Brought to you as a public service by Army of God's Will, Inc. (Props to Jaime :)
(Attributions as available - all Futurama sound grabs courtesy of Got Futurama?)
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| ``There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.'' -- Victor Hugo (paraphrased and / or mistranslated) |
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| ``What is truth?'' -- Pontius Pilate, John 18:38 |
`` `Beauty is truth, truth beauty' -- that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'' -- John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn |
| ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' -- Chaucer |
``I'm sorry not to explain everything properly.'' -- Ed Witten, 26-Jan-2004 (If anyone will, it'll be him.) |
| ``Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.'' -- Oscar Wilde |
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| ``Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.'' -- Meister Eckhardt |
``We're the hand that writes Then quickly moves away'' -- Dio, The Last In Line |
| ``Whereof one cannot speak, one must pass over in silence.'' -- Ludwig Wittgenstein |
``The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world.'' -- Ludwig Wittgenstein |
| ``The broken word is my spoken word.'' -- Dan Gluesenkamp, May 15, 1996 |
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| ``I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is my own.'' -- Montaigne |
``Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.'' -- Simeon Strunsky (doubtless including this one) |
| ``The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.'' -- W. Somerset Maugham |
``I hate quotations.'' -- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| ``Quote that sucker!'' -- Richard M. Nixon, as `quoted' in Doonesbury |
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| ``The meaning of life is that it stops.'' -- Franz Kafka |
``Art is not a mirror held up to reality, But a hammer with which to shape it.'' -- Bertolt Brecht |
| ``Nothing is in bad taste if it makes you laugh.'' -- John Waters |
``Art is anything you can get away with.'' -- Marshall McLuhan |
| ``MY OPINIONS ARE NOT FOR PUBLIC DISPLAY'' -- bumperwise |
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| ``Trust is a tough thing to come by these days.'' -- R.J. MacReady, The Thing | ``We are a way for the universe to know itself.'' -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos |
| ``I will permit NO MAN to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.'' -- Booker T. Washington |
``NEVER TRY TO PLEASE EVERYONE! YOUR GOAL SHOULD BE TO BECOME THE HATED ENEMY OF CERTAIN KINDS OF PEOPLE. :)'' -- Bill Beatty |
| ``We never gave up. We never gave in. If, in the end, that's the best they can say about us, it'll do.'' -- John Fitzgerald Byers |
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| ``"We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.'' -- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
``The older I get, the more often I weep... but at least I know why.'' -- me |
| ``Put an end once and for all to this discussion of what a good person should be, and be one.'' -- Marcus Aurelius |
``He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth.'' -- Goethe |
| ``We have art in order not to die from the truth.'' -- Nietzsche |
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The System Administrator's Burden
Nec dubitamus multa esse quae et nos praeterierint; homines enim sumus et occupati officiis. (Nor do we doubt that many things have escaped us also; for we are but human, and beset with duties.) Pliny The Elder |
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``Let us live so that when we come to die,
even the undertaker will be sorry.''
-- Mark Twain
``There's never enough time
to do all the nothing you want.''
-- Calvin and Hobbes
(Note: If the attribution is unavailable, meaning I obviously don't know it, but you do, or worse yet, I got one wrong, and let me know what the deal is. I'll appreciate it, and you'll recieve, well, nothing, really... I mean, I might email you back, to say thanks, but that's about it.)
(On the other hand, I could just say, ``Thanks in advance!'', so that I don't have to bother with the hassle, but that would be rude and unsightly of me. Besides, if I'm asking you to go to the trouble to send me the info, the least I can do is send you a personal thanks.)
(Enough with the bullshit! On to the wisdom!)
``There's two kinds of people in the world. There's you; and there's everyone else.''
-- Six Feet Under, ``Eat A Peach'' (Season 5)
``There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who believe that the world can be divided into two kinds of people, and those who don't.''
``There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who can be categorized into one of two kinds of people, and those who can't.''
``There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand
binary, and those who don't.''
-- a ThinkGeek tee-shirt
(and everywhere else in the known universe, apparently)
``There are actually three kinds of people in the world: Those who can count and those who can't.'' (I'm in the fourth category...)
``There are two rules for success in life: 1) Don't tell everything you know; ''
-- Tom Magliozzi, ``Car Talk'', March 1, 1998 (sent in by a listener)
``97.3% of all statistics are made up.''
(or reasonable facsimile thereof)
-- Vic Reeves (Thanks to Jan Brynjolffssen for the attribution!)
``Everything is dangerous if you're stupid.''
-- The motto of Omniscience Futureneering.
``If all men were brothers, would you want your sister to marry one?''
``A mathematician is a person who says that, when 3 people are supposed to be in a room but 5 came out, 2 have to go in so the room gets empty...''
``Life is always like high school. Which is interesting, because high school is nothing like life.''
-- Jon
Carroll, SF Chronicle, pg. C20, November 17, 1995.
``Never get involved in a land war in Asia.''
-- Vizzini, The Princess Bride
``Panama -- The Opposite of Civilization.''
-- David Letterman, November 7, 1995.
``Golf is not a matter of life & death -- it's far more important than that.''
``You can't save everyone -- just try not to be living next to them when they go off.''
-- Dennis Miller, April 27, 1995.
``Ah... memories, memories. Where is that brain damage they promised us?''
-- Hunter S. Thompson
``For every complex problem there exists an answer that is simple, concise and totally wrong.''
-- Albert Einstein (thanks to Gary Wilkens for the attribution)
``Even political songs become pop songs, after they get old.''
-- Ric Ocasic, March 12, 1995
``Nothing ever begins.''
-- Clive Barker
``Hope springs internal.''
-- RA
``Ordinary fucking people. I hate 'em.''
-- Repo Man
``The best thing about Windows95 was how easily I removed it.''
-- Don Maszle
``Le hasard ne favorise que les esprits prepares.''
(Chance favors only the prepared mind.)
-- Louis Pasteur
``Systems of belief, like kings and their kingdom, exist for a time and then
become part of the perpetual inventory of remembered things.''
-- ``Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic, Luck'' by David Berlinski, second edition, 1988, pg. 291
``In order to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.''
-- Carl Sagan, ``Cosmos'' (Trite, but true!)
Westheimer's Time Estimation Rule: Estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by 2, add 3, and change the unit of measure to the next higher unit. (So, for example, if you think something will take `just a minute', according to Westheimer it will actually take five hours. Seems right to me.)
Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can save a
couple of hours in the library.
-- Frank H. Westheimer, chemistry professor (1912- )
``That's the thing about history -- it's over before you know it.''
-- Garrison Keillor
``A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
hope of greening the landscape of idea.''
-- John Ciardi
``You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.''
-- Woodrow Wilson
``If at first you don't succeed, you are running about average.''
-- M. H. Alderson
``Nothing makes a person more productive than the last minute.'' (Too true, too true...)
``A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything is last year.''
-- Marty Allen
``Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it rains.''
-- `Nuke' LaLouche, Bull Durham
``Nature bats last.'' (A bumper sticker I saw.)
``To get maximum attention, it's hard to beat a good, big mistake.''
``You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.''
-- Booker T. Washington
``Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.''
-- Malcolm S. Forbes
``Not just a guy named God.''
-- Mark Sanford, June 11, 1992.
``I'm not going to learn any stats; I'm going to be a naturalist.''
-- Dan Gluesenkamp, March 1, 1994.
``YOU try fighting Cthulu, Dillhole! He'll kick your ass, THEN he'll redecorate!''
-- Beavis
``Statistics are like condoms: Nobody likes to use them, but no one
will do science with you if you don't.''
-- Jeff Cynx, via Lucy Jacobs
``There is the state religion of mindless consumerism, which is the real
message of all advertisements. The state religion is more powerful than any
other force; the wise person practices patience and stealth. The wise person
creates images that can be unpacked to deliver other messages.''
-- Jon
Carroll, S. F. Chronicle, pg. E10, March 7, 1996.
``The difference between ignorant and educated people is that the latter know
more facts. But that has nothing to do with whether they are stupid or
intelligent. The difference between stupid and intelligent people -- and
this is true whether or not they are well-educated -- is that intelligent
people can handle subtlety. They are not baffled by ambigious or even
contradictory situations -- in fact, they expect them and are apt to become
suspicious when things seem overly straightforward.''
-- Constable (a.k.a. Brigadier General Arthur Hornsby) Moore,
The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, by Neal Stephenson, pg. 283.
Training is what you do when you learn to operate a lathe or fill out a tax form. It means you learn how to use or operate some kind of machine or system that was produced by people in order to accomplish specific tasks. People often go to training institutes to become certified to operate a machine or perform certain skills. Then they can get jobs that directly involve those specific skills.-- Mathematics: The Most Misunderstood Subject by Dr. Robert H. LewisEducation is very different. Education is not about any particular machine, system, skill, or job. Education is both broader and deeper than training. An education is a deep, complex, and organic representation of reality in the student's mind. It is an image of reality made of concepts, not facts. Concepts that relate to each other, reinforce each other, and illuminate each other. Yet the education is more even than that because it is organic: it will live, evolve, and adapt throughout life.
``The Bill of Rights -- The ORIGINAL Contract with America. Beware of
Imitations. Accept No Substitutes. Insist on the Genuine Articles.''
--
(Here it
is, by the way, in case you're interested.)
``/earth is 98% full. Please remove any excess inhabitants.''
``I'm in shape... round's a shape isn't it?''
``All persons living or dead are purely coincidental and should not be construed.''
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
``If all these sweet young things were laid end-to-end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.''
-- Dorothy Parker
``Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.''
``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?'' (Unhh, yeah... sure...)
``Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.''
-- Carl Zwanzig
``HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN!''
-- E. E. CUMMINGS
``The reason it's called `Grape Nuts' is that it contains `dextrose',
which is also sometimes called `grape sugar', and also because `Grape
Nuts' is catchier, in terms of marketing, than `A Cross Between Gerbil
Food and Gravel', which is what it tastes like.''
-- Dave Barry, ``Tips for Writer's''.
Actual (!!!) Newspaper Headlines:
If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.``At a public meeting of the Los Angeles County government's 4 year-old Ritual Abuse Task Force, several members of the 14-person commission renewed their claims that satanic forces were spraying a pesticide into their offices, homes and cars in order to prevent them from revealing their experiences of human sacrifice, torture and sex orgies. None of the members who made such claims gave medical evidence of the poisoning. Said the county's chief of toxic epidemiology, who was in attendance, `I can't believe I'm listening to this.' ''
If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.It is an ice cream koan.
``All power corrupts, but we need electricity.''
``f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.''
``In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length.''
``All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism. (sylly)''
``VMS is like a nightmare about RXS-11M.'' (The key element being: `like'.)
``The whole world is Maya, illusion. However one should still refrain from
stepping into speeding traffic, because some Maya are harder than others.''
-- Ben Aveling
``Admit Nothing. Blame Everyone. Be Bitter.''
--
``Beer -- It's not just for breakfast anymore.''
-- Chuck Machala
``Laugh and the world thinks you're an idiot.''
-- Jack Petrilli
``Truth hurts. Maybe not as much as jumping on a bicycle with the seat missing, but it hurts.''
``The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning,
and inhibit clarity. With a little pratice, writing can be an intimidating
and impenetrable fog!''
-- Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes
``Jesus Saves!!!! But the puck goes out to Gretzky, he shoots, HE SCOOOOORRRRRRRRES!!!!!!!''
-- Pat Myers
``There was a tv show on recently where a lot of people were intensively researching the question, `What is the density of wolves in Minnesota?' I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. All they have to do is catch one and throw it in a pool.''
``My girlfriend's weird. One day she asked me, `If you could know how and when
you were going to die, would you want to know?' I said, `No.' She said,
`Okay, forget it.' ''
-- Steven Wright
Supermodel Insights:
(Who knows...)
``Harding's Homily: It's hard to be nostalgic when you can't remember anything.''
``Hylton's Rule: No job is too small to botch.''
``Fudd's First Law of Opposition: If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.''
Y Ask Y? (Y Knot?)
``The name of the song is called, `Haddock's Eyes.' ''(For more info, see ``The Annotated Alice'', pg. 306.)
``Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?'', Alice said, trying to feel interested.
``No, you don't understand,'' the Knight said, looking a little vexed. ``That's what the name is called.''
Next time you see the white rabbit run free-- Looking Glass by Hypnogaja
You might not want to follow
Lose your youth, 'cause beauty is truth
It's just harder to swallowSo go ask Alice
Why the hatter is mad
She'll turn when you see her
And laugh, and laughAll are welcome in Wonderland
'Til the Queen screams, ``Off with your head!''
And life will always get twisted
When you're living it through the looking glass
Asshole Seeks Bimbo:
Aging slacker, successful, bored, handsome, fit, power hungry, verbal, smart, funny, not bald yet, right wing sympathizer; seeks intimacy, adventure, something resembling a love life. You: cute, uppity, passionate, opinionated, bit naughty, aesthetically inclined, literate, street-smart, nights out, in-shape, under 38. Depressed, terminally happy need not apply.``Agent Mulder, every day, every life is in danger. That's just life.''-- S.F. Chronicle Friday, March 29, 1996 Relationships! Ad of the Week
``Goodbye, God, I'm going to Bodie.''
-- Prayer by a small girl moving to Bodie, California,
a mining town near Mono Lake, noted for gunfights, murder
and prostitution, some time in the 1800s.
``If it wasn't for 50% of the people here, the other half would be all of them.''
-- from the
replies to
Jenny
Holzer's art piece,
Please Change Beliefs.
``Never eat more than you can lift.''
-- ibid
``The only thing for sure is the breath you just took.''
-- ibid
``We all anesthetize ourselves against death through one form of madness or another.''
-- ibid
``A strange game -- the only winning move is not to play.''
-- Joshua, War Games
``Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I
have the heart of a young boy -- in a jar on my desk.''
-- Robert Bloch (not Stephen King; thanks Karen)
``Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman
she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.''
-- TV listing for the movie, The Wizard of Oz, in the Marin Paper (sic).
``Dorothy was a whiny, stupid, spoiled brat who was clueless on how to manage a rat-sized dog.''
-- ``Wolf Who Rules'' by Wen Spencer (2006), pg. 236 (paperback ed.)
``More information is always good.''
-- Patrick Combs' brother
(check out Patrick's quotes page as well).
``When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.''
-- Raoul Duke
``I didn't bite and claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetables.''
``In Los Angeles it's illegal to know what you do for a living.''
-- Walter Surface, in ``Gun, With Occasional Music'' by Jonathan Lethem, pg. 216
``The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.''
-- Paul Valéry
``It's so beautifully arranged on the plate -- you know someone's fingers have been all over it.''
-- Julia Child, in reference to haute cuisine
``Mathematics is concerned with ideas and inspiration, with islands of elegance
poking up from a sea of drudgery... Mathematics was invented to do things.''
-- Nathaniel Grossman
``Look, I think that's nonsense, and I'm prepared to argue that.''
-- Thomas Kuhn (in response to his critics' claims that he was arguing that science was little more than mob rule. You go, girl!)
``And that, after all, is the nature of such secrets: they are not what cannot be known but what cannot be acknowledged.''
-- The New Yorker, June 17, 1996, ``White Like Me'', Life and Letters by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pg. 69
Battle not with monsters,``I do not endorse NetScape; everything else just sucks.''
lest ye become a monster...
and if you gaze into the abyss,
the abyss gazes also
into you...-- Friedric Wilhelm Nietzsche
``You can't look back if you're decapitated.''
-- Punch Drunk
There ain't no answer
There ain't going to be any answer
There never has been an answer
That's the answer-- Gertrude Stein
You know, if voters have sent us one message loud and clear, it's that they're tired of government inspectors telling them what to eat, drink and breath! Take spoiled meat -- it costs us 4,000 lives, 5 million illnesses and over $3 billion in medical expenses yearly.``He asked me if I knew what time it was. I said, `Yes, but not right now.' ''
But does that justify the horrific regulatory burden on the meat industry? Couldn't we live with 8,000 deaths? Or 12,000?
Americans are crying out for cost-benefit ratios that make sense to business! If I'm elected, they'll get 'em!
Bob Dole for President. Because we all have to die of something.-- Bob Dole, as ``quoted'' in Doonesbury, by Gary Trudeau, August 20, 1995
``DO SOMETHING, EVEN IF IT SUCKS...''
-- quoted in The New Republic, June 3, 1996, pg. 26.,
from George H. Morris III's Rage Page, which no longer exists.
``Let us do our best, even if it gets us nowhere.''
-- Henry Miller, from a notice outside his house.
``It's not possible to do anything less than your best if you want to have an academic career.
You do a lot that's unrecognized and uncompensated, but that's what's required.''
-- Anne MacLachlan, October 16, 1996
``A journalist is someone who is stimulated by a deadline -- if he had more time, he'd write worse.''
-- Karl Kraus
``Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.''
-- Groucho Marx (thanks to Gary Wilkens for the attribution)
``Fellini made documentaries.''
-- Bob Harris (Check out The Scoop!)
``Age doesn't diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.''
-- Jim Fiebig
``An egoist is a person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.''
-- Ambrose Bierce
Grant me the Serenity to Accept the Things I Cannot Change;``I went for a walk last night, and my girlfriend asked me, `How long are you going to be gone?' I said, `The whole time.' ''
The Courage to Change the Things I Cannot Accept;
And the Wisdom to Hide the Bodies of Those People
I had to Hurt Today because they Pissed Me Off.-- Mona Radice
``There's a lot more to shopping than just going out and buying stuff!''
-- Secret Admirer, 1985
``There is a thin line between ignorance and arrogance, and only I have managed to erase that line.''
-- Dr. Science
``It's very difficult to find evidence of behavior in the fossil record.''
-- Greg Erickson
``It's not claiming to be life on Mars, but it tells us some nice stuff.''
-- Kevin Padian
``There are always alternatives.''
-- Mr. Spock, First Officer and Science
Officer, Federation Starship Enterprise, NCC-1701, Stardate 2822.3 (``The
Galileo Seven'', and elsewhere.)
List of Bart Simpson's Blackboard Quotations
Episode numbers indicate the blackboard scene used when the episode was shown for the first time; in some cases, the one used in Canada is listed where it was `original' and the USA one was repeated.Note that all quotes were originally in all capital letters, but any punctuation appears as it did in the original quotes. Openings are listed in the order in which they were first shown. If an episode is not listed, either it did not have a blackboard quote the first time it was shown, or it used a repeated opening. An `x' after an episode number indicates it took place during the episode, a `*' indicates a note.
(It actually looks like this: I WILL NOT CUT CORNERS " " " " " )
``Just you wait -- it's going to be hailing golf balls the size of basketballs before long!''
-- Dan Gluesenkamp (Yes, he really said this.)
``Slow and cynical wins the race.''
-- me (inspired by Bill Lemon, or, at least, a comment he made), November 5, 1996
``When everyone's doing it, it won't be popular anymore.''
``If I don't see you in the future I'll see you in the pasture.''
-- Michael `Wes' Westphal, November 15, 1996
``Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.''
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
``Free advertising!?! Free advertising -- now, that's something you just... can't buy.''
-- Mr. Jameson, ``News Radio'', January 8, 1997
``It's not a toy if you don't break it the first day.''
-- Mike Dickinson
drsteve's corollary: It's not a tool if you don't injure yourself with it the first day.
``With more dimensions, it's easier to get lost.''
-- Al Kelley
You are a disgrace to your baptism!!``...[I]t's important to realize that when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.''
You are a poor excuse for a Marine!!
You are a pathetic senile old man!!
You are a slimy coward!!-- `B-1' Bob Dornan, screaming at a fellow Republican who supported Loretta Sanchez, Dornan's opponent in the race for his Orange County, California House of Representatives seat.
(As an aside, I must say that I'm not sure I can find the right words to describe this. Awesome, perhaps, like standing in the middle of the street, seeing an out-of-control cablecar rushing towards you, knowing you will be crushed, powerless to move. ``...A disgrace to your baptism!'' Wow. What a prick. If you want, you can read more fun facts about B-1 Bob.)
``...[S]enator Adelbert M. Bryan... was reelected in November despite
shooting his own son to death after the young man charged him with a machete.
On other occasions, Bryan reportedly has shot a cow, smashed a news
photographer's camera and was accused, though acquited, of looting after
Hurricane Hugo.''
-- The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, January 13, 1997, pg. 13.
``Iraq is more democratic than America... You have divorce. You have abortion.
But, thanks to President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi Christians are forbidden to have
abortions or to divorce. So I enjoy all my rights -- much more than in so-called
democratic countries.''
-- Patriarch Raphael Bidawid, Iraq's highest-ranking Catholic,
The New Yorker, June 17, 1996, ``Saddam Wins Again'',
Letter From Baghdad by T. D. Allman, pg. 63
(I don't think I'm even capable of commenting on this...)
``[Y]ou look at what they charged me with and what they found me guilty of
and see if you can tell me they won, except for putting me in jail.''
-- Dan Rostenkowski,
in The Washington Post, May 1, as reported in
The New Republic, May 27, 1996, Notebook section, pg. 11.
``[From] everything you read, when [Hitler] came in he was
good. They built tremendous highways and got all the factories going. He
went nuts, he went berserk. I think his own generals tried to kill him,
didn't they? Everybody knows he was good at the beginning, but he just went
too far.''
-- Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott, defending her ownership of
a World War II armband with a swastika on it, as reported in
The New Republic, May 27, 1996, Notebook section, pg. 11.
(Couldn't she have just said she needs the design to show her decorator...?)
The San Francisco Chronicle, May 8, 1996, pg. C1: ``Sacramento -- A state Senate panel yesterday approved a quixotic new weapon against graffiti -- a bill requiring spray paint cans in Southern California to be operated by extenison cords or radio waves.'' (Mike Moser's response: ``What, they've never heard of felt-tipped pens?'')
``I thought of killing myself, but that would only continue the cycle of violence.''
-- Dan Akroyd, to his therapist after confessing to poisoning his neighbor, in Getting Away With Murder.
Suggestions to Park Rangers:
``This has to be the only place where a T-Rex is an indicator species for the health of the community.''
-- Andy Shedlock, in regard to VLSB.
``To make a promise to a woman that you cannot keep, is to aim your Winnebago into very deep water.''
-- Garrison Keillor, News from Lake Woebegone, January 25, 1997
In reference to slides as part of a presentation:
``Two per minute's a film.'' -- Dan Gluesenkamp
``Two per minute, that's like claymation.'' -- Stuart Allison, August 11, 1996
``The media are now the tool of tyrants and despots. Tyrants and despots
encourage fear, because fearful people will accept extreme political
solutions, will demand extreme political solutions.''
-- Jon
Carroll, S. F. Chronicle, January 8, 1997.
``Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.''
-- Friedric Wilhelm Nietzsche, ``The Gay Science''
``If it wasn't for this demo I'd probably just be typing and saving and printing.''
-- Comment by a guy giving a demo of Microsoft Office '97, after stating
that he had spent the weekend prior to the demo learning the software.
The Facts of Life! (Thanks, Marlene!)
``We've jumped over the walls of the human condition by climbing on the backs of animals.''
-- Martin Warshaw, on his deathbed, in ``Holy Fire'' by Bruce Sterling, 1996, pg. 13.
``Those who worship the Muses end up running a museum.''
-- ibid, pg. 182
``Analyzing what people do -- that's like masturbating for a living without having any fun.''
-- Bill Lemon, March 14, 1997
Check out Cynthia's Quotes!
``Try not to take too much for granted. Start with the previous sentence.''
-- Me
``I'd rather look at a hundred corpses than some of my own work. People come and go -- bad art is forever.''
-- Zoltan (a.k.a. Alan Arkin), on ``Chicago Hope'', March 17, 1997.
``A two-bit computer is going to be pretty good for factoring the number two.''
-- Dan Gluesenkamp, in reference to the current state of quantum computing technology
This day has been given to me fresh and clear.``[T]he world needs to learn how to take chances again. The road to success lies between foolhardiness and a timid demand for certainty.''
