Some people wish for peace for our children and their children. This is not enough. We must insist on peace for ourselves.
Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of Unix, although they should have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement.(MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab job ad)
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.(Life, the Universe and Everything)
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second-rate technology, who led them into it in the first place.(The Guardian)
A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.("Mostly Harmless")
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.("Mostly Harmless")
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea.(The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
"You'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It's unpleasantly like being drunk."
"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"You ask a glass of water."
(Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy)
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure.
"I refuse to prove that I exist" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing."
"Oh," says man, "but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn't it? It proves You exist, and so therefore You don't. Q.E.D."
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that." says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
(Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.(The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)
One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work - supposing you're trying to find out how a cat works--you take that cat apart to see how it works, what you've got in your hands is a non-working cat. The cat wasn't a sort of clunky mechanism that was susceptible to our available tools of analysis.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
They know enough who know how to learn.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.
As a fan, I'm distraught, but as a cartoonist looking at new vacant spaces in 2,400 newspapers, well, behind me, my cats are dancing a conga line. - On the end of Calvin & Hobbes
This little box will be your home for sixty hours a week. It comes with an obsolete computer and a binder about safety hazards. Your challenge is to look busy until someone gives you a meaningful assignment. (Dilbert)
I found some numbers that support your strategic plan. I had to take the square root of a negative number to do it. The timeline is on this mobius strip.(Dilbert (September 9, 1999))
I had to make some optimistic assumptions to meet the revenue target In week three, we're visited by an alien named D'utox Inag who offers to share his advanced technology.(Dilbert)
Next week, a doctor with a flashlight shows us where sales projections come from.(Dilbert)
I believe everyody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string.
You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.
In the future, airplanes will be flown by a dog and a pilot. And the dog's job will be to make sure that if the pilot tries to touch any of the buttons, the dog bites him.
In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn't have to ride around with jerks.
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.(The Old Man and Death)
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.
In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.(The Divine Comedy)
Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here. (The Divine Comedy)
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
I don't want to become immortal through my work, I want to become immortal through not dying.
To *you* I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
When you are at Rome live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.(Taylor)
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
Mastering the elements that lead to success won't ever guarantee success - but unless you seek to master these elements your chances of success decrease dramatically.
God has made Canada one of those nations which cannot be conquered and cannot be destroyed, except by itself.("Canada's Best Service for British Ideals" (1913))
Since baseball time is measured only in outs, all you have to do is succeed utterly; keep hitting, keep the rally alive, and you have defeated time. You remain forever young.
How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.(Meditations)
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.(Pappus of Alexandria)
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.(Knights, 424 B.C.)
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Wit is educated insolence.
Well begun is half done.(Politics)
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
The gods too are fond of a joke.
All paid employments absorb and degrade the mind.
Arguing with a man who will not produce evidence in support of his position is like arguing with a vegetable.
Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation.
Kill them all. God will know His own. - during attack on Beziers
One, a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;
Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; Three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
(Laws of Robotics from I. Robot, 1950)
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...'
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.(Once Around the Sun)
If you're not annoying somebody, you're not really alive.
The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page.
Of course, the best way to get accurate information on Usenet is to post something wrong and wait for corrections.
Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled. Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still he was never a whit abashed, but said, "If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill."
Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience. He that travelleth into a country before he hath some entrance into the language, goeth to school, and not to travel.
Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, "Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone."(Apothegms)
It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens.
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.(The Good Times, 1989)
If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base.
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world.
Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.
Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.
If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings'.
There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.(Dictionairre Historique et Critique)
Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming: feedback is the treatment.
We are all born mad. Some remain so.(Waiting for Godot)
I shall send up your case for a new trial - by your Maker. - to an undefended prisoner who stated he did not have a fair trial - before condemning him to death in the 1870's.
It will take six months or more for the colonial secretary to deal with the matter and months more before we learn of his decision. But you will not be interested in what he decides, for you are to be hanged Monday morning.
Prisoner: it is far from a pleasant duty for me to have to sentence you only to imprisonment for life...Your crime was unmitigated, diabolical murder. You deserve to be hanged! Had the jury performed their duty I might now have the painful satisfaction of condemning you to death, and you, gentlemen of the jury, you are a pack of Dalles horse thieves, and permit me to say, it would give me great pleasure to see you hanged, each and every one of you, for declaring a murderer guilty only of manslaughter. - at trial of gunman Gilchrist in 1863
Jimmy Connors plays two tennis matches and winds up with $850,000, and Muhammad Ali fights for one bout and winds up with five million bucks. Me, I play 190 games--if you count exhibitions -- and I'm overpaid!
An ardent supporter of the home town team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.
I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen.
In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.
Slump? I ain't in no slump... I just ain't hitting.
The roulette wheel has neither conscience nor memory.
What do these enemies of the human race look like? Do they wear on their foreheads a sign so that they may be told, shunned and condemned as criminals? No. On the contrary, they are the respectable ones. They are honored. They call themselves, and are called, gentlemen. What a travesty on the name, Gentlemen!
Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.(The Devil's Dictionary)
Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.(The Devil's Dictionary)
ABATIS, n. Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside.(The Devil's Dictionary)
Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.(The Devil's Dictionary)
ACCIDENT, n. An inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws.(The Devil's Dictionary)
ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.(The Devil's Dictionary)
AUCTIONEER, n. The man who proclaims with a hammer that he has picked a pocket with his tongue.
(The Devil's Dictionary)
BACCHUS, n. A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
(The Devil's Dictionary)
BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
(The Devil's Dictionary)
DEFENCELESS, adj. Unable to attack. (The Devil's Dictionary)
EULOGY, n. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead. (The Devil's Dictionary)
HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. (The Devil's Dictionary)
IMPARTIAL, adj. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions. (The Devil's Dictionary)
LAWFUL, adj. Compatible with the will of a judge having jurisdiction. (The Devil's Dictionary)
LECTURER, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience. (The Devil's Dictionary)
ABDICATION, n. An act whereby a sovereign attests his sense of the high temperature of the throne.(The Devil's Dictionary)
ABSCOND, v.i. To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with the property of another.(The Devil's Dictionary)
ABSURDITY, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.(The Devil's Dictionary)
AMNESTY, n. The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.(The Devil's Dictionary)
APPEAL, v.t. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.(The Devil's Dictionary)
CONSULT, v.i. To seek another's disapproval of a course already decided on.(The Devil's Dictionary)
CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.(The Devil's Dictionary)
CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.(The Devil's Dictionary)
EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.(The Devil's Dictionary)
FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.(The Devil's Dictionary)
FUTURE, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.(The Devil's Dictionary)
IMPUNITY, n. Wealth.(The Devil's Dictionary)
LAWYER, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.(The Devil's Dictionary)
PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.(The Devil's Dictionary)
POSITIVE, adj. Mistaken at the top of one's voice.(The Devil's Dictionary)
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
As far as I can judge, not much good can be done without disturbing something or somebody.(speech at Aurora, Ontario, 1874)
When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
Anybody who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.
The opposite of one profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.(Maxims)
In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools.
Kids today are looking for idols, but sometimes they look too far... They don't have to look any farther than their home because those are the people that love you. They are the real heroes.
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.
Baseball players are smarter than football players. How often do you see a baseball team penalized for too many players on the field?
It was all very simple; we had to choose between the English of Boston and the English of London. The English of London were farther away and we hated them less.
Luge strategy? Lie flat and try not to die.
