865 hits
The law should make men free. The problem is making the law free.
2, 3, 3, 37 - the prime factorization of the beast.
The problem with reality is the lack of background music.
Lecture, n: Where the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either one.
Half of the people in the world are below average.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action.
Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.-- Goethe
And the pickles frolicked with the waffles, joyously.
More to be feared than ignorance is the pretense of knowledge.
The bigger they are, the harder they hit.
"The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem."-- Theodore Rubin
"All the people stared as if we were both quite insane."-- The Hollies
"I'm not mad at the world... just at all the people in it."
The sooner you start to code, the longer the program will take.-- Roy Carlson
Aftermath, n: The period following algebra.
America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.
"Well, to be fair I did have a couple of gadgets he probably didn't, like a teaspoon and an open mind."-- The Doctor
Be the person you needed when you were younger.
"Must... defy... laws... of... physics!"-- The Tick
"I am not part of the problem; I am a Republican."-- Dan Quayle
The principle difference between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.
The Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm:
1. Write down the problem.
2. Think very hard.
3. Write down the answer.
"Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much."
In the beginning was the word, and the word was "aardvark".
Television: the bland leading the bland.
The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.-- Chinese Proverb
There are three sorts of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People.-- Oscar Wilde
"We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things."-- Marcel Proust
Is not that the nature of men and women--that the pleasure is in the learning of each other?
"Microsoft is not the problem. Microsoft is the symptom."-- Eric S. Raymond
Beauty lies in the hands of the beer holder.
If the pen is mightier than the sword then how can actions speak louder than words?
Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
He was just... well, like a lot of madmen. Somewhat accurate view of the problem, really insane view of the solution. (Kid Radd)
In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.-- Groucho Marx
If the pen is mightier than the sword, what happens when you run out of ink?
Of all the truths in the world, humor is the most satisfying and often the healthiest.
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
"Remember the Golden Rule: Those who have the gold make the rules."
I like the kind of people that can hold on to the the feeling they have after the song or movie ends.
"The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are."-- Mark Twain
The future exists first in the imagination, then in the will, then in reality.
Law of diminishing IQ:
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group.
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future.
A bird in the hand is the best way to eat chicken.
If it wasn't for the optimist the pessimist would never know how happy he isn't.
"Man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road."-- Alexander Smith
Answer the phone naked. Callers will hear it in your voice.
"It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution."-- Oscar Wilde
Given the pace of technology, I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside. (Calvin & Hobbes)
Government of the people
By a corrupt subset of the people
For the people who can afford the corrupt subset of the people.
-- Chris Newport
Lunatic Asylum, n: The place where optimism most flourishes.
The voters have spoken, the bastards...
"The first 80% of software development is the easy part. The hard part is the next 80%"
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
A wolf in sheeps clothing needs professional help.
Q: Why did the germ cross the microscope?
A: To get to the other slide.
Study the past, if you would divine the future.-- Confucius
The Pet Principle:
No matter which side of the door your dog or cat is on, it is the wrong side.
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."
Those who speak by the yard and think by the inch should be kicked by the foot.
All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.-- Noam Chomsky
I don't have an attitude problem. You have a perception problem.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.-- Steven Wright
Monday is the root of all evil.
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, let the machine get it.
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)
Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its de-evolution into the shiny things network.-- The Onion
"We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles."-- Mark Twain
Join the army: meet interesting people, then kill them.
I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code.
He who laughs last probably didn't understand the joke.
Progress, n: The process through which the Internet has evolved from smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart terminals.
Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over the table.-- The Anarchist Cookbook
Ass, n: The masculine of "lass".
Never wrestle with a pig. You'll both get dirty, and the pig likes it.
Only the good die young. Note the average age in Congress.
"I'd like to meet the person who invented sex and see what they're working on now."
"Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent."
Funny. All the wireless people seem to be the marionettes.
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.
"In corporate religions as in others, the heretic must be cast out not because of the probability that he is wrong but because of the possibility that he is right."-- Antony Jay
Brought to you by the people who made "out of context" a household word.
Just because you're not paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.-- The Register
The problem isn't that the victim can't fight, the problem is that they have to. Saying that self-defense classes are the answer to gay bashers is like saying that it would be good if the government stopped prosecuting rape cases and used the money saved to hand out free mace.-- Richard Caley
Innovation is not the product of logical thought, even though the final product is tied to a logical structure.-- Albert Einstein
"When the people fear their government there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."-- Thomas Jefferson
Eat a live toad in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
The business of the mind is first and foremost the pure joy of knowing and comprehending, the pure joy of consciousness.-- Anais Nin
"We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists ... in the loved one, perfection."-- Sidney Poitier
The applied mathematician can find the solution to any difficulty, whilst the pure mathematician can find the difficulty to any solution.
"The thing that I'm into is the philosophy of the music. I love the surprise of things, the accidents--just the sound of a word, to try to express them in the best way, so that the emotion is totally revealed."-- Beth Gibbons
The elephant is the only mammal that can't jump.
"The Prophets teach us patience."
-- Vedek Bareil
"It appears they also teach you politics."-- Sisko (Star Trek: DS9)
Beware the fury of a patient woman.
The more we disagree, the bigger the chance that at least one of us is right.
"I think all the boys that write the screaming stuff would write the best love songs... because they have the most to hide. The guys that are in the most pain are usually the ones with the biggest hearts."-- Tori Amos
"The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it."-- P. B. Medawar
"It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand."-- Mark Twain
You're probably the sort who would have Dorothy arrested for throwing water on the Wicked Witch of the West.-- Eric Holeman
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.
Peace is not the absence of war. Peace is the presence of a system for resolving conflicts before war becomes necessary. War never creates peace.
"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them."-- Mark Twain
The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while Nature cures the disease.-- Voltaire
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."-- Theodore Roosevelt
Accuracy, n: The vice of being right.
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
Be alert. The world needs more lerts.
I'm extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies:
As a USENET discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
In order to become the master the politician poses as the servant.-- Charles De Gaulle
We accept the love we think we deserve
Proof by omission: The reader may easily supply the details. The other 253 cases are analogous.
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")
"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."
"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)
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved; the pig was committed.
Just as the whole is more than the sum of parts, the forest more than the tree and birds, so is mankind greater than the wanking of its nerds on slashdot.org.
Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
Domestication is the enemy of romance.
Being in a nudist colony probably takes all the fun out of Halloween.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
"The problem with post-modernism is that you like it more if you're innumerate or illiterate; both is best."-- Graydon
Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself.-- Plato
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.-- Goethe
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
-Ashleigh Brilliant
"News" is just the stuff they use to fill up all the empty space they couldn't sell for advertising.