I can either use it or throw it away.
I promise that I shall use this day to the fullest,
realizing that it can never come back again.
I realize that this is my life to use or throw away.-- The Marva Collins Pledge (Marva Collins ran a small private school in the Chicago ghetto). From, ``Firestar'', by Michael Flynn, 1996, pg. 101
What if the bird will not sing?``You look at any woman at all, no matter how fine she is -- and somewhere there's a guy who's tired of sleeping with her.''
Nobunaga answers, `Kill it!'
Hideyoshi answers, `Make it want to sing.'
Ieyasu answers, `Wait.'Japanese poem about three great warlords in medieval Japan, who vied with each other to unify the country. ibid, pg. 411.
``Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular?''
(Thanks to Dan for this one!)
``Television can take a piece of cardboard and build him into a celebrity.''
-- Howard Stern, May 15, 1997 (in reference to Mike Douglas, among others.)
``There are some questions that can never be answered, but we don't know which ones they are.''
-- Ray Magliozzi, April 20, 1997, ``Car Talk''
``If things seem under control, you're just not going fast enough.''
-- Mario Andretti
``I don't want to be on any sort of mass transportation where the general public has access to the brakes.''
-- Dennis Miller, in reference to trains.
``Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died...''
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Zarathustra's Prologue, courtesy of
Bob Harris
Foreign Language Lessons:
The following were winners in a New York Magazine contest in which contestants were to take a well-known expression in a foreign language, change a single letter, and provide a definition for the new expression.
Check out Darren Embry's Past Quotes page. It includes such gems as:
``Introducing Microsoft Visual Assembler -- You just drag the assembly instructions onto the registers!''
-- Jacob Wilkins, December 5, 1996 (Awesome!)
and
``You want a magic bullet to protect your children in cyberspace. You won't
find that anywhere. I have seen some schools ask about software that will
allow students to surf the internet unsupervised. What other school activities
exist where kids do something UNSUPERVISED? None. Your job as a parent is to
supervise your kids, set limits, encourage their intellectual development and
teach them to distringuish between right and wrong.''
-- Glen Roberts of Full Disclosure, from
Computer Underground
Digest 9.03, January 12, 1997
and
``There's a lot of stupid people out there. Just to prove it, think
of how dumb the average person is, and then realize that half of the
people out there are stupider than that.''
-- George Carlin
``Just another academic with his feet in the clouds and his head underground.''
-- Kristin Balder-Froid, July 27, 1997
``A drug can be defined as a chemical that, when injected into an animal, produces a scientific paper.''
-- Tony Underwood, ``Experiments in Ecology'', 1997, pg. 106
``In Berkeley, vegetarianism is a competitive sport, in which people compete
for the title of `granolier than thou'.''
-- Bill Lemon, August 4, 1997
Things We Can Learn From Dogs
``If you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen them all.''
-- forestry expert and number theorist Ronald Reagan
``Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas.''
-- former Australian cabinet minister Keppel Enderbery
``The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people that make them unsafe.''
-- former Philadelphia mayor and police chief Frank Rizzo
``He was a man of great statue.''
-- Boston mayor Thomas Menino on former mayor John Collins.
``It's like an Alcatraz around my neck.''
-- Boston mayor Menino on the shortage of city parking spaces.
``They're multipurpose. Not only do they put the clips on, but they take them off.''
-- Pratt & Whitney spokesperson explaining why the company charged the Air Force nearly $1000 for an ordinary pair of pliers.
``The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep.''
-- Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live.
``I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.''
-- Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents.
``It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.''
-- Richard M. Nixon
``I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them.
There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and
the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.''
-- John Wayne (My hero -- what a swell guy.)
``If you let that sort of thing go on, your bread and butter will be cut right out from under your feet.''
-- former British foreign minister Ernest Bevin
``To err is human, to moo is bovine.''
--
DeForest Kelley
``He's dead, Jim.'' |
|---|
An Air Force major was once asked why there were so many rituals of hierarchy
in the military. He replied, `Because this is one of the few jobs where you
may have to tell someone, `Go die.' ''
-- The New Yorker, Feb. 17, 1997, pg. 8
``Mr. Guilty is liable.''
-- Peter Jennings, announcing the verdict of the O. J. Simpson civil trial,
as reported in The New Republic editorial, February 24, 1997
``Beware what you set your heart upon. For it surely shall be yours.''
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
``We consider ourselves bi-coastal, if you consider the Mississippi River one of the coasts.''
-- Ron Albertson, ``Waiting for Guffman''
``Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave.''
-- from an ad orginally meant to say ``Pepsi Comes Alive'',
mistranslated into Chinese; from Carl Campos' page of
stupid quotes, which no longer exists.
``The dairy cow -- the surrogate mother of the human race.''
-- Some milk industry weenie, June 21, 1997
``I'm healthy -- I'm alive, aren't I?''
-- me, August 23, 1997
A list of ``objectionable subjects'', according to a form distributed by Mike Trelow, the intent of which is to be ``put into the teacher's hand and his child's file, and (the child is to be) taken out of class whenever any of the subjects outlined in it (come) up'' (the child in this case is a fifth-grader); from ``The Devil and Ms. Forrester'', East Bay Express, Vol. 19, No. 46, Aug 22, 1997:``Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.''...keeping of a diary or a journal or a log book; sociograms, psychodrama, blindfold walks; material designed to effect behavorial, emotional, or attitudinal characteristics of an individual; death education; drugs and alcohol; nuclear war; globalism; interpersonal relationships, parents, parenting; human sexuality, including pre-marital sex, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, group sex and marriages, prostitution, incest, bestiality, mastrubation, divorce, population control, and roles of males and females; guided fantasy, hypnotic techniques; organic evolution, including Darwin's theory; discussions of witchcraft, occultism, the supernatural and mysticism, including visualizing conversations with dead historical figures.
(Gee, that just leaves the topics for discussion wide open, doesn't it? And what the Hell is ``death education''??? - Well, I asked...)
``You haven't seen multitasking until you've seen Doom and Quake run side by side.''
-- Kent Friis, 29 April, 1997
``If you want guarantees, buy a toaster.''
-- Pieter
``Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.''
-- Frank Zappa
``The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then, Else Else.''
-- Rich Steiner (with a small extension to a more general case by yours truly)
Graffiti
``Thirty-sevent percent (37%) of all [U. S.] households have more than three (3) televisions...''
-- ``Digital TV: The 2006 Problem'' by Herb Mendelsohn, Microtimes, July 21, 1997, pg. 132.
(Jesus F*#&$!% Christ!!! Let's put this another way: Pick five houses at random. Two of
them have four or more TVs! What the Hell is going on here?!?)
In reference to seeing an animatronic panda bear in a zoo:
``It's not a real thrill, is it?? It's artificial!!''``You'd rather talk than live, wouldn't you???''
``Having pandas in England is artificial, for God's sake!! What'da ya want me to do -- put everyone on a plane and fly 'em to Africa!?!''
``They come from China.''
``Not this baby -- this was handmade in Belgium. I don't want some cheap Chinese panda.''-- ``Fierce Creatures'', 1997
``Same Planet, Different Worlds''
-- The Far Side
``SOMEBODY is paying for YOUR FREE SPEECH.''
-- A ribbon from Ribbon-O-Matic
``When Windows 98 ships next year, most of the attention will focus on its
Web-centric interface. The interface's best feature is that you can turn it off.''
-- ``Windows 98: The Windowed Wide Web'', by Jeff Bertolucci, Bay Area Computer Currents, August 19, 1997
``Non-sequitors make me eat lamp shades.''
-- Wes, September 5, 1997
Here's a good page of science quotes, including:
``It's a bad plan that can't be changed.''
--Publius Syrus
and
``CARPE CLUE -- seize the manual!''
-- Darin May
Or you can go get the quote of the moment.
Bartlett's!!! (Yes!!!)
``Sartre had it only partly right. Hell isn't just other people; it's other people's homepages.''
-- Greg Allen
``(Our governments) have persuaded us that we'll be safe if only we
spend all our wealth so everybody on Earth can be killed in a moment --
when the governments decide the time has come.''
-- Vasily Gregorovich Lunacharsky (Vaygay), in ``Contact'', by Carl Sagan, 1985, pg. 403
``There are huge advertising budgets only when there's no difference between the products.
If the products really were different, people would buy the one that's better. Advertising
teaches people not to trus their judgement. Advertising teaches people to be stupid.''
-- ibid, pg. 225
``Do Buddhists believe in God, or not?''
``Their position seems to be that their God is so great he doesn't even have to exist.''
-- ibid, pg. 305
The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the Kingdom first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.``Information wants to be free. Believe it.''-- Confucis, from ``Great Learning'', as related in ibid, pg. 301
``The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously.''
-- Hubert H. Humphrey (Right on, Hubert!)
``You guys are a one-trick-pony: Have Equation, Will Travel.''
-- Mike Dickinson (In reference to our lab, of all things! This,
coming from the guy who works only on flies! ``Have Flies, Will Travel'' is more like it!)
She had looked around, blinking against the stinging in her eyes that was not all smoke, and saw the other piles of clothes, the other people, the dead... and the dying, whose cries she could now recognize. Even across the years, she remembered that the first thought she could recognize was an apology: I'm sorry -- I didn't mean to... Even now, she knew this was both necessary and futile. It had not been her fault -- she had not caused the war -- but she was there, and so far untouched, and for that, if nothing else, she must apologize.``Lead me not into temptation; I know the way myself.''-- ``Once A Hero'', by Elizabeth Moon, 1997, pg. 85
...We will be barbecuing something for everybody's taste:Normisms!
- Whole turkeys - for those who are afraid of E. coli
- Burgers and hot dogs - for those who are afraid of salmonella
- Salmon - for those who are afraid of meat, and
- Veggie burgers - for those who are afraid of everything.-- from the U. C. Berkeley Chemistry Dept.'s annual picnic announcement, 1997
Norm Peterson's Famous Quotes (from TV's ``Cheers'' -- Thanks to Wes for these)
``Can I draw you a beer, Norm?''Unabomber Haiku! (Could this possibly be in bad taste!?)
``No, I know what they look like. Just pour me one.''``How's a beer sound, Norm?''
``I dunno. I usually finish them before they get a word in.''``What's shaking, Norm?''
``All four cheeks & a couple of chins.''``What would you say to a nice beer, Normie?''
``Going Down?''``What's new, Normie?''
``Terrorists, Sam. They've taken over my stomach and they're demanding beer.''``What'll it be, Normie?''
``Just the usual, Coach. I'll have a froth of beer and a snorkel.''``What would you say to a beer, Normie?''
``Daddy wuvs you.''``What'd you like, Normie?''
``A reason to live. Give me another beer.''``What'll you have, Normie?''
``Well, I'm in a gambling mood, Sammy. I'll take a glass of whatever comes out of that tap.''
``Looks like beer, Norm.''
``Call me Mister Lucky.''
``Hey Norm, how's the world been treating you?''
``Like a baby treats a diaper.''``It's a dog-eat-dog world out there and I'm wearing Milk-bone underwear.''
(Thanks to Dan for sending this along!)
Technology badDan Quayl(e)
Please tell me you like my beard
Or I'll blow you up
Fun, easygoing
single, white Unabomber
seeks same for love, laughs.
Ed McMahon of death:
``You may already be a
winner! Open now!''
Bad Unabomber!
Blowing people all to hell.
Do you take requests?
Farewell to tenure
Sniping from the tower clock
already been done
Why can't I get this
stupid computer to print?
Time to buy some stamps.
Should I comb my hair
Or should I wear it matted
Judge prefers it combed
Remember when you
Laughed at his fake fur parka?
He remembers, too.
``Open your present...''
``No, you open your present...''
Kaczinski Christmas
It's circumstantial
all that stuff in my cabin
I found it all. Yeah.
My Daddy said BANG
When he taught me about sex.
I misunderstood.
Ted's fate worse than death:
``You're assigned to prison shop.
Make computer chips.''
Quotes from the master. (Yes, it is easy to poke fun at an idiot. So what?)
``I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.''``Governments need enemies to justify their existence.''``If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure.''
``Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.''
