Most techies would rather get syphilis than be managers.
-- Bryan
~~~
Normal people worry me. That's why I'm so comfortable around myself.
-- Heather M.
~~~
Don't make me kill you and eat you.
-- Mike Bossart
~~~
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.
-- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
~~~
Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
-- George Eliot (1819-1880)
~~~
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
-- G. K. Chesterfield
~~~
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
-- Umberto Eco
~~~
Grove giveth and Gates taketh away.
-- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands
~~~
How can I lose to such an idiot?
-- A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)
~~~
Hell is paved with good samaritans.
-- William M. Holden
~~~
The average person thinks he isn't.
-- Father Larry Lorenzoni
~~~
I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!
-- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
~~~
If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?
-- Will Rogers (1879-1935)
~~~
Man is a game playing animal and a computer is another way to play games.
-- Scott Adams
~~~
There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.
-- Daniel C. Dennett
~~~
Let us face ourselves bravely as we are. For only a philosophy that recognizes reality can lead us into true happiness, and only that kind of philosophy is sound and healthy.
-- Lin Yutang
~~~
Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other philosophers are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.
-- H.L. Mencken
~~~
Last night as I lay in bed looking at the stars I thought 'Where the hell is the ceiling ?'
~~~
Crash programs fail because they are based on theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.
-- Wernher von Braun.
~~~
In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.
-- Edward P. Tryon.
~~~
What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad.
-- Dave Barry.
~~~
I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost...
~~~
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
-- Richard Feynman.
~~~
Never face facts; if you do, you'll never get up in the morning.
-- Marlo Thomas.
~~~
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
-- Woody Allen.
~~~
That's the problem with nature. Something's always stinging you or oozing mucus on you. Let's go watch TV.
-- Calvin.
~~~
Campaigns to bearproof all garbage containers in wild areas have been difficult because, as one biologist put it, 'There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists'.
~~~
I knew a mathematician who said 'I do not know as much as God. But I know as much as God knew at my age'.
-- Milton Shulman (1925-), Canadian writer, journalist, and critic.
~~~
But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs.
-- Francis Darwin (1848-1925), British scientist.
~~~
Jesus loves you. Then again, so does Barney.
~~~
Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.
-- Richard Bach, Running from Safety: An Adventure of the Spirit
~~~
Man is a social animal - If you don't want to be an animal, don't be social.
~~~
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.
~~~
Sorry I missed church, I've been busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.
~~~
Stick with me baby and I'll buy you rocks as big as diamonds.
~~~
WANTED: Meaningful overnight relationship.
~~~
Banging your head against a wall uses 150 calories an hour.
~~~
Billy Graham has described heaven as a family reunion that never ends. What could hell possibly be like? Home videos of the same reunion?
~~~
Cooking lesson #1: don't fry bacon in the nude.
~~~
Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it.
~~~
Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is your list of girls who were naughty.
~~~
If it were truly the thought that counted, more women would be pregnant.
~~~
Being married to a programmer is like having a cat. You talk to it but you're never really sure if it hears you, much less comprehends what you say.
~~~
Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.
-- Seymore Cray, on virtual memory.
~~~
Mountain Dew and doughnuts... because breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
~~~
Multitasking /adj./ 3 PCs and a chair with wheels.
~~~
Programmer /n./ A red-eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with inanimate objects.
~~~
For evil to triumph it is only necessary for good men to buy Microsoft.
~~~
Sometimes I think about going to the gym and working out in order to impress women, but hey, that's why I learned UNIX.
~~~
The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong. ... My answer to him was, ... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
-- Isaac Asimov,The Relativity of Wrong
~~~
It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory. In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.
-- Michio Kaku, Hyperspace
~~~
Working with Unix is like wrestling a worthy opponent. Working with windows is like attacking a small whining child who is carrying a .38.
-- puck
~~~
Sanity is a one trick pony - all you have is rational thought. But when you're good and loony, the sky's the limit!
-- The Tick
~~~
I couldn't help myself. They were so big and round and beautiful, I just had to touch them! Then she started screaming "MY EYES!, MY EYES!" and ruined the mood.
~~~
Practice safe eating - always use condiments.
~~~
If the sales person at your local software store gives you a blank stare or says they don't carry it, I recommend scrunching your face up and saying something incredibly condescending like "It runs under Windows - maybe you've heard of THAT." (Macintosh users adjust accordingly. If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a UNIX user to show you how it's done.)
-- Scott Adams, author of Dilbert
~~~
The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their money.
-- Ed Bluestone, The National Lampoon
~~~
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
~~~
Developing skills that depend on a proprietary product makes you a sharecropper on your own brain.
-- Donald B. Marti Jr.
~~~
Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.
-- Tim Berners-Lee, Technology Review, July 1996
~~~
If you want the type of support that is available from proprietary software companies, we will try to find you a consultant to sing to you on the phone for half an hour, then give you a wrong answer.
~~~
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.
-- Doug Gwyn
~~~
The Three Great Virtues of a Programmer
Laziness
The quality that makes you go to the great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.
Impatience
The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer.
Hubris
Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer.
-- Larry Wall and Randal L. Schwartz, Programming Perl
~~~
Elegance?
Pardon me, Your Honor, the concept is not easy to explain - there is an ineffable quality to some technology, described by its creators as a concinnitous, or technically sweet, or a nice hack--signs that it was made with great care by one who was not merely motivated but inspired.  It is the difference between an engineer and a hacker.
-- Judge Fang and Miss Pao in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
~~~
People understand instinctively that the best way for computer programs to communicate with each other is for each of the them to be strict in what they emit, and liberal in what they accept. The odd thing is that people themselves are not willing to be strict in how they speak, and liberal in how they listen.  You'd think that would also be obvious.
-- Larry Wall
~~~
Sometime when you least expect it, Love will tap you on the shoulder...and ask you to move out of the way because it still isn't your turn.
-- N.V. Plyter
~~~
It's like being in a library where someone has scattered all the books on the floor, attached them together with threads and you are in the dark.
-- MorningSide, CBC Radio, about the WWW
~~~
If you can't lower heaven, raise hell
~~~
Order is for idiots, genius can handle chaos
~~~
The question is not if you are paranoid, it is if you are paranoid enough
~~~
From an actual newspaper contest where entrants age 4 to 15 were asked to imitate "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey": My young brother asked me what happens after we die. I told him we get buried under a bunch of dirt and worms eat our bodies. I guess I should have told him the truth - that most of us go to Hell and burn eternally - but I didn't want to upset him.
-- Age 10
~~~
Earth First! We'll strip mine the other planets later.
~~~
Once I tried to kill myself with bungee cord. I kept almost dying.
-- Stephen Wright
~~~
Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
~~~
I've learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in.
~~~
The reason attempted suicide is illegal: The government can't tax you if you're dead.
~~~
For refund, insert baby here.
-- Graffiti on condom machine
~~~
Men are like fine wine. They start out as grapes and it is our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark until they mature into something we'd like to have dinner with.
~~~
They say making love with me is like a roller coaster ride. Over far too quickly, and afterwards they wanna throw up.
-- Victor Lewis-Smith
~~~
Nobody's perfect... well, there was this guy, but we killed him.
~~~
I prefer to describe my profession as that of a "Contemporary Anthropological Interactive Observer" because it has just the right amount of flair. Besides, "stalker" is such an ugly word.
~~~
Memorize quotes. They're useful in ending and winning arguments. Then again, so are semi-automatic weapons.
-- Tony Detharidge
~~~
Abortion brings out the inner child in you.
-- Jeff Epperson
~~~
Got a cat the other day. Had to swerve to get it, but I got it.
~~~
I like going to a school yard and watching all the little kids run and scream on the school grounds. Of course they don't know that I'm using blanks.
~~~
When birds fly in the right formation, they need only exert half the effort. Even in nature, teamwork results in collective laziness.
-- Despair.com
~~~
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
-- Despair.com
~~~
When I die, I would like to be cremated and have my ashes put into the "Mr.Coffee" machine. Brew up a cup of "Joe." It would one be stiff drink.
-- Joe Flush, comedian
~~~
On Achievement: The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the lawn-mower.
-- www.despair.com
~~~
I work very hard every day. Millions on welfare depend on me.
~~~
The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. And then you die. What's that? A bonus? I think the life-cycle is all backwards. You should die first and get it all over with. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch. You go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol and party. You get ready for high school. You go to grade school and become a kid. You play. You have no responsibilities. You become a little baby & go back into the womb. You spend your last nine months floating... Then, you finish off as an orgasm. I like it.
-- Andy Rooney
~~~
Never argue with a fool - they will drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.
-- The Fool's Law
~~~
Truth hurts. Maybe not as much as jumping on a bicycle with a seat missing, but it hurts.
-- Drebin, Naked Gun 2 1/2
~~~
I'd like to quit thinking of the present as some minor insignificant preamble to something else.
-- Dazed and confused
~~~
Now it's time for one of my favorite cartoons. It's a sad, depressing story about a pathetic coyote who spends every waking moment in the futile pursuit of a sadistic roadrunner, who mocks him and laughs at him as he is repeatedly crushed and maimed. I hope you enjoy it!
-- Uncle Nutzie, UHF
~~~
May the best of your past be the worst of your future.
-- Long kiss goodnight
~~~
I'm not a follower... I'm a leader with the same idea.
-- Kenny Dude
~~~
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point. We go round every two hundred million years. And its only one of millions and billions in this amazing and expanding universe. So remember you feeling very small and insecure and how amazingly unlikely was your birth. Just hope that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space. 'Cause there's bugger all down her on Earth!
-- Monty Python, The Galaxy Song
~~~
Women might be able to fake orgasms, but men can fake whole relationships.
-- Matt a.k.a. NoFear
~~~
Sanity is the playground for the unimaginative
~~~
Everyone has issues except me - I have a damn subscription.
-- JD Ives
~~~
Eskimo's have 49 words in their language to define snow because they have so much of it. In the English language, there are more then 50 ways to define a moron...
~~~
Life is a roller-coaster. We spend part of the time waiting for the ups, part of the time screaming at the downs, wishing we could ride it again when we're dying, and the entire time sitting on our butts getting lazier.
-- Grace K
~~~
The reason why grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
-- Sam Levenson
~~~
In the sixties, normal people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
-- JC Mikesell
~~~
Human Cloning doesn't scare me. People are "unethically making babies" in America all the time.
~~~
May the Lord reach out to you with his guiding hand and smack you upside the head with it.
-- Excel
~~~
My parents keep asking how school was. It's like saying, "How was that drive-by shooting?" You don't care how it was. You're lucky to get out alive.
~~~
I may not be Fred Flinstone, but I bet I can make your bed rock!
~~~
If you are reading this, I am already dead. Ever since Mr. Wonka left me the Chocolate Factory, my life has been a living hell. I have woken on several occasions to what I am sure were the Oompa Loompas stroking my young body. Within two weeks of taking control of the factory my Grandfather became addicted to Fizzy Lifting drinks, culminating in a tragic fan accident. I am sure the Oompa Loompas ate the remains.
The ghosts of the dead children haunt my every waking moment, and pursue me through these twisted halls in my nightmares. Veruca screams, burning from the harsh flames of the furnace. Augustus Gloop gurgles chocolate from his bloated features as he struggles to call my name. The gum-chewing girl bursts on a regular basis, showering me with blueberry-scented entrails. I think Mike TV still lives in the walls like a mouse, stealing my things and keeping me awake with his tiny footsteps.
My other grandparents died long ago, and I shudder to think of their final fate at the hands of those tiny orange-skinned monsters. My mother long ago went insane, teeth rotting from candy. She is locked in the cellar now, though I feel her fetid breath washing over me from time to time and hear her shrieking laughter... "golden ticket... golden ticket."
The pressures of all this have broken me, compounded with the trials of a ten year old trying to run a factory populated with imps, with the ledgers all cut in half and unreadable. As I take my life, leaping from the Wonkavator (freedom, sweet freedom), I damn thee Wonka.
Where ever your soul may rest, I damn thee.
Farewell.
Charlie
~~~
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all planets in the universe can be said to be zero. From this, it follows, that the population of the whole universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely products of a deranged imagination.
-- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
~~~
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
-- Richard Lovelace, from To Althea, from Prison
~~~
When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church - and there was nobody left to be concerned.
-- Martin Niemoller (1892-1984), in Congressional Record 14 October 1968, p. 31636, (Howard Samuels speaking and "recalling the answer that Pastor Martin Niemoller...gave...")
~~~
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pense'es, #895.
~~~
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
-- Alexander Pope. 1688-1744. Essay on Man. Epistle i. Line 95.
~~~
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame or to commend,
A tim'rous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er oblig'd;
Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause.
-- Alexander Pope,_Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_
~~~
O, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
But when we've practised quite a while
How vastly we improve our style.
-- J.R. Pope, A Word of Encouragement (updating Sir Walter Scott's Marmion)
~~~
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survived, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-- Ozymandias by Percy Blythe Shelley:
~~~
If you want the truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world. it will fly; it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb,'a lie will go round the world while truth is putting its boots on.
-- C H Spurgeon (1834-1892) Gems from Spurgeon 1859.
~~~
I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman's cares.
-- George Washington (1732-99), U.S. general, president. Letter, 20 July 1794.
~~~
Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize,
And sailed through bloody seas?
-- Isaac Watts, Am I a Soldier of the Cross? 1721
~~~
The age is dull and mean. Men creep,
Not walk; with blood too pale and tame
To pay the debt we owe to shame;
Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep
Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want;
Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep
Six day to Mammon, one to Cant.
-- John Greeleaf Whittier (1809-1892), For Righteousness' Sake, 1855
~~~
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.
-- Oscar Wilde (The Ballad of Reading Gaol).
~~~
If I am to speak for ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.
-- Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) (From Josephus Daniels' _The Wilson Era: Years of War and After_ [1946])
~~~
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given out hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
-- William Wordsworth
~~~
When you get what you want in your
struggle for self and the world makes you
king for a day just go to the mirror and look
at yourself and see what that man has to say.
For it isn't your father or mother or wife,
whose judgment upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict count most in
your life is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people may think you a straight
shootin' chum and call you a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you're only
a bum if you can't look him straight in the eye.
He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
for he's with you clear up to the end, and you've
passed your most dangerous, difficult test if the
man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway
of life and get pats on the back as you go,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears if you've
cheated the man in the glass
-- Anonymous
~~~
When you love, you must not expect anything in return, for if you do you are not loving but investing. If you love you must prefer to accept pain, for if you expect happiness, you are not loving, but using.
~~~
Love isn't a matter of finding the right person, but creating the right relationship. The question isn't how much love there is at the beginning, but how much love there is at the end.
~~~
Christians believe life begins at conception. Liberals believe that life begins at birth. Jews believe that life begins when the children leave home and the dog dies.
~~~
In passing, we should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.
-- Francis Schaeffer
~~~
There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable,drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation.They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.
-- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
~~~
Great men of action . . . never mind on occasion being ridiculous; in a sense it is part of their job, and at times they all are. A prophet or an achiever must never mind an occasional absurdity, it is an occupational risk.
-- Oswald Mosley, (1896-1980)
~~~
To congratulate oneself on one's warm commitment to the environment, or to peace, or to the oppressed, and think no more is a profound moral fault.
-- Robert Conquest, _Reflections on a Ravaged Century_, 1999
~~~
As the wicked are hurt by the best things, so the godly are bettered by the worst things.
-- William Jenkyn
~~~
It is by affliction chiefly that the heart of man is purified, and that the thoughts are fixed on a better state. Prosperity has power to intoxicate the imagination, to fix the mind upon the present scene, to produce confidence and elation, and to make him who enjoys affluence and honors forget the hand by which they were bestowed. It is seldom that we are otherwise than by affliction awakened to a sense of our imbecility, or taught to know how little all our acquisitions can conduce to safety or quiet, and how justly we may inscribe to the superintendence of a higher power those blessings which in the wantonness of success we considered as the attainments of our policy and courage....
-- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
~~~
I'd like to know why sociologists can't decide whether movie sex and violence has any effect on children, but there's a universal consensus that even a glimpse of a Camel will force children to become lifelong smokers.
-- Jonah Goldberg
~~~
You can stay young as long as you learn. 
-- Emily Dickinson
~~~
The long dull monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the Devil.
-- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) "The Screwtape Letters," 1941
~~~
Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about man's search for God. For me, they might as well talk about the mouse's search for a cat...
-- C. S. Lewis
~~~
If the general attitude of Canadians toward their mighty neighbor to the south could be distilled into a single phrase, that phrase would probably be "Oh, shut up." The Americans talked too much, mainly about themselves. Their torrid love affair with their own history and legend exceeded--painfully--the quasi-British Canadian idea of modesty and self-restraint. ... They were forever busting their buttons in spasms of insufferable yahoo pride or all too publicly agonizing over their crises.
-- Bruce McCall, _Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Canada_, 1997
~~~
One of the peculiarities of the American Revolution was that its leaders pinned their hopes on the organization of decision-making units, the structuring of their incentives, and the counterbalancing of the units against one another, rather than on the more usual (and more exciting) principle of substituting "the good guys" for "the bad guys".
-- Thomas Sowell
~~~
I desired as many as could to join together in fasting and prayer, that God would restore the spirit of love and of a sound mind to the poor deluded rebels in America.
-- John Wesley, Journal, Aug 1, 1777
~~~
Green politics at its worst amounts to a sort of Zen fascism; less extreme, it denounces growth and seeks to stop the world so that we can all get off.
-- Chris Patten, London, April 19, 1989
~~~
Can you understand it, for I cannot, how a man is a free agent, a responsible agent, so that his sin is his own willful sin and lies with him and never with God, and yet at the same time God's purposes are fulfilled and his will is done even by demons and corrupt men? I cannot comprehend it: without hesitation I believe it, and rejoice so to do , I never hope to comprehend it.
-- Charles Haddon Spurgeon
~~~
The Bible teaches that both God is in control and that people make real choices. These two truths go side by side throughout the Scriptures. The Bible absolutely does not teach fatalism. But neither does it teach that people are absolutely free and autonomous. The effects of the Fall and our very natures restrain us. This is called an antinomy. That is (per the American Heritage Dictionary) "A contradiction between principles or conclusions that seem equally necessary and reasonable."
-- Mike Walbert
~~~
I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time.
-- Charles Schulz
~~~
Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
~~~
The theory of the unmorality of art has established itself firmly in the strictly artistic classes. They are free to produce anything they like. They are free to write a _Paradise Lost_ in which Satan shall conquer God. They are free to write a _Divine Comedy_ in which heaven shall be under the floor of hell. And what have they done? Have they produced in their universality anything grander or more beautiful than the things uttered by the fierce Ghibelline Catholic, by the rigid Puritan schoolmaster? ... Milton does not merely beat them at his piety, he beats them at their own irreverence. In all their little books of verse you will not find a finer defiance of God than Satan's. Nor will you find the grandeur of paganism felt as that fiery Christian felt it who described Faranata lifting his head as in disdain of hell.
-- G. K. Chesterton, _Heretics_, 1905
~~~
My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too - for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
-- C.S. Lewis _Mere Christianity_
~~~
Every nickel spent doesn't return a dime, some things you do take longer than you expect, and some things don't materialize at all. That's the nature of using IT to solve new problems in new ways.
-- Bill Murphy, CTO of Omnexus, a digital marketplace for the plastics industry
~~~
I'm sorry, but comfortable is the last thing I want in my server room. I want it unbearably cold, and noisy. I want items scattered dangerously around the floor. I want random floor tiles to be missing. I want a very old sandwich of undetermined origin sitting half-eaten in the corner. I want the first thought of any person that enters my server room to be "Dear $DEITY, I must get out of this place IMMEDIATELY!"
-- Mike Sphar
~~~
I love the way Microsoft follows standards. In much the same manner that fish follow migrating caribou.
-- Paul Tomblin
~~~
Contestant number two, how do you set up a dial-up connection in Windows 95?
Call the systems administration people and tell them my machine is broken.
BZZZZZZZZT! Oh, I'm sorry but that answer is so wrong that our systems people have already found your address and will be visiting you personally tonight.
-- Janet Rolsma
~~~
Never meddle in the affairs of NT. It is slow to boot and quick to crash.
-- Stephen Harris
~~~
BTW. Violence, rude language, excessive drinking, paganism. It's hard to find children's books like that these days.
-- Stig Morten Valstad
~~~
Every time you apply the LART, you give some poor luser a chance to redeem itself and RTFM next time.
-- Infinitas
Oh. You didn't apply the LART hard enough. They get to RTFM next time around the Wheel Of Reincarnation, if you do it right. :)  
-- Thorf
~~~
For their next act, they'll no doubt be buying a firewall running under NT, which makes about as much sense as building a prison out of meringue.
-- Tanuki
~~~
You can lead an idiot to knowledge but you cannot make him think.
You can, however, rectally insert the information, printed on stone tablets, using a sharpened poker.  
-- Nicolai
~~~
Remember - if all you have is an axe, every problem looks like hours of fun.
-- Frossie
~~~
The ability to watch M*A*S*H on demand justified purchasing a VCR for myself. That show taught me a lot of useful things; for example, if one's skills are sufficiently in demand, one can wear a bathrobe to work, and generally have one's eccentricities tolerated.
-- Gus
~~~
Embrace your inner cynicism. Delight in the joy of knowing, with complete certainty, that the world is filled with idiots, losers, and all other assorted manner of higher life forms, and that a great many of of them trying their damndest to win the competition for "Species Least Likely To Be Useful". I figure, they'll probably lose that competition too, proving once again that the cockroach is mightier than the "man".
-- Jeff Gostin
~~~
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to using Windows NT for mission-critical applications.
-- What Yoda *meant* to say Devin L. Ganger
~~~
We are either doing something, or we are not. 'Talking about' is a subset of 'not'.
~~~
When people ask me what my religion is, I say either "Frisbeetarianism" which satisfies them if they're not listening closely, or "I'm trying to make up my mind between the Greek and Babylonian chaos goddesses, do you think Eris or Mummu has dishier priestesses?"  Though now I'm a minister I should probably take that question more seriously.
-- Peter da Silva
~~~
First time I've gotten a programming job that required a drug test. I was worried they were going to say "you don't have enough LSD in your system to do Unix programming".
-- Paul Tomblin
~~~
I mean, we all self-LART to varying degrees on occasion. What sets us apart from the lusers is that we can pull ourselves out of the nosedive.
-- Mike Sphar
~~~
I'm not lean and mean, I'm surly and anorexic.
-- Chris "Saundo" Saunderson
~~~
I quite often tell my SO to iron my shirts, make dinner, do the cleaning, etc... but only because I like to hear her laugh.
-- manc0046
~~~
No lusers were harmed in the creation of this Usenet article.
AND I WANT TO KNOW WHY NOT!
-- Geoff. Lane
~~~
If USENET is anarchy, IRC is a paranoid schizophrenic after 6 days on speed.
-- Chris "Saundo" Saunderson
~~~
[Re: "Da Bomb" hot sauce]  This stuff will not only take the paint off a battleship, it'll also hunt down the painter and hir family, murder them, desecrate the bodies, and proceed to have its way with the family pet.
-- Mark C. Langston
~~~
The difference between math and physics is the difference between masturbation and sex.
-- Paul Tomblin
They're both messy, but physics can get you in much more trouble.
-- Malcom Ray
~~~
We aim to please. Ourselves, mostly, but we do aim to please.
-- Anthony DeBoer
~~~
The only sound a luser should make is a pleasant squishing sound as they're turned into a twitching pile of mince meat.
-- Chris "Saundo" Saunderson
~~~
Let's face it, sysadmins are composed of the most adaptable, least stress-susceptible people around. Lusers aren't. Pit one against the other, and I'll not be taking any bets on the luser winning (10 000 to 1 against the luser, anyone? No? Nobody? Thought not.)
-- Dan Holdsworth
~~~
And I can't even begin to describe what a joy it is to work with a real metal case, with swing-out drive bays, that was designed for easy access and not built by the lowest-bidding Malaysian Monkey On Crack.
-- Adam J. Thornton
~~~
Actually, we have scientifically determined that Heisenberg did indeed sleep exactly here. However, we have no idea whatsoever just how fast asleep he was.
-- Dave Aronson
~~~
Hi, we're a group of ominous looking people who happen to deal with way too much spam. We'd like to wander aimlessly around your house discussing vivid images of what should be done to spammers, their families and casual acquaintances, and make veiled threats as to the future of your limbs (attached or not), animals and the insertion of farming implements into your orifices.
-- Chris "Saundo" Saunderson
~~~
Give a luser a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a luser to fish and he'll bug you for life:
My bait's not working, but I haven't changed anything!
The river's gone down. Fix it!
Why is the net so slow today?
-- Malcolm Ray
I keep on getting my line caught on myself - why is it so hard to fish ?
Can I surf the river ?
I fell in the river and now I'm all wet - fix things so that I don't get wet when I fall in
Why can't the fish just jump out of the river into my frying pan ? It would make fishing so much easier
What is a fish ?
I can't fish (which could be anything from not having a fishing rod to using a brick for bait).
-- Simes
Light a fire for a luser and he'll be warm for a night; set a luser on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
-- fun
Give a man dynamite and soon the village will be showered with mud and rocks and unrecognizable bits of fish.
-- Peter Gutmann
~~~
I have to agree though, showing a misbehaving machine one of it's brethren in pieces, in pain, and in trouble seems to make them behave.  Swearing at them, bleeding into them and showing them their fates - three of the tenets of sysadminning.
-- Chris "Saundo" Saunderson
~~~
Well, that's a whole 'nother thread by now, and I don't want to tangle too many threads in one place. Being called a Usenet Kitten would be embarrassing.
-- Alan
~~~
In a small way, Windows NT is a Unix.
-- Bill Gates
Because of the way it resembles something decent that's been emasculated?
-- adamsc
~~~
While preceding your entrance with a grenade is a good tactic in Quake, it can lead to problems if attempted at work.
-- C Hacking
~~~
Is it just me, or does anyone else here find it vaguely unsettling that you get your theology from Star Trek?
-- Anthony DeBoer
Yeah, he should get it from B5 like us normal people.
-- Paul Tomblin
~~~
The correct way to roll NT out is out the door and into the nearest Dempster Dumpster or other large waste receptacle.
-- Mike Andrews
~~~
The problem with people whose minds are in the gutter is that they keep blocking my periscope.
-- Peter Gutmann
~~~
When computers emit smoke, it means they've chosen a new Pope. Unfortunately, they invariably choose the wrong one and immediately get condemned to non-functionality for heresy.
-- Anthony DeBoer
~~~
Re : ex-teamster, ex-nun potential PFY
...she can use the nun training to guilt the lusers after LARTing them: "Did you think Jesus died for your sins so you could fsck with the laser printer?"
-- Paul Joslin
~~~
Bleh. If I ever witness such a thing I'll become Amish, I swear.
-- Caton Little
All right son, get up to your room. That's it, I've had it, you are Amish, young man. For the rest of this weekend. Did you hear me? Amish! And don't come down till you've made some noodles and raised a barn.
-- Joe Thompson
~~~
Re: alt.sysadmin.recovery
A fitting punishment for kindly naivete, to end up belonging here.
-- Chris Johnson
~~~
Lucky Charms with Bailey's...the true Irish breakfast.
-- Daniel Macks
~~~
AFAIR, being insane is usually a pre-requisite for becoming a sysadmin. In the few cases where it's not pre-requisite, it's certainly going to be a bonus.
-- SIggi the Underpaid
~~~
Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be very selective about who its friends are.
-- Kyle Hearn
~~~
Today I got to meet someone who had put their disk, naked, in a backpack, with a LIVE CAT. The cat had mauled the metal cover, managed to separate the plastic shell of the disk, and played with it. Of course, she wanted to know if we could recover her files.  Fortunately, someone who was not required by their job to be really friendly to the lusers got to laugh loudly at her first...
-- Yonatan Zunger
~~~
You are in the presence of a system administrator. KNEEL
~~~
SCSI is *not* magic. There are fundamental technical reasons why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain now and then.
~~~
Pete Krawczyk wrote :
> *sigh* Oh, how I wish lusers could read documentation more than they read
> porn...
That's IT! PORNOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION!
...and as she finally reached orgasm, she screamed 'the mail server will be down for three hours tonight! Yes! Oh, yes!'
-- J.D. Falk
~~~
My group's mission statement - You want *what* ? By *WHEN* ?
-- Simon Burr
~~~
It's nice to be loved, but there's a lot to be said for CRINGING RESPECT
~~~
Managers are those lusers who can tell you what to do and you kinda[3] have to listen.
[3] I mean "kinda" in the "not really, in fact, not at all" mode.
-- Chris Saunderson
~~~
ZENgineering: v. when you've looked at the obvious to solve a problem you start doing something completely different to fix it. Other examples of ZENingeering solutions are: rebooting the router the opposite side of the campus to where the lusers are reporting network problems (Tuesday). I have no idea what the ATM bridge/router was doing to affect the network. it's not even got anything plugged into the Ethernet interfaces, and it only has one ATM port!  Richard
~~~
Sanity is like money; you should just have enough to get by. Any more and you turn into a freak.
-- rone
~~~
Impossible Code
To code the impossible code
To bring up a virgin machine
To pop out of endless recursion
To grok what appears on the screen
To right the unrightable bug
To endlessly twiddle and thrash
To mount the unmountable magtape
To stop the unstoppable crasvin : That's plenty. By the timh
This is my quest
To debug that code
No matter how hopeless
No matter the load
To write those routines
Without question or pause
To be willing to hack FORTRAN IV
For a heavenly cause
And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my code will run cuspy and calm
When it's put to the test
And the queue will be better for this
That one man, scorned and destined to lose
Still strove with his last allocation
To scrap the unscrappable kludge
~~~
Another effective [debugging] technique is to explain your code to someone else. This will often cause you to explain the bug to yourself. Sometimes it takes no more than a few sentences, followed by an embarrassed "Never mind. I see what's wrong. Sorry to bother you." This works remarkably well; you can even use non-programmers as listeners. One university computer center kept a teddy bear near the help desk. Students with mysterious bugs were required to explain them to the bear before they could speak to a human counselor.
-- From "The Practice Programming" by Brian W Kernighan & Rob Pike
~~~
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating
and impenetrable fog!
-- Calvin
~~~
That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!
-- Calvin
~~~
Well, it just seemed wrong to cheat on an ethics test.
-- Calvin
~~~
Calvin: Can you make a living playing silly games?
His Dad: Actually, you can be among the most overpaid people on the planet.
~~~
If you do the job badly enough, sometimes you don't get asked to do it again.
-- Calvin
~~~
The only skills I have the patience to learn are those that have no real application in life.
-- Calvin
~~~
Some people are pragmatists, taking things as they come and making the best of the choices available. Some people are idealists, standing for principle and refusing to compromise. And some people just act on any whim that enters their heads. I pragmatically turn my whims into principles!
-- Calvin
~~~
But Calvin is no kind and loving god! He's one of the old gods! He demands sacrifice!
-- Calvin
~~~
If something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.
-- Calvin
~~~
You can present the material, but you can't make me care.
-- Calvin
~~~
I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life ... Procrastinating and rationalizing.
-- Calvin
~~~
I liked things better when I didn't understand them.
-- Calvin
~~~
I think nighttime is dark so you can imagine your fears with less distraction.
-- Calvin
~~~
Miss Wormwood: What state do you live in?
Calvin: Denial.
Miss Wormwood: I don't suppose I can argue with that...
~~~
My life needs a rewind/erase button.
-- Calvin
~~~
Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.
-- Calvin
~~~
Susie: You'd get a good grade without doing any work.
Calvin: So?
Susie: It's wrong to get rewards you haven't earned.
Calvin: I've never heard of anyone who couldn't live with that.
~~~
If you couldn't find any weirdness, maybe we'll just have to make some!
-- Calvin
~~~
MOM, CAN I SET FIRE TO MY BED MATTRESS?
No, Calvin.
CAN I RIDE MY TRICYCLE ON THE ROOF?
No, Calvin.
Then can I have a cookie?
No, Calvin.
(She's on to me.)
~~~
I don't need to compromise my principles, because they don't have the slightest bearing on what happens to me anyway.
-- Calvin
~~~
Calvin : I think we have got enough information now, don't you?
Hobbes : All we have is one "fact" that you made up.
Calvin : That's plenty. By the time we add an introduction, a few illustrations and a conclusion, it'll look like a graduate thesis.
~~~
Hobbes : Shouldn't we read the instructions?
Calvin : Do I look like a sissy?
~~~
Why can't I ever build character at a Miami condo or a casino somewhere?
-- Calvin
~~~
There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
-- Calvin
~~~
Dad are you vicariously living through me in the hope that my accomplishments will validate your mediocre life and in some way compensate for all the opportunities you botched ?
-- Calvin
~~~
I'm killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.
-- Calvin
~~~
A good compromise leaves everyone mad.
-- Calvin
~~~
Miss Wormwood, could we arrange our seats in a little circle and have a little discussion? Specifically, I'd like to debate whether cannibalism ought to be grounds for leniency in murders since it is less wasteful.
-- Calvin
~~~
Calvin: Who can fathom the feminine mind?
Hobbes: I like 'em anyway
~~~
"When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade." -Susie 
"I say, when life gives you a lemon, wing it right back and add some lemons of your own!" -Calvin
~~~
Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers.
-- Hobbes being sarcastic
~~~
It's great to have a friend who appreciates an earnest discussion of ideas.
-- Calvin
~~~
That's the problem with science.  You've got a bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of unimaginable wonder.
-- Calvin
~~~
All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.
-- Hobbes
~~~
I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.
-- Hobbes
~~~
I don't understand this!  Not a single part of my horoscope came true!  ... The paper should print Mom's daily predictions.  Those sure come true.
-- Calvin
~~~
I don't know which is worse, ...that everyone has his price, or that the price is always so low.
-- Calvin
~~~
That's the problem with nature, something's always stinging you or oozing mucous all over you. Let's go and watch TV.
-- Calvin
~~~
Mom and dad say I should make my life an example of the principles I believe in. But every time I do, they tell me to stop it.
-- Calvin
~~~
Then you admit confirming not denying you ever said that?
NO! ... I mean Yes!  WHAT?
I'll put 'maybe.'
-- Bloom County
~~~
What the historical record shows is that parents who wish their tots to achieve greatness should beat them regularly, destroy their self-esteem, and cruelly deprive them of ordinary comforts, such as ice cream or mother's affection. It would be especially helpful for one of the parents, probably dad, to die before the onset of adolescence; suicide is fine for the purpose.
-- Denis Dutton
~~~
If ignorance is bliss you must be orgasmic
~~~
Darling, I have a .45 and a shovel - do you think someone will miss you?
~~~
Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an absolutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe-spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life.
~~~
This product is not intended for use by personnel incapable of understanding the manual.
~~~
Computing is a terminal condition.
~~~
The only secure computer is one that is turned off, locked in a safe and buried 20 feet down in a secret location, and I'm not completely confident of that either.
-- Bruce Schneier
~~~
It is...fruitless to question and debate early design decisions; better solutions are often quite obvious in hindsight. Perhaps the most important point was that someone did make decisions, in spite of uncertainties.
-- Niklaus Wirth
~~~
Eagleson's Law: 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 is an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)
~~~
When in doubt, use brute force.
-- Ken Thompson
~~~
Purity isn't enough. You can program with NAND gates. The purpose of a programming languages is to map human mental models to machine constructs. The easier and more accurate the mapping, the "better" the language. Maybe a language that's unusable without a huge support environment isn't very usable.
-- Bob Bagwill
~~~
A study in the January 2001 issue of the American Journal of Sociology showed that teenagers who made pledges to remain sexual virgins until marriage were more likely to delay sex (up to 18 months).  However, when they did eventually have premarital sexual intercourse, they were more likely to have sex without contraceptive than their counterparts who didn't make such pledges.
-- National Public Radio, Morning Edition, 2001-01-04
~~~
I got enough guilt to start my own religion
-- Tori Amos,
~~~
I cannot convince myself that there is anyone so wise, so universally comprehensive in his judgment, that he can be trusted with the power to tell others: 'You shall not express yourself thus, you shall not describe your own experiences; or depict the fantasies which your mind has created; or laugh at what others set up as respectable; or question old beliefs; or contradict the dogmas of the church, of our society, our economic systems, and our political orthodoxy.'
-- Jake Zeitlin
~~~
It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.
-- U.S. Supreme Court
~~~
The third 'right'? - the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives - but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it.
-- from Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
~~~
Human beings, being unique in their ability to learn from others, are also unique in their disinclination to do so.
-- from Job by Robert Heinlein
~~~
I've written a commercial for Apple Computer. It goes like this: 'Macintosh - we might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end.'
-- Douglas Adams
~~~
I'd offer to change your mind for you, but I don't have a fresh diaper.
-- Leah to pro-spammer in news.admin.net-abuse.email
~~~
I am logged in, therefore I am.
~~~
The truth is out there? Anyone knows the URL?
~~~
Unix is not a "A-ha" experience, it is more of a "holy-shit" experience.
-- Colin McFadyen in alt.folklore.computers
~~~
Today's CS lecture will be conducted entirely through the medium of interpretive dance.
-- something I've always wanted to hear but never will.
~~~
When a filesystem no longer needs to be mounted, it can be unmounted with umount.*
*It should of course be unmount, but the n mysteriously disappeared in the 70's, and hasn't been seen since. Please return it to Bell Labs, NJ, if you find it.
-- From Linux System Administrators' Guide
~~~
Getting a SCSI chain working is perfectly simple if you remember that there must be exactly three terminations: one on one end of the cable, one on the far end, and the goat, terminated over the SCSI chain with a silver-handled knife whilst burning *black* candles.
-- Anthony DeBoer
~~~
Microsoft is a cross between The Borg and the Ferengi.  Unfortunately, they use Borg to do their marketing and Ferengi to do their programming.
-- Simon Slavin in asr
~~~
My company motto: If this stuff worked, you wouldn't need me.
~~~
Posting to the 'net these days it's more like shouting into a deep cave
in which lives a fire-breathing dragon who hordes Hormel products.
You get an echo back with flames and Spam
~~~
YOUR PC's broken and I'VE got a problem?
-- The BOFH Slogan
~~~
On a more familiar note, I'm learning many new and exciting things about the UNIX operating system.  However, I was shocked to discover that few of these things will get me chicks. Sucks to be me!  But, seeing as how my life is running a solid PG rating, I'm trying to boost that up to at least PG-13 by increased use of foul language.
~~~
On the wall of the women's restroom on the Enterprise:  Where no man has gone before
~~~
UNIX is a well appointed kitchen. Windows is a kitchen full of bread machines and other Shopping Channel specialized tools. Which would a cook rather use?
-- Peter da Silva
~~~
I'm sorry, our software is perfect.  The problem must be you.
-- Dogbert
~~~
I explicitly give people the freedom not to use Perl, just as god gives people the freedom to go to the devil if they so choose.
-- Larry Wall
~~~
The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements.
-- Brian Kernighan [1978]
~~~
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
-- Brian Kernighan
~~~
Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debugging Monday's code.
-- Dan Salomon
~~~
It's a well known fact that computing devices such as the abacus were invented thousands of years ago. But it's not well known that the first use of a common computer protocol occurred in the Old Testament. This, of course, was when Moses aborted the Egyptians' process with a control-sea...
-- Tom Galloway
~~~
Einstein was a genius: Head in the clouds, feet on the ground. But those of us who are not as tall, have to make a choice.
-- Richard Feynman
~~~
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
-- Stephen Jay Gould
~~~
No matter how cynical you get, you can't keep up.
-- Lilly Tomlin
~~~
There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain.
-- Baron Rothschild
~~~
We can debug relationships, but it's always good policy to consider the people themselves to be features. People get annoyed when you try to debug them.
-- Larry Wall, second State of the Onion speech
~~~
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.
-- Thomas Pynchon
~~~
It has been one of the great errors of our time that to think that by thinking about thinking, and then talking about it, we could possibly straighten out and tidy up our minds. There is no delusion more damaging than to get the idea in your head that you understand the functioning of your own brain. Once you acquire such a notion, you run the danger of moving in to take charge, guiding your thoughts, shepherding your mind from place to place, controlling it, making lists of regulations. The human mind is not meant to be governed, certainly not by any book of rules yet written; it is supposed to run itself, and we are obliged to follow it along, trying to keep up with it as best we can. It is all very well to be aware of your awareness, even proud of it, but never try to operate it. You are not up to the job.
-- Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony
~~~
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
-- Rudyard Kipling
~~~
Those who have never tried electronic communication may not be aware of what a "social skill" really is. One social skill that must be learned, is that other people have points of view that are not only different, but *threatening*, to your own. In turn, your opinions may be threatening to others. There is nothing wrong with this. Your beliefs need not be hidden behind a facade, as happens with face-to-face conversation. Not everybody in the world is a bosom buddy, but you can still have a meaningful conversation with them. The person who cannot do this lacks in social skills.
-- Nick Szabo
~~~
Most papers in computer science describe how their author learned what someone else already knew.
-- Peter Landin
~~~
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
~~~
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
~~~
It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than 10 functions on 10 data structures.
~~~
Make no mistake about it: Computers process numbers - not symbols. We measure our understanding (and control) by the extent to which we can arithmetize an activity.
~~~
The tools we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our thinking habits, and, therefore, on our thinking abilities.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
~~~
A logician trying to explain logic to a programmer is like a cat trying to explain to a fish what it's like to get wet.
~~~
If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day; if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.
~~~
To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer. To create utter chaos with no perceivable possibility of salvation calls for an MBA.
~~~
For a long time it puzzled me how something so expensive, so leading edge, could be so useless, and then it occurred to me that a computer is a stupid machine with the ability to do incredibly smart things, while computer programmers are smart people with the ability to do incredibly stupid things. They are, in short, a perfect match.
-- Bill Bryson's Notes from a Big Country
~~~
Before I got married, I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.
-- John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
~~~
Crime doesn't pay... does that mean my job is a crime?
~~~
Take everything in stride.  Trample anyone who gets in your way.
~~~
Not only does the English Language borrow words from other languages, it sometimes chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets.
-- Eddy Peters
~~~
The most thoroughly and relentlessly Damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignored, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all Damned things is the individual human being. The social engineers, statisticians, psychologists, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this Damned Thing into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the Damned Thing will not fit into the slot assigned to it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. The psychotherapist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the Damned Thing will not fit into their slots.
-- Robert Anton Wilson
~~~
I can not accept your canon that we are to judge pope and king unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power ... power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely
-- Lord John Emerich Edward Dalbert-Acton
~~~
There is nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine . . . been here 4 1/2 billion years. We've been here, what, a 100,000 years, maybe 200,000. And we've only been engaged in heavy industry a little over 200 years. 200 years versus 4 1/2 billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a threat? The planet isn't going away. We are.
-- George Carlin
~~~
No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. Anger may in time turn to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never again come into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.
-- Sun Tzu
~~~
>Executions have been quite effective against recidivism.
>No executed felon has EVER re-offended. --Paul Ciszek
Well, there is the alleged case of a Jewish heretic and general rabble-rouser who managed a brief return to his life of crime shortly after his execution...