In a cemetery:
"Persons are prohibited from picking flowers from any but their own graves."
"What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager asked her mother.
"Encouragement, dear..." she replied.
Renning's Maxim: Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
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)
"Confronted with the choice, the American people would choose the policeman's truncheon over the anarchist's bomb.-- Spiro T. Agnew
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
The public seems incapable of distinguishing between your garden variety idiot and your genuine lunatic. It is the same confusion the public has had over the last five Presidents.-- Mark Leeper
Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent.
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.-- Franz Kafka
PMS, n: the short period of time when women act like men do all the time.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.-- Niels Bohr
Q. What's the difference between an aerobics instructor and a well-mannered professional torturer?
A. The torturer would apologize first.
Paul's Law: You can't fall off the floor.
"One good turn gets most of the blankets"
The light at the end of a tunnel may be an oncoming train.
The BeOS takes the best features from the major operating systems. It's got the power and flexibility of Unix, the interface and ease of use of the MacOS, and Minesweeper from Windows.-- Tyler Riti
...postmodernity, once the plaything of smarty-pants French guys, in truth belongs to the engagingly stupid. (Newsweek)
Occam's eraser: The philosophical principle that even the simplest solution is bound to have something wrong with it.
Organized Religion is like Organized Crime; it preys on peoples' weakness, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate.-- Mike Hermann
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished."-- Goethe
"To describe the beating of Egg Whites is almost as cheeky as advising how to lead a happy life."-- The Joy of Cooking
All animals except man know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.-- Samuel Butler
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.-- E. B. White
"Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away."-- Goethe
Vizzini: Inconceivable.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. (The Princess Bride)
QUOTE OF THE DAY: `
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.-- Steven Wright
In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.-- Tom Szasz
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer", and the party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb", do hereby and forthwith agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part shall be removed from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the parties.
The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be limited to, the following. The party of the first part shall, with or without elevation at his or her option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part and rotate the party of the second part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered non-negotiable. Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the party of the first part shall have the option of disposing of the party of the second part in a manner consistent with all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes. Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part shall have the option of beginning installation. Aforesaid installation shall occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable. The above described steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the first part, by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to produce the most possible revenue for the Partnership.
"Geologists know how to make the bedrock."
Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
I think it's a beautiful day to go to the zoo and feed the ducks.
To the lions.-- Brian Kantor (the SDM)
"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world."
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.-- Oscar Wilde
Microsoft: Re-inventing the square wheel.
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.
"The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself."-- Thomas Szasz
May you get to Heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you're dead.-- Irish Proverb
If there is no such thing as justice then the best we can hope for is revenge
If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.-- Dorothy Parker
That's what friendship means: sharing the prejudice of experience.-- Charles Bukowski
He who laughs last found the dirty meaning.
I get my kicks above the .sigline, Sunshine
Laugh, and the world laughs with you. But you know most of them didn't get the joke in the first place, the lying weasels.-- Wade Kwon
we make happen the stuff we fear will happen
It is a good thing to in your mind be able to seperate the artist from the art.
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
"I'm the Queen of the nerds. I love nerds- by which I mean, not a cool, bitchin' person. I guess I was a cool nerd. I wasn't shuffling my feet in the corner of the playground, I was the homecoming queen, but then, all the nerds voted for me."-- Tori Amos
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.-- Gandhi
The rich aren't like us, they pay less taxes.
"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
Advisor: The guy who told you how to screw up.
If the mind were exercised as much as the mouth, we would be a race of geniuses.
Idle hands are the air guitar's playground (Alas)
It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening.-- H.G. Wells
It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.-- W. Somerset Maugham
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought"-- Basho
Because these moments, as precious as they are, they're evil when they're gone.
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I've come to realize there is a very close resemblance to the first.-- Ronald Reagan
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it.
Life is like a dog-sled team; If you ain't the lead dog, the scene never changes.
Stand and fight, you misbegotten spawn of the perverse breeding between a pixie and a squirrel!
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.-- George Bernard Shaw
VB is very useful for allowing non programmers to prove they cant program.-- Druck
"All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies [government by the masses] are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people."-- Oscar Wilde
"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
To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, your're overdoing it.-- J. Jenkins
Pedestrian, n: The variable (and audible) part of the roadway for an automobile.
"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug."-- Mark Twain
There has been opposition to every innovation in the history of man, with the possible exception of the sword.-- Benjamin Dana
Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
We shame outselves for the sake of simplicity.
Men are like parking spaces: the good ones are taken and the rest are handicapped.
Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath.-- Oscar Levant
Kisses are like tears. The only ones that are real are the ones you can't hold back.
Quantum mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of.
Make the most of yourself, because that's all the self you are going to get, buster.
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.-- James Branch Cabell
Don't worry; it only seems kinky the first time.
How do you know if honesty is the best policy unless you've tried some of the others?
"There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one's mind."-- Marcel Proust
Three Accounts for the Super-users in the sky,
Seven for the Operators in their halls of fame,
Nine for Ordinary Users doomed to crie,
One for the Illegal Cracker with his evil game
In the Domains of Internet where the data lie.
One Account to rule them all, One Account to watch them,
One Account to make them all and in the network bind them
In the Domains of Internet where the data lie.
Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
The music is the magic carpet that the other things take naps on.-- Tori Amos
Two guys walked into a bar. The third one ducked.
It's not the men in my life, it's the life in my men.-- Mae West
As the main says, it has yet to be proven intelligence has any survival value.
Whether it deserves some respect is another matter.
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Democracy is the form of government where everyone gets what the majority deserves.
Stenderup's law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up.
"Sometimes the need to mess with their heads outweighs the millstone of humiliation."-- Fox Mulder (The X-Files)
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.
At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.-- La Bruyere
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.-- Goethe
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
"We apologize for the error in last week's paper in which we stated that Mr. Arnold Dogbody was a defective in the police force. We meant, of course, that Mr. Dogbody is a detective in the police farce." (Correction Notice in the Ely Standard)
Guru, n: A computer owner who can read the manual.
"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture"-- Bumper sticker
pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source
And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords.-- Alan Watts
"Making the simple complicated is easy. Making the complicated simple is brilliant."
"Alcohol is the cause and the solution to many of life's problems."-- Homer Simpson
"I don't know who Jim Henson is but I've heard he has his hand in a lot of things around here."-- Kermit the Frog (in 1972)
Whoever said women don't like porn just isn't talking to the right women. Or showing them the right porn.
