The meaning of life is to find your gift.
The purpose of life is to give it away,
-- Picasso
%
The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.
-- George Carlin
%
All good things must come to an end, but all bad things can continue forever.
-- Thorton Wilder
%
When you make a mistake, it's what you do next that makes it good or bad.
-- Miles Davis
%
The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.
-- Terry Pratchett
%
Americans will always do the right thing
after they have exhausted all other alternatives.
-- widely attributed to Winston Churchill
%
It is better to be an optimist and thought a fool
than to be a pessimist and be proven right.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Don't pray when it rains, if you don't pray when the sun shines.
-- Satchel Paige
%
Wise men talk because they have something to say.
Fools talk because they have to say something.
-- Plato
%
When stupidity is considered patriotism,
it is unsafe to be intelligent.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
Many wish the meek would hurry up and inherit the earth,
as the unmeek are making such a mess of it.
-- Olin Miller (circa 1966)
%
You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you,
if you could know how seldom they do.
-- Olin Miller
%
What a pity human beings can't exchange problems.
Everyone knows exactly how to solve the other fellow's.
-- Olin Miller
%
If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard,
just keep putting off doing it.
-- Olin Miller
%
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do,
because I notice how often it coincides with their own desires.
-- Susan B Anthony
%
I spent all day staring at a leaf.
I know that my time here is brief.
-- John Hunt
%
An empty vessel makes the loudest sound.
-- Old Proverb
%
The mother of the idiots is always pregnant.
-- A Chinese saying
%
In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act.
-- George Orwell
%
When the axe came into the forest,
the trees said, "The handle is one of us."
%
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass.
It's about learning to dance in the rain.
%
In life, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.
-- Zig Ziglar
%
The best teachers are those who show you where to look
... but don't tell you what to see.
-- Alexandra Trenfor
%
Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast,
and only catastrophe is clearly visible.
-- Edward Teller
%
We cry because we know a government that can lie, can lie about anything.
-- Miriam Makeba
%
Remember: Silly is a state of Mind,
Stupid is a way of Life.
-- Dave Butler
%
People don't fake depression. They fake being okay.
Remember that. Be kind.
-- Robin Williams
%
Either the United States will destroy ignorance,
or ignorance will destroy the United States.
-- W.E.B. Du BIOS
%
The  never ceasing argument against science is ignorance.
-- Marvin Jones
%
Love is man's natural endowment, but he doesn't know how to use it.
He refuses to recognize the power of love because of his love of power.
-- Dick Gregory
%
The best things in life&emsp;aren't things.
-- Art Buchwald
%
It is easier to do nothing by the sea than anywhere else...
-- E.F. Benson
%
When things go wrong, don't go with them.
-- Elvis Presley
%
When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
-- Henry J. Kaiser
%
In matters of principle, stand like a rock.
In matters of taste, swim with the current.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
It ain't over until it's over.
-- Casey Stengel
%
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature cannot be fooled.
-- R.P. Feynman
%
Some people pray for more than they are willing to work for.
%
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
The fundamental cause of the trouble in the modern world today is that
the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this:
to know so much and have control over nothing.
-- Herodotus
%
When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Opinions are like hearts.
Everyone has one, but not all of them are gentle.
%
Facts are stupid things.
-- President Ronald Reagan <font size="2">(a 1988 GOP convention blooper)</font>
%
"Tell the truth and run."
-- Yugoslav proverb
%
The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down.
-- H.L. Mencken
%
I love deadlines... especially the whooshing sound they make as they go by.
-- Douglas Adams
%
The story of people of color in America is the story of America.
It is not a pretty story.
-- James Baldwin
%
There is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.
-- Mark Twain
%
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them
pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything.
-- Russell Baker
%
Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it,
and wiser than the one that comes after it.
-- George Orwell
%
The way of the world is to praise dead saints and prosecute live ones.
-- Nathaniel Howe
%
Life is a garment we continuously alter, but which never seems to fit.
-- David McCord
%
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Much of the excitement we get out of our work is that
we don't really know what we are doing.
-- E. Dijkstra
%
Exceptions prove the rule, and wreck the budget.
-- Miller
%
The lesser of two evils -- is evil.
-- Seymour (Sy) Leon
%
The closest to perfection a person ever comes is when they fill out a job application form.
-- Stanley J. Randall
%
If I have not seen as far as others,
it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
%
A man is known by the company he organizes.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Everyone has a purpose in life.
Perhaps yours is watching television.
-- David Letterman
%
Progress means replacing a theory that is wrong with one more subtly wrong.
%
The superior man understands what is right.
The inferior man understands what will sell.
-- Confucius
%
Mausoleum: The final and funniest folly of the rich.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
The trouble with a lot of self-made men is that they worship their creator.
%
I love this country . . . . and the freedoms we used to have.
-- George Carlin
%
We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts.
-- Patrick Moynihan
%
Perhaps one day we will kneel down and ask the animals for forgiveness.
-- Dalai Lama
%
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.
-- John Naisbitt, Megatrends
%
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
-- Bob Dylan
%
The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.
%
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
-- Francis Bacon
%
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.
-- Vince Lombardi, football coach
%
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
-- Milton Friedman
%
Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.
-- Arthur R. Miller
%
It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
%
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee,
then a consensus forecast is a camel's behind.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%
You know, we've won awards for this crap.
-- David Letterman
%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes.
You'll learn a lot today.
%
Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life.
-- Schulz
%
It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.
%
It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
%
God gives burdens; also shoulders.
%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
%
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain
%
Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down.
-- Jimmy Durante
%
Don't tell me how hard you work.  Tell me how much you get done.
-- James J. Ling
%
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain
%
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Never mistake motion for action.
-- Ernest Hemingway
%
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
If you have a job without aggravation, you don't have a job.
-- Malcolm Forbes
%
I do not like work even when someone else does it.
-- Mark Twain
%
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
-- R. A. Heinlein
%
What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying.
-- Nikita Khrushchev
%
We can predict everything, except the future.
%
History started badly and has been getting steadily worse.
-- Nigel Molesworth
%
I believe that forgiving [terrorists] is God's function.
Our job is to arrange the meeting.
-- Gen. Norman Schwartzkopf
%
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
-- Mark Twain
%
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch,
you must first invent the universe.
-- Carl Sagan
%
Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.
-- Frederick Crane
%
In my opinion, we don't devote nearly enough scientific research to finding a cure for jerks.
-- Bill Watterson
%
Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence?
We call it prejudice.
-- Michael Crichton
%
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
-- Carl Sagan
%
Your assumptions are your windows on the world.
Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.
-- Alan Alda
%
Everything must be made as simple as possible,
But not simpler.
-- Albert Einstein
%
I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life.
It's just been too intelligent to come here.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
The saddest aspect of life right now is that
science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity;
and I'm not sure about the universe.
-- Albert Einstein
%
First, find out who are the people you can not criticize.
They are your oppressors.
-- George Orwell
%
If we knew what it was we were doing,
it would not be called research, would it?
-- Albert Einstein
%
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
-- Anais Nin
%
Few skills are so well rewarded as the ability to convince parasites that they are victims.
-- Thomas Sowell
%
While you can't fool all the people all the time,
you can fool enough of them most of the time to make the rest impotent.
-- Anonymous
%
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute
conversation with the average voter.
-- Churchill
%
A point of view can be a dangerous luxury
when substituted for insight and understanding.
-- Marshall McLuhan
%
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity,
and higher education positively fortifies it.
-- Stephen Vizinczey
%
Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
-- Mark Twain
%
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
-- Dave Olson
%
Those who can make you believe absurdities,
can make you commit atrocities.
-- Voltaire
%
It is dangerous to be right in matters
on which the established authorities are wrong.
-- Voltaire
%
The time spent on any item of the [finance committee] agenda
will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
-- Parkinson
%
I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
-- Steven Wright
%
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Nothing spoils a good story like the arrival of an eyewitness.
-- Mark Twain
%
The scientific theory I like best is that
the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
-- Mark Russell
%
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.
-- Lana Turner
%
First the doctor told me the good news:
I was going to have a disease named after me.
-- Steve Martin
%
To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the loving cup,
whenever you’re wrong admit it; whenever you’re right shut up.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them as much.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Common sense is like deodorant.
The people who need it most never use it.
-- Bill Murray
%
It’s useless to hold a person to anything they say
when they are in love, drunk or running for office.
-- Shirley MacLaine
%
Laughter is like a windshield wiper,
it won’t stop the rain but it will allow you to keep going.
-- Anonymous
%
Parasites plus suckers do not add up to a community.
-- Thomas Sowell
%
Wouldn’t exercise be more fun if calories screamed while you burned them?
-- Bill Murray
%
You know you’re getting old when you stop to tie your shoelaces
and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.
-- George Burns
%
Honolulu – it’s got everything.
Sand for the children, sun for the wife, sharks for the wife’s mother.
-- Ken Dodd
%
It's not hard to admit errors that are only cosmetically wrong.
-- J. K. Galbraith
%
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
Eureka! -- Archimedes
%
A complete lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is working.
-- Tanuki
%
When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics.
-- Josef Stalin
%
You can make a quote seem authoritative by
attributing it to a famous person.
-- Sun Tzu
%
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
-- Groucho Marx
%
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Progress is precisely that which rules and regulations did not foresee.
-- Ludwig von Mises
%
The stone age didn't end for lack of stones, ...
-- Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani
%
"We're from the government. We're here to help you."
%
The educated person is not the person who can answer the questions,
but the person who can question the answers.
%
A little fire, Scarecrow?
-- The Wizard of Oz
%
Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
%
Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence.
-- Time Bandits
%
Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle.
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%
Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.
%
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would
allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
-- John Barrymore's dying words
%
Do you have blacks, too?
-- George W. Bush, to Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso
%
Don't say yes until I finish talking.
-- Darryl F. Zanuck
%
Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.
-- Jeff Berner
%
Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral.
-- Kehlog Albran
%
Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it.
%
Grub first, then ethics.
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ...
%
His mind is like a steel trap ― full of mice.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
-- William Gilbert
%
I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!
-- Paul McCracken
%
I am not sure what this is, but an 'F' would only dignify it.
-- English Professor
%
I didn't accept it. I received it.
-- Richard Allen, National Security Advisor
%
I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating.
-- Boss Tweed
%
I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when
looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
-- Paul Anderson
%
I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
-- Bill Hoest
%
I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I support efforts to limit the terms of members of Congress,
especially members of the House and members of the Senate.
-- former Vice-President Dan Quayle
%
I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes.
-- President Richard Nixon
%
If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?
%
If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!
-- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
%
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
-- J. Paul Getty
%
If you go on with this nuclear arms race,
all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
-- Winston Churchill
%
In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.
-- Winston Churchill, of Montgomery
%
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either.
-- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
%
Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets.
-- The Brigadier, "Dr. Who"
%
Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
-- Victor Borge
%
MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount
of words into the smallest amount of thoughts.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to
get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
%
Of COURSE it's the murder weapon.
Who would frame someone with a fake?
%
One planet is all you get.
%
She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to.
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%
Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
%
Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people,
but they may be dying of something else anyway.
-- Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board
%
Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea,
even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.
-- J. Finnegan, USC.
%
That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
%
The C Programming Language: A language which combines the flexibility
of assembly language with the power of assembly language.
%
The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab
as much as we could with both of them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%
The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch.
%
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!
%
The streets are safe in Philadelphia.
It's only the people who make them unsafe.
-- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and ex- mayor of Philadelphia
%
The voters have spoken, the bastards...
%
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated
ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
-- Alexander Haig
%
The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market
is to start with a large fortune.
%
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it,
the other is to read Pope.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
-- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
%
They gave me a book of checks. They didn't ask for any deposits.
-- Congressman Joe Early (D-Mass)
%
This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys...
%
To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
-- Woody Allen
%
To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?
%
Tom Hayden is the kind of politician who gives opportunism a bad name.
-- Gore Vidal
%
Under capitalism, man exploits man.
Under Communism, it's just the opposite.
-- J. K. Galbraith
%
We don't have to protect the environment ― the Second Coming is at hand.
-- James Watt
%
We have reason to believe that man first walked upright
to free his hands for masturbation.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later.
%
Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book,
what CAN you believe?!
-- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
%
What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?
-- Bertold Brecht
%
When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical.
-- Jon Carroll
%
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
-- Winston Churchill, on formal declarations of war
%
Why be a man, when you can be a success?
-- Bertold Brecht
%
Why was I born with such contemporaries?
-- Oscar Wilde
%
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," replied the Cat.
-- Lewis Carrol
%
Yes, that was Richard Nixon. He used to be President. When he left the
White House, the Secret Service would count the silverware.
-- Woody Allen, "Sleeper"
%
You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't.
-- Dagwood Bumstead
%
You'll never be the man your mother was!
%
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
%
[Humanity] is the measure of all things.
-- Protagoras
%
Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more
months might as well have been written by someone else.
-- Eagleson's Law
%
Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
%
Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.
%
At least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
-- J. B. White
%
If the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust,
this would be a better world.
-- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
%
The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost would never throw the Devil out
of Heaven as long as they still need him as a fourth for bridge.
-- Letter in NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES #19
%
They [the Indians] are not running but are coming on.
-- note sent from Lt. Col Custer to other officers at the Little Bighorn
%
I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and
concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our family,
the Hominidae.
-- Richard Leakey
%
Computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude
in performance-price gain in 30 years.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
Skill such as yours is evidence of a misspent youth.
-- Herbert Spencer
%
The increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality
tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
-- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
%
There can be no public or private virtue unless the
foundation of action is the practice of truth.
-- George Jacob Holyoake
%
Though his invention worked superbly ― his theory was
a crock of sewage from beginning to end.
-- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
%
When fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer
has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
%
36 percent of the American public believes that boiling
radioactive milk makes it safe to drink.
-- results of a survey by Jon Miller at No. Ill. Univ.
%
43rd Law of Computing: Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation fault ― core dumped
%
80 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot, including this one.
%
99% of all guys are within one standard deviation of your mom.
%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.
%
A bore is a man you deprives you of solitude
without providing you with company.
-- Gian Vincenzo Gravina
%
A Nixon [is preferable to] a Dean Rusk ― who will be
passionately wrong with a high sense of consistency.
-- J. K. Galbraith
%
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone somewhere is having fun.
%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end
and no responsibility at the other.
%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy
who has cheated some woman out of a divorce.
-- Don Quinn
%
A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.
-- Everett Dirksen
%
A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views
after we have enlightened him with ours.
%
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money,
as well as afterward.
%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich
and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.
%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%
A child's education should begin at least 100 years before he is born.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
-- Herbert Prochnow
%
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster ― it is an opportunity.
%
A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
%
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly
can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen
%
A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.