We could not now take much time for further search...
our victuals being much spent, especially our beer.
(from a diary entry dated Dec. 19, 1620)
Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Canada is that it is not part of the United States.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the Unitied States.
Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target.
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
I am not a lawyer. I have many other faults but that is not among them.
Canada is a collection of ten provinces with strong governments loosely connected by fear.
We have the Mounties. They have the FBI. Can you imagine the FBI doing the Musical Ride? - 1989
Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time.
Anyone that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable.
Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.
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.(The Mythical Man-Month)
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal.
Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, the result is indisputable: 'This time it will surely run' or 'I just found the last bug'.
If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.
My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.
The characteristics of innocence are happiness and curiosity, the characteristics of experience are knowledge and, most often, regret.
I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless, and then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Attributed, not found in any of Burke's work
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.(Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents, 1770)
"Is it true that you smoke eight to ten cigars a day?"
"That's true."
"Is it true that you drink five martinis a day?"
"That's true."
"Is it true that you still surround yourself with beautiful young women?"
"That's true."
"What does your doctor say about all of this?"
"My doctor is dead."
A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.
A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.(Anatomy of Melancholy. Democritus to the Reader.)
They are proud in humility; proud in that they are not proud.(Anatomy of Melancholy)
Who cannot give good counsel? 'T is cheap, it costs them nothing.(Anatomy of Melancholy)
When they are at Rome, they do there as they see done.(Anatomy of Melancholy)
One religion is as true as another.(Anatomy of Melancholy)
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we - August 5, 2004
I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always agree with them.
The difference between God and the historians consists above all in the fact that God cannot alter the past.
For brevity is very good, where we are, or are not understood.(Hudibras)
I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.(from Suetonius, Augustus)
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
Men willingly believe what they wish.(De Bello Gallico)
Veni, vidi, vici.(from Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars)
It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking.(from Plutarch, Lives)
Shame! It's more than a shame. 'Snoutrage'! - (on a newspaper's statement that it was a shame to discuss Sir John A. MacDonald's nose)
The election is not a time to discuss serious issues.
You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.
It's a partial sellout. - on "crowd" of 6,000 fans
"I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
The truth is, Pavlov's dog trained Pavlov to ring his bell just before the dog salivated.(Brain Droppings)
Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground.(Brain Droppings)
Look at all the self-help titles in the bookstore and you'll get a few clues about our culture. They're all about aggression and acquisition. It wouldn't be at all surprising to see a book called "How to Force Your Will on Other People by Giving Them the Shaft and Fucking Them out of Their Money."(Brain Droppings)
I have come up with a single sentence that includes all of the seven deadly sins: greed, anger, pride, lust, gluttony, sloth, and envy. Here it is. "It enrages me that I, a clearly superior person, should have less money than my neighbor, whose wife I would love to fuck if I weren't so busy eating pork chops and sleeping all day."(Brain Droppings)
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
There is only one way in the world to be distinguished: Follow your instinct! Be yourself, and you'll be somebody. Be one more blind follower of the blind; and you will have the oblivion you desire.
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain -- and most fools do.
Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise.(from Plutarch, Lives)
I would much rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.(from Plutarch, Lives)
I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.
There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
In an information economy, the most valuable company assets drive themselves home every night. If they are not treated well, they do not return the next morning.
Enough 's as good as a feast.(Eastward Ho. Act iii. Sc. 2)
I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.
Min be the travaille, and thin be the glorie.(Canterbury Tales, The Knightes Tale, line 2408)
Truth is the highest thing that man may keep.(Canterbury Tales, The Frankeleines Tale)
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's the day to day living that wears you out.
An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.(Letter to his son, October 9, 1746)
Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If scientific civilization goes on only one man will laugh, because he can laugh better than the rest.
Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.
Americans have great and noble principles and they go to hell trying to live up to them. Canadians also have great and noble principles, but they go to heaven figuring out ways to get around them.
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.(Radio Free Maine)
If you're going through hell, keep going.
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
In this crisis I think I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today, and I hope that any of my friends and colleagues or former colleagues who are affected by the political reconstruction will make all allowances for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
The price of greatness is responsibility.
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
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.
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.(Radio speech, 1939)
I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: 'I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."(Hansard, May 13, 1940)
The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter.
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Never in the field of human endeavour was so much owed by so many to so few.
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.(Pro Publio Sestio)
While there's life, there's hope.(Ad Atticum)
The people's good is the highest law.(De Legibus)
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God--but to create him.
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
CNN is one of the participants in the war. I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected president but refuses because he doesn't want to give up power.
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
If there's one thing that computers do well, it's to make the same mistake uncountable times at inhuman speed.
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.
The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
(The Rime of the Ancient Mariner)
I don't think there are going to be that many people writing books this year. We don't have that many people who can read and write. - comparing the Giant's Super Bowl XXI and XXV champions.
And the sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home.
Nothing ever goes away.
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.(The Analects)
When you see a good man, try to emulate his example, and when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults.
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.(The Mourning Bride, 1697, act III scene 8)
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.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you want to hear.
I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late.
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, "Yes, but is it the God the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?"
Yes the guy can score you 40 goals. Yes I love it. What I don"t want is him causing 60. - On rookie Alex Selivanov
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
History is a vast early warning system.
to be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing it's 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
Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means.
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it.
Football isn't a contact sport, it's a collision sport. Dancing is a contact sport.
Human subtelty will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
That's what makes a man great; his flashes of insight, when he pierces through the nonsense of his time, and gets at something that really matters.
The most strenuous efforts of the most committed educationalists in the years since my boyhood have been quite unable to make a school into anything but a school, which is to say a jail with educational opportunities.
Everybody is trapped, more or less. The best thing you can hope for is to understand your trap and make terms with it, tooth by tooth.
It ain't braggin' if you can back it up.
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical may be madness. To surrender dreams, this may be madness. To seek treasures where there is only trash...Too much sanity may be madness, and maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.(Don Quixote)
A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience.
On the other hand, it is impossible for a cube to be written as a sum of two cubes or a fourth power to be written as a sum of two fourth powers or, in general, for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.
The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.
If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion. - From the journal of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
If the triangles made a god, they would give him three sides.
There has never been a kingdom given to so many civil wars as the Kingdom of God.
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing left to take away.
Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner will gladly agree to praise much in their country, but he would like to be allowed to criticize something, and that he is absolutely refused.(Democracy in America (1831))
I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders. - when asked what he'd do if he were in CEO Steve Jobs' position at Apple Computer
I've noticed lately that the paranoid fear of computers becoming intelligent and taking over the world has almost entirely disappeared from the common culture. Near as I can tell, this coincides with the release of MS-DOS.
Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
Minds are like parachutes; they work best when open.
Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses.
Indeed, it may be said of Kingston, that one half of it appears to be burnt down and the other half not to be built up.
We owe most of what we know to about one hundred men. We owe most of what we have suffered to another hundred or so.
Mankind shall not be free until the last king is strangled in the entrails of the last priest.
Jean Lesage is the only person I know who can strut sitting down. - mocking Jean Lesage, former premier of Quebec.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.
All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy.(What We Live By)
A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.(Devotions, 1624)
Who are a little wise the best fools be.(Triple Fool)
Life is like a B-picture script. It is that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I'd turn it down.
Canada is like an old cow. The West feeds it. Ontario and Quebec milk it. And you can well imagine what it's doing in the Maritimes.
