know what that's all about, then you go, [cute face] 'We're gonna bring a little of this tonight.'"-- Tori Amos (Little Earthquakes video)
You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down.-- Mary Pickford
"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
There is no CyberSpace, just a lot of people pretending.-- Sam Kass
Alien, n: A being who travels great distances to molest our cattle and trample our grain.
At a silly valley place I just visited [..] they have a parrot that 'rings'. It'll 'ring' a couple times, presumably because it enjoys the power of being able to make everyone in the room do the Macarena, and then it will answer itself. "Hello!"
-- Gary S. Callison (a.s.r.)
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.-- Plato
"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)
These lovers of esoterica seem to derive a great deal of intellectual satisfaction out of not quite understanding what they are doing.
Thermalophobia (thur muh lo fo' be uh), n: The fear when showering that someone will sneak in, flush the toilet, and scald you to death.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
I've decided, I'm going to feed every little addiction and silently go mad 'cause right now my writing sucks.-- Zaffel
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action.
"The rebellion is not about what clothes you are wearing or whether you turn your back to the audience - it's not about shocking for the shock's sake. It's not about singing Smack My Bitch Up and pretending to be hard. All you do is to get your name on K-Mart's black list. It easy, and boring. So Prodigy, if you want to be hard, go to an abortion clinic and try to help those girls who have had an abortion in a front of 20 shotguns. Try to be rough and don't tell how you beat up your girlfriends, if you got the balls to do that."-- Tori Amos
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.-- Edsger Dijkstra
"Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won't have anything to complain about."-- Tori Amos
Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction after all has to make sense, right?
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished."-- Goethe
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.
I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people into believing I had.-- Margaret Mead
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
"Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens, and then everybody disagrees."
-- Boris Marshalov
Is not that the nature of men and women--that the pleasure is in the learning of each other?
The phrase *I* like is: "Code as if the next guy to read it is a raving psychopath who knows where you live."
Following that by passing out a sheet asking them to list their names and addresses is optional, but recommended.
-- improving code quality - lessons from the SDM
"Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture on a rock."-- New York Times
There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.
"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man."-- Francais Bacon
Like I've always said, If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me. (Steel Magnolias)
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
Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.-- Alexander Woollcott
Motrin and espresso. The breakfast of champions.-- Sweet Poly
Maybe you can keep me from ever being happy, but you're not gonna stop me from having fun.-- Ani Difranco
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."-- Anais Nin
I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.-- Flannery O'Connor
Remember, "y'all" is singular. "All y'all" is plural. "All y'all's" is plural possessive.
"It's Hong Kong action. Anything you know about physics is just going to hold you back."-- Robin D. Laws
Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.-- John LeCarre
Frisbeetarianism: the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
You don't wanna get laid, man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you gotta talk to 'em. (Colors)
Knowledge is often mistaken for intelligence. This is like mistaking a cup of milk for a cow.
"Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity."-- Alan Watts
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."-- Theodore Rubin
"There is a pleasure sure in being mad which none but madmen know."-- Dryden
Lust comes at first sight, love comes after staring at the same person for elongated periods of time.-- lj user slvrstarlight
Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.-- Carl Jung
Labeling something as sarcasm utterly undercuts the effect. The whole point about sarcasm is that it's risky; it depends on your hearer getting the literal meaning and then seeing that you can't mean that so you must mean something else and working out what that other thing must be. Your hearer has to do some interpretive work, and that work is the effect.-- Arnold Zwicky
'Anything that happens, happens'
'Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.'
'Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.'
'It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though.'-- Douglas Adams (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Write a wise saying, and your name will live forever.-- Anonymous
One of the problems with learning that many teachers fail to see is that until you really understand something, any argument made out of that understanding context tends to be pretty useless.
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.-- Abraham Kapla
"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
When I look around I think this, this is good enough. And I try to laugh at whatever life brings.
Cuz when I look down I just miss all the good stuff and when I look up I just trip over things.-- Ani Difranco
"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)
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.
Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he would spend two years campaigning and organizing for it should not be trusted with the office.
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
Maybe love is letting people be just what they want to be. The door always must be left unlocked.
The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize. (Steel Magnolias)
"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)
Stand and fight, you misbegotten spawn of the perverse breeding between a pixie and a squirrel!
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.-- T.S. Eliot
"Pretty is something you're born with. But beautiful, that's an equal opportunity adjective."