-- Alfred E. Wiggam
%
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs
who has never learned to walk.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%
A conservative is one who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
%
A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
-- Ben Franklin
%
A critic is a legless man who teaches running.
-- Channing Pollock
%
A day without sunshine is like night.
%
A decision occurs when one abandons the obvious for the possible.
-- P. Taylor
%
A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat.
%
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell
in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
-- Caskie Stinnett
%
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday,
but never her age.
-- Robert Frost
%
A diva who specializes in risque arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
%
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
-- Ogden Nash
%
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Winston Churchill
%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
-- D. Gries
%
A good listener is not only popular everywhere,
but after a while he knows something.
-- Wilson Mizner
%
A good memory does not equal pale ink.
%
A good workman is known by his tools.
%
A great many people think they are thinking
when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
%
A handful of friends is worth more than a wagon of gold.
%
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year
one and a half times his weight in other people's patience.
-- John Updike
%
A hermit is a deserter from the army of humanity.
%
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
%
A king's castle is his home.
%
A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about
programming is not worth knowing.
%
A language that doesn't have everything is
actually easier to program in than some that do.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
A large number of installed systems work by fiat.
That is, they work by being declared to work.
-- Anatol Holt
%
A learning experience is one of those things that says,
"You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."
-- attributed to Douglas Adams
%
A little caution outflanks a large cavalry.
-- Bismarck
%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.
I believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
%
A man forgives only when he is in the wrong.
%
A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
-- John Barrymore
%
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
%
A man shall never be enriched by envy.
-- Thomas Draxe
%
A man who fishes for marlin in ponds will put his money in Etruscan bonds.
%
A man who turns green has eschewed protein.
%
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
%
A manager would rather live with a problem that he cannot solve
than accept a solution that he does not understand.
-- G. Woolsey
%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%
A model is an artifice for helping you convince yourself
that you understand more about a system than you do.
%
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%
A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
%
A person who knows only one side of a question knows little of that.
%
A person with one watch knows what time it is;
a person with two watches is never sure.  -- Proverb
%
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
-- George Wald
%
A plucked goose doesn't lay golden eggs.
%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers
that your wife will give you for free.
%
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party;
there is no battle unless there be two.
-- Seneca
%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and
rejoices that the system works.
%
A real person has two reasons for doing anything
... a good reason and the real reason.
%
A right is not what someone gives you;
it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark
%
A scout troop consists of twelve little kids dressed like schmucks
following a big schmuck dressed like a kid.
-- Jack Benny
%
A second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
A sine curve goes off into infinity or at least to the end of the blackboard.
%
A smile is the shortest distance between two people.
-- Victor Borge
%
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
-- O'Henry
%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
%
A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by its author.
-- S. C. Johnson
%
A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.
-- John Ruskin
%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
-- John Ciardi
%
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
-- Tennessee Williams
%
A visit to a fresh place will bring strange work.
A visit to a strange place will bring fresh work.
%
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice
without getting nervous.
%
A well-known friend is a treasure.
%
A witty saying proves nothing.
-- Voltaire
%
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
%
Abandon hope, all ye who press [ENTER] here.
%
Ability is useless unless it is used.
-- Robert Half
%
About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
%
About the only thing on a farm that has an easy time is the dog.
%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
-- Herbert Hoover
%
Above all things, reverence yourself.
%
Abstention makes the heart grow fonder.
%
Absurdity, (N.) A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Accident, (N.) A condition in which presence of mind is good,
but absence of body is better.
%
According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
-- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
%
According to the latest official figures,
43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
%
Accordion: A bagpipe with pleats.
%
Accuracy: The vice of being right.
%
Acquaintance, (N.) A person whom we know well enough to borrow from,
but not well enough to lend to.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Activity makes more men's fortunes than cautiousness.
-- Marquis de Vauvenargues
%
Actors will happen in the best-regulated families.
%
Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist.
-- Jean Ichbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
%
Adapt. Enjoy. Survive.
%
Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.
[Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]
-- Ovid
%
Admiration, (N.) Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
%
Adore, (V.) To venerate expectantly.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adult: One old enough to know better.
%
Adversity makes men, prosperity monsters.
-- French Proverb
%
If you don’t read the news paper, you are un-informed.
If you do read the news paper, you are mis-informed.
-- Mark Twain
%
Advertising: The science of arresting the human intelligence
long enough to get money from it.
-- Stephen Leacock
%
After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
-- Freeman Dyson
%
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
%
After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done.
%
After any machine or unit has been assembled,
extra components will be found on the bench.
%
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover,
it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
%
After winning the pennant one year, Casey Stengel commented,
"I couldn'ta done it without my players."
%
Air is water with holes in it.
%
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
-- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York,
and still waiting for a dial tone.
%
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake,
one of them keeps paying for it.
-- Peggy Joyce
%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance.
%
All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
-- Kingfish
%
All a hacker needs is a tight PUSHJ, a loose pair of UUOs,
and a warm place to shift.
%
All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
%
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy in its own way.
-- Tolstoy
%
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
%
All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.
-- Jane Wagner
%
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
%
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part
of every organism to live beyond its income.
-- Samuel Butler
%
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- E. Rutherford
%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
-- Sean O'Casey
%
All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.
%
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
%
All wise men share one trait in common: the ability to listen.
%
Allen's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.
%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid back.
%
Always make the audience suffer as much as possible.
-- Alfred Hitchcock
%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
-- Charlie McCarthy
%
America had often been discovered before Columbus; it had just been hushed up.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
-- Allen Ginsberg
%
American Non Sequitur Society: We don't make sense. We like pizza.
%
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%
Among the chosen, you are the lucky one.
Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.
%
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President
but is always polite to traffic cops.
%
An Army travels on its stomach.
%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
-- A. P. Herbert
%
An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.
-- Alfred A. Knopf
%
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
%
An idle mind is worth two in the bush.
%
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
-- Albert Camus
%
An NT server can be run by an idiot, and usually is.
-- Tom Holub
%
An object never serves the same function as its image, or its name.
-- Rene Magritte
%
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government,
but it's better than no government at all.
%
Anarchy: It's not the law, it's just a good idea.
%
And I alone am returned to wag the tail.
%
And now for something completely different.
%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%
And the Lord God said unto Moses ― and correctly, I believe ...
-- Field Marshal Montgomery, opening a chapel service
%
And there's hamburger all over the highway in Mystic, Connecticut.
%
Anger is a prelude to courage.
-- Eric Hoffer
%
Angular momentum makes the world go round.
%
Ankh if you love Isis.
%
Anoint, (V.) To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%
Another one bites the dust.
%
Anthony's Law of Force: Do not force it; get a larger hammer.
%
Antimatter doesn't matter as a matter of fact.
-- Piggins
%
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
(In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags.)
%
Antonym, (N.) The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
-- Charles McCabe
%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
-- Aesop
%
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.
%
Any given program, when running correctly, is obsolete.
%
Any job worth quitting is worth sticking around long enough until they fire you.
-- Tim Wirth
%
Any shrine is better than self-worship.
%
Any small object when dropped will hide under a larger object.
%
Any sufficiently advanced bureaucracy is indistinguishable from molasses.
%
Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.
-- Paul Chvostek
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
-- Andy Finkel, computer guy
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
%
Anyone can hate. It costs to love.
-- John Williamson
%
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.
At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes,
bathe and not make messes in the house.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Anyone who wants to be paid for writing software is a fascist asshole.
-- Richard M. Stallman, founder, Free Software Foundation
%
Anything anybody can say about America is true.
-- Emmett Grogan
%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%
Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't.
The label means the price went up.
The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW" means the price went way up.
%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
%
Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.
%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.
-- Mickey Mouse
%
Armadillo: To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
%
Army, (N.) A body of men assembled to rectify the mistakes of the diplomats.
-- Josephus Daniels
%
Army Axiom: An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood.
%
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.
-- Harry S Truman (one of his more ridiculous comments)
%
As Will Rogers would have said,
"There is no such things as a free variable."
%
As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
-- Weisert
%
As goatherd learns his trade by goat, so writer learns his trade by wrote.
%
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
%
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.
When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" ― probably because
it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
-- Woody Allen
%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll,
remember that there is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
As you read the scroll it vanishes,
and you hear maniacal laughter in the distance.
%
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, If God won't have you, the devil must.
%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls...
if thou art in the bathtub, it tolls for thee.
%
Ask your boss to reconsider ― it's so difficult to take "Go to hell" for an answer.
%
Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained control of the
country, it would probably fly around in circles.
-- Pat Paulsen
%
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers,
a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
-- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find
at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.
%
Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Auribus teneo lupum. (I hold a wolf by the ears.)
%
Automobile: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
%
Average managers are concerned with methods, opinions, precedents.
Good managers are concerned with solving problems.
%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
Avoid letting temper block progress; keep cool.
-- William Feather
%
Back off, man. I'm a scientist.
%
Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.
%
A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides by governors.
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry
%
There are two types of people: those who divide people
into two types, and those who don't.
%
Be careful when a loop exits to the same place from side and bottom.
%
Be different: conform.
%
Be regular and orderly in your life so that
you may be violent and original in your work.
-- Gustave Flaubert
%
Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of life.
%
Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly goes straight to the bone.
%
Bees are not as busy as we think they are; they just cannot buzz any slower.
-- Abe Martin
%
Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.
-- Louis Brandeis
%
Behold the warranty: The bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away.
%
Being stoned on marijuana isn't very different from being stoned on gin.
-- Ralph Nader
%
The moment you have worked out an answer,
start checking it. It probably isn't right.
%
Always let an answer cool off for awhile.
It should not be used while hot.
%
Check the answer you have worked out once more,
before you tell it to anybody.
%
If there is an opportunity to make a
mistake, sooner or later, the mistake will be made.
%
Better living a beggar than buried an emperor.
%
Between the choice of two evils, I always pick the one I've never tried before.
-- Mae West
%
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
-- Donald Knuth
%
Beware of Geeks bearing grifts.
%
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
-- Leonard Brandwein
%
Beware of a dark-haired man with a loud tie.
%
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
%
Beware of friends who are false and deceitful.
%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
%
Beware the new TTY code!
%
Biggest security gap - an open mouth.
%
Bingo, gas station, hamburger with a side order of airplane noise,
and you'll be Gary, Indiana. -- Jessie in the movie "Greaser's Palace"
%
Biography is the fallacy of intention.
-- Peter Taylor
%
Biology ... it grows on you.
%
Birth, (N.) The first and direst of all disasters.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
%
Black holes are where God is dividing by zero.
%
Blessed are the meek for they shall inhibit the earth.
%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
%
Blessed is the man who is too busy to worry in the daytime
and too sleepy to worry at night.
-- Leo Aikman
%
Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
%
Boling's postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
%
Project teams detest weekly progress reporting
because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress.
-- Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom
%
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
%
Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people
and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.
-- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
%
Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look.
%
Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Boy, (N.) A noise with dirt on it.
%
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee.
That will do them in.
%
Brain fried ― core dumped
%
Brain, (N.) The apparatus with which we think that we think.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one,
but may revitalize the corner saloon.
%
Broad-mindedness: The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
Brook's Law
%
Bubble Memory, (N.)
A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".
%
Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%
Bug: Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls.
%
Bumper sticker on nuclear war:
&NBSP;IF YOU HAVE SEEN ONE
YOU HAVE SEEN THEM ALL
%
At any given moment there are more important people
in the world than important jobs to contain them.
%
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
-- Balzac
%
Bureaucrat, (N.) A politician who has tenure.
%
Bureaucrats cut read tape ― length-wise.
%
Burnt Sienna: That's the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.
-- Ken Weaver
%
Business will be either better or worse.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
By doing just a little every day,
you can gradually let the task completely overwhelm you.
%
C++ : Where friends have access to your private members.
-- Gavin Russell Baker
%
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
-- Randall Garrett
%
Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise
as a man's head.
%
Caeca invidia est. (Envy is blind.)
-- Livy
%
Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions.
%
California is a fine place to live ― if you happen to be an orange.
-- Fred Allen
%
California is the ghost of Christmas future for the rest of America.
%
California is the land of perpetual pubescence,
where cultural lag is mistaken for renaissance.
-- Ashley Montagu
%
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
-- Indian proverb
%
Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
%
Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.
%
Cannot fork ― try again.
%
You can fool all of the people some of the time,
and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool Mom.
%
Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world.
-- The Beach Boys
%
Change is what people fear most.
-- Dostoevski
%
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
%
Character Density: the number of very weird people in the office.
%
Character is the ligament holding together all other qualities.
-- Arnold Glasow
%
Chemicals, (N.) Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
%
Chicken Little was right.
%
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents
despite every effort to teach them good manners.
%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Children begin by loving their parents.
After a time they judge them.
Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Children have more need of models than of critics.
%
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat
word for word what you shouldn't have said.
%
The amount of time required to complete a government project is
precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
%
When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%
Civilization is the art of living in towns of such size
that everyone does not know everyone else.
-- Julian Jaynes
%
Civilization advances by extending the number of
important operations one can do without thinking about them.
%
Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor.
-- Toynbee
%
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy.
-- Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand's _The Fountainhead_
%
Classified material requires proper storage.
%
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum ―
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cogito ergo doleo. (I think, therefore I am depressed.)
%
Cogito ergo sum.
%
Everyone knows that the name of the game is
what label you succeed in imposing on the facts.
%
Collaboration, (N.) A literary partnership based on
the false assumption that the other fellow can spell.
%
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
-- Hellen Keller
%
Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on
a million typewriters, and Usenet is nothing like Shakespeare.
-- Blair Houghton
%
Commitment, (N.)
Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
%
Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%
Complacency is the enemy of progress.
-- Dave Stutman
%
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems theory.
%
Computer Science: the boring art of coping with a large number of trivialities
(The Devil's DP Dictionary)
%
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
-- LaRouchefoucauld
%
Concept, (N.) Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than $25,000.
%
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from
one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense
that a tweed coat is good for dandruff.
-- Peter de Vries
%
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
%
Confound these ancestors... They've stolen our best ideas!
-- Ben Jonson
%
Confusticate and bebother these dwarves!
%
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
%
Conservative, (N.) One who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
-- Leo C. Rosten
%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number
and then give it back to them.
%
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.
-- Brian W. Kernighan
%
Conversation, (N.)
A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.
%
Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.
%
Corrupt, (adj.) In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%
Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner.
His job is to enforce the law and fight crime.
-- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
%
Courage is grace under pressure.
%
Coward, n.: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that,
with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Creativity cannot be diminished by the medium of expression.
-- Mitch Allen
%
Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is
something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
Creditors have better memories than debtors.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
-- A. E. Newman
%
Criminal: A person with predatory instincts
who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.
-- Howard Scott
%
Critic, n.: A person who boasts himself hard to please
because nobody tries to please him.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cudgel thy brains no more about it,
for your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.
-- Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1
%
Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.
%
Cynic, n.: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
%
Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward,
they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.
-- J. W. von Goethe
%
Dawn, (N.) The time when men of reason go to bed.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
De Borglie rules the wave, but Heisenberg waived the rules.
-- Piggins
%
Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also
easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
%
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%
Death is Nature's way of saying, "slow down".
%
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
-- R. Geis
%
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
%
Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance,
and bragged about forever.
-- button at the Boston Computer Museum
%
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are―by
definition―not smart enough to debug it.
-- Brian Kernighan
%
Decisionmaker, n.: The person in your office who was unable to form a task
force before the music stopped.
%
Decisions terminate panic.
%
Deliberation, (N.)
The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
-- Senator Soaper
%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
Democracy is four wolves and a lamb, voting on what to have for lunch.
%
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
-- E. B. White
%
Virtue is its own punishment.
%
Deprive a mirror of its silver, and even the Czar won't see his face.
%
Der Unterschied zwischen Genie und Wahnsinn liegt nur im Erfolg.
[The only difference between genius and insanity is the success.]
%
Did you know gullible is not in the dictionary?
%
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
%
Diplomacy is the art of extricating oneself from a situation
that tact would have prevented in the first place.
%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
%
Disc space ― the final frontier!
%
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
%
Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen
and thinking what no one else has thought.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgi
%
Distress, (N.) A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Do not merely believe in miracles, rely on them.
%
Do not clog intellect's sluices with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.
%
Do not compromise yourself; you are all you have got.
-- Janis Joplin
%
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
%
Do not try to solve all life's problems at once ― learn to dread each day as it comes.
-- Donald Kaul
%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
Don't have aesthetic convulsions when using them, either.
%
Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just
take the time to take the dirt out of them?
%
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good;
and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
-- Dick Brandon
%
Documentation is the castor oil of programming.
Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much.
%
Don't be overly suspicious where it's not warranted.
%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%
Don't comment bad code: rewrite it.
%
Don't compare floating point numbers solely for equality.
%
Don't crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers.
%
Don't diddle code to make it faster, find a better algorithm.
%
Dobbin's Law: When in doubt, use a bigger hammer.
%
Don't get suckered in by the comments ― they can be terribly misleading.
Debug only code.
-- Dave Storer
%
Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
%
Don't learn the tricks of the trade, learn the trade.
%
Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash.
-- Bo Diddley
%
Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
%
Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today,
because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.
%
Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
-- James J. Ling
%
Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes.
I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
-- Zaphod Beeblebrox
%
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.
It's already tomorrow in Australia.
-- Charles Schultz
%
Don't worry about things that you have no control over,
because you have no control over them.
Don't worry about things that you have control over,
because you have control over them.
-- Mickey Rivers
%
Don't worry about what other people are thinking about you.
They're too busy worrying about what you are thinking about them.
%
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
-- Voltaire
%
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
-- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
%
Doubts and jealousies often beget the facts they fear.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
Down with categorical imperative!
%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%
Ducharme's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough
you will recognize yourself as part of the problem.
%
Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side,
and it holds the universe together ...
-- Carl Zwanzig
%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.
%
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
and captain of your soul.
%
Dum excusare credis, accusas.
(When you believe you are excusing yourself, you are accusing yourself.)
-- St. Jerome
%
Dunne's Law: The territory behind rhetoric is too often mined with equivocation.
%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair.
And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
-- W. Somerset Maughm
%
E Pluribus Unix
%
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite,
its own aristocracy based on excellence of performance.
-- James Bryant Conant
%
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
-- J. K. Galbraith
%
Economics, (N.) Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K. Galbraith.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Economy makes men independent.
%
Education has produced a vast population able to read
but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
-- G. M. Trevelyan
%
Education helps earning capacity. Ask any college professor.
%
Een schip op het strand is een baken in zee.
[A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea.]
-- Dutch Proverb
%
Eeny Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak.
-- Bullwinkle Moose
%
Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature
to relieve the pain of being a damned fool.
-- Bellamy Brooks
%
Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
-- Frank Leahy
%
Egotist, (N.) A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
-- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star
%
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature,
because God is not capricious or arbitrary.
No such faith comforts the software engineer.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
Either do not attempt at all, or go through with it.
-- Ovid
%
Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.
-- Oscar Wilde's last words
%
Electrocution: Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
%
Elevators smell different to midgets
%
Eloquence is vehement simplicity.
-- Cecil
%
Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall
make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%
Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
-- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
%
Enjoy your life; be pleasant and gay, like the birds in May.
%
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
%
Envy always implies conscious inferiority wherever it resides.
-- Pliny
%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things
which otherwise require harder thinking.
-- Jerome Lettvin
%
Equal bytes for women.
%
Eschew obfuscatory digressiveness.
-- Barry Dancis (1983)
%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
-- Woody Allen
%
Ettore's observation: the other line moves faster.
%
Even a cabbage may look at a king.
%
Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.
%
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
-- Hajime Karatsu
%
Even if you do learn to speak correct English,
whom are you going to speak it to?
-- Clarence Darrow
%
Even the boldest zebra fears the hungry lion.
%
Even the future comes one day at a time.
-- W. Woodhouse
%
Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.
%
Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
States we really shouldn't complain ― it's still only 5 cents a day.
%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy
to tell you just how busy they are.
%
Ever wander around the web, look at discussions, totally agree with one of
the points of view, and then notice it was posted under one of your web
aliases 5 years ago?
-- Larry Weber
%
Every 4 seconds a woman has a baby.
our problem is to find this woman and stop her.
%
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
%
Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
%
Every institution I've ever been associated with has tried to screw me.
-- Stephen Wolfram
%
Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
-- Don Vonada
%
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction ― from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
%
Every program has two purposes ― one for which it was written
and another for which it wasn't.
%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%
Every purchase has its price.
%
Every silver lining has a cloud around it.
%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%
Every successful person has had failures, but
repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
%
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
-- Beckett
%
Everything is better with no people.
-- Bob "Biff" Rendar
%
Dykstra's Law: Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which,
unfortunately, no one we know belongs.
%
Everything to excess! Moderation is for monks.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Everything you know is wrong.
-- The Firesign Theater
%
Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
%
Evolution is both fact and theory. Creationism is neither.
-- Anonymous
%
Exactitude in small matters is the essence of discipline.
%
Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation
from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
%
Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
%
Excuse me while I change into something more formidable.
%
Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.
%
Expense Accounts, (N.) Corporate food stamps.
%
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
-- Poor Richard's Almanac
%
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
-- Olivier
%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you
to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
Experience is the worst teacher.
It always gives the test first and the instructions afterward.
%
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
%
Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
%
Extreme good-naturedness borders on weakness of character. Avoid it.
%
Extremes of fortune are fatal to folks of small dimensions.
-- Arnold Glasow
%
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
%
Failing to get them to do it your way might mean they're stupid,
but it also means you failed to get them to do it your way.
-- Cal Keegan
%
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
%
Failure is not an option. It comes bundled with your Microsoft product.
-- Ferenc Mantfeld
%
Fairy Tale: A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
%
Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint.
-- Dave Sim, author of "Cerberus the Aardvark"
%
Familiarity breeds attempt
%
Familiarity breeds children.
%
Familiarity breeds contempt.
%
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
-- Santayana
%
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters;
united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
-- Goya
%
Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.
%
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable
that we have to alter it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Felson's Law: To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism;
to steal from many is research.
%
Fidelity: A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
%
Field theories, unite!
%
Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
%
Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%
Finagle's Second Law: Once a job is fouled up,
anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
%
Fine, Java MIGHT be a good example of what a programming language should be like.
But Java applications are good examples of what applications SHOULDN'T be like.
-- pixadel
%
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
%
Finster's Law: a closed mouth gathers no feet.
%
Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
for its termination on someone else.
(i.e., the authority who imposed the deadline).
%
First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary.
%
History doesn't repeat itself, historians merely repeat each other.
%
Flee at once: All is discovered.
%
There is not now, and never will be, a language in which
it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%
When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that
the world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
%
Follow the river and you will eventually find the sea.
%
Football combines the two worst features of American life:
violence and committee meetings.
-- George Will
%
For a really sweet time, call C6H12O6.
%
For a while there I was worried that my tin foil beanie was blocking
the TopFive.com website. Luckily it turned out to be a router problem.
%
For an idea to be fashionable is ominous,
since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.
%
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%
For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
-- R. Clopton
%
For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
%
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
Forgetfulness, n.: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors
in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
%
Fourth Law of Revision: It is usually impractical to worry beforehand
about interferences ― if you have none, someone will make one for you.
%
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.
-- David Ellis
%
Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.
%
Fresco's Discovery: If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
%
Friends: people who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.
%
Frisbeetarianism, (N.)
The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.
%
A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first.
%
Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%
Furbling, v.: Having to wander through a maze of ropes
at an airport or bank even when you are the only person in line.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
-- H. H. Williams
%
Garbage In ― Gospel Out.
%
Genderplex, (N.) The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and tortoises).
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Gene Police: YOU! Out of the pool!
%
Generosity and perfection are your everlasting goals.
%
Genetics explains why you look like your father,
and if you don't, why you should.
%
Genius is the talent of a man who is dead.
%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
Genius: A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with "bright".
%
Genuinely skillful use of obscenities is uniformly absent on the Internet.
-- Karl Kleinpaste
%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%
Get forgiveness now ― tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
%
Get hold of portable property.
-- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
-- Calvin Keegan
%
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.
-- Abraham Kaplan
%
Give big space to the festive dog that shall sport in the roadway.
%
Give me a plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh Dome,
and a place to stand, and I will drain the world.
%
Giving advice is not as risky as people say; few ever take it anyway.
%
Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors,
or until someone insists on getting some useful work done.
%
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
and remember what value there may be in owning a piece thereof.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
Go soothingly in the grease mud, as there lurks the skid demon.
%
Go west young, man.
%
God did not create the world in 7 days;
he screwed around for 6 days and then pulled an all-nighter.
%
God does not play dice with the universe.
%
God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can choose our friends.
%
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
-- Voltaire
%
God is a polytheist.
%
God is a verb, not a noun.
%
God is an atheist.
%
God is real, unless declared integer.
%
God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant
and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.
-- Pablo Picasso
%
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
-- Alfred Jarry
%
God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
%
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
-- Kronecker
%
God requireth not a uniformity of religion.
-- Roger Williams
%
God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
-- William Bragg
%
Godwin's Law: As an online discussion grows longer,
the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
%
Going the speed of light is bad for your age.
%
Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school
make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.
%
Goldenstern's Rules:
1. Always hire a rich attorney
2. Never buy from a rich salesman.
%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.
-- La Rouchefoucauld
%
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
%
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders' dying words
%
Got Mole problems? Call Avogadro, 6.02 E23.
%
Goto, (N.) A programming tool that exists to allow
structured programmers to complain about unstructured programmers.
-- Ray Simard
%
Government expands to absorb all revenue and then some.
%
Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
-- Tolstoy
%
Government sucks.
-- Ben Olson
%
Grabel's Law:
2 is not equal to 3 ― not even for large values of 2.
%
Graduate life ― it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
%
Grain grows best in shit.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%
Kludge, (N.) An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts forming a distressing whole.
-- Jackson W. Granholm, "How to Design a Kludge," Datamation, Feb. 1962
%
Gray's Law of Programming:
'N+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same time as 'N' tasks.
%
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
'N+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as 'N' trivial tasks.
%
Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things,
and small people talk about wine.
-- Fran Lebowitz
%
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent.
%
Greener's Law: Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
%
Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above average drivers.
%
Hacker's Law: The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily
stir a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
-- Andrew Hacker, The End of the American Era (1970)
%
Half of one, six dozen of the other.
%
Half the things that people do not succeed in are
through fear of making the attempt.
%
Hand, (N.) A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm
and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
%
Hanson's Treatment of Time:
There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days before Saturday.
%
Happiness adds and multiplies as we divide it with others.
%
Happiness comes and goes and is short on staying power.
-- Frank Tyger
%
Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
-- Oscar Levant
%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery
of another.
%
Hardware, (N.) The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
%
Harris' Lament: All the good ones are taken.
%
No matter what result it anticipated,
there is always someone willing to fake it.
%
Experiments should exhibit reproducibility.
They should all fail in the same way.
%
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.
%
You can lead a horse to water,
but if you can get him to float on his back, you've got something.
%
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%
Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as
it damn well pleases.
%
Hatred, (N.) A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell you,
"There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time for play?
%
Have you locked your file cabinet?
%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass
is a crack in your sidewalk?
%
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
He is considered the most graceful speaker who can say nothing in most words.
%
He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap.
%
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
%
He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
-- John Mason Brown, drama critic
%
He that labors and thrives spins gold.
-- George Herbert
%
He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
%
He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.
%
He walks as if balancing the family tree on his nose.
%
He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
%
He wasn't much of an actor, he wasn't much of a Governor.
Hell, they HAD to make him President of the United States.
It's the only job he's qualified for!
-- Michael Cain
%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
-- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%
He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last.
%
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
%
He who hates vices hates mankind.
%
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
%
He who invents adages for others to peruse takes along rowboat when going on cruise.
%
He who laughs, lasts.
%
He who lives without folly is less wise than he believes.
%
He who sneezes without a handkerchief takes matters into his own hands.
%
He who spends a storm beneath a tree takes life with a grain of TNT.
%
He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
-- M. C. Escher
%
He'll sit here and he'll say, "Do this! Do that!" And nothing will happen.
-- Harry S. Truman, on presidential power
%
He's dead, Jim.
%
He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam,
he'd be there -- with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%
Heavy, (adj.) Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
%
Hedonist for hire: no job too easy.
%
Heisenberg may have slept here.
%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman
%
Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists.
A Corollary: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization.
%
Hello. My name is Batman. You killed my father. Prepare to die.
%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%
Help stamp out, remove and abolish redundancy.
%
Her life was saved by rock and roll.
-- Lou Reed
%
Herblock's Law: if it is good, they will stop making it.
%
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
-- Peter Drucker
%
Here at Controls, we have one chief for every Indian.
%
Heuristics are bug ridden by definition.
If they didn't have bugs, then they'd be algorithms.
%
Hey what? Where? When? (Are you confused as I am?)
%
Hidden talent counts for nothing.
-- Nero
%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%
History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion ―
i.e., none to speak of.
-- Lazarus Long
%
History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
%
Hlade's Law: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person.
They will find an easier way to do it.
%
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect,
even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.
%
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at your side.
-- Han Solo
%
Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
-- Rex Reed
%
Holy Smoke, Batman, it's the Joker!
%
Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
-- F. M. Hubbard
%
Horngren's Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
-- W. C. Fields
%
How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
%
How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
%
How does a project get to be a year late? ... One day at a time.