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?((Sherlock Holmes) The Sign of Four, 1890)
An engineer will not be motivated to make a shareholder rich.
There is a pleasure sure
In being mad which none but madmen know.
(The Spanish Friar)
Everything that can be invented, has been invented.
We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory.(The Heart's Domain)
If you have anything to tell me of importance, for God's sake begin at the end.
Hey, I can no-hit Tampa Bay. - April 2002, On hearing of pitcher Derek Lowe's feat.
A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.
Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
The thing that impresses me the most about America is the way parents obey their children.
A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.
The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.
If you want work well done, select a busy man - the other kind has no time.
A woman never stops to consider how very uninteresting her children would be if they were some other woman's.
Taking things philosophically is easy if they don't concern you.
About the only people who don't quarrel over religion are the people who don't have any.
If a man understands one woman he should let it go at that.
It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
If relativity is proved right the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew.
The physicist's greatest tool is his wastebasket.
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.
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.(Telegram, 24 May 1946)
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... it takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.
I want to know Gods thoughts.... all the rest are just details.
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
All our lauded technological progress -- our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
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. - April 16, 1953
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.
Planning is everything; plans are nothing.
When I was a small boy growing up in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of a summer afternoon on a riverbank we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major-league baseball player, a genuine professional like Honus Wagner. My friend said that he'd like to be President of the United States. Neither of us got our wish.
I suppose some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but a whimper.(The Hollow Man)
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving words in evidence of the fact.
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. - Attributed
The true poem is in the poet's mind; the true ship is the ship-builder.
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Men are what their mothers made them.
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.(from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers)
It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.
The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.(Adages)
Chance fights ever on the side of the prudent.
A bad beginning makes a bad ending.(Aegeus)
Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad.(Fragment)
Senility has it's privileges.( comment on Chief Justice Lewis Wallbridge of Manitoba in 1884)
Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
The problem isn't easy access to guns, but easy access to oxygen. Certain people shouldn't be breathing.(Boston Herald, 3/30/98)
The great themes of Canadian history are as follows: Keeping the Americans out, keeping the French in, and trying to get the Natives to somehow disappear.
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.
It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there.
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.
Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
Creative thinking may mean simply the realisation that there is no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done.
Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.
Arguing with the moderators is like shaking your fist at God. There's nobody there; and if there is, he's not listening. And if he's listening, all you're doing is pissing him off.(Slashdot.org)
Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
People can have the Model T in any colour--so long as it's black.
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't.
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
The average man does not know what to do with his life, yet wants another one which will last forever.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith.
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.
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
Five thousand balloons, capable of raising two men each, could not cost more than five ships of the line; and where is the prince who can afford so to cover his country with troops for its defense as that 10,000 men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an infinite deal of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them?
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Mitch doesn't have ulcers. He's a carrier. - on Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams
The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is: What does a woman want ?
Nothing in the world is as certain as death.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. (The Road Not Taken)
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.
I am the only guinea pig I have.
Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.
When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
I wasn't driving too fast, I was flying too low. - remark made to a patrol officer who stopped him for speeding.
If I tell a lie, it's only because I think I'm telling the truth.
To beat Barry Bonds, you've got to be a good liar to yourself. And an idiot to believe in your own lies.
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
It was on Saturday night that the Scotch gathered at the McIntyre House to make merry and seek one another's destruction.
Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.
The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.
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.
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
(Quoted in Arago, Eulogy of Galileo (1874))
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so. (Quoted in The Armchair Science Reader (New York 1959).)
I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.
There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?("Non-Violence in Peace and War")
There are seven sins in the world: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice and politics without principle.
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence. All the neurons in the brain that make up perceptions and emotions operate in a binary fashion.
Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed.
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.
Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
I could give Jack Nicklaus a good game in a foot of snow. - Responding to suggestion that the ice is the same for everyone.
The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet.
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.
One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.
Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country. - During the Nuremberg Trials
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.
The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization. - June 8, 1990
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.(March 9, 1999: On CNN's Late Edition)
My first World Series? Better than anything I could have expected, better even than sex, but I'm lousy at that. - 2001 World Series Champion
Some people skate to the puck. I skate to where the puck is going to be.
I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others.
We seldom or never learn, until too late, to distinguish which act or word, apparently trifling, is big with consequences we should shrink from - could only we see them.
That's so when I forget how to spell my name, I can still find my (expletive) clothes. - Explaining why he keeps a color photo of himself above his locker
Life is like a dogsled race--if you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.
The world is round; it has no point.
Law is not justice and a trial is not a scientific inquiry into truth. A trial is the resolution of a dispute.
Now, my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.(Possible Worlds, 1927)
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Whenever you make an impression on a man stop; your reasoning and details may ruin you.
Who the devil cares for a monument that actually deserves one?
Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel ashamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, 'It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than to be selfish and worry about my liver.'
Life is short… running makes it seem longer.
What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.(The New York Times, 1960)
Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.(Epigrams, Book iv. Ep. 5.)
When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'
Love blinds the eyes of men, but opens the eyes of women.
Unless mankind redesigns itself by changing our DNA through altering our genetic makeup, computer-generated robots will take over our world.
One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer.
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
Not only does God play dice with the Universe - he sometimes casts them where they can't be seen.
Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.(Beyond the Horizon, 1942)
A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?
Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.(Time Enough For Love)
Luck is a tag given by the mediocre to account for the accomplishments of genius.
The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.(Catch-22)
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
No, that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.(A Farewell To Arms)
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.(On the Universe)
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.(Chapterhouse: Dune)
There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
Before the gates of excellence the high gods have placed sweat; long is the road thereto and rough and steep at first; but when the heights are reached, then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning.(Works And Days)
The difference between the mile and the marathon is the difference between burning your fingers with a match and being slowly roasted over hot coals.
The odds against there being a bomb on a plane are a million to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to one. Next time you fly, cut the odds and take a bomb.
If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge
Ars longa, vita brevis(Aphorism)
When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'
Seeing a murder on television...will help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!
The great masses of the people...will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
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. The first method is far more difficult.
Canada is not so much a country as a clothesline nearly 4,000 miles long. St. John's in Newfoundland is closer to Milan, Italy than to Vancouver
It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.(The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes)
At last is Hector stretch'd upon the plain,
Who fear'd no vengeance for Patroclus slain:
Then, Prince! You should have fear'd, what now you feel;
Achilles absent was Achilles still:
Yet a short space the great avenger stayed,
Then low in dust thy strength and glory laid. (The Illiad)
There is a strength in the union even of very sorry men.(The Illiad)
The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken.(The Odyssey)
It is equally wrong to speed a guest who does not want to go, and to keep one back who is eager. You ought to make welcome the present guest, and send forth the one who wishes to go.(The Odyssey)
Whoever obeys the gods, to him they particularly listen.(The Illiad)
I too shall lie in the dust when I am dead, but now let me win noble renown.(The Illiad)
Cease to ask what the morrow will bring forth. And set down as gain each day that Fortune grants.(Odes)
Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.(Epistles)
It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.(Epistles)
He has the deed half done who has made a beginning.
Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.(Odes)
Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance.
I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want somebody else to go chase it.
One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Theology: An attempt to explain a subject by men who do not understand it. The intent is not to tell the truth but to satisfy the questioner.
The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you.
Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
I'm not dumb enough to be a goalie.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.
The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.(The Place of No Shadows)
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
There is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may retain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
I never told my religion nor scrutinize that of another. I never attempted to make a convert nor wished to change another's creed. I have judged of others' religion by their lives, for it is from our lives and not from our words that our religion must be read. By the same test must the world judge me.
