misc, 2/3
Thomas W. Strong, Jr.
"There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of
the law. No artist ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer
interprets the truth."
- Jean Giradoux
"Only the mediocre are always at their best."
- Jean Giraudoux
"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
translate into their own language and forthwith it is something
entirely different."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not
enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power and magic in it."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"He who has art and science also has religion, but those who do not
have them better have religion."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with
your eyes what is before your eyes."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Modern diplomats approach every problem with an open mouth."
- Arthur J. Goldberg
"I am surprised nothing has been made of the fact that astronaut Neil
Armstrong carried no sidearms when he landed on the moon."
- Justice Arthur Goldberg
"Learning from one's own experience is even more impractical if the
injury is a very serious one. In the extreme case of a fatal accident,
of course, the learning experience might be profound, but the learning
curve is abruptly truncated."
- Victor Goldberg (1974)
"That is one of the Laws of Usenet, up there with `You can tell when a
Usenet discussion is getting old when someone drags out Hitler and the
Nazis.'"
- David Goldfarb
"Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law."
- Oliver Goldsmith
"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough
to take it all away."
- Barry Goldwater
"Crossposting isn't inherently evil, in the same sense that necrophilia
doesn't really hurt anybody. One wonders only whether it's appropriate
to the occasion."
- Rick Gordon
"For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
'Canada'. Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something."
- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to
the U.S.
"A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his
friends."
- Baltasar Gracian
"We will occasionally use this arrow notation unless there is danger of
no confusion."
- Ronald Graham, "Rudiments of Ramsey Theory"
"Paranoia will get you through times of no enemies better than enemies
will get you through times of no paranoia."
- Pete Granger
"So you think *I'm* the murderer? What do I have to do to convince you
that I'm not, be the next victim?" "Well that would be a start."
- Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn in "Charade", 1963
"A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you
with company."
- Gian Vincenzo Gravina
"If at first you don't succeed -- give it up. It isn't worth the
pain."
- Matt Groening
"This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He's doomed."
- Harry Guggenheim, millionaire aviation enthusiast
"Who's more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?"
- Alec Guiness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Star Wars"
"You can pretend to be serious, you can't pretend to be witty."
- Sacha Guitry
"Ten of us to a hundred of them, eh? Well, one British soldier is
worth twenty of those beggars...so the odds are two to one in our
favor. Hardly sporting!"
- GURPS Basic Set, 3rd Ed
"...There are three kinds of mathematicians--those that can count and
those that can't count."
- Professor Gurtin during Calc in 3-D
"Y'know, you can't have, like, a light, without a dark to stick it
in... You know what I'm sayin'?"
- Arlo Guthrie
"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time
reading it."
- Moses Hadas
"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
that would be clearly understood."
- Alexander Haig
"The future is not weirder than we imagine, it is weirder than we can
imagine..."
- J.B.S. Haldane.
"He that leaveth nothing to Chance will do few things ill, but he will
do very few things."
- George, Lord Halifax
"Machines should work. People should think."
- Richard Hamming
"Virtue is its own revenge."
- E.Y. Harburg
"There is one comforting conclusion which is easy for a real
mathematician. Real mathematics has no effects on war. No one has yet
discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or
relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many
years."
- G. H. Hard, A Mathematician's Apology, 1940
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
- Salvador Hardin
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By
definition, there are already enough people to do that."
- G. H. Hardy
"The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to
leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully
swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face."
- Sydney J. Harris
"Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches/sec."
- J. Hart
"One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of
sheer terror."
- W. K. Hartmann
"God not only plays dice, he also sometimes throws the dice where they
cannot be seen."
- Stephen Hawking
"That's a definition, not a theorem. That means you don't argue with
it; you just write it down and memorize it."
- Warren Hawley
"This one is an ANSI standard fuse blower."
- Steven Hawthorne
"I'm going to speak my mind because I have noth to lose."
- S.I. Hayakwa
"We tend to idealize tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves
infested with losers and nut cases."
- Patrick Nielsen Hayden
"Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty,
hesitation or incongruity."
- William Hazlitt
"Engineering induction: if it works for n = 1, 2, and 3, that's good
enough for me".
- Ric Hehner
"Whenever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human
beings."
- Heinrich Heine
"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in
private and wash your hands afterwards."
- Heinlein
"Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
supposed to do."
- R. A. Heinlein
"The only inherent sin in society lies in huting others unnecessarily.
Hurting yourself in not sinful - just dumb."
- Robert Heinlein
"Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and
some people have mediocrity thrust upon them."
- Joseph Heller
"I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the
whole field to a private industry."
- Joseph Heller
"The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of
management is that success equals skill."
- Robert Heller
"Satire, for example, is defined as intellectual judo, in which the
writer or performer takes on the ideas and character of his target and
then take both to absurd lengths to destroy them. This is the most
mischievous of all forms of humor, the most radical use of irony. (It
is also the most easily misunderstood, since taking on the character of
one's target -- a bigot, say -- can lead the uninitiated into thinking
that you actually share the target's ideas. Saying the word 'nigger' in
character can get bricks thrown at your head -- and not by bigots.)
Satire is not a gentle process, and the more sacred the belief or
person whose mantle it assumes, the more effective it is."
