misc, 1/3
Thomas W. Strong, Jr.
it in the building next door. So now it has two 7th floors, which is a
very interesting thing to know if you ever go there--which you probably
won't, 'cause the building next door is false."
- Don Adams as Maxwell Smart in "Get Smart"
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly
by."
- Douglas Adams
"Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry."
- George Ade
"It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."
- Alfred Adler
"Any excuse will serve a tyrant."
- Aesop
"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public
office."
- Aesop
"I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls."
- Senator George Aiken, on the Vietnam war, January
1966
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
- Howard Aiken
"A man sometimes devotes his life to a desire which he is not sure will
ever be fulfilled. Those who laugh at this folly are, after all, no
more than mere spectators of life."
- Ryunosuke Akutagawa
"Money is the root of all evil, and yet it is such a useful root that
we cannot get on without it any more than we can without potatoes."
- Louisa May Alcott
"There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of
even one small candle."
- Robery Alden
"A gentleman never strikes a lady with his hat on."
- Fred Allen
"It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
coming up it."
- Henry Allen
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to
achieve immortality through not dying."
- Woody Allen
"Yes, that was Richard Nixon. He used to be President. When he left
the White House, the Secret Service would count the silverware."
- Woody Allen, "Sleeper"
"I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it
happens."
- Woody Allen
"If you steal ideas from one source, that's plagiarism, but if you
steal ideas from more than one source, that's research."
- Laurendo Almeida, Brazilian guitarist.
"The shortest distance between two points is under construction."
- Noelie Altito
"Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours
without surgery."
- Mark Amidon of Elbows
"If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid."
- Amphibious Warfare Review, Spring '89
"Try to look unimportant because the bad guys may be low on ammo."
- Amphibious Warfare Review, Spring '89
"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now...only much, much
better"
- L. Anderson
"Andrew no longer exists. Unsubscribe?"
- Andrew Messages System
"We don't claim the items here are of any use. If you think they are --
great, but it's up to you to decide. If they don't work -- tough. If
you lose millions of dollars because something here doesn't work --
tough. If you don't like this disclaimer -- tough. We reserve the right
to do the absolute minimum provided by law -- up to and including
nothing. This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with a large
number of software packages but this is in plain English and the rest
are in legalese. We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all
but our lawyers made us."
- Disclaimer on Andrew anonymous ftp
"What are you doing?"; "Writing free verse."; "You don't even have to
compile that, do you?"
- Mark Andy and Elliott Evans
"When your ship comes in, make sure you are willing to unload it."
- Robert Anthony
"The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
authority is Isaiah 30:26, 'Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
the light of seven days.' Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat
it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the
heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as
the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation,
(H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K),
gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be
computed... [However] Revelations 21:8 says 'But the fearful, and
unbelieving... shall have their part in the lake whic
- "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like... victory!"
- Apocalypse Now
"Give, expecting nothing thereof"
- St. Thomas Aquinas
"On the day of victory no one is tired."
- Arab proverb
"A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper
cannot be understood."
- Mark Ardis
"Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
- Hannah Arendt.
"Man by nature wants to know."
- Aristotle
"The gods are too fond of a joke."
- Aristotle
"Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
for these only gave life, those the art of living well."
- Aristotle
"It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for
subtlety."
- Issac Asimov
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds
the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's
funny..."
- Isaac Asimov
"When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced
by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with
great fevor and emotion--the distinguished but elderly scientists are
then, after all, probably right."
- Isaac Asimov
"I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them."
- Isaac Asimov
"When someone tells you something defies description, you can be pretty
sure he's going to have a go at it anyway."
- Clyde B. Aster
"A lady in waiting must learn to wait."
- John Astin as Gomez, The Addams Family
"The Pimpernel is the most over-rated human being since Judas Iscariot
won the A.D.31 'Best Disciple' competition"
- Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder
"Never believe anything until it's officially denied."
- Margaret Atwood
"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing."
- Marcus Aurelius
"The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as
smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway."
- Bernard Avishai
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray,
Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
- Charles Babbage
"There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the
right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself."
- J. S. Bach
"Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an
exact man"
- Francais Bacon
"Age appears best in four things: old wood to burn, old wine to drink,
old friends to trust, and old authors to read."
- Francis Bacon
"He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is
the greatest innovator."
- Sir Francis Bacon
"Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper
is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a ukelele."
- Bagdikian's Observation
"I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after
the IRS."
- Robert Bakker, paleontologist
"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."
- Honroe de Balzac
"Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and
original in your work."
- Clive Barker, "Jihad"
"Every crowd has a silver lining."
- Phineas Taylor Barnum
"For three hundred years flutists tried to play in tune. Then they
gave up and invented vibrato."
- George Barrere
"Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless
you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet."
- Dave Barry
"It may be meaningless, but at least it's a gesture."
- Dave Barry
"Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him."