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.(Inaugural Address)
He is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
The friendship that can cease has never been real.(Letter)
Channeling is just bad ventriloquism. You use another voice, but people can see your lips moving.
One: demonstrations always crash. And two: the probability of them crashing goes up exponentially with the number of people watching.
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new. It took us three years to build the NeXT computer. If we'd given customers what they said they wanted, we'd have built a computer they'd have been happy with a year after we spoke to them--not something they'd want now.
You achieve what you emphasize.
The first casualty when war comes is truth.
I'm going to give 110 percent on every play. You can't give any more than that.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.(Letter to Lord Chesterfield, 1775)
Anybody who parked on the railroad tracks, the Lincoln Police Department wants you to move your car. The university would like you to report immediately for IQ testing. - during campus rally celebrating Cornhusker's national football title
You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens.
I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast for I intend to go in harm's way.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.
The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them.
Why don't you write books people can read?
It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.(Hyperspace)
I don't spend much time thinking about whether God exists. I don't consider that a relevant question. It's unanswerable and irrelevant to my life, so I put it in the category of things I can't worry about.
A brain and some shoes are essential for marathon success, but if it comes down to a choice, pick the shoes. More people finish marathons with no brains than with no shoes.
A product manager can be defined as someone who has all of the responsibility and none of the power.
A crash is when your competitor's program dies. When your program dies, it is an 'idiosyncrasy'.
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' -- that is all
Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.(Ode On A Grecian Urn)
Marathoning is just another form of insanity.
Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
We have met the enemy and it is us.("Pogo comic strip")
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.(Imitation of Christ)
The real test of friendship is: can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple?
Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.(Inaugural Address 1961)
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.
Trying to outsmart a compiler defeats much of the purpose of using one. - Kernighan & Plauger co-writers(The Elements of Programming Style)
If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
In the long run, we are all dead.
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even where there is no river.
Now that I'm here, we'll turn the program around 360 degrees. - Dallas Maverick's top draft pick
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.(Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963)
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
A man who won't die for something is not fit to live.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.(Strength to Love, 1963)
Darkness cannot run out darkness, only light can do that; Hate cannot run out hate, only love can do that.
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.
You people in this district seem to have all Hell for a basement.
If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you. . . . The world will be yours and everything in it, what's more, you'll be a man, my son.("If")
No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.
The most important thing in the programming language is the name.
A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.(The Way of Lao-tzu)
Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.
The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a car.
Trust no man until you have made him angry.
Human beings are exceedingly tough creatures and almost never find the sufferings of others beyond their endurance.
There's a definite limit to how much of our own happiness and good fortune we can ask others to bear.
We are punished not for our sins but for our stupidity.
In Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada has at last produced a political leader worthy of assassination.
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
The parent who could see his boy as he really is, would shake his head and say "Willie is no good; I'll sell him."
Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects.
I am what is called a professor emeritus - from the Latin e, "out" and meritus,"so he ought to be".
You just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself - it is the occurring which is difficult.
I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
Voodoo Programming: Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but they try anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling everything.
Theists have good reasons for not believing in every god but their own. Atheists make no exception for the last one.
A lie told often enough becomes truth.
Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?
He's the first guy to drive a $300,000 car with licence plates he made himself.
Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
1. Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2. Advising the President.
3. Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.
Sometimes it is good that some things are impossible. I am happy there are many things that nobody can do to me.
There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computers.
If the network idea should prove to do for education what a few have envisioned, surely the boon to humankind would be beyond measure. Unemployment would disappear from the face of the earth forever, for consider the magnitude of the task of adapting the network's software to all generations of computer, coming closer and closer upon the heels of their predecessors until the entire population of the world is caught up in an infinite crescendo of on-line interactive debugging. - Said in 1968
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!
Don't pray that God's on our side, pray that we're on his side.
If I only had an hour to chop down a tree, I would spend the first 45 minutes sharpening my axe.
I just wrap my arms around the whole backfield and peel 'em one by one until I get to the ball carrier. Him I keep.
Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
I think that learned counsel is abusing the privilege of being stupid.
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.(To Althea From Prison)
What's the penalty for killing a photographer - one stroke or two? - after his swing was affected by a camera going off
I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.
I am confused, therefore I am.(Confusions, 1960)
In war there is no substitute for victory.
Harry, my boy, never write a letter if you can help it, and never destroy one.
Look here, McGee, this government can't afford two drunkards, and you've got to stop.(to Thomas D'Arcy McGee (Father of Confederation) in 1891)
... nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.(The Prince)
No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.(The Art of War, 1521)
It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who would profit by the old order, only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new.
The reward of work well done is more work.
The real test of character is in surprise. It is the unforeseen crisis, the sudden calamity, the unexpected shock, when the man is off guard, which shows truly what he is. - 1926
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.(A Long Walk to Freedom)
Why don't you learn to swim? - to opposition members from Newfoundland on transportation problems between the island and Canada's Mainland
Conceal a flaw, and the world will imagine the worst.(Epigrams)
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
The problem today is that the only success is a total success. And a lot of things don't fall into that category.
A child's mind must inevitably rot, looking at this dreary procession of nonsense night after night, and I think that the next ten years will produce a population composed entirely of goons. - On his daughter's fascination with television(The Groucho Letters)
I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
To the man who only has a hammer in the toolkit, every problem looks like a nail.
You can learn little from victory. You can learn everything from defeat.
He had heard people speak contemptuously of money: he wondered if they had ever tried to do without it.('Of Human Bondage', 1915)
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to know the game and stupid enough to think it is important.
I remember one time going out to the mound to talk with Bob Gibson. He told me to get back behind the batter; that the only thing I knew about pitching was that it was hard to hit.
It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it.
The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.
There's an old saying which goes: Once the last tree is cut and the last river poisoned, you will find you cannot eat your money.
I still say a church steeple with a lightening rod on top shows a lack of confidence.
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.
The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.("Gutenberg Galaxy", 1962)
The medium is the message.("Understanding Media", 1964)
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
Where does the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blending enter into the other. So with sanity and insanity.
Imagine the Creator as a stand up comedian - and at once the world becomes explicable.
It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
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.
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything.
There are only two things wrong with C++: The initial concept and the implementation.
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
The easiest job in the world has to be coroner. Surgery on dead people. What's the worst thing that could happen? If everything went wrong, maybe you'd get a pulse.
The biggest conspiracy has always been the fact that there is no conspiracy. Nobody's out to get you. Nobody gives a shit whether you live or die. There, you feel better now?
Anyone who ever said a dog was man's best friend never had a pet chimpanzee.
Women don't like guys who are dangerous. Women want us to think that because women are trying to kill us.
Even the best psychiatrist is like a blindfolded auto mechanic poking around under your hood with a giant foam "We're #1" finger.
The average American attention span is that of a ferret on a double espresso.
Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.
Don't take life seriously because you can't come out of it alive.
Here at last
We shall be free;
the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.(Paradise Lost)
Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st
Live well: how long or short permit to heaven.(Paradise Lost)
It's ridiculous to live 100 years and only be able to remember 30 million bytes. You know less than a compact disc. The human condition is really becoming more obsolete every minute.
Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come.
The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.
Here's the plan: When I find myself at death's door, I'm going to ring the doorbell and run like mad.