- Tony Hendra, "Going Too Far"
"You've been in the SCA too long when your spell check recognizes
`pursuivant'"
- Henry of Linlithgow
"You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on."
- Hepler, Systems Design 182
"The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself."
- Heraclitus
"An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose."
- A. P. Herbert
"No man steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and
he's not the same man."
- Heraclitus
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of
functions which do not have derivatives."
- Charles Hermite
"In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons."
- Herodotus
"When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be
sane."
- Hermann Hesse
"Goldilocks is about property rights. Little Red Riding Hood is a tale
of seduction, rape, murder, and cannibalism."
- Bernard J. Hibbits
"Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too."
- D. J. Hicks
"When we put our best foot forward, the other one had better be good
enough to stand on."
- Cullen Hightower
"And that marvelous moment when you switched from color to black and
white, to show the bleakness of human existence."; "Actually we ran out
of money and had to buy cheaper film."
- Benny Hill
"Let us go forth not as defenders of the status quo, but as crusaders
with a revolution idea -- that government should be the servant and not
the master of the people; that its purpose is to protect, not deny,
each man's freedom; that the purpose of a free press is to liberate,
not enslave the human spirit."
- A. S. Hills, President Inter-American Press
Association
"I have a perfect cure for a sore throat. Cut it."
- Alfred Hitchcock
"The people of Britain are very curious and ask: 'Why in the world
don't you come ?' We are coming. People should not always be so
curious."
- Adolf Hitler
"England has already lost the war. It is only a matter of having the
intelligence to admit it."
- Adolf Hitler, 4/4/41
"The great masses of the people . . . will more easily fall victims to
a great lie than to a small one."
- Adolf Hitler
"An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of those
eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as
possible."
- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies."
- C. A. R. Hoare
"We're not hitchiking anymore - we're riding!"
- Commander Hoeke
"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
- Bill Hoest
"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he
uses to frighten you."
- Eric Hoffer
"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life."
- Eric Hoffer
"Any computer project will take twice as long as you think it will even
when you take into account Hofstadter's law"
- Hofstadter's law
"Women and cats do as they dammed well please. Men and dogs had best
learn to live with it..."
- Alan Holbrook
"It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe,
with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
- John Andrew Holmes
"Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have
been waiting for centuries for somebody ignorant enough of the
impossible to do that very thing."
- John Andrew Holmes
"The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply
indifferent."
- John Hughes Holmes
"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you
shine on it, the more it contracts."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Every calling is great when greatly pursued."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"When a resolute fellow steps up to that great bully, the world, and
takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find that the
beard comes off in his hand, that it was only tied on to scare away
timid adventurers."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"There it was, hidden in alphabetical order."
- Rita Holt
"About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the
ends."
- Herbert Hoover
"I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate
commerce."
- J. Edgar Hoover
"Justice is incedental to law and order."
- J. Edgar Hoover
"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad
judgement."
- Jim Horning
"I also thank my reviewer---John Vlissides of Stanford University,
whose critical and insightful comments prodded me to rewrite the book
and Michael Tripoli, who checked the code for correctness. Naturally,
any remaining flaws are entirely their fault."
- Cay S. Horstmann, "Mastering C++"
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented
six feet downward and covered with dirt."
- Blair P. Houghton, regarding C Code indentation
"Bill Gates [Microsoft CEO] says no matter how much more power we can
supply, he'll develop some really exciting software that will bring the
machine to its knees."
- David House, Intel VP
"... And malt does more than Milton can; To justify God's ways to man"
- A. E. Housman
"Only fools are positive."
- Moe Howard
"The way of the world is to praise dead saints and prosecute live
ones."
- Nathaniel Howe
"Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week."
- William Dean Howells
"There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what
it's a plan for."
- Fred Hoyle
"You can leave if you want -- I won't take offense, even if intended."
- Professor Hrusa (CMU)
"Does that mean that Calculus with Sets & mappings is Calculus S&M?"
- Professor Hrusa
"Obviously, for mathechists."
- Jon Bennett
"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped."
- Elbert Hubbard
"To escape criticism -- do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."
- Elbert Hubbard
"Die: To stop sinning suddenly."
- Elbert Hubbard
"Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people."
- F. M. Hubbard
"If Moses had been a committee, the Israelites would still be in
Egypt."
- J. B. Hughes
"Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age."
- Victor Hugo
"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be
taken seriously."
- Hubert Humphrey
"Vegetarianism is harmless enough, although it is apt to fill a man
with wind and self-righteousness."
- Sir Robert Hutchison
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."
- Aldous Huxley
"There is the greatest practical benefit in making a few failures early
in life."
- Thomas Henry Huxley
"The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on
an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our
business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land."
- T. H. Huxley
"All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that
the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if
you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all
means, do not use a hammer."
- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
"The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone."
- Ibsen
"You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty."
- Henrick Ibson
"To avoid slow performance, Apple suggests that the amount of virtual
memory you select be less than the system RAM."
- INFOWORLD
"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are
consequences."
- Robert G. Ingersoll
"It is better to be a coward for a minute than dead for the rest of
your life."
- Irish Proverb
"To prevent having to tell fools to RTFM don't let on that you WTFM in
the first place."
- Sign in ITC's Swamp
"Under Brezhnev, the Soviet economy was led to the edge of an abyss.