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
Q. How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?
A. It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
%
Q. How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
%
Q. How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. That's a known problem... don't worry about it.
%
Q. How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. Three: one to screw it in and two to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
%
Q. How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of the way.
%
Q. How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem.
%
Q. How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None. It's a hardware problem.
%
Q. How many Vietnam vets does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. You don't know, man. You don't KNOW. Cause you weren't THERE.
%
Q. How was Thomas J. Watson buried?
A. 9 edge down.
%
Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%
However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity
in my traditional manner ... sulking and nausea.
-- Tom K. Ryan
%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important
to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.
-- Susan B. Anthony
%
I HATE arbitrary limits, especially when they're small.
-- Stephen Savitzky
%
I have found Christian dogma unintelligible.
Early in life, I absented myself from Christian assemblies.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
I have had interactions with developers who are convinced that everything in
.Net was created solely by MS for open source usage. But that could be another
result of vaccination preservatives.
-- Larry Weber
%
I think 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! And I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
-- Monty Python
%
I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice
whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own
homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
I would not dare to so dishonor my Creator God
by attaching His name to that book [the Bible].
-- Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, Part 1, Section 5
%
I'm also not very analytical. You know, I don't spend a lot of time
thinking about myself, about why I do things.
-- George W. Bush, aboard Air Force One; June 4, 2003
%
I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.
-- Leo Tolstoy
%
I am astounded ... at the wonderful power you have developed ― and terrified
at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever.
-- Arthur Sullivan, on seeing Edison's talking machine in 1888
%
I am not now, and never have been, a girl friend of Henry Kissinger.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared
for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
-- Winston Churchill
%
I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.
%
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
-- Will Rogers
%
I'll bet the human brain is a kludge.
-- Marvin Minsky
%
I can call spirits from the vastly deep.
Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?
-- Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I
%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
-- Joe Walsh
%
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
-- Lillian Hellman
%
I could prove God statistically.
-- George Gallup
%
I didn't claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat veggies.
%
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei
%
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in,
so long as it is a language I don't understand.
-- Sir Edware Appleton
%
I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius,
and Aquarians don't believe in astrology.
-- James R. F. Quirk
%
I don't care if I'm a lemming. I'm not going.
%
I don't care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine!
-- Vidiu Platon
%
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I don't like spreading rumors, but what else can you do with them?
%
I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road
and not be questioned about their motives.
-- Leray Scifres
%
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
-- Mae West
%
I get the feeling that as soon as something appears in the paper, it ceases to be true.
-- T-Bone Burnett
%
I go to seek a great perhaps.
-- Francois Rabelais
%
I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
I hate quotations.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
I have discovered the heart of Bushido: to die!
-- Yamamoto Tsunetomo
%
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
I haven't lost my mind ― it's backed up on tape somewhere.
%
I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
%
I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its
adherents become better people as a result of practicing it.
-- Joe Mullally, computer salesman
%
I like a man who grins when he fights.
-- Winston Churchill
%
I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
-- Art Leo
%
I like the future, I'm in it.
%
I must have slipped a disk; my pack hurts.
%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away.
%
I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
%
I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
-- William F. Buckley
%
I program, therefore I am.
%
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of
oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%
I sat through it. Why shouldn't you?
-- David Letterman, it a spot promoting one of his shows
%
I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's.
%
I support everyone's right to be an idiot. I may need it someday.
%
I think Microsoft named .NET so it wouldn't show up in a Unix directory listing.
-- Oktal
%
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
I think trash is the most important manifestation of culture we have in my lifetime.
-- Johnny Legend
%
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
%
I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Anroid
%
I tried being reasonable once. I didn't like it.
%
I use not only all the brains I have but all that I can borrow.
-- Woodrow Wilson
%
I used to be indecisive; now I'm not sure.
-- Graffiti
%
I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance.
%
I will never use bio-metrics. I'm afraid they'll make me change my password.
-- Drew Sudell
%
Few companies really work like the Borg.
Most work a lot more like the Holy Roman Empire.
News often takes weeks to travel from castle to castle by minstrel.
-- Drew Sudell
%
[The Ramones'] "I Wanna Be Sedated" should be played loud, poorly, and in
some dingy club where you'd get grounded if your folks found out you were
there, not quietly while strolling down the freezer aisle.
-- Drew Sudell
%
I will contend that conceptual integrity
is *the* most important consideration in system design.
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
%
I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work.
-- Gallagher
%
I wish they all could be California girls.
%
I wish you humans would leave me alone.
%
I wouldn't mind dying ― it's that business of having to
stay dead that scares the shit out of me.
-- R. Geis
%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%
I'll tell you what kind of guy I was. If you ordered a boxcar full
of sons-of-bitches and opened the door and only found me inside,
you could consider the order filled.
-- Robert Mitchum
%
I'm a misanthrope. What's your fucking problem?
%
I'm growing older, but not up.
-- Jimmy Buffett
%
I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?
-- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
%
I'm not breaking the rules. I'm just testing their elasticity.
%
I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid, and I'm not going.
%
I've got a bad feeling about this.
%
I've had fun before. This isn't it.
%
I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself,
but I've seen more of them who were paralyzed in the head.
-- George Wallace
%
Idiot Box, (N.) The part of the envelope that tells a person where
to place the stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Idiot, (N.) A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence
in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
-- Roy Santoro
%
If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows.
-- Yiddish saying
%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
-- Ted Turner
%
If Java had true garbage collection,
most programs would delete themselves upon execution.
-- Robert Sewell
%
If Murphy's Law were true, every time you tried to take a breath,
all the air would be on the other side of the room.
%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
%
If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1
passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
-- T. Cheatham
%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up.
%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
-- J. K. Galbraith
%
If all the philosophers in the world were laid end to end,
they wouldn't reach a conclusion.
%
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
%
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
-- Paul Beatty
%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%
If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
%
If at first you don't succeed, quit; don't be a nut about success.
%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers?
%
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
%
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
%
If guns are outlawed, how will we shoot the liberals?
%
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
%
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
-- Bert Lantz
%
If it doesn't come from you, shouldn't it come from Gerber?
-- Bristol Meyers baby formula ad
%
If it has syntax, it isn't user friendly.
%
If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.
%
If it weren't for Newton, we wouldn't have to eat bruised apples.
%
If it's working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
If it's not working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
-- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
%
If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
%
If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer,
try multiplying by the page number.
%
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
%
If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges.
%
If one year is seven dog years, then one day is a dog week.
%
If only God would give me some clear sign!
Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank.
-- Woody Allen
%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment
without having to accomplish anything.
%
If people were required to know the law rather than obey it,
the government would be overthrown the very next day.
%
If someone gives you a lemon, make lemonade.
-- D. Woodhouse
%
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
-- Pope John Paul I
%
If something's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.
%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test,
all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.
-- Stanley Garn
%
If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
-- Norm Schryer
%
If the experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.
%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring,
chances are 50-50 it will.
%
If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a circuit,
I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.
-- Samuel F. B. Morse
%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong,
the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
-- Art Hoppe
%
If this country is worth saving, it's worth saving at a profit.
-- H. L. Hunt
%
If this quote didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%
If two men agree on everything,
you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson
%
If voting could really change the system, it would be against the law.
%
If we do not change our direction,
we are likely to end up where we are headed.
%
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
If you always postpone pleasure you will never have it.
Quit work and play for awhile.
%
If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.
%
If you are willing to die, you can do anything.
%
If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
%
If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
If you can't say something nice, say something surrealistic.
%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S Truman
%
If you cannot take a bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.
-- Nikita Khrushchev
%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
%
If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue,
it will always do it.
-- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
%
If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
-- Graham Summer
%
If you make a mistake, you right it immediately to the best of your ability.
%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
but if you really make them think they'll hate you.
%
If you meet somebody who tells you that he loves you more than anybody
in the whole wide world, don't trust him. It means he experiments.
%
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-- Maslow
%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop.
%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get ice, but no cup.
%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage.
But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine,
is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
%
If you see someone without a smile, give them yours.
-- Anonymous
%
If you substitute other kinds of intellectual property
into the GNU manifesto, it quickly becomes absurd.
-- Cal Keegan
%
If you suspect a man, don't employ him.
%
If you think before you speak, the other guy gets his joke in first.
%
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive,
try missing a couple of car payments.
-- Earl Wilson
%
If you think the United States has stood still,
who built the largest shopping center in the world?
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
If you want to eat hippopotamus, you've got to pay the freight.
-- some IBM guy
%
If you work hard and do your homework,
you can grow up and get a job doing homework.
-- former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer
%
If you're going to do something tonight
that you'll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.
-- Henny Youngman
%
If you're happy, you're successful.
%
If you're not careful, you're going to catch something.
%
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
%
If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it
off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?
%
If you've seen one Grand Canyon, you've seen them all.
-- a member of the Monkey Wrench Gang
%
If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.
-- Spiro Agnew
%
If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
-- Ronald Reagan
%
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
%
Ignorance is the Mother of Devotion.
-- Robert Burton
%
Ignorance is when you don't know anything and somebody finds it out.
%
I'll play with it first and tell you what it is later.
-- Miles Davis
%
Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot.
It's more like the land He's trying to ignore.
%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier
%
Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism.
%
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
-- Fred Allen
%
Immortality ― a fate worse than death.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading it.
%
In America, any boy may become president
and I suppose that's just one of the risks he takes.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
In English, every word can be verbed.
Would that it were so in our programming languages.
%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.
Only, we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetence.
-- The Peter Principle
%
In any formula, constants are to be treated as variables.
%
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.
He is always in alliance with the despot.
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814
%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence
is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
In software, we rarely have meaningful requirements. Even if we do, the
only measure of success that matters is whether our solution solves the
customer's shifting idea of what their problem is.
-- Jeff Atwood
%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to drop
out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at discotheques.
-- Art Linkletter
%
In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's not
there if you want to keep writing good code.
-- Karl
%
In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared minds.
-- L. Pasteur
%
In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?
%
[In the future], people like me will be underground and hunted.
-- Chuck Murcko, 1995
%
In Sedona, "Namaste" means "What can I sell you?"
-- Chuck Murcko
%
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.
-- Robert Lucky
%
In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful Dead.
-- Egyptian Book of the Dead
%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
-- Alan Perlis
%
In the market, there can be no such thing as exploitation.
-- Murray Rothbard
%
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
-- John Lilly
%
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are prepared.
-- Louis Pasteur
%
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're different.
-- Albert Einstein
%
In this world, Truth can wait; she's used to it.
%
Incest, (N.) Sibling revelry.
%
Information Center, (N.) A room staffed by professional computer people whose
job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
%
Ingrate, (N.) A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of indigestion.
%
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%
Innovation is hard to schedule.
-- Dan Fylstra
%
Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.
-- Erma Bombeck
%
Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
%
Integrity has no need for rules.
%
Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.
-- Harry S Truman
%
Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets.
%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to
be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble?
%
Is life worth living? It depends on the liver.
-- Herbert Beerbohm Tree
%
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at
gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously?
%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:
1. The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse.
2. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%
It could be worse, you could be in Cleveland.
%
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
It has also been said that the software industry is an example of midgets
standing on the toes of other midgets.
-- Alan Cooper
%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%
It is Fortune, not wisdom that rules man's life.
%
It is a poor judge who cannot award a prize.
%
It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.
-- Willie Sutton
%
It is bad luck to be superstitious.
-- Andrew W. Mathis
%
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
%
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother,
because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
-- Voltaire
%
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.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%
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.
-- R. Serling
%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%
It is easier to run down a hill than up one.
%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
It is happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
-- S. Johnson
%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
%
It is impossible to travel faster than light,
and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
-- Woody Allen
%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem.
%
It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
%
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another.
It's one damn thing over and over.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
%
It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and intimidation.
%
It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
-- Elizabeth Carpenter
%
It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit.
%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind
to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
-- Voltaire
%
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the lowly ant
crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as high as the eagle?
%
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
-- Robert Bly
%
It is the business of little minds to shrink.
-- Carl Sandburg
%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
-- Hawkwind
%
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
%
It is the wise bird who builds his nest in a tree.
%
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone,
to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
-- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
%
It is your destiny.
-- Darth Vader
%
It just goes to show what you can do if you're a total psychotic.
-- Woody Allen
%
It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.
%
It may soon be time for you to look for a new line of work.
%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
%
It seems to make an auto driver mad if he misses you.
%
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
-- Edward Dahlberg
%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%
It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been always thus.
-- Dean Lattimer
%
It was the Law of the Sea, they said.  Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
-- Andrew Jackson
%
It's a fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
%
It's a poor workman who blames his tools.
%
It's all in the mind, ya know.
%
It's better to burn out than it is to rust.
%
It's better to burn out than to fade away.
%
It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud.
-- J. C. R. Licklider
%
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%
It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for being right.
%
It's hard to get ivory in Africa, but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa.
%
It's later than you think.
%
It's like deja vu all over again.
-- Yogi Berra
%
It's lucky you're going so slowly,
because you're going in the wrong direction.
%
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
-- Phil White
%
It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
-- Alexander Korda
%
It's not hard to meet expenses; they're everywhere.
%
It's not often that you get so much class entertainment
outside your bedroom window or outside your bedroom, period.
-- Groucho Marx
%
It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world.
It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.
-- L.R. Knost
%
It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things.
%
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
-- Woody Allen
%
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop.
%
It's not what we don't know that gets us into trouble,
it's what we know that ain't so.
-- Will Rogers
%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%
It's smart to pick your friends - but not to pieces.
%
It's so humid, you could poach an egg on the sidewalk.
%
Jenkinson's Law: It won't work.
%
Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin.
-- Michael O'Donoghue
%
Jesus was killed by a Moral Majority.
%
John Birch Society ― that pathetic manifestation of organized apoplexy.
-- Edward P. Morgan
%
Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails,
it will do so at the most inconvenient possible time.
%
Jones' Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong
has thought of someone to blame it on.
%
Jones' Motto: Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%
Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.
%
Jury ― Twelve people who determine which client has the better lawyer.
%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
-- Southern California Oracle
%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition
doesn't mean she knows what it is.
%
Just give Alice some pencils and she will stay busy for hours.
-- B. Kliban
%
Just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that isn't immune to bullets.
-- The Brigadier, Dr. Who.
%
Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%
Justice, like lightning, should ever appear to some men hope, to other men fear.
-- Jefferson Pierce
%
Justice: A decision in your favor.
%
Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally
when all other possibilities have been exhausted.
%
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%
Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!"
%
Ketterling's Law: Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
%
Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority.
Kinkler's Second Law: All the easy problems have been solved.
%
Klein bottle for rent, apply within.