They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even men for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is.(Utopia)
Americans make money by playing `money games,' namely mergers, acquisitions, by simply moving money back and forth ... instead of creating and producing goods with some actual value.
I'm constantly reminded of what my grandfather told me: the moon shines just as much on a handful of water as on a lake. We may find truth under a pebble. Truth is probably very small.
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
Why is American beer served cold? So you can tell it from urine.
Our unemployment rate would be 1.5 percentage points lower if we had as many people sitting in jail as the United States has,... - Economics Minister of Germany, 2002
Why certainly I'd like to have that fellow who hits a home run every time at bat, who strikes out every opposing batter when he's pitching, who throws strikes to any base or the plate when he's playing outfield and who's always thinking about two innings ahead just what he'll do to baffle the other team. Any manager would want a guy like that playing for him. The only trouble is to get him to put down his cup of beer and come down out of the stands and do those things.
I think that I shall never see
a billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
Life is a horror movie, starring people you know.
Amidst all the sound and fury, I don't expect right to prevail; I don't expect wrong to prevail, either; I just expect the sound and fury to prevail.
If you can explain why you love him, you don't.
The only person who can cure you of a woman is that woman herself; and given time enough, she usually does.
Nobody believes the official spokesman... but everybody trusts an unidentified source.
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore and diverting himself and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell that ordinary while the greater ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
Very little is known about the War of 1812 because the Americans lost it.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
In Germany, they first came 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 wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time there was nobody left to speak up.
What we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed.
There are no facts, only interpretations.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.(Thus Spake Zarathusra)
The search for truth begins with the doubt of all 'truths' in which one has previously believed.
One never dives into the water to save a drowning man more eagerly than when there are others present who dare not take the risk.
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
A subject for a great poet would be God's boredom after the seventh day of creation.
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
When I retire I'm going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.
Cricket : A game invented by religious fundamentalists to explain the idea of eternal hell to non-Christian indigenous peoples of the former British Empire.
I believe salaries are at their peak, not just in baseball, but all sports. It's quite possible some owners will trade away, or even drop entirely, players who expect $200,000 salaries. There's a superstar born every year... But still there is no way clubs can continue to increase salaries to the level some players are talking about.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
That play went 5-4-3 if you're scoring at home - or even if you're watching by yourself. - describing a double play
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home. - 1977
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
You can only put as much intelligence in a system as was in the design engineer to begin with.
He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.(1984)
An excellent recipe for longevity is this: cultivate a minor ailment, and take very good care of it.
No bubble is so iridescent or floats longer than that blown by the successful teacher.
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.
Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.
Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don't move.
It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time.(The Age of Reason, 1796)
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of... Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.(The Age of Reason)
If you're in the penalty area and don't know what to do with the ball, put it in the net and we'll discuss the options later.
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.
A little help was worth a deal of pity.(The Canadian Settler's Guide, 1855)
I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.("Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657)
Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.
Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other son-of-a-bitch die for his.
The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
There was a valid distinction between an offensive and a defensive weapon; if you were in front of it, it was offensive; if you were behind it, it was defensive.
He conquers who endures.
Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.
The problem with success is that its formula is the same as the one for ulcers.
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
Speak when you are angry--and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
It is my misfortune - and probably my delight - to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don't go with the basket of fruit! ... I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things - so much the worse for them. They just have to put up with it.
I took the two most expensive asprins in history. - On his decision to sit out a game with a headache which let Lou Gehrig into the lineup.
A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.
How would you like a job where, every time you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?
If you jump out of a plane without a parachute, does that make you brave? No, I think that makes you stupid. I will never play without the mask again. - When asked if wearing a goaltender mask meant that he had lost his courage
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something.
Indeed, what is there that does not appear marvelous when it comes to our knowledge for the first time? How many things, too, are looked upon as quite impossible until they have been actually effected?(Natural History)
The best plan is to profit by the folly of others.(Natural History)
For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.(Morals)
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.(History)
When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
("An Essay on Man")
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.(Essay on Criticism)
Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
(An Essay on Criticism)
Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
The structure of the university was such that, to become a member of the faculty, you merely found some obscure subject that nobody else claimed to teach, set up an office, and showed up at meal times. If you were unlucky, you may attract students.(The Last Continent)
Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.(Discworld)
In the Beginning there was nothing, which exploded.(Lords and Ladies)
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not! But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am!
We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in "Red Storm Rising"
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.
People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.
[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system.
A liar should have a good memory.(De Institutione Oratoria)
Our field is still in the embryonic stage. It's great that we haven't been around for 2000 years. We are still at a stage where very, very important results occur in front of our eyes.
Never run from anything...till you've had a good look at it. Most times it's not worth running from.
Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far. - 1901
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?
Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
The person who knows "how" will always have a job. The person who knows "why" will always be his boss.
Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.
I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.
Let him who desires peace prepare for war.(De Rei Militari)
The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.
They're not the smartest people in the world. They have a diamond diagramming where they have to go. And they still have coaches on first and third telling them which way to go. Otherwise, these guys would run all the way to the warning track. - on baseball players
Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
Effective control lies in the hands of directors, paid officials and manipulators who should not, but frequently do, operate a company on the basis of "Who's to stop us!"
You don't need no gun control. You know what you need? Bullet control. I think all bullets should cost $5000. You know why? If a bullet cost $5000 there'd be no more innocent bystanders...Or if someone has a score to settle, being like, "You know what, I would fucking put a cap in your ass... if I could *afford* it! I'm gonna save up some money, maybe get a second job or something, then you a motherfuckin' dead man!"(Bowling for Columbine)
A man is only as faithful as his opportunity.
We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing, all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.
Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing -- and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.
Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
Income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.("Citizen in a Republic", April 23, 1910)
While my interest in natural history has added very little to my sum of achievement, it has added immeasurably to my sum of enjoyment in life.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains.(The Social Contract)
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
In all things it is a good idea to hang a question mark now and then on the things we have taken for granted.
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.("The Philosophy of Logical Atomism")
I should reproach him for not giving us enough evidence. - on what he would say to God if they "met"
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese.
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
Sometimes it pays to stay in bed in Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don’t understand it.
You just can't escape the conclusion that half the people you know are below average.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."(Charlie Brown, Peanuts)
Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days, it will be.
There are two miracles in Canadian history. The first is the survival of French Canada, and the second is the survival of Canada.
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!(Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.)
Instead of getting married again, I'm going to find a woman I don't like and just give her a house.
What's on the mind when sober, is on the tongue when not.
Winning is always fun, but the car is more important. - On the NHL All-Star Game
Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
'T is not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess.(Table Talk)
You can command any response - you can even command people to die - but you cannot command love.
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.(Epistles)
Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.(Epistles)
If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good. - Source only listed author as Seneca, assuming the elder
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
I only ran for mayor because the others were dodos.
I am led to conceive it indispensably necessary to overwhelm and sink the (French) Canadian population by the introduction of a greater number of English Protestants, and this I believe to be practicable.(in a letter to Sir James Craig, early 1810)
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.(As You Like It, Act 2, sc. 7)
He was my friend, faithful, and just to me;
But Brutus says, he was ambitious,
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept.
Ambition should me made of sterner stuff,
Yet Brutus says, he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.(Julius Caesar)
To die, to sleep --
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause; there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.(Hamlet)
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.("Julius Caesar, Act II, Sc. 2, line 32.")