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.-- Voltaire
Patience is something you admire greatly in the driver behind you but not in the one ahead of you.
A troll is someone who, finding that no-one likes them, decides to pretend that it's on purpose.
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
VB is very useful for allowing non programmers to prove they cant program.-- Druck
There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.-- Alfred Korzybski
America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.
There are of course many problems connected with life, of which some of the most popular are `Why are people born?', `Why do they die?', `Why do they spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?' (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Almost everything alive is about some kind of balance. Heck, even a lot of things that are not alive are about balance. However, thinking a particular balance is the only balance is often a mistake.
"The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality."-- Oscar Wilde
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
"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
"Shouldn't we be carefully placing these comics in plastic bags?"
"No, we have lives." (MST3K)
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."-- Winston Churchill
The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.-- Eden Phillpots
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.-- Dr. Who
"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."-- Anatole France
I like the kind of people that can hold on to the the feeling they have after the song or movie ends.
In a cemetery:
"Persons are prohibited from picking flowers from any but their own graves."
The Pet Principle:
No matter which side of the door your dog or cat is on, it is the wrong side.
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer `yes' without having asked any clear question.-- Albert Camus
The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.-- Jean Kerr
Murphy's First Law of Computing:
Whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.
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)
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.-- George Wald
"News" is just the stuff they use to fill up all the empty space they couldn't sell for advertising.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."-- George Washington
"There ain't no rules around here, we're trying to accomplish something."-- Thomas Alva Edison
"You're not exactly catching us at our best" -- Kirk
"That much is certain" -- Spock (Star Trek IV)
Ah, twitter, where people will be deeply outraged for one to six hours, before forgetting forever.
Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but it takes a long time, and the light bulb has to really want to change.
"Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged about forever."
"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to live."-- Oscar Wilde
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.-- Thomas Jones
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.-- William James
"I don't know what a shrink would call me. I don't want to know."-- Tori Amos
Q: What's tiny and yellow and very, very, dangerous?
A: A canary with the super-user password.
"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
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.-- Mark Twain
"The Hindenburg crash had 62 survivors and 35 fatalities. Of the 35 deaths, 27 resulting from jumping from the airship. Many of the remaining 8 deaths resulted from burns and injuries due to the ensuing diesel fuel fire."-- Dan Egnor
The music is the magic carpet that the other things take naps on.-- Tori Amos
"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
I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.-- Rob Pike (on X)
Seagull Manager: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps over everything and then leaves.
Part of the difference of learning something by interest or necessity is how we file it, with what urgency, and how we think of it when we think of it again.
Be warned that being an expert is more than understanding how a system is supposed to work. Expertise is gained by investigating why a system doesn't work.-- Brian Redman
"Hey, Aeryn's gorgeous--she can change any guy's tune. She can also change 'im from tenor to soprano, but that's beside the point."-- Grace
During a recent three-hour train journey in a carriage full of bawling kiddies, it struck me that it is odd that railways and airlines separate smokers from non-smokers, but not children from people.-- Eamonn McManus
Music is the science of manipulating emotion through sound.-- Angus Gray
The disarmament of fear, in ourselves and those that oppose, propels us. Every step forward brings the possibility of backlash. But forward we go.-- David G. Welton
"The biggest disease today isn't leprosy or tuberculosis, but the feeling of being unwanted."-- Mother Theresa
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.-- Oscar Wilde
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.
Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?
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)
"Most people do not watch TV because they want to watch TV. They watch TV to relieve themselves of the burden of finding something actually enjoyable to do."
Is there no accounting for taste? There isn't even a budget for it.-- Sean Levy
It's much easier to see barriers than the absence of them.
You don't notice things that aren't there, such as:
- not being felt up during a professional conversation
- not getting wolf whistles when you walk past a construction site.
- not being asked why you're looking at the expensive technical equipment instead of the "easy to use" stuff.
- not being told "you really wouldn't be interested in math."
- not hearing remarks about "stupid women drivers" when you take your car into a body shop.
- not being afraid of getting beaten into a pulp as you walk from a gay bar to your car.
- not having your car vandalised because of the rainbow flag on your bumper.
- not being offered a job because a manager is too freaked by his own misconceptions to be able to even consider working with you.
- not being told "nothing personal, but you're making other people uncomfortable."
- not being offered a lower salary because "you don't need as much."