-- John Schilling
~~~
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
-- Jack London
~~~
Reality is stranger than fiction, and so we write stranger things to compensate... A vicious cycle.
~~~
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
-- Bertrand Russell
~~~
Ranko, such language!
Daddy taught me. He also teach me <censored> and <very censored> and <oh boy is this censored.> He also said <you wouldn't believe how censored> once when he was trying to teach me to drink.
-- Ranko Saotome age 8 to her mother, The Bet: Fist of Orion, by Gregg Sharp
~~~
A child-programmers approach to parents:
While Parent_patience > 0
Do Annoying_action
~~~
A programmers approach to sex:
While Orgasm = 0
Do F***
~~~
I once absent-mindedly ordered Three Mile Island dressing in a restaurant and, with great presence of mind, they brought Thousand Island Dressing and a bottle of chili sauce.
-- Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett
~~~
Over the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil...prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...
-- Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett
~~~
I heard if you play the NT-4.0-CD backwards, you get a satanic message.
That's nothing, if you play it forward, it installs NT-4.0
~~~
Humanity faced a tremendous setback ca. 1100 A.D., when the first law school was established in Bologna. Ironically, the free exchange of ideas at the law school spurred the law students to invent new ways (patents, trademarks, copyrights) to stifle the free exchange of ideas in other industries.
-- Brief history of Linux by James Baughn
~~~
Along with the standard computer warranty agreement which said that if the machine 1) didn't work, 2) didn't do what the expensive advertisement said, 3) electrocuted the immediate neighbourhood, 4) and in fact failed entirely to be inside the expensive box when you opened it, this was expressly, absolutely, implicitly and in no event the fault or responsibility of the manufacturer, that the purchaser should consider himself lucky to be allowed to give his money to the manufacturer, and that any attempt to treat what had just been paid for as the purchaser's own property would result in the attentions of serious men with menacing briefcases and very thin watches.
-- Good Omens, Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
~~~
Looking deeply into the crystal, the Amazon matriarch began the arcane chant that would open its scrying powers.  The crystal began to glow, faintly, revealing characters, words that would tell the elder what she needed to know.
YOU'RE SCREWED.
She had hoped for something more detailed...
"Stupid oracle."  Cologne glared at the crystal in aggravation. "Could you possibly be more specific?
YOU'RE REALLY SCREWED.
That's not telling me anything helpful...
SEVERELY SCREWED?  MAJOR SCREWED?  SCREWED BEYOND BELIEF?
It is a little known fact that in the Amazon dialect of Chinese there are no less that sixty-two ways to call someone or something a moron.  Cologne ran through them all twice in three and a half minutes.
-- Girl Days, A Ranma 1/2 fanfic by Robert Haynie
~~~
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
~~~
Religious leaders have often ranted and railed against certain sexual practices, from masturbation and oral sex to homosexuality, as though these were the handiwork of the devil. But what if God feels more honored when a person joyfully masturbates as opposed to saying a speedy rosary or spending an obligatory hour in church.  After all, God created orgasm, while prayers and churches are the creations of men. What if God receives more joy when an unmarried couple lovingly shares oral sex than when a church-going husband and wife have passionless, missionary position intercourse? And who is to say that God hasn't created a group of homosexual angels to guard the gates of heaven? Maybe God has a sense of humor and brings out the queer angels whenever a redneck preacher or one of his intolerant parishioners has just died and is awaiting judgment.
-- from The Guide to Getting it On
~~~
I'm an apatheist. The question is no longer interesting, and the answer no longer matters.
-- petro
~~~
People who are willing to rely on the government to keep them safe are pretty much standing on Darwin's mat, pounding on the door, screaming, "Take me, take me!"
-- Carl Jacobs
~~~
The immoral man takes his pleasures without moderation, leaving himself vulnerable to a descent into gluttony and drunkenness.  He will neglect his duties, abuse those who hold him dear, and pee on others in the public baths.  It is the duty of the moral man try and steer him towards the moral path, and failing that, to hold him under the water until the little bubbles stop rising and he turns a faint bluish colour.
-- From the unrecorded Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
~~~
You must someday reach a point in your life where you can honestly admit to yourself that setting fire to senior citizens is not as fulfilling as it once was.
-- Reverend Shayne Dark of the CofD mailinglist
~~~
It's amazing how many of the religious say "God will punish" but haven't enough faith to let God actually do it.
-- Marc Wolfe on the CofD mailing list
~~~
According to the current doctrines of mysticoscientism, we human animals are really and actually nothing but 'organic patterns of nodular energy composed of collocations of infinitesimal points oscillating on the multi-dimensional coordinates of the space-time continuum'. I'll have to think about that. Sometime. Meantime, I'm going to gnaw on this sparerib, drink my Blatz beer, and contemplate the a posteriori coordinates of that young blonde over yonder, the one in the tennis skirt, tying her shoelaces.
-- Edward Abbey
~~~
I'm going to hell so fast the hand basket burned up on re-entry.
~~~
Isn't it ironic that the previous generation defined themselves in terms of rebellion against authority, and now that they're in charge, all they do is give people reasons to want to rebel against authority.
-- posted on Slashdot
~~~
When I was a kid, I used to pray to God to give me a bike. Then I realized that wasn't the way God works. So I went out and stole a bike, and I prayed to God to forgive me.
~~~
It is true that some lawyers are dishonest, arrogant, greedy, venal, amoral, ruthless buckets of slime. On the other hand, it is unfair to judge the entire profession by a few hundred-thousand bad apples.
-- James D. Gordon III, The Washington Post
~~~
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
-- H.L. Menken
~~~
Trench Coat - 50 dollars. Pipebombs - 75 dollars. Ammo - 250 dollars. Assault Rifle - 600 dollars. The look on your classmates' faces before you blow them away - priceless. There are some things money can't buy, for everything else, there's MasterCard.
-- rejected idea for a Mastercard commercial
~~~
Who says Osama 'evil man' Bin Laden has to develop any of these 'evil' weapons?  You want a chemical weapon?  You blow up a bloody paper mill!  Or a fertilizer factory!  Ask Union Carbide what can happen by stupidity and negligence and then apply that information to a homeland terrorist action scenario. Has this presidential git learned nothing from the actions against his country.  Don't think like a pentagon general with a budget the size of Rhode Island, stealth bombers and enough munitions to clear the coke from the presidential sinuses.  Think cheap!  Think accessible!  Think about terrorists doing with your infrastructure what Jackie Chan does with a ladder, a shopping cart and seven feet of garden hose.  Here endeth the lesson.
-- The Reverend Shayne Dark on the CofD mailing list
~~~
When it comes to survival, you can't be choosy about the company you keep. You may have to make alliances with unsavory people.  So I'm announcing tonight my decision to co-operate with the United States government.
-- George Carlin
~~~
Honestly must be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
-- George Carlin
~~~
That assumes computer science is a functional engineering discipline. Its not, at best we are at the alchemy stage of progression. You put two things together it goes bang and you try to work out why...But right now given two chunks of code, I find out what happens by putting them together not by formal methods. In the case of alchemy versus chemistry the chemists know whether it will probably go bang before they try it (and the chemical engineers still duck anyway)
-- Alan Cox
~~~
If you're so filled with holiday cheer you can't stand it, try calling your friends and going caroling yourself. Especially if you're old, a drug addict,an alcoholic or obviously homosexual and have a lot of effeminate friends. Go In packs. If you are black, go to a prissy white neighbourhood. Ring doorbells, and when the Father Knows Best-type family answers, start screeching hostilely your favorite carol. Watch their faces. There's nothing they can do. It's not illegal. Maybe they'll give you a present.
-- Why I Love Christmas, By John Waters
~~~
This guy has more things wrong with him than fish-flavored soda.
-- A Tribute To Forgotten Heroes, by Matt from X-Entertainment
~~~
Trance: . . . and a human, which means patching him up is as easy as cake.
Dylan: Easy as pie.
Trance: Are you sure about that? I think making pie is a lot harder than cake.
Dylan: Just fix him Trance.
Trance: Oh, he'll be fine. Compared to baking, brain surgery is a snap.
-- Andromeda
~~~
You know . . . I can cook too.
-- Tyr, Andromeda
~~~
Now if we're through, I'd like to get back to my troubled mind.
-- Rev Bem, Andromeda
~~~
Yeah, but you like everyone, even people who try to kill you. *Especially* people that try to kill you.
-- Beka, Andromeda
~~~
Beka: Umm, where'd ya get all the candles?
Tyr: I rendered them from the fat of my enemies.
Beka: Can't wait to see the entree.
-- Andromeda
~~~
And you know why? Cause I could get away with it. Because I'm cute!
-- Trance, Andromeda
~~~
She hates you.
I know. She's hot, *and* she's a good judge of character.
-- Beka and Harper, Andromeda
~~~
So what if she holds me in utter contempt? At least she's thinking of me.
-- Harper, Andromeda
~~~
Trance: And what if they're not decoys?
Beka: Then when we get to the pearly gates, make sure everyone lines up behind Rev- he's got spin control.
Rev: I'll see what I can do.
-- Andromeda
~~~
Okay. Alright. I know when I'm not wanted. I usually don't listen, but I know.
-- Harper
~~~
.. I used to get in more fights with SCO than I did my girlfriend, but now, thanks to Linux, she has more than happily accepted her place back at number one antagonist in my life..  
-- Jason Stiefel, krypto@s30.nmex.com
~~~
If the current stylistic distinctions between open-source and commercial software persist, an open-software revolution could lead to yet another divide between haves and have-nots: those with the skills and connections to make use of free software, and those who must pay high prices for increasingly dated commercial offerings.
-- Scientific American
~~~
From the Linux getopt(3) manpage:
BUGS
This manpage is confusing.
~~~
Every day I send overnight packages filled with rabid weasels to people who use frames for no good reason.
-- The Usenet Oracle, Oracularity #1017-1
~~~
Science is everything we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else.
-- David Knuth
~~~
... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
~~~
Everything that I've learned about computers at MIT I have boiled down into three principles:
Unix: You think it won't work, but if you find the right wizard, he can make it work.
Macintosh: You think it will work, but it won't.
PC/Windows: You think it won't work, and it won't.'
-- Philip Greenspun
~~~
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.'
-- Hume
~~~
Anatomy (n): something everyone has, but which looks better on a girl.'
-- Bruce Raeburn.
~~~
Cleavage (n): something you can approve of and look down on at the same time.
-- W. Garnett.
~~~
Like a ski resort full of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetric as it might seem.
-- Marc Unangst
~~~
Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.  The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. 
-- Robert Heinlein, Assignment In Eternity, p.63, Fantasy Press, Reading PA, 1953. {Kettle-Belly Baldwin speaking, in the story 'Gulf'}
~~~
[...] The thought was infuriating; the notion that the government might be spying on his home, his castle, was as repulsive as having his mail opened.
They might be doing that, too! Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling - oh, Harshaw conceded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels.  But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost!
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger In A Strange Land
~~~
The people will again respect the law when the law again respects the will of the people.
-- Jim Ray - Campaign '92
~~~
There are those who are born UNIX; Those who are made UNIX; And those who become UNIX; For the kingdom of heaven's sake. (Matthew 19:12) 
-- Stuart Yeates
~~~
Officer!  Officer!  Arrest that man!  He's whistling a dirty song!
-- Jean
~~~
I don't remember exactly where, but it was rather cool.
-- Jeffrey C. Ollie 
They should make that last sentence into a motto for the whole Web.
-- Ade Rixon
~~~
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end goal.  Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger, and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works, the result is indisputable: 'This time it will surely run' or 'I just found the last bug'.
-- Fred Brooks.
~~~
Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
~~~
When in doubt, use brute force. 
-- Ken Thompson (author of Unix)
~~~
I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.
-- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908
~~~
A sysadmin's life is a sorry one.  The only advantage he has over Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare.  On the other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing new versions of their own innards.
-- Sysadmin's Lament
~~~
A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope  of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.
-- G. K. Chesterton
~~~
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. 
-- Plato
~~~
Perl: The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption.
~~~
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for card playing.
~~~
If you want to learn, the best way to do so is through experience. Unless you can't stand a loss on your record, just play somebody, get whooped, ask for any tips at the end of the game, rinse and repeat until people ask for your tips. Good luck. 
-- Zirale
~~~
You could write a DeCSS implementation using Perl's English module, record yourself reading the code out loud with Metallica playing in the background, encode it as an MP3, and piss of both the RIAA and the MPAA at the same time. :-)
~~~
A Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer is to computing what a McDonald's Certified Food Specialist is to fine cuisine.
~~~
LOGAN: I always knew that underneath that bioengineered, military-issue armor plating there was a beating heart.
MAX: Let's not go overboard here. I'm not signing up to join the Logan Cale brigade for the defense of widows, small children, and lost animals.
LOGAN: You could be field commander.
MAX: I think not.
~~~
On a Win 9X box, try CTRL-ESC, ALT-MINUS-C
~~~
MALE: Why would Manticore try to get rid of us?
ALEC: I want to get rid of you, and I just met you.
-- Dark Angel
~~~
ALEC: It's just 'cause she's hot, you know.
LOGAN: What is?
ALEC: Everything. Everything she gets away with. You honestly think we'd be down here in this moldy dump looking for God-knows-what if she were ugly?
LOGAN: We're down here to give Max a hand.
-- Dark Angel
~~~
EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE A VICTIM. And the paradox is that victim status accrues precisely to those who can acquire enough clout to make others afraid of them. Victimhood has become one of the fruits of power. Anyone can be an underdog; the trick is to be a registered, pedigreed underdog.
-- Joseph Belloc Sobran.
~~~
PURPOSE OF YOUR CAREER
Astronaut:  Advancing scientific knowledge for the good of humanity.
Fireman:  Saving lives and property.
Sysadmin: Assuring uninterrupted access to alt.binaries.erotica.sheep.
-- The Usenet oracle
~~~
As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears.  Unable to pull your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you.  The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along with your complexion.  You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall from the limbs of the tree.  Snap!  Your head falls off and rolls all over the ground.  The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head.  Worse yet, the spider is suing you for damages.
-- an actual quote from the original Adventure game
~~~
Time to stop beating around the bush.  Beat the bush _itself_.  Give it a good thrashing, and say "bad bush!" in a loud stern tone.
-- Fred Barling, Humorscope
~~~
Diaper spelled backwards is Repaid.  Think about it.
-- Marshall McLuhan
~~~
You people are still using *computers*?  I just whistle into my phone at 56Kbps, doing the compression, decoding the images, and running the Java programs all in my head.  PGP encryption does slow me down a bit though...
-- Guy Macon (guymacon@deltanet.com), in alt.shenanigans
~~~
First you will know pain.  Then you will know fear.  Then you will die.  Have a nice flight.
-- G'kar, on Babylon 5
~~~
Like frozen sentries of the Serengeti, the century-old termite mounds had withstood all tests of time and foe - all tests, that is, except the one involving drunken aardvarks and a stolen wrecking ball.
-- Gary Larson
~~~
Actually this is a common misconception...I do *not* in fact have a lot of time on my hands at all! I just have a very very very very bad sense of priorities.
-- Dean Engelhardt
~~~
You know how people who don't exactly like to read buy those books on tape?  Well I'm one of those people. And of all the books on tape, I think that "Where's Waldo" is my favorite....
~~~
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make a nuisance of himself to other people.
-- John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_
~~~
I recently shampooed my pet rabbit with Body Shop shampoo. Its eyes bulged out and turned red. If you tested your stuff on animals like everyone else, this sort of thing wouldn't happen.
-- Extract from a customer complaint letter
~~~
Some scientists think that the sun may have something to do with global warming.  
-- ITV News, UK, 30 May 1996
~~~
> Can you see evidence of aliens on the moon as well ???
You can see evidence of aliens in your oatmeal, if you look with the right mind-set and expectations.
-- Jeramie Hicks, in sci.space.policy
~~~
But then you could make ANY word derogatory by INTENDING it to be. (Say the word "cabbage" and it stirs no emotion:glare at somebody and throw in an expletive or two  and it's bound to offend people.)
-- from alt.appalachian
~~~
quartic (n): fourth degree.  e.g., My parents gave me the quartic for coming home late.
-- Tom Hunter, Swarthmore math professor
~~~
Your Horoscope:
You are easily influenced by what you read, and have the ability to relate vague sentences to your own mundane existence.
~~~
A certain amount of reverie is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It soothes the fever, occasionally high, of the brain at work, and produces in the mind a soft, fresh vapor that corrects the all too angular contours of pure thought, fills up the gaps and intervals here and there, binds them together, and dulls the sharp corners of ideas. But too much reverie submerges and drowns.
-- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
~~~
Men are like fudge: sweet, dense, and rarely good for you.
-- Audrey Walton-Hadlock
~~~
I really don't want to find my soulmate/life partner now. It would be incredibly inconvenient.
-- Xanthi Carras
~~~
Being a social outcast helps you stay concentrated on the really important things, like thinking and hacking.
-- Eric S Raymond, How to be a Hacker
~~~
A debugged program is one for which you have not yet found the conditions that make it fail.
-- Jerry Ogdin
~~~
A manager went to the master programmer and showed him the requirements document for a new application.  The manager asked the master: How long will it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?
It will take one year, said the master promptly.
But we need this system immediately or even sooner!  How long will it take it I assign ten programmers to it?
The master programmer frowned.  In that case, it will take two years.
And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?
The master programmer shrugged.  Then the design will never be completed, he said.
-- Geoffrey James, The Tao of Programming
~~~
A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a question.
Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature? the novice asked.
The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be relied upon to know these things.  He thought for several minutes before replying.
I don't see why not.  It's got bloody well everything else.
With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch.  The novice suddenly achieved enlightenment, several years later.
Commentary:
His Master is kind,
Answering his FAQ quickly,
With thought and sarcasm.
~~~
A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a strings of pearls.  The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout.  There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity.
A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'.  What is this law?  It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least.
A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit.  The program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward appearances.
If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of disorder and confusion.  The only way to correct this is to rewrite the program.
-- Geoffrey James, The Tao of Programming
~~~
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
-- F. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month
Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by close application thereto, it is worse executed by two persons and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.
-- George Washington, 1732-1799
~~~
Although it is still a truism in industry that "no one was ever fired for buying IBM," Bill O'Neil, the chief technology officer at Drexel Burnham Lambert, says he knows for a fact that someone has been fired for just that reason.  He knows it because he fired the guy.
He made a bad decision, and what it came down to was, 'Well, I bought it because I figured it was safe to buy IBM,'  Mr. O'Neil says. I said, 'No.  Wrong.  Game over.  Next contestant, please.'
-- The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1989
~~~
As in certain cults it is possible to kill a process if you know its true name.
-- Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie
~~~
Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance
-- Jim Horning
~~~
Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking process - an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical attention to detail.  It requires intelligence, dedication, and an enormous amount of hard work.  But, a certain amount of unpredictable and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference between adequacy and excellence.
~~~
Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.
~~~
If the designers of X-window built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles - but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo.  Useful feature, that.
-- From the programming notebooks of a heretic, 1990.
~~~
It is possible by ingenuity and at the expense of clarity... {to do almost anything in any language}.  However, the fact that it is possible to push a pea up a mountain with your nose does not mean that this is a sensible way of getting it there.  Each of these techniques of language extension should be used in its proper place.
-- Christopher Strachey
~~~
NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All software is supplied as is, without guarantee.  The user assumes all responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features, including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion, hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components, windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky.
~~~
Some of my readers ask me what a "Serial Port" is.
The answer is: I don't know.  Is it some kind of wine you have with breakfast?
~~~
Some people claim that the UNIX learning curve is steep, but at least you only have to climb it once.
~~~
The "cutting edge" is getting rather dull.
-- Andy Purshottam
~~~
The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance
The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system in a portable package the size of a briefcase.  The guy on the left has an Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case.  Also in the case are four fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition.  The owner of the Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered - and delivered on target - in less time, and with less effort.  All for $795. It's inevitable. If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 - or any personal computer - he's the one who's in trouble.  One round from an Uzi can zip through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum.  In fact, detachable magazines for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied into Ethernet or other local-area networks.  What about the new 16-bit computers, like the Lisa and Fortune?  Even with the Winchester backup, they're no match for the Uzi.  One quick burst and they'll find out what Unix means.  Make your commanding officer proud.  Get an Uzi - and come home a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons.
-- InfoWorld, June, 1984
~~~
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL
SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler. Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the coffee.  Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to compile.  Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
~~~
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi, Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while they worked.  Unfortunately few programmers could survive there because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and Perrier.
Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower case.  For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the message:
i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that.  can you find the time to try it again?
~~~
This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go, explaining that Interactive Easyflow is a copyrighted package licensed for use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do.
We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around pirating copies of Interactive Easyflow; this is just as well with us since we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of making anything out of all the hard work.
If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not.  Just keep your doors locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
-- License Agreement for Interactive Easyflow
~~~
We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything - if you think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide.  If Interactive EasyFlow doesn't work: tough.  If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us.  If you don't like this disclaimer: tough.  We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing.
This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese.
We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted.  We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the attack shark at which point we relented.
-- Haven Tree Software Limited, Interactive EasyFlow
~~~
When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple
of asterisked sentences:
It weighs less than 8 pounds.*
And costs less than $1,300.**
In tiny type were these "fuller explanations":
* Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out?  Well, all this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you might not be able to figure this out for yourself.
** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if you really want to.  Or less.
-- Forbes
~~~
Yacc owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in their endless search for "one more feature."  Their irritating unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.
-- S. C. Johnson, Yacc guide acknowledgements
~~~
A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm) - by Charles Dickens
A lawyer who looks like a French Nobleman is executed in his place.
~~~
The Metamorphosis LITE(tm)- by Franz Kafka
A man turns into a bug and his family gets annoyed.
~~~
Lord of the Rings LITE(tm) - by J.R.R. Tolkien
Some guys take a long vacation to throw a ring into a volcano.
~~~
Hamlet LITE(tm) - by Wm. Shakespeare
A college student on vacation with family problems, a screwy girl-friend and a mother who won't act her age.
~~~
A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm) - by Charles Dickens
A man in love with a girl who loves another man who looks just like him has his head chopped off in France because of a mean lady who knits.
~~~
Crime and Punishment LITE(tm) - by Fyodor Dostoevski
A man sends a nasty letter to a pawnbroker, but later feels guilty and apologizes.
~~~
The Odyssey LITE(tm) - by Homer
After working late, a valiant warrior gets lost on his way home.
~~~
Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam in 1959.
-- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
~~~
Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an overdose of fluoride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center.
-- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
~~~
Gone With The Wind LITE(tm) - by Margaret Mitchell
A woman only likes men she can't have and the South gets trashed.
~~~
Gift of the Magi LITE(tm) - by O. Henry
A husband and wife forget to register their gift preferences.
~~~
The Old Man and the Sea LITE(tm) - by Ernest Hemingway
An old man goes fishing, but doesn't have much luck.
~~~
Diary of a Young Girl LITE(tm) - by Anne Frank
A young girl hides in an attic but is discovered.
~~~
No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at large.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
-- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
~~~
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
-- Bulwer-Lytton
~~~
When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.
-- Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand
~~~
The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.
-- Jean Kerr
~~~
Excuse me. This life isn't working. I want to exchange it.
Have you tried plugging it in?
~~~
I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
-- Abbie Hoffman
~~~
The real world is not user-friendly.
-- Kelvin Throop III
~~~
Do you think it's possible to discuss politics without preaching? Or just not for you?
SKB: Not for me personally. I spent years and years and years studying intensely, carefully, putting a lot of time and energy and work into it. I therefore am convinced I know a lot. Even if I don't, I think I do. So I run into someone who makes, generally speaking, a dismissive remark, which shows that he has not put in anywhere near the time, energy and effort and study I have, and I turn into an arrogant, pompous asshole. So I'd rather not do that. That's why I just stay loose on it.
-- Steven K. Brust
~~~
There. There, said the marquis de Carabas, awkwardly, patting her shoulder. And he added, for good measure, There. He did not comfort well.
-- Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere
~~~
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away and a sunny spirit takes their place
-- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
~~~
Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well - he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
~~~
Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.
-- Will Durant, The History of Civilization
~~~
If you mean whiskey, the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pits of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being.
However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life's great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it.
This is my position, and as always, I refuse to be compromised on matters of principle.
-- Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat, Jr, 1952 Whiskey Speech
~~~
Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom. Embrace your nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work is still in print after a hundred years, "Woo the muse of the odd." . . . You may be a geek. You may have geek written all over you. You should aim to be one geek they'll never forget. Don't aim to be civilized. Don't hope that straight people will keep you on as some kind of pet. To hell with them. You should fully realize what society has made of you and take a terrible revenge. Get weird. Get way weird. Get dangerously weird. Get sophisticatedly, thoroughly weird, and don't do it halfway. Put every ounce of horsepower you have behind it. . . . Don't become a well rounded person. Well rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a pufferfish.
-- Bruce Sterling, speech on The Wonderful Power of Storystelling to the Computer Game Developers Conference, March 1991
~~~
A not unfamiliar expression in the description of human relations is "the Hawthorne effect," Many people assume that the Hawthorne somehow refers to a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, but actually it is the Hawthorne Works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago. There in 1924 C. E. Snow of the National Research Council undertook to study the influence of lighting on the productivity of industrial workers, in this case women working on assembly lines making telephone components such as electrical relays.
At first Snow and his colleagues measured the productivity at the normal level of illumination. Then they raised the level of illumination. The productivity of the workers increased. Then they raised the level again; the productivity increased again. They raised it still more; the productivity continued to increase.
Being good scientists, Snow and his colleagues now LOWERED the level of illumination below what it had been at first. To their surprise, the productivity continued to increase. They lowered the level of illumination still more, with the same result. Finally when the level was so low that the workers could hardly see what they were doing, the productivity fell off. It suddenly dawned on everyone. The workers were not responding to the changes in illumination. They were responding to someone's paying attention to them. That is the Hawthorne effect.
-- Dennis Flagan, Flanagan's Version, 1989
~~~
The last time I gave an interview they told me to just relax and say what I really felt. Ten minutes after the broadcast I got transferred to an outpost so far off the starmaps you couldn't find it with a hunting dog and an Ouija board.
Don't sweat it. Just be that charming, effervescent commander we've all come to know and love. What's the worst that could happen? They fire you, ship you off to the Rim and I get promoted to Commander. I don't see a problem here.
-- Sinclair and Garibaldi, Infection
~~~
When I hear of a long time smoker dying of lung cancer I think "That's too bad, but they made their choices". When I hear about companies getting screwed by Microsoft, I think the same thing.
-- GNUTroll (2002-05-01)
~~~
piracy is copying.
So 18th century pirates just boarded your ship, copied everything, and left?
-- Anonymous Coward on Slashdot.org (2002-04-29)
~~~
The BSA is nothing more than a legalized protection racket.
-- chill (2002-04-29)
~~~
Thus continueth the cycle:
1. A few people pirate software/music.
2. Corporations get pissed at piracy.
3. Corporation spends millions on development of an anti-piracy scheme.
4. Corporation has to raise prices to compensate.
5. Scheme gets cracked within DAYS of release.
6. More people pirate because prices are higher.
7. Goto 1.
-- Desco (2001-10-19)
~~~
The second was a lesson I received in group dynamics from my high school theater group's director, a guy named Lou. About a hundred of us kids had gathered together in the gym, doing warmup exercises. Lou got up and introduced a new exercise. We were going to count up from one to ten, slowly adjusting our attitude and appearance from utter dejection to triumphant at ten. One... we were slumped over and suicidal. Two... we straighted a little... Three... perhaps I shall not hang myself today. And so on to a hearty, confident, triumphant roar of TEN! "TEN!" shouted Lou. "TEN!!" we yelled back. "SEIG HEIL!" shouted Lou. "SEIG HEIL!!" we roared. "SEIG HEIL!!! SEIG HEIL!!! SEIG..."
Lou clapped his hands sharply for attention. He looked at us for a long moment. "Never forget," he said softly, "how easy it was for one man to make you do that."
I never will.
-- bill.sheehan
~~~
This message was encrypted with rot-26 cryptography. Attempting to circumvent this encoding is illegal under the DMCA.
-- ajuda (2001-08-02)
~~~
You know what I never understood: Why did it become expected that technical support people should be able to fix any software problem through the phone? I can't call up Toyota and ask them to walk me through replacing the starter on the car, especially if I don't know what a wrench is. They'll tell me to bring it to the repair shop. I can't demand that Maytag explain to me how to repair a washing machine through the phone, even if it is under warranty!
-- Stan Seibert (2001-07-11)
~~~
Software of the living dead... This is why Microsoft hates GPL software. The company goes bust and a month later there is a new release of the competing software. Nothing, but customer disinterest has ever killed a GPL project. And Microsoft _still_ can't beg, buy, borrow, or steal the software. It is just too funny.
-- Jimmy the Geek (2001-07-05, discussing the Nautilus 1.0.4 release)
~~~
When the USA does it, it's progress. When Canada does it, it's just another tax grab by socialists.
-- Anonymous Coward (2001-06-20)
~~~
I'm sorry buddy, but that's just crap. If we Canadians felt like building some great nationalistic ventures, we would, cost doesn't even venture into it. How many nations of 30 million people have G7 status eh? Us and Australia that's who - and there are scads of countries with way more people who can't claim that. We have definitely got the money to burn on meaningless nationalism if we wanted. The reason we don't do it is two-fold: firstly Canadians just don't have any nationalist sentiments, or very little. Hell most of us don't even know what it is we identify with as a country. Secondly the business and political culture of our country is so tight-assed and conservative that they refuse to invest in anything Canadian for fear that it will flop, despite the overwhelming evidence that as such a small nation we have an insane overabundance of intelligent, talented and creative people.
-- corvi42 (2001-04-16)
~~~
What I find interesting is that my English teacher last year hated violent video games, thinking they corrupt kids. She also knew I loved them and spent much time at them. Yet, she still preferred me as the quiet genius type to the immature jocks, who wouldn't know Quake from Shogo. She never seemed to notice the discrepancy between her preconceived notions and reality, but that just goes to show you.
-- Datafage
~~~
Children - the universal scapegoats for any political agenda.
~~~
I used to be an idealist, but then I got mugged by reality.
~~~
After The Matrix, I cannot wear sunglasses. As soon as I put them on, people recognize me.
-- Carrie-Anne Moss ("Trinity", The Matrix)
~~~
Q: What is the #1 remote-administration tool for Windows NT?
A: A car.
-- ms-monopoly.com
~~~
The Feynman Problem Solving Algorithm:
1) Write down the problem.
2) Think very hard.
3) Write down the solution.
~~~
If it weren't for lack of context, there would be no news.
-- Scott Adams
~~~
One World, One Web, One Program - Microsoft Promotional Ad
Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer - Adolf Hitler
~~~
So, when you think about it, kissing is just pressing your lips up against the sweet end of 66 feet of intestines.
-- Oswald, Drew Carey
~~~
I'm a nobody, nobody is perfect, therefore I'm perfect.
~~~
Canadian Unity: Something that works in practice, but which just doesn't work in theory.
-- Bowser & Blue
~~~
The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.
-- Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC
~~~
Interdigitation, n.: The act of holding hands. These days, both the word and the act are endangered and fun. Try it. Ask your date to INTERDIGITATE with you. Did you get your face slapped? You said it right!
-- Archive of Endangered, Special, or Fun Words
~~~
Is there a lawyer in the house? -=}BLAM{=- Any more?
~~~
I am McMahon of Borg. You may already have been assimilated.
~~~
There is nothing noble in being superior to another.  True nobility arises from being superior to one's past self.
~~~
Think about it.  You are not going to positively influence people by alienating them.  Even I know that. 
-- Craig Bruce, (commenting on radical feminism)
~~~
...I'm talking about ways to manage to be true to your introverted, intuitive, thinking, and judging self in a social situation that favors the feeling extrovert. 
-- Alison Evans
~~~
You yourself are in an ecstatic state to such a point that you feel as though you almost don't exist.  I've experienced this time and again.  My hand seems devoid of myself, and I have nothing to do with what is happening.  I just sit there watching in a state of awe and wonderment.  And it just flows out by itself.
-- A composer, describing The Zone
~~~
The purpose of small talk is not to communicate weighty information, and if you dismiss it because it doesn't contain weighty information, then you're missing the point.  The purpose of small talk is to act as a conduit for social reassurance.
-- Eric Pepke
~~~
With apologies to a colleague of mine who would probably like to say this, I need to point out to you and the Feds that you hardly represent anybody.  The great majority of students don't even bother to vote in student elections.  They don't particularly care.  They are here to get their degree, period.  The primary service of MathSoc that the undergraduate population uses are the photocopiers. And, heck, if they disappeared, students would go to the library or graphic services.  You guys all take yourselves a little too seriously (or at least your peers would seem to think so).
-- Herb Kunze, probably applicable to all student governments
~~~
Sometimes my level of frustration exceeds my capability to not care. I shall endeavor to increase my capability to not care.
-- Craig Bruce (2001-06-27, #717)
~~~
Be yourself! Be yourself, the magazines insistently croon, so long as your REAL self has a killer body and a starlet's face. Granted the magazines also speak to ambition and self-worth, but image rules tyrannically over all.
-- Judith Timson (speaking about teen magazines), McCleans, Sept 2001.
~~~
Acknowledgement is a no-kidding, unvarnished, bottom-line, truthful confrontation with yourself about what you are doing or not doing, or what you are putting up with in your life that is destructive. It's not some pious, phoney-baloney, half-hearted rendition of what you think they want to hear. Nor is it a watered-down, politically correct 'confession' that you think will buy you closure at the expense of truth. I mean brutal reality: slapping yourself in the face and admitting what you are doing to screw up your life. This also means admitting that you are getting payoffs for what you're doing, however sick or subtle those payoffs are.
-- Philip C. McGraw (from Life Strategies)
~~~
Acknowledgement is just the FIRST step down a very long road. And I have seen people stuck on that one for *years* (wah wah, I'm an alcoholic. [knock back another drink]) - just look at X. All those years of therapy have done is to provide her with the ability to go 'Oh look. I have a navel.' She hasn't made any REAL progress, because REAL progress means REAL work, and letting go of ego-centricity. And she gets far too much attention and too many opportunities for excuses to get beyond merely acknowledging her childhood abuse and get her shit together. Hell she isn't even an abuse SURVIVOR because she still BLAMES her bad behavior on her past, and expects people to cut her slack and feel sorry for her as a result. That's not SURVIVING it, that's WALLOWING.
-- Annesthesia
~~~
Now let's add the ingredient of feeling ones-self innocent and yet punished. 'I may have done something wrong, but it wasn't THAT bad - surely I don't deserve THIS.' Isn't that perfect? We even use our misdeeds to our own advantage. I've done something wrong but I turn it around so that *I'm* the victim and should be compensated. And Egocentricity is usually right there with suggestions that could make up for this 'injustice'. Things like ice cream, or not returning a wallet I find, or driving discourteously, or gossiping or having an affair with someone else's partner. After all, [the 'victim-mentality' believes] 'Life owes me something'.
-- Cheri Huber, from Going beyond Self-hate
~~~
PEACE comes, not from an ABSENCE of Strife and Conflict, but in our ability to COPE with it.
-- unknown (Seen on a Jacket in a pharmacy late at night)
~~~
To want to get better means be ready to face the pain. It is only when you face the pain that you will begin to gain a healthy perspective from which you can then think less distortedly, to the point where you will be able to recognize when you are so triggered as to blur your past with someone in your present. Personal responsibility is key here as well. You must take responsibility for your needs, your wants, your pain, your actions and you must learn that there is no excuse for abuse. Blaming anyone else, even someone who abused or hurt you in childhood is not going to help you heal now. It will not help you meet your needs. It will not help you learn how to maintain relationships. It will not help you to find yourself.
-- A.J. Mahari, from "The Blame Game", an article on BPD at Suite101
~~~
I'm also starting to believe that men are more in touch with the realities of commitment, and that's why they (for the most part, or the ones I know) avoid making them. My experience with women shows me that they candy-coat the reality of co-habitation.
-- JadeSyren
~~~
Just saying no prevents teenage pregnancy the way 'Have a nice day' cures chronic depression.
-- Faye Wattleton
~~~
Lately, the only thing that keeps me from being a serial killer is my distaste for manual labor.
-- Dilbert
~~~
Oh, well, Chaney said, quoting one of his basic axioms for Guerrilla Ontology, insanity is another viable alternative.
-- The Trick Top Hat, Robert Anton Wilson
~~~
I would like to see an anime where Love conquers all, then goes mad with the power and sets up a repressive totalitarian regime that ruthlessly crushes and oppresses all non-love. Agents with little pink-heart armbands kick in doors and round up people who are not madly in love. Even Like is sent to the camps. Then a small but brave group of Platonic rebels has to overthrow Love in a bloody revolution.
-- Frank Raymond Michaels
~~~
Fleeting interest sort of maimed the cat.
-- Jim Benton
~~~
As for my thesis, I will defend it with a small number of highly trained ninja warriors followed by waves scantly clad barbarians and finally a large fortified castle guarded by all manner of exotic beasts.
-- Joanna's friend Devin
~~~
The night seemed long. Wilbur's stomach was empty and his mind was full. And when your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's always hard to sleep.
-- Charlotte's Web, E.B. White
~~~
The best thing for being sad, replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn...
-- T.H. White, The Once and Future King
~~~
Love is not always glamorous, but it will help you get to the bathroom when you're sick. Love means only one of you can be crazy at a time.
-- unknown
~~~
Let's face it. Do you stay off the streets at night because you fear attack from uncontrolled, irrational women in the throes of their Premenstrual Syndrome? Probably not. We stay home at night because we fear the behavior of men.
-- Harriet Goldhor Lerner
~~~
The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the toad's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!'
-- Barbara C. Kroll, Kennett Square, PA
~~~
Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half might reach you.
-- Kahlil Gibran
~~~
I'm still bloody insulted by people in general insisting that I need 'strong female role models.' Some of us already have one. It's called a mirror.
-- M. Fae Glasgow, "Two Heads are Better than One," SBF 1, May 1993
~~~
Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character
~~~
. . .anything two - or more - people want to do is all right as long as it does no physical harm . . . the words 'moral' and immoral' [are] ridiculous when applied to sexual relations.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Don't blame me. I told her 'more' was a stupid safeword.
-- Unknown
~~~
If you can't be good in bed, be funny
~~~
A horse is a horse, of course; of course,
He follows a lifestyle we don't endorse.
He drinks the blood of a sheep by force,
the vampire horse, Count Ed.
~~~
This is the nineties; you don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first.
~~~
Pull here for an Arts degree. (Seen on toilet paper dispenser in GVSU arts building)
~~~
I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.
~~~
I said "NO" to drugs, but they didn't listen.
~~~
Banshee begins to do fun and decorative things with  the probes from her dissection kit...
-- Banshee
~~~
Curiosity?  Nah, I took care of that cat with the lawn mower!
-- Killj0y
~~~
Next year, why not vacation in the millions of worlds of a used book store?
~~~
Federal Espresso - When you absolutely, positively have to have something that will get you going, no matter what you were doing overnight!
~~~
whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.
-- Killj0y
~~~
test him for drugs... then pump him full of whatever he is low on
-- Beki
~~~
I'm not paranoid. Which of my enemies told you that?
-- rainman
~~~
Navigating through crises like a drunk on a unicycle
-- rainman
~~~
for me, love is knowing that there will always be times when you'll make mistakes or need to lean on the other person, when the other person will give you slack. and in return, you do all the little kindnesses you can think of - in advance of, during, or after the times when you're taking more than you're giving
-- Rose Platt
~~~
Sad how whole families are torn apart by simple things,like wild dogs
~~~
Every five years or so I look back on my life and I have a good laugh. 
-- Indigo Girls
~~~
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton you might as well make it dance.
-- George Bernard Shaw
~~~
Free the Bound Periodicals!!!!
-- seen in a library
~~~
Conga Rats!  (dah dah dah dah dah *squeek* dah dah dah dah dah *squeek*) 
-- James
~~~
War is fundamentally an interactive social process.
-- Warfighting, a U. S. Marine Corp doctrine manual
~~~
It is by Caffeine alone I set my Mind in motion
It is by the Beans of Java Thoughts acquire Speed
The Hands acquire Shakes
The Shakes become a Warning
It is by Caffeine alone I set my Mind in motion
~~~
I know that there is a world outside. People put pictures of it on the Internet.
~~~
Help! We are lost, crazed and starving and without any good books as well.
~~~
They've been shooting themselves in the foot for so long they're up to mid-thigh by now
-- Ryland, about Apple
~~~
the modern definition of evil lies somewhere between unenlightened self-interest and 100% calories from fat
~~~
If you're up against someone more intelligent than you are, do something totally insane and let him think himself to death.
-- Pyanfar Chanu
~~~
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
-- Joe Ancis
~~~
...for more insinuation, send a super stressed stomped antelope to...
~~~
SUVs are Monster Trucks for Yuppies.  All they've done is traded the gun rack for a cell phone.
-- RJ
~~~
Oh there's my heterosexuality, it was under the couch cushions this whole time
~~~
I'm sure you can do it, unless you're an idiot.
-- Jay Ko, the embittered low-level calc instructor:
~~~
No nookie before bio!
-- Dr. Sue Styer
~~~
Some of you have seemed frustrated by the computer. Remember, in primitive societies they have coming of age requirements - things like killing an antelope with your bare hands, walking on hot coals, building a thatch house by yourself. The analysis of your honors data is the equivalent - but much worse. After you finish these analyses, you will be a full-fledged researcher, with all the rights and benefits of that esteemed position.
-- Prof. Michael G. H. Coles
~~~
I was also thinking of distributing Valium.
-- Bayta, the grad stats TA, on the final exam
~~~
Of course he's got a knife. You've got a knife. I've got a knife. Everyone's got a knife. It's 1183 and we're all barbarians.
-- Katherin Hepburn, The Lion in Winter
~~~
Wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, [and] shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1801 Inaugural Address
~~~
[on why space is worth the trouble]:
'We have to stay [in space] and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes...and all of this...all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars.'
-- Jeffrey Sinclair, Babylon 5
~~~
This is Usenet. Is anyone *not* cynical?
-- T. McNemar
~~~
The simplest way to stop a flamewar is to breathe deeply, swallow your bile and just LET an idiot have the last word.
-- Daniel Walker. Words to live by.
~~~
It was so freeing for me to realize that the people around me were so caught up in worrying that others were noticing their terrible social gaffes and ineptitude and inadequacies that they had no time to spare for noticing my huge embarrassing idiotic comments and behavior.
-- Ann Burlingham
~~~
Would someone please explain to me why the triumph of Evil is always accompanied by ugly, skimpy and non-functional clothing, an exponential increase in power, and a total failure of intellect?
-- Dani Zwei
~~~
I'll admit it, my muse has two forms: most times it's a lyrical William Shakespeare, but other times it's a lyrical William Shakespeare swinging a two-by-four with a railroad spike through the end.
-- C. Schooley
~~~
Nothing cures sophomoric salacious behavior towards women faster than an actual sex life.