Even if you're paranoid, maybe the guy with the chainsaw really is after you.
"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
Adultery - two wrong people doing the right thing.
Don’t speak unless you can improve on the silence.
Life is cheap. It's the accessories that kill you.
What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts -- not the facts themselves.-- Cohen's Law
If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh.
"Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely-read man never quotes accurately for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely."-- Hesketh Pearson
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.-- Anais Nin
"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
Gina: "Isn't it customary for the suspect to leave the scene of the crime?"
Debra: "Definitely an amateur" (Empire Records)
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.-- Horace Walpole
An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.-- Don Marquis
"Laugh alone and the world thinks you're an idiot."
"To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves."-- Claude Adrien Helvetius
A dark past creates a long path back to the surface.
The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are going to the stars.-- Robert A. Heinlein
"Bother," said the Borg, "We've assimilated Pooh."
Democracy according to the NRA: Firearms are necessary to protect individual liberties; most of all the right to own firearms.
"We come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person, perfectly."
"Nothing in the world is friendlier than a wet dog."
"And the heat goes on... where the hand has been."-- Byrne/Eno
Nobody's creepy from the inside, Hazel. Some of them are sad, and some of them hurt, and some of them think they're the only real thing in the whole world. But they're not creepy.-- Neil Gaiman
Alimony: the fee a woman charges for name-dropping.
All esoteric teachings seek to apprehend the unseen happenings in the psyche, and all claim supreme authority for themselves.-- Carl Jung
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
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.-- H. L. Mencken
Don't you think that with the proper amount of manpower, pliers, ropes, belts and duct tape, you actually COULD lead a horse to water AND make it drink?-- Andy Overman
The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.-- Mark Twain
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
"Conviction is a luxury for those on the sidelines."
Men are all alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.-- Moliere
Never send a monster to do the work of an evil genius.
"If hackers ran the world, there'd be no war. Lots of accidents, maybe."
"Don't be afraid to go after what you want to do, and what you want to be. But don't be afraid to be willing to pay the price."-- Lane Frost
"If angst were a popsicle, I'd be suckin' the stick."
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)
As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.-- Noam Chomsky
Eiffel Tower: The Empire State Building after taxes.
The UNIX system has a command, 'nice', which allows a user to voluntarily reduce the priority of his process, in order to be nice to other users. Nobody ever uses it.-- Andy Tanenbaum
"Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions."-- Woody Allen
The more things change, the more they stay insane.-- Tom Weller
Dustin Pons, an American high-school student who attended a Soviet school for three weeks, as quoted in the New York Times: "American teenagers are more socially advanced. For instance, in their free time Soviets would rather read a book or walk in the park or play the piano. American teenagers would probably go out and watch TV, go to a movie, or something more actively inclined." ("The Progressive")
Frisbeetarianism: the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur." (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
Adventure: The land between entertainment and panic.
"Do not bend the spoon, instead realize the truth."
"The truth?"
"That the spoon effect will be added later by some sort of SGI workstation."
The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure.-- Lyndon B Johnson
"People aren’t against you; they are for themselves."
Music soothes the savage beast. ...unless it's polka.
I wouldn't touch the Metric System with a 3.048m pole.
Come, let us retract the foreskin of misconception and apply the wire brush of enlightenment.
"The biggest disease today isn't leprosy or tuberculosis, but the feeling of being unwanted."-- Mother Theresa
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.-- George Bernard Shaw
Proof by eminent authority: I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-complete.
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.-- Henry Kissinger
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.-- E. B. White
"The Ten Commandments contain 297 words. The Bill of Rights is stated in 463 words. Lincoln's Gettysburg Address contains 266 words. A recent federal directive to regulate the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words." (Atlanta Journal)
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."-- James D. Nicoll
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
"Ah," said the president [Reagan] with great lucidity, "It's true we shipped weapons to Iran, but they were defensive weapons."
If the man had a brain, he'd play with it.-- Molly Ivins
"I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves."-- August Strindberg
"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."-- G. K. Chesterton
The future ain't what it used to be.
"Love makes you do the wacky"-- Willow
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves but wiser people are full of doubts.-- Bertrand Russell
Patience is something you admire greatly in the driver behind you but not in the one ahead of you.
Never underestimate the falseness of a generalisation.
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.-- Samuel Johnson
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
Adolescence, n: The stage between puberty and adultery.
Arthur C. Clarke's Law :
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.-- Terry Pratchett (Night Watch)
The BEST part of waking up? Hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep.
The primary difference between a man and a woman is that a man gets his self-esteem when a woman says "yes" and a woman gets hers when she says "no". (Amy's Orgasm)
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.-- Ambassador Kosh
Do unto others before they undo you.
"I like to go to the beach and bury metal objects that say 'get a life' on them"
"Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God."
Deja moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before.
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.-- Anais Nin
If you put a million monkeys at a million keyboards, one of them will eventually write a Java program.
The rest of them will write Perl programs.
"My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful."-- Hermann Weyl
"It's gone wrong."
Professor George Eisenkopf, resident nuclear genius at the University of Chicopee Falls, Iowa, and the State Department's leading authority on civilian atomic power, scratched his nose with the plastic coffee-stirrer he'd been given on the plane.
"It isn't working properly," he added, in case there were any laymen present.-- Tom Holt ("Odds and Gods")
Abnormal, adj:
Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested. Wherefore the lexicographer adviseth a striving toward the straiter [sic] resemblance of the Average Man than he hath to himself. Whoso attaineth thereto shall have peace, the prospect of death and the hope of Hell.-- Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
The value of the Constitution depends on the good will of government itself. If the Supreme Court rules that the Bill of Rights should not interfere with the important business of government (which they have done on at least two occasions), then the Constitution is meaningless.-- John Kormylo
"I wish I could drink like a lady
I can take one or two at the most.
Three and I'm under the table --
Four and I'm under the host!"
The guests giggled, and floated down to the bottom of the garden to inspect the herbaceous borders, and snatch a quick snog before the crudities.-- Stephen Foster
Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions. It's the only way to make progress.-- Havelock Vetinari
"County library? Reference desk, please. Hello? Yes, I need a word definition. Well, that's the problem. I don't know how to spell it and I'm not allowed to say it. Could you just rattle off all the swear words you know and I'll stop you when...Hello??" (Calvin & Hobbes)
It's a joke. Like the funny kind, but different.