But under Gorbachov's policies, they have taken one great leap
forward."
- Dr. Alexei Izyuromov, Canada-US Institute in Moscow
"The will to win is worthless if you don't get paid for it"
- Reggie Jackson
"It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -
perhaps a tumor or a metabolic deficiency - but after a thorough
neurological exam it was determined that Byron was simply a jerk."
- J. Jahnke
"In democracy its your vote that counts.; In feudalism its your count
that votes."
- Mogens Jallberg
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices."
- William James
"If you believe everything you read, better not read."
- Japanese proverb
"B2 Hamerschlag: We're the best freshman floor this year,and at the
rate we're going, we'll be the best freshman floor next year, too."
- Faisal Nameer Jawdat <fj...@andrew.cmu.edu>
"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."
- Thomas Jefferson
"That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe,
for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and the improvement of his
conditions, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by
nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space,
without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which
we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement
of exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a
subject of property."
- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Isaac McPherson,
1813.
"I hold that a little rebellion is a good thing."
- Thomas Jefferson
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or
no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood
of patriots and tyrants."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain
occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations."
- Thomas Jefferson
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the
world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity]
one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and
mythology."
- Thomas Jefferson
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every
form of tyranny over the mind of man."
- Thomas Jefferson
"The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper."
- Thomas Jefferson
"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and
equal station to which the laws of nature and of Nature's God entitle
them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they
should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
- Thomas Jefferson, "Declaration of Independence"
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
- Thomas Jefferson
"Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried."
- Thomas Jefferson
"In addition I think science has enjoyed an extraordinary success
because it has such a limited and narrow realm in which to focus its
efforts. Namely, the physical universe."
- Ken Jenkins
"Filenames are only for people who can't remember where they put their
files."
- Tarjei T. Jensen
"If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
harder."
- Pope John Paul I
"People must not attempt to impose their own 'truth' on others. The
right to profess the truth must always be upheld, but not in a way that
involves contempt for those who may think differently. Truth imposes
itslef solely by the force of its own truth."
- Pope John Paul II, 1-1-91
"The first casualty when war comes is truth."
- Hiram Johnson
"A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by
its author."
- S. C. Johnson
"The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate
it."
- Franklin P. Jones
"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a
mistake when you make it again."
- F. P. Jones
"It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which
raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody
not to."
- Franklin P. Jones
"When PETA starts trying to toss red paint on motorcycle riders wearing
leather jackets, things will get more interesting (and I hope someone's
there with a camera)."
- James Jones
"Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!"
- Ben Jonson
"Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where
the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."
- Chief Joseph, Nez Perce surrender speech, 1877
"Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the
Mac (and nobody cares about it)."
- Bill Joy, 6/21/85
"Trouble is only an opportunity in work clothes."
- Henry J. Kaiser
"The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before
you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him
shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and
daughters."
- Genghis Kahn, 1226
"It is important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains
fall out."
- Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.
"Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long."
- Howard Kandel
"Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination."
- Immanuel Kant
"It has been said [by Anatole France], 'it is not by amusing oneself
that one learns,' and, in reply: 'it is *only* by amusing oneself that
one can learn.'"
- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
"Calm down. It's only ones and zeros"
- Sam Kass (sk...@andrew.cmu.edu)
"Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
day as it comes."
- Donald Kaul
"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to
topple his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims
rather than against them is to attain literacy."
- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American
"At college age, you can tell who is best at taking tests and going to
school, but you can't tell who the best people are. That worries the
hell out of me."
- Barnaby C. Keeney
"I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it."
- Garrison Keillor
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
- Walt Kelly
"We have met the enemy, and he is us."
- Walt Kelly
"One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the
advancement of science that I have made perservereingly during
fifty-five years; that word is failure."
- Lord Kelvin
"[The vector] has never been of the slightest use to any creature."
- Lord Kelvin
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since
you cannot make yourself as you wish to be."
- Thomas A. Kempis
"The biggest sin is sitting on your ass."
- Florynce Kennedy
"One man can make a difference. Every man should try."
- John F. Kennedy
"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for
you-- ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the
world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can
do for the freedom of man."
- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural address, 20 Jan 1961
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable."
- John F. Kennedy
"Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without
liberty is always in vain."
- John F. Kennedy
"If scientific discovery has not been an unalloyed blessing, if it has
conferred on mankind the power not only to create but also to
annihilate, it has at the same time provided humanity with a supreme
challenge and a supreme testing."
- John F. Kennedy
"If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the
world safe for diversity."
- John F. Kennedy
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."
- Robert F. Kennedy
"In the long run we are all dead."
- John Maynard Keynes
"Your presence is requested at your earliest convenience. Please be
sure your earliest convenience is at 1pm."
- Sher Khan (CEO Kahn Industries)
"What is zero to analysts? It is a number that's smaller than epsilon
for any epsilon."
- Prof. David Kinderlehrer, Advanced Calc 21-455
"Are you sure there are no hidden cameras up there?"
- Arizona Rep. Don Kinney, while stuffing $55,000 into
a gym bag
"The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little
longer."
- Henry Kissinger
"Campus politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so
small."
- Henry Kissinger
"The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling
their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from
the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to
ascribe to the other side a consistency, forsight and coherence that
its own experience belies. Of course, even two blind men can do
enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room."