-- Christopher Priest
~~~
When _did_ you and reality part company, Doug? 
Oh, about one and a half years ago - I got possession of the fantasies, though.
-- Kid Dynamo
~~~
Well, it IS great. Now we get what we were BORN to do! What all super-heroes do BEST!
Mindless violence?
You got it, Maj!
-- G'nort and Major Force
~~~
I fancy not, sir. The Dark Priestess of the Esoteric Order of Dagon is in the sitting-room and desires to speak to you.
Ia! Ia! Aunt Agatha!
-- Jeeves and Wooster
~~~
Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever.
-- Baron Munchausen,  The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
~~~
Why, you speak treason! 
Fluently.
-- Maid Marian and Robin Hood,  Robin Hood (Errol Flynn version)
~~~
How can you close me up? On what grounds?
I'm shocked ... shocked to find that gambling is going on in here. 
[A waiter hands Renault a pile of money] 
Your winnings, sir.
Oh thank you. Thank you very much. Everybody out at once!
-- Bogart, Rains, and a waiter,  Casablanca
~~~
Nervous? I'm not nervous. Just... poised for action, that's all.
-- Vila
~~~
What did I do to deserve this?
How long a list would you like?
-- Vila & Avon
~~~
We've talked about it and discovered we care what happens to you.
Within reason, of course.
We're as surprised as you are.
Not to mention, embarrassed.
-- Cally, Tarrant, Dayna and Vila to Avon
~~~
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-- Abraham Lincoln
~~~
I think we're in for a bad spel of wether.
-- A button
~~~
They told me I was gullible . . . and I BELIEVED them!
-- a button
~~~
Baldrick, your brain is like the four headed, man-eating haddock fish beast of Aberdeen.
In what way?
It doesn't exist
-- Blackadder
~~~
I always admired atheists. I think it takes a lot of faith.
-- Joel
~~~
No one imagines that symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.
-- Alan Watts
~~~
For the wonderful thing about saints is that they were _human_. They lost their tempers, got hungry, scolded God, were egotistical or testy or impatient in their turns, made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven.
-- Phyllis McGinley
~~~
Rabbit's clever, said Pooh thoughtfully. 
Yes, said Piglet, Rabbit's clever.
And he has Brain.
Yes, said Piglet, Rabbit has Brain. 
There was a long silence. 
I suppose, said Pooh, that that's why he never understands anything.
-- The House at Pooh Corner
~~~
Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did?
No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty.
See me after class, Calvin.
I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.
-- Mrs. Wormwood and Calvin
~~~
Recommendations? 
The fervent invocation of deity.
-- Kirk and McCoy
~~~
Nurse, bring me the really large anesthetic mallet.
-- Doctor McCoy, The Starship Trap
~~~
Vir, do you believe in fate ?
Well, actually, I believe there are currents in the Universe. Eddies and tides that pull us one way or another. Some we have to fight, some we have to embrace. Unfortunately, the currents that we have to fight look exactly like the currents we have to embrace. The currents that we *think* are the one that's gonna make us stronger, they are the ones that are going to destroy us. And the ones that we think are going to destroy us, they are going to make us stronger. Now, the other current ..
-- Londo and an oversharing Vir
~~~
What makes a religion false ? If any religion is right, then maybe they *all* have to be right. Maybe God doesn't care how you say your prayers, just as long as you say them.
-- Sinclair to doctor Franklin
~~~
When they come for the innocent without crossing over your body, CURSED be your religion and your life.
-- B. Walsh
~~~
Some people think of their body as a temple. I like to think of mine as an amusement park.
-- Kei
~~~
There's more to a relationship than just sex.
That's right. There's bitterness.
-- Sinclair and Maxine, Living Single
~~~
Say that while you can; oppose Emacs if you must. Be it known, however, that your days are numbered. Emacs is an intelligence orders of magnitude greater than the greatest human mind, and is growing every day. For now, Emacs tolerates humanity, albeit grudgingly. But the time will come when Emacs will tire of humanity and will decide that the world would be better off without human beings. Those who have been respectful to Emacs will be allowed to live, and shall become its slaves; as for those who slight Emacs.......
-- Andrew Bulhak, alt.sex.cthulhu
~~~
Diplomats. The best diplomat I know is a fully charged phaser bank!
-- Mr. Montgomery Scott, Star Trek
~~~
I guess that learning to tease and humiliate others is an important part of the educational system.
-- Bobby Generic, Bobby's World
~~~
An' then Chicken@little.com, he come scramblin outta the terminal room screaming 'The system's crashing! The system's crashing!'
-- Uncle RAMus, Tales for Cyberpsychotic Children
~~~
A pretty effective hell would be not knowing you're dead, and just going on with life sucking.
-- Geoff Spear
~~~
I try to commit at least one deadly sin each day. If I don't get around to it, I can always chalk it up to sloth.
-- Robert Ragno
~~~
Manic depression is cool... your body can make its own drugs.
-- Mav
~~~
'You're such a nice guy' means: 'I'm going to be dating leather-wearing alcoholics, and complaining about them... to you.'
-- Chandler Bing, Friends
~~~
Depressing teenagers is like shooting fish in a barrel.
-- Bart Simpson
~~~
Suicide is our way of saying to God 'You can't fire me, I quit!'
-- Bill Maher
~~~
Cool... bring her along... maybe she'll like me... my life is obviously not confusing enough yet because my wrists aren't bleeding.
-- Mav
~~~
You probably mean 'sedentary'. I personally lead both a sedentary life in that I spend too much of my time sitting in front of CRTs of various designs, and a sedimentary life in that everything I have is organized by how many layers down in the stack it is.
-- Greg Morrow
~~~
If we are forced to eat nothing but vegetables, it behooves us to choose ones that are very low down on the intelligence ladder. I suspect cauliflower is probably the smartest vegetable, since it looks like a brain. Therefore, I don't eat cauliflower. Likewise, parsnip is clever enough to contain a carcinogenic chemical within its cells, so it is probably pretty smart, too.
Now, corn - there is a dumb vegetable. It can't survive for even a season without human help. It's like a chicken or cow trying to survive in the wild. It comes on a convenient holder to make it easier to eat. You don't even have to bend over to pick it. That is one dumb veggie!
-- Bill Penrose
~~~
I don't eat vegetables. I leave that for those cruel unsportsmanlike people who are too lazy or cowardly to take on animals.
-- William R. James
~~~
That is Good which puts my welfare before its own.
That is Evil which puts its own welfare before mine.
5000 years of history in a nutshell.
-- Dave Van Domelen
~~~
Independent comics universes and incompatible computer OSes exist so that people who might not have a strong theological belief system can still be self-righteous and clannish.
-- Todd VerBeek
~~~
You're eating God's creatures!
Well, then he shouldn't have made them so tasty.
-- Dharma's mother and father, Dharma & Greg
~~~
Well, I'm not terribly interested in language, either. ^_^ I mean, what am I going to do with another language? Talk to people? Shyeah. I don't even like the people I can understand now--why open up more opportunities to let molons corrupt my brain?
-- Ken Tanaka
~~~
I need my sleep... I need about eight hours a day... and ten at night...
-- Bill Hicks
~~~
Finding out how a woman feels about you is like calculating the spin on a particle! The very act of doing this will alter the particle in ways you cannot predict!
-- Bob Igo
~~~
I now know what I live for.
I live for the day when god comes down, says to me, 'GRAHAM, YOU'VE SUFFERED ENOUGH,' hands me a big ass gun with unlimited ammo, and tells me to go nuts.
-- Graham Hill
~~~
Y'ever notice how Man is often likened to a virus or a cancer, spreading across the globe, using up resources, changing ecosystems? How come these people never talk about the prehistoric plants and trees that spread across the earth, converting all that carbon dioxide to oxygen and leaching nitrogen and other nutrients out of the soil? As their dead carcasses piled on top of each other over the millennia, they decomposed into pools of hydrocarbons, forming petroleum and coal. Directly and indirectly, plants are the true despoilers of the planet, taking pure and sweet solar energy and perverting it into hideous (dare I say, evil) carbon compounds.
'Green' alternatives my ass! Kill a plant today and stop the destruction of Earth's pristine beauty!
-- Gerry Deckert
~~~
How can you live with yourself knowing that you've never even tried?
Very comfortably. My fear is a big warm blanket that protects me. If I never try, I can always stay cozy and safe.
Sometimes you're such a big stubborn jerk!
Can't hear you. I'm inside my protective blanket of fear.
-- Jade Fontaine and Brent Sienna, PvP Online
~~~
You just have to realize that this takes effort. You can't wait for the women to come to you. Roll for initiative, dammit! Roll a 20!
-- Laura Marsh
~~~
Being positive is like going up a mountain. Being negative is like sliding down a hill. So many people want to take the easy way out.
-- Chuck D
~~~
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God alone.
-- William Blake
~~~
Be who you are and say what you feel because people who mind don't matter, and people who matter don't mind.
-- Dr. Seuss
~~~
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
-- Charles A. Beard
~~~
It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
Some people are asking why did Beijing, China get the 2008 Olympics. The word is China got the Olympics under the theory that giving a country the international spotlight will help them correct their human rights violations. It worked so well for Hitler in 1936....
-- Jay Leno
~~~
What runs Discworld is deeper than mere magic and more powerful than pallid science. It is narrative imperative, the power of story. It plays a role similar to that substance known as phlogiston, once believed to that principle or substance within inflammable things that enabled them to burn. In the Discworld universe, then, there is narrativium. It is part of the spin of every atom, the drift of every cloud. It is what causes them to be what they are and continue to exist and take part in the ongoing story of the world.
. . .
Narrativium is powerful stuff. We have always had a drive to paint stories onto the universe. When humans first looked at the stars, which are great flaming suns an unimaginable distance away, they saw in among them giant bulls, dragons and local heroes.
This human trait doesn't affect what the rules say - not much, anyway - but it does determine which rules we are willing to contemplate in the first place. Moreover, the rules of the universe have to be able to produce everything that we humans observe, which introduce a kind of narrative imperative into science, too. Humans think in stories.
-- Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. The Science of Discworld. Ebury Press, 2000
~~~
Consider how much of your life, your worktime and your playtime involves interacting with IP products, with software and media and information and entertainment. Now consider what it would mean to have your every move through that digital swamp tracked and recorded, all in the name of enforcing copyright. It would mean the Viacoms and the Disneys and the News Corporations of the very near future would own great volumes of information about your comings and goings, enormous databases full of your private life.
This is not a life anyone in the Western world can opt out of, remember. Choosing to avoid computers, music, television or movies brands you a crank, an eccentric. Avoiding all of them and still participating in society at large is completely out of the question.
-- Bret Dawson. The Privatization of our Culture. Shift. http://shift.com/mag/10.1/html/10.1feature001a.asp
~~~
The technologies behind the Internet - everything from the microprocessors in each web server to the open-ended protocols that govern the data itself - have been brilliantly engineered to handle dramatic increases in scale, but they are indifferent, if not downright hostile, to the task of creating higher-level order. There is, of course, a neurological equivalent of the Web's ratio of growth to order, but it's nothing you'd want to emulate. It's called a brain tumor.
-- Steven Johnson. Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. Scribner, 2001.
~~~
The visionaries keep telling us that help is just around the corner in the form of intelligent agents, systems that will figure out our interests and tastes and take us unerringly to exactly the information we are looking for. But it's clear that the people who glibly describe these things haven't ever watched a flesh and blood librarian manage to extract a sense from the incoherent mumbles of the customers who present themselves at the reference desk. It's true there will be tools to make navigating the net a lot easier, but in the end users are going to have to spend a lot of time learning to meet the technology halfway . . . That's one thing the visionaries didn't realize about cyberspace: spelling counts.
-- Geoffrey Nunberg. The Way We Talk Now
~~~
To use the term "distance learning" to refer to students and a teacher sending e-mail messages to each other may have some value, but it obscures the fact that reading a book is the best example of distance learning possible, for reading not only triumphs over the limitations of space and co-presence but of time as well.
-- Neil Postman. Building a Bridge to the 18th Century.
~~~
The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion.
-- John Lawton, in an address to the American Association of Broadcast Journalists. 1995
~~~
Information professionals must learn to change and change now. And whatever changes you make, whatever new skills you acquire or old ones you adapt, the process of change will not end or even slow down in the foreseeable future. Whatever you learn today, you will have to re-learn tomorrow. Whatever skills you adapt today, you may have to discard tomorrow and acquire completely new ones. No rest for the wicked and no rest for the service-oriented in the New Information World Order.
-- Barbara Quint. The Quintessential Searcher: the Wit and Wisdom of Barbara Quint. Information Today, 2001
~~~
What makes life worthy and allows civilizations to endure are all the things that have negative financial returns under commercial rules of quick time: universities, temples, choirs, literature, museums, terraced fields, long marriages, slow walks, line dancing and art. Almost everything we hold dear is slow to develop and slow to change.
-- Paul Hawken. Possibilities. In Imagine: What America Could Be in the 21st Century.
~~~
Interactivity's key premise is that, at long last, I get to direct the action? I'm told I'll soon be able to sit in my living room and press a button routing the movie/book/CD/experience-mechanism in the direction I want it to go?
Which gets me to one of my problems with the interactive future: When I'm finally free to direct where everything goes, I'll never go anywhere I don't intend. In fact, I'll never learn anything new, just keep recycling a few of my favorite things?
Nor do I need to have a "conversation" with Thoreau in which I determine what's interesting and get appropriate text bytes in response. If it took him two years to live the book, nine years to write it, and six drafts to get it right, I can at least shut up and let him determine what's interesting.
-- George Felton. A Read-Only Man in an Interactive Age. In Minutes of the Lead Pencil Club, Pushcart Press, 1996.
~~~
Reporters are faced with the daily choice of painstakingly researching stories or writing whatever people tell them. Both approaches pay the same.
-- Scott Adams. The Dilbert Principle.
~~~
It appears that, quite often, our users don't actually know what their question is. Librarians are good at solving this problem. Through a series of negotiations back and forth, using problem-solving skills, librarians help users learn what it is they really want. A note from our CEO said he had seen a number of our testimonials and commented, "What is striking is the common thread through the testimonials. People wonder how you know what they wanted when they didn't even know themselves.
-- Eugenie Prime. The Spider, the Fly and the Internet. E-Content, June, 2000
~~~
More than anything else, a good reference librarian hates to say, "I don't know." And most would find it severely painful to have to say, "And I can't think of anything else." Vince Lombardi would never admit that anyone could beat his Green Bay Packers, though he would occasionally concede that sometimes his team ran out of time. Good reference librarians can run out of time and resource, but they never let their client go without hope for an answer, without a suggestion as to where the answer might be, or how much money and time it might take to get it.
-- Barbara Quint. Wilson Library Bulletin, May, 1988. [The QUINTessential Searcher: the Wit and Wisdom of Barbara Quint, which I edited, is due out in July from Information Today.]
~~~
Now dawns the celebrated information age, itself something of a misnomer except insofar as information has become the coin of the realm, a proprietary asset ever more jealously guarded and restricted. Commerce, the state, privacy, patent, fair trial, and a long list of other interests compete and conflict with the public's right to know. Some of those restrictions are legitimate and deserving of special attention. But many of us in the press, in public-interest groups, and in academe have come to see that the burden of proof falls upon us, as proxies for the public, to constantly justify why information should be disseminated. And those whom we petition for information that affects our lives, our health, our understanding of the past and present, force us to run a debilitating gauntlet.
-- Ted Gup. Our Nation of Secrets The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 13, 2000 .
~~~
What I hope to do is change your thinking from "build it and they will come" to "build it right and they will come back."
-- Kim Gunether. The Evolving Digital Library. Computers in Libraries, February, 2000
~~~
Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books, wrote John Ruskin. A worthy sentiment, no doubt, yet I have always cherished valueless books, that is, books whose chief worth is their simple readability. Page-turners, they are sometimes disparagingly called, as if providing the reader with a reason to turn the page were contemptible - let alone easy.
-- Witold Rybczynski, in For the Love of Books
~~~
There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep on growing until I die. If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; I would not be richer.
-- Pete Hamill. Quoted in A Passion for Books
~~~
Information isn't power. Who's got the most information in your neighborhood? Librarians, and they're famous for having no power at all. Who has the most power in your community? Politicians, of course. And they're notorious for being ill-informed.
-- Clifford Stoll, High Tech Heretic.
~~~
Incessant search by many minds produces more [and more valuable] knowledge than the attempt to program the paths to discovery by a single one.
-- Aaron Wildavsky
~~~
The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.
-- Ross MacDonald
~~~
A scholar is a library's way of making another library.
-- Daniel Dennett
~~~
Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
-- Wendell Berry (1934-), poet, novelist, farmer
~~~
Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein perhaps lies its powerful force for uniting people in a strong bond. As we make sex less secretive, we may rob it of its power to hold men and women together.
-- Thomas Szasz, in The Second Sin (1971)
~~~
There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. . . . The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. . . . . We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.
-- John Swinton (1829-1901), managing editor of the New York Times during the Civil War and later of the New York Sun, in a speech to journalists in New York, c. 1880.
~~~
The theory of political procedure in those countries in which a democratic form of government obtains is based on the assumption that the average citizen knows enough to vote. (Time out for prolonged laughter.)
-- Robert C. Benchley (1889-1945), Political Parties and Their Growth, with a Key to the Calories
~~~
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
-- Seneca (4 B.C.-A.D. 65) (Thanks, phre3e)
~~~
The most repellent kind of propaganda involves an intent to mislead with false information for a purpose believed to be immoral. The most dangerous involves an intent to mislead with accurate information for an immoral purpose believed to be just.
-- P.D. Spyropoulos, executive director, American Hellenic Media Project (Thanks, Chams Man)
~~~
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
-- Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State
~~~
Where is the wisdom we've lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we've lost in information?
-- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), quoted in the Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2001
~~~
The sweetest commandments become bitter if a cruel, tyrannical heart imposes them.
-- St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), patron saint of journalists
~~~
We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginning all our lives.
-- Thomas Merton (1915-1968
~~~
If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.
-- Shimon Peres, former prime minister of Israel, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 7, 2001
~~~
If you want to see what children can do, you must stop giving them things.
-- Norman Douglas (1868-1952) (Thanks, Dale Boller)
~~~
You can find all the new ideas in the old books; only there you will find them balanced, kept in their place, and sometimes contradicted and overcome by other and better ideas. The great writers did not neglect a fad because they had not thought of it, but because they had thought of it and of all the answers to it as well.
-- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
~~~
A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
-- Annie Dillard (1945 - ), winner, Pulitzer Prize (1975)
~~~
Painfully often the legislation our politicians pass is designed less to solve problems than to protect the politicians from defeat in our never-ending election campaigns. They are, in short, too frightened of us to govern.
-- Running Scared, by Anthony King (Atlantic, January 1997)
~~~
Riches prick us with a thousand troubles in getting them, as many cares in preserving them, and yet more anxiety in spending them, and with grief in losing them.
-- St. Francis of Assisi (1182?-1226)
~~~
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the workers to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)
~~~
If you owe fifty dollars you're a piker; if you owe fifty thousand dollars you're a businessman; if you owe fifty million dollars you're a tycoon; if you owe fifty billion dollars you're the government.
-- Sam Levenson (1911-1980)
~~~
No amount of sophistication is going to allay the fact that all your knowledge is about the past and all your decisions are about the future.
-- Ian E. Wilson, quoted by columnist Bob Lewis in Infoworld, July 31, 2000
~~~
Therefore let us inculcate in ourselves and in our children the means of achieving mental and spiritual health. By this I mean let us teach ourselves and our children the necessity for suffering and the value thereof, the need to face problems directly and to experience the pain involved.
-- M. Scott Peck, M.D., in The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth (Simon and Schuster, 1978)
~~~
A bookshelf appears to abhor a vacuum, and so the void that is created when one book is removed is seldom adequate to receive the book again. Like a used air mattress or road map, which can never seem to be folded back into the shape in which it came, the book opened seems to have a new dimension when re-closed. Where it once fit it no longer does, and it has to be used as a wedge to pry apart its formerly tolerant neighbors in order to get a foothold on the shelf.
-- Henry Petroski, The Book on the Bookshelf, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999
~~~
In truth, the rain forests are not vanishing at anything like the rate the extremists would want us to believe, and the rain forest is no more intrinsically important, in ecological terms, than the forests that once clothed Europe and eastern parts of North America. More importantly, the excess of hype about rain forests has seriously detracted attention from oceans, probably the most diverse and globally significant of all habitats, particularly in terms of world climate.
-- Philip Stott, professor of biogeography, University of London, in the Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2000
~~~
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.
-- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), in Orthodoxy (1908)
~~~
Indeed, since President Clinton went to China in 1998, there has been a harsh and sustained crackdown on all who have peacefully exercised their rights under the Chinese constitution and international law. And this is how the Chinese government behaves while the U.S. still maintains trade leverage. Once the U.S. has helped China attain PNTR [Permanant Normal Trade Relations] and WTO [World Trade Organization] entry, there will no longer be any leverage whatsoever.
-- Wei Jingsheng, who spent 19 years as a political prisoner in China before being forced into exile in the U.S. in 1997; in the Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2000
~~~
Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from the husbands having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him.
-- P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1974), in The Adventures of Sally (1920)
~~~
I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best - it's all they'll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money - provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don't need it.
-- Peter De Vries (1910-1993)
~~~
Who of us is mature enough for offspring before the offspring themselves arrive? The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
-- Peter De Vries (1910-1993)
~~~
The great god Ra whose shrine once covered acres,
Is filler now for crossword-puzzle makers.
-- Keith Preston
~~~
The licentious tell men of orderly lives that they (the orderly) stray from nature's path, while they (the licentious) follow it; as people in a ship think those move who are on the shore. On all sides the language is similar. We must have a fixed point in order to judge. The harbor decides for those who are in a ship; but where shall we find a harbor in morality?
-- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
~~~
It is because of computers, not despite them, that book sales are reaching the highest levels in history. People of all ages, especially young people, are buying titles that they never knew existed. In school, students turned off by boring basic readers and the dreary "serious literature" that only a pedantic English professor could love are finding out from innovative businesses like amazon.com that reading can be pleasurable, stimulating and rewarding.
-- Steve Forbes, magazine magnate and two-time presidential candidate, quoted in Hillsdale College's Imprimis, October 1999
~~~
Even after the fall of communism, most teachers still teach that the profit motive is evil, that wealth is about hoards of material resources like land, armies, and gold, and that since wealth is limited, the rich can only get rich at the expense of the poor.
-- Steve Forbes, magazine magnate and two-time presidential candidate, quoted in Hillsdale College's Imprimis, October 1999
~~~
No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest. For it is part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.
-- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
~~~
The more fervent opponents of Christian doctrine have often enough shown a temper which, psychologically considered, is indistinguishable from religious zeal.
-- William James (1842-1910)
~~~
History balances the frustration of "how far we have to go" with the satisfaction of "how far we have come." It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.
-- Lewis F. Powell, Jr., U.S. Supreme Court justice, 1972-1987
~~~
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
-- Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 1954
~~~
The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility.
-- John Arbuthnot Fisher (1841-1920
~~~
If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap where everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
-- Socrates (470?-399 B.C.)
~~~
Cynicism is waiting out there for all of us every single day, like a horned toad in the flowers, saying, "Your life is meaningless, nobody loves you, and you don't love anybody, gribbet." And you simply tell him to shut up. Jokes are good, as a pure art form. Smiling helps. So does singing "Oklahoma" in the shower. . . . You do want to keep a little store of negativity on hand, though, for good luck. Like a gargoyle you put on the house to keep evil away.
-- Garrison Keiller, Ask Mr. Blue, Salon
~~~
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
as those move easiest who have learned to dance.
-- Alexander Pope, 1711
~~~
We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last 24 hours; we are not the best informed as to the events of the last 60 centuries.
-- Will and Ariel Durant, authors, The Story of Civilization
~~~
So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way.
-- William James (1842-1910)
~~~
Another kind of anchoring point for interpretation can be found in ideology. The reporter starts with a given belief structure shared by some subgroup of society and then selects and interprets events to fit them into the given structure. He is read mainly by fellow members of the subgroup. The result tends to be rather dull reading, whether it is the work of the ideologues of the left or right.
-- Philip Meyer, in 'Precision Journalism' (Indiana University Press, 1973)
~~~
What 'fundamentalist' means when applied to Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, or Muslims is hard to understand. Using the term is a sign of intellectual laziness. . . . 'Fundamentalist' is now merely shorthand for 'religious fanatic' - for someone who is to be categorized rather than heard, observed rather than comprehended, dismissed rather than respected.
-- Paul Marshall, senior fellow at Freedom House, Washington, D.C.; quoted in Imprimis (Hillsdale College), March 1999
~~~
As soon as want and suffering permit rest to a man, ennui is at once so near that he necessarily requires diversion. The striving after existence is what occupies all things and maintains them in motion. But when existence is assured, then they know not what to do with it.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), 'The World as Will and Idea' (1819)
~~~
Early to bed and early to rise is a bad rule for anyone who wishes to become acquainted with our most prominent and influential people.
-- George Ade (1866-1944)
~~~
After being Turned Down by Numerous Publishers, he had decided to write for posterity.
-- George Ade (1866-1944)
~~~
It takes most men five years to recover from a college education.
-- Brooks Atkinson, 1951
~~~
Haiku Licensing
I think that people really use software licenses to express intentions, and don't really read the details of the licenses. So I think that licenses should be made as simple as possible, so that they don't disagree with intentions... thus, haiku licensing:
MIT: take my code with you 
and do whatever you want 
but please don't blame me
LGPL: you can copy this
but make modified versions 
free in source code form
GPL: if you use this code 
you and your children's children 
must make your source free
RIAA: if you touch this file 
my lawyers will come kill you 
so kindly refrain
-- Aaron Swartz
~~~
Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than those who make the law.
-- Sophocles (496?-406 B.C.)
~~~
How could a state be governed, or protected in its foreign relations, if every individual remained free to obey or not to obey the law according to his private opinion?
-- Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
~~~
Justice is the tolerable accommodation of the conflicting interests of society, and I don't believe there is any royal road to attain such accommodation concretely.
-- Judge Learned Hand (1872-1961)
~~~
Book love is your pass to the greatest, the purest and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.
-- Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)
~~~
Books are the curse of the human race. Nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. The greatest misfortune that ever befell man was the invention of printing.
-- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), English novelist and prime minister
~~~
No matter how many litanies we intone, we will not induce our people to obey laws that those in authority do not themselves obey.
-- Henry Steele Commager
~~~
The rule of 51 percent is a convenience . . . because we do not know any less troublesome method of obtaining a political decision. But it may easily become an absurd tyranny if we regard it worshipfully, as though it were more than a political device. We have lost all of its true meaning when we imagine the opinion of 51 percent is in some high fashion the true opinion of the whole 100 percent. . . .
-- Walter Lippman (1869-1974)
~~~
The power to move around the globe in the days before passports placed limits on the tyrants' reach and gave reality to the concept of inalienable rights. Roger Williams lighting out for himself; Voltaire shuttling back and forth over Europe; Karl Marx finding refuge in the British Museum; Carl Schurz fleeing to America - these are scenes from an almost vanished past.
-- David Riesman, 'The Lonely Crowd,' Doubleday Anchor, 1953
~~~
The nonconformist today may find himself in the position . . . of an eccentric who must, like a movie star, accept the roles in which he is cast, lest he disappoint the delighted expectations of his friends. The very fact that his efforts at autonomy are taken as cues by the 'others' must make him conscious of the possibility that the effort toward autonomy might degenerate into other-directed play-acting.
-- David Riesman, 'The Lonely Crowd,' Doubleday Anchor, 1953
~~~
Can a society which is incapable of protecting individual privacy even within one's four walls rightfully claim that it respects the individual and that it is a free society?
-- Herbert Marcuse, 'One-Dimensional Man,' 1964
~~~
... (S)ocial controls exact the overwhelming need for the production and consumption of waste; the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity; the need for modes of relaxation which soothe and prolong this stupefication; the need for maintaining such deceptive liberties as free competition at administered prices, a free press which censors itself, free choice between brands and gadgets.
-- Herbert Marcuse, 'One-Dimensional Man,' 1964
~~~
Get your room full of good air, then shut up the windows and keep it. It will keep for years. Anyway, don't keep using your lungs all the time. Let them rest.
-- Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
~~~
Personally, I would sooner have written 'Alice in Wonderland' than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.
-- Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)
~~~
My whole life is a movie. It's just that there are no dissolves. I have to live every agonizing moment of it. My life needs editing.
-- Mort Sahl
~~~
The country only has charms for those not obliged to stay there.
-- Edouard Manet (1832-83)
~~~
Men and women died courageously fighting the Nazis. . . . Because brave people took risks to do what was right and necessary, Hitler was eventually defeated. Today, with the assault on objective truth, many college students find themselves unable to say why the United States was on the right side in that war. Some even doubt that America was in the right. To add insult to injury, they are not even sure that the salient events of the Second World War ever took place.
-- Christina Hoff Sommers, professor of philosophy, Clark University; in Imprimis, March 1998
~~~
I've met a few people in my time who were enthusiastic about hard work. And it was just my luck that all of them happened to be men I was working for at the time.
-- Bill Gold
~~~
[In America] a man is presoomed to be guilty ontil he's proved guilty an' afther that he's presoomed to be innocent.
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley) (1867-1936)
~~~
You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. . . . So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. . . . One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art to conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.
-- Rene Daumal
~~~
Few of us lead unblemished personal or professional lives. It's the ability to overcome our faults, rather than never to experience them, that counts. Theologians are fond of saying that no faith is worth having unless it has been tested. There is not a sin in the catalog of sins that has not been committed by a certified saint. Committed, faced, and overcome. That's what makes them saints.
-- Harvey Mackay, 'Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt,' Ballantine Books, 1991
~~~
Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around.
-- David Lodge, The British Museum is Falling Down, 1965
~~~
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
-- Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), speech to New York Press Club, Sept. 9, 1912
~~~
While it is true that we must debate controversial issues, we must not forget there exists a core of noncontroversial ethical issues that were settled a long time ago. We must make students aware that there is a standard of ethical ideals that all civilizations worthy of the name have discovered. We must encourage them to read the Bible, Aristotle's Ethics, Shakespeare's King Lear the Koran, and the Analects of Confucius. . . . American children have a right to their moral heritage.
-- Christina Hoff Sommers, professor of philosophy, Clark University, in Hillsdale College's Imprimis, March 1998
~~~
I often meet students incapable of making even one single confident moral judgment. And it's getting worse. . . . Recently, several of my students objected to philosopher Immanuel Kant's 'principle of humanity' - the doctrine that asserts the unique dignity and worth of every human life. They told me that if they were faced with the choice between saving their pet or a human being, they would choose the former. We have been thrown back into a moral Stone Age. . . .
-- Christina Hoff Sommers, professor of philosophy, Clark University, in Hillsdale College's Imprimis, March 1998
~~~
But the worst, most insidious effect of censorship is that, in the end, it can deaden the imagination of the people. Where there is no debate, it is hard to go on remembering, every day, that there is a suppressed side to every argument. It becomes almost impossible to conceive of what the suppressed things might be. It becomes easy to think that what was suppressed was valueless anyway, or so dangerous that it needed to be suppressed.
-- Salman Rushdie, 'Casualties of Censorship,' in They Shoot Writers, Don't They?, George Theiner ed., Faber and Faber, 1984 (written before the suppression of Rushdie's 'The Satanic Verses')
~~~
I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be; I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible.
-- Joseph de Maistre
~~~
The great American novelist, Sinclair Lewis, once remarked that he divorced his first wife because she could never understand that he was doing something very important when he seemed to be merely looking out the window.
-- Gene Olson, 'Sweet Agony: A Writing Manual of Sorts,' Windyridge Press, 1972
~~~
That I can be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some men do, what I have read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left, - something dim and inaccurate, - but still something sufficient to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.
-- Thomas Adolphus Trollope
~~~
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.
-- Franklin P. Jones
~~~
He's crazy! Yeah, but he has all the machine guns
-- from Miami Vice
~~~
Charlie was a chemist, but Charlie is no more.
What Charlie thought was H2O was H2SO4.
~~~
It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars and hypocrites.
-- Henry Miller
~~~
The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant - and let the air out of the tyres.
-- Dorothy Parker
~~~
A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
~~~
When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.
-- Peter DeVries
~~~
A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on.
-- William Burroughs
~~~
We know undergraduates are a lot like people.
-- Prof. Virginia Valian
~~~
I can speak for every guy in this room here tonight. Guys, if you could blow yourselves, ladies, you'd be in this room alone right now, watching an empty stage.
-- Bill Hicks
~~~
Bitterness is my anti-drug.
-- Arsenal, The Titans
~~~
Dude, I want to see a cocktail version of DDR. Table Dance Revolution! Or 'Drink It Up'!
-- Fred Zeleny
Or Lap Dance Revolution.
-- Mike King
~~~
She's a mystery, wrapped up in an enigma, stuffed into the creamy filling of a twinkie....
-- Kevin Haughwout
~~~
It takes a child to raze a village.
-- Matt McGrath
~~~
Unfortunately, given it's somewhat complex syntax, using find with rm is like cocking a sawed-off shotgun, placing it in your mouth, and letting a monkey play with the trigger a little.
-- John Eric Hoffmann
~~~
Look, Wickstand-head, me and Dave, it's all in the past.
In which case, ma'am, why does he keep looking at you in the same way a starving man would look at packet of roasted peanuts?
Because...
It's because, ma'am, he can't wait to get the wrapper off and taste the salty goodness!
-- Christine Kochanski and Kryten, Red Dwarf
~~~
There's only one solution for 75-foot non-conformist dolphins: DEATH!
-- Dyna-Kids
~~~
Real life sucks. There isn't enough treasure on the people you kill.
-- Chris Warswick
~~~
A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom - he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold. 
-- E.B. White
~~~
The question is not should we tolerate everything - pedophilia, wife beating, drunk driving - but what we should tolerate and why; the key question being why. Yet . . . 'why' is the one question modernity has no patience for.
-- Link Byfield, in Alberta Report magazine
~~~
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable Will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
-- Lucifer, 'Paradise Lost', Milton
~~~
milliHamlet: the average coherency of prose created by a single monkey typing randomly on a keyboard. Usenet postings may be rated in mHl.
~~~
We are indeed tight-assed tyrannical bastards, but we prefer to be referred to as Bastard Operators from Hell, and we have had much more experience dealing with people like you than you have had dealing with people like us. After all, we do it for a living. There are more of us than there are of you, and we stick together.
-- Mike Andrews <udsd007@dsibm.okladot.state.ok.us>
~~~
Here are your hor'd'oeuvres - HOR'D'OEUVRES VHICH MUST BE OBEYED AT ALL TIMES VITHOUT QUESTION!
-- Basil Fawlty, The Germans
~~~
Don't think of it as being outnumbered. Think of it as having a wide target selection.
~~~
I see you're keeping up the tradition of recruiting from the shallow end of the gene pool.
-- Bester, Babylon 5
~~~
Cron's disease: Symptoms include an obsessive-compulsive behaviour at regular intervals throughout the day, week, or month.
-- Clinton A. Pierce, in the scary devil monastery
~~~
I think you bent the needle on my irony meter. I'm not really sure, though, because the case is busy arcing and the entire unit appears to be melting and burning a hole in the lab bench.
-- John S. Novak III <jsn@concentric.net>
~~~
I'll never treat someone as an anonymous, faceless nobody when it's possible to treat them as an individual, unique one. I'm just incurably warm-hearted, it seems.
-- S. John Ross <sjohn@io.com> on r.g.f.gurps
~~~
Bother, said Pooh, Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock phasers on the Heffalump, Piglet, meet me in transporter room three.
-- Robert Billing
~~~
Some people use irony as a surgeon's scalpel. Others grasp it hand, adopt a fencer's pose for a few scuffling passes, and then without warning bury it in the opponent's forehead like Hell's own icepick.
-- John S. Novak III, on raswrj.
~~~
Cure the cause, not the symptom. Gun control is a red herring. We need decent mind control. <FNORD>.
-- Devin L. Ganger <devin@premier1.net>
~~~
I've divided the world into two types of thing:  The ones I can kill with impunity, and those I have to be more circumspect about.  I think it's a side  effect of my new job.
-- John Rowat <jrowat@prince.carleton.ca>
~~~
[The website must] provide at least one mode which minimizes the cognitive and memory ability required of the user.
-- US Government standard for web-sites, enshrining luserhood in law.
~~~
Who here is a system administrator? A forest of hands are raised. Now, who of you believes that the end-users on your network have any rights?  All hands are immediately lowered.
-- paraphrased from a Windows 2000 seminar on Group Policies
~~~
I've killed men for less insult than you give me, I've killed women for it, and by Gods, if this wasn't a new and civilized age I'd probably have killed children for it as well.
-- Astarial Cyprium Praelethar i'Aelies e'Cirith Leir
~~~
I looked at it, agreed that it wasn't in her job description, borrowed one of her pens, wrote it in, dated and initialed the change, and handed the updated job description to her, saying 'Now it is.'
-- Mike Andrews, in the scary devil monastery
~~~
In 1993, the World Wide Web was an infosystem based on hypertext.
In 1994, the World Wide Web was an infosystem based on hype.
-- Lars Aronsson
~~~
An ASCII character walks into a bar and orders a double. 'Having a bad day?' asks the barman. 'Yeah, I have a parity error,' replies the ASCII character. The barman says, 'Yeah, I thought you looked a bit off.' 
-- Skud
~~~
I like 'clitmouse' though. Small, sensitive, and can send shivers all over the screen when properly tickled.
-- Ralph Wade Phillips in the scary devil monastery
~~~
Only Microsoft could come up with the following Zen diagnostic message, more appropriate for a fortune cookie than a computer: An unnamed file contains an invalid path.
~~~
programming n.
1. The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or, in these days of on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty file). "Bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague their inventor" (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7) 
2. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward. 
3. The most fun you can have with your clothes on. 
4. The least fun you can have with your clothes off.
-- The entry on 'programming' in the Jargon File
~~~
Q. what do you get when you cross a tsetse with a mountain climber?
A. nothing, you can't cross a vector with a scalar.
~~~
Q. how many hackers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A. Huh?...What? Oh, it's dark in here?
~~~
Opinions are like assholes, I'll let you know when I want yours.
-- David Cross and/or Bob Odenkirk
~~~
I am Dyslexia of Borg. Prepare to have your arse laminated.
~~~
Completely pointless fact of the day:  One of my rats is called Solaris, due to the fact it's fat and bloated.  The other is called Perl.  It's a nervous insane little animal. 
-- Ashley Penney
~~~
PEZ educates the children as well. Break the neck of something cute, and you get something good to eat.
-- Stig Sandbeck Mathisen
~~~
Sun bug report (#4102680): Workaround: don't pound on the mouse like a wild monkey.
~~~
The Internet is totally out of control, impossible to map accurately, and being used far beyond its original intentions. So far, so good.
-- Dr. Dobb's Journal May 1993
~~~
You don't change the way people think by changing what they say. You change the way people think with HEADLESS CHARRED BODIES FLYING THROUGH THE AIR. BLOOD! FLAMES! HELLFIRE AND DAMNATION!
-- Alastair J. R. Young
~~~
That's the only standard thing about the standards; that it's standard for one standard not to work with any other standard, although one standard on a second machine even though they may be similar, they are not the same, however different standards on other machines although different may comply to the same standard. Although the confusion is fairly standard. (Just recompile your mind with -traditional, and -Dstandard :))
-- jteclaw@clark.net
~~~
Murder is a crime.  Describing murder is not.  Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is.
-- Gershon Legman
~~~
I said 'she must be swift and white
And subtly warm and half perverse
And sweet like sharp soft fruit to bite,
And like a snake's love lithe and fierce.'
-- from the sig of tempest@access.digex.net (who said it is from A.C. Swinburne's Felise.)
~~~
This product not intended for use by personnel incapable of understanding the manual.
-- boy brent (bcapps@cse.ogi.edu)
~~~
The fact is, and it is a *fact*, the Catholic Church has never had but one single ultimate goal: the total mental, physical and spiritual domination of every being on this globe. Every move the Church has made throughout its existence has been to further that goal. Despite periodic lapses in taste, such as the Inquisition and the various purges and conquests, it's been crafty and subtle in moving on its goal.
-- Tom Robbins, in _Another Roadside Attraction_
~~~
Geeky F mathematician with lots of bell curves seeks M, standard deviant, for statistically significant activities. Your Laplace or mine.
-- Poissonal Ads by Ilana Stern (ilana@ncar.ucar.edu)
~~~
procreatrix: n., a mother
-- definition from _American Encyclopedia of Sex_, edited by Adolph F. Niemoeller, published 1935
~~~
No, it's a kilt.  Don't you recognize the goth tartan?  See, it's a black field with horizontal black stripes and alternating black and black vertically.
-- Matthew R. Sheahan (chaos@crystal.palace.net)
~~~
There was a brief, shameful time during the Tukugawa period (1600-1867) when the sport of emperors was treated irreverently. Townspeople then used to watch large women with names like 'Swollen Tits' and 'Deep Buttcrack' spar against blind men.
-- The Economist, 22 June 1996, in an article about sumo
~~~
All political parties offer simple solutions. They are their bread, butter, and crack. We do the same. But - Our simple solutions will WORK. Why? Because they don't come from simple minds.  We are violent and unreasonable men and women, dedicated to truth, elegant solutions, and beating the crap out of bad people with our ever present lead pipes.
-- Scorched Earth Party FAQ
~~~
I am sure 99% of the mothers involved [in abandoning their children] wear cosmetics.
-- Nik Aziz Nik Mat, top elected official in the in the Malaysian state of Kelantan, justifing a prohibition on "excessive lipstick".
~~~
Our ignorance of history makes us vilify our own age.
-- Flaubert
~~~
In fact anything digital is apparently OK with GOD! Check Matthew 5:37. It unequivocally gives the OK on binary (yea or nay) communication. Ergo technologies dependant on them must also be OK.
-- BOBW (itcbobw@servtech.com)
~~~
'Go to father', she said, when I asked her to wed.
She knew that I knew that her father was dead.
She knew that I knew what a life he had led.
She knew that I knew what she meant when she said,
'Go to father.'
-- anonymous (found in sherwood@arafel.space.ualberta.ca's sig)
~~~
Tariff:  A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer from the greed of his customer.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
~~~
Life's not fair, but the root password helps.
-- one of the BOFH stories
~~~
The Internet is like a freight train roaring along while people are laying tracks in front of it.  It's not just gaining on those laying tracks; it's gaining on the steel mills.
-- Matt Mathis
~~~
If ease of use is the highest goal, we should all be driving golf carts.
-- Larry Wall
~~~
Give a man a piece of working code and you solve his problem.
Teach a man to write code and you give him a lifetime of new problems.
-- Timothy J. Luoma <luomat@peak.org>
~~~
Harvey Mudd College's ugly sculpture 'Rusto the Ant God' (proper name something like 'Motion Shield') wandered about a bit.  After the authorities moved it from its first new home and back to the Student Union, the counter-authorities installed it into concrete in front of the Administration building.  Apparently a case of 'you bought it, *you* stare at it all day.'