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
There are two ways spreading the light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.-- Edith Wharton
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)
Destinesia: The act of entering a room and forgetting why.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
"Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead."-- Sinclair Lewis
"Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex."-- Oscar Wilde
"Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed."-- Mark Twain
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.
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
"In all our searching, the only thing we found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other" (Contact)
"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."-- Oscar Wilde
"If you weren't Cindy Crawford, you didn`t get to ride in the little cart. I saw them take her off on a little cart, and I thought, 'I'm in the wrong profession!'"-- Tori Amos (Chicago Tribune, October 8, 1992)
"The most merciful thing in the world...is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."-- H.P. Lovecraft
"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
'La vache qui rit est jolie.' (Laughing cows are pretty.)
"[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?"
The revolution will NOT be televised.
You probably go to museums and complain that Monet pressed down too hard with his crayons because the picture is all bumpy.-- John Woods
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.-- H. L. Mencken
"Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy."
Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.-- Ashleigh Brilliant
I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.-- Mark Twain
The goodness of morals depends upon what the morals say, not just the fact that they are morals.-- Rob Bernardo
I think that Vulcan is a geekocracy where the people who know the most about sci-fi get to rule.-- <br />
Keith Irwin
The truth is not decided by democracy.
Politics is storytelling. We just pick the one we like best.
I find "Yes, you _can_ do it that way, but the rest of the Internet community will point at you and giggle", followed by my walking out in a flurry of RFCs, tends to be quite effective-- Tanuki the Raccoon-Dog (a.s.r.)
Nowadays, originality is the art of concealing your source.
This must be morning. I never could get the hang of mornings.
It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.-- Blaise Pascal
"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them?"
Five-step methods are the surest sign of an uninspired plan.
"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt."-- Herbert Hoover
X.400 is the mail system of the future, and I hope it stays that way.-- Erik Fair
Never run from anything immortal. It only attracts their attention. (The Last Unicorn)
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.-- Albert Einstein
Decafalon, n.: The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.-- Lily Tomlin
It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a new bomber.
Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists.
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.-- Paul Beatty
Patageometry, n: The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant under brain transplants.
"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
Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?-- Paul Simon
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
Do you know the difference between involvement and commitment? Think of ham and eggs. The chicken is involved. The pig is committed.-- Martina Navratilova
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.-- Woody Allen
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")
"The degree of normality in a database is inversely proportional to that of its DBA"
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
I save about twenty drafts -- that's ten meg of disc space -- and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped.-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
I want to die like my grandfather, peaceful and in my sleep - not screaming like the other people in the car.
If you can't take the heat, don't tickle the dragon.-- Scott Fahlman
The way some people find fault, you'd think there was a reward.
Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up.
"Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them."
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.-- Susan Sontag
"If houses were built the way software is built,
the first woodpecker would bring down civilization."
The best way to get rid of worries is to let them die of neglect.
did you know that in McDonaldland, you can get a license to hamburgle? It's true, the Hamburgler actually pays Grimace the purple guy for the same hamburgers he burgles, just for the opportunity to steal them for sport. He's neither a criminal nor an anarchist, he's a sycophant to the clown plutocracy.-- puddle (#xkcd)
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience... Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.-- Howard Zinn
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
"Question Authority. They usually know where the bathroom is."-- Daria
"In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!'"-- Dave Barry
The biblical concepts of sin and salvation are an integral part of Christian doctrine. Christianity first creates a problem (sin) and then offers a "solution" (salvation). This is not unlike the protection racket; you either buy "protection"--or else!"-- Domald Morgan
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet renounce controversy are people who want crops without ploughing the ground.-- Frederick Douglass
Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.-- Amy Lowell
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have trained for years and years can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.
"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.�"
Sir: Why did the chicken cross the road?
Andrew: One does not know, Sir. Possibly a predator was behind the chicken, or possibly there was a female chicken on the other side of the road if it was a male chicken; possibly a food source, or, depending on the season, it might be migrating. One hopes there's no traffic.
Sir: To get to the other side.
Andrew: "To get to the other side." Ah. Why is that funny? (Bicentennial Man)
�...Because the establishment never gets it. That�s how it is with paradigm shift. The establishment does not see where the next wave is coming from. And even if they hire someone to tell them where the next wave is coming from, they never believe them.�-- Ted Nelson
The senior wizard in a world of magic had the same prospects of long-term employment as a pogo stick tester in a minefield.-- Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)
There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.-- Oscar Wilde
The difference between theory and practice is greater in practice than it is in theory.
"The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness."-- Eric Sevareid
"Pity the educated cynics who refuse to enjoy the fun, choosing instead to remain faithful to their numb anguish. Mourn for the humorless devotees who refuse to join in the juicy unpredictable game so that they might feed their spiritual greed, pretzeled up motionless on prayer mats with the torment of grave meditations. Have compassion for the imagination-dead heroes who cling so tightly to the masks they've forged for themselves that they're dead to the delight of molting."-- Rob Brezsny
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.-- Oscar Wilde
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.-- Oscar Wilde
Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer.
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.-- H. L. Mencken
Oh yeah? You wanna step out of the giant robot and say that again?
Rhetorical subtlety doesn't work on people with the perceptive powers of an eggplant.-- Spencer Sun
"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy."-- Louis Kronenberger
I do not like the man: he has all of the virtues I detest and none of the vices I admire.-- Winston Churchill
Sometimes you have more perspective than the situation, sometimes the situation has more perspective than you.
Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
"That's the trouble with women these days. They act like men and want to be treated like women" (An American in Paris)
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.-- Aldous Huxley
Mirth prolongeth life and causeth health.
"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."
"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
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.-- Plato
In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.-- Adlai Stevenson
The chance of a lifetime is to be yourself.
"Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world."-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"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
Never underestimate the human capacity for cognitive dissonance.
Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.
People must think I'm a mushroom. They constantly keep me in the dark and feed me bullshit.
Bathquake, n: The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water faucet is turned on to a certain point.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
All New: The software is not compatible with any previous version.
"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)
There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.
"What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary."-- Richard Harkness
The reward for a job well done is more work.
What is wanted is not the will to believe but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.-- Bertrand Russell
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
"I wanted to make a little spot in the context of the record where there was this break in the action. In the midst of this buildup of these ever-growing, terrible machines, I just wanted to remember that there is somewhere... else."-- Trent Reznor
You can be a professional without being constipated about it.-- David Keyser
Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.-- Augustine
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
"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)
I don't know what your problem is, but I bet it's hard to pronounce.