- John Barrymore's dying words
"Be suspicious of anything that works perfectly -- it's probably
because two errors are canceling each other out."
- Dave Bartley
"Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology."
- R. S. Barton
"Half the work that is done in the world is to make things appear what
they are not."
- E. R. Beadle
"Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood."
- Louise Beal
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
independence."
- C.A. Beard
"It's so fast, it can do an infinite loop in thirty seconds."
- Brian Bechtel of Apple Computer on the Macintosh IIfx
"But scientists, who ought to know Assure us that it must be so. Oh,
let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about."
- Hilaire Belloc
"A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedence, loyalty, and the
importance of turning around three times before lying down."
- Robert Benchley
"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
supposed to be doing at the moment."
- Robert Benchley
"As for me, except for the occaisional heart attack, I feel as young as
I ever did."
- Robert Benchley
"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."
- John Benfield
"That's the problem with tragedies. After the first chapter, you know
the dick-ass is gonna die because he's not perfect!"
- Ed Bennett
"I have made mistakes, but have never made the mistake of claiming I
never made one."
- James G. Bennet
"It is difficult for me to comprehend the fact that some people
actually do not consider all uses of explosives to be recreational."
- Ragnar Benson
"People who deal with bits should expect to get bitten."
- Jon Bentley
"There is only one sin in this world, and you have definately committed
it: It is the Sin of Not Understanding Humor When It Slaps You Upside
The Head."
- Pete Berger
"There's no need for flames in response to a comment, no matter how
hostile the comment was delivered."
- Peter Glen Berger, 3/19/88, andrew.gripes
"Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself."
- John Bernal
"The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not
understand what he finds."
- Claude Bernard
"...to raise a signal means to turn the light on; ... Responding to a
signal means turning the light off (and, under System V, hoping the
bulb won't blow when it's next turned on)..."
- Dan Bernstein
"LZW compression takes under five lines of APL."
- Dan Bernstein
"The entire description of the world takes only five lines of APL."
- Mike Waters
"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum" (I think that I think, therefore I
think that I am.)
- Ambrose Bierce
"Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think."
- Ambrose Bierce
"Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father- and act which
made a deep impression on me at the time."
- Ambrose Bierce
"To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one's voice."
- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
"Admiration, n: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves"
- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
"There are four types of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
and praiseworthy."
- Ambrose Bierce
"The employer generally gets the employees he deserves."
- Walter Bilbey
"Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius."
- Josh Billings
"With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud
I try to be a fraud and a half."
- Otto von Bismark
"As your attorney, it is my duty to inform you that it is not important
that you understand what I'm doing or why you're paying me so much
money. What's important is that you continue to do so."
- Bizarro
"True, money _can't_ buy happiness, but it isn't happiness I want.
It's money."
- Bizarro
"Never before have I encountered such corrupt and foul-minded
perversity! Have you ever considered a career in the Church?"
- Black Adder II
"The Bible doesn't forbid suicide. It's Catholic directive, intended
to slow down their loss of martyrs."
- Ellen Blackstone
"The fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees."
- William Blake
"Most human problems can be solved by an appropriate charge of high
explosive."
- Blaster, "Uncommon Valor"
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
- Derek Blok
"Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier."
- Blore's Razor
"The last time somebody said, `I find I can write much better with a
word processor.', I replied, `They used to say the same thing about
drugs.'
- Roy Blount, Jr.
"If it weren't for my lawyer, I'd still be in prison. It went a lot
faster with two people digging."
- Mister Boffo
"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes which can be made
in a very narrow field."
- Niels Bohr
"The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
- Bohr
"Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true."
- Niels Bohr to a young physicist
"Anything a human being does to a LaRouche follower is justifiable on
the grounds of self-defense. "
- Kevin Bold
"Stupidity is evil waiting to happen."
- Clay Bond
"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public
relations officers."
- Daniel J. Boorstin
"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree,
is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals.
We cause accidents."
- Nathaniel Borenstein
"If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least
conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict
little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential
equations, but can use dice with fair success."
- Max Born
"There is no substitute for excellence-not even success."
- Thomas Boswell
"You can neither win nor lose if you don't run the race"
- Bowie
"The human race likes to give itself airs. One good volcano can produce
more greenhouse gases in a year than the human race has in its entire
history."
- Ray Bradbury
"Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future."
- Ray Bradbury
"If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee
-- that will do them in."
- Bradley's Bromide
"Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the
steamroller, you're part of the road.....
- Stuart Brand, "The Media Lab"
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
"Documentation is like sex; when it's good, it's very, very good, and
when it's bad, it's better than nothing"
- Dick Brandon
"Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers."
- Leonard Brandwein
"I don't trust him. We're friends."
- Bertolt Brecht
"Why be a man when you can be a success?"
- Bertold Brecht
"Grub first, then ethics."