``Welcome President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.''
``Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.'' (You go first, Dan.)
Vice President Dan Quayl(e), during a television interview, when asked about then Chief of Staff John Sununu's resignation: ``This isn't a man who is leaving with his head between his legs.''
``It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago.''
``We are the most intelligent planet on Earth.'' (I think that should have been: ``I am the most inelegant planet on Earth.'')
On the San Francisco earthquake: ``The loss of life will be irreplaceable.''
On the complex social issues behind the Los Angeles Riots: ``When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame.''
``What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.'' (How true, how true, indeed.)
``The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.'' (Unfortunately, this last is not a true fact.)
``I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change.'' (Time to change your mind, Dan, or at least your underwear.)
``One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is `to be prepared'.'' (Not only can he not spell, he can't count, either.)
``May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world.''
-- The Quayl(e)s' 1989 Christmas card.``Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.'' (God forbid.)
``We don't want to go back to tomorrow, we want to go forward.'' (Some of us want to go forward into yesterday, however, which isn't such a great idea on the face of it.)
``I have made good judgements in the Past. I have made good judgements in the Future.'' (Obviously not an inhabitant of the Present, I'm sure ol' Dan knows of what he speaks.)
``The future will be better tomorrow.'' (Let's hope so.)
``We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world.'' (Well, someone's got to.)
``People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.'' (Or they can be Vice President of the United States.)
``I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.''
-- Vice President Dan Quayl(e) to Sam Donaldson, August 17, 1989``We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a `part' of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a `part' of Europe.''
``Public speaking is very easy.''
-- Vice President Dan Quayl(e) to reporters in October 1988``I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.'' (I think this was supposed to be, ``I am not part of a problem.'')
``I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix.'' (Which is practically in California, practically speaking. How practical this all is.)
``A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.'' (Actually, this isn't just stupid, it's incorrect, a winning combination if there ever was one.)
``We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.'' (Dammit!)
``For NASA, space is still a high priority.'' (Otherwise they could just change it to National Aeronautics Association... naa.)
``Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.''
``The American people would not want to know of any misquotes that Dan Quayl(e) may or may not make.''
``We're all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.''
``It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.'' (This is my favorite.)
``It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.'' (It's time for Dan Quayl(e) to enter the solar system and join his fellow astronauts, preferably somewhere in the vicinity of Jupiter.)
``You need to take these life-threatening drugs seriously and get them on the market.'' (In reference to how the Bush administration had cut red tape and made it easier to get pharmaceuticals approved. Yeah, like, whatever, Dan.)
A correction printed in the Daily Californian: ``Retraction: The `Greek Special' is a huge 18 inch pizza and not a huge 18 inch penis, as... described in [an ad]. Blondie's Pizza would like to apologize for any confusion Friday's ad may have caused.'' (I'm not sure ``confusion'' is the appropriate word there...)
``Life is beautiful, all God's children are innocent. Let's talk bail.''
-- A judge on ``Law & Order'', at a bail hearing
``Well, I think in a way Bob Dylan was sort of the Dan Bern of the '60's.''
-- Dan Bern, The Anchorage Press, May 1 - 7, 1997 / Vol. 6, Ed. 17
Peter Anspach's list of The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord!
Sheri Kelly, Philosopher Consultant``I have pointed out to several famous decision theorists that there are no odds at which I would bet my son's life for a dime. After a half hour of argument, they say, `You are simply irrational'. I do not think so. I think it is rather they who have a problem with rationality.''
Specialties:1-800-KANT-CHAT
- Converting qualia into functional descriptions (for anxiety disorders).
- Teaching you to cope with your noumenal apprehensions (for procrastinators).
- Training in how to argue other people out of existence (for social phobics).
In some possible world, there exists a 100% money back guarantee if not fully satisfied. Specific contingencies not covered in this contract.-- Sheri Kelly (this was too good to pass up!)
``Alexander [the Great] asked Diogenes if there was anything in the world
he wanted. Diogenes, without looking up, replied: `Yes. Get out of my light.' ''
-- Plutarch (Check out Ohio State University's pantheon of
famous philosophers for more of the same)
``An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the
consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor
who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and
does not want to be told otherwise.''
-- Aldo Leopold (Thanks, Wes)
``Is being an idiot like being high all the time?''
-- Janeane Garofolo
``Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.''
-- Don Marquis
``The meek shall inherit the Earth. They are too weak to refuse.''
-- John Hoover, ``Sewer, Gas & Electric'', by Matt Ruff, pg. 165
``I drink twelve fluid ounces each day.''``Artificial intelligence wasn't something to be trifled with, particularly if you didn't have the documentation that went with the hardware.''
``Of food coloring?''
``Low-level carcinogen. I'm building up a tolerance.''
``To what?''
``To cancer.''-- ibid, pg. 184
``A good mind in pursuit of truth and justice is never outmatched!''
-- Ayn Rand in a hurricane lantern, ibid, pg. 299
``Like an artist figuring deductions on his tax return. If life is your
inspiration, what isn't a business expense?''
-- John Hoover, ibid, pg. 342
``Attention. This is Special Agent Ernest G. Vogelsang of the F. B. I. If
you are within the sound of my voice, you are breaking the law.''
-- (Like the man said) Special Agent Ernest G. Vogelsang of the F. B. I., ibid, pg. 422
It might be an impossible task, but at least it was a well-defined one. The rules for performance were no problem. He had learned them long ago: you succeed, or you die trying. Until you succeed, you never relax. Until you die, you never give up.``Human culture is built around four basic elements: sexual relationships, territorial rights, individual intellectual dominance, and desire for group acceptance.''He urged them on without inviting discussion. The trip had been an exhausting trial by fire for everyone, but he knew better than to ask if they could scramble their way over a kilometer or two of difficult terrain. He would learn what they could not do when they collapsed.
-- Hans Rebka's thoughts, ``Summertide'' by Charles Sheffield, pgs. 196-197 (in ``The Heritage Universe'' edition)
``Delay is the deadliest form of denial.''
-- ``Transcendence'', by Charles Sheffield, pg. 499 (in ``The Heritage Universe'' edition)
She had seen it happen a hundred times in faculty meetings, and much as she hated and despised the process, she was not immune to it. You proposed a theory. Even in your own mind, it began as no more than tentative. Then it was questioned, or criticized -- and as soon as it was attacked, emotion took over. You prepared to defend it to the death.``When one door closes another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us.''-- ibid, pg. 524
Lang's Law: Everything always takes longer.
Lang's list of Great Truths:
- 1)
- Once you win, shut up. More talk only makes people want to argue back.
- Corollary A)
- If you save time in an argument, don't waste it. Start work on the next problem.
- Corollary B)
- Don't waste time solving the wrong problems.
- 2)
- If you win too easy, better ask what's going on that you don't know about.
-- ibid, pgs. 592-593
``Describing the Internet as `a network of networks' is like calling the Space
Shuttle `a thing that flies' ''
-- John Lester of Massachusetts General Hospital (from his email signature file)
When a spokesperson for the Texas Dept. of Corrections was asked the reason for the recent increase in executions of death row inmates, he responded by stating that all the guards wanted the same week off for vacation.
``If you want to dispose of empty cartons, bags of trash, etc.,
don't put them in the halls. This is in violation of fire
regulations and, in the crowded lower hallways, increases [the] risk of
tripping and, concomittantly, lawyers.''
-- Dave McGuire, The VLSB ``Griffin'', Vol. 3, No. 5, September 30, 1997
``Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even
though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor
spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they
live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.''
-- Theodore Roosevelt (Thanks to Dave McGuire for this!)
``He sniffed the air and frowned slightly. Bartholomew was a sommelier of
heavy metal. `Yeah. Not bad for a two-umlaut band.' ''
-- ``Zodiac'', by Neal Stephenson, 1988, pg. 103
``There were a dozen rich white guys and one of me. Actually, I'm a white
guy too, but somehow I keep forgeting.''
-- ibid, pg. 153
``I have a penis.''
``Don't make me get my purse.''
-- Spin City, October 1, 1997
``There is no later! Later's a lie, man!''
-- Tom Peyer
``So remember, kids! Eat meat! And lots of it! It's nature's perfect food!''
-- Lance Blastoff, by Frank Miller
``But, Lance -- you said you love me! You promised you'd stay with me forever!''``Better living through Preferences.''
``Got what I was after, didn't I? I'm gone, babe.''Lance Blastoff says: ``Get it while you can get it -- then get going while the going's good!''
He's a role-model, kids! And he don't take no lip! Do what he tells you!
-- ibid
``Women -- they try to be so adult, and then just like that they sink all the
way down to your level.''
-- Dick Solomon (John Lithgow), ``Third Rock From the Sun'', October 8, 1997
``Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.''
--
``There is something fascinating about science. One gets such a wholesale
return of conjecture out of an trifling investment of fact.''
-- Mark Twain
``Those are great -- are they lizard?''
``No, they're Italian.''
-- ``Boogie Nights''
``Hope you Promise Keepers like it HOT. Maybe they'll let you run things down there.''
-- God, everywhere (Posted on the Women's Wire forum on the
Promise Keepers and their gathering)
``Wow! Who's the tomato?''
``Are you familiar with Darwin's theory of natural selection? I'll give
you the short version -- select someone else.''
-- ``Nine Volt'', #3
I met a traveller from an antique land,``What's it for?''
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 lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.''-- ``Ozymandias'', by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Immutable Laws of Dilbert
If you can't get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the butt.
Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've done and what you're going to do.
After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.
The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.
When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when the boss asks for a ride home from the office.
Keep your boss's boss off your boss's back.
Everything can be filed under ``miscellaneous.''
Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.
To err is human, to forgive is not our policy. (My favorite)
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work s/he is supposed to be doing.
Important letters that contain no errors will develop errors in the mail.
If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you will get out of it.
You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.
People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the number of pens that person is carrying.
When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
Following the rules will not get the job done.
Getting the job done is no excuse for not following the rules.
When confronted by a difficult problem you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, ``How would the Lone Ranger handle this?''
No matter how much you do, you never do enough.
The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for everything that goes wrong.
(And now for the real thing...)
A magazine recently ran a ``Dilbert Quotes'' contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life Dilbert-type managers. Here are some of the submissions:
As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday, and employees will receive their cards in two weeks. (This was the winning entry; Fred Dales, Microsoft Corp, Redmond, WA)What Our Group Expects:What I need is a list of specific unknown problems we will encounter. (Lykes Lines Shipping).
How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff? (Programming intern at Microsoft)
E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business. (Accounting Manager, Electric Boat Company)
This project is so important, we can't let things that are more important interfere with it. (Advertising/Marketing Manager, UPS)
Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule. No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now, go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them. (R&D Supervisor, Minnesota Mining & Mfg / 3M Corp)
My boss spent the entire weekend retyping a 25-page proposal that only needed corrections. She claims the disk I gave her was damaged and she couldn't edit it. The disk I gave her was write-protected. (CIO of Dell Computers)
Quote from the boss: ``Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.'' (Marketing executive, Citrix Corp)
My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my boss, he said she died so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, ``That would be better for me.'' (Shipping Executive, FTD Florists) (Don't forget to send flowers!)
We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees. (AT&T Lone [sic] Lines Division)
We recently received a memo from senior management saying, ``This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above.'' (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division) (This gets my vote for `most surreal')
One day my boss asked me to submit a status report to him concerning a project I was working on. I asked him if tomorrow would be soon enough. He said, ``If I wanted it tomorrow, I would have waited until tomorrow to ask for it!'' (New Business Mgr, Hallmark Cards)
As director of communications, I was asked to prepare a memo reviewing our company's training programs and materials. In the body of the memo one of the sentences mentioned the ``pedagogical approach'' used by one of the training manuals. The day after I routed the memo to the executive committee, I was called into the HR Director's office, and was told that the executive VP wanted me out of the building by lunch. When I asked why, I was told that she wouldn't stand for ``perverts'' (pedophiles?) working in her company. Finally, he showed me her copy of the memo, with her demand that I be fired, with the word ``pedagogical'' circled in red. The HR manager was fairly reasonable, and once he looked the word up in his dictionary and made a copy of the definition to send to my boss, he told me not to worry. He would take care of it. Two days later a memo to the entire staff came out, directing us that no words which could not be found in the local Sunday newspaper could be used in company memos. A month later, I resigned. In accordance with company policy, I created my resignation letter by pasting words together from the Sunday paper. (Taco Bell Corp)
Lucent Technologies is endeavorily determined to promote constant attention on current procedures of transacting business focusing emphasis on innovative ways to better, if not supercede, the expectations of quality. (This gem is the closing paragraph of a nationally-circulated memo from a large communications company.)