The fact that I know I'm often a fool, but that I also have an IQ a fair bit over a hundred, scares me. What fools the rest of the world must be.
Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.-- Oscar Wilde
"The fickleness of the women whom I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me."-- George Bernard Shaw
"Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief."-- Arthur Schnitzler
"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.
If you're not part of the freaks, you're part of the boredom.-- Perry Farrell
Brandolini's law: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.
"Everything is convention, including law. When it is not the thought that led to the convention, but just the records of the convention that define morals, structural ethics are too dependant, and likely doomed."
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.
It seems more people are bitten by new yorkers per year than by sharks.
More to the point, new yorkers can be anywhere, not being limited by water. Fear them.
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
I'm an apatheist. The question is no longer interesting, and the answer no longer matters.-- petro (a.s.r)
Please do not duck the next time the clue-by-four swings your way.-- Ben Browning
Who cares whether the glass is half full or half empty? Shouldn't the question be who's been drinking out of my glass?
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb-assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
The only rose without thorns is friendship.
"Play with each other. Play with yourselves. Just don't play with the squirrels, they bite."
Cashtration, n.: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
You're just jealous because the voices are talking to me and not you.
"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
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.
They don't make nostalgia like they used to.
God made us sisters. Prozac made us friends.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
As I stare into the abyss of the toilet bowl I try hard to rememeber the reason why I felt the desperate need to mix vodka and red wine with whiskey and tequila.-- Shirley Manson
"Greek mythology says that whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. I'd never been sure whether 'mad' meant crazy or angry. Either way, the gods were working on me pretty good right now."-- Darien Fawkes (The Invisible Man)
The only thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to accessorize. (Steel Magnolias)
You, along with other heterosexuals, clearly have the power to ensure that my child be taught by her teachers that homosexuality is wrong or to pretend that we don't exist. You, collectively, have the power to deny her the protection of her stepmother's health insurance should I become unable to work. You have the power to make sure that my pension benefits are unavailable to my partner. You have the power to ensure that in order to protect my family I must pretend in public that my partner and I do not have the deeply committed relationship that we do in fact share. You have the power to send my child the message that her family is not real and her parents are bad people. I do not believe that it is in your best interest to do these things. More importantly, I will never, ever, acquiesce in them. I cannot.-- Doretta Schrock
"A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity."-- Robert Frost
The unique operations of the (human) brain are the result of natural selection operating through the filter of culture. They have suspended us between the two antipodal ideals of nature and machine, forest and city, the natural and the artifactual, relentlessly seeking, in the words of geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, an equilibrium not of this world.-- Edward O. Wilson ("Biophilia")
Live long enough to be a problem to your kids.
Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.-- Pete Seeger
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)
Maybe love is letting people be just what they want to be. The door always must be left unlocked.
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.
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.-- Thomas Jefferson
Reason, v.i: To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.-- Ambrose Bierce
Talk to your kids about sex. Tell them just how absolutely incredible it really is. (The Covert Comic)
Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight.-- Mark Twain
The more sane often call themselves insane to avoid others' judgement.
"Success consists of doing the common things of life uncommonly well."
The job of the poet is to render the world -- to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.-- Mark Van Doren
On the sexes:
Brains times Beauty times Availability = Constant.
The skin of civilization is only 7 meals thick
Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.-- Ed Howe
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.-- Henry David Thoreau
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
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.-- Douglas Adams (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
I used to have a handle on life, then it broke.
Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline sharply the minute they start waving guns around?-- Dr. Who
The beasts of the field and fowls of the air did know Ridcully the Brown. They'd got so good at pattern-recognition that, for a radius of about twenty miles around the Ridcully estates, they'd run, hide or in desperate cases attack violently at the mere sight of a pointy hat.-- Terry Pratchett (Moving Pictures)
"Here's a horrible thought: You know how dumb the average person is? Well, half the human race is even dumber than that..."
"You ever hear of the Spartans, Lewis? Ancient Greece...traditional enemies of the Athenians? They were a warrior society. I'll try to make it simple for you...they were Klingon." (The Rhipodon Society)
"God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyll and Hyde of sacred romance."-- Mark Twain
98% of us Americans are hard-working people. It's the other 2% that give us a bad reputation. Then again, we did elect them.
Indifference is the key when dealing with a narcissistic megalomaniac.
"The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason."-- Bertrand Russell
Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.-- Alan Keightley
Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.
-- Oscar Wilde
"You just realize you're not on Happy Days. It's the real world; You need to ignore what you are programmed by sitcoms to think your life should be."-- Trent Reznor
"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to be insane in such a useful way that they can't commit you."-- Mark Edwards
Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
Insecurity is comparing our behind the scenes to others highlight reel.
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.-- Mark Twain
Choconiverous, adj: Biting off the head of the chocolate Easter bunny first.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
It's true that the French have a certain obsession with sex, but it's a particularly adult obsession. France is the thriftiest of all nations; to a Frenchman sex provides the most economical way to have fun. The French are a logical race.-- Anita Loos
No group of parents should have the right either to prevent other people's children from being educated or to require--as a quid pro quo--that they be equally exposed to the religious doctrines of Christian fundamentalism. It's bad enough that these parents may be denying their own children the educational tools necessary to cope with the diverse society into which they will be graduating. It is too much to give them a veto over the education of the rest of our children.-- Alan Dershowitz
C++, the language in which only friends can access your private members.
Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.-- Jules Renord
Tell you what. When the vast majority of straight folks in this country learn how to have a private life privately, learn how to "just be themselves without telling it to everybody", why then I'll try to learn from them how to do the same.-- Elaine May
Erotic is when you use a feather. Kinky is when you use the whole chicken.
"She who has the biggest sword gets to be the biggest bitch."-- Kymberli Morris
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.-- Douglas Adams
"The Camden Aquarium, in defense of sharks, has a placard stating that the most lethal wild animal in the US is deer. (Their mode of attack is to stand in your headlights, and then launch their dead or crippled bodies through the windscreen into your lap)."
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
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
"Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell."
Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds.-- Susan Sontag
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.-- H. L. Mencken
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
Use the best: Linux for servers, Mac for graphics, Windows for Solitaire.