This above all; to thine own self be true.(Hamlet, Act 1, sc. 3)
Brevity is the soul of wit.("Hamlet", Act 2 scene 2)
Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.("Hamlet", Act 2 scene 2)
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.("Macbeth", Act 5 scene 5)
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence. ("Macbeth", Act 1 scene 3)
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.("Romeo and Juliet", Act 2 scene 2)
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York...("King Richard III", Act 1 scene 1)
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility;
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.("King Henry V", Act 3 scene 1)
I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I.("Much Ado About Nothing", Act 3 scene 3)
The worst is not
So long as we can say, "This is the worst."("King Lear", Act 4 scene 1)
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.("Hamlet", Act 1 scene 3)
Lay on, Macduff,
And damn'd be him that first cries, "Hold, enough!"("Macbeth", Act 5 scene 8)
I like this place, and willingly would waste my time in it.(As You Like It)
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.(The Tempest, Act ii, Sc. 2)
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.(The Tempest, Act iv, Sc. 1)
Why, then the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open. (The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act ii, Sc. 1)
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.(Measure for Measure, Act i. Sc. 4)
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does. (Measure for Measure. Act ii. Sc. 2.)
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage, where every man must play a part;
And mine a sad one.(The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, scene 1)
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.(The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, sc. 3)
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.(Twelfth Night, Act 2, sc. 5)
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
(King John, Act 4, sc. 2)
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.(King Henry IV Part 2, Act 3, sc. 1)
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.(King Henry V, Act 4, sc. 3)
Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it; he died
As one that had been studied in his death
To throw away the dearest thing he owed,
As 't were a careless trifle. (Macbeth, Act 1, sc. 4)
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 't is something, nothing;
'T was mine, 't is his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.(Othello, Act 3, sc. 3)
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?(Henry IV, Part 1)
And thus I clothe my naked villaniny
With old odd ends stoln out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.("Richard III", Act 1 scene 3)
Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge...
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war...(Julius Caesar, Act 3, sc. 1)
Stand up, speak up, then shut up. The human mind can absorb only what the human seat can endure.
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.("Reader's Digest", November, 1942)
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.(Ozymandias)
If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast.
If nominated I will not run. If elected I will not serve.
A department of delay, a department of circumlocution, a department in which people could not get business done, a department which tired men to death who undertook to get any business transacted with it.
I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I'll do it again.
Alchohol, the cause of and the solution to all the world's problems.
Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand.
Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose... it's how drunk you get.
All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me, so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer.
The three little sentences that will get you through life:
1- Cover for me.
2- Oh, good idea, Boss !
3- It was like that when I got here.
Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder.
Programming is like sex, one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life.
The distribution of patronage was the most important single function of the government.(Life of Laurier)
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
Ninety feet between bases is perhaps as close as man ever come to perfection.
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.(from Plutarch, Of Banishment)
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?(The Gulag Archipelago)
You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
What you cannot enforce, do not command.
Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act.
How many dead do you have to see in a war before you know it is Death you are fighting for?
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth: Anonymously and posthumously.
The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards -- and even then I have my doubts.
The doubt of an earnest, thoughtful, patient and laborious mind is worthy of respect. In such doubt may be found indeed more faith than in half the creeds.(Means and Ends of Education)
One has apparently to choose between a competent discussion of trivialities and a series of emotional outbursts about what matters.
I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that.(Fahrenheit 9/11)
Through thick and thin, both over bank and bush,
In hope her to attain by hook or crook.(Faerie Queene. Book iii. Canto i. St. 17.)
Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.(Faerie Queene. Book v. Canto ii. St. 43.)
But the real tragedy was that 15 hadn't been colored yet. - after fire burned 20 books at Auburn's football dormitory
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
The government (is) extremely fond of amassing great quantities of statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts down anything he damn well pleases.
The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.
No one wants advice -- only corroboration.(The Winter of Our Discontent)
The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.
The trouble is not that players have sex the night before a game. It's that they stay out all night looking for it.
Ability is the art of getting credit for all the home runs somebody else hits.
They say some of my stars drink whiskey. But I have found that the ones who drink milkshakes don't win many ballgames.
Two hundred million Americans, and there ain't two good catchers among 'em.
Most games are lost, not won.
You look up and down the bench and you have to say to yourself, "Can't anybody here play this game?
Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly misleading. Debug only code.
Statistics are like lampposts: they are good to lean on, but they don't shed much light.
To be patriotic, hate all nations but your own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all pretenses but your own.
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.
Ninety percent of everything is crap. - Sturgeon's Revelation
The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities...It is best to win without fighting.(The Art of War. Planning a Siege)
Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.(The Art of War. Emptiness and Fullness)
Many receive advice, few profit by it.(Maxims)
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.(Maxims)
It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.(Maxims)
Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.(Maxims)
Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.(Maxims)
Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.(Maxims)
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.(Maxims)
He gives twice who gives promptly.
Science is to see what everyone else has seen but think what no one else has thought.
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.(The Friends of Voltaire)
Oil prices have fallen lately. We include this news for the benefit of gas stations, which otherwise wouldn't learn of it for six months.(Globe & Mail, 1991)
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.
I hold it true,what'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
(In Memoriam)
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone;
(Ulysses)
There are no great things, only small things with great love. Happy are those.
Do not go gentle into that good night.("Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night")
One of those war, famine, and pestilence speeches which have so often carried the country for the Government. - on a preceding speech made by a member of the opposition in 1892
The United States is our friend whether we like it or not.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, how ever measured or far away.
The man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.(The Fellowship of the Ring)
It's a dangerous business going out your front door.(The Fellowship of the Ring)
The Road Goes Ever On And On
Down From The Door Where It Began
Now Far Ahead The Road Is Gone
And I Must Follow If I Can
Persuing It With Eager Feet
Until It Meets Some Larger Way
Where Many A Path and Errand Meet
And Wither Then I Cannot Say(Fellowship of The Ring)
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.(Lord of the Rings)
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost.(Lord of the Rings)
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
Technical people are better off not looking at patents. If somebody sues you, you change the algorithm or you just hire a hit-man to whack the stupid git.
When you say: "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say: "Hey, I got those with the system -- for free."
We didn't have to replicate the problem. We understood it.
The Hon. Member disagrees. I can hear him shaking his head.
Americans should never underestimate the constant pressure on Canada which the mere presence of the United States has produced. We're different people from you and we're different people because of you. Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is effected by every twitch and grunt. It should not therefore be expected that this kind of nation, this Canada, should project itself as a mirror image of the United States.
Our hopes are high. Our faith in the people is great. Our courage is strong. And our dreams for this beautiful country will never die.
You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on.(Mr. Citizen, 1960)
All the president is, is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Why is it that we rejoice at a wedding and cry at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible.
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
I am not a role model.
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.
Nothing is too small to know, and nothing is too big to attempt.
We're not withholding information. There are no details.
It's easy to cry 'bug' when the truth is that you've got a complex system and sometimes it takes a while to get all the components to co-exist peacefully.
A grandfather was walking through his yard when he heard his granddaugther repeating the alphabet in a tone of voice that sounded like a prayer. He asked her what she was doing. The little girl explained: "I'm praying, but I can"t think of exactly the right words, so I'm just saying all the letters, and God will put them together for me, because He knows what I'm thinking."
Aluminum was once a precious metal.
Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.(Aeneid)
I was told I am a true cosmopolitan. I am unhappy everywhere.
An illiterate fool can be a useful fool, he can wash floors, but a fool with a doctorate is deadly. No amount of learning can cure stupidity and higher education positively fortifies it.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.