``I lost weight, but I also had diarrhea like you would not believe.''
-- Andie MacDowell (O-kaaay! Grabbed this from Scott's Page of
Evil, and boy was it! Unfortunately, it now seems to be gone... But don't despair!
Instead, check
here.)
Also from Scott's Page of Evil (these may be from Scott Himself - the last one certainly is):
``Modern society without organized religion would be like a crazed maniac without a chainsaw.''``Piers Anthony? *Ugh* he's like, the Judy Blume of sci-fi.
``Jesus died for your sins. Don't let Him have died in vain. Commit them!''
``Piers [Anthony's] most famous work would have to be the popular Xanth series. It's about magical idiots blundering around some sort of parallel version of Florida.''
``Whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real.''
-- Will James
``At this moment, in this cafe, we're sitting next to strangers. Everyone
will get up, leave and go their own way. And then, they'll never meet again.
And if they do, they won't realize that it's not for the first time.''
-- Kryzstof Kieslowski (Thanks to
Karen L. Kranack for this.)
``Liz Taylor has been in Betty Ford more than... Gerald Ford.''
``Boy, that Kevorkian, he is gettin' sloppy! The last one, he just backed over the guy.''
-- Bill Mahr
I don't really believe that the Pope believes that there's a God. He's too smart. The second-raters, the level of priests below him, maybe believe it. But not him.``If anything is more corrupting than power, it is power exercised in secret.''-- Marvin Minsky, as quoted in The New Yorker, October 20 & 27, 1997, pg. 222
(Q: If it is huberis to claim to know the mind of God, is it simply extreme arrogance to claim to know the mind of the Pope? Just curious...)
``No one ever dies wishin' she'd spent more time at the office.''
-- Sean Cassidy (Banshee), ``Generation X'', no. 32 (among others, apparently)
``Building a fast computer really comes down to good plumbing.''
``Virtual memory is for weenies.''
``Memory is like an orgasm: it's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.''
``If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use: two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?''
-- Seymour Cray (1925-1996), who was, for over 30 years, builder of the fastest computers on Earth
When Seymour Cray was told that Apple bought a Cray supercomputer to help design the next Mac, he replied:
``Interesting - I use a Mac to help me design the next Cray.''
(Note that some of the previous are from a really big page of computer quotes)
The World's Shortest Books
``My Plan To Find The Real Killers'' by OJ Simpson``He didn't say anything. I figgered he was one of those guys who didn't like to talk much -- that he had a lot on his mind.''``To All The Men I've Loved Before'' by Ellen DeGeneres
``The Book of Virtues'' by Dean Rains (who the hell is Dean Rains?!)
The Difference between Reality and Dilbert
Human Rights Advances in China
``Things I Wouldn't Do for Money'' by Dennis Rodman
Al Gore: The Wild Years
Amelia Earhart's Guide to the Pacific Ocean
America's Most Popular Lawyers
Career Opportunities for Liberal Arts Majors
Detroit - A Travel Guide
Different Ways to Spell ``Bob''
Dr. Kevorkian's Collection of Motivational Speeches
Easy UNIX
Ethiopian Tips on World Dominance
Everything Men Know About Women
Everything Women Know About Men
French Hospitality
George Foreman's Big Book of Baby Names
``How to Sustain a Musical Career'' by Art Garfunkel
Mike Tyson's Guide to Dating Etiquette
``One Hundred and One Spotted Owl Recipes'' by the EPA
Staple Your Way to Success
The Amish Phone Directory
The Engineer's Guide to Fashion
Johnny Cash's Guide to Fashion
The First Amendment does not say that there is freedom of expression provided the talk is not `dangerous'. It does not say that there is freedom of expression provided the utterance has no tendency to subvert. It does not put free speech and freedom of the press in the category of housing, sanitation, hours of work, factory conditions, and the like, and make it subject to regulation for the public good. Nor does it permit legislative restraint of freedom of expression so long as the regulation does not offend due process. All notions of regulation or restraint by government are absent from the First Amendment. For it says in words that are unambiguous, `Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.'``Mass numbers of people in the streets are about the only thing that scare governments.''-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, 1958
``The Berkeley Internet Kit -- that thing is a piece of shit! What was it, some student assignment?''
-- Andy Shedlock, November 25, 1997
``The powerful methods of the `Principia' now allow us, for the first time in history,
to speak of a `correctly formulated question' in theories of mathematics, and thus also,
further, to ask: `Is a correctly formulated mathematical question necessarily answerable?'
In other words: `Is every mathematical statement provable, either the statement itself, or - if
it states something false - it's opposite?'
It is to this, most fundamental question, that I have found the answer.
Which is no.''
-- Kurt Gödel, ``Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth''
Kurt Gödel died on January 14, 1978 in Princeton, New Jersey. In this century, it should be noted, Gödel's achievements in pure thought are virtually preeminent. Only Einstein's theory of general relativity represents an accomplishment of comparable intellectual grandeur. Of the actual course of Gödel's life I know little. Gödel took his degree in mathematics at the University of Vienna and remained in residence at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1938 until his retirement in 1976. By all accounts, he was a solitary and retiring figure. He taught no classes and offered rare public lectures. Those that he gave were accessible only to specialists. He held no office hours and did not concern himself with the rights of women or minority students. He was aloof and distant toward his colleagues. He failed to receive a full professorship at the Institute until 1953. A picture of Gödel in a volume published to commemorate his sixty-fifth birthday shows him standing against a blackboard. His face is utterly devoid of expression. His eyes are as bleak and pitiless as the sun.``There is no enemy so relentless as the sun.''-- ``Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic, Luck'' by David Berlinski, second edition, 1988, pg. 164
``You look better than good -- you look like a weatherman!''
-- Hank Hill, to his son
``I am as much to blame for your condition as the media and the Devil.''
-- Peggy Hill, to her son
``When giving a presentation, one's consistent flow of logic usually makes up
for one's inability to take oneself seriously.''
-- D. W. Jeffrey
``I'd love to fuck a politician, if only to try to break even.''
-- Mike Hunt
In my eyes he was no less than a literary Kostabi. What he wanted to be was another Picasso, which made no sense at all. Kostabi completes $100,000 Japanese commissions by calling his assistants between courses at Le Cirque. Picasso merely painted the contents of his own soul. And how hard, in the end, is that?``You know -- diagraming sentences. You take all these words strung together in a sentence, and you kill 'em!''-- Malcolm Gladwell, in Slate's introduction to hackery as part of their Hack-A-Thon.
``There is no conspiracy if only one person is doing it.''
-- Paul Vixie
When asked why he drove head-on into a brick wall at 90 miles-per-hour, the
man replied, before expiring, ``Because it was there.''
-- Anonymous
``There's a wonderful lecture series on the history of modern lecture series.''
-- Niles Crane, Frasier
``I've been doing The Fonda Workout: The Peter Fonda Workout. That's where I wake up, take a hit of acid,
smoke a joint, and go to my sister's house and ask her for money.''
-- Kevin Meaney
``USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of
four people make up 75 percent of the population.''
-- David Letterman
``Albert Camus wrote about the absurdity of the human condition -- waitresses are experts on that.''
-- A Praire Home Companion
``If you look in a man's eyes as you torture him, then you understand him.
When you ask him for information, you can tell from his eyes if he's telling
the truth when he says `I don't know.' The humane torturers would
stop at that point.'' [my emphasis added]
-- A Japanese veteran who had served in China during World War II, who also stated that most of the
soldiers who tortured Chinese civilians ``were regular people who simply
did their job[s].'' As reported in The San Francisco Bay Guardian, December
31, 1997, pg. 25. (Gimmie a fucking break.)
``A degree... is a first step down a ruinous highway. You don't want to
waste it so you go on to graduate work and doctoral research. You end up a
thorough-going ignoramus on everything in the world except for one
subdivisional sliver of nothing.''
-- Isaac Asimov, The Dead Past
``Guns don't kill people -- physics kills people!''
-- Dick Solomon, Third Rock from the Sun
``Guns don't kill people -- sucking wounds kill people!''
-- ``Lock 'N' Lowdown'', by Bruce McCall, The New Yorker, Feb 7, 2000, pg. 43
``Guns don't kill people -- the government does.''
-- Dale, ``King of the Hill''
``Guns don't kill people -- oh, wait, yes they do.''
Why ``Sports Scholarship'' is an Oxymoron
``Academic tenure is a life sentence without possibility of parole --
you can switch prisons, but you can't leave.''
-- M. Ian Westphal, January 25, 1998
I just thought you'd like to see what angels wear on their feet. Just out of curiosity. I'm not trying to prove anything, by the way. I'm a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that... So, the other reason I call myself Wonko the Sane is so that people will think I am a fool. That allows me to say what I see when I see it. You can't possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you're a fool.-- Wonko the Sane (a.k.a. John Watson), So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, by Douglas Adams, 1984, pg. 164-165 (U.S. paperback edition)
``Advertising is legalized lying.''(You're thinking, ``I bet these advertising quotes come from the same place!'' Well, you're right!)
-- H.G. Wells``Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.''
-- George Orwell
``Either that software you're using is really cool or you're trying not to soil your tie.''-- from Chuck Seggelin's Quote Book page (Home of really great stuff!)``So she takes out this tube, which is labeled `RAT' on one end, and `ME' on the other, she puts the rat end on the rat's nose, and puts the other end in her mouth and blows into it until the rat wakes up.''
And here, for your edification, is the Outriders of Reality Reference Manual & Travel Guide.
``[Bill] Gates is like smallpox. You have to go in there and you have to
nail it. If you leave it lying around, it will just come back.''
-- Frederick Waren-Boulton, a former chief economist in the Department of
Justice's antitrust division, in ``The Force of An Idea'', The New
Yorker, January 12, 1998, pg. 36 (an excellent article!)
More Bumperstickers
``StoP tHE LogGINg oR wE WiLl coNtInUE To KIll oNe CeleBrITY EacH WeEK.
There ARe nO SkIinG `aCciDenTS'.''
-- THE TREES
``E pur si muove!''
[It still moves!]
(or, )
[...and still it moves!]
(or, )
[...but it does move!]
-- Galileo (as quoted by Bertolt Brecht?)
``Lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus
comes back he's gonna want to see a fucking cross, man?''
-- Bill
Hicks
Me: ``Mulder's not very bright here.''
Kristin: ``Mulder's never very bright, frankly. If it wasn't
for Scully he'd be dead a thousand times over.''
-- A conversation between myself and my wife, while watching
The X-Files, episode 5X11, ``Kill Switch''
``Follow Your Bliss
Off A Cliff ''
``As you know, we Americans are notoriously bad at math: two-thirds of us
barely understand percentages; the other three-fifths have trouble with fractions.''
-- Bob Harris
``Unfortunately, some folks think the 'net is only gossip and pornography, but that's just what they show
on TV -- which is itself mostly gossip and pornography. So there you are.''
-- ibid
``A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket.
`You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?' she sneered. I replied,
`I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too.' ''
-- Jake Johansen
``If you ever see me getting beaten by the police, put down the video camera and come help me.''
-- Bobcat Goldthwait
``I'm a psychic amnesiac. I know in advance what I'll forget.''
-- Michael McShane
``My mom said she learned how to swim. Someone took her out in the lake
and threw her off the boat. That's how she learned how to swim. I
said, `Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.' ''
-- Paula Poundstone
``I think that's how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, `Gee, I'm enjoying the crime
and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.' ''
-- Richard Jeni
``Property is theft, therefore theft is property, therefore this ship is mine.''