- Henry Kissinger
"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."
- Henry Kissinger
"Sure, we can raise money! We can raise your Activities Fee."
- "Senator" Josh Knauer, on how Student Senate should
raise money
"This memo is to notify you that you are happy in your job. If you
have any questions, please contact the Personnel office at extension
x3088. Thank you."
- Kevin Knight
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it."
- Donald Knuth
"God made the integers; all else is the work of Man."
- Kronecker
"Berlin is the testicles of the West. Each time I give them a yank,
they holler."
- Khruschev
"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge
even where there is no river."
- Nikita Khrushchev
"Television, a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well
done."
- Ernie Kovacs
"In a mad world only the mad are sane."
- Akira Kurosawa
"18,000 dollars a year and all I've I got to show for it is an Andrew
account and no sleep."
- Jay Laefer
"The policy is no eating, not no food. If it was no food, I'd invite
Gary into the cluster and start gnawing on him."
- Jay Laefer
"I wouldn't trust Phil [Dye] with system:administrator access."
- Jay Laefer
"I wouldn't trust Phil with *system:anyuser* access!"
- Tom Strong
"A distributed system is one that stops you from getting any work done
when a machine you've never even heard of crashes."
- Leslie Lamport (Attributed)
"I'll never discuss my lawyer's character in his absence, so let's
discuss his absence of character!
- Michael Lara
"Shut up he explained."
- Ring Lardner
"Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind
blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire."
- La Rochefoucauld
"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example."
- La Rouchefoucauld
"We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears."
- La Rouchefoucauld
"Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to
your regular duties."
- Doug Larson
"The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the
urge to throw a snowball."
- Doug Larson
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
to suspect 'Hungry.'"
- Gary Larson, "The Far Side"
"Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success."
- Christopher Lasch
"I've found thats it's not good to talk about your troubles. Eighty
percent of the people who hear them don't care and the other twenty
percent are glad your having trouble."
- Tommy LaSorda
"When guns are outlawed, how will we handle frat boys?"
- Kurt Laughlin, on cs.opinion
"The Constitution does not grant rights, it recognizes them"
- Jason Laumark
"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty
recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but
the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their
dream with open eyes, to make it possible."
- T. E. Lawrence, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"
"You get fifteen democrats in a room, and you get twenty opinions."
- Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt), May 1990
"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."
- Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project
"Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelics drugs is
like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did
it in the first century A.D., and besides, telescopes are unnatural."
- Timothy Leary, "The Politics of Ecstasy"
"There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory,
decreased short term memory, and I forget the third."
- Timothy Leary
"I give you bitter pills in sugar coating. The pills are harmless: the
poison is in the sugar."
- Stanislaw Lec
"Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language. You should
do your duty in all things. You can never do more, you should never
wish to do less."
- General Robert E. Lee
"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat."
- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
"The Army has carried the American ideal to its logical conclusion. Not
only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and
color, but also on the grounds of ability."
- Tom Lehrer
"On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I
wanted to put a check mark about three inches away."
- Tom Lehrer, lecturing in "The Nature of Math", 4/4/90
"If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared not only
to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever said it."
- Tom Lehrer
"If I can't get people to commit themselves on whether or not there is
a square root of two, then I won't touch on God or anything here...
- Tom Lehrer, lecturing in "The Nature of Math", 4/4/90
"Captain, it is I, Ensign Pulver, and I want you to know that I just
threw your stinkin' tree overboard. Now what's all this crud about no
movie tonight?"
- Jack Lemmon as Ensign Pulver, "Mr. Roberts"
"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."
- Lenin
"Life is what's going on while your making other plans"
- John Lennon
"Well, Thurgood Marshall retired, so that wasn't an earthquake we felt
last Friday. It was the whole country moving a few inches to the
right."
- Jay Leno
"I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be wild in.
To what avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?"
- Aldo Leopold
"Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage amongst his books.
For to you Kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring,
but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned by the
flicking of a finger."
- LESSONS: Anonymous
"Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking."
- Jerome Lettvin
"Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you
remember."
- Oscar Levant
"I am no more humble than my talents require."
- Oscar Levant
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing
Compilers"
"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another,
'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'"
- C. S. Lewis
"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless."
- Sinclair Lewis
"A book is a mirror: if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an
apostle to look out."
- G. C. Lichtenberg
"Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
be irresponsible, too."
- Lichty & Wagner
"Pat's going to win in '92. I'll see to it. I don't care where I have
to break into."
- G. Gordon Liddy
"Obviously crime pays, or there'd be no crime."
- G. Gordon Liddy
"The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend."
- Abraham Lincoln
"I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back."
- Abraham Lincoln
"The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use
in effecting our separation from Great Britain, and it was placed in
the Declaration not for that, but for future use."
- Abraham Lincoln
"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way
the social and political equality of the white and black races--I am
not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of
Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with
white people."
- Abraham Lincoln, First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, August
21, 1858
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
see it tried on him personally."
- Abraham Lincoln
"'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and
remove all doubt."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Do not be deceived. Revolutions do not run backwards."
- Abraham Lincoln
"If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have? Four,
calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg."
- Abraham Lincoln
"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us
from the support of a cause we believe to be just."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to
control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things
that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very
principles upon which our government was founded. "
- Abraham Lincoln
"The world's as ugly as sin, And almost as delightful"
- Frederick Locker-Lampson
"Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy."