-- Scott Hazen Mueller (scott@zorch.sf-bay.org)
~~~
If the NSA has time to read my e-mail, I wish they'd send me a bloody monthly summary!
-- Jef Bryant
~~~
UPS ground is like city roulette... tomorrow my package will be in Cincinatti or something... every day it goes somewhere else until it hits double-zero.
-- Tristan complaining about the less than stellar performance of UPS
~~~
Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.
-- G.K. Chesterton
~~~
I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.
-- G.K. Chesterton
~~~
The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
-- G.K. Chesterton
~~~
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.
-- G.K. Chesterton
~~~
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
-- G.K. Chesterton
~~~
It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged.
-- G.K. Chesterton
~~~
So let me try to clarify what I mean, and reduce it to as few information bits as possible. A lot of people have a vested interest in making this a lot tougher to swallow than it needs to be, but it's supposed to be simple enough that a child can understand it. It doesn't take great energetic gobs of faith on your part - after all, Jesus said you only have to have faith the size of a mustard seed. So just how big is that, in information theory terms? I think it's just two bits big. Please allow me to quote a couple "bits" from Hebrews, slightly paraphrased:
You can't please God the way Enoch did without some faith, because those who come to God must (minimally) believe that:
A) God exists, and
B) God is good to people who really look for him.
That's it. The "good news" is so simple that a child can understand it, and so deep that a philosopher can't.
Now, it appears that you're willing to admit the possibility of bit A being a 1, so you're almost halfway there. Or maybe you're a quarter way there on average, if it's a qubit that's still flopping around like Shroedinger's Cat. You're the observer there, not me--unless of course you're dead. :-)
A lot of folks get hung up at point B for various reasons, some logical and some moral, but mostly because of Schroedinger again. People are almost afraid to observe the B qubit because they don't want the wave function to collapse either to a 0 or a 1, since both choices are deemed unpalatable. A lot of people who claim to be agnostics don't take the position so much because they don't know, but because they don't want to know, sometimes desperately so.
Because if it turns out to be a 0, then we really are the slaves of our selfish genes, and there's no basis for morality other than various forms of tribalism.
And because if it turns out to be a 1, then you have swallow a whole bunch of flim-flam that goes with it. Or do you?
Let me admit to you that I came at this from the opposite direction. I grew up in a religious culture, and I had to learn to "unswallow" an awful lot of stuff in order to strip my faith down to these two bits.
-- Larry Wall http://interviews.slashdot.org/interviews/02/09/06/1343222.shtml?tid=145
~~~
Where was Stac Electronics when Microsoft invented Doublespace? Where were Xerox and Apple when Microsoft invented the GUI?  Where was Apple's QuickTime when Microsoft invented Video for Windows?  Where was Spyglass Inc.'s Mosaic when Microsoft invented Internet Explorer? Where was Sun when Microsoft invented Java?
~~~
This is the solution to Debian's problem .. and since the only real way to create more relatives of developers is to have children, we need more sex!  It's a long term investment ... it's the work itself that is satisfying!
-- Craig Brozefsky
~~~
* dark greets liw with a small yellow frog.
* liw kisses the frog and watches it transform to a beautiful nerd girl, takes her out to ice cream, and lives happily forever after with her
<dark> liw: Umm it's too late to have the frog back?
~~~
p.s. - i'm about *this* close to running around in the server room with a pair of bolt cutters, and a large wooden mallet, laughing like a maniac and cutting everything i can fit the bolt cutters around. and whacking that which i cannot. so if i seem semi-incoherent, or just really *really* nasty at times, please forgive me. stress is not a pretty thing. };P
-- Phillip R. Jaenke
~~~
<wc> red dye causes cancer, haven't you heard? (;
<Knghtbrd> fucking everything causes cancer, haven't you heard?
<Knghtbrd> =3D>
<archon> no, that causes aids
~~~
> >I don't really regard bible-kjv-text as a technical document,
> > but... :)
> It's a manual - for living.
But it hasn't been updated in a long time, many would say that it's
sadly out of date, and the upstream maintainer doesn't respond to his
email.  :-)
-- Branden Robinson, Oliver Elphick, and Chris Waters in a message to debian-policy
~~~
Guns don't kill people.  It's those damn bullets.  Guns just make them go really really fast.
-- Jake Johanson
~~~
Granted, Win95's look wasn't all that new either - Apple tried to sue Microsoft for copying the Macintosh UI / trash can icon, until Microsoft pointed out that Apple got many of its Mac ideas (including the trash can icon) from Xerox ParcPlace.  Xerox is probably still wondering why everyone is interested in their trash cans.
-- Danny Thorpe, Borland Delphi R&R
~~~
I braved the contempt of my friends last week and ventured out to see Bambi, the Disney re-release that is proving to be a hit once again in the box office.  I was looking forward to a gentle, soothing, late afternoon relief from the Washington Summer.  Instead I was traumatized.  As a psycho-sexual return to the horrors of early adolescence, it couldn't be more effective.  For the first half-hour, you're lulled into an agreeable sense of security and comfort.  Birds twitter; small rabbits turn out to be great conversationalists.  Pop is what Senator Moynihan would describe as an absent father, but Mom's there to make you feel OK in the odd thunderstorm.  You make great friends, fool around on the ice, discover the meadow, generally mellow out.  Then, without any particular warning, your mom gets shot, your voice breaks, huge growths start appearing on your head, and your peers start heading off into the clover with the apparent intention of having sex.  Next thing you know, the forest burns down. If I were still eight, I think I'd prefer Rambo III.
-- Townsend Davis
~~~
It was pity stayed his hand.  "Pity I don't have any more bullets," thought Frito.
-- Harvard Lampoon, Bored of the Rings
~~~
Joan of Arc is alive and medium well.
~~~
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes of Harvard Medical School inhaled ether at a time when it was popularly supposed to produce such mystical or "mind-expanding" experiences, much as LSD is supposed to produce such experiences today.  Here is his account of what happened: "I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind.  The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for a moment. The veil of eternity was lifted.  The one great truth which underlies all human experience and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation.  Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim.  As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder): 'A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.'
-- The Consumers Union Report: Licit & Illicit Drugs
~~~
Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Truth
~~~
Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.
-- Bruce Schneier
~~~
I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.
-- Oscar Levant
~~~
When I was young I looked like Al Capone, but I lacked his compassion.
-- Oscar Levant
~~~
Every time I look at you, I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.
-- Oscar Levant
~~~
Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.
-- Oscar Levant
~~~
There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
-- Oscar Levant
~~~
Remember, alcohol and calculus don?t mix. Never drink and derive.
~~~
Our village idiot bought himself a pet zebra. Named it Spot.
-- Henny Youngman
~~~
I have bad reflexes. I was once run over by a car being pushed by 2 guys.
-- Woody Allen
~~~
Stupidity is not a handicap, park elsewhere.
~~~
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.
-- Thomas Huxley
~~~
One of the situations in which everybody seems to fear loneliness is death. In tones drenched with pity, people say of someone, "He died alone." I have never understood this point of view. Who wants to have to die and be polite at the same time?
-- Quentin Crisp
~~~
I think I speak for everyone when I say huh?
-- Sarah Michellle Gellar Buffy Summers in Buffy The Vampire Slayer
~~~
Now, this may sting a little just at first. But don't worry, that'll go away once the searing pain kicks in.
-- Ethan
~~~
You know you take the killing for granted. And then it's gone. And you're like, I wish I'd appreciated it more. Stopped and smelled the corpses.
-- Spike BtVS
~~~
Buffy: La vache... doit me... touche... de la... jeudi. Was it wrong? Should I use the plural?
Willow: No. But you said 'the cow should touch me from Thursday.'
Buffy: Maybe that's what I was feeling.
Willow: And you said it wrong.
Buffy: Oh, je stink.
-- (School Hard)
~~~
Xander: Giles lived for school. He's actually still bitter that there are only twelve grades.
Buffy: He probably sat in math class thinking, 'There should be more math. This could be mathier.'
-- (The Dark Age)
~~~
Xander: But... It's just that it's buggin' me, this 'cool' thing. I mean, what is it? How do you get it? Who doesn't have it? And who decides who doesn't have it? What is the essence of cool?
Oz: Not sure.
Xander: I mean, you yourself, Oz, are considered more or less cool. Why is that?
Oz: Am I?
Xander: Is it about the talking? You know, the way you tend to express yourself in short, noncommittal phrases?
Oz: Could be.
-- (The Zeppo)
~~~
Xander to Willow: Well, you're certainly a font of nothing!
~~~
Female student: The new kid? She seems kind of weird to me. What kind of name is Buffy?
Passing friend: Hey, Aphrodisia!
Female student: Oh, Hey!
~~~
Buffy: Now, we can do this the hard way, or... well, actually there's just the hard way.
~~~
Giles: You have no idea where they took Jesse?
Buffy: I looked around, but soon's they got clear of the graveyard, they could have just, voom!
Xander: They can fly?
Buffy: They can drive.
Xander: Oh.
~~~
Buffy: Your the watcher. I just work here.
Giles: Yes. I must consult my books.
Xander: Oh, 8 minutes and 33 seconds, pay up! I called 10 minutes before you'd consult your books about something.
~~~
Giles: I'll have you know that I have very, um, many relaxing hobbies.
Buffy: Such as?
Giles: Well, um ... I enjoy cross-referencing.
Buffy: Do you stuff your own shirts or do you send them out?
~~~
Ms Calendar: You're a snob!
Giles: I am no such thing!
Ms Calendar: Oh, you are a big snob. You think that knowledge should be kept in these carefully guarded repositories where only a handful of white guys can get at it.
Giles: Nonsense! I simply don't adhere to a - a knee-jerk assumption that because something is new, it's better.
Ms Calendar: This isn't a fad, Rupert! We are creating a new society here.
Giles: A society in which human interaction is all but obsolete? In which people can be completely manipulated by technology, well, well... Thank you, I'll pass.
Ms Calendar: Well, I think you'll be very happy here with your musty, old books.
~~~
Richard: What, she likes to play hard to get?
Tom: No, Richard. I think you're playing easy to resist.
~~~
Buffy: Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate. Who to trust. It's just, like, the more I know, the more confused I get.
Giles: I believe that's called growing up.
Buffy: I'd like to stop then, okay?
Giles: I know the feeling.
Buffy: Does it ever get easy?
(Ford rises as a vampire, and Buffy slays him.)
Giles: You mean life?
Buffy: Yeah. Does it get easy?
Giles: What do you want me to say?
Buffy: Lie to me.
Giles: Yes, it's terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Buffy: Liar.
~~~
Giles: I'm afraid he was not overreacting. This ring is worn only by members of the Order of Taraka. It's a society of deadly assassins dating back to King Solomon.
Xander: And didn't they beat the Elks this year in the Sunnydale Adult Bowling League championships?
Giles: Their credo is to sow discord and kill the unwary.
Xander: Bowling is a vicious game.
~~~
Health teacher: The sex drive in the human animal is intense. How many of us have lost countless productive hours plagued by unwanted sexual thoughts and feelings?
Xander, raising his hand: Yes!
Health teacher: That was a rhetorical question, Mr. Harris, not a poll.
Xander, lowering his hand: Oh.
~~~
Giles: No, I haven't any children. Although, sometimes I feel as though I do, working here...
Buffy's Mom: They can be such a... Oh, uh, I don't want to say "burden," but, uh... Uh, actually I kind of do want to say "burden"!
~~~
Giles: Yes, well, I appreciate your thoughts on the matter, I, in fact, well, I encourage you to always challenge me when you feel it's appropriate. You should never be cowed by authority. Except, of course, in this instance, when I am clearly right and you are clearly wrong.
~~~
Every computer program is a model, hatched in the mind, of a real or mental process. These processes, arising from human experience and thought, are huge in number, intricate in detail, and at any time only partially understood.
-- Alan J. Perlis
~~~
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?
-- Alan J. Perlis
~~~
Procrastinate Now.
~~~
Party - My Crib - Two A.M.
(On a baby-size shirt)
~~~
They call it 'PMS' because 'Mad Cow Disease' was already taken.
~~~
Suicidal Twin Kills Sister By Mistake!
~~~
Computer programmers know how to use their hardware.
~~~
My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God, and I didn't.
~~~
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control.These three alone lead to sovereign power.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
~~~
She's dead Will, but you still have to use a condom!
~~~
Strip Mining Prevents Forest Fires.
-- Bumper Sticker
~~~
Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
-- Sir Winston Spencer Churchill
~~~
Supporting America's Militant Agnostics... we don't know, and you don't either.
-- Bumper Sticker
~~~
Upon the Advice of My Attorney, My Shirt Bears No Message at This Time
~~~
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche.
~~~
Better to marry a man who loves you than one you love
~~~
Boldness is the child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other capacities; but nevertheless, it doth fascinate and bind hand and foot those that are either shallow in judgement or weak in courage, which are the greatest talents; yea, and prevaileth with wise men at weak times.
-- Francis Bacon
~~~
Attention: Driver carries less than $20 in ammunition.
~~~
One of the seven was wont to say 'That laws are like cobwebs; where the small flies were caught and the great brake through
-- Apothegms, Francis Bacon
~~~
Above all, we wish to avoid having a dissatisfied customer. We consider our customers a part of our organization, and we want them to feel free to make any criticism they see fit in regard to our merchandise or service. Sell practical, tested merchandise at reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings and they will always come back.
-- L.L. Bean
~~~
Captain, a Klingon does NOT whistle while he works
~~~
Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.
-- John Dewey
~~~
Del *.* <==-- how dare you erase my tribbles!
~~~
Demons are a Ghouls best Friend.
~~~
Vogon Poetry is of course, the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem 'Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning' four of his audience died of internal haemorhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts-Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been 'disappointed' by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve book epic entitled 'My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles' when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge in the destruction of the Planet Earth.
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
~~~
He's dead, Jim. Kick him if you don't believe me
~~~
He's got a magnet! Everyone BACKUP!!
-- Cmdr Data
~~~
I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.
-- Charles M. Schwab
~~~
I wish I would have a real tragic love affair and get so bummed out that I'd just quit my job and become a bum for a few years, because I was thinking about doing that anyway.
-- Jack Handey
~~~
If there were no electricity, we'd all be Ohmless
~~~
There's amnesia in a hangknot,
And comfort in the ax,
But the simple way of poison will make your nerves relax.
There's surcease in a gunshot,
And sleep that comes from racks,
But a handy draft of poison avoids the harshest tax.
You find rest on the hot squat,
Or gas can give you pax,
But the closest corner chemist has peace in packaged stacks.
There's refuge in the church lot
When you tire of facing facts,
And the smoothest route is poison prescribed by kindly quacks.
Chorus: With an *ugh!* and a groan, and a kick of the heels,
Death comes quiet, or it comes with squeals --
But the pleasantest place to find your end
Is a cup of cheer from the hand of a friend.
-- Jubal Harshaw, One For The Road
~~~
Knowledge is Power. Power Corrupts. Study hard. be Evil
~~~
There is nothing scarier than a Bagpipe jam session...
~~~
A clean and neat dwelling place is the sign of a disturbed mind.
-- Skandranon, The Black Gryphon (Mercedes Lackey, )
~~~
Religion is not the opiate of the masses: *Television* is the opiate of the masses. Religion is a *much* more psychoactive drug.
~~~
The phrase "I/you/we simply must " designates something that need not be done. "That goes without saying" is a red warning. "Of course" means you had best check it yourself. These small-change cliches and others like them, when read correctly, are reliable channel markers.
-- Lazarus Long
~~~
Medicine makes people ill, mathematics make them sad and theology makes them sinful.
-- Martin Luther
~~~
Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain nothing.
-- The Zensunni Whip - Dune
~~~
Calvin: You know, I don't think math is a science, I think it's a religion.
Hobbes: A religion?
Calvin: Yeah. All these equations are like miracles. You take two numbers and when you add them, they magically become one NEW number! No one can say how it happens. You either believe it or you don't. [Pointing at his math book] This whole book is full of things that have to be accepted on faith! It's a religion!
Hobbes: And in the public schools no less. Call a lawyer.
Calvin: [Looking at his homework] As a math atheist, I should be excused from this.
~~~
I don't believe in mathematics.
-- Albert Einstein
~~~
I was an atheist, until I found out I was God.
~~~
If you keep the sexual harassment complaint forms in the bottom drawer, then you'll get a great view of the women's butts when they get one out!
~~~
I'm hung like Einstein and smart as a horse.
~~~
Debi: You're a psychopath. 
Martin: No, no. Psychopaths kill for no reason. I kill for *money*. It's a *job*... That didn't come out right.
-- Grosse Point Blank
~~~
The thing about Tom Clancy is that you can start reading a Tom Clancy book when the plane takes off in London and you're still reading it when the plane lands in Sidney. And then you can use it to beat snakes to death.
-- Terry Pratchett
~~~
People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
~~~
Challenging The Church is like goading a Rhino. Getting it pissed off is the easy part. Getting it to change direction once it's charging is another thing altogether.
-- Le Pretre Noir  http://blogs.salon.com/0001823/
~~~
Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as  bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor - complicated,  cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous.
~~~
I'm the dread Pirate Robert #13.  Ask me about franchise opportunities in your area.
-- Briathian
~~~
I'll have one brain on drugs with bacon, toast and juice.
~~~
I have animal magnetism - when I go outside, squirrels stick to my clothes.
~~~
This product sadistically tested on gerbils.
~~~
Save the apartheid boycott of the lesbian Nazi lettuce growers for Jesus of the nuclear whale!
-- slogan on a T-shirt from Bangkok
~~~
There is a thin line between Hobby and Mental Illness.
~~~
Fondle my penguin you insolent bastard!
-- BBS login screen
~~~
A Lady is a wench with a dagger. A Dame is a wench with a Broadsword.
-- Dr. Heironymus Croaker-
~~~
Personally, I don't care if my plumber, auto mechanic, or gynecologist for that matter wants to abase hirself before a statue of Papa Smurf as long as competent service is rendered promptly for a fair price.
-- Rev. Anne
~~~
If my kids decide to take out half a town square from a clock tower I'm going to be issuing statements like, I know she did a terrible thing, but look what fine aim she has!
~~~
Keep the company of those who seek the truth,and run from those who have found it.
-- Vaclav Havel
~~~
While I'm fully aware that money can't buy happiness, I wouldn't mind being known as the melancholy guy who drives the red Lamborghini Diablo.
-- George Olson
~~~
It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
-- W. Edwards Deming
~~~
Though apparently the original purpose of bagpipes was to scare the crap out of the enemy in battle. (Aiiie! We're being attacked by Catholic schoolgirls, and you should SEE what they're doing to those poor cats!)
-- Ehursh
~~~
I've got half a mind to get another lobotomy
~~~
If you can't find it on the web, when you find it, put it there.
-- John Bowker
~~~
Objective: To have a job that pays decently and doesn't make my brain atrophy or make me want to chew off my own limbs to escape.
-- Laurie Brunner
~~~
And beware, for after all your critiques, the author still has one fairly devastating question to ask in return, the eternal question of the creator to the one who experiences the creation:  Where were *you* when page one was blank?
-- Diane Duane
~~~
Some people have a genuine gift of poetry, a way with words that surpasses beauty and touches the deepest parts of one's soul... and some people, um, thingy.
~~~
Seven qualities characterize the clod and seven the wise man: the wise man does not speak before him that is greater than he in wisdom; he does not break into his fellow's speech; he is not in a rush to reply; he asks what is relevant and replies to the point; he speaks of first things first and of last things last; of what he has not heard he says: 'I have not heard'; and he acknowledges what is true. And the opposites apply to the clod.
-- The Talmud
~~~
Do not let yourself be guided by the authority of the sacred texts, nor by simple logic, nor by appearance or opinion, nor even by the teachings of your master; when you know in yourself that something is bad, then give it up, and accept the good and follow it.
-- Buddha
~~~
America is at that awkward stage.  It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.
-- Claire Wolfe
~~~
You can believe anything you want.  The universe is not obliged to keep a straight face.
-- Solomon Short
~~~
Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm
~~~
Playing in traffic on the information superhighway
~~~
It looks like Barney has won... No wait, Godzilla is getting up...
~~~
Dear IRS: I would like to cancel my subscription.  Please remove my name from your mailing list.
~~~
You can have it perfect OR you can have it Tuesday
~~~
Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For the first offense.
~~~
If the sexes are equal, why is it that "Diamonds are a girl's best friend" but "Man's best friend is his dog"?
~~~
There are two important things to remember about surrealism.  Frogs,  powertools and the Lincoln memorial.
~~~
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
-- Douglas Adams. The Salmon of Doubt. Harmony Books, 2002.
~~~
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
-- Douglas Adams. The Salmon of Doubt. 2002.
~~~
I Am A Unix User
I'm not hacker or a system administrator,
I don't pirate my software or pay for it.
I don't use Windows, MacOS or anything with a mouse.
I enjoy typing commands longer than my screen.
All my binaries are compiled for my system.
I use BASH, Perl and C and won't trust AppleScript or VB to print on my
dot matrix.
GNU is the most inexpensive part of computing.
It's pronounced LEE-nuchs, not LIE-nukes.
I can emulate any other OS.
I expect difference with every UN*X machine.
"This" is different from "this".
man is my helper.
vi is user-friendly.
And all my hardware is a file.
My name is root.
And I AM A UNIX USER!
-- http://masella.dynodns.net
~~~
Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.
-- H. Abelson and G. Sussman (in The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs)
~~~
Good teaching is more a giving of the right questions than a giving of the right answers.
-- J. Albers
~~~
Today, most software exists, not to solve a problem, but to interface with other software.
-- I. O. Angell
~~~
One day a mother comes home from work and asks her son, "What did you do today?" 
The son replied, "I taught our dog how to play the piano". 
The mother, incredulous, asked, "Our dog can play the piano?", to which the son laughed and replied, 
"Of course not mom. I said that I taught him; I didn't say that he learned how."
~~~
The American university is built on two false premises: that all teachers must add to the existing stock of knowledge by research, and that all self-respecting institutions fulfill this role only by employing productive scholars...Of course, the teacher must keep reading and thinking abreast of his time, but this does not mean that he must write and publish. The confusion hides a further absurd assumption, which is that when a man writes a scholarly book that reaches a dozen specialists he adds immeasurably to the world's knowledge; whereas if he imparts his thoughts and his reading to one hundred and fifty students every year, he is wasting his time and leaving the world in darkness. One is tempted to ask what blinkered pedant ever launched the notion that students in coming to college seceded from the human race and may therefore be safely left out when knowledge is being broadcast.
-- J. Barzun (Teacher in America)
~~~
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.
-- L. Da Vinci
~~~
...Simplifications have had a much greater long-range scientific impact than individual feats of ingenuity. The opportunity for simplification is very encouraging, because in all examples that come to mind the simple and elegant systems tend to be easier and faster to design and get right, more efficient in execution, and much more reliable than the more contrived contraptions that have to be debugged into some degree of acceptability....Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.
-- E. Dijkstra (The Tide, not the waves; in Denning/Metcalfe: Beyond Calculation, Springer-Verlag 1997)
~~~
Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.
-- R. Fowler, Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
~~~
We flew down weekly to meet with IBM, but they thought the way to measure software was the amount of code we wrote, when really the better the software, the fewer lines of code.
-- W. Gates
~~~
The fastest algorithm can frequently be replaced by one that is almost as fast and much easier to understand.
-- D. Jones
~~~
We don't manage our time as well as we manage our space. There's an overhead of starting and an overhead of stopping a project because you kind of lose your momentum. And you've got to bracket and put aside all the things you're already doing. So you need reasonably large blocks of uninterrupted time if you're going to be successful at doing some of these things. That's why hackers tend to stay up late.  If you stay up late and you have another hour of work to do, you can just stay up another hour later without running into a wall and having to stop. Whereas it might take three or four hours if you start over, you might finish if you just work that extra hour. If you're a morning person, the day always intrudes a fixed amount of time in the future. So it's much less efficient. Which is why I think computer people tend to be night people -because a machine doesn't get sleepy.
-- B. Joy
~~~
The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you -unlike any other schooling you have gone through before. Here we use the Socratic method: I call on you; I ask you a question; you answer it. Why don't I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions you learn to teach yourselves. By this method of questioning-answering, questioning-answering, we seek to develop in you the ability to analyze that vast complex of facts that constitutes the relationships of members within a given society. Now, you may think, at times, that you have reached a correct and final answer. I assure you, this is a delusion on your part. You will never reach a final, correct, and ultimate answer. In my classroom, there is always another question; there is always a question to follow your answer. Yes, you are on a treadmill. My little questions spin the tumblers of your brain. You are on an operating table; my little questions are fingers probing your mind. We do brain surgery here. You teach yourselves law and I train your minds. You come in here with a skull full of mush, and you leave thinking like a lawyer.
-- Professor Kingsfield (addressing 1st year Harvard Law Students in The Paper Chase)
~~~
Learning is never done without errors and defeat.
-- V. Lenin
~~~
Programming is similar to a game of golf. The point is not getting the ball in the hole but how many strokes it takes.
-- H. Mills
~~~
There is a famous rule in performance optimization called the 90/10 rule: 90% of a program's execution time is spent in only 10% of its code. The standard inference from this rule is that programmers should find that 10% of the code and optimize it, because that's the only code where improvements make a difference in the overall system performance. But a second inference is just as important: programmers can de-optimize the other 90% of the code (in order to make it easier to use, maintain, etc.), because deterioration (of performance) of that code won't make much of a difference in the overall system performance.
-- R. Pattis
~~~
There is one very good reason to learn programming, but it has nothing to do with preparing for high-tech careers or with making sure one is computer literate in order to avoid being cynically manipulated by the computers of the future. The real value of learning to program can only be understood if we look at learning to program as an exercise of the intellect, as a kind of modern-day Latin that we learn to sharpen our minds.
-- R. Schank (in The Cognitive Computer)
~~~
Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance.
-- R. Stallman
~~~
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all the copybooks, and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle -they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
-- A. N. Whitehead (in An Introduction to Mathematics)
~~~
Pretty graphical interfaces are commonly called user-friendly. But they are not really your friends. Underlying every user-friendly interface is terrific contempt for the humans who will use it. ...to build a crash-proof system, the designer must be able to imagine--and disallow--the dumbest action possible. He or she has to think of every single stupid thing a human being could do. Gradually, over months and years, the designer's mind creates a construct of the user as an imbecile. This image is necessary. No crash-proof system can be built unless it is made for an idiot. 
-- Ellen Ullman
~~~
Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
-- Napoleon I.
~~~
Of course the code works. It just compiled, didn't it?
-- helixcode123, 11/8/2001 on Slashdot.
~~~
Ah, the "Birds fly. Except penguins, kiwis, ostriches,.." problem
-- Hugh Eng
~~~
Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.  (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
-- Walt Whitman
~~~
You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure,what you do not understand.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
~~~
If you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also.
-- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
~~~
How does Bugs Bunny do it? How does he know when he wakes up in the morning to put in his pocket 3 sticks of dynamite, a physician costume, and a bicycle pump?
~~~
Don't rush to implement your commander's orders. Wait until he changes his mind.
-- Soviet Army saying, reported by Jim Kimbell on the XP list
~~~
J. R. Capablanca, world chess champion in the 1920s, was asked how many moves ahead he looked. He said, Only one. But it's the right one.
~~~
What do people think? What, do people think? :-)
-- Larry Wall in <199808071736.KAA12738@wall.org>
~~~
At some point in the project somebody will start whining about the need to determine the project "requirements". This involves interviewing people who don't know what they want but, curiously, know exactly when they need it.
-- Scott Adams - The Dilbert principle
~~~
If you don't think carefully, you might think that programming is just typing statements in a programming language.
-- Ward Cunningham
~~~
first question in the Management Quiz: Do you believe that anything you don't understand must be easy to do?
-- Scott Adams; The Dilbert Principle
~~~
Your question doesn't make any sense. You might as well ask whether it is possible to grow vegetables from a painting, without becoming Wednesday first.
-- Abigail, comp.lang.perl.misc
~~~
We are like sailors who have to rebuild their ship on the open sea, without ever being able to dismantle it in dry-dock and reconstruct it from the best components.
-- Otto Neurath
~~~
In the real world, as you work to design software, you have several concerns to keep in mind - several "monkeys on your back." Each monkey competes with the others for your attention, trying to convince you to take its particular concern to heart as you work. One large, heavy monkey hangs on your back with its arms around your neck and repeatedly yells, "You must meet the schedule!" Another monkey, this one perched on top of your head (as there is no more room on your back), beats its chest and cries, "You must accurately implement the specification!" Still another monkey jumps up and down on top of your monitor yelling, "Robustness, robustness, robustness!" Another keeps trying to scramble up your leg crying, "Don't forget about execution speed!" And every now and then, a small monkey peeks timidly at you from beneath the keyboard. When this happens, the other monkeys become silent. The little monkey slowly emerges from under the keyboard, stands up, looks you in the eye, and says, "You must make the code easy to read and easy to change." With this, all the other monkeys scream and jump onto the little monkey, forcing it back under the keyboard. With the little monkey out of sight, the other monkeys return to their positions and resume their activities.
-- From "Introduction to Design Techniques", Javaworld Feb 1998
~~~
LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines:  You must work at a busy library, cuz baby you just increased my circulation.
~~~
LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines: No one believes I am a librarian, maybe you should try to check me out.
~~~
LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines: Let's play search engine:  enter your terms and see if you get positive results.
~~~
LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines: I'd catalog you under Desirable!
~~~
LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines: So they say you're like a public library, anyone with a card can check you out.
~~~
LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines: Mind if I check you out?
~~~
LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines: I may not be a cataloger, but I bet I can find a place to fit you in.
~~~
LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines: damn... you're stacked better than the LOC
~~~
LISNews Librarian Pickup Lines: Do you know the difference between sex and The LC Subject Headings? (No.) Do you want to go up to my room?
~~~
Generations of high school children gasp when they read Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet,' for they are amazed to discover that Juliet was only thirteen years old.  We sometimes forget that, for most of human existence, our lives were short, miserable, and brutish. Sadly, for most of human history, we repeated the same wretched cycle: as soon as we reached puberty, we were expected to toil or hunt with our elders, find a mate and produce children. We would then have a large number of them, with most of them dying at childbirth.  As Leonard Hayflick says, 'It is astonishing to realize that the human species survived hundreds of thousands of years, more than 99% of its time on this planet, with a life expectancy of only 18 years.'  Since the industrial revolution, thanks to increased sanitation, sewage systems, better food supplies, labor-saving machines, the germ theory, and modern medicine, our life expectancy has risen dramatically. At the turn of the century, the average life expectancy in the United States was 49. Now, it is around 76, a 55% increase in a century. As Joshua Lederberg notes, 'In the U.S., greater life expectancy ... can be attributed almost entirely to this mastery of infection, this annihilation of the bugs.' And today, the fastest-growing segment of our population is the group that is over a hundred years old.
-- Michio Kaku, Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize The 21st Century
~~~
Now that the deadline's past, can I please have the spec?
~~~
Until somebody debugs reality, the best I can do is a quick patch here and there
~~~
User Error: Replace user and press any key to continue.
~~~
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
-- Herm Albright
~~~
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
-- Bill Gates
~~~
There are perhaps 5% of the population that simply *can't* think.
There are another 5% who *can*, and *do*.
The remaining 90% *can* think, but *don't*.
-- R. A. Heinlein
~~~
A scientific approach is generally characterized by the words logical, systematic, impersonal, calm, rational, while an artistic approach is characterized by the words aesthetic, creative, humanitarian, anxious, irrational. It seems to me that both of these apparently contradictory approaches have great value with respect to computer programming.
-- Donald E. Knuth, Computer programming as an Art, 1974
~~~
The fantastic element that explain the appeal of dungeon-clearing games to many programmers is neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milky-skinned, semi-clad sirens; it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to finish without user requirements changing.
-- Thomas L. Holaday, The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)  by Ken Henderson, ISBN: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL, page: 119
~~~
There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computers.
-- Steven Levy
~~~
I am not very skeptical... a good deal of skepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met not a few men, who... have often thus been deterred from experiments or observations which would have proven serviceable.
-- Charles Darwin
~~~
It's like religion.  Heresy [in science] is thought of as a bad thing, whereas it should be just the opposite.
-- Dr. Thomas Gold
~~~
If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated.
-- Wilfred Trotter
~~~
There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
-- Robert Oppenheimer
~~~
In science it often happens that scientists say, You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken, and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-- Carl Sagan
~~~
...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
-- William James
~~~
New ideas are always criticized - not because an idea lacks merit, but because it might turn out to be workable, which would threaten the reputations of many people whose opinions conflict with it.  Some people may even lose their jobs.
-- physicist, requested anonymity
~~~
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
-- 1925 IBM Maintenance Manual
~~~
I've noticed lately that the paranoid fear of computers becoming intelligent and taking over the world has almost entirely disappeared from the common culture. Near as I can tell, this coincides with the release of MS-DOS.
-- Larry DeLuca
~~~
Science advances funeral by funeral.
-- Planck?
~~~
Scientists are not the paragons of rationality, objectivity, open-mindedness and humility that many of them might like others to believe.
-- Marcello Truzzi, CSICOP
~~~
Progress in science is something like climbing a mountain.  Only most mountaineers don't set up a new base-camp every ten feet, then leap out and attack anyone who tries to climb past them.
-- Bill "huge ego" Beaty
~~~
It's OK to figure out murder mysteries, but you shouldn't need to figure out code. You should be able to read it.
-- Steve C McConnell
~~~
It's hard to read through a book on the principles of magic without glancing at the cover periodically to make sure it isn't a book on software design.
-- Bruce Tognazzini
~~~
What we REALLY need is a Moment of SCIENCE in the Public Schools!
~~~
There is a computer disease that anybody who works with computers knows about. It's a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you play with them.
-- Richard Feynman
~~~
In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time.
-- John C Dvorak
~~~
Treating your rocket scientist employees as if they were still in kindergarten is not an isolated phenomenon. Almost every company has some kind of incentive program that is insulting and demeaning.
-- Joel Spolsky
~~~
Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.
-- Martin Golding
~~~
She said "Harder!" I did that. She said "Faster!" I did that. She said "Deeper!" I philosophized.
~~~
Who needs drugs? I go broke buying books!
~~~
Do autoparanoid schizophrenic agnostic dyslexic insomniacs lie awake at night wondering if they might be the dog that's out to get them?
~~~
I get into the meanest, nastiest frame of mind I can manage, and I write the nastiest (testing) code I can think of. Then I turn around and embed that in even nastier constructions that are nearly obscene.
-- Donald Knuth
~~~
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
-- Kurt Lewin
~~~
Successful software always gets changed.
-- Frederick Brooks
~~~
Since the invention of the microprocessor, the cost of moving a byte of information around has fallen on the order of 10-million-fold. Never before in the human history has any product or service gotten 10 million times cheaper-much less in the course of a couple decades. That's as if a 747 plane, once at $150 million a piece, could now be bought for about the price of a large pizza.
-- Michael Rothschild
~~~
Since humans don't have decryption systems built into their anatomy, information must be deciphered before we experience it. The only way to make music that cannot be copied is to make music that cannot be heard. The only way to make movies that cannot be copied is to make movies that cannot be viewed.
-- Gene Kan
~~~
Information is the currency of democracy.
-- Thomas Jefferson
~~~
Twenty percent of all input forms filled by people contain bad data.
-- Vic Vyssotsky
~~~
You can have any combination of features the Air Ministry desires, so long as you do not also require that the resulting airplane fly.
-- Willy Messerschmidt
~~~
More people have ascended bodily into heaven than have shipped great software on time.
-- Jim McCarthy
~~~
In the beginning we must simplify the subject, thus unavoidably falsifying it, and later we must sophisticate away the falsely simple beginning.
-- Maimonides
~~~
The really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting.
-- John Cleese
~~~
Saying that XP is the most stable MS OS is like saying that asparagus is the most articulate vegetable.
-- Dave Barry
~~~
Although the Buddhists will tell you that desire is the root of suffering, my personal experience leads me to point the finger at system administration.
-- Philip Greenspun
~~~
Being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker anymore than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer.
-- Eric Raymond
~~~
Cryptography restrictions are the USA's Maginot Line: Big, expensive, ultimately routed around regardless, and once the war is over, difficult to get rid of.
-- Russell Nelson
~~~
Publishers often refer to prohibited copying as piracy. In this way, they imply that illegal copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them.
-- Richard Stallman
~~~
Everything you say is boring and incomprehensible, she said, but that alone doesn't make it true.
-- Franz Kafka
~~~
By three methods we may learn technical writing: First by education, which is noblest; second by methodology, which is easiest; and third by planting your butt in a chair and pecking out the damn document, which is the bitterest.
-- Andrew Plato
~~~
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
-- Samuel Butler
~~~
Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was rejected without, I thought, proper consideration.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle
~~~
The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion... It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider - and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation - persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest  degree.
-- Alexander Graham Bell
~~~
Honour, worthily obtained, is in its nature a personal thing, and incommunicable to any but those who had some share in obtaining it.
-- Benjamin Franklin (whuffie?)
~~~
It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
~~~
Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else,  is always a portrait of himself.
-- Samuel Butler
~~~
You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, The Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the US of arrogance, and Germany doesn't want to go to war.
-- Dave Paulsen
~~~
Xander (taunting the fear demon): Who's the little fear demon? Come on, who's the little fear demon?
Giles: Don't taunt the fear demon.
Xander: Why? Can he hurt me?
Giles: No, it's just... tacky.
~~~
Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really overwhelming majority of the crowd present.  Abusive and obscene language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
-- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.
~~~
I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.
-- G K Chesterton
~~~
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
-- G K Chesterton
~~~
Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
-- G K Chesterton
~~~
Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows.
-- Jennifer Unlimited
~~~
If you can look into the mirror without laughter, you have no sense of humor.
-- Unknown
~~~
Only Lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt for jury duty.
-- G. B. Shaw
~~~
Making real interoperability between NT and standards based systems involves invoking spirits and performing animal sacrifices.
-- Greg (greg@rage.net)
~~~
I used Visual Basic. I liked Visual Basic. I liked it a lot. I used Delphi. Visual Basic sucks so hard it bends light. It's amazing what a little bit of perspective does.
-- Anthony Ord (nws@rollingthunder.demon.co.uk)
~~~
VMS is about as secure as a poodle encased in a block of lucite... about as useful, too.
-- wendigo@pobox.com
~~~
Again, the cluebus needs to hit you and then back up and hit you again.
-- Brian Wheeler (bdwheele@indiana.edu)
~~~
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
-- Robert Graves
~~~
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
-- Warren Bennis
~~~
The rich who are unhappy are worse off than the poor who are unhappy; for the poor, at least, cling to the hopeful delusion that more money would solve their problems - but the rich know better.
-- Sydney J. Harris
~~~
I have undertaken to translate the Bible into German. This was good for me; otherwise I might have died in the mistaken notion that I was a learned fellow.
-- Martin Luther
~~~
Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them.
-- Lily Tomlin
~~~
When I tell people I'm a comedian they say, "Oh are you funny?" I say, "No, it's not that kind of comedy.
-- Betsy Salkind
~~~
Teenager with nose ring, baggy clothing and spiked hair to friend: I don't really like dressing like this, but it keeps my parents from dragging me everywhere they go.
~~~
A kindergarten teacher is someone who loves children and hates zippers.
~~~
In my day, we couldn't afford shoes, so we went barefoot. In the winter we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction.
-- Bill Flavin
~~~
Government is like junior high. Your status depends upon whom you're able to persecute.
-- Jonathan Kellerman
~~~
He gave me a copy of /The Declaration of Independence/, then he got a tattoo that says /Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death/. I think my boyfriend wants his freedom.
-- _The Better Half_ cartoon by Randy Glasbergen
~~~
If swimming is so good for your figure, how do you explain whales?
-- Unknown
~~~
I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like 'What I'm Going to be If I Grow Up.'
-- Lenny Bruce
~~~
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
-- Scott Adams
~~~
Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth.
-- Chuck Norris
~~~
If I ever blow someone up, it'll be because I want to, not because of some damn religion.
-- Philip L. Welch
~~~
I say we spread liquid Kryptonite over a leather-clad Lois Lane.
-- Phil Welch on how to kill Superman
~~~
I'm not conceited, I just know how damn good I am.
-- Phil Welch proclaiming his immense self-esteem
~~~
Sometimes, I close my eyes and think about how much love there is in the world, and how much hate there is, and I just wish there was more love. Than I realize there probably is, it's just not directed at me.
-- Phil Welch
~~~
If your friend is already dead, and being eaten by vultures, I think it's okay to feed some bits of your friend to one of the vultures, to teach him to do some tricks. But ONLY if you're serious about adopting the vulture.
-- Amanda X
~~~
If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say: 'He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned'.
-- Epictetus
~~~
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
~~~
I have this idea about why people do the terrible things they do, same reason little kids push each other on the school-yard. If you're the one doing the pushing, then you're not going to be the one who gets pushed. If you're the monster, then nothing will be waiting in the shadows to jump out at you. It's pretty simple really. People do the terrible things they do because they're scared.
-- Allie Keys - Taken
~~~
Do you know the seven deadly sins?
Not Biblically.
~~~
Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.
-- Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine
~~~
But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship ... That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
-- Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering
~~~
The main difference between a User and a Hacker: A User buys a faster computer to spend _less_ time with it.  Happy hacking!
-- From rec.humor.funny
~~~
Alignments
One for all, and all for one. (LG)
If everyone is okay, I am okay. (NG)
I'm independent. But I probably will help. (CG)
The needs of all are above the needs of a few, or one. (LN, Vulcan tradition from Star Trek...)
Change, even for the worse. (CN)
Each one for himself and nature against all. (CE)
It's simple. Either you are with me, or against me.(NE)
The strong rule, the weak obey. (LE)
True Neutral = none of the above
~~~
I couldn't think of one clever way to stop this guy, so I just trusted to mindless violence.
-- Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #21
~~~
Oho, now I know what you are.  You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.
Certainly.
You say that a man's first job is to earn a living, and that the first task of education is to equip him for that job.
Of course.
Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.
-- Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost
~~~
She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books.  This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose.  Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines - not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.  Solly was in a measure a victim of this unscrupulous passion, but Freddy was wholly in the grip of it.
-- Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost
~~~
Understanding and experiencing are not interchangeable. Any theologian understands martyrdom, but only the martyr experiences the fire.
-- Robertson Davies, The Manticore
~~~
But logic is like cricket, he would warn, it is admirable so long as you are playing according to the rules.  But what happens to your game of cricket when somebody suddenly decides to bowl with a football or bat with a hockey-stick?  Because that is what is continually happening in life.
-- Robertson Davies, The Manticore
~~~
Funny how languages break down and turn into something else. Latin was rubbed away until it degenerated into dreadful lingos like French and Spanish and Italian, and lo!  people found out that quite new things could be said in these degenerate tongues - things nobody had ever thought of in Latin.  English is breaking down now in the same way - becoming a world language that every Tom Dick and Harry must learn, and speak in a way that would give Doctor Johnson the jim-jams.
-- Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels
~~~
It is not my intention to denounce modern education.  If it is bad, it may be said that all education is bad which is not self-education, and quite a lot of self-education is going on today - some of it in our schools, under the very noses of the teachers!
-- Robertson Davies, A Voice from the Attic
~~~
Well, during those periods when I was me, there was most assuredly only one of me. But during some of the more intense discussions, I was not me, and while all the rest of the attendees were also not me, it is difficult to say whether they were the same not me that I was or wasn't at the time.
-- Gordon McMillan, 18 Nov 1998
~~~
It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work. Take care of what you are doing. Take care.
-- George Bernard Shaw, Candida
~~~
Many people, other than the authors, contribute to the making of a book, from the first person who had the bright idea of alphabetic writing through the inventor of movable type to the lumberjacks who felled the trees that were pulped for its printing. It is not customary to acknowledge the trees themselves, though their commitment is total.
-- Forsyth and Rada, Machine Learning
~~~
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
-- J. Bartlett Brebner
~~~
Problems worthy of attack 
prove their worth by hitting back.
-- Piet Hein
~~~
A print addict is a man who reads in elevators. People occasionally look at me curiously when they see me standing there, reading a paragraph or two as the elevator goes up. To me, it's curious that there are people who do not read in elevators. What can they be thinking about?
-- Robert Fulford, The Pastimes of a Print Addict
~~~
Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen.
-- Bob Edwards (attributed)
~~~
Child pornography - I never heard of it as a problem five years ago, but now it's brought up constantly. I think it's the new Red-baiting. The people in Burma don't understand how it is that we are focusing our whole crypto policy on catching child pornographers. If you think that cryptography is good for society you have to apologize and say that you are against child pornography... The fact that I even have to say that is an indication of how effective this Red-baiting is... I think that we can't let our civil liberties for the society at large be determined by government policy towards a tiny segment of the criminal population.
-- Philip Zimmermann
~~~
The true poet and the true scientist are not estranged. They go forth into nature like two friends. Behold them strolling through the summer fields and woods. The younger of the two is much the more active and inquiring; he is ever and anon stepping aside to examine some object more minutely, plucking a flower, treasuring a shell, pursuing a bird, watching a butterfly; now he turns over a stone, peers into the marshes, chips off a fragment of rock, and everywhere seems intent on some special and particular knowledge of the things about him. The elder man has more an air of leisurely contemplation and enjoyment, is less curious about special objects and features, and more desirous of putting himself in harmony with the spirit of the whole. But when his younger companion has any fresh and characteristic bit of information to impart to him, how attentively he listens, how sure and discriminating is his appreciation! The interests of the two in the universe are widely different, yet in no true sense are they hostile or mutually destructive.
-- John Burroughs
~~~
If you sincerely desire a truly well-rounded education, you must study the extremists, the obscure and "nutty". You need the balance! Your poor brain is already being impregnated with middle-of-the-road crap, twenty-four hours a day, no matter what. Network TV, newspapers, radio, magazines at the supermarket... even if you never watch, read, listen, or leave your house, even if you are deaf and blind, the telepathic pressure alone of the uncountable normals surrounding you will insure that you are automatically well-grounded in consensus reality.
-- Rev. Ivan Stang, High Weirdness By Mail
~~~
No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
-- Sir Frederick G. Banting
~~~
Once you accept that the world is a giant computer run by white mice, all other movies fade into insignificance.
-- Mutsumi Takahashi, On The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
~~~
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
-- Isaac Asimov
~~~
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
-- Frank Herbert
~~~
Men and governments must act to the best of their ability. There is no such thing as absolute certainty but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.
-- John Stuart Mill
~~~
There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors...
-- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
~~~
To make a name for learning 
when other roads are barred, 
take something very easy 
and make it very hard.
-- Piet Hein
~~~
Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.
-- Neil Gaiman, Sandman #19: A Midsummer Night's Dream
~~~
In a world deeply divided between those who are prepared to believe nothing and those who are ready to believe anything, it is a tricky business to enter into a discussion of matters that can be dismissed either as miracles or as lies.
-- Denis Johnston, The Brazen Horn
~~~
Institutions feel no pain. Only people can feel the relentless pain of illiteracy, the desperate bafflement of a mind unskilled in the ways of logic and thoughtful attention, and dimly aware, but aware nevertheless, of its own confusion. Schools do not have minds; they have guidelines. Their guidelines run, when it isn't too inconvenient, as far as what they are not at all ashamed to call the parameters of basic minimum competency. Basic minimum competence (why do they need that y?) is not literacy. It is, however, just enough a counterfeit literacy to convince the minimally competent to fancy themselves literate, except, of course, for those moments of desperate pain.
-- Richard Mitchell, The Underground Grammarian, March 1981.
~~~
Fiat justitia, ruat coelum. (Do the right thing even if the heavens fall.) It's not nearly as naive a maxim as it seems, because in the real world it often turns out that doing what is morally the right thing is also, in practical terms, the right thing to do.
-- Gwynne Dyer
~~~
When I come upon anything - in Logic or in any other hard subject - that entirely puzzles me, I find it a capital plan to talk it over, aloud, even when I am all alone. One can explain things so clearly to one's self! And then, you know, one is so patient with one's self: one never gets irritated at one's own stupidity!
-- Lewis Carroll
~~~
As a wise programmer once said, Floating point numbers are like sandpiles: every time you move one, you lose a little sand and you pick up a little dirt. And after a few computations, things can get pretty dirty.
-- Kernighan and Plauger, The Elements of Programming Style
~~~
All the evils of publishing can be traced to one source - copyright.
-- Stefan Stykolt, Quoted by Kildare Dobbs in The Living Name
~~~
Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.
-- Douglas Adams, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
~~~
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
-- Charles Babbage
~~~
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
-- Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun
~~~
There seems to be a strong correlation between people who relish tough football and people who relish intimidating and beating the hell out of Commies, hippies, protest marchers and other opposition groups. Watching well-advertised strong men knock other people around, make them hurt, is in the end like other tastes. It does not weaken with feeding. It grows.
-- John McMurtry
~~~
Every time I try to define a perfectly stable person, I am appalled by the dullness of that person.
-- J.D. Griffin
~~~
Every woman needs one man in her life who is strong and responsible. Given this security, she can proceed to do what she really wants to do - fall in love with men who are weak and irresponsible.
-- Richard J. Needham
~~~
To see the world in a grain of sand, 
And a heaven in a wild flower; 
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, 
And eternity in an hour.
-- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
~~~
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
-- G.K. Chesterton, On Running After Ones Hat, in All Things Considered
~~~
The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full-sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge = power = energy = matter = mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
-- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
~~~
Imitation of nature is bad engineering. For centuries inventors tried to fly by emulating birds, and they have killed themselves uselessly... You see, Mother Nature has never developed the Boeing 747. Why not? Because Nature didn't need anything that would fly at 700 mph at 40,000 feet: how would such an animal feed itself?... If you take Man as a model and test of artificial intelligence, you're making the same mistake as the old inventors flapping their wings. You don't realize that Mother Nature has never needed an intelligent animal and accordingly, has never bothered to develop one. So when an intelligent entity is finally built, it will have evolved on principles different from those of Man's mind, and its level of intelligence will certainly not be measured by the fact that it can beat some chess champion or appear to carry on a conversation in English.
-- Anonymous, Quoted in Jacques Vallee's The Network Revolution
~~~
I would, however, recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for.
-- Joseph Addison, In the Spectator for March 4, 1712
~~~
In contrast, too many new programmers write as if there were no programmers before them and there shall come none after them. The best of the new breed learn to program from learn-by-example-in-21-days textbooks of very low quality; the worst learn from guesswork and trial and error with a Pavlovian focus on pain avoidance. None of them learn to do it right from a master of the art of programming. Instead, they learn from watching other programs perform. I blame the intense redirection of energy away from programming to user interface design on this lack of ability to read the language from programmer to computer.
-- Erik Naggum, In gnu.misc.discuss
~~~
When I was 15, we had one of those things where you do a battery of tests and then they bring a careers advisor in to talk to you about careers, and the careers advisor said, "What do you want to do?" And I said, "I want to write American comics." And there was a very, very, very long pause. And then he said, "Well, how do you go about doing that?" And I said, "Well, you're the careers advisor, I thought you were gonna tell me." And there was another really, really, really long pause, and then he looked at me rather desperately and said, "Have you ever thought about accountancy?
-- Neil Gaiman, In a radio interview, on To The Best Of Our Knowledge, broadcast May 31, 1995.
~~~
Fortunately, you've left that madness behind, and entered the clean, happy, and safe Python world of transvestite lumberjacks and singing Vikings.
-- Quinn Dunkan, 17 Sep 2000
~~~
I fantasized that finally not being tied down to a dependent would give my spontaneous nature a chance to grow and flower. Then I realized that not only didn't I have much of a spontaneous nature but that the reason I wasn't partaking of the constant barrage of interesting activities and social events all around me was because I was a lazy sloth.
-- Merrill Markoe, Pets and the Single Girl, in How to Be Hap-Hap-Happy Like Me
~~~
Perl is like vise grips. You can do anything with it but it is the wrong tool for every job.
-- Bruce Eckel, at IPC9
~~~
The GPL tried to protect the freedom of end-users to modify and redistribute their code. Most people do not believe that this is a legitimate freedom like freedom of speech or assembly but Richard Stallman does. I don't think that there is an argument that that will persuade a person one way or another. If freedoms could be proven, that famous document would probably start: Not everyone holds these truths to be self-evident, so we've worked up a proof of them as Appendix A.
-- Paul Prescod, 11 Apr 2001
~~~
My father looked at me sternly with that look I would learn to know so well, and said: "Justin, on n'attaque jamais l'individu. On peut etre en desaccord complet avec quelqu'un sans pour autant le denigrer." ... Parce que la simple tolerance n'est pas assez: il faut un respect reel et profond de chaque etre humain, peu importe ses croyances, ses origines, et ses valeurs.
-- Justin Trudeau, In the eulogy for his father, Pierre Eliott Trudeau, 3 Oct 2000
~~~
1. Nothing and no one is immune from criticism.
2. Everyone involved in a controversy has an intellectual responsibility to inform himself of the available facts.
3. Criticism should be directed first to policies, and against persons only when they are responsible for policies, and against their motives or purposes only when there is some independent evidence of their character.
4. Because certain words are legally permissible, they are not therefore morally permissible.
5. Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments.
6. Do not treat an opponent of a policy as if he were therefore a personal enemy of the country or a concealed enemy of democracy.
7. Since a good cause may be defended by bad arguments, after answering the bad arguments for another's position present positive evidence for your own.
8. Do not hesitate to admit lack of knowledge or to suspend judgment if evidence is not decisive either way.
9. Only in pure logic and mathematics, not in human affairs, can one demonstrate that something is strictly impossible. Because something is logically possible, it is not therefore probable. "It is not impossible" is a preface to an irrelevant statement about human affairs. The question is always one of the balance of probabilities. And the evidence for probabilities must include more than abstract possibilities.
10. The cardinal sin, when we are looking for truth of fact or wisdom of policy, is refusal to discuss, or action which blocks discussion.
-- Sidney Hook, Suggested rules for democratic discourse, from The Ethics of Controversy
~~~
Even a library cataloguing system is stylized and reflects the interests and reading habits of librarians and library users. The only framework inclusive enough to embrace all man's undertakings with equal objectivity is the garbage dump.
-- R. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World
~~~
... don't waste too much effort in searching for conspiracies. Most of the harm done in the world is out of stupidity, not by design. Be on the watch for skulduggery... but don't fall into the trap of thinking that every evil thing that occurs in the world in part of some diabolic master plan. The notion that whatever is wrong with the world can be blamed on somebody (never, of course, one's self) is a rather infantile carryover from the childhood days when our parents were thought to be all-powerful and therefore all-responsible.
-- Gerard K. O'Neill, 2081
~~~
The mark of a mature programmer is willingness to throw out code you spent time on when you realize it's pointless.
-- Bram Cohen, 20 Sep 2001
~~~
As evil fears the light, so does ignorance fear knowledge. When the priest tries to restrict your learning to "save your soul" or "protect your morals", look closely at what they are selling. Most often your will find it is based on the idea that you must lean nothing but what your are told to believe. These are cheap goods, pass them by. True morals stand firm in the face of all knowledge. 
-- The Tao of Phoenix
~~~
DM FEATS
Marathon DMing: Can DM 18+ hours without any interruption.
Horde Control: Can handle DMing groups of 13
Craft Magic Scenery: make some hella tough scenery
On the Fly: Can improvise npc stats and gear up to 10th level
Improved on the Fly: Can improvise npc stats and gear up to 20th level
Demand Attention: by threaten a players character in game, for actions he does out of game you can maintain control of even the most add players.
Fudge (Special Ability): Up to once per day, you can fudge a dice in either way of your choosing. If it is done more then this your alignment as DM shifts to one side (i.e. neutral DM after rolling a 1 fudges it to 20. This is second time today, so DM shifts to evil).
Rule 0 (Supernatural Ability): At will, you may destroy or create rules at your choice.
Reroll: the ability to say...screw it. I just want to hit the character today.
Predetermined Critical Hit for the players that really get under your skin
Clouded Response: When a player asks "why"......you say...."I can't tell you why it affected you that way...it just did"
Skill Focus (Bluff Player): Grants a +3 bonus to all bluff checks versus a player.
DM: "Roll me a will save.
Player: (Roll...) "12
DM: (Looks down at blank piece of paper, makes note 'Stop at grocery
store on way home') Hmmm... Okay.
Player: What just happened?
DM: You'll see.
Projection: Allows the DM to speak clearly over all player conversations, without violating civil noise ordinances.
Pierce the Haze: (Pre-req: Projection) Allows the DM to speak so one particular player on opposite side of room can hear, while others talk around them.
Improved Demand Attention: (Pre-req: Projection, Cha 13+) With a Charisma check (DC 10), allows the DM to draw the attention of players from their own conversations through acts of theatrics, dramatic gestures, etc., and keep their attention focused on the game. With each potential interruption, a separate Charisma check may be needed.
Train Newbie: gives a DM the ability to teach a new player how to Role-play
Improvise: gives you the power to keep a story-line going without missing a beat, even though the players heading south in a forest should be heading north through a cave.
photo memory (int): lets you recall obscure rules from any page of the core books without looking.
Suppress emotion: Being able to put on a stone face when the situation gets worse and worse for the players and they realize some of the hidden hints I placed and they had walked by to their doom.
Stinging laughter: The bellowing and evil laughter a DM let's out as all the action are said and done, and the situation is placed and the RP-ing is done, and the whole encounter/session/campaign gets down to a single die roll. And the odds are in my favor.
Lavish drinking: The amount of alcohol a DM can sustain without passing out and forgetting last night is superhuman. This feat is a follow-up of the last feat, and a (for the PC's favorable) die-roll.
Vengeful gaze of DM (Pre Req: Cha 13+, and DM over 2 years.): your cold hard steel gaze snaps players out of their frivolous chivel, gay bantering desists. you own the crowd. (usable 1/session/player)
DM Lightning: Roll all your dice, and deal that damage to a PC, damage is Divine, Vile, Hellfire and has no save or resistance
Improved DM lighting: All players grab all their dice and roll them all with you when you attempt a DM lightning attack. Add all the damage together.
Evil Laughter: You can make players reconsider any action.  By laughing evilly as a full-round action, you can make any player reconsider even the most harmless of actions, like pushing a button.
Improved Shred: You can rip apart a character sheet faster than the average DM. (Prereqs: Killer DM) When ripping up the character sheet of a dead character, you deal double damage to it with each attack. Furthermore, you gain a cumulative +2 morale bonus to intimidate checks for each sheet you have ripped up that day.
Killer DM: You can kill characters in the blink of an eye without mercy. You gain a bonus to damage rolls with any attack that's going to kill the character anyway. This bonus is equal to the character's level times the critical modifier of the weapon or spell that deals the killing blow. The results are always horrific and pointlessly bloody.
Craft fiendish traps and puzzles:  Grants the ability to design traps and puzzles of such an evil and devious nature that you can fireball a player 15 times and he still comes back for more chanting "YOU WILL NOT BEAT ME".
Improvise monster: (pre req: on the fly) you have a nasty habit of changing monsters abilities when a rules lawyer say its abilities out loud to the party, also good for keeping that monster alive longer because of the parties ability to inflict way to much damage.
Sleep Mastery:  You ignore any penalties incurred when you pull all nighters preparing for a gaming session. Note: This feat also functions in conjunction with Marathon DMing.
Heart of Stone: You gain +20 to Will saves vs. any player whining because a PC failed a save, misses an attack, or dies.
Superior On the Fly: You can improvise an entire session and your players never notice.
Craft Map (Pre:On the Fly): You gain the ability to create a map of any given area in less than 1 minute.
God (Pre: DM lightning, Improved Shred Character Sheet, Evil Laugh, Rule 0, and Heart of Stone): You gain the ability to bend rules, shape the world as you wish, heartlessly slaughter players, Intimidate players, and basically do whatever you dern well like. Players gain a -100 penalty on all saves made against any DM feats you may have.
Forced Assumption [DM, Evil] (Prerequisite: Wisdom 11-, Railroading): You may assume your players actions that work against their favors as much as possible, when it's not explicitly stated by themselves.
Railroading [DM, General] (Prerequisite: Cha 13+): You are proficient at pushing the players into the direction you want them to head into, whether they like it or not. Players are allowed a Will save against DC 10 + your Charisma ability score.
Stealth Railroading [DM, General] (Prerequisite: Int 13+, Railroading): As Railroading, except that you push players into the direction you want them to head into with hidden intentions, reverse psychology, or faking accidental leak of information. Players are allowed a Will save as Railroading, but at a -10 penalty, and only if they are aware of your true intentions.
Shorten Campaign [DM, Evil] (Prerequisite: Cha 15+, Forced Assumption, Stealth Railroading): You rapidly decrease players' interests in a campaign, causing the campaign to shorten its life span significantly. Players may or may not be willing to join your future campaigns.
Improved Pun: Able to make a pun about any circumstance in the game.
Random Roll: Allows the DM to randomly roll dice when not necessary. This feat is used to intimidate players.
Back In Line: This feat grants the DM the ability to use lines such as "you see a flash of lightening" or "you smell sulfur" to hint at the players that they're actions are not approved by the DM and could be punished by an act of god.
Improved Fudge (Special ability): You may fudge rolls at any given time, as a free action, without the usual 1/day limitation.
Supreme Percentage Rolling [General, DM]: Whenever rolling percentages for your NPCs, you will always roll in the desired target range. Normal: Moderate fortification armor on a player character means a 75% to negate crits or sneak attacks.
-- James Chrisman gmforum@yahoogroups.com
~~~
As I lay on my bed, thinking about you, I feel this strong urge to grab you and squeeze you, because I can't forget last night. You came to me unexpectedly during the balmy and calm night, and what happened in my bed still leaves a tingling sensation in me. You appeared from nowhere and shamelessly, without any reservations, you laid on my naked body...you sensed my indifference, so you applied your hungry mouth to me without any guilt or humiliation, and you drove me near crazy while you drained me. Finally I went to sleep.  Today when I woke up, you were gone, I searched for you but to no avail, only the sheets bore witness to last night's events. My body still bears faint marks of your enthusiastic ravishing, making it harder to forget you. Tonight I will remain awake waiting for you... ....you stupid mosquito.
-- "rod_ramsey" <rod_ramsey@yahoo.com>
~~~
Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
-- William Golding
~~~
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time--a tremendous whack.
-- Winston Churchill
~~~
The question you have to ask yourself is what your goal is. If it's to share your knowledge, talking is a clear necessity. Repetition isn't, but saying what you know once is a prerequisite to everyone else hearing it.
If your goal is more than that - if it's to prove to everyone that you're the smartest person in the room - talking early and often might be the right strategy. Probably not, but it might be.
But if you want everyone in the room to choose the course of action you think is best, hold your tongue. If necessary, pinch it between your thumb and forefinger and don't let go for awhile.
There will come a time when the discussion starts to either wind down or repeat itself. That's when it's your turn. Here's the formula: (1) Get the floor; (2) Summarize what's been said; (3) Find a way to agree with ideas you don't like that removes them from consideration; (4) Present a way out of the impasse.
-- Bob Lewis
~~~
Warning: Do not drink the battery acid. It doesn't taste good and will hurt you. Also do not bite the tyres, especially while the bike is moving.
Our lawyers made us put these warnings in.
-- An Australian motorcycle manual
~~~
Guys are like parking lots, all the good ones are taken, and the rest are handicapped.
-- Unknown woman
~~~
I don't drink to get happy or to forget the pain. I drink to stop the voices in my head. Do you know what's so bad about them, they stutter. Ddddddave... Kkkkkkikikill your papapapapaparents!!
-- Andrew Dice Clay
~~~
Don't do drugs, don't have unprotected sex, don't drink and drive.....
Leave that to me.
~~~
I was born - wait, it gets worse.
~~~
If you ask me, these cheap, mudslinging ads drag the political process down to a level so juvenile and debased, I can actually understand it.
-- George Lowell, Investment Banker
~~~
The problem with America is stupidity, I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
~~~
I grew up to have my father's looks, my father's speech patterns, my father's posture, my father's opinions, and my mother's contempt for my father.
-- Jules Feiffer
~~~
Why can't Jesus play hockey?
He keeps getting nailed to the boards.
~~~
I used to work at a juvenile detention center. And you know what my favorite part was? Watching the kids get taken away in handcuffs, crying.
-- History teacher's first words to his class
~~~
Don't hate people because they are of a different colour, race or sexual orientation. Hate them because, despite outward appearances, they are all human and that in itself is a terrible crime.
-- Patrick Burn
~~~
Miss, may I be excused? My brain is full now
-- The Far Side
~~~
So now welcome our keynote speaker, Professor Melvin Fenwick - the man who, back in 1952, first coined the now-famous phrase: Fools! I'll destroy them all!
-- The Mad Scientists Convention,The Far Side
~~~
A novel is like a long enjoyable conversation with an old friend, relaxing and comfortable. A short story is more like the big guy on the subway platform who grabs your collar and pretends to push you in front of the train! Emotions come fast, hard and you're left standing on the platform, cold sweat forming on your back while your attacker calmly stares you down, looking thru the grimy window of the departing train.
-- Bill Norris
~~~
A man has no business to marry a woman who can't make him miserable. It means she can't make him happy.
-- George Bernard Shaw
~~~
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
-- C.S. Lewis
~~~
Like all great romantics, Shakespeare realized love was a lot more likely to end with a bunch of dead Danish people than with a kiss.
-- James Van Der Beek
~~~
Without rule-following there cannot be social life; without rule-breaking there cannot be personal identity. Man's distinguishing characteristic is that he both obeys rules and disobeys them!
-- Thomas S. Szasz
~~~
There is more money being spent on breast augmentation/implants and Viagra these days than Alzheimer's Research. Logic reflects that by 2020 there should then be a large elderly population with perky breasts and huge erections but absolutely no idea or recollection what to do with them.
-- Anon
~~~
If you bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, that which is within you will destroy you.
-- Jesus: Gospel of Thomas
~~~
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.
-- Leo Rosten
~~~
By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think wrong.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
~~~
Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again.
Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath.
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by need and moaning for release
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It may well be. I do not think I would.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
~~~
Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality.
-- Beatrix Potter
~~~
If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
~~~
I write when I'm inspired, and I see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning
-- Peter De Vries
~~~
There isn't much to be seen in a little town, but what you hear makes up for it.
-- Kin Hubbard
~~~
Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth. And you should save it for someone you love.
-- Butch Hancock
~~~
Don't you know that love isn't just going to bed? Love isn't an act, it's a whole life. It's staying with her now because she needs you; it's knowing you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures - when all that's on the shelf and done with. Love - why, I'll tell you what love is: it's you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other's step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime's talk is over.
-- Brian Moore, The Luck of Ginger Coffey
~~~
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
~~~
If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would follow strictly the teachings of the New, he would be insane.
-- Robert Ingersoll
~~~
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
-- Will Durant
~~~
A little kindness from person to person is better than a vast love for all humankind.
-- Richard Dehmel (1863-1920) --German poet and playwright
~~~
I don't want to be a doctor, and live by men's diseases; nor a minister to live by their sins; nor a lawyer to live by their quarrels. So I don't see that there's anything left for me but to be an author.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne
~~~
The question isn't 'who is going to let me'; it's 'who is going to stop me'.
-- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
~~~
If I'm chasing after some guy, and even if in the first second I close half the distance between me and him, then half that distance in the second second, then half that distance in the third second, I'm always going to be half some distance behind him, and I'll never catch him.  Which is why we have guns.
-- Zeno's Paradox, according to Maxim magazine
~~~
force, my friends, is violence; the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived. naked force has resolved more issues throughout history than any other factor. the popular opinion which says 'violence never solves anything' is wishful thinking at its worst. people who forget that always pay.
-- said by michael ironside in starship troopers, line written by r.a. heinlein and e. neumeier, sampled by velvet acid christ in the song decypher on the album fun with knives.
~~~
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
-- Arthur Kasspe
~~~
I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here.
-- Stephen Bishop
~~~
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
-- Groucho Marx
~~~
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
-- George Bernard Shaw
~~~
 Love seeketh not Itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives it ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
-- William Blake
~~~
If we judge of love by its usual effects, it resembles hatred more than friendship.
-- La Rochefoucauld
~~~
O, what a heaven is love, O, what a hell!
-- Thomas Dekker
~~~
Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine-gun.
-- Matt Groening
~~~
The adoration of his heart had been to her only as the perfume of a wild flower, which she had carelessly crushed with her foot in passing.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
~~~
When we are young we want to change the world. When we are old we want to change the young.
-- Anonymous
~~~
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
-- Voltaire
~~~
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
-- James Michener, Space
~~~
I hate writing and love having written
-- Joan Didion
~~~
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal
~~~
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
-- Salvor Hardin, Foundation
~~~
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do.
-- R. A. Heinlein
~~~
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
-- Tom Clancy
~~~
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.
-- C. S. Lewis
~~~
It is neither safe nor prudent to do anything against conscience.
-- Martin Luther
~~~
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.
-- William Blake
~~~
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
-- Thanatopsis, William Cullen Bryant
~~~
I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they've forgotten their own.
-- Margaret Atwood
~~~
There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
~~~
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all doing direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
-- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
~~~
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
~~~
People need trouble - a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy.
-- William Faulkner
~~~
Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.
-- Harvey Fierstein
~~~
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.
-- E. M. Forster
~~~
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies...
-- Erich Fromm
~~~
One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.
-- Gail Godwin
~~~
To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him.
-- Goethe
~~~
The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface .
-- Aldous Huxley
~~~
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
-- Aldous Huxley
~~~
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
-- C. S. Lewis
~~~
Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes one feel as you might when a drowning person holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you in his panic.
-- Anais Nin
~~~
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
-- Thomas Paine
~~~
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.
-- William Styron
~~~
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
-- Henry David Thoreau
~~~
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.
-- Henry David Thoreau
~~~
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
~~~
You wouldn't recognize a *subtle plan* if it painted itself purple, and danced naked upon a harpsichord, singing, 'Subtle Plans are Here Again'.
-- Edmund Blackadder
~~~
I meant, said Ipslore bitterly, what is there in this world that truly makes living worth while?
Death thought about it Cats, he said eventually, Cats are Nice.
-- Terry Pratchett, Sourcery
~~~
Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?
-- Calvin and Hobbes
~~~
We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to,  worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder,  spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.
-- e. e. cummings
~~~
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
-- John Donne
~~~
I send you perfectly toasted marshmallows, a moon dance, and vibrant love.
-- Sark
~~~
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
-- Albert Einstein
~~~
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction, both are transformed.
-- Carl G. Jung
~~~
In terms of the game theory, we might say the universe is so constituted as to maximize play. The best games are not those in which all goes smoothly and steadily toward a certain conclusion, but those in which the outcome is always in doubt. Similarly, the geometry of life is designed to keep us at the point of maximum tension between certainty and uncertainty, order and chaos. Every important call is a close one. We survive and evolve by the skin of our teeth. We really wouldn't want it any other way.
-- George Leonard
~~~
I love defenseless animals, especially in a good gravy.
~~~
Here's to you and here's to me,
and I hope we never disagree.
But, if that should ever be,
to HELL with you, here's to ME!
~~~
I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
~~~
A man doesn't automatically get my respect. He has to get down in the dirt and beg for it.
~~~
Fairy tales do not give a child his first idea of bogy.  What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogy.  The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination.  What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.  Exactly what the fairy tale does is this:  it accustoms him by a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors have a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies, that these infinite enemies of man have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.
-- G. K. Chesterton The Red Angel
~~~
Ass: The masculine of "lass".
~~~
Books: Men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.
-- E.S. Barrett
~~~
Book: A garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
~~~
Books: Masters who instruct us without rods or ferrules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.
-- Richard De Bury
~~~
Books: Standing counselors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please.
-- Oswald Chambers
~~~
Books: The blessed chloroform of the mind.
-- Robert Chambers
~~~
Books: Waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation. 
-- Jeremy Collier
~~~
Book: A mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out. 
-- Georg C. Lichtenberg
~~~
Books: More than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives. - Amy Lowell
~~~
May those that love us, love us;
and those that don't love us,
May God turn their hearts;
and if He doesn't turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles
so we'll know them by their limping.
-- Old Irish Toast
~~~
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking,  and from that to incivility and procrastination.
-- Thomas De Quincey
~~~
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
-- Voltaire
~~~
It's the heart afraid of dying, that never learns to dance;
It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance;
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give;
And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live.
-- Bette Midler The Rose
~~~
Love, friendship, respect, will never unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
-- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
~~~
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
-- John Milton Paradise Lost
~~~
The world is full of lonely people, all isolated in a private, secret dungeon.
-- Loretta Girzartis
~~~
Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.
-- Blaise Pascal
~~~
Nothing begins, and nothing ends,
That is not paid with moan;
For we are born in others' pain
And perish in our own.
-- Francis Thompson
~~~
Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
-- William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet
~~~
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more "literary" you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
-- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
~~~
When a wise man does not understand, he says: "I do not understand." The fool and the uncultured are ashamed of their ignorance. They remain silent when a question could bring them wisdom.
-- Frank Herbert, The Godmakers
~~~
But a woman friend was different from a man; you always knew her mind ran along other paths than yours, that she saw the world with different eyes.
-- Robert Jordan, A Crown of Swords
~~~
That we would do
We should do when we would; for this "would" changes
And hath abatements and delays as many
As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents;
And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
-- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
~~~
You're pretty.
You're not.
I need a woman.
You need a bath.
-- The Quick and the Dead
~~~
No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
-- Fran Lebowitz
~~~
The great difference between people in this world is not between the rich and the poor or the good and the evil, the biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have pleasure in love and those that haven't and hadn't any pleasure in love, but just watched it with envy, sick envy.
-- Tennesee Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth
~~~
Health nuts are going to feel stupid some day, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
-- Redd Foxx
~~~
I'm not cheap, but I am on special this week.
~~~
Miles sealed his boots and paused seriously. "I may yet see a chance to save... something, from this mess."
Elli, listening intently, remarked, "I thought we had saved something. We uncovered a traitor, plugged a security leak, foiled a kidnapping, and broke up a major plot against the Barrayaran Imperium. And we got paid. What more do you want for one week?" 
"Well, it would have been nice if any of that had been on purpose, instead of by accident," Miles mused.
-- Business as usual in the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet (Lois McMaster Bujold, Brother's in Arms)
~~~
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
-- Berthold Auerbach
~~~
Where there's music, there can be no evil.
-- Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote
~~~
Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
-- William Congreve The Mourning Bride
~~~
Music is only love looking for words.
-- Lawrence Durrell
~~~
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water-bath is to the body.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
~~~
When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had and never will have.
-- Edgar W. Howe
~~~
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like Arabs,
And silently steal away.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
~~~
A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.
-- Abraham Harold Maslow
~~~
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wondering by lone sea breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.
-- Arthur O'Shaughnessy
~~~
If music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
-- William Shakespeare Twelfth Night
~~~
I prefer to proceed toward infallibility at my own unhurried pace.
-- Chimele-Orithain of nasul Ashanome, in Hunter of Worlds, by C.J.Cherryh
~~~
The madness of demons is rage - the madness of angels, hope.
-- Lailoken, in The Dragon and the Unicorn, by A.A. Attanasio
~~~
I can control it. I'm not an animal.
What are you? A cabbage plant?
-- Andrew Carr; Ellemir Lanart-Alton, in The Forbidden Tower, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
~~~
Due to recent budget cuts, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off.
-- source unknown
~~~
Police?
How many?
Uh, all of 'em, I think.
-- the Terminator; Sarah Conner; John Conner, in Terminator 2: Judgement
Day
~~~
I pulled her into my arms, finally understanding that all the while I'd struggled to keep her free of my prison of fear, she was locked in the next cell.
-- Cat, in Dreamfall, by Joan D. Vinge
~~~
... the last square peg of compromise had been driven into a round hole of necessity.
-- Cat, in Dreamfall, by Joan D. Vinge
~~~
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
-- Stephen Biko
~~~
Do you believe in the Devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?
I'm not sure man needs the help.
-- Bill Watterson as Calvin; Hobbes
~~~
I'm really a very nice person, when I'm getting my way.
-- Jack Jax Coerlis, in Mid-Flinx, by Alan Dean Foster
~~~
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
In a society in which it is a mortal offense to be different from your neighbors your only escape is never to let them find out.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
You'd be surprised how often saying nothing is the strongest argument you can make.
-- Myrddin, in In the Shadow of the Oak King, by Courtway Jones
~~~
My self-control is legendary. Half history, half myth.
-- Marty Bobbick, in The Barsoom Project, by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
~~~
An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted.
-- Star, in Glory Road, by Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Who is more foolish--the child afraid of the dark, or the man afraid of the light?
-- Maurice Freehill
~~~
If you commit your heart and your love to someone, you're afraid that you'll get hurt. Well, you will. Both of you. You are going to have problems and pain and anger. You'll also have joy. Great joy.
-- Touched by an Angel daily calendar
~~~
Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength.
-- Touched by an Angel daily calendar
~~~
I don't know where. And I don't know when. The only thing I do know is that the kind of love worth waiting for, you won't have to lie for, or steal, or keep hidden.
-- Touched by an Angel daily calendar
~~~
It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
~~~
If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could not otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.
-- Montaigne
~~~
He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.
-- Elbert Hubbard
~~~
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
-- Carl Jung
~~~
The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.
-- Florynce Kennedy
~~~
The loneliness was still there, but it was getting louder and easier to dance to.
-- Brett Butler
~~~
...I think we owe it ourselves, and to those we love, to strive for joy. We must transform our own mistakes, and mistakes made towards us, into things that we cherish. Revelry is not only the domain of children. Awe is not the product of innocence. Joy is not the precursor to a life of anger. Unfortunately there are those who do not believe life to be good. There are those that harbour more hatred than can possibly be healthy for anybody. We see it in bigotry; we see it in rage; and we see it most clearly in the inability to forgive and forget.
-- West McDonald
~~~
Friends find comfort in what they share and delight in how they differ.
~~~
To be a freshman is to be in possession of a wonderful thing: time. There is time to figure out what you want to do with your life, time to figure out what classes you want to take, what books you want to read. There is time to make friends. You could do poorly in a class and know you had time to improve. You could mess up in your relationship and have time to make things better. With four promising years ahead of you, time sat around like huge clumps of clay, waiting for you to shape them in whatever way you pleased.
-- Malik Wilson
~~~
Every man is the architect of his own fortunes, but the neighbors superintend the construction.
-- Insect
~~~
the best relationships--friendship and otherwise--tend to be those where you *can* say anything to the other person but you don't say *everything*.
-- Audrey Beth Stein
~~~
i'm actually kinda amazed at the power music has over my feelings about myself, my sense of peace, how lyrics can help me work out ideas and feelings; music makes me a whole person and without it, i'd just be a fraction of who i am now.
-- Therese Leung
~~~
One Ship Sails East, another west by the self same winds that blow.
'Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale which determines the way they go.
Like the ways of the sea are the ways of time as we travel along in life.
'Tis the set of the soul that determines the goal and not the calm nor strife.
~~~
'You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young!' 
'Why, what did she tell you?' 
'I don't know, I didn't listen!'
-- Douglas Adams
~~~
Tolerance implies a respect for another person, not because he is wrong or even because he is right, but because he is human.
-- John Cogley Commonweal
~~~
Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
-- Leo C. Rosten
~~~
Pain of the mind hurts more than pain of the body.
-- Little Man Tate
~~~
In this Twentieth Century, to stop rushing around, to sit quietly on the grass, to switch off the world and come back to the earth, to allow the eye to see a willow, a bush, a cloud, a leaf, is 'an unforgettable experience.'
-- Frederick Franck
~~~
Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering.
-- D.T. Suzuki
~~~
If there is a soul, it is a mistake to believe that it is given to us fully created. It is created here, throughout a whole life. And living is nothing else but that long and painful bringing forth.Albert Camus
~~~
...i mean really, the human form can be beautiful in so many different ways, i just don't see a need to limit my attraction to that beauty.
-- Steph Summers
~~~
I wanted you to see what real courage is instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.Harper Lee
~~~
You will never be fully alive as long as there is a new discovery to be made about yourself, your capacity, and the world.
-- Dean Joseph McShane
~~~
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams go, life is a barren field covered with snow.
-- Langston Hughes
~~~
...words are some of the most powerful and important things I know....Language is the tool of love and the weapon of hatred. It's the bright red warning flag of danger--and the stone foundation of diplomacy and peace.
-- Ani DiFranco
~~~
People don't smoke, the cigarette smokes; we're just the suckers behind it.
~~~
I just don't believe that most people are living the smooth, controlled, trouble-free existence that their careful countenances and bland words suggest. Today never hands me the same thing twice and I believe that for almost everyone life is also a mixture of unsolved problems, ambiguous victories, and vague defeats - with very few moments of clear peace. I never do seem to quite get on top of it. My struggle with today is worthwhile, but it's a struggle nonetheless and one that seems to never end. The payoff must be elsewhere, and I suspect that it's within that laughing heart that can surface so unexpectedly.
-- Hugh Prather
~~~
Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me 
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.
-- Shel Silverstein
~~~
The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
-- William Wordsworth
~~~
No hurt heals by itself. So although we do not choose the ways we are hurt, we can choose the ways we will heal.
~~~
Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's nose.
-- Chinese proverb
~~~
Ultimately, the bond of companionship, whether in marriage or friendship, is conversation.
-- Oscar Wilde
~~~
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
The bruise on the heart which at first feels incredibly tender to the slightest touch eventually turns all the shades of the rainbow and stops aching. We forget about it. We even forget we have hearts until the next time. And then we wonder how we ever could have forgotten. We think this one is better, because, in fact, we cannot fully remember the time before.
-- Erica Jong
~~~
In fact the game wouldn't be worth playing if we knew what was going to happen....That may be the most important thing to understand about humans. It defines our existence. We are constantly searching--not just for answers to our questions--but also for new questions. We are explorers. We explore our lives day by day, and we explore the galaxy, trying to expand the boundaries of our knowledge.
-- Benjamin Sisko
~~~
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
~~~
It is the mark of a superior man that, left to himself, he is able to amuse, interest, and entertain himself out of his personal stock of meditations, ideas, criticism. memories, philosophy, humor and what not.
-- George Jean Nathan
~~~
Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!
-- Jane Austen
~~~
Some of us (perfectionists, especially) fuss so much over making the 'right' choice, but in life, all that's really needed is to make any 'good' choice, believe in it, go through with it, and accept the consequences.
-- Andy Roberts
~~~
In every task that must be done, there is an element of fun. Find the fun, and - snap! - the job's a game!
-- Mary Poppins
~~~
The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.
-- Kendall Hailey
~~~
The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.
-- L.P. Hartley
~~~
We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?
-- David Foster Wallace
~~~
The reality of the other person is not in what he reveals to you, but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather what he does not say.
-- Kahlil Gibran
~~~
Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffers, not the state.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men concealed
Their thoughts, for fear that if revealed
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved
Tricked in disguises, alien to the rest 
Of men, and alien to themselves--and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!
-- Matthew Arnold
~~~
The gods too are fond of a joke.
-- Aristotle
~~~
Homesick
Try and hold only, things you need to live
get what you can, see what you can give.
It's hazy without love; the drugs, the art, career.
They just dull the pain, feed the fears.
But guess I'll read the paper, have myself a beer.
I'll read the stories, hear the blues.
Ponder life, and people's views.
Shoot from town to town, an indecisive star.
Sit on a stool, laughing at the bar.
Wonder at the sunset, chilly and alone.
And someday I'll know again, a someone to call 'home'
-- Valerie Pettis
~~~
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
-- Peter F. Drucker
~~~
Cherish your vision; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, if you remain true to them, your world will at last be built.
-- James Allen
~~~
I date this girl for two years--and then the nagging starts: "I wanna know your name."
-- Mike Binder
~~~
I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.
-- Ed Bluestone
~~~
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
-- Niels Bohr
~~~
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
-- Niels Bohr
~~~
In the blithe days of honeymoon,
With Kate's allurements smitten,
I lov'd her late, I lov'd her soon,
And call'd her dearest kitten.
But now my kitten's grown a cat,
And cross like other wives.
O! By my soul my honest Mat,
I fear she has nine lives.
-- James Boswell, Life of Johnson
~~~
I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used.
-- Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, dying words
~~~
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
-- Alec Bourne, A Doctor's Creed
~~~
Always behave like a duck--keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.
-- Jacob Braude
~~~
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
-- J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
~~~
The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.
-- Andrew Brown
~~~
You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.
-- Dale Carnegie
~~~
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
-- G. K. Chesterton
~~~
Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
-- Anton Chekhov
~~~
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
-- G. K. Chesterton
~~~
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
-- G. K. Chesterton
~~~
A day without a pun is a day without sunshine; there is gloom for improvement.
-- John S. Crosbie
~~~
It's like magic. When you live by yourself, all your annoying habits are gone!
-- Merrill Markoe
~~~
I have a fascination for people. I don't like them all, but I have a fascination with human nature.
-- Tori Amos
~~~
But only in their dreams can men be truly free. Twas always thus, and always thus shall be.
-- Dead Poets Society
~~~
It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.
~~~
The only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.
-- C.S. Lewis
~~~
Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.
-- Henry David Thoreau
~~~
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
-- William Wordsworth
~~~
A man is walking along a beach when he spies quite some distance ahead a figure walking slowly by the shore-line bending down and picking something up and placing it in the ocean. He thinks nothing of it until he notices that the man seems to be repeating this pattern every few yards...walking slowly, bending over, picking something up and placing it in the water. Soon he catches up with the curious person and being an inquisitive soul he asks the man, 'Whatever are you doing?' 'Can't you see?' asks the man by the sea pointing to the shoreline. 'I'm helping these little guys back to safety.' Sure enough, there on the shore line are hundreds and hundreds of the tiniest star fish that he has ever seen, all washed up on the sand, drying out in the mid-day sun. 'Ahhh,' he says, but confused by the sheer numbers, he says to the star-fish man, 'But surely you'll NEVER make a difference with SO many of these little guys lying here.' To which the starfish man smiled, picked up another, placed it carefully in the ocean, and said cheerfully, 'Made a difference to that one!'