-- Zaphod Beeblebrox, The Restaurant At The End of The Universe, Ch. 20
(It should be noted that The Restaurant At The End of The Universe is so full of good quotes that to really do it justice you should just read the whole book, which is conveniently available online.)
(Although there is also this:
``Well, I mean, YES idealism, YES the dignity of pure research, YES the pursuit of truth in all its
forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if there's any REAL
truth, it's that the entire multi-dimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being
run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another 10 million
years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one
could do with the exercise.''
-- One of the white mice in The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy)
``Don't take off your fingers.''
-- Marlene M. Martinez, March 2, 1998
``Everyone exists for my amusement...''
-- Sunflower's Motto
Twenty-First Century Haiku
Three things are certain:-- David Dixon
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
Everything is gone;-- David Carlson
Your life's work has been destroyed.
Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?
I'm sorry, there's -- um ---- Owen Mathews
insufficient -- what's-it-called?
The term eludes me ...
Windows NT crashed.-- Peter Rothman
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
Seeing my great fault-- Chris Walsh
Through darkening blue windows
I begin again
The code was willing,-- Barry L. Brumitt
It considered your request,
But the chips were weak.
Printer not ready.-- Pat Davis
Could be a fatal error.
Have a pen handy?
A file that big?-- David J. Liszewski
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
Errors have occurred.-- Charlie Gibbs
We won't tell you where or why.
Lazy programmers.
Server's poor response-- Rik Jespersen
Not quick enough for browser.
Timed out, plum blossom.
Chaos reigns within.-- Suzie Wagner
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Login incorrect.-- Jason Axley
Only perfect spellers may
enter this system.
This site has been moved.-- Charles Matthews
We'd tell you where, but then we'd
have to delete you.
wind catches lily-- Nick Sweeney
scatt'ring petals to the wind:
segmentation fault
ABORTED effort:-- Mike Hagler
Close all that you have.
You ask way too much.
First snow, then silence.-- Simon Firth
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.
With searching comes loss-- Howard Korder
and the presence of absence:
``My Novel'' not found.
The Tao that is seen-- Bill Torcaso
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.
The Web site you seek-- Joy Rothke
cannot be located but
endless others exist
Stay the patient course-- David Ansel
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down
A crash reduces-- James Lopez
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
There is a chasm-- Rahul Sonnad
of carbon and silicon
the software can't bridge
Yesterday it worked-- Margaret Segall
Today it is not working
Windows is like that
To have no errors-- Brian M. Porter
Would be life without meaning
No struggle, no joy
You step in the stream,-- Cass Whittington
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.
No keyboard present-- Jim Griffith
Hit F1 to continue
Zen engineering?
Hal, open the file-- Jennifer Jo Lane
Hal, open the damn file, Hal
open the, please Hal
Out of memory.-- Francis Heaney
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.
Having been erased,-- Judy Birmingham
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.
The ten thousand things-- Jason Willoughby
How long do any persist?
Netscape, too, has gone.
Rather than a beep-- Len Dvorkin
Or a rude error message,
These words: ``File not found.''
Serious error.-- Ian Hughes
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
``If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own.''
-- Scoop Nisker (how I could have
let this go until now is beyond me)
``I'll have the matter-anti-matter latte.''
-- Andy Shedlock, March 17, 1997
``I ran into a homeless person the other day and he asked me for money and I
asked him why he didn't have a job, and he said, `Nobody will hire me!'
So I go, `What do you do?' and he said, `I dunno. Nothing.' So I said to
him, `Well why don't you try something a little less competitive?' ''
-- Jaymes B. Warnock
``Did you hear about the insomniac agnostic dyslexic nymphomaniac who
stayed up all night wondering if there is a dog and whether to have
sex with it?''
-- M. Ian Westphal
``If you're an idiot, too bad.''
-- me, April 8, 1998
``In Ohio, an unidentified man in his late twenties walked into a police station with a 9-inch wire protruding from his forehead and calmly asked officers to give him an X-ray to help him find his brain, which he claimed had been stolen. Police were shocked to learn that the man had drilled a 6-inch deep hole in his skull with a Black & Decker power drill and had stuck the wire in to try and find the missing brain.'' (Who cares if this is true or not -- it's too good to pass up!)
``Do you want to tell me the truth, or do you just want me
to know it?''
-- Lily Tomlin, Murphy Brown, April 13, 1998
``Joe, have you ever had an evergreen sandwitch?''
-- Mateo Rutherford (as reported to me by John Sabo) (drsteve -- naming names for over twenty years)
A friend of mine lent me a copy of `Dianetics', which I proceeded to read. A great deal of fuss was made in the introduction that most failures to understand were made because one read past a word one did not understand. Pages and pages reinforced the tenet that you should not read past a word you did not understand.``Writing is HELL!! Every word is like giving birth to twins.''Having read the introduction, I proceded to Chapter One, which began `Dianetics...', and in accordance with the book's teachings, I promptly put the book down.
-- Brian R. Speer, April 28, 1998
``I have a life -- I just choose not to do anything with it.''
-- M. Ian Westphal, May 12, 1998
``What you need is some editorial skill in your self-expression.
Between impulse and action, there is a realm of good taste, begging
for your acquaintance.''
``I find your `self-expression' ponderous.''
-- The Doctor and 7 of 9, Star Trek Voyager: One (Episode 193), May 17, 1998
``We're going to make film history, right here on video tape.''
-- Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), Boogie Nights
... others called the move wise, then cursed The Senator in private for putting them through 16 years of ruinous political agony for a flawed dream that was doomed from the start. ``He should have emigrated to Australia 10 years ago,'' said a professional pol who once worked for him. ``Once he put that woman in the water, it was all over.''``Today the flames of the nuclear fire are all over. I am thankful to God that... we have jumped into these flames... with courage.''Which is probably true. Chappaquiddick was hard to explain -- except as a flagrant and genuinely hideous example of bad driving.
The details remain hazy, for reasons that were never made clear or even acceptable -- but in the end it was mainly a mater of a grown man on his own turf in his own car, who couldn't drive in a straight line across a short bridge.
That was the nut of the problem. He could soar with the condors and crawl with the wildest of swine -- but when the deal went down he was simply a bad driver. There are people in Washington who will tell you that Ted Kennedy would be president of the United States today, if he'd ever learned to drive.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, ``The Dim and Dirty Road'', The San Francisco Examiner, December 30, 1985 (reprinted in ``Generation of Swine -- Gonzo Papers Vol. 2: Tales of Shame and Degredation in the '80s'', 1988, pg. 60 [trade paperback edition])
``Ketchup -- it's like hearing from an old friend.''
-- A Praire Home Companion, May 30, 1998
``When clones are outlawed, only outlaws will have clones.''
-- (Some comic, whose name I unfortunately didn't get... Any ideas?)
``The Perl motto is `There's More Than One Way To Do It.' The Perl for Win32
motto could be `It's A Good Thing That There's More Than One Way To Do It,
Because Most Of The Ways Don't Work.' ''
-- , builder and maintainer of the Perl
for Win32 FAQ
``CP/M 2.2 is extremely important, and the Z80 chip will live forever because of it.''
-- Future Computing Inc., May, 1982 (Taken from
Chronology of Events in the
History of Microcomputers)
(The funniest thing about this quote is that it's absolutely true)
``Accessing memory using a segmented architecture holds many advantages over
the earlier linear-addressing method.''
-- Intel, June, 1983, ibid (This comment used to say, ``Yeh-right''. Now it says:
``Oh My GOD, that is such BULLSHIT!!!'')
``Most people dismiss non-literate cultures.''
``Well, we live in one.''
-- Third Rock from the Sun
``We know there will be environmental and societal consequences to our
dam building, but we will leave it to future generations to resolve those impacts.''
-- Floyd Domini, former Director of the Bureau of Reclamation
``Floyd Domini -- the Hitler of our natural resources.''
-- June 14, 1998
Priorities....Actual (!!!) Marion Barry Quotes!:A hundred years from now...
It won't matter how much money I had...
What kind of house I lived in...
Or what kind of car I drove....What will matter is that the world might be a better place...
Because I was important in the life of a child.-- (among others...)
(Marion Barry Jr. is the former mayor of Washington DC, a black male crackhead.)
``The contagious people of Washington have stood firm against diversity during this long period of increment weather.''``Have you ever noticed how when a programmer says something is `interesting', that rather than meaning `intriguing', they're disturbingly more apt to mean that it's `annoying', `difficult', or both?''``I promise you a police car on every sidewalk.''
``If you take out the killings, Washington actually has a very very low crime rate.''
``First, it was not a strip bar, it was an erotic club. And second, what can I say? I'm a night owl.''
``Bitch set me up.''
``I am clearly more popular than Reagan. I am in my third term. Where's Reagan? Gone after two! Defeated by George Bush and Michael Dukakis no less.''
``The laws in this city are clearly racist. All laws are racist. The law of gravity is racist.'' (Go Marion!)
``I am making this trip to Africa because Washington is an international city, just like Tokyo, Nigeria or Israel. As mayor, I am an international symbol. Can you deny that to Africa?''
``People have criticized me because my security detail is larger than the president's. But you must ask yourself: are there more people who want to kill me than who want to kill the president? I can assure you there are.'' (I think he's dead-on with this one.)
``The brave men who died in Vietnam, more than 100% of which were black, were the ultimate sacrifice.''
``I read a funny story about how the Republicans freed the slaves. The Republicans are the ones who created slavery by law in the 1600's. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and he was not a Republican.'' (Actually, that's wrong.)
``What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?'' (I think there's something in the Constitution about this.)
``People blame me because these water mains break, but I ask you, if the water mains didn't break, would it be my responsibility to fix them then? WOULD IT!?!'' (Um..., no.)
``I am a great mayor; I am an upstanding Christian man; I am an intelligent man; I am a deeply educated man; I am a humble man.'' (Yeh-right.)
``There are generally two kinds of math problems which get discussed:
`trivial', meaning, those with known solutions; and `interesting', meaning,
those upon which much work has been done, with little visible progress toward
an actual solution.''
-- (unknown)
``Mister Mulder, why are those like yourself, who believe in the existence
of extraterrestrial life on this Earth, not dissuaded by all the
evidence to the contrary?''
``Because... all the evidence to the contrary... is not entirely dissuasive.''
-- The X-Files, episode 1X01, ``Deep Throat''
``YAHBT -- Yet Another Hypocritical Berkeley Thing''
-- Ned the Head
``Tradation is the illusion of permanance.''
-- Woody Allen, ``Deconstructing Harry''
``Amanda, you don't talk to men like that. When they make up their minds, they use cast iron sheets.''
-- Nikos Rovani
``I'm walkin' a white line; I don't want no trouble.''
``White line's in the middle of the road -- that's the worst place to drive.''
-- ``They Live''
``Life's a bitch, and she's back in heat.''
-- ibid
[I]f we're going to make policy on [abortion], we probably should see what it is that we're making legal. Then we may do what we need to do, which is to say, ``This is really horrible, and we have to do it anyway.'' That's what I think the tactic ought to have been on some level from the very beginning. ``You know what, folks, this is awful. It's gross, it's upsetting. Yeah, a fetus has fingers if you go late enough; it's got fingers earlier than we want to imagine. And yet abortion has to be legal anyway because the alternative is worse.''``...He knows when you are slee-ping, he knows when you're a-wake, he knows if you've been bad or good BECAUSE HE'S WATCHING YOU EVERY FREAKING MINUTE OF YOUR ENTIRE LIFE!!!''That's what the clinic people know.
-- Cynthia Gorney, author of ``Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars'', in ``Pro-Fight: The uses and misuses of the abortion debate'', The East Bay Express, July 17, 1998, Vol. 20, No. 41
``[In America] we like our solutions quick, and we like 'em stupid.''
-- Bill Mahr
``They say high school is the best time of your life.''
``Only if your life is extremely short.''
-- Daria
``If a man speaks in the forest, and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?''
-- ``Car Talk''
New, useful words!
Bozone (n.) The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.Some (More) Time-Honored Truths (Thanks, Dan!)Cashtration (v.) The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
Dopelar effect (n.) The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when you come at them rapidly.