%
Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
-- Henry N. Camp
%
Labor, (N.) One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
-- Joey Ramone
%
Lactomangulation, (N.) Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk
carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Laissez Faire Economics is the theory that if each acts like a vulture,
all will end as doves.
%
Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false.
%
Laugh, and the world ignores you. Crying doesn't help either.
%
Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged
communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly
increased area of misunderstanding.
%
Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences:
If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set.
%
Law of Probable Dispersal:
Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
%
Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
%
Lawrence's Axiom: Anger is one letter short of danger.
%
Law #1 of Computer Programming
Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
%
Law #2 of Computer Programming
Any given program costs more and takes longer.
%
Law #3 of Computer Programming
If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
%
Law #4 of Computer Programming
If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
%
Law #5 of Computer Programming
Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
%
Law #6 of Computer Programming
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
%
Law #7 of Computer Programming
Program complexity grows until it exceeds
the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
%
Law #% of Computer Programming
Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English,
and you  will find that programmers cannot write in English.
%
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how
tragic your defeats ― approximately 1.4 billion Chinese couldn't care less.
%
Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
-- Anon
%
Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%
Leisure can be justified. Recreation maximizes productive stamina.
Play is not the opposite of work. Idleness consolidates thought.
-- Thomas "Sam" Frantz
%
Lend money to a bad debtor and he will hate you.
%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%
Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
%
Let me play with it first and I'll tell you what it is later.
-- Miles Davis
%
Let me tell you the truth: The truth is what is. And what should be is
a fantasy, a terrible, terrible lie somebody gave the people long ago.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
%
Let the machine do the dirty work.
%
Let's give discredit where discredit is due.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%
Lewis's Law of Travel:
The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to anyone, ever.
%
Liar, (N.) A lawyer with a roving commission.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Liar: One who tells an unpleasant truth.
%
Liberty is the mother not the daughter of order.
-- Proudhon
%
Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date.
%
Lieberman's Law: Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%
Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood.
Blood debts must be repaid in kind.
The longer the delay, the greater the interest.
-- Chinese author Lu Xun, 1926
%
Life in a free society is friendly, prosperous,
pleasant, cultured, and ever-longer.
-- Jeff Daiell, 1989, in counterpoint to Hobbes
%
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
%
Life is a pinball machine. You bounce around for a while, and then you drain.
-- Joe Bak
%
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
%
Life is full of surprises when you're up the stream of consciousness without a paddle.
-- Zippy the Pinhead
%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer,
then you find there is nothing in it.
%
Life is not one thing after another,
it's the same damned thing over and over.
%
Life is the application of noble and profound ideas to life.
-- Matthew Arnold
%
Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid.
-- John Wayne
%
Life is wasted on the living.
-- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
%
Life is what happens to you while you are planning to do something else.
%
Life's greatest gift is natural talent.
-- P. K. Thomajan
%
Life. Don't talk to me about life.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Anroid
%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life
that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%
Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
-- Alan McKay
%
Like winter snow on summer lawn, time past is time gone.
%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%
listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go.
-- ee cummings
%
Live every day like it's your last because someday you'll be right.
%
Live free or die.
%
Living on Earth may be expensive,
but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
%
Living your life is a task so difficult,
it has never been attempted before.
%
Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree, that smells awful.
%
Long computations which yield 0 (zero) are probably all for naught.
%
Long distance runners break into more pants.
%
Long life is in store for you.
%
Look under the sofa cushion; you will be surprised at what you find.
%
Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies.
-- D'Hericault
%
Los Angeles is a geometropolitan predicament rather than a city.
You can no more administer it than you could administer the solar system.
-- Jonathan Miller
%
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%
Love means never having to say, "Put down that meat cleaver."
%
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
%
Lowery's Law: If it jams ― force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug.
%
Luck is probability taken personally.
-- Chip Denman
%
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
-- E. Letterman
%
Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes.
%
Lynch's Law: When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.
%
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
-- Alan Turing
%
Mad, (adj.) Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Main's Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
%
Maintainer's Motto: If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
%
Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%
Make a wish: it might come true.
%
Make input easy to proofread
%
Make it right before you make it faster.
%
Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood.
-- D. B. Hudson
%
Make sure all variables are initialized before use.
%
Make sure comments and code agree.
%
Make sure your code "does nothing" gracefully.
%
Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%
Man is a Generalist. Specialization is for insects.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when
he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Man is a rationalizing animal, not a rational animal.
-- R. A. Heinlein
%
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft,
and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Man rarely reads the handwriting on the wall until he has his back to it.
%
Man who falls in blast furnace is certain to feel overwrought.
%
Man who falls in vat of molten optical glass makes spectacle of self.
%
Man's horizons are bounded by his vision.
%
Mankind has yet to devise a rule that never requires exceptions.
-- Wayne Dyer
%
Manual, (N.) A unit of documentation. There are always three or more
on a given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others.
The information you need is in the others.
-- Ray Simard
%
Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist.
%
Many are called, few are chosen. Fewer still get to do the choosing.
%
Many are called, few volunteer.
%
Many are cold, but few are frozen.
%
Many are the wonders of the Universe, and none so wonderful as Mankind!
-- Sophocles
%
Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long.
%
Many pages make a thick book.
%
Many receive advice, few profit from it.
%
Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a simple yes or no answer.
%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire
%
Marshall's generalized iceberg theorem: 7/8ths of everything cannot be seen.
%
Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a receipt.
%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
-- Jules Feiffer
%
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
-- R. S. Barton
%
Madison Avenue Axiom: If an item is advertised as "under $50",
you can bet it's not $19.95.
%
Meader's Law: Whatever happens to you,
it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so.
%
Mediocrity thrives on standardization.
-- Wayne Dyer
%
Meditation is not what you think.
%
Meeting, (N.) An assembly of people coming together to decide what person
or department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
%
Memories of you remind me of you.
-- Karl
%
Memory should be the starting point of the present.
%
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%
Menu: A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
%
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.
%
Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%
Mile's Law: where you stand depends on where you sit.
%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do
with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz
%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%
Mister Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.
%
Modern man is the missing link between the apes and humans.
%
Modesty is an ornament, but you go further without it.
-- German Proverb
%
Modesty is of no use to a beggar.
-- Homer
%
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review
and be implemented it wasn't worth doing.
%
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
%
Money is like a sixth sense, and you can't use the other five without it.
%
There are two ways to write error-free programs.
Only the third one works.
%
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
Morality is one thing. Ratings are everything.
-- A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
%
More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads.
One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction.
Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
-- Woody Allen
%
Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously.
%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd be out of a job.
%
Most legislators are so dumb that they couldn't pour piss out of a boot
if the instructions were printed on the heel.
%
Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer.
There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
-- Larry Wall
%
Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
%
Mr. Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
the population is growing.
%
Mr. Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
%
Muddy water let stand will clear.
-- Chinese Proverb
%
Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.
%
Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%
My head is bloodied, but unbowed.
-- From the poem "Invictus"
%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%
My past is my own.
-- The Shadow (DC Comics)
%
Naeser's Law: You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof.
%
Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
Necessity is a mother.
%
Neil Armstrong to Walter Cronkite: "Well, Walter, I believe that the Good
Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to
use up mine running up and down a street."
%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
%
Never insult an alligator until you have crossed the river.
%
Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting.
-- Billy Rose
%
Never lick a gift horse in the mouth.
%
Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.
%
Never say you know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him.
%
Never throw a bird at a dragon.
%
New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age,
and his wife most often reminds him to act it.
-- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
%
New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
-- David Letterman
%
New boots, big steps.
-- Chinese Proverb
%
New systems generate new problems.
%
Newlan's Truism:
An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
%
Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day.
As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year.
%
Next Wednesday you will be presented with a great opportunity.
%
Next to being shot at and missed,
nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.
-- F. J. Raymond
%
Nihil tam munitum quod non expugnari pecunia possit.
(No fort is so strong that it cannot be taken with money.)
-- Cicero
%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
%
No guts, no glory.
%
No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket
in his pocket, or at least had been fooling around with timetables.
-- Archie Goodwin
%
No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the Legislature is in session.
-- Lysander Spooner
%
No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up.
%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
No one is talking behind your back as far as you know.
%
No one who accepts the sovereignty of truth can be a foot soldier
in a party or movement. He will always find himself out of step.
-- Sidney Hook
%
No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.
-- Ayn Rand
%
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
%
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
%
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
%
No user-serviceable parts inside.
Refer to qualified service personnel.
%
Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest.
%
Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
%
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
%
Nobody wants constructive criticism.
It's all we can do to put up with constructive praise.
%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.
%
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
%
None love the bearer of bad news.
-- Sophocles
%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.
Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
-- John Keats
%
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
%
Nothing is as repulsive as phoniness;
conversely, nothing is as magnetic as reality.
-- Howard Henrichs
%
Nothing is done until nothing is done.
%
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer;
nothing is more difficult than to understand him.
-- Fyodor Dostoevski
%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-- Andrew Young
%
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm:
It moves stones, and it charms brutes.
%
Nothing recedes like success.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
%
O'Riordan's Theorem: Brains x Beauty = Constant.
%
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist.
%
Objects on your screen are closer than they appear.
%
Ocean, (N.) A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for
man ― who has no gills.
%
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
-- Plato
%
Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.
-- Thomas Paine
%
Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
%
Of course, someone who knows more about this will correct me if I'm wrong,
and someone who knows less will correct me if I'm right.
-- David Palmer
%
Ogden's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
%
Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
%
Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement.
%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky
%
Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
%
Oliver's First Law of Computing:
Computers are much too complex; they'll never work.
-- Robert Oliver (circa 1982)
%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
%
Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew,
and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
-- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
%
One Page Principle: A specification that will not fit on one page
of 8.5x11-inch paper cannot be understood.
-- Mark Ardis
%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet when well oiled.
%
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.
-- Henry Brook Adams
%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is
that they never have to stop and answer the phone.
%
One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.
%
One millihelen: the unit of beauty required to launch just one ship
%
One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language
is the use of the word "I".
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein
%
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
%
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.
%
One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
%
One's mind, stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension.
%
Only God can make random selections.
%
Opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one,
but nobody wants to look at the other guy's.
-- Hal Hickman
%
Optimists say the glass is half full, pessimists say the glass is half
empty, engineers say the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%
Optimization is not some mystical state of grace, it is an intricate
act of human labor which carries real costs and real risks.
-- Tom Neff
%
Oregon, (N.)
Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday night.
%
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-- Mike Adams
%
Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't.
%
Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press,
and that cannot be limited without being lost.
-- Thomas Jefferson (1786)
%
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
-- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
%
Out of body, back in five minutes.
%
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read.
%
Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
%
Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
%
Overload ― core meltdown sequence initiated.
%
PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs,
whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil perpetrated by skilled but
perverted professionals.
-- Jon Ribbens
%
Paranoia doesn't mean the whole world really isn't out to get you.
%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems.
It's easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
-- D. J. Hicks
%
Parking fees that Universal Studios collected from picketers of
<u>The Last Temptation of Christ</u>: $4,500
-- Harper's Index Nov. 1988
%
Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay in important decision,
the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%
Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group
tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%
Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time allotted it.
Karl's version: Work expands to exceed the time allotted it.
%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%
Benford's Law of Controversy: Passion is inversely proportional
to the amount of real information available.
-- Gregory Benford
%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer
%
Patience, (N.) A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtains.
%
Peace: a period of cheating between two wars.
%
People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange surroundings ―
they can become accustomed to reading Lisp and ForTran programs, for example.
-- Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
%
People get lost in thought because it is unfamiliar territory.
%
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future.
%
People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
-- Calvin
%
People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
%
People who claim they don't let little things bother them
have never slept in a room with a single mosquito.
%
People who have no faults are terrible.
There is no way of taking advantage of them.
%
People who look down on other people do not end up being looked up to.
%
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
Benjamin Franklin said it first.
%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
(Confound those who have said our remarks before us.)
-- Aelius Donatus
%
Perfection is achieved only on the point of collapse.
-- C. N. Parkinson
%
Perpetuo vincit qui utitur clementia.
(He is forever victor who employs clemency.)
-- Syrus
%
Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.
-- E. G. Leter
%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves.
%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%
Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
%
pi seconds is a nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff
%
Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die
-- John W. Campbell
%
Plagiarism is basic to all culture.
-- Papa Seeger
%
Plan ahead: it was not raining when Noah built the ark.
-- Richard Cushing
%
Please don't ask me what the score is.
I'm not even sure what the game is.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Please don't lie to me,
unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the truth.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Please ignore previous quote.
%
Please update your programs.
%
Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
%
Police up your spare rounds and frags. Don't leave nothin' for the dinks.
-- Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
%
Politician, (N.) From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete"
("head" or "face). Hence "polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
-- Martin Pitt
%
Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
%
Positive, (adj.) Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Power is poison.
%
Power, (N.) The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
%
Practice is the best of all instructors.
-- Publilius
%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
-- Niels Bohr
%
Preserve the old, but know the new.
%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side.
%
Prevent security leaks.
%
Pro is to Con as Progress is to Congress.
%
Probably the best operating system in the world is the O/S
made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories.
-- Ted Nelson, October 1977
%
Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.
-- Leviticus 25:10
%
Programming is an art form that fights back.
%
Programming is 10% science, 25% ingenuity
and 65% getting the ingenuity to work with the science.
%
Programming is like sex.
One mistake and you're providing support for a lifetime.
-- Michael Sinz
%
Progress is nothing but the victory of laughter over dogma.
-- Benjamin DeCasseres
%
Promptness is its own reward if one lives by the clock instead of the sword.
%
Pronounce your prepositions, dammit!
%
Pull yourself together; things are not all that bad.
%
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
%
Put your trust in those who are worthy.
%
Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
%
Q: "Why do trans-atlantic transfers take so long?"
A: "Electrons don't swim very fast."
%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat ?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
%
Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%
Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
%
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all
   those Californians trying to share the experience.
%
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself
   symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a
   netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin
   cosmos of nothingness.
%
Q: How many Pro-Lifers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to say that light started
   when the screwing began.
%
Q: How many supply-siders does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.
%
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with
   brightly-colored power tools.
%
Q. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A. Only one, but it takes a really long time
   and the light bulb has to want to change.
%
Q: What do you do with an elephant with three balls?
A: Walk him and pitch to the rhino.
%
Q: Why did the tachyontac cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
%
Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
%
Quantity is no substitute for quality, but it's the only one we've got.
%
Quoth the Raven, "Never mind."
%
Quotations are for people who are not saying things worth quoting.
%
Quoting one is plagiarism. Quoting many is research.
%
Rational people don't go stomping around demanding
that the world be perfect for them.
-- Matthew N. Dodd
%
Romeo:   Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
Mercutio: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church.
%
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!
-- Dylan Thomas
%
Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
-- George W. Bush; Florence, S.C.; January 11, 2000
%
Ray's Rule of Precision:
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
%
Re: graphics: A picture is worth 10K words ― but only those to describe the picture.
Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.
%
Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
%
Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
spring up in the middle of the machine room.
%
Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
%
Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use
functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
%
Real Time, (adj.) Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and then.
%
Real wealth can only increase.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated
at speeds faster than 85 MPH (140k/h).
-- presumable misprint from the 1987 Buick Grand National owner's manual.
%
Reliable software must kill people reliably.
-- Andy Mickel
%
Religions revolve madly around sexual questions.
%
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind
and unfits it for every noble enterprise.
-- James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774
%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot,
it could only be worse in Cleveland.
%
Remember: You cannot drain the ocean with a teaspoon.
-- Ignas Bernstein
%
Removing the error messages "now that the program is working" is like
wearing a parachute on the ground, but taking it off once you're in the air.
-- Kernighan &amp; Plauger [Software Tools]
%
Render unto Caesar if line 54 is larger than line 62.
%
Replace repetitive expressions by calls to a common function.
%
Reporter, (N.) A writer who guesses his way to the truth
and dispels it with a tempest of words.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get another chance later on.
%
Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals.
-- "Oh, Lucky Man"
%
Ride the tributaries to reach the sea.
-- Arab Proverb
%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal.
%
Rudin's Law: In a crisis that forces a choice to be made between alternative
courses of action, most people will choose the worse one possible.
%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.
%
Rule of the Great:
When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts,
they probably are thinking about lunch.
%
Rules for driving in New York:
1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers on.
3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the intersection.
%
SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
-- Ken Thompson
%
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
-- George Orwell
%
Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.
%
Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.
%
Schapiro's Explanation: The grass is always greener on the other side ―
but that's because they use more manure.
%
Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof.
-- Ashley Montague
%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%
Scott's First Law: No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%
Scott's Second Law: When an error has been detected and corrected,
it will be found to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary: After the correction has been found in error,
it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
%
See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and
over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.
-- George W. Bush; Greece, New York; May 24, 2005
%
Seminars, (N.) From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussions.
%
Serocki's Stricture: Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
-- M. C. Reed.
%
Sex is the poor man's opera.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
Sex without love is an empty experience, but,
as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.
-- Woody Allen
%
Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
%
She hates testicles, thus limiting the men she can admire
to Democratic candidates for president.
-- John Greenway, "The American Tradition", on feminist Elizabeth Gould Davis
%
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look
that you could have poured on a waffle ...
%
Short words are best, and the old words when short are best of all.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Show business is just like high school, except you get paid.
-- Martin Mull
%
Show me a man who is a good loser
and I'll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss.
%
Silverman's Law: If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%
Simon's Law: Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
%
Skinner's Constant: That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by,
added to, or subtracted from the answer you get,
gives you the answer you should have gotten.
%
Slime is the agony of water.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
%
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide
and our doubts serve to reassure us.
-- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
%
So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here.
-- Biff in "Back to the Future"
%
Socialism is power, power, and more power.
-- Oswald Spengler, Hitler's intellectual forebear
%
Society is the presumption of habit over instinct.
-- Peter Taylor
%
Sodd's Second Law: Sooner or later,
the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur.
%
For many years scientists have tried to perfect fault tolerant systems.
Meanwhile, Microsoft profits by exploiting fault tolerant customers.
-- Marvin Jones
%
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Some grow with responsibility, others just swell.
-- Arnold Glasow
%
Some men are discovered; others are found out.
%
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity,
and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%
Some people fall for everything and stand for nothing.
%
Some people hope to achieve immortality through their works or their children.
I would prefer to achieve it by not dying.
-- Woody Allen
%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit them on the head.
%
Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it
-- Gordon R. Dickson
%
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other.
Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
-- Katherine Hepburn
%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
-- Sigmund Freud
%
Sometimes the only solution is to find a new problem.
%
Sometimes the only way out of a difficulty is through it.
%
Sometimes, too long is too long.
-- Joe Crowe
%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers: If a subordinate asks you a pertinent
question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down,
paraphrase the question back at him.
%
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
%
Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership
and the temporal power should not become too important in any church.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
%
Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old.
-- Pink Floyd
%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
%
Stock brokers invest your money until it's all gone.
-- Woody Allen
%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if it'd only take a bath.
%
Stult's Report: Our problems are mostly behind us.
What we have to do now is fight the solutions.
%
Sturgeon's Law: Ninety percent of everything is crap.
%
Success is a journey, not a destination.
%
Success is not free. Neither is failure.
-- Ray Kroc
%
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Success is what happens when something goes right.
-- Arnold Glasow
%
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
-- Seneca
%
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
%
Superiority is always detested.
-- Balasar Gracian
%
Sure there are dishonest men in local government.
But there are dishonest men in national government too.
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
Swipple's Rule of Order: He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind
when he actually has a hole in his head.
%
Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
%
Tact is the great ability to see other people as they think you see them.
%
Tact, (N.) The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
%
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
%
Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
%
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man,
but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
-- Kipling
%
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
-- Ken Kesey
%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."
-- Russell Long
%
Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he
grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway.
%
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
-- Aldous Huxley
%
Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll believe you.
Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll have to touch it to be sure.
%
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing.
-- R. Geis
%
Than self restraint, there is nothing better.
-- Lao Tzu
%
That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.
-- Thomas Jefferson, on the U.S. Congress.
%
That government is best which governs least.
-- Thomas Jefferson
That government is best which governs not at all.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
-- Thoreau
%
That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.
%
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers.
What they really hate is lousy programmers.
-- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
%
The Abrams' Principle: The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
%
The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will
take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that
by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units.
%
The English have no respect for their language,
and will not teach their children to speak it.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
The Fifth Rule: You have taken yourself too seriously.
%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group
divided by the number of people in the group.
%
The Idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds,
thrives on cross-breeding, grows better for being stepped on.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"
%
The Kennedy Constant: Don't get mad ― get even.
%
The Law of Software Envelopment (at MIT): Every program at MIT attempts
to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot expand are
replaced by ones which can.
%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor,
to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-- Anatole France
%
The Official MBA Handbook on business cards: Avoid overly pretentious job
titles such as "Lord of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India"
or "Director of Corporate Planning."
%
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the
right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
-- Dorothy Nevill
%
The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it.
%
The Swartzberg Test: The validity of a science is its ability to predict.
%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
%
The United States has entered an anti-intellectual phase in its history,
perhaps most clearly seen in our virtually thought-free political life.
-- David Baltimore
%
The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money
completely surrounded by people who want some.
-- Dwight MacDonald
%
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
The angels wanna wear my red shoes.
%
The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
The attacker must vanquish; the defender need only survive.
%
The attention span of a computer is as long as its electrical cord.
%
The author should gaze at Noah, and ... learn, as they did in the Ark,
to crowd a great deal of matter into a very small compass.
-- Sydney, Smith, Edinburgh Review
%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains,
because the average man can see better than he can think.
%
The best cure for anger is delay.
-- Seneca
%
The best prophet of the future is the past.
%
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and
fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
drifting side by side to our common doom.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
The best thing about a boolean is, even if you are wrong,
you are only off by a bit.
-- Anonymous
%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
%
The best way to break a bad habit is to drop it.
-- Anonymous
%
The better part of maturity is knowing your goals.
-- Arnold Glasow
%
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time.
-- Merrick Furst
%
The chain that can be yanked is not the cosmic chain.
-- Cal Keegan
%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely
to show up at the steam fitters' picnic.
%
The chief barrier to happiness is envy.
-- Frank Tyger
%
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
-- Eric Sevareid, CBS Evening News, December 29, 1970
%
The city of the dead antedates the city of the living.
-- Lewis Mumford
%
The clothes have no emperor.
-- C. A. Hoare, about Ada.
%
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity
often abstract away its essence.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-- Alan Perlis
%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
%
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper,
the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.
-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
%
The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to eat.
-- John McNulty
%
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
us who are fortunate enough never to have been one ― like watching
Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
%
The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
%
The decision didn't have to be logical, it was unanimous.
%
The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
%
The difference between Genius and Stupidity is that Genius has limits.
%
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
The difference between sympathy and empathy is three letters: "yes".
-- P. Taylor
%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
-- Buckminster Fuller
%
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
%
The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with symposium to follow.
%
The envious man grows lean at the success of his neighbor.
-- Horace
%
The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
-- L. Ogborn
%
The famous politician was trying to save both his faces.
%
The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory
emancipated from the order of space and time.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%
The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems.
-- Roger Levian
%
The finest eloquence is that which gets things done.
%
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time.
The last 10% of a project takes the other 90% of the time.
%
The first and great commandment is: Do not let them scare you.
-- Elmer Davis
%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
-- Abbie Hoffman
%
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
-- Paul Erlich
%
The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization.
-- Alan Coult
%
The following statement is true.
The previous statement is false.
%
The fourth law of thermodynamics:
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.
%
The future isn't what it used to be. (It never was.)
%
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
%
The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last
at least until we've finished building it.
%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%
The government of the United States is not in any sense
founded on the Christian Religion.
-- George Washington (The Treaty of Tripoli)
%
The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.
%
The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace.
-- Holly Near
%
The hand that rocks the cradle can also cradle a rock.
-- Feminist saying, circa 1968-1972
%
The hardest thing to open is a closed mind.
-- Leo Burnett
%
The heart has no rainbows when the eye has no tears.
%
The hell with the Prime Directive: let's kill something.
%
The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
%
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best".
-- H. Allen Smith
%
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity
― the rest is overhead for the operating system.
%
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein ― it rejects it.
-- P. Medawar
%
The hypothesis: Amid a wash of paper, a small number of documents become the
critical pivots around which every project's management revolves.
These are the manager's chief personal tools.
-- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%
The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers
out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who,
by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
-- attributed to Douglas Adams
%
The ideal is impossible. The idea of the ideal is essential.
-- P. Taylor
%
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the
consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.
-- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
%
The Internet? Is that thing still around?
-- Homer Simpson
%
The Internet is the most powerful stupidity amplifier ever invented.
It’s like television without the television part.
-- James “Kibo” Perry
%
The lame in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it.
-- Francis Bacon
%
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal
%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%
The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
%
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching train.
%
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.
-- Woody Allen
%
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
The love of money is only one among many.
-- Alfred Marshall
%
The luck that is ordained for you will be coveted by others.
%
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd.
The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.
-- Alan Ashley-Pitt
%
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a soda can,
when discarded will last forever; and a $20,000 car which, when properly cared for,
will rust out in two or three years.
%
The meek are contesting the will.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth ― they are too weak to refuse.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
-- J. Paul Getty
%
The meek shall inherit the earth.
The rest of us will go to the stars.
%
The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out.
-- Tennessee Williams
%
The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
%
The more laws and order are made prominent,
the more thieves and robbers there will be.
-- Lao Tsu
%
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
%
The more things change, the more they'll never be the same again.
%
The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us is right.
%
The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
-- Andy Warhol
%
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds
new discoveries, is not "Eureka!", but "That's funny ..."
-- Isaac Asimov
%
The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
-- H. P. Lovecraft
%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around.
I hope I don't get run over again.
%
The next six days are dangerous.
%
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
%
The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the 80-column card.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
However, when you are up to your ass in alligators,
it is difficult to remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
%
The older a man gets, the deeper the snow was as a child.
%
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a necessity.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe.
%
The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.
%
The only good bug is a dead bug.
But the best bug is the one that wasn't there to begin with.
%
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in
the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop and take a rest.
%
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
%
The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.
-- Harry S Truman
%
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on.
It is never any use to oneself.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement.
%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
-- Brian Kernighan
%
The opossum is a very sophisticated animal.
It doesn't even get up until 5 or 6 pm.
%
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.
But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr
%
The optimum committee has no members.
-- Norman Augustine
%
The past always looks better than it was.
It's only pleasant because it isn't here.
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%
The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato
chip market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food
market and is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose
-- James Finke, President, Commodore Int'l Ltd. (1982)
%
The plural of spouse is spice.
%
The police are not there to create disorder.
The police are there to preserve disorder.
-- Richard J. Daly, Mayor of the city of Chicago
%
The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of the Force.
-- Darth Vader
%
The price of greatness is responsibility.
-- Winston Churchill
%
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling,
is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
-- James Baldwin
%
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
%
The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your action.
%
The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it.
-- Glaser and Way
%
The problem with being best man at a wedding is that you never get a chance to prove it.
%
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
-- Elizabeth Taylor
%
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
%
The program is absolutely right; therefore the computer must be wrong.
%
The purpose of most meetings seems to be to get as much human meat as possible into one room.
-- James Iry, via Twitter
%
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong ―
but that's the way to bet.
-- Damon Runyon
%
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
%
The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our
behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel.
-- Steve Furtick
%
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
The revolution will not be televised.
%
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
-- Emerson
%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left-handed people are in their right minds.
%
The road to success is always under construction.
-- Florian Bruckner
%
The secret cement of any organization is trust.
-- Donald E. Walker
%
The shell must break before the bird can fly.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
-- Noelie Altito
%
The silly question is the first intimation of some totally new development.
%
The solution to a problem changes the problem.
-- J. Martin
%
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
-- Ed Bluestone
%
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
%
The steady state of disks is full.
-- Ken Thompson
%
The subject matter of research is no longer nature in itself,
but nature subjected to human questioning . . .
-- Werner Heisenberg
%
The superfluous is very necessary.
-- Voltaire
%
The sweetest of all sounds is praise.
-- Xenophon
%
The Three Laws of Thermodynamics
The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.
The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break even.
The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
%
The time is right to make new friends.
%
The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up, it's always a cat
-- Ogden Nash.
%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do.
%
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
%
The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it's too late.
-- Seymour Cray
%
The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.
-- Louis Kronenberger
%
The truth is that all those having power ought to be mistrusted.
-- James Madison
%
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility.
And vice versa.
%
The typical page layout program is nothing more
than an electronic light table for cutting and pasting documents.
%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%
The unnatural, that too is natural.
-- Goethe
%
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should,
therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.
-- E. W. Dijkstra (1982)
%
The way to make a small fortune in the stock market is to start with a large one.
%
The Web is like a dominatrix.
Everywhere I turn, I see little buttons ordering me to Submit.
-- Nytwind
%
The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.
-- Wavy Gravy
%
The wise shepherd never trusts his flock to a smiling wolf.
%
The world is a fantasy, so let's find out about it.
-- Astrophysicist Dennis Sciama
%
The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
%
[The World Wide Web is] the only thing I know of whose shortened
form - www - takes three times longer to say than what it's short for.
-- attributed to Douglas Adams
%
The world is divided into two kinds of people:
those who think the world is divided into two kinds of people
and those who do not.
%
The world is no nursery.
-- Sigmund Freud
%
The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.