And so on. It's hard to see absence of something as an advantage until you have to deal with its presence.-- Amanda Walker
I was thinking of 'duh?' in the sense of 'a sentence containing several words more than three letters long, and possibly requiring general knowledge or a sense of history that extends past last Tuesday, has been used in my presense.'-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
[Perl] isn't a programming language, it's a thousand special case rules flying in close formation.-- Peter da Silva
Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable. As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing a part of our lives?-- Alan Kay (``Computer Software'', Scientific American)
The business of the mind is first and foremost the pure joy of knowing and comprehending, the pure joy of consciousness.-- Anais Nin
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.-- Laurence J. Peter
If you're going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.-- Marie Osmond
"There is nothing wrong with the software that rm won't cure."-- Arnie Romo
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.
We're not into science fiction because it's good literature, we're into it because it's weird. Follow your weird, ladies and gentlemen. Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace your nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, "woo the muse of the odd."-- Bruce Sterling
Support your local medical examiner. Die strangely.-- Nikki Gustas
In a nonsmoking area:
"If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."
Stretch pants - the garment that made skiing a spectator sport.-- Anonymous
"What's reality anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch."-- Jane Wagner
Squanderprint (skwan' duhr print), n: Directions that try to make you use up a product faster than you normally would. (Ex.: Apply shampoo. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.)-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
"Worry is like a rocking chair--it gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere."-- Dorothy Galyean
"Everybody winds up kissing the wrong person good night."-- Andy Warhol
Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.-- Steven Wright
Technical people are better off not looking at patents. If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git.-- Linus Torvalds
Ellen Ripley: Whenever he says anything, you say, "right," Brett. You know that?
Brett: Right. (Alien)
Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.-- Goethe
"The I.S.O. standard unit of female pulchritude is the milli-Helen. This is the amount of beauty capable of causing the launching of a single ship."-- Terry Pratchett
Everything we hear is an opinion, not fact. Everything we see is an perspective, not the truth.-- Marcus Aurelius
Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war? (williamt@athena.eng.sun.com)
A bit of tolerance is worth a megabyte of flaming.-- Henry Spencer
Critics think that things should be done in good taste. Most people think that things should just taste good.-- Gene Simmons
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?-- Steven Wright
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.)
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.-- Andre Gide
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
"Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy."-- Groucho Marx
"People are much more willing to lend you books than bookcases."-- Mark Twain
Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.-- Fran Lebowitz
"The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone."-- Henrik Ibsen
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.-- Lily Tomlin
Teacher's First Law of Grading Lab Papers: If an experiment has perfect results, the student has cheated.
There is a superstition in avoiding superstition.-- Francis Bacon
"Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews."-- John Updike
I want to die like my grandfather, peaceful and in my sleep - not screaming like the other people in the car.
Work like you don't need the money
Love like you've never been hurt
Fuck like you're being filmed
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
Things will get better, despite our efforts to improve them.-- Will Rogers
If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.-- Mae West
“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”-- Thomas Merton
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
A passionate commitment to social justice is no substitute for knowing what the hell you're talking about.-- Thomas Sowell
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.-- Susan Sontag
"Evangelists say Halloween is the devil's holiday. What a lame-ass devil! Sitting down in the depths of hell, going, 'I've got control of the major corporations, churning out weapons and toxic waste, but how can I get candy? Let me think--I'll get the children of the world to dress up as hobos and Power Rangers--and then I'll have all the bite-size Three Musketeers I need! Buhahaha!'"
Real friends are those who, when you've made a fool of yourself, don't feel that you've done a permanent job.
I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.-- Carol Leifer
All esoteric teachings seek to apprehend the unseen happenings in the psyche, and all claim supreme authority for themselves.-- Carl Jung
The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take.-- Roy Carlson
"It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."-- Fred Adler
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.-- Woody Allen
The fun with white chocolate macadamia nut cookies is telling which white fatty substance is which. I can't.
"Somebody should clip Sting around the head and tell him to stop using that ridiculous Jamaican accent."-- Elvis Costello
My notion of a husband at forty is that a woman should be able to change him, like a bank note, for two twenties.
"Penguins mate for life. That doesn't surprise me much because they all look alike. It's not like they're going to meet a really new, great looking penguin someday."