Anything too stupid to be said is sung.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
A witty saying proves nothing.
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
A fool learns from his experience. A wise person learns from the experience of others.
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft...and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
We each have only enough strength to complete those assignments that we are fully convinced are important.
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
Lose this day loitering; t'will be the same old story tomorrow, and the next day more dilatory ... Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting o'er lost days ... What you can do or think you can, begin it--boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
People get annoyed when you try to debug them.
Artificial intelligences make mistakes too, only faster.
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half.
In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? - 1927
I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't as all. You can be discouraged by failure - or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that's where you will find success.
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.(Calvin & Hobbes (Calvin))
I thrive on change... I thrive on making other people change.(Calvin & Hobbes (Calvin))
I have plenty of common sense, I just choose to ignore it.(Calvin & Hobbes (Calvin))
Miss Wormwood, could we arrange our seats in a little circle and have a little discussion? Specifically, I'd like to debate whether cannibalism ought to be grounds for leniency in murders since it is less wasteful.(Calvin & Hobbes (Calvin))
If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?(Calvin & Hobbes (Hobbes))
If something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.(Calvin & Hobbes (Calvin))
I don't know which is worse, ...that everyone has his price, or that the price is always so low.(Calvin & Hobbes (Calvin))
Sometimes one should just look at things and think about things without doing things.(Calvin & Hobbes (Calvin))
I moved to New York City for my health. I'm paranoid and New York was the only place where my fears were justified.
The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be created in the form of computer programs.
Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet.
One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.
Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)("Song of Myself")
Whatever women do they must do it twice as well as men. Luckily, this is not difficult.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.(Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III)
Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.
We have lots of time to make everything but mistakes.
One hundred years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, how big my house was, or what kind of car I drove. But the world may be a little better, because I was important in the life of a child.
A cult is a religion with no political power.
Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
Pioneers did not produce original works of art, because they were creating original human environments; they did not imagine utopias because they were shaping them.
An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth.(Reliquiæ Wottonianæ)
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
Never trust a computer you can't throw out a window.
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
Anywhere is walking distance, if you've got the time.
Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.
When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, 'Did you sleep good?' I said 'No, I made a few mistakes.'
Black holes are merely where God divided by zero.
Early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese
Eagles fly; but weasels aren't sucked into jet engines.
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.
Well, I believe in the soul. The cock. The pussy. The small of a woman's back. The hanging curve ball. High fiber. Good scotch. That the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent over rated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there oughta be a Constitutional Amendment outlawing astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve. And I believe in long slow deep soft wet kisses that last three days. - Kevin Costner as Crash Davis(Bull Durham)
The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again. Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.(Field of Dreams)
The Internet is a communication tool used the world over where people can come together to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another.(Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back)
I love America. No one is responsible for what they do.(15 Minutes)
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.(Animal House)
Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500(Apocalypse Now)
I love the smell of Napalm in the morning. It smells like victory.(Apocalypse Now)
Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies(Apocalypse Now)
I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us.(Apocalypse Now)
Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.(Apocalypse Now)
Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin' all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin' program.(Apocalypse Now)
Why must I be surrounded by frickin' idiots?(Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery)
Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration, don't fail me now!(Blues Brothers)
And Shepherds we shall be, for Thee, my Lord, for Thee, power hath descended forth from Thy hand, that our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee, and teeming with souls shall it ever be. In Nomine Patri et Fili Spiritu Sancte.(Boondock Saints)
Every man dies, but not every man truly lives(Braveheart)
1. Alright father, I'll ask him. If I fight for you, do I get to kill the English.
2. Is your father a ghost, or do you converse with the almighty?
1. In order to find his equal an Irishman is forced to talk to god. Yes father! Father says don't change the subject, just answer the fuckin' question.
(Braveheart)
Fight and you may die. Run and you'll live. At least a while...and dying in your bed, many years from now, would you be willing, to trade, all the days from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here, and tell our enemies, that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!!(Braveheart)
The trouble with Scotland is, it's full of Scots!(Braveheart)
Strikeouts are boring. Besides that, they're fascist.(Bull Durham)
Honey, would you rather I were making love to him using your name, or making love to you using his name? - Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon)(Bull Durham)
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while. - Nuke LaLoosh (Tim Robbins)(Bull Durham)
Jay: What do you look so shocked for? He does this all the time. Fat bastard thinks just because he never says anything, that it'll have some huge impact when he does open his fucking mouth.
Silent Bob: Why don't you shut up? Jesus! Always yap, yap, yapping all the time. Give me a fucking headache.
(Chasing Amy)
Dante: But you hate people!
Randall: Yes, but I love gatherings. Ironic, isn't it?
(Clerks)
You'd feel a hell of alot better if you'd just rip into the occasional customer.(Clerks)
This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers(Clerks)
You ever notice that all the prices end in '9'? Damn that's eerie.(Clerks)
Randall: You know who I can do without? I can do without the people in the video store.
Dante: Which ones?
Randall: All of 'em.(Clerks)
I am a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule.(Clerks)
Customer: Cute cat. What's his name?
Randall: Annoying customer.(Clerks)
Mass genocide is the most exhausting activity one can engage in, next to soccer.(Dogma)
Afghanistan? Hmm... oh, yeah. They had an army. Our army! I guess that's one way to build a coalition: just keep invading countries. - Narrator on Afghanistan being part of the "Coalition of the Willing"(Fahrenheit 9/11)
What if I told you I wouldn't sleep with you until you let me meet (your friends)?
I'd say it's 4:30 in the morning and they're probably up.(Good Will Hunting)
I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster and drank pina coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. THAT was a pretty good day. Why couldn't I get that day over and over and over again ..(Groundhog Day)
There is no way this winter is EVER going to end as long as that groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don't see any way out of it. He's got to be stopped. And I have to stop him.(Groundhog Day)
This is the one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel prediciting the weather.(Groundhog Day)
How to run a marathon: Step one, you start running. There is no step two.(How I Met Your Mother)
That's all right Mr. Ryan. My morse is so rusty I might be sending him the dimensions of Playmate of the Month.(Hunt for Red October)
If there's one thing I know, it's never to mess with mother nature, mother in-laws and, mother freaking Ukrainians.(The Italian Job)
The outfield walls now look like the yellow pages. And, any of you folks having trouble finding a good proctologist might want to come down here and check out the area around the 375 foot sign.(Major League 2)
Bullshit! Eateries that operate within the designated square downstairs qualify as part of the food court. Anything operating outside said designated square is considered an autonomous unit for mid-mall snacking.(Mallrats)
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega.(Mallrats)
You take the blue pill, the story ends and you wake up believing whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.(The Matrix)
Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real. What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?(The Matrix)
I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from here is a choice I leave to you.(The Matrix)
He must be a king.
Why?
He ain't got shit all over him.(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest castle in these islands.(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.' Amen.(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries! Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)
Listen, here's the thing. If you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker. - Mike McDermott (Matt Damon)(Rounders)
Worm: She's really got him by the balls.
Petra: That's not so bad, is it?
Worm: It depends on the grip!
(Rounders)
I gotta tell ya, at this point the length of this conversation is way out of proportion to my interest in it - Dan Rydell (Josh Charles)(Sports Night)
We'll bring you the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat-and, because we've got soccer highlights, the sheer pointlessness of a zero-zero tie. You're watching Sports Night on CSC, so stick around. - Dan Rydell (Josh Charles)(Sports Night)
Natalie: What did you do?