-- Father Robert F. Capon
%
The world will not recognize your talent until you demonstrate it.
%
The world's as ugly as sin, And almost as delightful
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%
The worst form of failure is the failure to try.
%
The years of peak mental activity are between the ages of four and eighteen.
At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all the answers.
%
Theorem: A cat has nine tails. Proof: No cat has eight tails.
A cat has one tail more than no cat. Therefore, a cat has nine tails.
%
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
%
There are a lot of lies going around.... and half of them are true.
-- Winston Churchill
%
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy ...
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
There are no programming bugs, only undocumented features.
%
There are no giant crabs in here, Frank.
%
There are no saints, only unrecognized villains.
%
There are only two kinds of programming languages:
those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup
%
There are 10 kinds of people.
Those who know binary and those who don't.
%
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
-- Heisenberg
%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
-- Disraeli
%
There are three ways to get something done:
do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
%
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 is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
-- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
%
There are two ways to be fooled.
One is to believe what isn't true.
The other is to refuse to accept what is true.
-- Søren Kierkegaard
%
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.
%
There can be no offense where none is taken.
-- Japanese proverb
%
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know nothing about.
%
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature:
that of paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
%
There is no "Complete Idiot's Guide to Creationism,"
but perhaps one is not needed.
-- Andrei Codrescu, on NPR Aug. 25, 1999
%
There is no excuse for the use of the word "synergies" on any project
where common sense and straight talking are the norm.
-- Paul Robinson - FreeBSD-Hackers mailing list, 17 July, 2003
%
There is some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing that it's basically
impossible to send a piece of hate mail through the Internet without its
being touched by a gay program. That's kind of funny.
-- Eric Allman
%
There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage
and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots.
What is it? Distrust.
-- Demosthenes: Philippic 2, sect. 24.
%
There is a time in the tides of men,
which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
On the other hand, don't count on it.
-- T. K. Lawson
%
There is danger in delaying, good fortune in acting.
%
There is no heavier burden than a great potential.
%
There is no idea so sacred that it cannot be questioned, analyzed ... and ridiculed.
-- Cal Keegan
%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
There is no statute of limitations on stupidity.
-- Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
%
There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
%
There is no such thing as not enough time if you are doing what you want to do.
%
There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.
%
There is no time like the pleasant.
%
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing.
%
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
-- Swift
%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about,
and that is not being talked about.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that
if it were spread out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%
There will always be survivors.
-- Robert Heinlen
%
There will be big changes for you, but you will be happy.
%
There you go man,
Keep as cool as you can.
It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave.
Keep on being free!
%
There's a bug somewhere in your code.
%
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness.
Too bad it's not a fence.
%
There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
%
There's at least one fool in every married couple.
%
There's got to be more to life than compile-and-go.
%
There's more to life than sitting around in the sun in your underwear playing the clarinet.
-- Woody Allen
%
There's no future in time travel
%
There's no limit to how complicated things can get,
on account of one thing always leading to another.
-- E. B. White
%
There's no place like home.
%
There's no place like $HOME.
%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
-- Dr. Who
%
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right
keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- J. S. Bach
%
There's nothing wrong with America that a good erection wouldn't cure.
-- David Mairowitz
%
There's only one way to have a happy marriage
and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.
-- Clint Eastwood
%
There's so much plastic in this culture
that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%
They took some of the Van Goghs, most of the jewels, and all of the Chivas!
%
Things are always at their best in the beginning.
-- Pascal
%
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%
Things are not as simple as they seems at first.
-- Edward Thorp
%
Things won't get any better, so get used to it.
%
Think honk if you're a telepath.
%
This isn't brain surgery; it's just television.
-- David Letterman
%
This space unintentionally left blank.
%
Thoreau's Law: If you see a man approaching you with the
obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life.
%
Those who are quick in deciding are in danger of being mistaken.
-- Sophocles
%
Those who believe in astrology are living in houses
with foundations of Silly Putty.
-- Dennis Rawlins, astronomer
%
Those who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
%
Those who can, do; those who can't, simulate.
%
Those who can't repeat the past are condemned to remember it.
-- Mark O'Donnell
%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hacker
%
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
-- Aristotle
%
Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
%
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
Those who talk don't know. Those who don't talk, know.
%
Time and tide wait for no man.
%
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
%
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
-- Graffiti
%
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
%
Time wounds all heels.
%
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents,
and everyone is writing a book.
-- Cicero
%
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%
To be awake is to be alive.
-- Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden Pond"
%
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
%
To be is to program.
%
To be overbusy is a witless task.
-- Sophocles
%
To be perfect is to have changed often.
-- J. H. Newman
%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first,
and call whatever you hit the target.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
To be wrong all the time is an effort, but some manage it.
-- William Feather
%
To be, or what?
-- Sylvester Stallone
%
To criticize the incompetent is easy;
it is more difficult to criticize the competent.
%
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.
-- H. F. Amiel
%
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
-- C. K. Chesterton
%
To err is human, to compute divine.
Trust your computer but not its programmer.
-- Morris Kingston
%
To err is human, to forgive divine.
%
To follow foolish precedents, and wink
with both our eyes, is easier than to think.
-- William Cowper
%
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
-- Thomas Edison
%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%
To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle,
is a deep delight of the blood.
-- Georges Santayana
%
To know the world one must construct it.
-- Cesare Pavese
%
To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.
%
To program anything that is programmable is obsession.
%
To program is to be.
%
To steal from a thief is not theft. It is merely irony.
-- Zorro, while retrieving money taxed from Californians
%
To steal from one person is theft. To steal from many is taxation.
-- Daiell's Law
%
To teach is to learn.
%
Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
%
Today is the last day of your life so far.
%
Too clever is dumb.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
-- Mae West
%
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted.
%
Troglodytism does not necessarily imply a low cultural level.
%
True innovation often comes from the small startup
who is lean enough to launch a market but lacks the heft to own it.
-- Timm Martin
%
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
%
Truthful, (adj.) Dumb and illiterate.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
-- Charles Schulz
%
Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which
the only specification is that it should run noiselessly.
%
Tussman's Law: Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
-- Howard Kandel
%
Two men look out through the same bars; one sees mud, and one the stars.
%
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
%
Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
-- Blaise Pascal
%
Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
Never use your thumb for a rule.
You'll either hit it with a hammer or get a splinter in it.
%
Uncompensated overtime? Just Say No.
%
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing,
there is some ordinance under which you can be booked.
-- Robert D. Sprecht (Rand Corp)
%
Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something,
it can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
Superiority is recessive.
%
Universe, (N.) The problem.
%
University, (N.) Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to fix it.
%
UNIX <u>is</u> user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are.
-- unknown
%
Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.
-- Anthony Hope
%
Unless you are very rich and very eccentric,
you will not enjoy the luxury of a computer in your own home.
-- Edward Yourdon, 1975.
%
Use GOTOs only to implement a fundamental structure.
%
Use debugging compilers.
%
Use free-form input where possible.
%
Use library functions.
%
Use the Force, Luke.
%
Useful knowledge is a great support for intuition.
-- Charles B. Rogers
%
Users of a tool are willing to meet you halfway;
if you do ninety percent of the job, they will be ecstatic.
-- Software Tools, p.136.
%
Van Roy's Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%
Variables won't. Constants aren't.
%
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once.
2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points.
%
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
%
Vests are to suits as seat-belts are to cars.
%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Salvor Hardin
%
Vique's Law:
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously
moving from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
%
Volcano - a mountain with hiccups.
%
Vote anarchist.
%
War is menstruation envy.
%
Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%
Watch out for off-by-one errors.
%
We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
-- Whole Earth Catalog
%
We all know that no one understands anything that isn't funny.
%
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
%
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
We are not alone.
%
We are what we pretend to be.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, JR
%
We call our dog Egypt, because in every room he leaves a pyramid.
%
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
%
We can't let children think it's okay to dress up like Vikings
and go around hollering.
-- Dogbert, on opera
%
We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting
-- Stanley Sutton
%
We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you.
%
We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
%
We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish.
-- John Culkin
%
We don't want to discourage the innovators and those who take risks
because they're afraid of getting sued by a lawsuit.
-- George W. Bush; Washington, D.C.; June 24, 2004
%
We have met the enemy and he is us
-- Walt Kelly (in POGO)
%
We learn from history that we do not learn anything from history.
%
We may not return the affection of those who like us,
but we always respect their good judgment.
%
We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass no matter how self-seeking.
-- F. G. Withington
%
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
%
We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
-- Ann Marion
%
We were spanking each other with meat and then suddenly it got weird.
-- Joe Hacket
%
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve
one technical problem ― how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
%
We work to become, not to acquire.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did.
-- Rufus T. Firefly, in "Duck Soup"
%
We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.
-- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
%
We're the weirdest monkeys ever.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%
We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away.
The center of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away.
You could drive that in a week, but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
-- Andy Rooney
%
Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
%
Weinberg's First Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%
Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
%
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends!
%
Welcome to the human race, with its wars, disease and brutality.
-- Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders), "Show Me"
%
Welcome to The Machine.
%
Welcome to the working week.
I know it don't thrill you
I hope it don't kill you.
%
Well, I killed my own grandfather and here I am!
Guess there's no paradox when time travel isn't involved.
-- Andrew Kennedy
%
Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve.
%
A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.
%
Wethern's Law: Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
%
What a waste it is to lose one's mind ― or not to have a mind at all.
How true that is.
-- V.P. Dan Quayle, garbling the United Negro College Fund slogan
%
What are you doing wrong with our bug-free product?
%
What cannot be eaten must be civilized.
-- Peter Taylor
%
What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? A stick!
-- Bill Kirchenbaum, comedian
%
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
%
What happens when you cut back the jungle? It recedes.
%
What is a magician but a practicing theorist?
-- Obi-Wan Kenobi
%
What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.
-- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
%
What is vice today may be virtue tomorrow.
%
What is virtue today may be vice tomorrow.
%
What is worth doing is worth delegating.
%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
%
What makes the Universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing to compare it with.
%
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
%
What sin has not been committed in the name of efficiency?
%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
%
What this calls for is a special blend of psychology and extreme violence.
-- Vyvyan Basterd, "The Young Ones"
%
What this country needs is a good 5 dollar plasma weapon.
%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
%
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
What we anticipate seldom occurs;
what we least expect generally happens.
-- Bengamin Disraeli
%
What we do not understand we do not possess.
-- Goethe
%
What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?
%
What, me worry?
%
Whatever is not nailed down is mine.
What I can pry loose is not nailed down.
-- Collis P. Huntingdon
%
When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself,
the four young ladies, and, of course, the goat.
%
When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging;
when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive,
its called hospitality.
-- Al Capone
%
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President.
Now I'm beginning to believe it.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
When I was in my twenties, not shaving for a few days gave me a cool Don
Johnson/Miami Vice look. Now that I'm in my forties, though, it tends to
make me look more like Otis from Mayberry.
-- Tom Gray
%
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam.
I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
-- Woody Allen
%
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
%
When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him.
That's where the money is.
-- Robespierre
%
When a fellow says,
"It ain't the money but the principle of the thing",
it's the money.
-- Kim Hubbard
%
When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half loop?
%
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is
not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space
travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the
sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes.  The dog has certain
relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
-- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%
When all other means of communication fail, try words.
%
When bad men combine, the good must associate;
else they will fall one by one,
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
-- Edmund Burke
%
When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask?
Well, last year, I think it was a Tuesday.
%
When everything has been seen to work, all integrated,
you have four more months of work to do.
-- C. Portman of ICL Ltd.
%
When in doubt, do what the President does ― guess.
%
When in doubt, lead trump.
%
When in doubt, punt.
%
When in doubt, use brute force.
-- Ken Thompson
%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which
I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
-- Alan J. Perlis
%
When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem,
you modify the problem, not the remedy.
%
When the wind is great, bow before it; when the wind is heavy, yield to it.
%
When we are planning for posterity,
we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
-- Thomas Paine
%
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
-- General James Gavin
%
When you are alone you are all your own.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
%
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
-- Harry S Truman
%
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
-- The Wall Street Journal
%
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
-- Dave Parnas
%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards ― no one can say
what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
-- J. K. Galbraith
%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
%
Wherever you go, there you are.
-- Buckaroo Banzai
%
Whether you can hear it or not,
the Universe is laughing behind your back
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada"
%
While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong,
the true test is admission to someone else.
%
While money can't buy happiness,
it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.
%
While most peoples' opinions change,
the conviction of their correctness never does.
%
While you don't greatly need the outside world,
it's still very reassuring to know that it's still there.
%
Whistler's Law:
You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge.
%
Who has more leisure than a worm?
-- Seneca
%
Who is W. O. Baker, and why is he saying those terrible things about me?
%
Who works achieves and who sows reaps.
-- Arab Proverb
%
Who's on first?
%
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
%
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.
-- Book of Proverbs
%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement,
unless it was to avoid responsibility with?
%
Why does man kill? He kills for food.
And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
Why does opportunity always knock at the least opportune moment?
%
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that
happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told
it to the same person?
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
Why is it that there are so many more horses' asses than there are horses?
-- G. Gordon Liddy
%
Why isn't "palindrome" spelled the same way backwards?
%
Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Wiker's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%
Will the highways on the Internet become more few?
-- George W. Bush, Concord, NH; January 29, 2000
%
Williams and Holland's Law:
If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods.
%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm
as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
%
With all the fancy scientists in the world,
why can't they just once build a nuclear balm?
%
With clothes the new are best, with friends the old are best.
%
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules,
and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is
no such thing as progress.
-- Ransom K. Ferm
%
With friends like these, who need hallucinations?
%
With great effort, you move the rug aside, revealing a trap door.
%
Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
%
Words are the voice of the heart.
%
Words must be weighed, not counted.
%
Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout.
This is also the worst vegetable of next year.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
Wozencraft's Law: If you make all of your plans on
the assumption that a particular thing won't happen -- it will.
%
Writing code has a place in the human hierarchy
worth somewhere above grave robbing and beneath managing.
-- Gerald Weinberg
%
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
%
Writing in C or C++ is like running a chain saw with all the safety guards removed.
-- Bob Gray
%
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%
XML is just data with that Internet shit wrapped around it.
-- Joe Romello, by way of Steve Sapovits
%
Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
%
Yes, but which self do you want to be?
%
Yes, we have no bonanzas.
%
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today ―
I think he's from the CIA.
%
Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Yinkel, (N.) A person who combs his hair over his bald spot,
hoping no one will notice.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
-- Al Capone
%
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
%
You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
%
It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
-- Jean Cocteau
%
You can measure a programmer's perspective
by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
-- Alan Perlis
%
You can observe a lot just by watching.
-- Yogi Berra
%
You can often profit from being at a loss for words.
-- Frank Tyger
%
You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers.