Hemaglobe (n.) The bloody state of the world.
Intaxication (n.) Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
``Construct Reality & Make It Work For You!'' (A bumper sticker I saw)
``In California, pedestrians have the right of way.''
``You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that pedestrians have rights anywhere.''
-- (overheard)
``Staying in school and staying off drugs is fine, but it won't do you any good if you don't stay in your car!''
-- ``Reginald Denny'' and ``Rodney King'', In Living Color
``He had to stem the bleeding, and cutting [off] heads is a way to do that.''
-- a Wall Street analyst, who asked not to be named, regarding Robert
Palmer's strategy for turning Digital Equipment Corp. around, as
reported by ZDNet, June 10, 1998
``Perl -- the Swiss-Army Chainsaw of programming languages.''
-- (An anonymous reviewer of ``Advanced Perl Programming'' at Amazon.Com)
``The Leatherman: The Perl of Swiss Army Knives''
-- from the alt.sysadmin.recovery FAQ
``Rising CO2 levels could help Nevada ranching, golf, and landscaping industries. But in the long run, the
greenhouse effect would be bad for business by wiping out the environment.''
-- Las Vegas Business Press, November 17, 1997
``To be [a] German [composer] is to dig in rather than to spread out, to get to the heart of things, obsessively.
As the saying goes, a German joke is no laughing matter.''
-- Ned Rorem, ``Stravinsky at 100'', 1981, in Setting the Tone: Essays and a Diary, 1983.
``Freud entered a cave which expanded toward ever deeper shadows...''
-- ibid
``Hearing verse set to music is like looking at a painting through a stained glass window.''
-- Paul Valéry, as quoted in ibid
``I see it as a compensation. I feel like I'm doing a good job. If no one is recognizing my good job, I recognize it.''
-- Orlando Arias, Los Angeles county health inspector, after being filmed accepting a $200 bribe, as reported by AP, November 10, 1998.
``Nothing goes without saying.''
-- Anonymous
``Your bad planning is not my crisis.''
-- Carolyn Larabell
``At least the music is in focus.''
-- Beevis
``What do you get when you play country & western music backwards?
You get your wife back, your job back, and your dog back.''
-- Detective John Munch, ``Homicide''
``A penny saved is ridiculous.''
A Mutual of Omaha Press book:``I Stayed in the Helicopter While Jim Fought the Crocodile'' by Marlin Perkins
(Thanks, Bill!)
``The six leading jurisdictions in executing their own people, per capita, are China, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria,
Florida, and Texas. Bill Clinton himself once signed a death warrant on a retarded man who was so unable to understand
his situation that he saved some of his last meal for later.''
-- Bob Harris
``A conspiracy wrapped in a plot, inside a government agenda.''
-- Fox Mulder, The X-Files, episode 5X13, ``Patient X''
``A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, and stuffed in a body bag.''
-- Detective John Munch, Homicide
``I'm a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in an AWESOME rack.''
-- Raven, Questionable Content
``...a mystery, wrapped inside of a... mystery, wrapped inside of a third mystery.''
-- Bert "Sock" Wysocki, Enigma, Season 2, Episode 5, ``Underbelly''
``A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, served with a side of slaw.''
-- Bomis
Other excellent quotes from Bomis:
A good slogan can stop analysis for fifty yearsCat HaikuI eat, therefore, I am what I eat
We put the `I' in `team'
An oasis of indifference in a desert of apathy.
You never feed me.``You know what they say -- if it ain't one thing, it's your mother.''
Perhaps I'll sleep on your face.
That will sure show you.You must scratch me there!
Yes, above my tail!
Behold, elevator butt.The rule for today
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.In deep sleep hear sound
cat vomit hairball somewhere
will find in morning.Grace personified
I leap into the window.
I meant to do that.Blur of motion, then --
silence, me, a paper bag.
What is so funny?You're always typing.
Well, let's see you ignore me
sitting on your hands.My small cardboard box.
You cannot see me if I
can just hide my head.Terrible battle.
I fought for hours. Come and see!
What's a 'term paper'?Small brave carnivores
kill pine cones and mosquitos
Fear vacuum cleaner.I want to be close
to you -- Can I fit my head
inside your armpit?Wanna go outside
Oh, crap! Help! I got outside!
Let me back inside!Oh no! Big one
has been trapped by newspaper!
Cat to the rescue!Humans are so strange.
Mine lies still in bed, then screams
My claws are not that sharp.Cats meow out of angst
"Thumbs! If only we had thumbs!
We could break so much!"The Big Ones snore now
Every room is dark and cold
Time for ``Cup Hockey''We're almost equals
I purr to show I love you
Want to smell my butt?
``It's good to have evil friends.''
-- Marlene M., March 5, 1999
``Things are so cheap these days -- all you need is money, and you can buy lots of things!''
-- Dan G., March 11, 1999 (Too true, too true...)
``People should come just for the food.''``Poverty is not deprivation. It is isolation.''
``I know that.''
``They should come just for the food.''
``I know that, I know... But they don't.''-- Big Night
``Well, the Democrats may be reinventing the wheel, but the Republicans are reinventing the swastika.''
-- Gail Zappa, as quoted in The New Yorker, January 25, 1999, pg. 33
``I don't want to knock my opponent out. I want to hit him, step away, and watch him hurt.''
-- Joe Frazier
``I hate the people who love me and they hate me!''
-- Bender, Futurama, ``I, Roommate''
``Nature abhors a vacuum, but not as much as cats do.''
-- Lee Entrekin
``A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff nature replaces it with.''
-- Tennessee Williams
The Essence of Dilbert:
``Managing is easy when you hate the employees.''Tee-shirts:
-- the pointy-haired manager
The University of Chigago: Hell does freeze over``Alan Pred knows what's going on in the world. He's the hypermodern man of the hour.'' -- Cal Professor Evaluation Program (CalPEP) for 1999, review of Geography 20, Global Restructuring, Fall '95The University of Chigago: Where fun comes to die
``Even the clock radio that wakes you up in the morning will be connected to
the Internet, allowing your boss to set your alarm. Instead of the snooze
button, there will be an even handier button for purchasing the current song.''
-- Lincoln Spector, ``Pings to Come: The wonderful world of tomorrow is only a few years away'',
Computer Currents, April 13 - April 26, 1999
``Buffalo: Where the unborn go to die.''
-- Bill & Wes, April 22, 1999
``You can only go forward in one direction.''
-- Sean Penn
``Greek culture invented democracy, built the Acropolis, and then called it a day.''
-- David Sedaris
From The San Francisco Chronicle Best-Sellers list, April 25, 1999:The last time a governor in California granted clemency to a death row inmate was in 1967 (the year I was born). The governor was Ronald Reagan. (As reported in The San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 1999, pg. A1, East Bay edition. We live in a strange world. Or, at least, I do.)Business @ the Speed of Thought, Bill Gates: The chairman of Microsoft explains why businesses need more of his products.
``I used to love Descartes -- because he would take you very rationally, step by step, to a completely insane place. But each step seemed totally logical.'' -- David Cronenberg, The San Francisco Chronicle, April 25, 1999, The Pink Section, pg. 48. (Exactly.)
Attorney Ronald L. Kuby, in reference to his client's arrest for arranging to have 150 people lie naked in Times Square for a photo shoot, referred to it as part of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's ``crackdown on the quality of life and on naked people.'' The San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 1999, pg. A5, East Bay edition.
``[Your account] will be assigned to an outside collection agency with authorization to pursue further.'' -- A letter from Kaiser Permanente to Coralyn Weesender, concerning the $1 they think she owes them. The San Francisco Chronicle, April 26, 1999, Personals section, pg. E8, East Bay edition.
Actual (!!!) product warning labels:
In case you needed further proof that the human species is doomed to stupidity, here are some actual label instructions on consumer goods:``So, if he was so in tune with the software and all, why couldn't he just project his consciousness into The Matrix and leave his body behind, so they couldn't kill him?''On a Sears hairdryer:
Do not use while sleeping.
(If you're asleep, how can you read the warning...?)On the ``CycleAware'' helmet-mounted mirror:
Remember: Objects in the mirror are actually behind you.
('Nuff said.)On a bag of Fritos:
You could be a winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside.
(The shoplifter special!)On a bar of Dial soap:
Directions: Use like regular soap.
(...and that would be... how?)On some Swann frozen dinners:
Serving suggestion: Defrost.
(It's ``just'' a suggestion...)On Tesco's Tiramisu dessert (printed on bottom of the box):
Do not turn upside down.
(Too late! You lose!)On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding:
Product will be hot after heating.
(Are you sure??? Let's experiment.)On packaging for a Rowenta iron:
Do not iron clothes on body.
(But wouldn't that save more time?)On a large folding cardboard sunshade for car windscreens:
Do not attempt to operate vehicle with sunshade in place.
(In case you were wondering...)On Boot's Children's cough medicine:
Do not drive car or operate machinery.
(We could do a lot to reduce the rate of construction accidents if we could just keep those 5-year-olds off the fork lifts.)On Nytol sleep aid:
Warning: may cause drowsiness.
(``May''? Does it work or not!?)On a kitchen knife:
Warning: Keep out of children.
(What's for dinner?)On a string of Christmas lights:
For indoor or outdoor use only.
(As opposed to use in outer space? Which could be indoors or outdoors...)On a food processor:
Not to be used for the other use.
(?!?!!??)On Sainsbury's peanuts:
Warning: contains nuts.
(Yes!!)On an American Airlines packet of nuts:
Instructions: open packet, eat nuts.
(I'm glad they cleared that up...)On a child's Superman costume:
Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly.
(Which garmet will enable you to fly? That's the one I want!)
``If the Devil is behind this I want him in The Box.''
-- Lt. Giardello, ``Homicide''
``We are Hollywood Squares, where product placement is our middle name.''
-- Tom Bergeron, ``Your host on the New Hollywood Squares''
Futurama Subtitles:
(Thanks to nachop and
PhysicsChic and Kizor)
Season One:
``I've got just two words for you, mister -- NO!''
-- Johnny Bravo
``Makin' teenagers depressed is like shotin' fish in a barrel.''
-- Bart Simpson
``Do we have that color at home?''
-- ``...a very small girl, perhaps 3 or 4...'' at SFMOMA, as reported by
Jon Carroll, May, 10, 1999
``[Technology] can be pretty frightening when it gets concentrated in the
hands of a few, but people know this, and they're always finding ways to
appropriate technology and make it theirs.''
-- Neal Stephenson, May 12, 1999, S. F. Chronicle, pg. D5
``Don't make me come down there.''
-- God (as seen on a giant billboard, black with white lettering, in Tannersville, PA)
``Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.''
-- Samuel Johnson
``Transportation happens.''
-- Esai Morales, star of ``Atomic Train''
The Master
Housekeeper: ``But that's a priceless Steinway!''and
Clouseau: ``Nyot anymeur.''
``And I submit, Monsieur Ballon, that you arrived home, found Miguel with Maria Gambrelli, and killed him in a rit of fealous jage!''-- Inspector Jacques Clouseau, ``The Pink Panther Strikes Again'' and ``A Shot In The Dark''
``Doctors are just soft-tissue engineers.''
-- KB-F
``I'm going to have a near-death experience if it kills me!''
-- Dick Solomon, ``Third Rock from the Sun''
``If only he had joined a mainstream religion, like Oprahism, or Voodoo.''
-- Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, Futurama, ``Hell Is Other Robots''
``[The Senate needs] to balance the rights of law-abiding citizens against the rights of the public.''
-- Senator Orrin Hatch (That's quite a juggling act)
According to Peter Biskind in ``Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,'' a woman who worked on ``Raiders of the Lost Ark'' told George Lucas her favorite film of his was ``THX-1138''. He gave her a puzzled look and said, ``But it didn't make any money.'' (From Salon's article putting forth 10 Reasons Not to See Episode 1) (And here's #11: it sucks.)
Also note that ``Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope: The Special Edition'' was the first movie ever to be released (re-released?) with three colons in its title.
``The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.''
and
``It is the business of the future to be dangerous.''