- Janet Long
"The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about."
- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
"Get a shot off fast, this upsets him long enough to make your second
shot perfect."
- Lazarus Long
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best
he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house."
- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
"Sometimes we talk to ourselves because we are the only ones who will
listen"
- Longshot
"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next
to me."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
"C code and bboards are my only foods; I forsake all others, except for
leaves from the Bodhi tree and water sipped from the bladder of a
goat."
- Nathan Loofbourrow
"See I am just a frustrated artist. The sex urge feeds into the art
urge which feeds into the computing urge. So I have a need to program a
ray tracer to fulfill the previous two levels of abstration."
- Nathan Loofbourrow
"Couldn't you just masturbate?"
- Rick Romero
"The NeXT machines don't understand my needs as a man."
- Nathan Loofbourrow
"Don't take VICE too seriously; It throws in random bits."
- Dan Lovinger
"Some people have compared the security holes in this system to a hole
the size that a 747 could fly through. By now, I would imagine it's up
in the range of Star Destroyer class."
- Dan Lovinger
"Normalize 'er? But I just derived 'er!"
- Dan Lovinger, after too much of a Math Methods test
"What we see depends on mainly what we look for."
- John Lubbock
"War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity: it
destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any
scourge, in fact, is preferable to it. Famine and pestilence become as
nothing in comparison to it."
- Martin Luther
"They that have I's shall be blind until their death."
- Lyse
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in
a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave
national emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to
gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the
exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem
never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real."
- General Douglas MacArthur, 1957
"It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan,
more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to managment than the
creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who
would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely
lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones."
- Machiavelli, "The Prince," 1513
"One item could not be deleted because it was missing."
- Mac System 7.0b1 error message
"There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes
necessary to shoot the engineers and begin production."
- MacUser, November 1990
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise
of fighting a foreign enemy."
- James Madison
"'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds."
- Malaclypse the Younger
"And joy, after all, is the end of life. We do not live to eat and make
money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what
life means and what life is for."
- George Leigh Mallory
"The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation."
- Lew Mammel, Jr.
"Likewise, when a long series of identical computations is to be
performed, such as those required for the formation of numerical
tables, the machine can be brought into play so as to give several
results at the same time, which will greatly abridge the whole amount
of the processes."
- General L. F. Manabrea, 1842; referring to Charles
Babbage's Analytical Engine
"Physicists are mathematicians in a hurry."
- B. Mandelbrot
"A house without books is like room without windows."
- Horace Mann
"If it's against state law, it's generally considered a breach of
Etiquette."
- Ms. Manners
"There is no sweeter sound than the crumbling of one's fellow man."
- Groucho Marx
"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
- Groucho Marx
"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."
- Groucho Marx
"Oh, I know it's a penny here and a penny there, but look at me. I
worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty."
- Groucho Marx, "Monkey Business"
"Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water!
And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew
them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb
does. Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know."
- Groucho Marx, "Animal Crackers"
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
- Groucho Marx
"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the
set, I go into the other room and read a book."
- Groucho Marx, 1890-1977
"Religion is the opium of the people."
- Karl Marx
"You're free to be as much of an asshole as you wish -- as long as I'm
not paying for it."
- Todd Masco
"All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer her by."
- John Masefield
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem
as a nail."
- Abraham Maslow
"Everything that exists exists in some degree, and if it exists in some
degree then it ough to be measured."
- Mathematicians' Bill of Rights
"It is bad luck to be superstitious."
- Andrew W. Mathis
"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have
nothing whatever to do with it."
- W. Somerset Maughm
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its
freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it
values more, it will lose that, too."
- W. Somerset Maugham
"You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed
adultery, are now extinct."
- W. Somerset Maugham
"Only a mediocre person is always at his best."
- W. Somerset Maugham
"Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
- W. Somerset Maugham
"War must be looked upon as a business, and subject, like any other
business, to business principles. War is the business of destruction of
life and property of an enemy.....The most deadly and destructive
implements of war are the most humane, and the producers of them may
justly be looked upon as humanitarians."
- Hudson Maxim
"Now, the first thing to remember is: always treat your kite just like
your woman."; "How do you mean sir, you mean take her home on the
weekend to meet your mother?"; "NO, I mean get inside of her five times
a day and take her to Heaven and back!"
- Rik Mayall as Colonel Lord "Flash" Flasheart, in
BlackAdder Goes Forth
"Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art."
- Charles McCabe
"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy."
- Charlie McCarthy
"The measure on a man's real character is what he would do if he knew
he would never be found out."
- Thomas McCauley
"Irrigation of the land with sewater desalinated by fusion power is
ancient. It's called 'rain'."
- Michael McClary
"The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste you time waving your
hands
and hopping when a rock or a club will do."
- McCloctnick the Lucid
"I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!"
- Paul McCracken
"Unix is not a "A-ha" experience, it is more of a "holy-shit"
experience."
- Colin McFadyen in alt.folklore.computers
"The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to
eat."
- John McNulty
"You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
doubt."
- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
"To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee;
For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."
- Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"
"There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know
some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on
whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and
stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing."
- H.L. Mencken
"After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known
quotations."
- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
"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
"If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to
please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely
girl."
- H. L. Mencken
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and
deserve to get it good and hard."
- H. L. Mencken
"College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms,
legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
loss to humanity."
- H. L. Mencken
"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out
twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
- H. L. Mencken
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American
public."
- H. L. Mencken
"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a
cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."
- H. L. Mencken
"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
brings wisdom."
- H. L. Mencken
"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking"
- H. L. Mencken
"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor
of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me
forever ineligible for public office."
- H.L. Mencken
"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a
coffin."
- H. L. Mencken
"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know
that you would lie if you were in his place."
- Henry Louis Mencken
"The American public knows what it wants, and deserves to get it good
and hard."
- H. L. Mencken
"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands,
hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."
- H.L. Mencken
"To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of
their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of Hell."
- Thomas Merton
"Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way
to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life
forms, and they'll call you crazy."
- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
"They can have my RSA key when they pry it from my cold dead fingers."
- Perry Metzger (pmet...@shearson.com)
"We could have set up our machines as Andrew workstations and relied
solely on Computing & Communications and AC&M for software and support.
However, our early experiences with Andrew led us to choose another
path."
- Mike Meyer, Nov. 1991 _Cursor_, on the Statistics
department computer setup
"An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but
because people refuse to see it."
- James Michner, "Space"
"When the grammar checker identifies an error, it suggests a correction
and can even makes some changes for you."
- Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0 User's Guide, p.35:
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing
is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is
willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal
safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless
made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
- John Stewart Mill
"...all ideas need to be heard, because each idea contains one aspect
of the truth. By examining that aspect, we add to our own idea of the
truth. Even ideas that have no truth in them whatsoever are useful
because by disproving them, we add support to our own ideas."
- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"
"Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so."
- John Stuart Mill
"Queensboro president Donald Mannis, charged with receiving bribes in
exchange for city contracts, resigned on Tuesday. Mannis feels he must
devote more time to impending litigation, some of which might emanate
from a recent statement he made comparing New York Mayor Ed Koch to
Nazi Martin Bormann. A spokesman from the Bormann estate said they are
weighing the odds of a slander suit. Mayor Koch could naturally be
reached for comment, but we chose not to listen."
- Dennis Miller, "Saturday Night Live"
"That's the news, and I am outta here!"
- Dennis Miller, "Saturday Night Live"
"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you
could know how seldom they do."
- Olin Miller
"I've created a new college council and we're going to submit the
proposal to them as soon as they exist."
- Phil Miller
"What hath night to do with sleep?"
- John Milton
"I bet the human brain is a kludge."
- Marvin Minsky
"The fan awaits the shit, madame."
- Moliere's The Misanthrope
"Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty
without any proof."
- Ashley Montague
"Listen, strange women, lyin' in ponds, distributin' swords, is no
basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives
itself from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic
ceremony."
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
"Those who curse the universe, curse that which is deaf. Those who
shake their fists, shake them at blind stars."
- Michael Moorcock
"Bean, I still haven't had a Macintosh walk up to me and give me a blow
job."; "You're not treating them right."
- Hugh Moore and Bean
"Figure out howl long it'll take, and multiply by two." (Significant
pause) "The hard part is figuring how many times to multiply by two".
- Roger Moore
"You don't *run* programs on Ultrix."
- Mark Moraes
"Right, you chase them."
- Rayan Zachariassen
"We are on a threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the
transition from nonlife to life."
- Hans Moravec on artificial intelligence
"The mail transport mechanism is trivial."
- Jim Morris
"The person who walks alone is soon trailed by the FBI."
- Wright Morris
"Architects believe that not only do they sit at the right hand of God,
but that if God ever gets up, they take the chair."
- Karen Moyer, Design
"It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious."
- Edsel Murphy
"No job too big; no fee too big!"
-Bill Murray as Dr. Peter Venkman, "Ghost-busters"
"Jews always know two things: suffering and where to find great Chinese
food."
- My Favorite Year
"So, Is it too early to hose andrew?"
- John Myers
"Super-seniors, or tenured students?"
- John Myers
"Show-page or no show-page-- there is no 'try'."
- John Myers
"The best way to keep one's word, is not to give it."
- Napoleon
"It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a
plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his
reasons, insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his
resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall."
- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."
- Napoleon
"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
"I drink to make other people interesting."
- George Jean Nathan
"Personally, should I ever form a globe spanning conglomerate, I intend
to do it fairly and without malice or dirty politics. I hope you
fellows don't make that too difficult a task; I would have to have you
all killed."
- David Neal (abb...@nuchat.uucp)
"Probabilities are not very interesting when you are dead."
- Peter G. Neumann
"I don't mind occasionally having to reinvent a wheel; I don't even
mind using someone's reinvented wheel occassionally. But it helps a
lot if it is symmetric, contains no fewer than ten sides, and has the
axle centered. I do tire of trapezoidal wheels with offset axles"
- Joseph M. Newcomer
"Theories are more like graduate students - once admitted you try hard
to avoid flunking them out, it being much better for them and for the
world if they can become long term contributors to society"
- Allen Newell
"You know, I've never seen snow before."