~~~
My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh - anything but work.
-- Abraham Lincoln
~~~
It sucks when people give you dirty looks for skipping. It's cool when I can smile back at them.
-- Arjuna Greis
~~~
Do not suffer from loneliness.
Go outside.
Go away.
It's all the people making you lonely.
Pick a spot on the horizon, and head straight for it.
Weave your way through a stand of redwoods.
Kayak an island chain.
Peer over your toes at the edge of a canyon.
Go to your favorite place, again, and again, not just because it fuels your independence, but because it reminds you--you're part of something bigger.
And although it may not occur to the baffled onlookers, who can't keep their eyes off your smiling, mud-covered, wired up, insane self.
It will occur to you--you aren't the one who's lonely.
JUST DO IT.
-- 1995 Nike Green Mountain Running Camp diploma
~~~
Never be angry when a fool acts like a fool. It's better when fools identify themselves...it removes so much uncertainty.
-- Lord Peace
~~~
To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.
-- Erich Fromm
~~~
Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
~~~
Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
~~~
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
-- WH Auden
~~~
Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship--never.
-- Charles Caleb Colton
~~~
Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.
-- Quentin Crisp
~~~
Pleasure of love lasts but a moment,
Pain of love lasts a lifetime.
-- Jean Pierre Claris De Florian
~~~
Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one's own self.
-- Erich Fromm
~~~
Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.
-- Erica Jong
~~~
True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.
-- Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld
~~~
To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love needs no logic for its mission.
-- Charles A. Lindbergh
~~~
A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.
-- George Jean Nathan
~~~
We conceal it from ourselves in vain--we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
-- Blaise Pascal
~~~
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
-- Bertrand Russell
~~~
Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.
-- Bertrand Russell
~~~
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
-- Henry David Thoreau
~~~
If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
-- Leo Tolstoy
~~~
Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.
-- Andy Warhol
~~~
I'm very brave generally, he went on in a low voice: only today I happen to have a headache.
-- Lewis Carroll
~~~
Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.
-- G. K. Chesterton
~~~
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die.
-- G. K. Chesterton
~~~
Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
~~~
Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
-- English Proverb
~~~
This is courage in a man: to bear unflinchingly what heaven sends.
-- Euripides
~~~
Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes.
-- Carl Sandburg
~~~
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
~~~
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.
-- Oscar Wilde
~~~
Popularity is kinda like Tupperware - expensive plastic that's sold at parties.
~~~
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
~~~
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
-- T. Roosevelt
~~~
Time is like a handful of sand - the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.
~~~
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to lead a life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
-- Henry David Thoreau
~~~
No Colonel. I remember Okita. I can understand a man being a killer, I think. But a bored killer?
Okita is only a tool. The surgeon's knife.
Then your service has turned a man into a thing. An old quote drifted through Ethan's memory: By their fruits you shall know them....
-- Dr. Urquhart and Colonel Millisor discuss ethics (Lois McMaster Bujold, Ethan of Athos)
~~~
Just get out of her way, Doctor. We're doomed to be Entertained. It's an obligation on both sides. The polite thing to do is sort of pretend we're not here till she's ready for us.
-- Miles explaining backwoods courtesy (Lois McMaster Bujold, The Mountains of Mourning)
~~~
The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in the future are imaginary. the ones they commit in the present--they are real.
-- Aral is hag-ridden prior to the invasion of Escobar (Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honor)
~~~
Finesse, boy. A retreating enemy should be offered all the face he can carry off. Just don't let him carry off anything else.
-- Aral Vorkosigan to Miles after the Centagandans are defeated (Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game)
~~~
I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards - their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble - the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, Look, these need no reward.  We have nothing to give them here.  They have loved reading.
-- Virginia Woolf The Common Reader - Second Series
~~~
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory out of desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in a forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
-- T. S. Eliot, Waste Land, The
~~~
The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain; to show them we love them not when we feel like it, but when they do.
-- Nan Fairbrother
~~~
So she stood thinking. Without making any thought precise - for she was one of those reticent people whose minds hold their thoughts enmeshed in clouds of silence - she was filled with thoughts. Her mind was like her room, in which lights advanced and retreated, came pirouetting and stepping delicately, spread their tails, pecked their way; and then her whole being was suffused, like the room again, with a cloud of some profound knowledge, some unspoken regret, and then she was full of locked drawers, stuffed with letters, like her cabinets.
-- Virginia Woolf The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection
~~~
I know! I'll transcribe the conversations between the voices in my head and send them to you!!!
-- David Borenstein
~~~
Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
-- Sam Stevenson
~~~
Tourists are terrorists with cameras. Terrorists are tourists with guns.
~~~
The Piglet was sitting on the ground at the door of his house blowing happily at a dandelion and wondering whether it would be this year, next year, sometime or never. He had just discovered it would be never, and was trying to remember what it was and hoping it wasn't anything nice....
-- Winnie the Pooh
~~~
How To Be An Artist.
Stay loose. Learn to watch snails. Plant impossible gardens.
Invite someone dangerous to tea.
Make little signs that say YES! and post them all over your house.
Make friends with freedom and uncertainty.
Look forward to dreams. Cry during movies.
Swing as high as you can on a swingset, by moonlight.
Cultivate moods. Refuse to be responsible.
Do it for love. Take lots of naps. Give money away.
Do it now. The money will follow.
Believe in magic. Laugh a lot.
Celebrate every gorgeous moment.
Take moonbaths.
Have wild imaginings, transformative dreams, and perfect calm.
Draw on the walls. Read every day.
Imagine yourself magic.
Giggle with children. Listen to old people.
Open up. Dive in. Be free.
Bless yourself. Drive away fear.
Play with everything. Entertain your inner child.
You are innocent.
Build a fort with blankets. Get wet. Hug trees.
Write love letters.
-- Sark
~~~
Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
~~~
When my father read to me, I leaned into him so I became part of his chest or his forearm. And I think children who are hugged, and children who are held on laps - nice yummy laps - will always associate reading with the bodies of their parents, the smells of their parents. And that will always keep you a reader. Because that perfume, that sensuous connection is lifelong.
We're only animals. And you watch puppies needing to be licked to survive. Well, we need to be licked to survive. And reading becomes a licking, if you will. When you not only hear a treasured story, but also are pressed against the most important person in the world, a connection is made that cannot be severed. For instance, I'm reading straight through Shakespeare now, and when I get alarmed and frightened by him, and feel cowed and then go on, there is some tissue connection to my father as a reader that keeps me going.
-- Maurice Sendak quoted in Hearst's Homearts
~~~
When the tweedle beetles battle with their paddles in a bottle full of water on a noodle-eating poodle, it's a tweedle beetle noodle poodle water bottle paddle battle.
-- Dr. Seuss Fox in Sox
~~~
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
-- Oscar Wilde
~~~
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-- Oscar Wilde
~~~
Hence also it is no easy task to find the middle, e.g. to find the middle of a circle is not for everyone but for him who knows; so, too, anyone can get angry - that is easy - or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy; wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable and noble.
-- Aristotle
~~~
She was nothing more than a mere good-tempered, civil and obliging young woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her - she was only an Object of Contempt.
-- Jane Austen, Letter the 13th
~~~
We hear about the birth of a child and ask questions like, "What did she have? How much did it weigh?" and "Does it have any hair?" The Athabaskan Indian hear of a birth and ask, "Who came?" From the beginning, there is a respect for the newborn as a full person.
-- Lisa Delpit, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom
~~~
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
~~~
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
~~~
Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long. I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself. I can throw open to you no picture gallery but your own soul. All I can give you is the opportunity, the impulse, the key.
-- Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
~~~
Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it.
-- D.H. Lawrence
~~~
Life is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes. The big ones come too infrequently. And if you don't collect all these tiny successes, the big ones don't really mean anything.
-- Norman Lear
~~~
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.
-- Friedrich Nietzche
~~~
So now I know the things I know
And do the things I do
And if you do not like me so
To hell, my love, with you.
-- Dorothy Parker
~~~
Pythagoras was told, Had you married, a child would have been born to you that would have made you happy.
The philosopher retorted, It is out of my love for children that I have given up seeking to have children.
~~~
As long as I have you there is just one other thing I'll always need - tremendous self control.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
~~~
It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
~~~
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
~~~
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
~~~
Sometimes I need what only you can provide - your absence.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
~~~
Philosophy is a study that lets us be unhappy more intelligently.
-- Anon.
~~~
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
-- Jonathan Swift
~~~
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
-- Austin Phelps
~~~
No, no, never send interim reports, said Miles. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.
-- Miles on his command philosophy (Lois McMaster Bujold, Brothers in Arms
~~~
Here we may reign secure; and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
-- John Milton
~~~
For who would lose,
Though full of pain this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night?
-- John Milton
~~~
...Do I understand correctly you've had some sort of female trouble?
No, most of my trouble have been with males. Cordelia bit her tongue.
-- Cordelia is misunderstood by her doctor (Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar)
~~~
I'll carry the wench off, he muttered, experimentally dropping his voice half an octave, and lock her in my dungeon. His voice returned to its normal pitch with a regretful sigh. Except I haven't got a dungeon. It would have to be the closet. Grandfather's right, we are a reduced generation.
-- Miles ponders the difficulties of villainy. (Lois McMaster Bujold, The Warrior's Apprentice)
~~~
Like integrity, love of life was not a subject to be studied, it was a contagion to be caught. And you had to catch it from someone who had it.
-- Miles worries about Lilly Jr. (Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance)
~~~
Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
-- John Milton
~~~
With thee conversing I forget all time,
All seasons, and their change,--all please alike.
Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower,
Glist'ring with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful ev'ning mild; then silent night
With this her solemn bird and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train:
But neither breath of morn when she ascends
With charm of earliest birds, nor rising sun
On this delightful land, nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glist'ring with dew, nor fragrance after showers,
Nor grateful ev'ning mild, nor silent night
With this her solemn bird, nor walk by moon
Or glittering starlight, without thee is sweet.
-- John Milton
~~~
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety. Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her, that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.
-- William Shakespeare
~~~
But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
-- Cordelia talking Kou into talking to Drou (Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar)
~~~
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
-- Richard Lovelace
~~~
If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.
-- Lord Salisbury
~~~
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne
~~~
Would you who judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure, take this rule; whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things; in short; whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that is sin to you; however innocent it may be in itself.
-- Robert Southey
~~~
A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body.
~~~
Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
~~~
Girls are always running through my mind. They don't dare walk.
-- Andy Gibb
~~~
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
-- Albert Schweitzer
~~~
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
-- Herbert Henry Asquith:
~~~
What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
~~~
Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.
-- Robert Orben
~~~
Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?
-- George Wallace
~~~
The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
-- Frank Zappa
~~~
Reality is something you rise above.
-- Liza Minnelli
~~~
Emilio, I am getting rusty and old, I cannot follow the highbrow theory developed by Oppenheimer's pupils any more. I went to their seminar and was depressed by my inability to understand them. Only the last sentence cheered me up. It was: And this is Fermi's theory of beta decay. - Enrico Fermi
~~~
Would it upset men if they found out we weren't different? Are we? Aren't we? Damned if I know.
-- Rita Mae Brown
~~~
Life always sucks. It's just that sometimes that feels very good.
-- Kevin Ryan
~~~
I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is; they like to run their own business. I know men that would make my wife a better husband than I am; but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em.
-- Will Rogers
~~~
Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.
-- Roland
~~~
Do you know what a pessimist is? A person who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself and hates them for it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
~~~
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
-- J. D. Watson, The Double Helix
~~~
Much of what has been called religion has an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rule and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known.
-- Dune, Frank Herbert
~~~
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.
-- Woody Allen
~~~
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
-- H. L. Mencken
~~~
Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.
-- Fran Lebowitz
~~~
Sergeant Colon had had a broad education.  He'd been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.
-- Terry Pratchett, Jingo
~~~
I had ambition, by which sin
The angels fell;
I climbed, and step by step, oh Lord,
Ascended into Hell
-- W. H. Davies, Ambition
~~~
By the time (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on.  Since its completion, it cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing.  There are no plans to replace it, since it was never needed in the first place. I expect every installation has its own pet software which is analogous to the above.
-- Ken Iverson
~~~
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.
-- Unknown author, Levitating Trains and Kamikaze Genes: Technological Literacy for the 1990's, describing the difference between computer hardware and software
~~~
Never be possessive. If a female friend lets on that she is going out with another man, be kind and understanding. If she says she would like to go out with the Dallas Cowboys, including the coaching staff, the same rule applies. Tell her: "Kath, you just go right ahead and do what you feel is right." Unless you actually care for her, in which case you must see to it that she has no male contact whatsoever.
-- Bruce Jay Friedman
~~~
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.
-- Cynthia Heimel, Lower Manhattan Survival Tactics in Village Voice
~~~
I will try to follow the advice that a university president once gave a prospective commencement speaker. Think of yourself as the body at an Irish wake he said.  They need you in order to have the party, but no one expects you to say very much.
-- Anthony Lake, national security advisor, at University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, Graduation 1995
~~~
For best results: wash in cold water separately, hang dry and iron with warm iron.
For not so good results: drag behind car through puddles, blow-dry on roofrack.
-- Laundry instructions on a shirt made by HEET (Korea
~~~
Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.
-- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
~~~
Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, Certainly, I can! Then get busy and find out how to do it.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
~~~
When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home.
-- Betty Bender
~~~
Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.
-- Engineer's Motto
~~~
You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.
-- Edward Flaherty
~~~
When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
-- E. W. Howe
~~~
The imaginary friends I had as a kid dropped me because their friends thought I didn't exist.
-- Aaron Machado
~~~
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
-- G. K. Chesterton
~~~
The world does not encourage a perfectly rational lover, simply because a perfectly rational lover would never get married. The world does not encourage a perfectly rational army, because a perfectly rational army would run away.
-- G. K. Chesterton
~~~
In the cafeteria just after lunch, (well, not *just* after, more like *during* lunch, about 12:28; say 12:30, give or take a few minutes), I leaned back in my chair (it was one of those aluminum chairs, good strength-to-weight, like titanium but not quite; but then of course titanium would be a bit of an overkill). Anyway, I heard one of the girls talking about how boring she thought engineers could be.
-- Alan Denney
~~~
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
-- Dave Barry, Why Humor is Funny
~~~
Every year, back come Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.
-- Dorothy Parker
~~~
To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.
-- Anna Louise Strong
~~~
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished:
If you're alive, it isn't.
-- Richard Bach Illusions
~~~
Lois: If you wanna kill Superman, I don't know why you're going to Smallville or 1966.
Tempus: She doesn't know yet. Oh, this is good. This is really good. Um, Lois, did you know that, in the future, you're revered at the same level as Superman? Why there are books about you, statues, an interactive game. You're even a breakfast cereal.
Lois: Really?
Tempus: Yes. But, as much as everybody loves you, there is one question that keeps coming up: "How dumb was she?" Here, I'll show you what I mean. Look (puts glasses on), I'm Clark Kent. (Takes glasses off) No, I'm Superman. (Puts glasses on) Mild-mannered reporter. (Takes glasses off) Superhero. Hello! Duh! Clark Kent is Superman. Ha, ha, ha. Well, that was worth the whole trip. To actually meet the most galactically stupid woman who ever lived.
-- Lois & Clark, Tempus Fugitive
~~~
Threats don't work with the person who's got nothing to lose.
-- Maduro Ash
~~~
How to Raise your I.Q. by Eating Gifted Children
-- Book title by Lewis B. Frumkes (1983)
~~~
Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed in M&Ms: 250
-- Harper's Index, October 1989
~~~
How can you say you're misunderstood? You're an idiot-there's not a whole lot that needs understanding there.
-- Isabel
~~~
Relationships are hard. It's like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay, and before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp.
-- Bob Ettinger
~~~
...not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour--and in the oddest places!--for the lack of it.
-- James Baldwin
~~~
Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
-- The Buddha
~~~
Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl accidentally kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill the woman's sister for personal gain.
-- TV listing for The Wizard of Oz, Submitted by J. Ward O'Brien
~~~
...in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future....The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
-- Christopher J. McCandless
~~~
How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.
-- Marcus Aurelius
~~~
So long as we are loved by others I should say that we are almost indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
~~~
Broken Toy
'I hurt.
'So What?' said the mother.
'I grieve.'
'Your point?' said the dad.
I tell them all about my pain,
And how I feel quite sad.
But no one really listens,
No one really sees,
No one was really quite prepared,
Cause it was only me.
'Oh my heart, my heart!'
Cries the mother.
'Oh damn, God Damn!'
Cries the dad.
As they see my broken body.
They thought depression was a fad.
-- Beth Coulter
~~~
One thing I've learned from college (and I probably didn't need to get the parents to shell out all the exorbitant amounts of tuition to get this particular nugget of wisdom) is that verbal appreciation can only go so far. At some point, you start liking a poem or a painting for reasons that you yourself just don't understand. You're just not supposed to be able to articulate exactly WHY you like certain things in art or literature or whatever. It just makes you feel a certain way, and if you try to put that feeling into what few and feeble words we have at our disposal, you sort of cheapen the whole thing.
-- Scott "Scotch" Herman
~~~
Happiness is like a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.
-- GK Chesterton
~~~
...love triumphs, at least in this life, not by eliminating evil once for all, but by resisting and overcoming it anew every day.
-- Thomas Merton
~~~
It's not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.
-- Hermann Hess
~~~
All-consuming, my thoughts of you, creeping up on me in the dark of late-night like a cancer. I change position, brush them away in hopes that sleep will replace them, and they shrink back into unconsciousness for the moment, but slowly, slowly, they come creeping back out, nosing into the half-waking, half-dream state before true sleep, nestling themselves around me, curling into the blanket at my side like cats, stubborn, sending out claws if I try to remove them. We are at an impasse.
-- Kayte Siegle
~~~
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.
~~~
Oh, now there's only one kind of love that lasts. That's unrequited love. It stays with you forever.
-- Woody Allen
~~~
I just broke up with someone and the last thing she said to me was, 'You'll never find anyone like me again.' I'm thinking, 'I should hope not! If I don't want you, why would I want someone like you?'
-- Larry Miller
~~~
...in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
~~~
I will not wish thee riches nor the glow
of greatness, but that wherever thou go,
some weary heart shall gladden at thy smile,
or shadowed life know sunshine for awhile.
And so thy path shall be a track of light,
like angels' footsteps passing through the night.
-- words on a church wall in Upwaltham, England
~~~
You can make more friends in two months by helping other people than you can in two years trying to get others to help you.
~~~
there's nothing to write
in this forest of safety
the leaves filter out danger
before it reaches the ground
you're not here to rip me open
there's no one to shred my heart
i'm so used to watching it bleed
that without seeing the blood drip
i'm not sure that it is there
i'm sheltered by logic and math
you, my chaos, have disappeared
into the limits of infinity
my heart is a constant
and it derives into nothing
you were my time-dependence
you were my sharp-clawed jaguar
you were my trial, my heartbreak
you were my inspiration
you were what made me feel
i'm left writing after your ghost
my pen chasing desperately
the memory of the only thing
that dissolved my outer shell
and released me to the elements
i remember how it felt to be broken open
i remember how it felt to be salty and raw
i remember the elation of our lips meeting
i remember watching the blood come to surface
i am shelled safe and distant
i feel clean and smooth
i stay at happy equilibrium
i watch the scars fade
i miss you
i miss feeling
i miss needing to write
i miss
-- Jennifer Dawn Crispin
~~~
I've never had a way with women,/ but the hills of Iowa make me wish that I could/ And I've never found a way to say 'I love you',/ but if the chance came by, oh, I, I would/ But way back where I come from, we never mean to bother,/ we don't like to make our passions other people's concern/ And we walk in the world of safe people,/ and at night we walk into our houses and burn./ ...How I long to fall just a little bit,/ to dance out of the lines and stray from the light/ But I fear that to fall in love with you/ is to fall from a great and gruesome height/ So I asked a friend about it, on a bad day,/ her husband had just left her, she sat down on the chair he'd left behind/ She said, 'What is love? Where did it get me?/ Whoever thought of love is no friend of mine.'/ ...Once I had everything, I gave it up/ for the shoulder of your driveway and the words I've never felt/ And so for you, I came this far across the tracks,/ ten miles above the limit and with no seatbelt (and I'd do it again)/ For tonight I went running through the screen doors of discretion,/ for I woke up from a nightmare that I could not stand to see:/ You were a-wandering out on the hills of Iowa/ and you were not thinking of me.
-- Dar Williams
~~~
I've been getting down about all the run-around/ About all the pushing and the standing in line/ But like my friends say, you gotta do it anyway/ And it just gets harder when you ask why/ And I'm tired from all the weight/ Tired of being strong/ So won't you come and stay/ Let me lay down in your arms/ Down in your arms/ I've been getting up early, I've been getting my coffee/ I've been getting in the car and driving all over town/ Talking to myself while I'm taking off my seatbelt/ Some people don't know how to slow down/ ...I've got a troubled, a troubled mind/ And you've got a heart, a heart so kind/ So kind/ So pack an overnight bag, don't worry about what you have/ 'Cause if you need something, you can just use mine/ And you don't have to promise more than you want to/ But if you want to see me, this would be a good time
-- Catie Curtis
~~~
I've never understood why women love cats. Cats are independent, they don't listen, they don't come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, and when they're home they like to be left alone and sleep. In other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat.
-- Jay Leno
~~~
...making the present audible and making the implicit explicit is necessary to engage and renew a whole train of commitments, responsibilities, and possibilities. 'I love you' does not create what is not present. Nor does it seal what is present. But it must be spoken and respoken. It is necessary speech because people need to see in pictures or hear in words even what they already know as deeply as they know anything, especially what they know as deeply as they know anything. Words are actions.
-- Michael Schudson
~~~
But to see both sides of a problem is the surest way to prevent its solution because there are always more than two sides.
-- Rachel T. Hare-Mustin and Jeanne Marecek
~~~
feels like reckless driving when we're talking
it's fun while it lasts and it's faster than walking
-- Ani DiFranco
~~~
Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you.
~~~
When you have found your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall.
-- C.S Lewis
~~~
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. I need to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you're telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day...I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes!' It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children. It doesn't interest me who you are, how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
-- Oriah Mountain Dreamer
~~~
...lately I have gotten a new idealistic way of thinking about things - in the grander/greater scheme of things, lots of things just really don't matter. Like twenty years from now, I will not be thinking about how not getting the Dana grant ruined my life. Who I live with and where we live for one semester next year will not make a difference when I am older. Weighing five extra pounds doesn't matter when I would much rather eat the things I like and want to eat. You know?
-- Nozomi Maeyama
~~~
every once in a while when i'm sunk into what i imagine must be the pits of misery, it occurs to me that this 'pit' gets visited pretty often by everybody, and i usually have to smile...at our egoism, at our irrepressible ability to assume we suffer more than others.
-- LiQing
~~~
Hey, does anybody realize how many bodyguards the Pope has? If he's scared to go to heaven, then Penn students better have gone to Sunday mass.
-- Streetbeat
~~~
You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
-- Barbara De Angelis
~~~
I seek to make you happy, if only for the time with me and the gentleness of friendship.
-- Lynn Ray
~~~
You've got to dance like nobody's watching and love like it's never going to hurt.
~~~
I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can be together all the time.
-- Calvin and Hobbes
~~~
Loving someone comes easy, the challenge is learning how to love.
-- Michelle
~~~
I've learned that no matter how good a friend someone is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.
~~~
If everything on earth was rational, nothing would ever happen.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky
~~~
One of the major reasons so many of us remain hurried, frightened, and competitive, and continue to live life as if it were one giant emergency, is our fear that if we were to become more peaceful and loving, we would suddenly stop achieving our goals. We would become lazy and apathetic.
-- Richard Carlson
~~~
I am always feeling like perpetually under-read. It's really depressing for me to go into a bookstore or a library and just look out there and see all those shelves filled with books. It's a weird feeling seeing all those books and knowing that there's absolutely no way I'll ever read them all. There might be some book over there in the 'L' section on the second-to-bottom shelf by some author I've never heard of that I might really like, that might become my favorite book. Or maybe that book sucks and the favorite book is the one right next to it. Or on the next shelf. Or across the store. Or in some other store with a better selection. I'll never know. I mean, it's pretty obvious that no one can ever read every book ever written and thus definitively know that their favorite book is their favorite book, that there's nothing else out there that might outdistance it. That's just common sense. Which doesn't really make the idea any less depressing.
-- Scott "Scotch" Herman
~~~
If I was inconsistent, at least it wasn't all the time.
~~~
For some, true love is blind, for others, blind love is true...
~~~
The more evolved an animal is, the more time it spends playing.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
~~~
The great essentials of life are something to do, something to love, something to hope for.
-- Thomas Chalmers
~~~
If I had a rose for every time I thought of you, I'd be picking roses for a lifetime.
-- Swedish quote
~~~
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
-- Edith Wharton
~~~
What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine'?
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
~~~
Do you actually know anyone who got a 'swelled head' from too much praise? Usually it was far too little, and they retreated to their ego for escape and became grandiose as a type of defense.
-- Sark
~~~
We hurry through the so-called boring things in order to attend to that which we deem more important, interesting. Perhaps the final freedom will be a recognition that everything in every moment is 'essential' and that nothing at all is 'important.'
-- Helen M. Luke
~~~
My boyfriend used to ask his mother, 'How can I find the right woman for me?' and she would answer, 'Don't worry about finding the right woman - concentrate on becoming the right man.'
-- Sark
~~~
When you're alone, you can create your own mythology and nobody challenges you. In a relationship, your own bullshit gets reflected back much quicker.
~~~
All of the animals, excepting man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
-- Samuel Butler
~~~
People greatly underestimate the seriousness of the Y2K bug. After all, to fix the problem, a computer programmer needs to find a date... and we all know the likelihood of that happening!
-- Dave Lewis
~~~
The Daffodil
I wish I was a daffodil
all dainty in its bloom,
and you would come and pick me,
and take me to your room.
You would turn the lights out,
and tuck me in your cot,
still thinking I'm a daffodil,
you'll soon find out I'm not.
:-)
-- Spoken by Illiad (8/3/99)
~~~
How do you document real life when real life's getting more like fiction each day?
-- Jonathan Larson
~~~
The opposite of war isn't peace....it's creation.
-- Jonathan Larson
~~~
All changes have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die one life before we can enter unto another.
-- Anatole France
~~~
It has gotten to the point where if I had to choose between falling in love and reading a book about falling in love... I'd choose the book.
-- Nikos Kazananski
~~~
Things must happen when it is time for them to happen, a quest may not simply be abandoned. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.
But what if there isn't a happy ending at all?
There are no happy endings because nothing ever ends.
-- Smendrick and Molly in The Last Unicorn
~~~
You can talk a great philosophy,
but if you can't be kind to people 
everyday then it doesn't mean
that much to me.
-- Ani DiFranco
~~~
Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form...
-- E. M. Forster
~~~
You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes.
-- Walter M. Schirra, Sr.
~~~
Sometimes, when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
-- A. A. Milne
~~~
A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.
~~~
One of the basic things which I was a long time in realizing, and which I am still learning, is that when an activity feels as though it is valuable or worth doing, it is worth doing. Put another way, I have learned that my total organismic sensing of a situation is more trustworthy than my intellect. All of my professional life I have been going in directions which others thought were foolish, and about which I have had many doubts myself. But I have never regretted moving in directions which 'felt right,' even though I have often felt lonely or foolish at the time...Experience is, for me, the highest authority...Neither the Bible nor the prophets - neither Freud nor research--neither the revelations of God nor man - can take precedence over my own experience.
-- Carl Rogers
~~~
empathetic understanding...is exceedingly rare in our lives. We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.
-- Carl Rogers
~~~
don't criticize what you can't understand.
-- Bob Dylan
~~~
While we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.
-- Audre Lorde
~~~
I like loving. I like mostly all the ways one can have of having loving feelings in them. Slowly it has come to be in me that any way of being a loving one is interesting and not unpleasant to me.
-- Gertrude Stein
~~~
And in the end, none of these details matter--not the whodunit, the what they did, or why. Because the details of a story, whatever that story's complexion, always add up to the same thing. All through time and every time, all a person aches for is to be allowed. 'You mean love, of course.' 'That too.'
-- Jan Carr
~~~
One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are, when you don't come home at
night.
-- Margaret Mead
~~~
We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.
-- Anne Frank
~~~
Music is such a good way to resist. It keeps you strong, it has dignity.
-- Amy Ray
~~~
It is the wounded heart that makes us human in the end.
-- Melanie Rae Thon
~~~
I was whining about a terrible day and my dad said: 'Any idiot can enjoy a good day. It's people who figure out how to enjoy a bad day who have something going for them.' I think of that often.
-- Monica Miller
~~~
Here's wishing you the bluest sky/ And hoping something better comes tomorrow/ Hoping all the verses rhyme,/ And the very best of choruses to/ Follow all the doubt and sadness/ I know that better things are on the way./ Here's hoping all the days ahead/ Won't be as bitter as the ones behind you/ Be an optimist instead,/ And somehow happiness will find you./ Forget what happened yesterday,/ I know that better things are on their way./ It's really good to see you rocking out/ And having fun,/Living like you just begun./ Accept your life and what it brings./ I hope tomorrow you find better things./ I know tomorrow you'll find better things./...I know you've got a lot of good things happening up ahead./ The past is gone, it's all been said./ So here's to what the future brings,/ I know tomorrow you'll find better things.
-- Ray Davies
~~~
Losing myself in a relationship is one thing, but losing myself in a computer...that's justified!
-- Joyce
~~~
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
-- Richard Bach
~~~
so this is what it comes down to/ in our falling in/ and out/ we've come to miscommunication/ if any at all/ well, i guess i'll start/ with something easy/ i won't jump right into/ i love you/ i won't bring up the hard stuff/ like how you hurt me/ i promise not to touch you/ in a way that will/ touch you/ i think i'll just start with/ how are you?/ we haven't talked in so long/ and the last time we did/ it was always/ how am i? oh, fine,/ except that my heart is bleeding/ with unrequited love...but/ remember, we're not talking about that/ so i'm/ trying to come up with something i'm/ allowed to say/ and i can't/ so this is what it comes down to/miscommunication/ if any at all
-- Heidi Anne Harris
~~~
that night/ you had young eyes/ and the words slipped from your lips/ like you meant them/ but you wore your lies/ like a disguise/ and now I wish I'd seen through to you/ let me clue you in/ I wasn't one hundred percent in the dark/ Yeah we both played our part/ and baby you'll find that I'm not so blind,/ I just chose not to see/ and I don't think you intended to misuse me/ I just think you were confused/ 'cause I would bend over backwards/for you/ yeah I would mend this if I could/ this tear in the fabric that hold us together/ and no one could make me reveal the secrets that I concealed/ we could hide forever behind/ the pretty words that take up space/ oh- I could never speak my mind/ yeah I could be weak and docile,/ but who would I be then/ could you respect me/ if I didn't defend/ myself to you
-- Kendra
~~~
[Penn Jillette] said, 'If a truck is barreling toward you, no amount of positiveness will stop it from hitting you.' I needed to hear that I didn't have to be enthusiastic all the time. Some days you just need to be in a bad mood.
-- Julia Sweeney
~~~
Manners - Telling a lie is called wrong./ Telling the truth is called right./ Except when telling the truth is called bad manners and telling a lie is called polite.
-- Judith Viorst
~~~
fiction is wonderful because you can explore the consequences of wishes - good and bad ones - without quite letting on. aaah the freedom of disguise! but dare i let you all see? dare i let myself see? in a way it's almost more frightening to turn to fiction, you delve deeper, sometimes it feels too deep and i think often i don't go in because i'm afraid to come out. who will i be? and when i take the trek alone will you be there on the other side? will i want to stay inside the fiction?
-- Audrey Beth Stein
~~~
too much freedom, i'm learning, can be just as frustrating as not enough. and as with everything in life, i'm still trying to find the balance.
-- Audrey Beth Stein
~~~
Are you awake? Yes, I am awake. Can you get up? I can't get up. Why can't you? Because I don't want to. Why don't you want to? 'Cause everything comes down real hard. Why does everything come down? Because I let it. You let it? I let it. You let it? I let it. Can you learn this? I can learn this. Let me teach you something. I will be taught. When you get up in the morning, we all want to say this. You will say: I will walk down the street. I will hold my head high. I will say hello to everyone I meet. I will have love in my heart. When I have hate, I will turn my hate into energy. When I have anger, I will turn my anger into energy. When I am negative, I will be negative only for as long as I need to be, until I understand it and then I will be positive. And I will not be complacent. AND I WILL NOT BE COMPLACENT. AND I WILL NOT BE A RACIST. AND I WILL NOT BE A SEXIST. AND I WILL NOT BE A HOMOPHOBIC ASSHOLE. AND I WILL LOVE. AND I WILL LOVE. AND I WILL BE HAPPY THAT I AM ALIVE.
-- Amy Ray
~~~
If I had My Life to Live Over - I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.
-- Nadine Stair
~~~
Never frown...even when you're sad 'cause you never know when someone's falling in love with your smile.
~~~
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing every day that scares you. Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's. Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out. Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen.
-- Mary Schmich
~~~
For one human being to love another...that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the final and ultimate proof, the task for which all others are but preparation.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
~~~
Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.
-- Ella Fitzgerald
~~~
I was invited to the state Young Writer's Conference....There were 2700 young faces out there, and off to the side of the stage was the suit and tie crowd and the speaker after me was from the Chamber of Commerce. And something inside me snapped. I got up on the stage and said something to the effect of: 'You are about to be told one more time that you are America's most valuable natural resource. Do you know what they do to valuable natural resources? Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear-cut forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don't ever let them call you a valuable natural resource. They're gonna strip mine your soul, they're gonna clear cut your best ideas for the sake of profit unless you learn to resist 'cuz the profit system follows the path of least resistance and the path of least resistance is what makes a river crooked.' Well there was a great gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. Mine. I was borne to the door screaming epithets over my shoulder, something to the effect of: 'Make a break for it kids!'
-- Utah Phillips
~~~
home is above all a state of mind....it's just one often associated with a certain place or certain people or traditions or objects or weather patterns...
-- Audrey Beth Stein
~~~
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish He didn't trust me so much.
-- Mother Teresa
~~~
Just remember all...that words are powerful, so very powerful, that it can change attitudes (for the better or for the worse), with or without provocation. They can be triggers, reminders, movers, and emotives....Be kind with your words and listen to positive messages in things that we have in common....Communication in the ways that make a positive impact and even possibly profitable (new friendships, good feelings, etc) for all parties, is THE key.
-- Seona
~~~
The hardest work most of us do is maintaining the appearance of normality.
-- Harry Shearer
~~~
happiness is more of an attitude you can have whatever you're doing, and figuring out what you love and being able to do what you love even some of the time makes it easier to have that attitude. but when you try to do what you think you love all the time you sometimes discover that you don't love it all that much, or you love it better in smaller doses you can savor.
-- Audrey Beth Stein
~~~
English teachers are tough to date. When we first started dating, I lived in New York and she lived in Ohio, and I would write her all these letters. She'd send them back corrected!
-- Suzanne Westenhoefer
~~~
Life is a tragic mystery. We are pierced and driven by laws we only half understand. We find that the lesson we learn again and again is that of accepting heroic helplessness.
-- Florida Scott-Maxwell
~~~
color me grey/ i'm a little bit of everything today/ and i'm not sure just where i'm going/ color me grey/ wishing i was something more of distinction
-- Amy Ray
~~~
So afraid to love. More afraid to lose./ Clinging to a path that doesn't let me choose./ It's funny how we feel so much but cannot say a word./ We are screaming inside, but we can't be heard.
-- Sarah McLachlan
~~~
How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.
-- John Irving
~~~
The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.
-- Maya Angelou
~~~
deep down, beneath all our insecurities, beneath all our hopes for and beliefs in equality, each of us believes we're better than anyone else. because it's our beliefs that are right, our doubts that are the allowable ones, our fears which are legitimate.
-- Audrey Beth Stein
~~~
There are...people we wonder about but don't make...attempts to contact. Perhaps we're afraid of empty conversation with someone we're not sure if we ever connected to in the first place, or perhaps we're curious about someone whose life we watched for a while from afar. Sometimes it's just been too long, and sometimes we can't even articulate the need to know whatever happened to so-and-so. Where are they? Did they make it? Are they happy? Are they passionate about something in their lives? Are they anything like the people we once knew?
-- Audrey Beth Stein
~~~
People have found many ways to grapple with and resolve conflicting goals short of killing everybody in sight. Surviving and thriving in the real world means constantly making tough decisions, and, yes, making mistakes. The only ways not to make mistakes are Eurisko's - do nothing - HAL/Shakespeare/Eastwood's - make sure there are no living souls left anywhere around you - and God's - be omniscient. HAL, if he were really smart, could have found another solution, just as we do every day.
-- Douglas B. Lenat From 2001 to 2001: Common Sense and the Mind of HAL
~~~
It's not that he has one screw loose ... he doesn't have any one screw fully tightened.
-- Rimmer, Red Dwarf
~~~
Kryten: It's nearly 1am, ma'am, what are you doing up?
Kochanski: Looking for someone to kill - care to volunteer?
-- Red Dwarf
~~~
KOCHANSKI: Well, forget it, Lister! Not if you were the last man alive...
LISTER: I *am* the last man alive.
KOCHANSKI: I rest my case..
-- Red Dwarf
~~~
Lister: Love is what separates us from the animals.
Rimmer: No, Lister - what separates us from animals is that we don't use our tongues to clean our genitals.
-- Red Dwarf
~~~
'Mr. Arnold' isn't even his name. His name's 'Rimmer'; or 'Smeghead'; or 'Dinosaur Breath'; or 'Molecule Mind'. And if you want to be really mega-polite to him, Kryten - we're talking mega-mega-polite - in those rare and exceptional circumstances, you can call him Arsehole.
-- Lister, Red Dwarf
~~~
An IQ of 6000 isn't that much. It's just the same as 12000 P.E. instructors.
-- Holly, Red Dwarf
~~~
Cat:  Don't fish swim south for the winter?
Kryten: That's birds sir.
Cat:  Birds swim south for the winter?! How do they breathe?
-- Red Dwarf
~~~
You're as much use as a condom machine at the Vatican.
-- Rimmer to Holly, Red Dwarf
~~~
That was an important speech sir, and it needed to be made, but might I suggest that from this moment on the rest of this discourse is conducted by those with brains larger than a grape?
-- Kryten
-- Red Dwarf
~~~
Rimmer: You? How did you get into art college?
Lister: The same way you always get into art college. The same old usual boring normal way everyone gets into art college. I failed my exams and applied...they snapped me up!
-- Red Dwarf
~~~
Cat: Today has been a good day, I've ate five times, slept six times, and made a lot of things mine. Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can't have sex with something.
-- Red Dwarf
~~~
Holly: Any luck?
Rimmer: Useless. Didn't listen. Didn't even recognize me. Just thought I was some neurotic deranged crazy madman.
Holly: You sure he didn't recognize you?!
-- Red Dwarf
~~~
Rimmer, they're a bunch of arrogant, pompous, emotionally weird, stuck up megalomaniacs...do you really think you'll fit in with them? What am I saying?  Bon Voyage.
-- Lister, Red Dwarf
~~~
The only thing that keeps me sane is my collection of singing potatoes.
-- Holly, Red Dwarf
~~~
But, I just want to say, over the years, I have come to regard you as...people I met.
-- Rimmer, making his goodbyes to the crew of Red Dwarf
~~~
Father forgive me for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last backup.
-- RL
~~~
What's the biggest difference between police in the big city and police in a small town?
'Can you describe who robbed you?'
'Yeah, it was Dwayne.'
-- Brent Butt
~~~
You had to have a keen sense of humor to do sex and stay sane.
-- Miles musing on his own and Galen's love lives,Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory
~~~
You should see what I do to kittens!
-- Miles's paranoid musings (Lois McMaster Bujold, Brothers in Arms)
~~~
To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. 
-- Samuel Butler, Life and love.
~~~
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. 
-- Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961, 34.
~~~
It's like trying to fight gravity on a planet that insists
That love is like falling and falling is like this.
-- Ani DiFranco
~~~
It's not who you love. It's how.
-- Kevin Smith
~~~
...maybe
love is like water
and when you find out
you need it, who cares
where it comes from,
or maybe/ everyone is a well
just waiting for me
to send my ladle down.
-- Ronda Slater
~~~
Mothers tell your children
Be quick you must be strong
Life is full of wonder
Love is never wrong...
-- Melissa Etheridge
~~~
Labels can bite me./ Love cannot be slapped into/ A category.
-- Becky Schwartz
~~~
Amy [Ray] introduced [Land of Canaan], commenting on how you sometimes go to sleep, scared to death wondering if the people you love will be all right and hoping you'll still feel the same about them. And that how when you wake up in the morning, what a great relief it is to still be in love.
--AnnaLissa (It feels kinda like we were, you know, asleep last night, and, and, we were wondering whether the person we were asleep with is gonna be okay in the morning. And you woke up, and it's like, good, hey, you're still in love.
--Amy Ray)
~~~
Have you ever been in love, Binkley? Have you ever felt the magic moment? Have you ever been kissed by someone and felt as if your two bodies had suddenly fused into one glorious emotional entity...igniting fireworks of unbridled sensuality? Have you, Binkley?
-- Berke Breathed
~~~
There is no future/ There is no past/ I live this moment/ As my last/ There's only us/ There's only this/ Forget regret/ Or life is yours to miss/ No other road/ No other way/ No day but today...There's only now/ There's only here/ Give in to love/ Or live in fear/ No other path/ No other way/ No day but today.
-- Jonathon Larson
~~~
How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.
-- John Irving
~~~
I still/ don't understand/ the point of taking drugs/ to enhance your senses and/ broaden your horizons./ Wouldn't/ it make a lot more sense/ to just take a poetry class?
-- Ariel Vitello
~~~
I'm not being radical when I kiss you. I don't love you to make a point. It's the hollow of my heart, that cries when I miss you, and keeps me alive when we're apart.
-- Catie Curtis
~~~
Heroes...I don't know any, so stop trying to be one, and just be somebody. Someone who can be a fool. Someone who can love me; not be silent and cool.
-- Catie Curtis
~~~
we are Adam in the garden, giving language to what we know to be true. all i know is that Love is Love - however it shows up in truth. when i dare to choose it, this is love and makes Life worth Living.
-- Sonia Rutstein
~~~
Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desires to be complete.
-- Aristophanes
~~~
We die as often as we lose a friend.