"No, I'm not trying to save on psychiatrist's bills. It's more me asking, 'does anyone else feel this way?' And if it does reach the point where it gets uncomfortably personal, I tend to disguise what I'm saying in the phrasing."-- Beth Gibbons
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.-- Oscar Wilde
A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.-- J. Pierpoint Morgan
"I think that happiness is when you can let yourself feel every emotion you want at any time instead of being a lying little fuck."-- Tori Amos
"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."
-- Vaclav Havel
Law of Cat Inertia:
A cat at rest will tend to remain at rest, unless acted upon by some outside force - such as the opening of cat food, or a nearby scurrying mouse.
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
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.
In a church bulletin: "Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don't forget your husbands."
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."-- Mark Twain
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.-- Robert Bly
Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.-- Sigmund Freud
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.-- G. M. Trevelyan
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.-- Groucho Marx
Taking me seriously is a big mistake. I certainly wouldn't.-- Ani Difranco
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.-- Eric Hoffer
"If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standards of nonconformity."
Happiness is a warm puppy, stir-fried with scallions and red pepper.-- Ry Schwark
Books: A controlled hallucinogen known to regularly cause people to imagine things that are not really there.
"All children are morbid. It is their one saving grace."-- Truman Capote
It is better to waste one's youth, than to do nothing at all with it.-- Courteline
"If we can dispel the delusion that learning about computers should be an activity of fiddling with array indexes and worrying whether X is an integer or a real number, we can begin to focus on programming as a source of ideas."-- Harold Abelson
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.-- Groucho Marx
The fewer clear facts you have in support of an opinion, the stronger your emotional attachment to that opinion.
You can be a professional without being constipated about it.-- David Keyser
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.-- George Bernard Shaw
"Tell him I've been too fucking busy - or vice versa."-- Dorothy Parker
"People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.. that’s why we recommend it daily."
"Reality is the leading cause of stress for those in touch with it."-- Jack Wagner
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.-- Mark Twain
(as The Spice Girls play in background)
"What are they doing?"
"Psychological warfare." (Small Soldiers)
"We need a new cosmology. New Gods. New Sacraments. Another drink."-- Patti Smith
On emulating hormones and long-range neurotransmitters:
"If your job is delivering packages and all the packages are very small and your boss doesn't care who you give them to as long as it's on the correct continent and you have until the next ice age to get the work done, then you don't have a very difficult profession. I see no reason why simulating that anachronism would present the slightest difficulty."-- John K. Clark
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.-- A. H. Weiler
Men are like a fine wine.
They start out as grapes, and it's up to women to stomp the living shit out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.
"If there is one thing that always comes out of a terrible tragedy, it is really dumb legislation." (Esquire magazine)
I have a 3 year old. He'll have filtering software on his machine until he's at least thirteen or until he figures out how to disable it. If he's savvy enough to outgeek his dad who's been geeking for over 20 years more than him, then he deserves his porn.-- Alex Johns
"Don't keep a man guessing too long--he's sure to find the answer somewhere else."-- Mae West
Murphy's Eleventh Law of Computing:
A computer program will follow your orders, but rarely your intentions.
Law of Cat Motion:
A cat will move in a straight line, unless there is a really good reason to change direction.
Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training.-- Anna Freud
Belief is that which explains that we cannot reason. Therefore it is almost impossible to change someone's belief.
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.-- Alfred Adler
A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.-- Elbert Hubbard
Descartes described how his father taught him how to swim by throwing him into the Seine: "I sink, therefore I swam."
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.-- Anatole France
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.-- Alfred Adler
"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing."-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets.-- Dave Edison
Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.-- Andrew Lias
Grammar is not a vice (though excessive picking at it can be). And nonstandard words/grammar can be used to good effect--but no one can do that without knowing how they're deviating.-- Randy Clark
If you think that mental illness interferes with financial success, just look at the average television evangelist.
Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds.-- Susan Sontag
Cashtration, n.: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
Lactomangulation - n. Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
"Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them."-- Louis B. Nizer
Life is what happens to you when you're making other plans.-- Betty Talmadge
"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him."-- Fyodor Dostoyevski
Some people get credit for being conservative when they are only stupid.-- Kin Hubbard
Table Snorkeling (tay' bul snawrk' ling), n: Frantic gesticulations when one bites into hot food and has to take in air to cool it off.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
Scientists find wonder in everything, except extremely dull papers on quality assurance.