"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
"If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat."-- Mark Twain
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
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.-- Abraham Lincoln
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
"As long as the music's loud enough, we won't hear the world falling apart."-- Derek Jarman
[American Family Association Targets MTV] Thank God we know we're right; thank God we know we possess the Truth; thank God we know the proper values to give to our children, so that we need not teach them to think for themselves; thank God we have passed beyond the stage of needing to ask questions; thank God we have been given the Vision of the perfect world; thank God we have a decision procedure for telling the difference between Gospel hymns and rock video music. I hope God has a sense of humour, and I hope She doesn't give up on us for following our silly, narrow-minded, self-important ways.-- Joel Parthemore
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.-- Mark Twain
Saying that the just overturned systems of eastern Europe are proof the socialism isn't good or doesn't work, is sort of like saying that a particular Christian church that failed in producing ethical behavior in its adherents is proof that we need to abandon the Golden Rule and start being nasty to each other.-- Rob Bernardo
"I open up more when it's conversational. Otherwise, they're proving how smart they are, and I'm proving how smart I am. It's a penis race, and we're both losing. I'd rather just hang out and see where it can go."-- Tori Amos (The Orlando Sentinel, April 12, 1996)
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand.
We listen to reply.
"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good."-- Robert Graves
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")
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."-- Nietzsche
"It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'as pretty as an airport' exist."-- Douglas Adams
"I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end."-- Douglas Adams
Why do people settle their minds? When they see or while they know that about 3 billion other people don't agree with them, why do they hardly consider a serious talk with one of them?
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)
Adult: A person that has stopped growing at both ends but not in the middle.
What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?-- Marilyn Pittman
Theists think all gods but theirs are false. Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one.
Conservative: a man who believes nothing should be done for the first time.
Love thine enemies... it really pisses them off.
"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."
"I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."-- Kahlil Gibran
"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
The older I get, the more I think you ever learn is either further subtleties, or further distractions.
"Before you find your handsome prince, you've got to kiss a lot of frogs."
The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking that we have done so far, has created problems we cannot solve at the level of thinking at which we created them.-- Albert Einstein
God must love assholes--she made so many of them.
As the cheetah said to the chameleon:
You can hide, but you can't run!-- Alan Williams
What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love.-- Leonard Cohen (Beautiful Losers (1966))
Law of Hydrodynamics: When a body is immersed in water, the telephone rings.
"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)
"Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."-- Cyril Connolly
"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
Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.-- Mark Van Doren
"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?"-- Ayn Rand
"One of the CIA's few endearing traits is its penchant for making headlines. It is the world's most fully headlined secret agency."
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.)
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together-- Herbert Prochnow
"Dreams are the answers to questions that we haven't yet figured out how to ask."-- Fox Mulder (The X Files)
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
The default Magic Word, Abracadabra, actually is a corruption of the Hebrew phrase ha-Bracha dab'ra which means "pronounce the blessing".
Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies.-- Bill Bulko
"Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month."-- Wernher von Braun
Imaginative writers are valuable colleagues and their testimony is to be rated very highly because they draw on sources that we have not yet made accessible to science. The portrayal of the psychic life of human beings is, of course, the imaginative writer's most special demand. He has always been the forerunner of science and thus scientific psychology, too.-- Sigmund Freud
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or "female horse stuffed with wax" depending on the dialect. Coke then researched 40,000 Chinese characters and found a close phonetic equivalent, "ko-kou-ko-le," which can be loosely translated as "happiness in the mouth."
Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.-- Morticia Adams
Dante Hicks: Theoretically, people see money on the counter, and no one around, they think they're being watched.
Veronica: Honesty through paranoia. (Clerks)
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over and over again. People think you are stupid.
Do not go gentle into that good night... Rage, rage against the dying of the light.-- Dylan Thomas
"Make lots of money", "enjoy the work", "operate within the law": choose 2-- Brian Anderson
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation.
Listen to the Mustn'ts, child.
Listen to the Don'ts.
Listen to the Shouldn'ts,
The Impossibles, the Won'ts.
Listen to the Never haves,
Then listen close to me--
Anything can happen, child
Anything can be.-- Shel Silverstein
"I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, *giftless*. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy, I'm a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?'"-- Aaron Sorkin
Giving help doesn't mean dashing in and doing what seems like a good idea to you. It means doing what the other person wants. If what the person wants is for you leave them alone, it means doing that.-- John Fisher
"The decision to kiss for the first time is the most crucial in any love story. It changes the relationship of two people much more strongly than even the final surrender; because this kiss already has within it that surrender."-- Emil Ludwig
In business, your judged by what you say... nothing can kill the confidence of a perspective client faster then a proposal littered with grammatical, usage or punctuation errors. (Ad for RightWriter, The Grammar Checker)
I always used to wonder why the pope wore drag.
-- Tom Farrell
Who cares, as long as he looks faaabulous?!-- Gene Smith
"The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone."-- Henrik Ibsen
"I don't need to be told how to do my job."
"I hope not, because it's by ass on the line and I'm up to my neck in it." (The Thin Blue Line)
"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!'"
What do you mean, "If a woodchuck could chuck wood"? What's the point in calling it a "woodchuck" if it can't ?-- David Gunter
The nice men are ugly.
The handsome men are not nice.
The handsome and nice men are gay.
The handsome, nice and heterosexual men are married.
The men who are not so handsome, but are nice, have no money.
The nice, semi-handsome men with money think we are only after their money.
The men without money are after our money.
The handsome men, who are not so nice and somewhat heterosexual, don't think we are beautiful enough.
The men who think we are beautiful, that are heterosexual, somewhat nice, and have money, are cowards.
The men who are somewhat handsome, somewhat nice, have some money, and are heterosexual, are shy and NEVER MAKE THE FIRST MOVE.
The men who never make the first move automatically lose interest in us when we make the first move.
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
The obvious mathematical breakthrough [to break modern encryption] would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers.-- Bill Gates (The Road Ahead)
"Mobile phones are the only subject on which men boast about who's got the smallest."-- Neil Kinnock
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.-- Alan Ashley-Pitt
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.-- Wernher von Braun
If a tree falls in a forest and lands on a politician, even if you can't hear the tree or the screams, I'll bet you'd at least hear the applause.-- Paul Tindale
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
-- Josh Billings
There must be more to life than sitting there wondering if there is more to life.
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are software.-- Richard P. Brennan
Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.-- Oscar Wilde
Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine.
"...the only place for 63,000 bugs is a rain forest"
"They say necessity is the mother of invention. And when the necessity is survival, she can be one mean mother. Of course, it's her child, invention, who's the real dangerous one."-- Darien Fawkes (The Invisible Man)
"The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they will believe they are as clever as he."-- Karl Kraus
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.-- Robert Frost
The loom works perfectly well without the steam powered wig darner and shortbread cutter stapled to the side.-- Peter da Silva
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a hole in his head.