- Bertolt Brecht
"My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power"
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!"
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"Inform all the troops that communications have completely broken
down."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"Try to relax and enjoy the crisis."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"Sometimes I need what only you can provide - Your absence."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"I'm perfectly willing to be judged. But only by God and history."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story ."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that
power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by
other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as
service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for
which he is insatiable, implacable."
- David Brin, "The Postman"
"The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe
seems to be missing."
- William J. Broad
"It's immature and silly, but then again -- so is high school."
- Mathew Broderick in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"
"Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
of being a damned fool."
- Bellamy Brooks
"Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the
patron may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot
govern the actual completion. An omelette, promised in two minutes,
may appear to be progressing nicely. But when it has not set in two
minutes, the customer has two choices -- wait or eat it raw. Software
customers have had the same choices."
- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr, _The Mythical Man-Month_
"Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So,
for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be
crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was
that one."
- Mel Brooks
"We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children."
- David Brower
"I'm against any law that I wouldn't break if I could get away with
it."
- A. Whitney Brown
"A group of white South Africans recently killed a black lawyer because
he was black. That was wrong. They should have killed him because he
was a lawyer."
- A. Whitney Brown
"That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at
you."
- A. Whitney Brown
"He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace."
- John Mason Brown, drama critic
"I don't understand why you make such a big deal out of
everything...haven't you learned; if it's not happenning to me it's not
important?"
- Murphy Brown
"All things are artificial, for nature is the art of God."
- Thomas Browne
"The long habit of living indisposith us to dying."
- Sir Thomas Browne
"And remember, no matter where you go, there you are."
- Buckaroo Banzai
"Put yourself in Hamlet's shoes. Suppose you were a prince, and you
came back from college to discover that your uncle had murdered your
father and married your mother, and you fell in love with a beautiful
girl and mistakenly murdered her father, and then she went crazy and
drowned herself. What would you do?"; "Go back for a masters?"
- Art Buchwald and student
"I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your
intelligence."
- William F. Buckley, Jr.
"I would sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand
names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by
the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University."
- William F. Buckley, Jr.
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: (1)
not going all the way; and (2) not starting."
- Buddha
"This will be the greatest thing for labor relations since the Cat o'
Nine Tails!!!"
- Charles Montgomery Burns
"Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in
stones. It is easier to get a spark than a moral."
- John Burroughs
"The only way to deal with exploiters is to terrorize the bastards."
- The late Congressmember Phillip Burton
"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never
worshipped anything but himself"
- Sir Richard F. Burton
"I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always
agree with them."
- George Bush
"All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
every organism to live beyond its income."
- Samuel Butler
"We think as we do, mainly because other people think so."
- Samuel Butler
"The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself
with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of
himself too."
- Samuel Butler
"A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will
keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those
that are worth committing."
- Samuel Butler
"The country that draws a broad line between its fighting men and its
thinking men will find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done
by cowards."
- Sir William F. Butler
"Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They
seem more afraid of life than death."
- James F. Byrnes
"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible
worlds; the pessimist fears this is true."
- Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion
"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why
the poor have no food, they call me a communist."
- Dom Helder Camara
"Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions."
- Henry N. Camp
"[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no
mercy."
- Joseph Campbell
"You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having
asked any clear question."
- Albert Camus
"You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a
smile and a gun."
- Al Capone
"Nobody controls his own life. The best you can do is choose to be
controlled by good pepole, By pepole who love you."
- Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game"
"Weather forecast for tonight: dark."
- George Carlin
"I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of
hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect."
- George Carlin
"Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what
do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do
they?"
- George Carlin
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
- George Carlin
"All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been, it is lying as in
magic preservation in the pages of books. They are the choicest
possessions of men."
- Thomas Carlyle
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do."
- Dale Carnegie
"Start at the Beginning, go through till the End, then stop."
- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
"I'll leave the anarchists alone since they usually shoot back. The
liberals wring their hands so much that they make easy moving targets."
- Capt. Pat Carroll, USAF
"Liberals are an easy target. They're so soft and furry, and they make
lovely pleading noises when trod on."
- Patrick Carroll
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I
became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can
meet girls."
- M. Cartmill
"The problem with political jokes is they get elected."
- Henry Cate VII
"After I'm dead I'd rather people ask why I have no monument than why I
have one."
- Cato the Elder
"...Editors are, in my opinion, a low form of life, inferior to viruses
and only slightly above academic deans"
- D. Causey, "Crimes in Scientific Editing"
"I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth,
and they never believe me."
- Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour
"The poetry of heroism appeals irresitably to those who don't go to a
war, and even more so to those whom the war is making enormously
wealthy."
- Celine.
"Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it
is and not as it should be!"
- Miguel de Cervantes, "Don Quixote"
"Let us say that I despise stupidity. Especially when it masquerades as
virtue."