-- Telo (#xkcd)
"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
"Science has made gods of us before we were even worthy of being men."-- Jean Rostand
What are we to make of a system that blames us for failing to procreate while refusing us custody of our children? That perpetuates the myth that we are weaklings while denying us the right to serve in the military? That regards us as incapable of forming stable relationships while forbidding us to marry?-- Richard Goldstein (in the "Gay Life 1991" segment of The Village Voice)
The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while Nature cures the disease.-- Voltaire
A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is to computing what a McDonalds Certified Food Specialist is to fine cuisine.
In a church bulletin: Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack's sermons.
"I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over."-- Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
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
"If you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you will find yourself docked."-- Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
Every human being is capable of everything, no matter how exalted or depraved. Without twenty years of diligent domestication, it is in our nature to commit genocide, infanticide, and canabillism. And drink beer and howl at the moon.-- Donna Barr ("Desert Peach: the Good Uncle")
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.
Math Anxiety: An intense lifelong fear of two trains approaching each other at speeds of 60 and 80 mph. (Cynic's Dictionary)
"If we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time."-- Edith Wharton
"Intellectual brilliance is no guarentee against being dead wrong."-- David Fasold
"It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."
"Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much."
"Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what's wrong with it."
"I understand your question and the answer is 'You're thinking too hard.'"-- Jose Garcia
"Anger is natural. It's part of the force. You just have to learn to hang out with it."-- Tori Amos
The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.-- Gloria Leonard
I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.-- Mark Twain
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.-- Oscar Wilde
"They are wrong who say that love is blind. On the contrary, nothing - not even the smallest detail - escapes the eyes; one sees everything in the loved one, notices everything; but melts it all into one flame with the great and simple: �I love you.�"
"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
'Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.'-- Natalie Goldberg
"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions."-- Susan Sontag
"The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly."-- Terry Pratchett (Soul Music)
Genies rarely have nightmares, for the same reason that elephants don't usually worry about being trampled underfoot. With the possible exception of bottles, there's nothing in the cosmos large enough or malicious enough to frighten them, or stupid enough to try.-- Tom Holt ("Djinn Rummy")
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.
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.-- Mark Twain
The next time you feel like downloading 'The Little Engine That Could' into a weapon of mass destruction: Don't.
If we couldn't laugh at things that didn't make sense,
we couldn't react to a lot of the world around us." (Calvin & Hobbes)
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed a cat. (Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London)
Lecture, n: Where the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either one.
"Not only is life a bitch, but it is always having puppies."-- Adrienne Gusoff
Religion is for people afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there.
I like having a machine called 'elvis' on the network because that way, I can say 'ping elvis' and have it come back with 'elvis is alive'.-- Carl Shipley
Vegetarians are people who cannot hear tomatos screaming.-- Joseph Campbell
To my opinion, most modern poetry is written because people do not want to stand up and fight for what they are writing about.
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."-- Bertrand Russell
Glamour is that indefinable something about a girl who has a large bosom.-- Andy Rothman
Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.-- Jules Renord
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.-- Rich Kulawiec
If you sat a monkey down in front of a keyboard, the first thing typed would be a UNIX command.-- Bill Lye
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.-- George Bernard Shaw
"What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?"-- Richard Nixon
[A] thing is symmetrical if there is something we can do to it so that after we have done it, it looks the same as it did before.-- Richard Feynman
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.-- H. L. Mencken
"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
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.-- Douglas Adams
Choconiverous, adj: Biting off the head of the chocolate Easter bunny first.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.
-- Henry Brooks Adams
"We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles."-- Mark Twain
The two women exchanged the kind of glance women use when no knife is handy.-- Ellery Queen
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.-- Earl Wilson
The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? My answer to that would be, 'No.'-- Aaron Copland
"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
I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.-- Edgar Allan Poe
Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: No one to blame.-- Erica Jong
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
Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.-- Arnold Bennett
The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony #9.-- Erwin Dietrich
"If you don't think, and you have no wit and you have so many hangups that you can't look beyond your cup of coffee then you're never going to understand what I'm really saying. Because you know what? You're going to shut down and close off before you hear me. If I'm threatening you, you're going to see it the way you need to see it so you can dismiss me."-- Tori Amos
"Being a graduate student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you're Dopey and Bashful. In the middle, you are usually sick (Sneezy), tired (Sleepy), and irritable (Grumpy). But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you're Happy."