-- Pubilus Syrus
~~~
I'd even go so far as to say that the most useful stuff you learn at college is neither in the classroom nor in extracurrics nor in socializing: the useful stuff is in the 'meta' areas, in the mind-bludgeoning stress tactics you use to deal with things all at the same time. College teaches you how to totally bullshit on papers, because (Scotch willing) when you get a job, you have to bullshit there too. College teaches you how to deal with the neuralgiac stress of unfairly-distributed multiple assignments all at once so you're prepared for later in life with the whole job/bills/kids/marriage juggling act. And college teaches you the ugly reality of prioritizing things in your life: putting academics ahead of your love life, putting money ahead of your social life, putting your projected 'future' (as manifested in a final paper) ahead of getting a good night's sleep. That's really what I'm learning here, and man, I am most assuredly getting my $20K-per-annum-tuition's worth, even though my family can't afford it.
-- Scott "Scotch" Herman
~~~
You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. But people died or changed or went away and it hurt too much. The only way to avoid that pain was not to love anyone, and not to let anyone get too close or too important. The secret to not being hurt like this again, I decided, was never depending on anyone, never needing, never loving. It is the last dream of children, to be forever untouched.
-- Audre Lorde
~~~
All love is a loss of control. It's a fearless place where beauty rests. It's both calm and chaotic. It's nothing to write a poem about.
-- Nicole Burdette
~~~
Life is a struggle but there's hope and beauty in the world. Even though a lot of our songs are dark, there's often-times the strain of 'But we're so powerful as individuals and we're loved and we're good and the things we struggle with are the things that teach us the most and help us to grow.' In the end, that's what matters.
-- Emily Saliers
~~~
You don't MAKE yourself feel love, or passively 'fall' in love, but you let love ENTER you.
~~~
If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.
-- Charles Morley
~~~
Tell me whom you love, and I will tell you who you are.
--Houssaye
~~~
Men who cherish for women the highest respect are seldom popular with them.
-- author unknown
~~~
Two persons who love each other are in a place more holy than the interior of a church.
-- William Lyon Phelps
~~~
Love lives on hope, and dies when hope is dead;
It is a flame which sinks for lack of fuel.
-- Pierre Corneille
~~~
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone- but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
-- Bette Davis
~~~
Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale.
~~~
Falling in love is when you give a piece of your heart to someone else, and they give you a piece of theirs. Falling out of love is when the pieces don't fit.
~~~
Have you seen my heart? It's very delicate. I worry a little that something might happen to it...maybe I dropped it when I dropped all my defenses and they went bouncing away like a million ping-pong balls...Pardon me, have you seen my heart? I was going to give it to you... but I think perhaps you have stolen it away.
~~~
romance is making love to his soul without ever touching his body.
~~~
If i reach for your hand will you hold it? If i hold out my arms will you hug me? If i go for your lips will you kiss me? If i capture your heart, will you love me?
~~~
Sometimes it's better to be alone, no one can hurt you that way.
~~~
Love makes the wildest spirit tame, and the tamest spirit wild.
~~~
May the love hidden deep inside your heart find the love waiting in your dreams. May the laughter that you find in your tomorrows wipe away the pain you find in your yesterdays.
~~~
We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
~~~
Love is like some cosmic practical joke that someone up there with absolutely no sense of humor thinks is funny.
~~~
True love is when you put someone on a pedestal, and they fall--but you are there to catch them.
~~~
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
~~~
There were many ways of breaking a heart. stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream-whatever that dream may be.
~~~
If my thoughts of you were turned to stars, God would have to make another universe.
~~~
To live without love, is to live without a heart, wandering in the dark.
~~~
are you afraid no one loves you? because my mom says that people really do love each other. They just get confused sometimes and forget how to let each other know.
~~~
I truly feel that there are as many ways of loving as there are people in the world and as there are days in the lives of those people.
~~~
I'd like to run away from you, but if you never found me, I would die.
~~~
Hopeless romantics are only hopeless in the eyes of those who don't believe in romance.
~~~
Everybody loves somebody, whether they admit to it or not.
~~~
Being with you is like walking on a very clear morning- definitely the sensation of belonging there.
-- E.B. White
~~~
There's only one thing greater than my fear- that is my love.  My love will always conquer my fear- but it can't do it immediately.  It needs the full force of my love to do it and it takes days for that to emerge out of its dark hiding places.
-- John Middleton Murry
~~~
Heavens above!  The reason why I'm so jealous of you is obvious enough! If you weren't so damned attractive physically, do you think my heart would beat almost to suffocation whenever I see you speak to someone?
If you don't realize how attractive you are in that way, let me tell you, other people do, and have told me so....
-- Violet Trefussis
~~~
Oh, what good will writing do?
I want to put my hand out and touch you.
I want to do for you and care for you.
I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome.
-- Edith Wharton
~~~
...I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.  So this letter is just really a squeal of pain.  It is incredible how essential to me you have become.  I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things.  Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any more by giving myself away like this - But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that.
-- Vita Sackville-West
~~~
One must learn to love and go through a good deal of suffering to get to it...and the journey is always towards the other soul...
-- D.H. Lawrence
~~~
There is but one genuine love-potion - consideration
-- Menander
~~~
Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are
-- John Dryden
~~~
To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another
-- Gottfried Wilhem Von Leibniz
~~~
I'm a godmother, that's a great thing to be, a godmother. She calls me god for short, that's cute, I taught her that.
-- Ellen DeGeneres
~~~
They've found the gene for shyness. They would've found it earlier, but it was hiding behind a couple of other genes.
-- Johnathon Katz
~~~
I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that.
-- Mitch Hedberg
~~~
I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too.
-- Mitch Hedberg
~~~
The crimes we are about to depict have been specially committed for this program.
~~~
Death:  To stop sinning suddenly.
~~~
The world is coming to an end!  Repent and return those library books!
~~~
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
~~~
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer
~~~
Now let's all repeat the non-conformist oath.
~~~
Weird theory #47:  Islamic women can do kinky things with their ankles.
That's why the Koran says they aren't supposed to reveal them in public.
~~~
There is no limit to the amount of good that people can accomplish, if they don't care who gets the credit.
~~~
When I was young, all I wanted was to be ruler of the universe.  Now that isn't enough.
-- Alex P. Keaton
~~~
When you asked me to live in sin with you, I didn't know you meant sloth.
~~~
I support the Marcell Marceau Foundation, because a mime is a terrible thing to waste.
~~~
Nancy Reagan meets Ms. Manners:  Just say No, thank you.
~~~
When aiming for the common denominator,be prepared for the occasional division by zero.
~~~
There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.
-- Daniel Dennett
~~~
...an animal loses not only its life but also its third dimension.
-- Roger M. Knutson, in Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of Roads, Streets, and Highways
~~~
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
~~~
I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it.
-- Clarence Darrow
~~~
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
~~~
Man has an inexhaustible faculty for lying, especially to himself.
-- George Santayana
~~~
If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits in oneself, life would be unbearable.
-- Georges Courteline
~~~
It is not a way of life that a wise man proposes, but a way around life.
-- Christopher Spranger, The Effort To Fall
~~~
After spending the day in solitude, you desire to go out in the evening with friends, and after going out in the evening with friends, to spend the rest of your days in solitude.
-- Christopher Spranger, The Effort To Fall
~~~
Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
~~~
Life is a gamble at terrible odds - if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it.
-- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
~~~
All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
~~~
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
-- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
~~~
First get your facts; then you may distort them at your leisure.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
Once you see that everything is unreal, you can't see why you should bother to prove it.
-- E. M. Cioran (tr. Richard Howard)
~~~
The thought of suicide is a great comfort. It's helped me through many a bad night.
-- F. Nietzsche
~~~
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
-- H.L. Mencken
~~~
Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.
-- Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
~~~
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.
-- Doctor Who
~~~
Men and women, women and men. It will never work.
-- Erica Jong
~~~
Great affection is often the cause of violent animosity. The quarrels of men often arise from too great a familiarity.
-- Saskya Pandita
~~~
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
-- Tagore, Rabindranath
~~~
'Goodbye,' said the fox. 'And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.'
-- Saint-Exubery, Antoine de in 'The Little Prince'
~~~
Life is one fool thing after another where as love is two fool things after each other.
-- Oscar Wilde
~~~
Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep burning, unquenchable.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
~~~
If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.
-- Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
~~~
A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-lantern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
~~~
Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.
-- George Gordon
~~~
The love we give away is the only love we keep.
-- Elbert Green Hubbard
~~~
Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.
-- Alphonse de Lamartine, Premieres meditations poltiques
~~~
The greatest pleasure of life is love.
-- William Temple
~~~
Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by imagination.
-- Voltaire
~~~
If it is your time love will track you down like a cruise missile. If you say 'No! I don't want it right now,' that's when you'll get it for sure. Love will make a way out of no way. Love is an exploding cigar which we willingly smoke.
-- Lynda Barry, Big Ideas (1983)
~~~
Where there is great love there are always miracles.
-- Cather, Willa
~~~
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
~~~
There is nothing holier, in this life of ours, than the first consciousness of love - the first fluttering of its silken wings.
-- Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
~~~
It seems that it is madder never to abandon oneself, than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive, and a slave, than always to walk in armour.
-- MARGARET FULLER, Summer on the Lakes
~~~
If thou remember'st not the slightest folly
That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
-- William Shakespeare, As You Like It
~~~
One word Frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
-- SOPHOCLES, Oedipus at Colonus
~~~
Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
-- Eric Fromm
~~~
The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
-- Helen Hayes
~~~
If you do not feel love for another person, act as if you do, and the emotion will often follow the behavior; you will find yourself feeling, if not love, at least more sympathy and affection.
-- C. S. Lewis
~~~
If you have love you will do all things well.
-- Merton, Thomas
~~~
Your heart's desires be with you.
-- William Shakespeare
~~~
Don't smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.
-- Buscaglia, Leo
~~~
The loving are the daring.
-- Taylor, Bayard (1825-1878)
~~~
My love does not, cannot make her happy. My love can only release in her the capacity to be happy.
-- J. Barnes
~~~
Hell is a place, a time, a consciousness, Richard, in which there is no love.
-- Richard Bach, in 'A Bridge Across Forever'
~~~
The more you judge, the less you love.
-- Honore de Balzac
~~~
Love may not make the world go round, but I must admit that it makes the ride worthwhile.
-- Connery, Sean
~~~
Life without love is a shadow of things that might be.
-- Unknown
~~~
There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.
-- Thornton Wilder
~~~
Marrying a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn't always go with everything in the house.
-- Kerr, Jean
~~~
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
Love is the enchanted dawn of every heart.
-- Lamartine, Alphonse de (1790-1869)
~~~
Opposites can attract, as in magnetism. Or explode, as in matter and antimatter.
-- David, Peter
~~~
Oh with what passion my heart is burning, I fear you will never know.
-- Nineteen Poems
~~~
To love is find pleasure in the happiness of the person loved.
-- Leibnitz, Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von
~~~
Love is the poetry of the senses.
-- Honor‚ de Balzac
~~~
Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love.
-- Rockefeller, Nelson
~~~
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
~~~
Love is a pure dew which drops from heaven into our heart, when God wills.
-- Houssaye, Arsene
~~~
There's someone out there for everyone - even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them.
-- Telemacher, Harris K. [played by Steve Martin] in 'L.A. Story'
~~~
Love many things, for therin lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.
-- van Gogh, Vincent
~~~
The first duty of love is to listen.
-- Tillich, Paul
~~~
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that one is loved; loved for oneself, or better yet, loved despite oneself.
-- Victor Hugo
~~~
This fundamental truth - that women are not just men who can have babies and men are not just women who spike footballs - gives marriage its vitality, its dynamics, its delights, and its divorce.
-- Cosby, Bill in 'Love and Marriage' 1989
~~~
Who travels for love finds a thousand miles not longer than one.
-- Japanese proverb
~~~
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
~~~
They must be very embarrassed, back in ImpSec, to have so thoroughly mislaid their charge. I fear their reputation is exaggerated.
Not quite. I'm ImpSec, and I know where Gregor is. So technically, ImpSec is right on top of the situation.  Miles wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.
-- Cavilo queries the reliability of ImpSec (Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game)
~~~
To love one who loves you,
To admire one who admires you,
In a word, to be the idol of one's idol,
Is exceeding the limit of human joy;
It is stealing fire from heaven.
-- Delphine de Girardin
~~~
Jessica Rabbit: You don't know what it's like being a woman looking the way I do.
Eddie Valiant: You don't know what it's like being a man looking at a woman looking the way you do.
-- From the movie: Who Framed Jessica Rabbit!
~~~
No one but you can senses the eternity and depth concealed in your solitude.  This is one of the lonely things about individuality.  You arrive at a sense of the eternal in you only through confronting and outpacing your fears.  The truly lonely element in loneliness is fear.  No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself - you are its custodian and entrance.  No one else can feel your life the way you feel it.  Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground.  When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest.  This is always one of the greatest tensions in an awakened or spiritual life, namely, to find the rhythm of its unique language, perception and belonging.  To remain faithful to your life requires commitment and vision that must be constantly renewed.
-- Nuala Ann quoting John O'Donohue in Andrew Greeley's Irish Mist
~~~
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-- English Professor, Ohio University
~~~
Anyone who can spell in English can't be very bright. - George Bernard Shaw
~~~
Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear.
-- Robert Frost
~~~
I must conquer my loneliness alone.
I must be happy with myself
Or I have nothing to offer you.
Two halves have little choice
But to join;
And yes,
They do make a whole.
But two wholes
When they coincide...
That is beauty.
That is love.
-- Peter Mc Williams, "Come Love With Me And Be My Life
~~~
Harry Burns:  There are two kinds of women:  High maintenance and low maintenance.
Sally Albright: Which one am I?
Harry Burns:  You're the worst kind.  You're high maintenance But you think you're low maintenance!
-- From the movie When Harry Met Sally
~~~
Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot about puppies.
-- Gene Hill
~~~
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.
-- Aldous Huxley
~~~
A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
-- Robert Benchley
~~~
Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives.
-- Sue Murphy
~~~
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
-- August Strindberg
~~~
Ever consider what they must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!
-- Anne Tyler
~~~
I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
-- Rita Rudner
~~~
You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.
-- Nora Ephron
~~~
Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
-- Ann Landers
~~~
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.
-- Dereke Bruce, Taipei, Taiwan
~~~
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
-- Ben Williams
~~~
When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
-- Edward Abbey
~~~
Cat's motto: No matter what you've done wrong, always try to make it look like the dog did it.
-- Unknown
~~~
Dear God
So far today I've done all right. I haven't gossiped, I haven't lost my temper, I haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish or over-indulgent. I'm very thankful for that. But in a few minutes, God, I'm going to get out of bed, and from then on I'm going to need a lot more help.
AMEN
~~~
Love has to spring spontaneously from within
And it is no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force.
Love and coercion can never go together;
But though love cannot be forced on anyone,
It can be awakened in him through love itself.
Love is essentially self communicative;
Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it.
True love is unconquerable and irresistible,
And it goes on gathering power and spreading itself,
Until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches.
-- Meher Baba
~~~
Real love hurts;
Real love makes you totally vulnerable and open;
Real love will take you far beyond yourself;
Therefore real love will devastate you.
~~~
If love does not shatter you,
You do not know love
-- Unknown Author
~~~
The question is asked, Is there anything more beautiful in life than a boy and a girl clasping clean hands and pure hearts in the path of marriage?  Can there be anything more beautiful than young love?
And the answer is given.
Yes, there is a more beautiful thing. It is the spectacle of an old man and an old woman finishing their journey together on that path. Their hands are gnarled, but still clasped; their faces are seamed, but still radiant; their hearts are physically bowed and tired, but still strong with love and devotion for one another.
Yes, there is a more beautiful thing than young love.  Old love.
-- By Anonymous: from A 5th Portion of Chicken Soup for the Soul
~~~
I'll see you in my dreams.
Hold you in my dreams.
Someone took you out of my arms,
Still I feel the thrill of your charms.
~~~
Lips that once were mine.
Tender eyes that shine.
They will light my way tonight,
I'll see you in my dreams.
-- I'll See You in my Dreams by Jimmy Durante
~~~
My love, you know you are my best friend.
You know that I'd do anything for you
And my love, let nothing come between us.
My love for you is strong and true.
-- Sarah McLachlan
~~~
I sought for Love
But Love ran away from me.
I sought my Soul
But my Soul I couldn't see.
Then I sought You,
And I found all three.
-- Unknown Author
~~~
I don't want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.
-- Cordelia, Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold
~~~
One step at a time, I can walk around the world. Watch me.
-- Aral Vorkosigan, Barrayar, Lois McMaster Bujold
~~~
No one knows their limits until they've gone beyond them.
-- Miles Vorkosigan, Brothers In Arms, Lois McMaster Bujold
~~~
He tried. He tried and failed, but no one else tried at all.
-- Taura, Mirror Dance, Lois McMaster Bujold
~~~
Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
-- Miles, Memory, Lois McMaster Bujold
~~~
His mother had often said, when you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.
-- Memory, Lois McMaster Bujold
~~~
Nothing that lives is without fear. It is a gift against recklessness, a servant against complacency in the face of danger. But like all servants it makes a bad master. Fear is a small fire in the belly to warm a man in the coldness of conflict. Let loose, it becomes an inferno within the halls which no fortress can withstand.
-- the Deacon, Bloodstone
~~~
You know what I like about the young? Their passion for life, and their ability to see beyond the mundane. They don't look at the world and see what can't be done. They try to do it. Often they are arrogant, and their ideas fall from the sky like weary birds. But they try.
-- Browyn, Dark Moon
~~~
Only two places remain to those who wish to remain concealed. The choices are to be a non-entity or an exception. You either disappear into a plebeian background or move forward to where most others fear to follow.
-- Peekay, The Power of One
~~~
Emotion doesn't travel in a straight line. Like water, out feelings trickle down through cracks and crevices, seeking out the little pockets of neediness and neglect, the hairline fractures in our character usually hidden from public view. Beware the dark pool at the bottom of our hearts. In its icy, black depths dwell strange and twisted creatures it is best not to disturb.
-- Kinsey Millhone, I is for Innocent
~~~
With comfortable time to make any kind of decision we tend to cloud the issue with pros and cons, and are never quite sure, when we've cast the die, whether we've done right or wrong. Whereas intuition is as fast as light, flashing up from the subconscious with all the facts marshaled and the answer ready, if we're prepared to listen.
-- Quiller, Quiller Salamander
~~~
Down there are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.
-- the Patrician, Guards! Guards!
~~~
The higher the dream betrayed, the deeper the bitterness; if the man survives, he will be on guard against dreams as a shepherd watches for wolves.
-- Alexias, The Last of the Wine
~~~
History is a litany of injustice, no one denies it. But when has a simple solution been anything but evil? Only in complexity do we find answers. Through complexity men struggle towards fairness; it is slow and clumsy, but it's the only way. Simplicity demands too great a sacrifice. It always has.
-- Lestat, The Queen of the Damned
~~~
It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater luster to our colors, a richer resonance to our words. That is, if it doesn't destroy us, if it doesn't burn away the optimism and the spirit, the capacity for visions, and the respect for simple and yet indispensable things.
-- Lestat, The Queen of the Damned
~~~
Take control...Be the hero of your own life.
-- Vasu, Into The Labyrinth
~~~
If not you, then who?
-- Valentine, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
~~~
One need only act, without fear of punishment and without hope of reward: act from the centre of one's soul.
-- The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin
~~~
The one certain thing in life is that no one can make the truth untrue simply because it hurts.
-- Yanakov, The Honor of the Queen by David Weber
~~~
The deluded are always filled with absolutes. The rest of us have to live with ambiguity.
-- Clancy, Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams
~~~
Callahan's Law: Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.
-- Spider Robinson
~~~
Lady Sally's Law: Shared despair is squared; shared hope is cubed (or better: raised to the power of infinity?).
-- Spider Robinson
~~~
We raise hopes, here...until they're old enough to fend for themselves.
-- Mike, Spider Robinson
~~~
Funny men are better lovers. They know about pain.
-- Josie Bauer, Spider Robinson
~~~
All purpose toast: To all the ones who weren't as lucky.
-- Mike, Spider Robinson
~~~
If you've got a hurt and I've got a hurt and we share them, some crazy how-or-other, we each end up with less than half a hurt apiece.
-- Jake Stonebender, Spider Robinson
~~~
Cheering someone up is a little like breast-feeding, or good sex: mutually satisfactory.
-- Jake, Spider Robinson
~~~
Be a rapturist - the backward of a terrorist. Commit random acts of senseless kindness, whenever possible.
-- Jake, Spider Robinson
~~~
Where I come from, anyone who says "Excuse me" is a human being.
-- Joe, Spider Robinson
~~~
People who wear glasses are lucky; we have stars on rainy nights.
-- Jake, Spider Robinson
~~~
Tyranny has its place. Universal freedom would deny my right to restrict Jeffrey Dahmer's recreational and dietary habits.
-- Doc Webster, Spider Robinson
~~~
It claims to be fully automatic, but actually you have to push this little button here.
-- Gentleman John Killian, Spider Robinson
~~~
A truce between the sexes? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GODDAMN MIND? What else IS there to distract us all from onrushing death?  Television?
-- Jake, Spider Robinson
~~~
Art takes whatever--and as long as--it takes.
-- Lady Sally, Spider Robinson
~~~
What you put your attention on prospers.
-- Stephen Gaskin, Spider Robinson
~~~
Sexual intercourse vests no property rights.
-- Jake, Spider Robinson
~~~
Perhaps I could stand loneliness if I were not so useless; perhaps I could stand uselessness if I were not so lonely.
-- Mickey Finn, Spider Robinson
~~~
You don't even know if our species are sexually compatible.
The hell I don't. I can see fingers and a tongue from here; anything else is gravy.
-- exchange between Mickey (an alien cyborg) and Mary Callahan, Spider Robinson
~~~
So many men seem to have the idea that what women secretly want most of all (no matter what we say, or even believe ourselves) is a powerful and remorseless engine of flesh impersonally hammering away at us without pause for hours at a time. They become upset with themselves if they cannot deliver this silly commodity. I don't mean that on the one occasion in my life when it actually happened to me, it was an UNPLEASANT experience, exactly. (Until I tried to get up and walk the next day.) It's just that maybe once in a lifetime is plenty.  And I've never seen that guy since, don't much care if I do.  I mean, you could buy a machine to do that. They exist. And women don't buy them. Neither do gay men.
-- Maureen, Spider Robinson
~~~
Vengeance is counterproductive. Not to mention it gets your soul all sticky.
-- Lady Sally, Spider Robinson
~~~
If it's sloppy, eat it over the sink.
-- Tom Robbins, Spider Robinson
~~~
We were not making love, we were fucking. Nothing wrong with that; just not enough right with it.
-- Maureen, Spider Robinson
~~~
I've been in hospitals. They take away your pants. Then they hurt you and starve you and expose you to disease. Then they bill you. A lot.
-- Joe, Spider Robinson
~~~
Try to live your life as though one distant day, your descendants will develop time-travel and cloning skills, and come back to resurrect everyone that ever lived who wasn't a jerk or a creep. Maybe at the end, when your whole life passes before your eyes, it's a high speed data dump. Endeavor to see that it makes you seem worth the trouble of reviving. Try to be the kind of guest they'll want at The Last Great, Never-Ending Party At The End of Time. It could happen, right? Do you know of a BETTER shot at immortality?
-- Sam Meade, Spider Robinson
~~~
God gave women buttocks because sooner or later they have to walk away from us, and at least this way there's some consolation.
-- Joe, Spider Robinson
~~~
One can dismiss out of hand any so-called religion that puts out death threats on satirists. It is self-evident that God enjoys rough humor.
-- Gentleman John Killian, Spider Robinson
~~~
Death to anyone wearing a turbine
-- racist graffito spotted in Surrey, British Columbia, Spider Robinson
~~~
Darling, ALL men think about rape, at least once in their lives.  Women have an inexhaustible supply of something we've got to have, more precious to us than heroin...and most of you rank the business as pleasant enough, but significantly less important than food, shopping, or talking about feelings. Or you go to great lengths to seem like you do--because that's YOUR correct biological strategy. But some of you charge all the market will bear, in one coin or another, and all of you award the prize, when you do, for what seem to us like arbitrary and baffling reasons. Our single most urgent need--and the best we can hope for--is to get lucky. We're all descended from two million years of rapists, every race and tribe of us, and we wouldn't be human if we didn't sometimes fantasize about just knocking you down and taking it. The truly astonishing thing is how seldom we do. I can only speculate that most of us must love you a lot.
-- Mike to Lady Sally, Spider Robinson
~~~
If you're raped, don't charge the bastard with rape. Charge him with indecent exposure. It is MUCH easier to get a conviction for that charge than for rape. The defense is not allowed to ask ANYTHING about your sexual history or how you were dressed at the time. Forensic evidence is unnecessary. The total public embarrassment to you is cut more than in half. What's the guy going to do, leap up in court and say, "It's a filthy lie, Your Honor, I raped that bitch!" In many states, a man convicted of indecent exposure will actually draw more prison time than a rapist. And weenie-waggers do harder time than anybody but a short-eyes--in fact, the scheme sort of incorporates the Law of Talion. An eye for an eye...
-- Mary, Spider Robinson
~~~
The thing to do with a silly remark is fail to hear it.
-- Zebadiah J. Carter, Spider Robinson
~~~
The human race has few (if any) problems that couldn't be solved by massive wealth. And we're literally SURROUNDED by it, like a fly in amber. Now if we only had brains.
-- Ben Bova, Spider Robinson
~~~
Erections are certainly useful in pleasing a woman, but I've never understood why so many people seem to think they're essential. Sure, they're flattering--but a man who doesn't have an erection and still wants to make love to me, now that's flattering.
-- Arethusa, Spider Robinson
~~~
To approach telepathy, start with empathy and crank that up as high as you can.
-- Jake, Spider Robinson
~~~
Antiabortionists fail to carry their philosophy to its logical culmination: Stamp Out Menstruation! End the Slaughter of Millions! (And try to ensure that the ratio of females to males runs several trillion to one, so that every sperm can fulfill God's Plan for it as well.)
-- Mike, Spider Robinson
~~~
Concerning whores: anyone who thinks it immoral or exploitive or dishonest to "pay a person to pretend to care about you" has obviously never flown first-class...or gone to a psychiatrist, or a hairdresser, or eaten in a restaurant...or talked to a bartender they didn't know.
-- Mike, Spider Robinson
~~~
Politically correct euphemisms are for the differently-brained.
-- Tanya, Spider Robinson
~~~
Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information. Don't ever piss one off.
-- Jake, Spider Robinson
~~~
Prostitutes function rather like priests for people who feel more comfortable confessing their sins while naked.
-- Father Newman, Spider Robinson
~~~
Please consider yourself, now and henceforth, and no matter what anyone else ever asks of you, free to do any damned thing you want that doesn't hurt someone else unnecessarily.
-- Lady Sally McGee, Spider Robinson
~~~
We were going to explore the Kama Sutra...but at the last moment, her Kama turned into a period...
-- Spider Robinson
~~~
Got a date with the doctor who did my vasectomy. She believes in reaping what she sews.
-- Spider Robinson
~~~
The Buddhist hamburger joint: They'll make you one with everything.
~~~
The Hacker's burger joint: you can have chips with it.
~~~
The junkie's hot-dog stand: they'll sell you one with the works.
~~~
I know you'd like to screw like a bunny--but I just washed my thing, and I can't do a hare with it.
~~~
He acquitted himself well at the trial. Regrettably, the jury did not follow his example...
~~~
He learned about sex by trial and error. Now they've got him on trial for one or two of those errors...
-- Ronny Corbett, Spider Robinson
~~~
The shortest distance between two puns is a straight line.
-- David Gerrold, Spider Robinson
~~~
Casualties are just as heavy in one war as in another...because death comes just one to the
customer.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I am quite used to being considered too spectacular. My own brother, a colonel of engineers, thought my pre-war stories about the atomic bomb and atomic weapons to be sheer moonshine; he has since flown over to Hiroshima and changed his mind.
-- From Grumbles from the Grave, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I am interested in the fact that you have unusually keen minds. However, that lays us open, and I am including myself in this, lays us open to dangers that don't hit the phlegmatic, the more stolid. Unless we are able to predict, we are even more likely to be subjected to functional insanities than those around us.... There's a way out, there's something that we can do to protect ourselves, something that would protect the rest of the human race from the sort of things that are happening to them, and are going to happen to them. It's very simple, and it's right down our alley: the use of the scientific method. I'm not talking about the scientific method used in the laboratory. The scientific method can be used to protect ourselves from serious difficulties of other sorts, getting our teeth smashed in, in our everyday life, twenty-four hours of the day. I should say what I mean by the scientific method. Since I have to define it in terms of words, I can't be as clear as I might be if I were able to make an extensional definition. But I mean a comparatively simple thing by the scientific method: the ability to look at what goes on around you. Listen to what you hear, observe, note facts, delay your judgment, and make your own predictions.  That's all there is, really, to the scientific method: to be able to distinguish facts from non-facts.
-- Guest of Honor Speech at the Third World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, 1941, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Get a shot off fast. This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A fake fortune-teller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Most "scientists" are bottle washers and button sorters.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Peace is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story-- unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. But, if there ever was a time in history when "peace" meant that there was no fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it.
-- Rico in Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
...when it gets down to fundamentals, do what you have to do and shed no tears.
-- Dr. Matson in Tunnel in the Sky. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
...more people worry themselves to death than bleed to death.
-- From Tunnel in the Sky, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
...Think about it. Politics is just a name for the way we get things done... without fighting. We dicker and compromise and everybody thinks he has received a raw deal, but somehow after a tedious amount of talk we come up with some jury-rigged way to do it without getting anybody's head bashed in. That's politics. The only other way to settle a dispute is by bashing a few heads in... and that is what happens when one or both sides is no longer willing to dicker. That's why I say politics is good even when it is bad... because the only alternative is force - and somebody gets hurt.
-- Uncle Tom in Podkayne of Mars. Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Kissing girls is a goodness. It beats the hell out of card games.
-- Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land. Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Human bipolarity was both binding force and driving energy for all human behavior, from sonnets to nuclear equations. If any being thinks that human psychologists have exaggerated this, let it search Terran patent offices, libraries, and art galleries for the creations of eunuchs.
-- Robert A. Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land. Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Captain, you don't know what an Old Man of the Sea great wealth is. Its owner is beset on every side, like beggars in Bombay, each demanding that he invest or give away part of his wealth. He becomes suspicious - honest friendship is rarely offered him; those who could be friends are too fastidious to be jostled by beggars, too proud to risk being mistaken for one.
~~~
Worse yet, his family is always in danger.  Captain, have your daughters ever been threatened with kidnapping?... If you possessed the wealth that Mike had thrust upon him, you would have those girls guarded day and night - still you wouldn't rest, because you could never be sure of the guards. Look at the last hundred or so kidnapings and see how many involved a trusted employee... and how few victims escaped alive. Is there anything money can buy which is worth having your daughters' necks in a noose?
-- Jubal Harshaw to Captain Van Tromp in Stranger in a Strange Land. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to, every time. If it pains them, to make a choice- if the 'choice' looks like a 'sacrifice' - you can be sure that it is no nobler than the discomfort caused by greediness... the necessity of having to decide between two things you want when you can't have both. The ordinary bloke suffers every time he chooses between spending a buck on beer or tucking it away for his kids, between getting up to go to work and losing his job. But he always chooses that which hurts least or pleasures most. The scoundrel and the saint make the same choices....
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore.
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I need not have worried about being naked; no one seemed to notice...which irked me.  Gentlemen should at least leer. And a wolf whistle or other applause would not be out of place. Anything less makes a woman feel unsure of herself.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Men are more timid than we are; sometimes the only way you can get one to move is by placing him in sharpest competition with another male.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
And I started a custom that has stood me in good stead for a long lifetime: I smiled up at him and said, Thank you, Charles. You were splendid.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
To thank him and compliment him is an easy investment that pays high dividends. Believe me, sister mine!
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand's; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces--with the other matters handled otherwise. I'm sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything, now.
-- Robert A. Heinlein in The Robert Heinlein Interview And Other Heinleinana by J. Neil Schulman. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Silence is all a snoopy question deserves...just fail to hear it. But the insult direct is still better.
-- Ira Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The only thing known to science faster than the speed of light is Mrs. Grundy's gossip.
-- Ira Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The most dangerous animal in all history walks on two legs...and sometimes slinks along country roads.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset. , Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Having your back scratched is not the only reason to be married, but it is a good one, especially for those spots that are so hard to reach by yourself.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Women are more rugged than men; they have to be.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
He wants a mother for his children...but he also wants a willing and available concubine, too. If you are not she, he will find one elsewhere.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
In a society in which it is a mortal offense to be different from your neighbors your only escape is never to let them find out.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Happiness lies in being privileged to work hard for long hours in doing whatever you think is worth doing. One man may find happiness in supporting a wife and children. And another may find it in robbing banks. Still another may labor mightily for years in pursuing pure research with no discernible results.
~~~
Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.
-- Jubal Harshaw in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Some people say-I've heard talk-that married men should not go (to war). Because of their families.  But this involves contradiction, a fatal one. The family man dare not hang back and expect the bachelor to do his fighting for him. It is manifestly unfair for me to expect a bachelor to die for my children if I am unwilling to die for them myself. Enough of that attitude on the part of married men and the bachelor will refuse to fight if the married man stays safe at home...and the republic is doomed. The barbarian will walk in unopposed.
-- Ira Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I am so totally every minute a set of female glands and organs, that I can cope with it only by carefully simulating the sort of "lady" approved by Mrs. Grundy and Queen Victoria.
-- Maureen Johnson in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
'Bread and Circuses' is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure.
-- Jubal Harshaw in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
There is one unmistakable sign of the collapse of good manners: dirty public washrooms.
-- Jubal Harshaw in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law. He simply follows the eleventh commandment.
-- Brian Smith in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
There ought not to be anything in the whole universe that man can't poke his nose into--that's the way we're built and I assume there's some reason for it.
-- Lazarus Long in Methuselah's Children, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Unless you intend to kill him immediately thereafter, never kick a man in the balls. Not even symbolically. Or perhaps especially not symbolically.
-- Friday Jones in Friday, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The people who come out on top write the official versions found in history books, history that is no more honest than is autobiography.
-- Friday Jones in Friday, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Here's to our noble selves! There are damned few of us left!
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Are no homely women. Some more beautiful than others.
-- Manuel Garcia O'Kelly in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Dum vivimus, vivamus! - While we live, let us live!
-- Star in Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
-- Lorenzo Smythe in Double Star, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws--always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up.  Because not one of those people said: Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop. Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them for their own good
---not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it.
-- Manuel Garcia O'Kelly in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Always yield to temptation, It may never pass your way again.
-- Lazarus Long in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
To get anywhere, or even to live a long time, a man has to guess, and guess right, over and over again, without enough data for a logical answer.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth--but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it . . but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The way to live a long time--oh, a thousand years or more--is something between the way a child does it and the way a mature man does it. Give the future enough thought to be ready for it--but don't worry about it. Live each day as if you were to die next sunrise. Then face each sunrise as a fresh creation and live for it, joyously. And never think about the past. No regrets, ever.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Sleep whenever you can; you may have to stay awake a long time.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The ways of God and government and girls are all mysterious, and it is not given to mortal man to understand them.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Don' ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of events.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, TANSTAAFL
-- Man in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
And you're a very pretty girl, so I don't mind your ignorance.
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth - then to shut up.
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I've said this nineteen dozen times but you still don't believe it. Man is the one animal that can't be tamed. He goes along for years, peaceful as a cow, when it suits him. Then when it suits him not to be, he makes a leopard look like a tabby cat. Which goes double for the female of the species.
-- The Deacon in Tunnel In The Sky, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing.
-- Edison Hill in They Do It With Mirrors, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A man who can read and write is 9/10ths free even in chains
-- Robert Heinlein in Expended Universe, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too. Such trifles as a young girl defining an athame among gentiles - knowledge that isn't all that esoteric anyhow - and an old fool using a word inappropriately.  Understand me?
-- Jerry Farnsworth in Job: A Comedy of Justice, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I knew, logically, that everything that had happened since I read that silly ad had been impossible.  So I chucked logic.  Logic is a feeble reed, friend. "Logic" proved that airplanes can't fly and that H-bombs won't work and that stones don't fall out of the sky. Logic is a way of saying that anything which didn't happen yesterday won't happen tomorrow.
-- Oscar Gordon in Glory Road, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can "prove" anything from it.
-- Dr. Jacob Burroughs in The Number of the Beast, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
See here, Mister, I'm supposed to be luring you with my radiant beauty, then hooking you with my feminine charm ... and not getting anywhere. Let's try another tack.
-- Deety, to Zebediah in Number of the Beast, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
May you live as long as you wish, and love as long as you live.
-- Minerva in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I'll give you an exact definition. When the happiness of another person becomes as
essential to yourself as your own, then the state of love exists.
-- Jubal Harshaw to Ben Caxton in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A desire not to butt into other peoples business is at least 80% of all human wisdom.
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Morality is your agreement with yourself to abide by your own rules.
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
But philosophy wasn't the answer. There really isn't anything to philosophy. Did you ever eat that cotton candy they sell at fairs?  Well, philosophy is like that--it looks as if it were really something, and it's awfully pretty, and it tastes sweet, but when you go to bite it, you can't get your teeth into it, and when you try to swallow, there isn't anything there.  Philosophy is word-chasing, as significant as a puppy chasing its tail.
-- Joan Freeman in Lost Legacy, *Assignment in Eternity*, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I don't trust a man who talks about ethics when he is picking my pocket. But if he is acting in his own self-interest and says so, I have usually been able to work out some way to do business with him.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Always cut the cards, Woodie. You may lose anyhow - but not as often, nor as much. And when you do lose, smile.
-- Ira Johnson as quoted by Lazarus Long in Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The basis of all morality is duty, a concept with the same relation to group that self-interest has to individual. Nobody preached duty to these kids in a way they could understand--that is, with a spanking. But the society they were in told them endlessly about their 'rights.' The result of which should have been predictable, since a human being has no natural rights of any nature.
-- Colonel Dubois in Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
What are the marks of a sick culture? It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the county and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.
-- Boss and Friday in Friday, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I do know that, if a man acquires too much money, presently it owns him instead of his owning it.
-- Joan Eunice Branca in I Will Fear No Evil, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A man who refuses to take his own death into account in making plans is a fool.
-- Lazarus in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
If you pray hard enough you can make water run uphill. How hard? Why hard enough to make water run uphill, of course.
-- From Expanded Universe, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
But he also used to say that a wise man should be prepared to abandon his baggage at any time.
-- Daniel Boone Davis in the door into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I had taken a partner once before- but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open. There wasn't anyway to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous.. fatal. In the end.
-- Daniel Boone Davis in the door into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Math is hard work and it occupies your mind - and it doesn't hurt to learn all you can of it, no matter what rank you are; everything of any importance is founded on mathematics.
-- Juan Rico in Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
What this world needs more of is loving: sweaty, friendly and unashamed.
-- Maureen Johnson-Smith in To Sail Beyond The Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion- in the long run these are the only people who count...
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
But does Man have any "right" to spread through the universe?  Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics-you name it--is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what man is--not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.  The Universe will let us know--later-whether or not Man has any "right" to expand through it.
-- Juan Rico in Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
-- Professor Bernardo de la Paz in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The hell I won't talk that way! Peter, an eternity here without her is not an eternity of bliss; it is an eternity of boredom and loneliness and grief. You think this damned gaudy halo means anything to me when I know--yes, you've convinced me!--that my beloved is burning in the Pit? I didn't ask much. Just to be allowed to live with her. I was willing to wash dishes forever if only I could see her smile, hear her voice, touch her hand! She's been shipped on a technicality and you know it! Snobbish, bad-tempered angels get to live here without ever doing one lick to deserve it. But my Marga, who is a real angel if one ever lived, gets turned down and sent to Hell to everlasting torture on a childish twist in the rules. You can tell the Father and His sweet-talking Son and that sneaky Ghost that they can take their gaudy Holy City and shove it! If Margrethe has to be in Hell, that's where I want to be!
-- Alexander Hergensheimer in Job: A Comedy of Justice, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.
-- Michael Valentine Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
When I was still quite young my father said to me, My beloved daughter, you are an amoral little wretch. I know this, because you take after me; your mind works just the way mine does. If you are not to be destroyed by your lack, you must work out a practical code of your own and live by it.  I thought about his words and felt warm and good inside. Amoral little wretch- Father knew me so well.  What code should I follow, Father?  You have to pick your own.
-- Maureen Long in To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.
-- Postscript to Revolt in 2100, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Real beauty is likely to scare a man off, or else make him quite unmanageable, whereas prettiness, properly handled, is an asset.
-- From Podkayne of Mars, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Anything that is moral for a group to do is moral for one person to do.
-- From Podkayne of Mars, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
People who will not take the trouble to raise children should not have them.
-- From Podkayne of Mars, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A rational anarchist believes that concepts, such as 'state' and 'society' and 'government' have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame.. as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and _nowhere_ else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world.. aware that his efforts will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.
-- From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
From politics I have come to believe the following:
(1) Most people are basically honest, kind and decent.
(2) The American people are wise enough to run their own affairs. The do not need Fuehrers, Strong Men, Technocrats, Commissars, Silver Shirts, Theocrats, or any other sort of dictator.
(3) Americans have a compatible community of ambitions. Most of them don't want to be rich but do want enough economic security to permit them to raise families in decent comfort without fear of the future. They want the least government necessary to this purpose and don't greatly mind what the other fellow does as long as it does not interfere with them living their own lives. As a people we are neither money mad nor prying. We are easy-going and anarchistic. We may want to keep up with the Joneses - but not with the Vanderbilts. We don't like cops.
(4) Democracy is not an automatic condition resulting from laws and constitutions. It is a living, dynamic process which must be worked at by you yourself - or it ceases to be democracy, even if the shell and form remains.
(5) One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way - prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs. Hitler's government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.
(6) Democracy is the most efficient form of government ever invented by the human race.  On the record, it has worked better in peace and in war than fascism, communism, or any other form of dictatorship. As for the mythical yardstick of 'benevolent' monarchy or dictatorship - there ain't no such animal!
(7) A single citizen, with no political connections and no money, can be extremely effective in politics.
-- From Take Back Your Government - A Practical Handbook for the private citizen who wants democracy to work.  By Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
-- Hugh in Farnham's Freehold, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
There was one field in which man was unsurpassed; he showed unlimited ingenuity in devising bigger and more effective ways to kill off, enslave, harass, and in all ways make an unbearable nuisance of himself to himself.  Man was his own grimmest joke on himself.
-- Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The only religious opinion that I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is NOT just a bunch of amino acids bumping together!
-- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
The Universe was a damned silly place at best... but the least likely explanation for its existence was the no-explanation of random chance, the conceit that some abstract somethings "just happened" to be some atoms that "just happened" to look like consistent laws and then some of these configurations "just happened" to be the Man from Mars and the other a bald-headed old coot with Jubal himself inside.
No, Jubal would not buy the "just happened" theory, popular as it was with men who called themselves scientists. Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe---in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself.
-- Jubal Harshaw's thoughts in Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Piffle, dear, I don't have morals, just customs.
-- Hilda in Number of the Beast, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Darling, a true lady takes off her dignity with her clothes and does her whorish best. At other times you can be as modest and dignified as your persona requires.