- Miguel de Cervantes, "Don Quixote"
"Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse."
- Miguel de Cervantes
"When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome"
- Miguel de Cervantes
In a country as big as the United States, you can find fifty examples
of anything.
- Jeffery F. Chamberlain
"It was a blonde, a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained
glass window."
- Raymond Chandler
"What doesn't kill me better be able to run damn fast"
- Rich Chandler
"In the end, everything is a gag."
- Charlie Chaplin
"Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball."
- Charles V
"Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so."
- Lord Chesterfield
"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An
inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."
- G. K. Chesterton
"I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean."
- G. K. Chesterton
"Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him
from being a camel."
- G. K. Chesterton
"The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
really clever who has not found that he is stupid."
- G. K. Chesterton
"Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."
- G. K. Chesterton
"A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without
any hope of fame and money, but even practises it without any hope of
doing it well."
- G. K. Chesterton
"To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in
doing it"
- G.K.Chesterton
"Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives."
- Maurice Chevalier
"Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of
destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by
all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by
death."
- Richard Childers
"May your fondest wish be granted."
- Traditional Chinese Curse
"He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask
remains a fool forever."
- Old Chinese saying
"If you must play, decide upon three things at the start: The rules of
the game, the stakes, and the quitting time."
- Chinese proverb
"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the
great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
- Winston Churchill
"Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be
shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful
see it for what it really is-the strong horse the pulls the whole
cart."
- Winston Churchill
"When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
- Winston Churchill
"Many men stumble across the truth, but most manage to pick themselves
up and continue as if nothing had happened."
- Winston Churchill
"If this principle of giving up without a fight any place you cannot be
sure of holding were adopted, would not the enemy be able to make an
unlimited number of valuable conquests without any fighting at all ?"
- Winston Churchill
"I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The
first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about
the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies
died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime
Minister. That is a political statistic."
- Winston Churchill
"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on
the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing
strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may
be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing
grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall
fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
- Winston Churchill, 4 June 1940
"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us
as equals."
- Winston Churchill
"Victory at all costs; victory in spite of all terror; victory no
matter how long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is
no survival."
- Winston Churchill
"There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result."
- Winston Churchill
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce"
- Winston Churchill
"Should the invader come to Britain, there will be no placid lying down
of the people in submission before him, as we have seen, alas! in other
countries. We will defend every village, every town, and every city.
The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily
devour an entire hostile army, and we would rather see London laid in
ashes and ruins than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved."
- Winston Churchill
"...I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a pallbearer
for all my friends who run and do exercises!"
- Winston Churchill
"The Arabs are a backwards people who eat nothing but Camel dung."
- Winston Churchill
"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts."
- Winston Churchill
"There are vast numbers, not only in this island but in every land, who
will render faithful service in this war but whose names will never be
known. This is a war of the unknown warriors."
- Winston Churchill
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
subject."
- Sir Winston Churchill
"A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
hope of greening the landscape of idea."
- John Ciardi
"There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation."
- John Ciardi
"A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
in students."
- John Ciardi
"Having me for postmaster is like having Zippy for president. I dare
you to quote me on that."
- ckk, The Postmaster who never sleeps.
"Being in the army is like being in th Boy Scouts, except that the Boy
Scouts have adult supervision."
- Blake Clark
"The shortest distance between two points is through Hell."
- Brian Clark
"A few sums!" retorted Martens, with a trace of his old spirit. "A
major navigational change, like the one needed to break us away from
the comet and put us on an orbit to Earth, involves about a hundred
thousand separate calculations. Even the computer needs several
minutes for the job."
- Arthur C. Clarke, "Into The Comet"
"Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states
that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he
states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
- Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"
"Clarke's Second Law: The only way to discover the limits of the
possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."
- Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"
"Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"
"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a
vacuum."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to
be when you kill them."
- William Clayton
"War is a series of disasters which result in a winner."
- Georges Clemenceau
"If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you
said."
- Samuel Clemens
"Dammit, we're all going to die, let's die doing something *useful*!"
- Hal Clement, on the danger of space exploration
"... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men."
- Voltarine de Cleyre
"For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill."
- R. Clopton
"The solution implemented here works amazingly well in most
circumstances, and, being essentially half-assed, is more in keeping
with the spirit of Unix. Blech."
- cmushell.el comment
"CMU security, please hold, we have an emergency."
- CMU Security (who else?)
"Andrew: The bastard son of CMU and IBM."
- CMU Student
"The trouble with normal is it always gets worse."
- Bruce Cockburn
"A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
believe everything positively stinks."
- Lew Col
"La vrai disette, c'est l'absence de livres. (Real poverty is lack of
books.)"
- Colette
"Oh, you're Eeyore! I know you, you're a doof-head!"
-Wallace Colyer
"Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like
a woman scorn'd."