Casey McCall: I did what I do, Natalie. I did what I do.
Dan Rydell: You screwed up your romantic life in front of fifth-graders?(Sports Night)
Isaac: Danny, I've got to talk to you.
Dan Rydell: Good, because I've got to talk to you. Who should go first?
Isaac: Well, since I don't really care what you have to say, I think it should be me
(Sports Night)
Hey, I apologize for nothing! No, that's not true, I apologize for some things. A few things. Several things. I apologize for half of things. - Casey McCall (Peter Krause) to Dana(Sports Night)
True love is the soul's recognition of its counterpoint in another.(Wedding Crashers)
How do you write women so well?
I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability. - Jack Nicholson(As Good As It Gets)
All I got in this world is my balls and my word and I don't break either of 'em for nobody! - Al Pacino(Scarface)
And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.(John (8:32))
Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever resues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world.(Mishna. Sanhedrin (Talmud))
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.(I Corinthians 13:11)
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The 26.2 miles of a marathon begins with one too many beers and a bad decision.
Everyone needs to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer.
I have a drink to celebrate the little things. Like Tuesdays - we only have one of those a week!
I killed a six-pack just to watch it die.
I don't mind coming to work, but that eight hour wait to go home is a bitch
I pretend to work. They pretend to pay me.
I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted paychecks.
I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slaveship just goes in circles.
People who do the world's real work don't usually wear neckties.
Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
Luge: The sport of lying down and trying not to die.
Luge is the only sport where you can die during the event and still win.
An Irishman is not drunk as long as he can hold on to one blade of grass to keep from falling off the world.
Si hoc legere scis numium eruditionis habes. - Translates to: If you can read this, you're overeducated.
The difference between British and Americans is, Americans think a hundred years is a long time, and the British think a hundred miles is a long drive.
The path of least resistance is what makes rivers and politicians crooked.
Education is the best defense against the media.
I don't mind Jesus, it's his fan club I can't stand.
Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
A tree never hits an automobile except in self-defence.
It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work?
A stick
What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?
Make me one with everything.
What did the fish say when he hit a concrete wall?
Dam!
Knowledge is often mistaken for intelligence. This is like mistaking a cup of milk for a cow
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on forecasters.
A computer scientist is someone who, when told to 'Go to Hell', sees the 'go to', rather than the destination, as harmful.
I do know everything, just not all at once. It's a virtual memory problem.
Hey! It compiles! Ship it!
The three most dangerous things are a programmer with a soldering iron, a manager who codes, and a user who gets ideas.
If this sign is blue, you're going too fast.(A red sign on the door of a physics professor)
A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward. - A definition of programming
A slipping gear in your M203 grenade launcher can cause it to fire when you least expect it. This could make you very unpopular with what is left of your unit.(Army Magazine of Preventive Maintenance)
We have upwards of one hundred licensed houses and perhaps as many more which retail spirituous liquors without license; so that the business of one half of the town is to sell rum and the other half to drink it.
Hell can't be worse than this trail. I'll chance it.(Note left by gold seeker, on a trail from Edmonton to the Yukon in 1897 before shooting himself.)
No one is born in the Prairies who can help it, and no one dies there who can get out in time.
WHERE THE HELL IS MEECH LAKE, ANYWAY? Wherever the damn place is it's full of sleazy bastards up to no damn good.(Passing pedestrian, St. John's Newfoundland in April 1990)
Is my friend in the bunker or is the bastard on the green?
Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged about forever.
If a trainstation is where the train stops, what's a workstation...?
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
If you can't beat your computer at chess, try kickboxing.
The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
The whole world steps aside for the man who knows where he is going.
Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.
Hit any user to continue.
Bad Command or File Name. Good try, though.
Press any key... no, no, no, NOT THAT ONE!
WARNING: Keyboard Not Attached. Press F10 to Continue.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Why doesn't DOS ever say 'EXCELLENT command or filename!'
C:\DOS
C:\DOS\RUN
\RUN\DOS\RUN
Philosophy is a study that lets us be unhappy more intelligently.
A poet is someone who is astonished by everything.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
Real programmers don't work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am it's because they were up all night.
The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland; but that's because it's the best book on anything for layman.
Pascal keeps your hand tied. C gives you enough rope to hang yourself.
A program is a spell cast over a computer, turning input into error messages.
Tourists are terrorists with cameras. Terrorists are tourists with guns.
Luck always seems to be against the man who depends on it.
A college education never hurt anybody who was willing to learn after he got it.
The test of any man's character is how he takes praise.
Nine out of ten people who change their minds are wrong the second time too.
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.(Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. - Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers.
(A Bit of Fry and Laurie)
The graduate with a Science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The graduate with an Engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
The graduate with an Accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"
The graduate with a Liberal Arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
Applying computer technology is simply finding the right wrench to pound in the correct screw.
Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing that way.
G: "If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?"
EB: "Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area."
(Somewhere in No Man's Land, BA4)
A metaphor is like a simile
Laws of Computer Programming #8 :-
Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.
(SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 2 No 2)
Laws of Computer Programming #7 :-
Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
(SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 2 No 2)
All computers wait at the same speed.
Programmers are tools for converting caffeine into code.
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.
Users /nm./: collective term for those who use computers. Users are divided into three types: novice, intermediate and expert.
Novice Users: people who are afraid that simply pressing a key might break their computer.
Intermediate Users: people who don't know how to fix their computer after they've just pressed a key that broke it.
Expert Users: people who break other people's computers.
(The Jargon File)
Campaigns to bearproof all garbage containers in wild areas have been difficult because, as one biologist put it, 'There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists'.
A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is to computing what a McDonalds Certified Food Specialist is to fine cuisine.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
The problem with America is stupidity. Why don't we just take the safety labels off everything and let the problem solve itself ?
People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs.
The Two Rules of Success: 1. Don't tell everything you know.
Join the army, meet interesting people, and kill them.
A man who smiles when things go wrong knows who to blame.
Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.
Life is complex - it has both real and imaginary parts.
A threat is basically a means for establishing a bargaining position by inducing fear in the subject. When a threat is used, it should always be implied that the subject himself is to blame by using words such as "You leave me no other choice but to..."(CIA Manual)
#1597. Everything is deemed possible except that which is impossible in the nature of things.(California Civil Code: "Object of a Contract")
#3529. That which ought to have been done is to be regarded as done.(California Civil Code: "Maxims of Jurisprudence")
#3530. That which does not appear to exist is to be regarded as if it did not exist.(California Civil Code: "Maxims of Jurisprudence")
#3547. A thing continues to exist as long as is usual with things of that nature.(California Civil Code: "Maxims of Jurisprudence")
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box.(Italian Proverb)
If you believe everything you read, better not read.(Japanese Proverb)
"Here Before Christ" - Northern hunter's saying about the Hudson's Bay Company
The church is near, but the road is icy. The bar is far, but we will walk carefully.(Russian Proverb)
A dog is wiser than a woman; it does not bark at its master.(Russian Proverb)
Take thy thoughts to bed with thee, for the morning is wiser than the evening.(Russian Proverb)
To run away is not glorious, but very healthy.(Russian Proverb)
Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead.(Scottish Proverb)
... it is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big enough hammer.(Sun System & Network Admin manual)
If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup.(Turkish Proverb)
An only son becomes only a drunkard or a thief.(Ukrainian Proverb)
Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis ad capul tuum saxum immane mittam. - Translation: I have a catapult. Give me all the money or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.