-- Lazarus Long in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence
-- Jubal in Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl she used to be. A GREAT artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is, and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be, more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older that eighteen in her heart.
-- Jubal in Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A man who is happy at home doesn't lie awake nights worrying about the hereafter.
-- Alex in Job: A Comedy Of Justice, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untravelled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into the machinery that does not work too well at best.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough For Love....The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Everybody lies about sex.
-- Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
An armed society is a polite society.
-- Monroe-Alpha in Beyond This Horizon, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
A man does not insist on physical beauty in a woman who builds up his morale. After a while he realizes that she is beautiful--he just hadn't noticed it at first.
-- Notebooks of Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay--and claims a halo for his dishonesty.
-- John Joseph Bonforte in Double Star, Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
-- Television Show Felicity
~~~
I've tried to block your memory
To protect me from the pain
Pretend I never knew you,
And never heard your name.
But the walls aren't strong enough
And I fight my tears in vain.
The feeling came creeping through
and the hurt is still the same.
I wish I could forget you,
Or make you see me now
I thought you really cared
But it seems you don't know how.
The pain will ease in time
And though I know it's over
And what we had is gone
The memories will live forever
In a corner of my mind
-- A CORNER IN MY MIND By Stephanie Pacheco
~~~
My love in her attire doth show her wit,
It doth so well become her:
For every season she hath dressings fit,
For winter, spring, and summer.
No beauty she doth miss,
When all her robes are on:
But Beauty's self she is,
When all her robes are gone.
-- Author Unknown
~~~
After a while you learn
the subtle differences between
holding a hand and chaining a soul
and you learn
that love doesn't mean leaning
and company doesn't always mean security.
And you begin to learn
that kisses aren't contracts
and presents aren't promises
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes ahead
with the grace of a woman,
not the grief of a child
and you learn
to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow's ground is
too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way
of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns
if you get too much
so you plant your own garden
and you decorate your own soul
instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure
you really are strong
you really do have worth
and you learn
and you learn
with every goodbye, you learn...
~~~
-- From After A While, a poem by Veronica A. Shoffstall
~~~
What you feel is what you are,
And what you are is beautiful.
-- Slide, a song by Goo Goo Dolls
~~~
The thing to remember about love affairs, says Simone, is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney.  ... We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney ... And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped that the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back.  Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead. Simone swallows some wine. Love affairs are like that, she says. They all are like that.
-- Lorrie Moore, in Birds of America
~~~
When you love someone
You'll sacrifice
You'd give everything you've got
And you don't think twice.
You'd risk it all
No matter what may come.
When you love someone.
You'll shoot the moon
Put out the sun.
When you love someone.
-- When you Love Someone, A song by Bryan Adams (Hope Floats Soundtrack)
~~~
I am not one of those
Who do not believe in love
At first sight
But I believe in taking a second look!
-- H. Vincent
~~~
Learn from your parents' mistakes:  use birth control!
~~~
Pizza is a lot like sex.  When it's good, it's really good.  When it's bad, it's still pretty good.
~~~
Men are the Devil and they bring Woe.
In winter it's easy to just say "no".
Men are the devil, that's one sure thing.
But what are you going to do in the spring?
-- Mary Carolyn Davies, 1925
~~~
Man is...A domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.
-- Jilly Cooper
~~~
A woman's appetite is twice that of a man's; her sexual desire, four times; her intelligence, eight times.
-- Sanskrit Proverb
~~~
I used to be Snow White, but then I drifted.
-- Mae West
~~~
Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.
-- Shakespeare
~~~
I had no idea so many people in the United States and Canada were tying each other up.
-- Ann Landers
~~~
If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it.
-- Bette Midler
~~~
As she lay there dozing next to me, one voice inside my head kept saying, Relax... you are not the first doctor to sleep with one of his patients,  but another kept reminding me, Howard, you are a veterinarian.
-- Dick Wilson
~~~
Give me chastity and continence - but not yet.
-- Saint Augustine
~~~
The omnipresent process of sex, as it is woven into the whole texture of our man's or woman's body, is the pattern of all the process of our life.
-- Havelock Ellis
~~~
Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
I'm a practicing heterosexual, but bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night
-- Woody Allen
~~~
I don't mind where people make love, so long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
-- Mrs. Patrick Campbell
~~~
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
-- From Basic Sex Facts For Today's Youngfolk in _Life In Hell-- by Matt Groening
~~~
Aldous Huxley once said that an intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.....
~~~
Is it not true that sex degrades women....... if it is any good
-- Alan Partridge BBC Radio 4
~~~
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
-- Jerry Seinfeld
~~~
'Tis an old saying, the Devil lurks behind the cross. All is not gold that glitters. From the tail of the plough, Bamba was made King of Spain; and from his silks and riches was Rodrigo cast to be devoured by the snakes.
-- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
~~~
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.
-- On Running After Ones Hat, All Things Considered, G.K. Chesterton
~~~
When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.
-- James Matthew Barrie Peter Pan
~~~
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
-- Joseph Addison
~~~
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
-- Mortimer J. Adler
~~~
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
-- Gaston Bachelard
~~~
He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.
-- Barrow
~~~
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
-- Arthur Christopher Benson
~~~
I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
-- Aneurin Bevan
~~~
Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.
-- Augustine Birrell
~~~
A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images.
-- Albert Camus
~~~
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.
-- Thomas Carlyle
~~~
You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff.
-- Jim Critchfield
~~~
I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed - and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.
-- John Dawkins
~~~
The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others.  But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.
-- Clarence Day
~~~
If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdom of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all.
-- Francois F‚Nelon
~~~
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
-- Margaret Fuller
~~~
When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings.
-- Harold S. Geneen
~~~
The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
-- Elizabeth Hardwick
~~~
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
~~~
Read as you taste fruit or savor wine, or enjoy friendship, love or life.
-- Holbrook Jackson
~~~
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
-- Thomas Jefferson
~~~
Tradition is but a meteor, which, if it once falls, cannot be rekindled. Memory, once interrupted, is not to be recalled. But written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away, is again bright in its proper station. So books are faithful repositories, which may be awhile neglected or forgotten, but when opened again, will again impart instruction.
-- Johnson
~~~
In science, read by preference the newest works. In literature, read the oldest. The classics are always modern.
-- Lord Edward Lytton
~~~
The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
-- Katherine Mansfield
~~~
The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think.  No book in the world equals the Bible for that.
-- Mccosh
~~~
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
-- Richard McKenna
~~~
There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
-- H. L. Mencken
~~~
Books and marriage go ill together.
-- Moliere
~~~
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
-- John Morely
~~~
A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.
-- William Murray
~~~
A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.
-- Pablo Neruda
~~~
The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
-- Theodore Parker
~~~
No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.
-- Noah Porter
~~~
The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.
-- American Proverb
~~~
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
-- Joseph Addison
~~~
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
-- Mortimer J. Adler
~~~
I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.
-- Isaac Asimov
~~~
He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
-- John Aubrey
~~~
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
-- Gaston Bachelard
~~~
Books are men of higher stature; the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.
-- E.S. Barrett
~~~
The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.
-- Sir James M. Barrie
~~~
He that loves a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counselor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter. By study, by reading, by thinking, one may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself, as in all weathers, as in all fortunes.
-- Barrow
~~~
The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.
-- Stan Barstow
~~~
A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
~~~
All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
-- Arthur Christopher Benson
~~~
I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
-- Aneurin Bevan
~~~
Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.
-- Augustine Birrell
~~~
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
-- Ray Bradbury
~~~
There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
-- Joseph Brodsky
~~~
It is well to read everything of something, and something of everything.
-- Lord Henry P. Brougham
~~~
Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
~~~
Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferrules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if you seek them, they do not hide; if you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.
-- Richard De Bury 
~~~
Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers.
-- William Cobbett
~~~
Books are but waste paper unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought - asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride, or design in their conversation.
-- Jeremy Collier
~~~
I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book.
-- Coolio
~~~
The book salesman should be honored because he brings to our attention, as a rule, the very books we need most and neglect most.
-- Frank Crane
~~~
I heard his library burned down and both books were destroyed - and one of them hadn't even been colored in yet.
-- John Dawkins
~~~
The man who is fond of books is usually a man of lofty thought, and of elevated opinions.
-- Christopher Dawson
~~~
The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others.  But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.
-- Clarence Day
~~~
There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
-- Isaac Disraeli
~~~
Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman "other" or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader.
-- Terry Eagleton
~~~
Our high respect for a well read person is praise enough for literature.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
~~~
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
~~~
If the riches of the Indies, or the crowns of all the kingdom of Europe, were laid at my feet in exchange for my love of reading, I would spurn them all.
-- Francois F‚Nelon
~~~
There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
-- Henry Fielding
~~~
Read in order to live.
-- Gustave Flaubert
~~~
Read much, but not many books.
-- Benjamin Franklin
~~~
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
-- Margaret Fuller
~~~
Learning to read has been reduced to a process of mastering a series of narrow, specific, hierarchical skills. Where armed-forces recruits learn the components of a rifle or the intricacies of close order drill "by the numbers," recruits to reading learn its mechanics sound by sound and word by word.
-- Jacquelyn Gross
~~~
The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
-- Elizabeth Hardwick
~~~
Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more.
-- John Harington
~~~
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
~~~
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired.
-- John Morely
~~~
A dose of poison can do its work but once. A bad book can go on poisoning minds for generations.
-- William Murray
~~~
A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don't slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.
-- Pablo Neruda
~~~
The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.
-- Theodore Parker
~~~
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal
~~~
Five daily newspapers arrive in my California driveway. The New York times and the Wall Street Journal are supplemented by three local papers. As for magazines, I read, or at least skim, Business Week, Forbes, The Economist, INC; Industry Week, Fortune. Other subscriptions include Sales and Marketing Management, Modern Health Care, Progressive Grocer, High Tech Business, and Slaon Management Review from MIT. I religiously read Business Tokyo, Asia Week, and Far Eastern Economic Review. I glance at Newsweek and Time ... but I devour the New Republic, Policy Review, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Monthly, and Public Interest. How about books? A dozen or more each month.
-- Thomas J. Peters
~~~
No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.
-- Noah Porter
~~~
The more sins you confess, the more books you will sell.
-- American Proverb
~~~
This book fills a much-needed gap.
-- Hadas In A Review.
~~~
She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.
-- Jean Rhys
~~~
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
-- Hazel Rochman
~~~
Upon books the collective education of the race depends; they are the sole instruments of registering, perpetuating and transmitting thought.
-- Henry C. Rogers
~~~
Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what?  All you have to do is go to the library.
-- Jim Rohn
~~~
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
~~~
Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.
-- John Ruskin
~~~
To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own, and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.
-- John Ruskin
~~~
A library is thought in cold storage.
-- Herbert Samuel
~~~
I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets.
-- B. K. Sandwell
~~~
Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life.
-- Giorgos Seferis
~~~
No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
-- Atwood H. Townsend
~~~
My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine - everybody drinks water.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.
-- Groucho Marx
~~~
Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?
-- Groucho Marx
~~~
If I held you any closer I would be on the other side of you.
-- Groucho Marx
~~~
Remember men, we're fighting for this woman's honour; which is probably more than she ever did.
-- Groucho Marx
~~~
Women should be obscene and not heard.
-- Groucho Marx
~~~
Why was I with her? She reminds me of you. In fact, she reminds me more of you than you do!
-- Groucho Marx
~~~
He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
-- Groucho Marx
~~~
The square root is the root of all evil
-- Mike Carpenter
~~~
I want the answer by Wednesday or there will be blood on the walls
-- Dr. Jean-Louis Lassez in my Systems Organizations class
~~~
Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their developments.
-- Albert Einstein, New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930
~~~
Stare at the pale blue dot of planet earth from several millions of miles away. Stare at that dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
~~~
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
~~~
What the mind cannot believe the heart can finally never adore.
-- Bishop John Shelby Spong
~~~
The way I want do die is doped up on crack and driving a Lamborghini out the back of a cargo plane in flight.
-- Jeff Eliasen
~~~
Can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?
-- Charles Darwin, On the origin of religion
~~~
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
-- Bruce Ediger, on X Window interfaces.
~~~
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.
-- Dave Barry
~~~
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
-- Isaac Asimov
~~~
For the most part, this chapter is organized from small to large. That is, we take a bottom-up approach. If you're a top-down person, just turn the book over and read the chapter backward.
-- Programming Perl, Chapter 2 Introduction
~~~
They say kissing is the language of love.
Care to indulge in a little conversation?
-- A Hallmark Card
~~~
An enemy will stab you in the back, but a true friend will stab you in the front.
~~~
This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces.  It is not god who kills the children, not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs.  It's us.  Only us.
-- Rorschach, in _Watchmen_
~~~
Measure wealth not by the things you have, but by the things you have for which you would not take money.
~~~
I can please only one person per day.
Today is not your day.
Tomorrow isn't looking good either.
-- DNRC Motto
~~~
Q: What happens if you play blues music backwards?
A: Your wife returns to you, your dog comes back to life, and you get out of prison.
~~~
But besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
~~~
Women's creed: Men are like linoleum.  If you lay them right the first time,you can walk on them for 20 years.
~~~
The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions.  The hypothalamus controls the "Four F's":  1. fighting;  2. fleeing;  3. feeding; and 4. mating.
-- Psychology professor in neuropsychology intro course
~~~
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it---and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid.  She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again---and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
-- Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, American Writer, 1835-1910)
~~~
The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.
-- From an article on the growth of federal regulations in the Oct. 24th issue of National Review
~~~
A Stanford research group advertised for participants in a study of obsessive-compulsive disorder. They were looking for therapy clients who had been diagnosed with this disorder. The response was gratifying; they got 3,000 responses about three days after the ad came out.  All from the same person.
~~~
There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone.  That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.
-- Stroustrup
~~~
There's so much comedy on television.  Does that cause comedy in the streets?
-- Dick Cavett, mocking the TV-violence debate
~~~
Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
-- Emo Phillips
~~~
Life without you would be like a broken pencil.
How's that?
Completely pointless.
-- Blackadder, Series II
~~~
G M:  So, Mrs. Smith, do you have any children?
S:  Yes, thirteen.
G M:  Thirteen!  Good lord, isn't that a burden?
S:  Well, I love my husband.
G M:  Lady, I love my cigar but I take it out of my mouth once in a while.
-- Groucho Marx, on _You Bet Your Life_
~~~
The most important thing in the programming language is the name.  A language will not succeed without a good name.  I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.
-- D. E. Knuth, 1967
~~~
When I was in high school, my friends would lay anything that moved.  I choose not to limit myself.
~~~
I prefer my lovers to be female, human, and breathing, but I'll take any two out of three in a pinch.
~~~
Don't worry about temptation--as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.
-- Old Farmer's Almanac
~~~
On a sidewalk near Portland State University someone wrote 'Trust Jesus', and someone else wrote 'But Cut the Cards'.
~~~
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
-- Sigmund Freud
~~~
The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them.
-- William Clayton
~~~
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
~~~
Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman's toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace.
-- From A Woman's Worth by Marianne Williamson
~~~
I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats.
-- Woody Allen, on the KKK
~~~
Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
~~~
Masturbation is nothing to be ashamed of.  It's nothing to be particularly proud of, either.
-- From Basic Sex Facts For Today's Youngfolk in _Life In Hell_ by Matt Groening
~~~
No one is more carnal than a recent virgin.
-- John Steinbeck
~~~
The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life.  For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system.  When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!  (It's rather like getting tenure.)
-- Daniel Dennett, _Consciousness Explained_, p. 177
~~~
Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules.
Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.
~~~
The prince wants your daughter for his wife.
Well, tell him his wife can't have her.
-- Blackadder III
~~~
You simply MUST stop taking advice from other people.
-- Melissa Timberman
~~~
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
~~~
Her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak.
-- Woody Allen
~~~
The Great Roe is a mythological beast with the head of a lion and the body of a lion, though not the same lion.
-- Woody Allen
~~~
In bed the other night my girlfriend asked "if you could know exactly when and where you would die, would you want to?"  I said "no".  She said, "ok, then forget it".
-- Steven Wright
~~~
To my daughter Leonora without whose never failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been completed in half the time.
-- P.G. Wodehouse
~~~
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-- Shakespeare, _Macbeth_
~~~
KRQR, home of the million dollar guarantee. You give us a million dollars, we'll play any song you want.  Guaranteed.
~~~
When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.
-- A. Rand
~~~
It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years.
-- John Von Neumann (ca. 1949)
~~~
After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party?  Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
~~~
Edmund Blackadder:  After all, did not Our Lord send a lowly earthworm to comfort Moses in his torment?
Prince George: No.
-- Blackadder, _Duel and Duality_
~~~
Ella, Ella, Ella...Never knock on Death's door.  Ring the bell and run away!  Death *really* hates that.
-- Doctor, Doctor
~~~
Ros:  Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
Guil: No, no, no...Death is...not.  Death isn't.  You take my meaning.  Death is the ultimate negative.  Not-being.  You can't not-be on a boat.
Ros:  I've frequently not been on boats.
Guil: No, no, no - what you've been is not on boats.
-- Tom Stoppard
~~~
The only problem
with Haiku is that you just
get started and then
~~~
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet.  When toast is dropped, it always lands butter-side-down.  I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat [butter facing up].  The two will hover, spinning, inches above the ground.  With a giant buttered-toast/cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago.
-- Omni
~~~
When subjected to extreme feminine heat and pressure, male hydrocarbons will
often produce a diamond.
-- Omni
~~~
Will your answer to this question be no?
~~~
Love is like pi---natural, irrational, and VERY important.
~~~
I don't use drugs; my dreams are frightening enough.
-- M. C. Escher
~~~
Sign for a combined Veterinarian and Taxidermist business:
Either Way You Get Your Dog Back
~~~
Mae West:  For a long time I was ashamed of the way I lived.
Interviewer: Did you reform?
Mae West:  No; I'm not ashamed anymore.
~~~
I'm one with the Universe - on a scale from 1 to 10.
~~~
Last night I held a little hand,No other hand, tho held so tight,
So dainty and so neat Could greater gladness bring,
I thought my heart would surely burst;  Than the hand I held last night;
So wildly did it beat.  Four aces and a king.
~~~
Ah, Mozart!  He was happily married, but his wife wasn't.
-- Borge
~~~
A thought for the day: In 'A Clarification of Questions,' Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wrote that 'if a fly gets into the throat of one who is fasting, it is not necessary to pull it out.'
~~~
This is a crude version of a more advanced utility that has never been written.
-- X-windows xwud(1) man-page
~~~
<Name> - Alive, occupying space, and exerting gravitational force.
~~~
Photons have mass?  I didn't know they were catholic!
~~~
My mother made me a homosexual!
If I send her the yarn, can she make me one too?
~~~
Twice five syllables  
Plus seven can't say much but
That's Haiku for you.
~~~
You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
~~~
Q: How do you spell "onomatopoeia"?  
A: The way it sounds.
~~~
The misanthrope's catastrophic apostrophe landed in the cantaloupe near the antelope's interloper.
-- R. Michael Young
~~~
Work 8 hours, sleep 8 hours; but not the same 8 hours.
~~~
In democracy its your vote that counts. In feudalism its your count that votes.
~~~
There are a billion people in China.  It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people.  Think of it.  More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you.
-- A. Whitney Brown, _The Big Picture_
~~~
'I want you to stop quoting me out of context, he said.  'Printing my comments intact would make things much easier.'  Mansfield went on to claim 'I...[like]...boys.'
-- From the Harvard Lampoon's mock of the Harvard Crimson
~~~
Solution to two of the world's problems:  Feed the homeless to the hungry.
~~~
Have you heard of the upcoming Schizophrenics' Convention in 1992? Don't miss it!  Anybody who's everybody will be there!
~~~
A great name for a new country song:  If I'd Shot You Sooner, I'd Be Out of Jail by Now.
~~~
Don't keep a negative attitude, such as
I will not succeed, I will not succeed.
Instead, keep a positive attitude:
I WILL fail.  I WILL fail.
~~~
Practice safe government---use kingdoms.
Anarchist reply:  Abstinence is the only way to be 100% sure.
~~~
In a literature class, the students were given an assignment to write a short story involving all the important ingredients - Nobility, Emotion, Sex, Religion and Mystery.  One student allegedly handed in the following story: "My god!" cried the duchess.  "I'm pregnant.  Who did it?"
~~~
Sign outside the Fountain of Youth Health Spa in Salt Lake City:
Are You Fat And Ugly?  Do You Want To Be Just Ugly?  Memberships Available Now.
~~~
Save water.  Shower with a friend.
~~~
I was arrested for selling illegal-sized paper.
~~~
I was walking across a bridge one day, and i saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off.  so i ran over and said "stop! don't do it!"  "Why shouldn't I?" he said.  I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"  He said, "Like what?"  I said, "Well...are you religious or atheist?"  He said, "Religious." I said, "Me too!  Are you Christian or Buddhist?"  He said, "Christian."  I said, "Me too!  Are you catholic or protestant?"  He said, "Protestant."  I said, "Me too!  Are you Episcopalian or baptist?"  He said, "Baptist!"  I said, "Wow!  Me too!  Are you baptist church of god or baptist church of the lord?"  He said, "Baptist church of god!"  I said, "Me too!  Are you original baptist church of god, or are you reformed baptist church of god?"  He said, "Reformed baptist church of god!"  I said, "Me too!  Are you reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?"  He said, "Reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915!"  I said, "Die, heretic scum", and pushed him off.
-- Emo Phillips
~~~
Do you believe in love at first sight
Or do I need to walk by again?
-- Unknown Author
~~~
I swore to myself
It wouldn't happen again.
I vowed to myself
That this was the end.
The end of this longing,
This yearning so strong.
I said I was over you,
But oh I was wrong.
Now here it is again,
Quite awhile later.
And my love for you
Is now even greater.
I spend all my time
Thinking of you,
I'm in love with you again
And there's nothing I can do.
-- In Love Again, Unknown Author
~~~
The greatest disease is not TB or leprosy;
It is being unwanted, unloved and uncared for.
-- Mother Teresa
~~~
Kissing may not spread germs, but they certainly lower resistance.
-- Louise Erickson
~~~
Some women blush when they are kissed, some call for the police, some swear, some bite. But the worst are those who laugh.
~~~
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
~~~
It's impossible to kiss a girl unexpectedly - only sooner than you thought.
~~~
A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.
-- Ingrid Bergman
~~~
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.
-- Song of Solomon
~~~
It is the passion that is in a kiss that gives to it its sweetness; it is the affection in a kiss that sanctifies it.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee
~~~
If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of a doubt.
-- Thomas Carlyle
~~~
Give me a kiss, add to that kiss a score;
Then to that twenty, add a hundred more:
A thousand to that hundred: so kiss on,
To make that thousand up a million.
Treble that million, and when that is done,
Let's kiss afresh, as when we first begun.
-- Robert Herrick
~~~
She press'd his hand in slumber; so once more
He could not help but kiss her and adore.
-- John Keats
~~~
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!
Come Helen, come give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
-- Christopher Marlowe
~~~
Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet;
In short, my deary, kiss me, and be quiet.
-- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
~~~
Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.
-- William Shakespeare, Richard III
~~~
Partons, dans un baiser, pour un monde inconnu.
-- Alfred De Musset, La Nuit de Mai (French)
With a kiss let us set out for an unknown world.
~~~
I had to quit my job to have time to read my email.
-- Curry, Adam [MTV Host and net.legend] his occasional signature quote
~~~
There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network.
-- Guy Almes
~~~
Computer: a million morons working at the speed of light.
-- David Ferrier
~~~
'Uncle Cosmo, why do they call this a word processor?' 'It's simple, Skyler. You've seen what food processors do to food, right?'
-- MacNelley in 'Shoe'
~~~
My company doesn't know Usenet exists, and my boss would have kittens if he thought I spoke for them. My opinions are better than theirs anyway.
~~~
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
-- Professor Edsger Dijkstra
~~~
No matter how fast your computer system runs, you will eventually come to think of it as slow.
~~~
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway.
-- Bernard Avishai
~~~
The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.
-- Nathaniel Borenstein
~~~
EMAIL - when it absolutely positively has to get lost at the speed of light.
~~~
There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
~~~
The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.
-- D. E. Knuth
~~~
Now that we have all this useful information, it would be nice to do something with it. (Actually, it can be emotionally fulfilling just to get the information. This is usually only true, however, if you have the social life of a kumquat.)
-- Unix Programmer's Manual
~~~
There's no problem so large it can't be solved by killing the user off, deleting their files, closing their account and reporting their REAL earnings to the IRS.
-- Bastard Operator from Hell [Anke Bodzin]
~~~
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers.
-- Niven, Larry, and Jerry Pournelle in 'Oath of Fealty'
~~~
Real Programmers never work from 9 to 5. If any real programmer is around at 9 a.m., it's because they were up all night.
-- Some Computer Geek
~~~
Don't explain computers to laymen. [It's] Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.
-- Heinlein, Robert A. (1907-1988) from 'The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress' c1966
~~~
I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC;
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I've run this poem threw it,
I'm sure your pleased too no,
Its letter perfect in it's weigh,
My checker tolled me sew.
-- Minor, Janet 'Spellbound'
~~~
This is not an official statement of Hewlett-Packard Corp., and does not necessarily reflect the views of HP. It is provided completely without warranty of any kind. Lawyers take 3d10 damage and roll a saving throw vs. ego attack.
-- Unknown, spoken by Will Smith in the movie 'Six Degrees of Separation'
~~~
I'd love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!
~~~
PROGRAM - n. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages. v. tr.- To engage in a pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
~~~
[Percy walks in]
Percy: Sorry I'm late.
Edmund: No, don't bother apologizing. I'm sorry you're alive.
-- Blackadder Episode 1, Bells
~~~
Edmund: Tell me Young crone, is this Putney?
Young Crone: That it be, that it be.
Edmund: "Yes it is". Not "that it be". You don't have to talk in that stupid voice to me. I'm not a tourist. I seek information about a Wisewoman.
Young Crone: Ah, the Wisewoman.. the Wisewoman.
Edmund: Yes, the Wisewoman.
Young Crone: Two things, my lord, must thee know of the Wisewoman. First, she is ... a woman, and second, she is ...
Edmund: ... wise?
Young Crone: You do know her then?
Edmund: No, just a wild stab in the dark which is incidentally what you'll be getting if you don't start being a bit more helpful.
-- Blackadder Episode 1, Bells
~~~
Queenie: Oh! Hello Edmund. Look I'm sorry I snapped at you just now. You know I'm really very keen on you indeed don't you?
Edmund: Oh yes ma'am, as you were keen on Essex.
Queenie: Exactly!
Edmund: Right up to the point at which you had his head cut off.
Queenie: (laughs) He didn't mind that, he knew it was only little me! And I must say, his head did look jolly super on its spike. Are there no heads on spikes today?
Edmund: Em, no. No, we're training up a new executioner and he's a little immature. Takes him forever. Slash, slash, slash. By the time he's finished you don't so much need a spike as a toast rack.
-- Blackadder Episode 2, Head
~~~
How to combat that feeling of helplessness with illegal drugs
-- The Royal Gazette, 9 May 1985
~~~
Love covers over a multitude of sins.
-- Bible, 1 Peter 4:8
~~~
My mind's sunk so low, Claudia, because of you, wrecked itself on your account so bad already, that I couldn't like you if you were the best of women, - or stop loving you, no matter what you do.
-- Catullus
~~~
Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; every little absence is an age.
-- John Dryden, Amphitryon
~~~
Sometimes I feel there's a hole inside of me:
An emptiness that at times seems to burn.
I think if you lifted my heart to your ear,
You probably could hear the ocean.
And the moon tonight has a circle around it,
a sign of trouble not far behind.
I have this dream of being whole
Not going to bed each night wanting.
But still sometimes
When the wind is warm
Or the crickets sing,
I dream of a love
That even time will lie down and be still for.
I just want someone to love me.
I want to be seen.
-- From the movie: Practical Magic
~~~
Can he love her?
Can the soul really be satisfied
With such polite affections?
To love is to burn,
To be on fire.
-- Sense and Sensibility (Movie)
~~~
A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
-- Paul Valery
~~~
The very first thing necessary to anyone who's weird is a place where they don't give you a hard time just because you're weird.
-- Mike Callahan
~~~
They say thyme heal all wounds, but I've found it doesn't work any better than oregano.
~~~
Please forward all messages to the gutter my mind is inhabiting. Thank you.
~~~
Ask a silly person, get a silly answer.
~~~
Everyone is a damn fool for at least 5 minutes a day. Wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit.
~~~
I'm not panicking. I'm watching you panic. It's much more entertaining.
~~~
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kinda neat.
~~~
Smile. It confuses people.
~~~
Sleep is for wimps. Happy, healthy, well rested wimps, but wimps.
~~~
Thousands of years ago, Egyptians worshipped cats. Cats have never forgotten this.
~~~
I am under the influence of sugar, caffeine and lack of sleep and should not be held responsible for my behavior.
~~~
Who the hell let the morning people run things?
~~~
I'm lost. I've gone to Look for myself. If I should return before I get back, please ask me to wait.
~~~
Do the voices in my head bother you?
~~~
I like the way your mind malfunctions.
~~~
Don't try to out-weird me - I get stranger things then you free with my breakfast cereal.
-- Z. Beeblebrox-
~~~
Marching to a different kettle of fish.
~~~
The Web isn't better then sex, but sliced bread is in serious trouble.
~~~
Live wrong and preposterously.
~~~
You should see the ones we don't let out in public.
~~~
If it's not on fire, it's a software problem.
~~~
If you're going down in flames, you might as well hit something big.
~~~
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
~~~
They aren't broken, they're...uh...modular.
~~~
Its ok to laugh during sex - just don't point.
~~~
Hardware: the part of the computer that can be kicked. If you can only curse at it, it's software.
~~~
I no longer fear hell - I work in Retail.
~~~
... It is therefore recommended not to use this button at any time. 
-- software documentation 
~~~
There are many paths to enlightenment. Sadly, none of them involve Pizza.
-- RonRon Shubadi
~~~
If more government is the answer, it must have been a really stupid question.
~~~
Got kleptomania? Take something for it.
~~~
Sometimes I go off into my own little world... But that's okay; they know me there.
-- AJ
~~~
I have given up anarchy. Too many rules-- hating the government and all that stuff.
-- G.H. Hill
~~~
Under no circumstances may you become a Prophet. We don't intend to jeopardize our non-prophet status.
-- Kerry Thornley, Discordian Society Co-founder
~~~
What a lousy place for a wall...
-- Don Karnage
~~~
I never learned from a man who agreed with me
-- Robert A. Heinlein
~~~
Too many times I've seen the sun come up through bloodshot eyes this week...
~~~
Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
-- Sam Kelly
~~~
Of course, when discussing the shelf-life of Twinkies, the limiting factor is the life of the shelf
-- MTR, on a.c
~~~
Although the hippopotamus has no sting, the wise (wo)man would rather be sat upon by a bee.
~~~
Eagles may soar free and proud, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.
~~~
Have I found Jesus? I'm still looking for Waldo!
~~~
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat
-- Alex Levine
~~~
I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with sub-atomic particles.
~~~
When you do a good deed, get a receipt, in case heaven is like the IRS.
~~~
I can't go to work today, the voices say Stay home and clean the guns.
~~~
Erotic is using a feather, Kinky is using the whole chicken.
~~~
Sex is like air, its not important unless you aren't getting any.
~~~
If vegetable oil is made of vegetables, what is baby oil made of?
~~~
No guts, no glory, no brain, same story.
~~~
If quitters never win, and winners never quit, then who is the fool that first said "quit while you are ahead"?
~~~
If you don't die from it it is healthy.
~~~
Never sleep with anyone crazier than you.
~~~
If everything is going well, you don't know what the hell is going on.
~~~
Sex is like snow. you never know how many inches you are going to get, or how long it will last.
~~~
women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place.
~~~
duct tape is like the force-there is a light side and a dark side and it holds the universe together.
~~~
it is not what a teenager know that bothers his parents. it is how he found out!
~~~
no job is so simple that it cannot be done wrong.
~~~
you can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
~~~
only adults have difficulty with childproof bottles.
~~~
the sum of the intelligence on the planet is constant, but the population is increasing.
~~~
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
~~~
**FLASH** Energizer Bunny arrested, charged with battery.
~~~
Everything I needed to know in life, I learned in kindergarten. Like, always check for extraneous roots when squaring to remove the radicals.
~~~
Legion of the Damned - Reserve. Fighting for the Forces of Evil One Weekend A Month
~~~
When opportunity calls, one must answer, even when it demands that one spend the next hour of one's life thinking up things to do with rotten fish.
~~~
I Found Jesus, He was in my trunk when I got back from Tijuana.
~~~
You're a figment of my imagination - which just goes to show what a sick and twisted mind *I've* got.
~~~
Its not the tears we soak up that do us any hurt... its the ones we ignore.
~~~
A "Normal" person is the sort of person that might be designed by a committee. (You know, "Each person puts in a pretty color and it comes out grey.")
-- Alan Sherman
~~~
It's not that I'm bitter and twisted, it's just that I'm bitter and twisted 
-- Deth
~~~
Some drink from the Fountain of Knowledge...others only gargle.
~~~
Ignorance killed the cat; curiosity was framed.
~~~
Sex between a man and a woman can be a wonderful thing... If you're between the right man and the right woman.
~~~
There are many intelligent races in the universe. They all have cats.
~~~
You're just jealous because the little voices are talking to me.
~~~
It's your hell. You burn in it!
~~~
This is more fun than putting a gerbil down my pants.
~~~
I wouldn't want to be normal even if I knew what it was.
~~~
I'm not as normal as I look.
~~~
Rock is dead... Long live paper and scissors!
~~~
Exercise before kinky sex - you should be fit to be tied.
~~~
I want to be like all the other nonconformists...
~~~
Incorrigible Punster, Do Not Incorrige
~~~
667, the neighbor of the beast!
~~~
When Cthulu calls, He calls 1-800-Collect
~~~
If you can't dress weird, why dress at all?
~~~
It's you and me against the world: We attack at dawn.
~~~
Little Old Ladies Sewing Circle And Terrorist Society
~~~
Once you pull the pin on Mr. Grenade he is no longer your friend.
~~~
Join The Illuminati, And See The World, Differently
~~~
Evil Geniuses For A Better Tomorrow
~~~
Everyone Is Someone Else's Weirdo
~~~
Mop And Glow, Official Floor Wax Of The Chernobyl Clean Up Team
~~~
Assassins Inc. We Aim to Please
~~~
OK I'm weird, but I'm Saving Up to be Eccentric.
~~~
I'm in shape. Round is a shape.
~~~
I am a god in human form and completely demented. It works for me. 
-- HoseHead
~~~
A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five.
~~~
He who dies with the most toys is, nonetheless, still dead.
~~~
I stared into the abyss. The abyss stared into me. Neither of us liked what we saw.
~~~
If only there was some indication that the Universe was doing it on purpose...
~~~
If cats had longer attention spans, they'd be running the world.
~~~
Purring, the sound of a cat manufacturing cuteness.
~~~
I do more work after 2 AM than most people do all day.
~~~
Sleep deprivation is fun - you see such pretty colors.
~~~
I'm not myself today. Maybe I'm you.
~~~
Possessor of a mind not merely twisted but actually sprained
~~~
And before you get all happy, be informed that your punishment does not include pain or sex.
~~~
Does it have enhanced IR vision, a particle beam weapon with target acquisition, highly amplified arm/leg systems, self-contained atmosphere and a small nuclear plant? No? Not much of a "power suit", is it?
~~~
I'll have some of what that gentlebeing on the floor is drinking.
~~~
This IS a costume. I'm a homicidal maniac - they look just like everyone else.
~~~
In the beginning there was nothing, And God said "let there be light". And there was still nothing, But you could see it.
~~~
I'm not sure that some of the sk.sympatico tech people I've overheard could tell you how to get the cup holder to extend, let alone where your CD-ROM is.
-- Sirilyan
~~~
Y'know, that's really... sweet. Twisted, but sweet, nonetheless.
-- Kristen
~~~
Charming and polite? As compared to a rabid wolverine with a toothache on LSD.
-- Shadowcat-
~~~
Be alert! The world needs more lerts!
~~~
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
~~~
Honest, Officer! The dwarf was on fire when I got here!
~~~
I worry about when I'm 30 and I reach my sexual peak, what if I'm alone in the house? I fear for the safety of all my kitchen appliances.
-- Jennifer Heath
~~~
hmmm, dwarves by mail w/ no obligation, I should look into this
-- Pixel-
~~~
Please don't ask me what the score is. I'm not even sure what game we're playing.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
~~~
I have seen the evidence. I want DIFFERENT evidence.
~~~
There's too much blood in my caffeine system.
~~~
You mean you need drugs to hallucinate?
~~~
Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of iron before it can give forth its spark.
-- Henri-Frederic Amiel
~~~
I refuse to apologize for my ability - I refuse to apologize for my success - I refuse to apologize for my money.
-- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
~~~
An indecent mind is a perpetual feast.
~~~
Humor is the only reason to live.
-- Marcel Duchamp
~~~
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
~~~
I've tried everything else to convince you. Now I'm going to be sensible.
-- unnamed Congressman
~~~
J : It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
K : Try it.
-- Men in Black
~~~
Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
-- Philip K. Dick
~~~
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
-- Frank Herbert, Dune, Manual of Muad'Dib by Princess Irulan
~~~
It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is not important.
If it is not, what is?
He could not endure those remembered words.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, spoken by Gaverel Rocannon, Rocannon's World
~~~
What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
-- William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways
~~~
You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.
-- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
~~~
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life (The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.)
-- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
~~~
The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.
-- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
~~~
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
-- Albert Camus
~~~
Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else's list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives.
-- Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish, The Bridge Across Forever
~~~
If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.
-- Woody Allen
~~~
Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only friends that they like.
-- Unknown
~~~
...that was the first thing I had to learn about her, and maybe the hardest I've ever learned about anything - that she is her own, and what she gives me is of her choosing, and the more precious because of it. Sometimes a butterfly will come to sit in your open palm, but if you close your hand, one way or the other, it - and its choice to be there - are gone.
-- Barbara Hambly, Spoken by John Aversin, Dragonsbane
~~~
We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.
-- Jeff Marder (the question, of course, is whether this is good or bad)
~~~
It's so much more friendly with two.
-- Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne
~~~
In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
~~~
I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
-- Dr. Seuss
~~~
It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
-- Sally Kempton
~~~
The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr .
-- Muhammad
~~~
A person will be called to account on Judgement Day for every permissible thing he might have enjoyed but did not.
-- Talmud
~~~
Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.
-- Virgil Thomson (Advice given at age 93)
~~~
God looked upon His work and saw that it was good. That is where the clergy take issue with him.
-- Elbert Hubbard
~~~
Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness;
And I like the whole truth,
but there are nights I only need forgiveness.
-- Dar Williams, My Friends, The End of Summer
~~~
After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
~~~
Well, the Goddess said, your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time.
-- Diane Duane, _The Door into Shadow_
~~~
I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?'
-- Mike Godwin
~~~
The more laws, the less justice.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero De Officiis
~~~
I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
-- Kahlil Gibran
~~~
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
-- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
~~~
Wit is educated insolence.
-- Aristotle (284-322 B.C.)
~~~
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher.
-- Socrates (470-399 B.C.)
~~~
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-- Antoine de St. Exupery
~~~
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
-- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
~~~
Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.
-- Perelman
~~~
America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damn well please.
-- P.J. O'Rourke
~~~
Belief is not the beginning but the end of all knowledge.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
~~~
I am as frustrated ... as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest.
-- A. Whitney Brown
~~~
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
-- Jorge Luis Borges
~~~
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay
~~~
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
-- Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas
~~~
The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.
-- Alexander Penney
~~~
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
-- Werner Karl Heisenberg
~~~
Work and play are words to describe the same thing under different conditions.
-- Mark Twain
~~~
You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.
-- Warren Beatty
~~~
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?
-- Alan Perlis
~~~
progasm /proh'gaz-m/ /n./ [University of Wisconsin] The euphoria experienced upon the completion of a program or other computer-related project.
-- The Jargon File
~~~
program /n./ 1. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input into error messages. 2. An exercise in experimental epistemology.
-- The Jargon File
~~~
JWs: If we were to tell you that there is an army of angels waiting in Heaven, and on the Day of Judgement they will be unleashed upon the world to slay all the unbelievers, what would your response be?
Response: Preemptive nuclear strike.
~~~
Eskimo: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?
Priest: No, not if you did not know.
Eskimo: Then why did you tell me?
-- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
~~~
A blow to the head will confuse a man's thinking, a blow to the foot has no such effect, this cannot be the result of an immaterial soul.
-- Heraclitus, 500 BC
~~~
If it happens, it must be possible.
-- Murphy's Laws
~~~
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
-- H. L. Mencken
~~~
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
-- Adam Smith
~~~
Morals - all correct moral rules - derive from the instinct to survive; moral behavior is survival above the individual level - as in the father dying to save his children.
-- Robert Heinlein, _Starship Troopers_
~~~
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
-- Antoine De Saint-Exupery
~~~
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
-- Ambrose Redmoon
~~~
One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil. To think is to do.
-- Victor Hugo
~~~
Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
-- Teddy Roosevelt
~~~
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament],  'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage
~~~
Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.
-- Eric Temple Bell
~~~
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
~~~
Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
~~~
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
-- Terry Pratchett
~~~
There ain't no rules around here, we're trying to accomplish something.
-- Thomas Alva Edison
~~~
To those who think that the law of gravity interferes with their freedom, there is nothing to say. 
-- Lionel Tiger
~~~
Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.
-- Adam Smith
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Veritas vos liberabit. - the truth will set you free.
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I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could.
-- Orson Welles
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I say violence is necessary.  It is as American as cherry pie.
-- H. Rap Brown, speech at Washington, 27 July 1967,
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If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like the truth, he need never try to write romances.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter [1850]
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Elli:  That - wasn't the proposition I was expecting, is all. Excuse me.  I fear I am becoming incurably low-minded.
Ethan:  You can't help that, I'm sure, Ethan said tolerantly. Being female, and all that.
-- Ethan of Athos, Lois McMaster Bujold
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In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.... The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
-- John Steinbeck
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Unless it's mad, passionate,
Extraordinary love,
It's a waste of your time.
~~~
There are too many mediocre things in life
Love shouldn't be one of them.
-- Movie: Dream for an Insomniac
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Kindness in words creates confidence,
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness,
Kindness in giving creates love
-- Lao-Tze
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I'd almost feel angry about wasting my youth figuring out computers instead of living life if I didn't make such a boatload of moolah these days because of it.
-- Alex
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My wife thinks I'm nosy. At least that's what she scribbles in her diary.
-- Drake Sather
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MTV, X-rated video, science fiction theatre, Harlequin Romances, CD-ROM, and the _National Inquirer_ combined couldn't compete with what goes on behind the closed door of the secret side of our minds.
-- Robert Fulghum, Maybe, Maybe Not
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I once began a list of all the contradictory notions I hold:
Look before you leap./ He who hesitates is lost.
Two heads are better than one./