- William Congreve (1670-1729)
"You wanna know how to nail Capone? This is how you nail Capone: he
pulls a knife you pull a gun, he puts on of yours in the hospital, you
send one of his to the morgue. THAT'S how you nail Capone."
- Sean Connery in "The Untouchables"
"I not only want a car that is built in accordance with the basic
principles of physics and in light of an empirically verified,
well-winnowed tradition of automobile design, but I also want it
screwed together right."
- Edward W. Constant II, "The Social Locus of
Technological Practice: Community, System, or
Organization?"
"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
"It is a faith (not always justified) of theoretical physics that if
man proposes what is sufficiently elegant, nature, pleased and
flattered, will say yes."
- Leon N. Cooper, "Introduction to the Meaning and
Structure of Physics"
"The world revolves around the sun, not your head."
- Copernicus
"Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughn Williams is like
staring at a cow for forty-five minutes."
- Aaron Copland
"The problem with protestantism is that it's not quite silly enough to
be rejected out of hand."
- R. Craig Coulter.
"The Golden Rule is of no use to you whatever unless you realize it
isyour move."
- Frank Crane
"I'd hate to think we're seriously hampering the productivity of
America. But, on the other hand, what the heck!"
- Computer game magnate Les Crane, "Time"
'A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"; "However," replied the
Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."'
- Stephen Crane
"If the automobile had followed the same development cyclee as the
computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per
gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside."
- Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld
"Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level."
- Quentin Crisp
"If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style."
- Quentin Crisp
"Do not think what you want to think until you know what you ought to
know."
- Crow's Law
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
- Aleister Crowley
"To be nobody-but-myself -- in a world that is doing its best, night
and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting."
- e. e. cummings
"Remember, it's not the principle of the thing...it's the money!"
- Daffy Duck
"There has been opposition to every innovation in the history of man,
with the possible exception of the sword."
- Benjamin Dana
"Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from your
own. You may both be wrong."
- Dandemis
"If a train station is where the train stops, what's a work station?"
- Roger B. Dannenberg
"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most
active."
- Leonardo da Vinci
"Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom; Justice is
what comes out of a courtroom."
- Clarence Darrow
"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
speak it to?"
- Clarence Darrow
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"
- Bill Davidsen
"VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use unix."
- W. Davidson
"There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the
existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any
marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat
engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is
obviously impossible."
- Richard Davisson
"Mediocrity requires aloofness to preserve its dignity."
- Charles G. Dawes
"It doesn't matter what time you were born; today is your birthday, so
shut up!"
- Doug DeCarlo to Eeyore, 3/7/91
"Kill them all. God will select those who should go to heaven and
those who should go to hell."
- Abbot Arnold de Citeaux, 1205
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."
- Charles DeGaulle
"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality."
- Jules de Gaultier
"When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
the white man came, and Indian said simply Ours."
- Vine Deloria, Jr.
"Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises."
- Demosthenes
"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Common sense is the most evenly distributed quantity in the world.
Everyone thinks he has enough."
- Descartes, 1637
"Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is
good for dandruff."
- Peter de Vries
"There are two kinds of pedestrians...the quick and the dead."
- Lord Thomas Robert Dewar
"Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open."
- Thomas Dewar
"Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in
jeopardy."
- John Dewey
"People who never make a mistake end up by never doing anything
worthwhile - when they do not end up in institutions. A rigid
insistence on strict criteria is the road to scientific catatonia."
- Solomon Diamond
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go
away."
- Philip K. Dick
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is
a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."
- Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"
"Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong."
- John Diefenbaker
"PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set."
- E. W. Dijkstra
"Warning: the proofreading of the program text has not been done with
the same care I spent on the pages of my book."
- E. W. Dijkstra, EWD482, "Exercises in Making Programs
Robust"
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about
telescopes."
- E. W. Dijkstra
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense."
- E. W. Dijkstra
"this compact disc is made from analog masters recorded without noise
reduction. half the tracks, in fact, were recorded in a dismal, cheap
basement eight-track studio with puddles of water on the floor.
digital technology will now faithfully reproduce these noisy, low-fi,
un-professional masters at great expense. feel stupid yet?"
- Disclaimer on a CD
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
- Walt Disney
"Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness
without action."
- Benjamin Disraeli
"I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?"
- Benjamin Disraeli
"When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are
broken."
- Benjamin Disraeli
"Gentlemen, you can't fight here, this is a War Room!"
- Dr. Strangelove
"..never write device drivers while on acid!"
- MJ Dominus
"Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt." [Confound those who
have said our remarks before us.]
- Aelius Donatus
"What's worth doing is worth doing for money."
- Joseph Donohue
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main; ... any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for
whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."
- John Donne
"Aye, and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd have been a wagon...."
- James Doohan as Mr. Scott in _The_Search_for_Spock_
"Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others."