Law of Cat Landing:
A cat will always land in the softest place possible; often the mid-section of an unsuspecting, reclining human.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
Most children grow up to be adults in spite of their parents, not because of them.
You can't make a program without breaking some egos.
"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."
Auntie Em--Hate you. Hate Kansas. Taking the dog.-- Dorothy
On applause: They named it Ovation from the Latin ovis, a sheep.-- Plutarch
Hang in there, retirement is only thirty years away!
I'm sick of tattoos, sick of piercings, sick of temporary tattoos. They are the white stilettos of the '90s.-- Shirley Manson
God, as some cynic has said, is always on the side which has the best football coach.-- Heywood Broun
"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education."-- Mark Twain
"Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ..."
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 site is intended for people over 18, but only because kids shoot each other if they hear the word 'fuck'."
"The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't make eight cats pull a sled through the snow.
The intensity comes from meaning, not from extremes.
"To live outside the law you must be honest."-- Bob Dylan
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."-- Donald E. Knuth
On the menu of a Swiss restaurant:
"Our wines leave you nothing to hope for."
"Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly."-- Arnold Edinborough
(as The Spice Girls play in background)
"What are they doing?"
"Psychological warfare." (Small Soldiers)
He believes in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who does not understand them.-- George Bernard Shaw
Maybe that explains Perl: Larry Wall let a kitten have its way with the bash, sed, and expr doc, then implemented the result.-- Jay Maynard
We think in language, therefore the quality of our thoughts can only ever be as good as the quality of our language.-- George Carlin
I speak without reservation from what I know and who I am. I do so with the understanding that all people should have the right to offer their voice to the chorus whether the result is harmony or dissonance, the worldsong is a colorless dirge without the differences that distinguish us, and it is that difference which should be celebrated, not condemned.-- Ani Difranco
Manners are one of the truly lost causes.-- John Simon
I'll say it again for the logic impaired.-- Larry Wall
The moral of the story is that with a contrived example, you can prove anything. Oops. No, that's not what I meant to say.-- Joel Spolsky
The fewer clear facts you have in support of an opinion, the stronger your emotional attachment to that opinion.
Cigarette, n: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco inbetween.
"The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad."-- Friedrick Nietzsche
"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time."-- George Orwell
Aquadextrous, adj: Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves.-- John Berger
"They keep saying the right person will come along. I think mine got hit by a truck."
"Laws don't work, unless they merely codify generally accepted behavior, in which case they are probably unnecessary."
-- tom@genie.slhs.udel.edu
"They call him the Sand Spider"
"Why do they call him that?"
"Probably because it sounds scary." (True Lies)
Arithmetic: An obscure art no longer practiced in the world's developed countries.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud. After a while, you realise the pig is enjoying it.-- Jamie Lawrence
On-line, adj: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer.
Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming.-- J. P. McEvoy
Those who say they 'sleep like a baby' haven't got one.
Great Lover, n: A man who can breathe through his ears.
"Time goes by so fast, people go in and out of your life. You must never miss the opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you." (Cheers)
Behaviorism is the art of pulling habits out of rats.-- O'Neill
"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
The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.
"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.
"Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solicitude is the enemy of well-being."-- John Updike
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff.-- Peter de Vries
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.
Unfortunately, there are like five people in the world who understand the X keyboard model--I'm not one of them--and three are insane. It's that bad.-- Tim Showalter
It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.-- Emerson
"The way I play is a bit torturous but... it's the only way I know how to play."-- Tori Amos
They say it's never too late to learn to play the piano, but at 2 am, I really wish my roommate would quit and go to bed.-- Nathan Hansar
"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
"Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial 'we'."-- Mark Twain
We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift - our personal association, which means so much to them - we give grudgingly.-- Mark Twain
Sign in a hotel elevator in Paris:
"Please leave your values at the front desk."
A winning formula can be obliterated simply by the change to an ingorant new manager.
“How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.”-- Anais Nin
"Love is not the dying note of a twisted violin - it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring."-- S.J. Perelman
"Y'ever notice how Man is often likened to a virus or a cancer, spreading across the globe, using up resources, changing ecosystems? How come these people never talk about the prehistoric plants and trees that spread across the earth, converting all that carbon dioxide to oxygen and leaching nitrogen and other nutrients out of the soil? As their dead carcasses piled on top of each other over the millenia, they decomposed into pools of hydrocarbons, forming petroleum and coal. Directly and indirectly, plants are the true despoilers of the planet, taking pure and sweet solar energy and perverting it into hideous (dare I say, evil) carbon compounds.
"'Green' alternatives my ass! Kill a plant today and stop the destruction of Earth's pristine beauty!"-- Gerry Deckert
America was founded by drug smugglers -- rum was the drug, but smugglers nonetheless.
"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
Q: Why did the astrophysicist order three hamburgers?
A: Because he was hungry.
If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?-- Lily Tomlin
"Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim."-- Bertrand Russell
Descartes described how his father taught him how to swim by throwing him into the Seine: "I sink, therefore I swam."
You think Oedipus had a problem--Adam was Eve's mother.
"Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie."-- William Shakespeare
The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought.-- Nathaniel Hawthorne
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.-- Henry David Thoreau
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?-- T. S. Eliot
"Well, it's weird when you play a show somewhere and there's a disproportionate number of people backstage talking about how they're witches. And that there's a cool place to go - 'Hey, you guys want to go out tonight after the show?' 'Yeah, where?' ' Well, there's a great place. There's this old abandoned church that these satanic cults hang out at.' It's not, 'Let's go down to the bar.' It's like, 'Let's go out and slaughter a cow.' What the fuck? It's the last thing you're expecting. And they assume that you must be into that. I've got someone coming up to me saying, 'The promoter is telling everyone you're a warlock.' I think a lot of spare time breeds incredible weirdness. They're looking for some way to rebel. I don't know."-- Trent Reznor
Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.-- Steven Wright
The Four Food Groups: Coffee, ice cream, beer and pizza.
Politicians should be changed frequently, like diapers - and for much the same reason.
The best way to accelerate hardware is at 9.8 m/sec/sec.
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.-- Brian Kernighan
Absent, adj: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered.
"Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones."-- Phillips Brooks
Ever since Hume's analysis of causation, it has been clear that events in the world are not connected by necessity. "Laws of nature" are descriptive, not legislative. They are devised by man for the purpose of organizing his expeience. Einstein wrote:
Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logocally uniform system of thought. ... The sense-experiences are the given subject-matter. But the theory that shall interpret them is man-made. ... hypothetical, never completely final, always subject to question and doubt.