"A promiscuous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are."-- Victor Lownes
"As long as the music's loud enough, we won't hear the world falling apart."-- Derek Jarman
"That's a hell of an ambition, to be mellow. It's like wanting to be senile."-- Randy Newman
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.-- Andy Finkel
In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.-- J. von Neumann
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot in the universe- So what the hell, leap.
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check three friends. If they're OK, chances are you're the one.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.-- Albert Einstein
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.-- H. L. Mencken
"What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager asked her mother.
"Encouragement, dear..." she replied.
"Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig a little to find it."-- Tori Amos
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its de-evolution into the shiny things network.-- The Onion
2+2=5-ism: Caving in to a target marketing strategy aimed at oneself after holding out for a long period of time. "Oh, all right, I'll buy your stupid cola. Now leave me alone."-- Douglas Coupland ('Generation X')
It's surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you're not comfortable within yourself, you can't be comfortable with others.-- Sydney J. Harri
Democracy according to the NRA: Firearms are necessary to protect individual liberties; most of all the right to own firearms.
I just had a vision of the scene at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as plane-load after plane-load of bath-crazed females crowd into the concourses and espresso bars, their overnight bags, panniers, rucksacks, and fanny packs rubbing and scrapping, creating a harsh continuo in counterpoint the higher-pitched murmurings, laughter, and occasional shrieks as would-be bathers compete for taxis and creme rinse. Finally, amidst the confused jostlings, a new sense of purpose, of unity, of solidarity begins to ignite this batho-phrenetic congeries into a bath-talion that makes its motto "Fuck it, let's get wet, let's get going." They form their orderly ranks and swing out onto passenger loading zones where they commandeer every bus, airporter, shuttle, and limousine in sight to begin the final stage of the final assault. At this point, the vision faded as an unexpected guest was admitted to my presence.-- Frank Maloney
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."-- Nietzsche
The Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm:
1. Write down the problem.
2. Think very hard.
3. Write down the answer.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".-- Philip K. Dick
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson.
It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.
Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting.-- Dave Barry ('What is Electricity?')
Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should think only about today.
Charlie Brown: No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get better.-- Charles Schultz
"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."-- G. K. Chesterton
"Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?"-- Virginia Woolf
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.-- Aristotle
To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, your're overdoing it.-- J. Jenkins
"A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do."-- Calvin (Calvin & Hobbes)
Beepilepsy, n: Aflicts those with vibrating pagers characterized by sudden spasms, goofy facial expressions and loss of speech
When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. It's much more fulfilling to freeze them and throw them at life's Porsche when he drives by. That'll teach his lemon-giving ass a lesson.
"Americans have different ways of saying things. They say 'elevator', we say 'lift' ... they say 'President', we say 'stupid psychopathic git'...."-- Alexi Sayle
I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there.-- Fred Allen
When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a six-year-old.
"It is always so," my mother said. "You do things together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ... Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things together which nobody in their right mind would do alone.-- Freeman Dyson ("Weapons and Hope")
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.-- Albert Einstein
Bitch - a cool babe who refuses to change her name.
"A man will call a woman 'bitch' when he can't control her, when she won't do his bidding, when she's not compliant to his needs. I like this in a word."-- Cynthia Heimel
"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)
Ford was humming something. It was just one note repeated at intervals. He was hoping that somebody would ask him what he was humming, but nobody did. If anybody had asked him he would have said he was humming the first line of a Noel Coward song called "Mad About the Boy" over and over again. It would then have been pointed out to him that he was only singing one note, to which he would have replied that for reasons which he hoped would be apparent, he was omitting the "about the boy" bit. He was annoyed that nobody asked.-- Douglas Adams (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it.
"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."-- Walter Bagehot
Pigslice, n: The last unclaimed piece of pizza that everyone is secretly dying for.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
I'm always making a comeback, but nobody ever tells me where I've been.-- Billie Holiday
"An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way."-- Charles Bukowski
Politics is like coaching a football team. You have to be smart enough to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
Feature, n: A surprising property of a program. Occasionally documented. To call a property a feature sometimes means the author did not consider that case, and the program makes an unexpected, though not necessarily wrong response. See BUG. ``That's not a bug, it's a feature!'' A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it.
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.
In art, as in no other form of endeavor, there is meaning apart from success.-- Joseph Conrad
Yes, yes, sensitive, acoustic, multicultural rhythms, sensitive, yoga, tantric sex, sensitive.