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"It's nice to have a chat with a clever man"
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"But soon, soon, soon... the world will be a better place, with meadows
and bunnies and fiber optics in every home..."
- Tom Dowdy, Apple Computer
"Bring the little ones unto me, and I will get a good price for them."
- Dr. Fegg's Encyclopeadia of _All_ World Knowledge
"If they don't want us to drink and drive, why do you have to have a
driver's license to buy beer?"
- Drexell's Class
"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not
be done at all."
- Peter F. Drucker
"He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who
dares not is a slave."
- Sir William Drummond, "Academical Questions"
"Beware the fury of a patient man."
- John Dryden
"He trudged along, unknowing what he sought, and whistled as he went,
for want of a thought"
- Dryden
"Money can be lost...beauty normally fades with the years...health may
fail or some disease can strike...friends usually vanish, perhaps die.
Only memories remain for as long as you live. so, live that your
memories will make you glad rather than sad."
- George Dubow
"Being a scientist does not disqualify a person from being an
intelligent citizen."
- Lee A. DuBridge
"If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as
part of the problem."
- Ducharm's Axiom
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of
Patents, 1899.
"Was einmal gedacht wurde kann nicht mehr zurueckgenommen werden!"
(What has been thought, can not be taken back anymore).
- Friederich Duerrenmatt, "The physicists", 1962
"How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155
x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who
could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
nanocentury."
- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
"I guess we all know who's the real wizard under the sheets."
- David Duke, referring to Bill Clinton and Gennifer
Flowers
"All human wisdom is summed up in two words -- wait and hope."
- Alexandre Dumas the Elder
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness."
- David Dunham
"The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
it isn't here."
- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
do and always a clever thing to say."
- Will Durant
"This is a picture of the British High Command at the beginning of
World War I. These aren't evil men -- some of them aren't even
stupid."
- G. Dyer, in _WAR_
"Everybody is somebody else's weirdo."
- Dykstra
"Ok, so just what is a bessel function?"
- Rob Earhart, as Intermediate Optics goes flying over
his head
"The supervisor and compositor shall be flogged thirty times for an
error per chapter; the printer shall be flogged thirty times for bad
impression, either too dark or too light, of one character per
chapter."
- "Early Movable Type in Korea"
"People who meet me are always surprised that I'm congenial. I guess
they expect me to pull out a .44. Well, I can't. I don't even own a
gun."
- Clint Eastwood
"There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
what it is I'll get married again."
- Clint Eastwood
"I have strong feelings about gun control. If there's a gun around, I
want to be controlling it."
- Clint Eastwood in "Pink Cadillac"
"Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it.
Feed it."
- Aubrey Eben
"That's the nature of research--you don't know what in hell you're
doing."
- `Doc' Edgerton
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls
and looks like work."
- Thomas Edison
"....I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
- Thomas Edison
"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."
- Thomas Edison
"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."
- Thomas Edison
"Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and
wishes, where we face it as free beings, admiring, asking and
observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science."
- Albert Einstein
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by
understanding."
- Albert Einstein
"Small is the number of them that see with their own eyes, and feel
with their own hearts."
- Albert Einstein
"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of
thinking. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind.
If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
- Albert Einstein
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing
is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age
eighteen."
- Albert Einstein
"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of
each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty
bound to do his share in this defense are the constitutional rights
secure."
- Albert Einstein
"We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of
annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it
our solemn and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing
these weapons from being used for the brutal purpose for which they
were invented."
- Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,
September 1948
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- Albert Einstein
"Space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere
shadows, and only a kind union of the two will preserve an independent
reality."
- Albert Einstein
"The important thing is never to stop questioning."
- Albert Einstein
"But the creative principle resides in mathematics. In a certain sense,
therefore, I hold it true that pure thought can grasp reality, as the
ancients dreamed."
- Albert Einstein
"Politics is for the moment. An equation is for eternity."
- Albert Einstein
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
- Albert Einstein
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
- Albert Einstein
"Who can imagine Moses, Jesus, or Ghandhi armed with the money-bags of
Carnegie?"
- Albert Einstein
"It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of
instruction have not strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry. This
little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of
freedom. Without this it goes to rack and ruin without fail."
- Albert Einstein
"The most beautiful thing to experience is the mysterious. It is the
source of all true art and science."
- Albert Einstein
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy,
education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would
indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and
punshiment and hope of reward after death."
- Albert Einstein
"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
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
- Albert Einstein
"He who marches joyfully in rank and file has already earned my
contempt. A large brain has been wasted on this individual, since for
him, a spinal cord would suffice."
- Albert Einstein
"If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y
is play. Z is keep your mouth shut."
- Albert Einstein
"The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time.
The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of
consistency."
- Albert Einstein
"Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else--unless it
is an enemy."
- Albert Einstein
"Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which
we live."