- Dale Newfield, just before making his first snowman
(the proper way)
"Please feed the 'Official UCC Spectator'. Do not allow this person to
use network facilities. (Position assigned, but not recommended, by
Academic Computing)"
- Button worn by Chris Newman
"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on
the shoulders of giants."
- Isaac Newton
"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily
in high schools."
- 1921 New York Times editorial
"Finding out what goes on in the CIA is like performing acupuncture on
a rock."
- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
"Who are you and how did you get in here?"; "I'm a locksmith. And, I'm
a locksmith."
- Leslie Nielsen as Lieutenant Frank Drebins, "Police
Squad! (in color)"
"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was
Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to
speak up."
- Rev. Martin Niemoeller
"It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate
people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to
speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!"
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the
laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"He divines remedies against injuries; he knows how to turn serious
accidents to his own advantage; whatever does not kill him makes him
stronger."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Insanity is the exception in individuals. In groups, parties, people,
and times, it is the rule."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"... the Earth hath skin, and the skin hath diseases. One of these...
is called man."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"The masses seem to me worthy of notice in only three respects: first
as blurred copies of great men, produced on bad paper with worn plates,
further as a resistance to the great, and finally as the tools of the
great; beyond that, may the devil and statistics take them"
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my
reasons for them!"
- Nietzsche
"Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do
not cease to be insipid."
- Nietzsche
"Please, Captain. Not in front of the Klingons."
- Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek V, The Final
Frontier
"It's a nitwit idea. Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. The rest of the
time you go by the Book, which is mostly a collection of nitwit ideas
that worked."
- Niven and Pournelle, "The Mote in God's Eye"
"I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a
professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any
other minority viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority."
- Richard M. Nixon
"I think Congress has spent enough time on ethics. I think its time
they moved on to something else."
- Richard M. Nixon
"Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the
Presidency."
- Richard M. Nixon
"If I could find a way to get [Saddam Hussein] out of there, even
putting a contract out on him, if the CIA still did that sort of a
thing, assuming it ever did, I would be for it."
- Richard M. Nixon
"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."
- Sean O'Casey
"A penny for your thoughts?"; "A dollar for your death."
- The Odd Couple
"America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from
barbarism to decadence without touching civilization."
- John O'Hara
"A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows."
- O'Henry
"Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it."
- Olivier
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their
home."
- Ken Olson, President, Digital Equipment, 1977
"THE NEBRASKA STATE MOTTO: `I dunno. What do you wanna do?'"
- Sharon O'Neil
"Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man."
- J. Robert Oppenheimer, speaking of Albert Einstein
"In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no
overstatement, can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and
this is a knowledge which they cannot lose."
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky
that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death,
the Shatterer of Worlds."
- J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting "The Bhagavad Gita",
Alamogordo, New Mexico, 1945
"The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him
that he is already degraded."
- George Orwell
"After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not
for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have
simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi."
- P. J. O'Rourke
"The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treat the
patient who has the disease."
- Sir William Osler
"I am not an actor- I'm a movie star!"
- Peter O'Toole in "My Favorite Year"
"When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue
is not hereditary."
- Thomas Paine
"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their
country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of our
men and women. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have
this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more
glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly:
it is dearness only that gives every thing its value."
- Thomas Paine
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the
cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with
which more than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent
that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a
history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize
mankind..."
- Thomas Paine
"...and how are you going to make education easy? You might as well
try to build an athlete by keeping him in a hammock with cream puffs
and beer."
- Edgar Pangborn
"This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with
great force."
- Dorothy Parker
"Math is the art of avoiding computation."
- B Parlett (UC Professor), 1989.
"When anyone says `theoretically,' they really mean `not really.'"
- David Parnas
"I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being
unable to sit still in a room."
- Blaise Pascal
"The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."
- Blaise Pascal
"We are upping our standards,...so up yours."
- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988
"An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides
correctly, but he always decides."
- John H. Patterson
"You don't win a war by dying for your country, you win a war by making
the other poor bastard die for his country"
- George S. Patton
"Practically everyone but myself is a pusillanimous son of a bitch."
- George S. Patton, Letter to Col. Codman, 1945.
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will
surprise you with their ingenuity."
- Gen George S. Patton, _War As I Knew It_ (1947)
"If there is a 50-50 chance that something can go wrong, then 9 times
out of ten it will."
- Paul Harvey News, 1979
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
- Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted by a physicist
colleague.
"Development of hydro power in the desert of north Africa awaits only
the introduction of water..."
- "Peaceful uses of Nuclear Explosives"
"Science is one thing and Wisdom is another. Science is an edged tool,
with which men play like children, and cut their own fingers."
- Thomas Love Peacock
"A masterful retreat is itself a victory."
- N. V. Peale
"He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself
the accomplice of liars and forgers."
- Charles Peguy
"Let our recreations be innocent and pursued with moderation: and never
let us suffer irregular indulgences to expose our character to derision
and contempt."
- Pennsylvania Freemasonry
"You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of Fortran."
- Alan Perlis
"It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?"
- Alan Perlis
"In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble."
- Alan Perlis
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing."
- Alan Perlis
"The computing field is always in need of new cliches."
- Alan Perlis
"I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor
do I feel that the world must live up to mine."
- Fritz Perls
If you don't know what to do, call the media and at least give the
appearance of doing something.
- David Peterson
"Genius is lasting 5 minutes longer than the other side."