('Pragmatism and Science')
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
The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing.-- Gamel Abdel Nasser
"Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwile."-- Franklin P. Jones
Anticiparcellate (an ti si par' sel ate), v: Waiting until the mailman is several houses down the street before picking up the mail, so as not too appear too anxious.-- Rich Hall ("Sniglets")
"If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil."-- Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency)
'The main reception foyer was almost empty but Ford nevertheless weaved his way through it.'
(Ford making his way out of Milliways whilst under the influence of enough alchol to make a rhino sing) (The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
"Mosquitoes have caused more deaths than all the wars. Guppies devour mosquito larvae so may be the best defense against them...We budget billions for military systems. Preposterous! Spend it on guppies!" (letter to the editor, Eugene newspaper)
"Women are like cell phones. They like to be held and talked to, but push the wrong button, and you'll be disconnected."
C gives you enough rope to hang yourself. C++ also gives you the tree object to tie it to.
Some women get excited about nothing, and then marry him.
First law of debate: Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.
Primus in orbe Deus fecit timor.
"It was fear that introduced gods into the world."
You can't remember the plot of the Dr. Who movie because it didn't have one, just a lot of plot holes strung together. It did have a lot of flashing lights, though.-- Terry Pratchett (alt.fan.pratchett)
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
"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless--of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?' Answer. That you are here--that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?"-- Tom Schulman (Dead Poets Society)
"Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know, most people's fantasies are pretty sad."-- Frederik Pohl
"Don't apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
"And the thing is, I like my evil like I like my men--evil. You know, straight up, black hat, 'Tied to the train tracks, soon my electro-ray will destroy metropolis' bad."-- Buffy (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)
So just what are time flies, and why do they like an arrow?
"Warning: Dates in Calendar are closer than they appear."
The weirder you are, the better you have to be if you still want to get paid.-- Ben Aveling
"A child does not have to be taught how to be happy or the ways of love. It is fear, hatred, & prejudice that have to be taught. And from the condition of the world we can see that unfortunately there are some very good teachers."-- Javan
"The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions."-- Susan Sontag
"A child prodigy is one with highly imaginative parents."
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.-- Will Rogers
Always behave like a duck: keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.-- Jacob Braude
The world, especially for the middle and upper classes, is much more fool-proof then it used to be. A fool-proof environment causes an increase in the number of fools.-- Hillel Gazit
The use of either 'PC' or 'lighten up' is usually enough to cause me to junk an article: the former indicates that the writer is a raving moron incapable of original thought, while the latter is a pretty clear indication that the writer is an insensitive clod.-- Melinda Shore
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places."-- Hemingway
WITTICISM, n. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted, and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a "joke."-- Ambrose Bierce
"The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums."-- Peter De Vries
Sometimes you have to bite people hard on the lip before they realize you're not kissing them, so keenly do they yearn for approval.-- Jess Anderson
There's old proverbs to suit about anything you want to do.
Is there anything safer than TV-style seriousness--i.e., delivering the conventional wisdom as if it were the deeply important truth?-- Pauline Kael
"Some people are afraid of what they might find if they try to analyze themselves too much, but you have to crawl into your wounds to discover where your fears are. Once the bleeding starts, the cleansing can begin."-- Tori Amos
"It's foolish to be prejudiced. There are so many reasons to hate people on an individual basis."-- Dennis Miller
Some husbands are living proof that a woman can take a joke.
Motrin and espresso. The breakfast of champions.-- Sweet Poly
"Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth."-- Mark Van Doren
"In California everyone goes to a therapist, is a therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist."-- Truman Capote
When you dig straight down, you won't reach the other end of the earth. There's a couple of reasons:
-You will drown in the water.
-If you brought scuba gear, you will burn because the center of the earth is too hot.
-If you even thought of that and brought a portable black hole� with you, you'll become disoriented, partly due to gravity, and start digging in circles.
"To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love."-- George Santayana
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
The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth.-- Albert Einstein
There is no CyberSpace, just a lot of people pretending.-- Sam Kass
The Two Rules of Success: 1. Don't tell everything you know.
He flung himself flat on the swaying roof, held out the crossbow, shut his eyes and fired.
In accordance with ancient narrative practice, the shot ricocheted off someone's helmet and brought down an innocent bird some distance away, whose only role was to expire with a suitable humorous squawk.-- Terry Pratchett (The Last Continent)
Why can't some people take a joke? Well, maybe because they're honest, and the joke doesn't belong to them.-- Matt Diamond
"Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road."-- Stewart Brand
"Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends."-- S. Weir Mitchell
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."-- Anais Nin
Humor is just another defense against the universe-- Mel Brooks
If you insist that you know what's right for a person, you are precious close to saying that their feelings aren't real, just because you don't understand them. The next stop after sentimentality is cruelty.-- John Fisher
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.-- Horngren
The two women exchanged the kind of glance women use when no knife is handy.-- Ellery Queen
"Ergotism is what you get if you overuse the word "therefore". Egotism on the other hand is a form of "I" strain."-- Paul Martin
"If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?"
"Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area."
"It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end."-- Ursula K. Le Guin
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check three friends. If they're OK, chances are you're the one.
Bozone, n: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
A tall man with long grey hair falling untidily over the collar of his dark blue suit leaned against the parapet eating an ice cream. Although impeccably dressed, he was palpably all wrong, and the two policemen looked at each other with pleasant anticipation.
"Drugs?" suggested the first policeman.
"More like dirty books," said the other. "If he's armed, it's my turn."
"It's always your turn," grumbled his companion. The first policeman shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, all right then," he said. "But I get to drive back to the station."-- Tom Holt ("Expecting Someone Taller")
Sodd's Second Law: Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur.
"If you're one in a million, there are ten of you in New York."
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)
Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naive self-love. The first was when it realized that our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly conceivable... The second was when biological research robbed man of his particular privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him to a descent from the animal world.-- Sigmund Freud
Boss, n.: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the words 'boss' and 'botch' were largely synonymous, except that boss, in addition to meaning 'a supervisor of workers' also meant 'an ornamental stud.'
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discussion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fallacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among themselves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in whatever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too earnestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better for all parties." (Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks, published around 1850)
"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action."-- Frank Herbert
"A sense of humor is the only thing that keeps intelligent people from hanging themselves."-- Voltaire
Luxury is the main cause of boredom; Boredom is a main cause of extreme thoughts, eg. violence.
"For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong."-- H. L. Mencken
If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.
"Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable."-- Henry Louis Mencken