- Albert Einstein
"Do not needlessly endanger your lives until ordered to do so."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and
the spiritual fiber of a nation more than its wealth."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want
peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
the way and let them have it."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
"Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me
the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my
way; and there are many victories worse than a defeat."
- George Eliot
"Why do men go to war? Because women are watching."
- T. S. Eliot
"We call them Twinkies. You've seen them on television acting the news,
modeling and fracturing the news while you wonder whether they've read
the news or if they've blow-dried their brains, too."
- Linda Ellerbee
"What we call 'Progress' is the exchange of one nuisance for another
nuisance."
- Henry Havelock Ellis
"I don't mind you *thinking* I'm stupid, but don't *talk* to me like
I'm stupid."
- Harlan Ellison
"A hero is not braver than an ordinary man but is brave five minutes
longer"
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Always do what you are afraid to do."
- Emerson
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then
all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out in
a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
civilization."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it
is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
invent."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To be great, is to be misunderstood."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I wish to say what I think & feel today, with the proviso that
tomorrow perhaps I shall contradict it all."
- Emerson
"I hate quotations."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry
it with us or we find it not."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"ERROR: Machine does not support color holographic images"
- End of msg
"Mass times momentum? What the *hell* is that?"
- Dr. Engler to Dale Newfield
"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
- English Professor
"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."
- English Professor, Ohio University
"Nothing is enough for the man for whom enough is too little."
- Epicurus
"Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you
imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?"
- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
- Susan Ertz
"Where there are no men of honor, strive to be a man of honor, so that
others may learn from your example."
- Ethics of the Fathers
"When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion."
- Ethiopian proverb
"Do we, holding that the gods exist, deceive ourselves with
insubstantial dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change
alone control the world?"
- Euripedes, "Hecuba"
"Boy, when you go to vote, make sure not to flip your coin up so high
that the other people see it, and make sure you catch it and don't have
to go crawling around on the floor looking for it while hundreds of
waiting voters snicker or you`ll be really embarassed."
- Elliott "Eeyore" Evans
"Here's a hint. When you think your code to exec a shell function is
just not working, never, repeat NEVER send it "/etc/reboot" just to see
what happens."
- Elliott "Eeyore" Evans
"After long thought, I and several of my friends came to the conclusion
that this was designed to prevent cheating. I won't comment on that:
The idea that a CMU student could not cheat if they wanted to is more
insulting than the implication that they would."
- Ethan Evans on academic.cs.15-211.announce.
"Hey! This is *my* cluster. *I* get to beat the users."
- Ethan Evans, former Head Andrew Consultant
"Nathaniel should never have written the message server code."
- Craig Everhart
"All Galaxy Class Starships are equipped with their own dramatic
lighting system"
- Dan Fahs
"Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"
- Admiral Farragut, USN, 1801-1870
"Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only
when the clock stops does time come to life."
- William Faulkner
"Maturity is only a short break in adolescence."
- Jules Feiffer
"Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by
not committing them?"
- Jules Feiffer
"Pascal is not a high-level language."
- Steven Feiner
"Never count a human dead until you've seen the body. And even then
you can make a mistake".
- Lady Fenring
"When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant.
When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And
when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in
some doubt."
- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."
- Richard Feynman
"From a long view of the history of mankind -- seen from, say, ten
thousand years from now -- there can be little doubt that the most
significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's
discovery of the laws of electrodynamics. The American Civil War will
pale into provinciald insignificance in comparison with this important
scientific event of the same decade."
- Richard P. Feynman
"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just
as dumb as the next guy."
- Richard Feynman
"There was a sociologist who had written a paper for all of us to
read... I started to read the damn thing, and my eyes were coming out:
I couldn't make head nor tail of it... Finally, I said to myself, 'I'm
gonna stop and read one sentence slowly'... So I stopped -- at random
-- and read the next sentence very carefully... 'The individual member
of the social community often receives his information via visual,
symbolic channels.' I went back and forth over it, and translated.
You know what it means? 'People read.'"
- Richard P. Feynman
"When someone demands blind obedience, you'd be a fool not to peek."
- Jim Fiebig
"Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of
a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor."
- Edgar R. Fiedler
"Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
one went to Harvard)."
- Edgar R. Fiedler
"He, in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would
have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented
him."
- Henry Fielding, "Jonathan Wild"
"I never met a kid I liked."
- W.C. Fields
"Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them
first for seven hours, they always come out tender."
- W. C. Fields
"Start every day off with a smile and get it over with."
- W.C. Fields
"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
- W. C. Fields
"It's not bogus, it's an IBM standard."
- Esther Filderman
"I don't like VMS. I can't think in dollar signs."
- Esther Filderman
"I have a friend who told me that the greatest computer system ever
built by mankind was by the Druids at Stonehenge. Well, that's an old
story. But what I liked was that he felt that the Druids didn't die
out, they just went bankrupt trying to debug the software."