- Donald Petersen
"American induction is when you do something three times and get the
idea."
- Dr. Karl Petersen (UNC Professor)
"We trained hard, but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up
into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that
we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful
method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing
confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation"
- Petronii Arbitri Satyricon, AD 66, attr. to Gaius
Petronus
"What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step
toward something better."
- Wendell Phillips
"We must never forget that the ultimate purpose of an explosive is to
explode."
- Petri Pihko
"The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics."
- Plato
"In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain."
- Pliny the Elder
"Prosperity tries the fortunate: adversity the great."
- Pliny the Younger
"Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science
made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of
facts is not necessarily science."
- Henri Poincaire
"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes
and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum
tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, March 1949
"Committees are, by nature, timid. They are based on the premise of
safety in numbers; content to survive inconspicuously, rather than take
risks and move independantly ahead. Without independence, without the
freedom for new ideas to be tried, to fail, and to ultimately succeed,
the world will not move ahead, but live in fear of its own potential."
- Prof. Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche
"If one does not fail at times, then one has not challenged himself"
- Prof. Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche
"The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they
foul up there's no law against wacking them around a little."
- Porterfield
"One murder makes a villain, millions a hero."
- Beilby Porteus
"Strike suddenly, decisively, and in sufficient force to resolve the
matter. Do it quickly, and do it with minimum loss of life."
- General Colin Powell
"A university professor set an examination question in which he asked
what is the difference between ignorance and apathy. The professor had
to give an A+ to a student who answered; I don't know and I don't care"
- Richard Pratt, Pacific Computer Weekly, 20 July 1990
"In ecology, as in economics, TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A
Free Lunch) is intended to warn that every gain is won at some cost.
Failure to recognize the 'no free lunch' law causes the buffalo-hunter
mentality syndrome -- the unthinking assumption that there will always
be plenty because there always has been plenty."
- Dr. Robert W. Prehoda
"Life's a bitch, and life's got lots of sisters."
- Ross Presser
"We're going to use prototypes?!? Oh. My. God!"
- Josh Pritikin
"It worked once; it's got to work every time."
- Josh Pritikin
"A city is a large community where people are lonesome together"
- Herbert Prochnow
"What do they call a comedian who doesn't get any laughs? A
philosopher."
- Phil Proctor
"It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were
on good terms, one would not part."
- Marcel Proust
"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand
what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not
understand."
- Putt's Law
"If we don't succeed, then we run the risk of failure."
- Dan Quayle
"...Yes, the lectures are optional. Graduation is also optional."
- Professor Brian Quinn
"A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman
out of a divorce."
- Don Quinn
"We're engineers. What's Pi? Oh, about three"
- Jen Quiren
"Yes, but it is more regularly noted as being in the order of ten to
the first."
- Christy
"I don't want to be a software engineer. I want to design weapons of
mass destruction."
- Jen Quirin (attributed)
"So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked
what is the root of money?"
- Ayn Rand
"I feel Clinton's opposing the Vietnam War isn't an issue, and I
probably would have done the same. As far as Clinton supposedly
cheating on his wife, what do people think he's going to do? Be
president of another country while he's president of ours?"
- Tom R., age 12, Woodstock, IL in the Chicago Tribune,
11/3/92.
"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."
- Jeannette Rankin
"I hate life, I hate death and everything in between just doesn't
interest me."
- Chris Rapier
"Mister Order, he runs a very good pace But old Mother Chaos is
winning the race."
- Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst K.S.C.
"Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos."
- Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst K.S.C.
"Options to reboot are: -n Avoids the sync. It can be used if a
disk or the processor is on fire."
- reboot(8)
"There will be more white belts there than you can shake a stick at ...
safely."
- Red
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In
practice, there is."
- Chuck Reid
"Property in ideas is an insoluble contradiction. [He who complains of
"theft" of his idea] complains that something has been stolen which he
still possesses, and he wants back something which, if given to him a
thousand times, would add nothing to his possession."
- H. Rentzsch, Geistiges Eigenthum, 1866.
"The quality of the crate matters little. It is the quality of the man
sitting in the crate that counts"
- Baron von Richtofen, aka The Red Baron
"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
sky."
- Rainer Rilke
"Mind you, not as bad as the night Archie Pettigrew ate some sheep's
testicles for a bet... God, that bloody sheep kicked him..."
- Ripping Yarns
"There are a lot of standards committees"
- Dennis Ritchee referring to UNIX standards
"Steve Jobs has said that Xwindows is brain-damaged and will disappear
in two years. He got it half right."
- (reportedly) Dennis Ritchie
"I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one
minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any
achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their
number or how great their need."
- Howard Roark
"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been
sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful,
rebellious, and immature."
- Tom Robbins
"Typos in FINNEGANS WAKE? How could you tell?"
- Kim Stanley Robinson
"If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who
commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron."
- Spider Robinson, "MindKiller"
"...while I know many people who emphatically believe in reincarnation,
I have never met or read one who could satisfactorily explain
population growth."
- Spider Robinson
"I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God."
- John D. Rockefeller
"Only a brave person is willing honestly to admit, and fearlessly to
face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers."
- Rodan of Alexandria
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just
sit there."
- Will Rogers
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Tom Strong N3NBB ts...@andrew.cmu.edu