-- Steven Feiner
%
You can't antagonize and influence at the same time.
%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
%
You can't get there from here.
%
You can't have great software without a great team,
and most software teams behave like dysfunctional families.
-- Jim McCarthy
%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen.
You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.
-- Lauren Bacall
%
You can't teach self-esteem.
Self-esteem arises from attempting challenging tasks and mastering them.
%
You can't underestimate the power of fear.
-- Tricia Nixon
%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%
You cannot build a reputation on what you are going to do.
-- Henry Ford
%
You cannot succeed by criticizing others.
%
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%
You don't have to explain something you never said.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
-- J. D. Salinger
%
You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth.
-- Nicklaus Wirth
%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
-- Alfred Kahn
%
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the beach.
%
You never finish a program, you just stop working on it.
%
You see but you do not observe.
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
%
You should emulate your heroes, but don't carry it too far.
Especially if they are dead.
%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.
-- Henrick Ibson
%
You're never too old to become younger.
-- Mae West
%
Your attitude determines your attitude.
-- Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
%
Your conscience never stops you from doing anything.
It just stops you from enjoying it.
%
Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart, what is true.
%
Your reality is lies and balderdash,
and I'm glad to say that I have no grasp of it.
-- Baron von Munchausen
%
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
%
Youth is the trustee of posterity.
%
Youth is wasted on the young.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
%
Zero Defects, (N.) The result of shutting down a production line.
%
Zimmerman's Law of Complaints: Nobody notices when things go right.
%
Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
since I first called my brother's father dad.
-- William Shakespeare, "King John"
%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
%
[In the U. S. Army] An officer does not take an oath of loyalty to the
Commander-in-Chief.  He takes an oath of loyalty to the Constitution.
-- Sam Donaldson
%
[Leslie Stahl was] a pussy compared to Rather.
-- George H. W. Bush
%
grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
%
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
%
A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.
-- H.L. Mencken, Minority Report, 1956
%
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955.
%
Democracy is also a form of worship.
It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands,
hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
-- H.L. Mencken
%
Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a
well-known solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken, "The Divine Afflatus" (16 November 1917)
%
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
-- H.L. Mencken, "Prejudices: Third Series", 1922
%
I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Judge: a law student who marks his own examination papers.
-- H.L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955
%
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- attributed to H. L. Mencken
%
Men have a much better time of it than women.
For one thing, they marry later.
For another thing, they die earlier.
-- H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949.
%
Never let your inferiors do you a favor. It will be extremely costly.
-- H.L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955.
%
No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
-- Attributed to H.L. Mencken.
%
Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always
come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous.
It should be left to the congenitally sinful,
who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
-- H.L. Mencken, "The Aesthetic Recoil," American Mercury, July, 1931.
%
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.
It is the chief occupation of mankind.
-- H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy, 1949.
%
The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear―fear of the unknown,
the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.
-- H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, 1920.
%
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize-fighters shaking hands.
-- H. L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955.
%
When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.
-- H. L. Mencken, "Newspaper Days: 1899-1906" (1941)
%
Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country,
it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.
-- H.L. Mencken, "Sententiae," The Vintage Mencken, 1955.
%
I am waiting for the "Internet Beermeister,"
so hackers can wage a "Denial of Cerveza" attack.
-- Rich Simons
%
Never work anywhere where you can't find the guy in charge and break his nose.
-- Rich Simons
%
Nothing is more dangerous than a man whose actions are the responsibility of his deity.
-- Rich Simons
%
Windows is a manifestation of commerce.
Unix is a manifestation of culture.
-- Rich Simons
%
Working in Windows is like baking moose shit pie.
Sure, you're baking pies, but look what's in 'em.
-- Rich Simons
%
Be cautious of those who give you advice. That's my advice to you.
-- Steve Mayr
%
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Sounds like a plan.
-- Steve Mayr
%
If you take the easy way out, nothing will come easy.
-- Steve Mayr
%
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.
-- George Carlin
%
Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently,
by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
-- George Carlin
%
I have as much authority as the Pope,
I just don't have as many people who believe it.
-- George Carlin
%
I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.
-- George Carlin
%
If it's true that our species is alone in the universe,
then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.
-- George Carlin
%
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.
-- George Carlin
%
American justice is measured by the amount of money you are willing to risk to make your point.
-- Rich Simons
%
Hey, you know something, people? I'm not black,
but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I'm not white.
-- Frank Zappa
%
I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.
-- Frank Zappa
%
Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.
-- Frank Zappa
%
My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is:
Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.
-- Frank Zappa
%
Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
-- Frank Zappa
%
Take the Kama Sutra.
How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?
-- Frank Zappa
%
The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you
the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
-- Frank Zappa
%
There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
-- Frank Zappa
%
There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful,
that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.
-- Frank Zappa
%
Our brains have just one scale, and we re-size our experiences to fit.
-- Randall Munroe, xkcd
%
There's no such thing as soy milk. It's soy juice.
But they couldn't sell soy juice, so they called it soy milk.
Because anytime you say soy juice, you actually... start to gag.
-- Lewis Black
%
You don't want another Enron? Here's the law: If you have a company,
and it can't explain, in one sentence... what it does... it's illegal!
-- Lewis Black
%
The one thing I think we learned this year is that the Democrats
and the Republicans are completely worthless.
-- Lewis Black
%
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
-- Confucius
%
Rotten wood cannot be carved.
-- Confucius (Analects, Book 5, Chapter 9)
%
Men's natures are alike. It is their habits that carry them far apart.
-- Confucius
%
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.
-- Confucius
%
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.
-- Confucius
%
"That hardly ever happens" is another way of saying, "It happens".
-- Douglas Crockford, during his keynote at YUIConf 2011
%
Write [code] in a way that clearly communicates your intent.
-- Douglas Crockford, during his keynote at YUIConf 2011
%
Geriatric Relativity: The observation that time goes faster the older you get.
-- Brian M. Clapper
%
Critical thinking is the antidote to gullibility and credulity,
which explains why politicians aren't fond of critical thinking.
-- Brian M. Clapper
%
There's a certain freedom in being so tired that you just can't possibly do another thing.
-- Brian M. Clapper
%
Unreason is now ascendant in the United States-in our schools,
in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government.
-- Sam Harris, "The Politics of Ignorance" (2005)
%
I love living in the future. --Bill Cheswick
%
Sendmail(8) proved that if you polish a turd long enough,
you may eventually end up with a shiny coprolite.
-- Bill Cheswick
%
Salad is what food eats. -- Bill Cheswick
%
The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
and color, but also on ability.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President
should on no account be allowed to do the job.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.
-- Madeleine L'Engle
%
That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden.
And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.
-- Madeleine L'Engle
%
Because you're not what I would have you be,
I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.
-- Madeleine L'Engle
%
A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
-- Ansel Adams
%
A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.
-- Ansel Adams
%
A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
-- Ansel Adams
%
In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.
-- Ansel Adams
%
When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain
%
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain
%
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
-- Mark Twain
%
[He was] a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg
who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
-- Mark Twain
%
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain
%
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.
The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
-- Mark Twain
%
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
-- Mark Twain
%
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind;
it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
-- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
I said I didn't know.
-- Mark Twain
%
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.
This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain
%
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits:
freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
-- Mark Twain
%
It is the difference of opinion that makes horse races.
-- Mark Twain
%
It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain
%
Man is the only animal that blushes ― or needs to.
-- Mark Twain
%
My father was an amazing man. The older I got, the smarter he got.
-- Mark Twain
%
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain
%
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
-- Mark Twain
%
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
%
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy".
Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
-- Mark Twain
%
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
-- Mark Twain
%
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
-- Mark Twain
%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority,
it is time to reform.
-- Mark Twain in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
%
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?
It is because we are not the person involved.
-- Mark Twain
%
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
-- Mark Twain
%
A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
-- Mark Twain
%
A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
-- Mark Twain
%
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
-- Mark Twain
%
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
-- Mark Twain
%
Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears,
by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
-- Mark Twain
%
I can live for two months on a good compliment.
-- Mark Twain
%
If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati.
Everything comes there ten years later.
-- Mark Twain
%
Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
-- Mark Twain
%
Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest
without knowing what he is hollering about.
-- Mark Twain
%
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
-- Mark Twain
%
Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress.
But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain
%
The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
-- Mark Twain
%
There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things,
and people who claim to have accomplished things.
The first group is less crowded.
-- Mark Twain
%
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
-- Mark Twain
%
To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
-- Mark Twain
%
Truth is mighty and will prevail.
There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.
-- Mark Twain
%
We have the best government that money can buy.
-- Mark Twain
%
When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
-- Mark Twain
%
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended;
yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
-- Mark Twain
%
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
-- Mark Twain
%
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it is time to pause and reflect.
-- Mark Twain
%
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union,
were not perceived to have any relation.
-- Mark Twain
%
%
Tequila isn't even a drink. It's just a way of getting the police 'round,
without using the phone.
-- Dylan Moran
%
When did ignorance become a point of view?
-- Dilbert (Scott Adams)
%
There's no kill switch on awesome.
-- Dilbert (Scott Adams)
%
A society without the means to detect lies and theft
soon squanders its liberty and freedom.
-- Chris Hedges
%
Really, the comforting side in most conspiracy theory arguments
is the one claiming that anyone who's in power has any plan at all.
-- xkcd #1081 (mouseover text)
%
A person who is nice to you, but rude to a waiter, is not a nice person.
-- Dave Barry
%
There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra than on
Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2030, there should be a large
elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no
recollection of what to do with them.
-- Dave Barry
%
It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical
need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as
some kind of recreational activity.
-- Dave Barry
%
No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
-- Dave Barry
%
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants,
today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
-- Dave Barry
%
People who want to share their religious views with you
almost never want you to share yours with them.
-- Dave Barry
%
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If A equals success, then the formula is:
&emsp;A = X + Y + Z
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
-- Albert Einstein
%
The tyranny of the ignoramuses is insurmountable and assured for all time.
-- Albert Einstein
%
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else, unless it is an enemy.
-- A. Einstein
%
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
-- Albert Einstein
%
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
-- Albert Einstein
%
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
-- Albert Einstein
%
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
-- Albert Einstein
%
The only real valuable thing is intuition.
-- Albert Einstein
%
God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
-- Albert Einstein
%
God does not care about our mathematical difficulties.
He integrates empirically.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-- Albert Einstein
%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-- Albert Einstein
%
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought,
but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
-- Albert Einstein
%
A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
-- Albert Einstein
%
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the
opportunity for development accorded the individual.
-- Albert Einstein
%
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
-- Albert Einstein
%
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.
-- Albert Einstein
%
As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors.
Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics.
I can assure you mine are still greater.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count;
everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-- Albert Einstein
%
He who joyfully marches to music 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.
-- Albert Einstein
%
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
-- Albert Einstein
%
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his ears.
I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
-- Steven Wright
%
I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards.
I got a full house and 4 people died.
-- Steven Wright
%
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo
of the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here".
-- Steven Wright
%
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright
%
You know that feeling when you're leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip over?
Well, that's how I feel all the time.
-- Steven Wright
%
I'm making wine at home, but I make it out of raisins, so it'll be aged automatically.
-- Steven Wright
%
Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see 'em at the beach. Pisses me off.
-- Steven Wright
%
Sponges grow in the ocean. That kills me.
I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be, if that didn't happen.
-- Steven Wright
%
It doesn't matter what temperature a room is,
it's always room temperature.
-- Steven Wright
%
I remember the day the candle shop burned down.
Everyone just stood around and sang, "Happy birthday."
-- Steven Wright
%
If you shoot a mime, should you use a silencer?
-- Steven Wright
%
Once I stayed in a hotel where the pool was on the 23rd floor.
I couldn't believe how deep it was.
-- Steven Wright
%
There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking like an idiot.
-- Steven Wright
%
What's another word for, "thesaurus?"
-- Steven Wright
%
Whenever I think about the past, it's just bring back so many memories.
-- Steven Wright
%
Once I was walking through the woods, and I saw a rabbit standing in front of a candle,
making shadows of people on a tree. I said, "Don't be so sarcastic."
-- Steven Wright
%
I'm a peripheral visionary. I can see into the future, but just way off to the side.
-- Steven Wright
%
It's hard for me to buy clothes, 'cause I'm not my size.
-- Steven Wright
%
Small keyboards make for big mistakes.
-- Joe Gunn
%
The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.
-- Leonard Cohen
%
Poetry is just the evidence of life.
If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
-- Leonard Cohen
%
The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.
-- Leonard Cohen
%
Deprivation is the mother of poetry.
-- Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game
%
There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
-- Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968
%
A human is a system for converting dust billions of years ago into dust
billions of years from now via a roundabout process which involves checking
email a lot.
-- Randall Munroe (xkcd #1173)
%
"Well, vegans, as you know, don't have eggs, meat, dairy, or senses of humor."
-- Peter Sagal, on NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"
%
An ounce of perversion is worth a pound of pure.
-- Dr. Mark Crislip
%
Holy water is often contaminated with bacteria and, as a result,
I hypothesize that Pasteur went to Hell, since, if he'd gone to heaven,
all the water would be clean."
-- Dr. Mark Crislip
%
It is ignoring the nuances of a complicated topic to grind your axe that annoys me.
-- Dr. Mark Crislip
%
Anybody who thinks that homeopathy is appropriate therapy
for anything but thirst is ... unfit to care for patients.
-- Dr. Mark Crislip
%
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit.
Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone:
Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force.
-- Dorothy Parker, on Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"
%
It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God,
if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Sometimes, a grand adventure begins when you lick the evil.
-- Joe Pizzirusso
%
Angels are very good at math. That's why they call them arc-angels.
-- Steven Novella (The Skeptics Guide to the Universe)
%
Girls are complicated. The instruction manual that comes with girls is 800 pages,
with chapters 14, 19, 26 and 32 missing, and it's badly translated, hard to figure out.
-- Huge Laurie, on raising a girl
%
There is no material safety data sheet for astatine. If there were,
it would just be the word "NO" scrawled over and over in charred blood.
-- Randall Munroe, "What If?"
%
Telling a child that everyone dies is the hardest thing about being a party clown.
-- James Ferace
%
Last night, I told my kid that the night light only makes it easier for the monsters to find her.
-- James Ferace
%
There’s a mighty big difference between good, sound reasons
and reasons that sound good.
-- Burton Hillis
%
There are&nbsp;two ways to be fooled.
One is to believe what isn’t true;
the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
%
Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
-- Frank Tyger
%
Most people would like to be delivered from temptation,
but would like it to keep in touch.
-- Robert Orben
%
When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means the sun is about to set.
-- Liu Yulang
%
You can beat 40 scholars with one fact,
but you cannot beat one idiot with 40 facts.
-- Rumi
%