- James Finkle, "Omni", August 1983
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale
University, five days before the Crash of 1929.
"Four people attack you with screwdrivers, you have a gun, they're
supposed to die. That's not racism. That's Darwin."
- Chip Flatow
"There never has been, nor will there ever be, any programming language
in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad code."
- Lawrence Flon
"My left is blocked, my right is stopped, I can't retreat - only one
thing left to do: Attack!"
- Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole
Superieure de Guerre
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole
Superieure de Guerre
"Man is so made that when anything fires his soul, impossibilities
vanish."
- Jean de La Fontaine
"Mathematicians are like lovers....Grant a mathematician the least
principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also
grant him, and from this consequence another."
- Fontenelle
"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one."
- Malcolm S. Forbes
"Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist."
- Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones
"We're not lost. We're locationally challenged."
- John M. Ford
"'Blueberry,' Kirk thought, instead of ducking. WHAM! Blueberry it
was."
- John Ford, "How Much for Just the Planet"
"The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change."
- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring
the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many
facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next
fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent
Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's
Factor; that's engineering.
- Fortune
"Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have."
- Harry Emerson Fosdick
"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting."
- Alan Dean Foster, "To the Vanishing Point"
"To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything."
- Anatole France
"Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in
my library are those which people have lent me."
- Anatole France
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the
poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread."
- Anatole France
"Where are we going?
Western Psyche! When will we get there? Real soon!"
- Will Frank
"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked
through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of
bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient
proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last
of human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of
circumstances -- to choose one's own way."
- Viktor Frankl
"It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad
one to lose it."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn from no other."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff
life is made of."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Never confuse motion with action."
- Ben Franklin
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
"If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't
actually live longer; it just seems longer."
- Clement Freud
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
- Sigmund Freud
"Never knock on Death's door: ring the bell and run away! Death
really hates that!"
- Matt Frewer as Dr. Mike Stratford in "Doctor, Doctor"
"I have never forced myself on my wife: I paid her each time."
- Stephen Freind
"Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned."
- Milton Friedman
"Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't
have to experience it."
- Max Frisch
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -; I took the one less traveled
by; And that has made all the difference."
- Robert Frost
"The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest
willing to let them."
- Robert Frost
"The patient is not likely to recover who makes the doctor his heir."
- Thomas Fuller
"Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no
straight lines."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
"Don't fight forces; use them."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
"God is not a noun; God is a verb."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
"It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing
warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or
two things still safe to eat."
- Robert Fuoss
"The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
time."
- Merrick Furst
"If something goes wrong, it is more important to talk about who is
going to fix it, than who is to blame."
- Francis J. Gable
"Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"What is called a high standard of living consists, in considerable
measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, for increasing
sensual pleasure and enhancing caloric intake above any conceivable
nutritional requirement."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the
opposite."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"I was brought up in southwestern Ontario where we were taught that
Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a
five-dollar-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that and you
went to Detroit."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will
sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people
suppose that it is always wrong."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei
"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the
humble reasoning of a single individual."
- Galileo Galilei
"But where the senses fail us, reason must step in."
- Galileo Galilei
"Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding
he sings."
- Ed Gardner
"Every psychic investigator of [the medium] Mrs. Piper was impressed by
her simplicity and honesty. It never occurred to them that no charlatan
ever achieves greatness by acting like a charlatan. No professional spy
acts like a spy. No card cheat behaves at the table like a card cheat."
- Martin Gardner
"Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
'user-friendly' [...] Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover."
- Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO
"I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to
buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike."
- Emile Henry Gauvreay
"Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
writing."
- R. Geis
"I wouldn't mind dying -- it's that business of having to stay dead
that scares the shit out of me."
- R. Geis
"Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired."
- R. Geis
"Impeccability, a finely honed strategic sense, and an intelligent
application of personal ferocity beat out fear and hate every time."
- Joshua Geller
"On the Tobruk front a large force of Italians attacked one enemy
cyclist, causing him to dismount. After heavy and prolonged fighting
they were able to puncture his tires. The front wheel was destroyed,
while destruction of the rear wheel must also be considered probable.
The handle bars are in our hands, but possession of the frame is still
contested."
- German satire of an Italian war communique,
reportedly captured by British troops in Libya
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
- J. Paul Getty
"A `No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
`Yes' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble."
- Mahatma Ghandi
"If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind
for revealing them to the trees."
- Khalil Gibran
"Hey babe, I've got an O(n) method for computing form factors."
- Stephen Gifford
"No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's
a dirty little beast."
- W.S. Gilbert
"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
- William Gilbert
"A libertarian is just an anarchist on the gold standard."
- Alexis Gilliland
"Layered protocols give the software implementor a chance to ruin his
performance in each layer."
- Don Gillies
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Tom Strong N3NBB ts...@andrew.cmu.edu