Shut up and sing some old Police stuff again.-- Nat Lanza (on Sting)
"The radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babble of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas."-- Aldous Huxley (On Silence; 1946)
"Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words."-- Dorothy Parker
Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies.-- Bill Bulko
I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. Especially Bob Dylan.-- Jim Rosenberg
For most mothers, day care is a problem. I'm looking for night care, too.-- Cathy Crimmins
Words skittered out of his mouth like cartoon dogs on fresh-waxed linoleum, frantically going nowhere.-- Amy Tan
If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses.-- Michael Swaine
Do not go gentle into that good night... Rage, rage against the dying of the light.-- Dylan Thomas
I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us.-- Konrad Lorenz
"We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away."-- Chuang Tzu
For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.-- Justin Richardson
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
All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.-- Samuel Butler
The longer I live, the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Any idiot can face a crisis - it's this day-to-day living that wears you out."-- Anton Chekhov
"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn."-- David Russell
Just about all real intellectual activity starts from the understanding that *there is a problem here*, especially in things we take for granted.-- Arnold Zwicky
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.-- Elizabeth Taylor
Mary had a crypto key,
she kept it in escrow,
and everything that Mary said,
the Feds were sure to know.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."-- Kristian Wilson (Nintendo Inc. 1989)
We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them.-- Evelyn Waugh
"You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it."-- Wendell Berry
All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.-- Carl Sagan
Don't talk to me about the public not being able to stomach the abnormal, man -- most people get too used to lying to themselves about anything uncomfortable at so early an age that they themselves are not a reliable source.-- Susan Juroff
Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.-- Harry S. Truman
"Well, let's just say, 'if your VCR is still blinking 12:00,you don't want Linux'".-- Bruce Perens
Since before the Earth was formed and before the sun burned hot in space, cosmic forces of inexorable power have been working relentlessly toward this moment in space-time -- you receiving this fortune.
"A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by its author."-- S. C. Johnson
"[Re: extinction of species, and the desperate need to blame someone]
> There are 3,500 species of ant.
Today. To the best of our knowledge. How many were there before the great Hexapodia Race Wars three thousand years ago, when the Better Red Than Dead Alliance destroyed the Polka-Dot League, slaughtering thousands of billions of thinking, feelering individuals in an act of genocide unmatched since the K-T event when the Brontosaurus' attempt at a space program using their largest-ever catapult went horribly wrong?"
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)
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
"How many of you ever started dating somene because you were too lazy to commit suicide?"-- Judy Tenuta
"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."-- Oscar Wilde
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.-- Samuel Butler
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
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
You wouldn't know a good time if it stripped naked, hopped on your face, and started wiggling!-- C. Stanley
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.-- Harry S. Truman
"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it."-- Stephen Butler Leacock
Magnocartic, adj: Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping carts.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
"The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age."-- Lucille Ball
"Either what you've said is so vague that it's meaningless or I disagree with you completely."-- Tom Maddox
"All dogmas perish the thinking mind, especially ones you agree with."-- Adam Richardson
"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 fellow who thinks he knows it all is especially annoying to those of us who do.-- Harold Coffin
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.-- Oscar Wilde
BASIC, n.:
A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.-- Kahlil Gibran
"Mom and dad say I should make my life an example of the principles I believe in. But every time I do, they tell me to stop it." (Calvin & Hobbes)
One nice thing about egotists: They don't talk about other people.-- Lucille S. Harper
"There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have."-- Don Herold
"A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times."-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
"I cut my hair now, and nobody recognizes me. It's that whole thing I was bitching about earlier - 'I can't go anywhere without someone pointing' - And now it's like, 'Hey, it's me man!' I'm standing in the N section with my laminate on and covered in mud. (laughs) I just can't get a response anymore."-- Trent Reznor
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.-- La Bruyere
A "practical joker" deserves applause for his wit according to its quality. Bastinado is about right. For exceptional wit one might grant keelhauling. But staking him out on an anthill should be reserved for the very wittiest.-- Lazarus Long
Anything invented before your fifteenth birthday is the order of nature. That's how it should be. Anything invented between your 15th and 35th birthday is new and exciting, and you might get a career there. Anything invented after that day, however, is against nature and should be prohibited.-- Douglas Adams
> 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
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)
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
"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."
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.-- Andy Tanenbaum
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.-- Arthur C. Clarke
Dragons are the living embodiment of power, purpose, and real estate devaluation.-- Marc Gabriele