-- A. N. Whitehead
The discovery of the alphabet will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves... You give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth; they will be heroes of many things, and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing.-- Socrates, ``Phaedrus''
``I wouldn't be seen dead with a living work of art.''
-- Uncredited museum curator
``We are proud of our museums where we display a way of living that we have made impossible.''
-- A. K. Coomaraswamy
``Keep in Circulation the Rumor that God is Alive.''
(The previous seven quotes are from ``The Medium is the Massage'' by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, 1967)
``When I heard that, I was so surprised I almost spilled my martini.'' (almost...)and
``I'll bet you any amount of money you want, up to a quarter.''-- Maurice Besse (clearly a member of the ``You can have any color you want, as long as it's black'' school of gambling)
``Jesus Christ!''and
``Where!?''
``I'm not a superhero, I'm just a Latter-Day Saint.''-- Orgazmo (This is a great movie!)
``People who do not live in the real world, after all, have nothing to lose
[there].''
-- Bob Graham, in a review of ``The Thirteenth Floor'', S. F. Chronicle, May 28, 1999
``When did you download into him?''
-- ``The Thirteenth Floor''
``It's like Yoda talks in backwards German.'' -- KB-F
``This is the land of opportunity, gentlemen -- the opportunity to turn yourselves in.''and
``We're the CIA -- something always goes wrong.''-- The Seige
``Won't the doctor be there?''
``No -- he's out at his nursing home. He has a collection of maniacs he
psychoanalyzes.''
-- ``Ministry of Fear''
``Life is funny -- everybody says that, but nobody laughs.''
and
``If the minimum wasn't good enough, it wouldn't be the minimum.''
-- C. W. Nevius, ``Go Forth, Class of '99, But Hang On To Your Beanies'', S. F. Chronicle, Sunday, June 6, 1999
Here is a page of quotes from William Blake. In particular, the ones from ``The Marriage of Heaven and Hell'' (1790-93) are worth looking at, and include
``Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained'',
``The voice of honest indignation is the voice of God''
and
``Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.''
``We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives!'' -- Ed Wood
``Technically I'm still an average person.'' -- Some guy who said his mom was a vampire and that she convinced him to murder his best friend's parents, as seen on Court TV (This seems to be where our understanding of average is heading...)
``The BIBLE is PURE SHIT!'' -- A homemade sign, laserprinted on a piece of white 8 1/2 x 11 office paper, scotchtaped to the rear window of an old Honda Civic I happend to be behind, June 18, 1999. You sorta had to be there.
Smilin' with the mouth of the ocean``Merrill Lynch has cooties.''
Then I'll wave to you with the arms of the mountain
I'll see you!-- Faith No More, ``Ashes To Ashes'', album of the year
``Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results.''
-- Ernest Shackelton, ``Shackelton'' by R. Huntford, p. 521
``This present moment - this is clear. The past - all stories. Nothing but
stories. All colored. So we choose our colors. We choose what colors we see.''
-- ``Antarctica'' by Kim Stanley Robinson, pg. 199
``Knowledge is not wisdom.''
-- Heraclitus, as quoted in ibid, pg. 505
``If it's worth doing, it's worth doing over.''
-- Dan G., July 6, 1999
These are from ``The Last Deathship Off Antares'' by William John Watkins, 1989
``Never forget the Gradient. Nothing that ignores the Gradient lasts.'' (pg. 18)``Your lack of interest in personal interaction makes you an ideal candidate for working with the dead.''``...all you really noticed... was the eyes. They were dark, like small black holes opening into emptiness.... In a place where everybody was ruthless, the guy in the niche still managed to look like he had done things nobody else would do to stay alive. You couldn't look at him without thinking that you might beat him with brute force, but you'd have to go a long way to overcome his treachery. He looked like he could betray people who didn't even trust him...'' (pg. 39)
``All niches belong to the Cooperative.'' (pg. 40)
``What somebody gives you is worth nothing; what you earn increases everything about you.'' (pg. 146)
``A tool is just a weapon nobody's tried to kill anybody else with.'' (pg. 154)
``Q: What animal has the largest eyes in the world?''
``A: Marlon Brando at a buffett.''
-- Gilbert Godfried
``It's not what you smoke, but why.''
-- J. Jacobs
Homer Simpson: ``Mr. Burns, you're the richest guy I know...''
Mr. Burns: ``Yes, but I'd trade it all for a little more.''
-- ``The Simpsons''
``I'd rather let a thousand guilty men go free than chase after them.''
-- Police Chief Wiggum, ``The Simpsons''
``Irrationality is the square root of all evil.''
-- Douglas Hofstadter
``You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 1012 to 1.''
-- Sir Ernest Rutherford
``Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you.''
-- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student
(This guy has the lowest ratio of `Understanding of Evolution' to
`Education' I've ever seen. Plus, he's a huge asshole. And: I wonder
what `Mother' thinks about this... At least she doesn't have to
cook dinner.)
``Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture on a rock.''
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
``Don't come back until you have him'', the Tick-Tock Man said quietly, sincerely, extremely dangerously.They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints. They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And what the hell, they caught him.
-- Harlan Ellison, ``Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man''
``An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these eyes we cannot bear to look out of,
we blind them as quickly as possible.''
-- Russell Hoban, ``Pilgermann''
It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working
as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he
had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked,
``What's your IQ?'' The new arrival replied, ``190''. They discussed
Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival
came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer
this time came ``120''. To which Einstein replied, ``Tell me, how did the
Cubs do this year?'', and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so.
To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, ``What's
your IQ?''. Upon receiving the answer ``70'', Einstein smiled and asked,
``Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?''
(I realize that technically this is a ``joke'', and not a ``quote'' in
the usual sense, but it's too good to pass up. Besides, it's my page.)
``When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified
your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a
definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
In a way, the next move is up to him.''
-- R. A. Lafferty
Join in the new game that's sweeping the country. It's called ``Bureaucracy''. Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do anything loses.
Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche.
``You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.''
-- Henrick Ibson
``I see the light!! It burns!!''
-- Homer Simpson
``Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never afraid to break your face.''
``These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!
``These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!
``These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP out of MEGATON MAN!''
Wethern's Law: Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
``The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken.''
(I have no idea who said this, but it's way cool!)
``A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!''
-- Firesign Theatre, ``The Giant Rat of Summatra''
``I hate JavaScript.''
``JavaScript is just a tool, and like any other tool, it can be used for good or evil.''
``Yes, and remember -- Larry Ellison is also a tool, and, like any other tool, can be used for good or evil.''
-- Conversation between myself and Stu May, 11-Sep-2000
``Stupidity is like nuclear power: It can be used for good or evil, and you don't want to get any on you.''
-- Dilbert & Wally
``The NEW architecture - happily coded for YOUR protection!''
-- Bryan Stansell, Feb 2, 2000
There once was a member of Mensa
Who was a most excellent fencer.
The sword that he used
Was his -- (line is refused,
And has now been removed by the censor).
``Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.''
-- Fletcher Knebel
Real programmers don't program in assembler. They don't write in anything less portable than a number two pencil.
The real lesson of ``Godzilla 2000'':
swallow
head-first
anything
that breathes
atomic fire
With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair* VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation
He throws the spinning disk drives in the air!
And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down
As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds!
Helpless users with projects due
Scream ``My God!'' as he stomps on the tape drives, too!Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla!
Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!"
A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears.Machine-Independent, adj.: Does not run on any existing machine.
C is for Clair who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of the sleigh.
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech.
G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug.
I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake.
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of enui.
O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.
S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits.
U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
W is for Winie, embedded in ice, X is for Xercies, devoured by mice.
Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin.-- Edward Gorey, The Gashlycrumb Tinies
The real Cabinet, according to Robert Reich (from ``Locked in the Cabinet''):``Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.''Secretary of the Interior is really Secretary of the West
Secretary of the Treasury is really Secretary of Wall Street
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development is really Secretary of Big Cities
Secretary of Agriculture is really Secretary of Small Towns
Secretary of Commerce is really Secretary of Corporate America
Secretary of Labor is really Secretary of Blue-Collar America
Secretary of Energy is really Secretary of Mountains and Deserts
Secretary of Transportation is really Secretary of Disasterous Crashes
Secretary of State is really Secretary of Middle East Peace Accords and Other Frantic Meetings
Secretary of Defense is really Secretary of Half the Discretionary Budget of the United States
Secretary of Health and Human Services is really Secretary of Doctors, Hospitals and the AARP
``Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within.''
``Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your program doesn't deliver it.''
``What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.''
``The public quickly accepts all the miracles that science provides.''
-- 1950's propaganda film
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
I used to be schizophrenic, but we're OK now.
If you can remain calm, you don't have all the facts.
Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in.
``God was my copilot... but we crashed in the mountains & I had to eat him.''
``Let me assure you that to us here at First National you're not just a number.
You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash and another number.''
-- James Estes
``Even poets gotta use airplanes, sometimes.''
-- A poet on KFOG, Feb 25, 2000
``Documentation is like sex: when it's good, it's very, very good; and when it's bad, it's still better than nothing.''
-- Dick Brandon
``Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.''
-- P. K. Dick
``Somebody tell me where to click.''
-- Guy Middleton, Chief Architect, GNAC, Inc.
``The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights
you have and what rights you have not got.''
-- J. Parnell Thomas (Yo, dude!)
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.-- Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)
``You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers.''
-- Steven Feiner
``How can you tell when hippies come to visit? They're still there.''
-- Bryan Mitchell, 29-Aug-2000
``Evolution stops when stupidity is no longer fatal.''
-- luger
``I want all of your souls on my desk by the end of the day.''
-- Stu May, `The Manager From Hell'
``Instant gratification is too slow.''
-- Binky, 01-Sep-2000 (Well, this is also in ``Postcards from the Edge'',
but what the hell, it was better when he said it! :)
C, n.:
A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't.If God had intended man to smoke, He would have set him on fire.-- Ray Simard
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way. (Oh, wait...)
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
``I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.''
-- Ambrose Bierce, ``The Devil's Dictionary''
``Where is your God when you need him? Where is your beautiful,
merciful faggot now?! Here I come, God! Here I come, you fucking rat!!''
-- The Mole, ``South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut''
``You're scared, right?''
``Maybe.''
``The way this works is, you do the thing you're scared shitless
of, and you get the courage after you do it, not before
you do it.''
``That's a dumb-ass way to work - should be the other way around.''
``I know. That's the way it works.''
-- Three Kings
``You know that game we sometimes play, sitting in a square in the Nest,
tossing a ball around? Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it
only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else. When it's
tossed your way, you've got to catch it and hold it tight -- and hope
there'll be someone else to toss it to when you get tired of being brave.''
-- A Pail of Air, by Fritz Leiber, 1951
``To generalize is to be an idiot.''
-- William Blake
``As he cut my artery I felt something was wrong.''
-- ``Whose Line Is It Anyway?''
``I was just here... Where did I go..?''
-- Fox Mulder, The X-Files, episode 4X20, ``Small Potatoes''
``The assertion that `all men are created equal' was of no practical use
in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
Declaration not for that, but for future use.''
-- Abraham Lincoln
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
I Think, Therefore I'm Dangerous
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: ``I came by
subway.'' Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your door.
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
``Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.''
-- Jeff Berner
``...we can often explain what we could not predict...[but]
we can sometimes predict what we cannot explain.''
-- Michael Scriven, ``Explanation and Prediction in Evolutionary Theory'',
Science, p. 480, v. 130, 28 August 1959.
``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
Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
``People are wonderful!''
-- Paul Ebersman, 27-June-2000
``The number of xterms you keep open on your screen, determines your relative level of dork.''
-- Scott Schultz, June 13, 2000
Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are so long they can't afford the disk space.
``I can't wait until we invent time travel.''
-- Dan G., November 25, 1998
``Time travel is evil - it ruins lives and should be avoided at all costs.''
-- Johnny Gomez, Celebrity Deathmatch
``All the chalk in the world is not going to help me.''
-- Will Alexander, 27-Jul-2000
``When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.''
-- George Bernard Shaw
Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. ``At this time,'' said Nasrudin, ``I only want to say that the King spoke to me.'' All the villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The remaining villager asked, ``What did the King say to you?'' ``What he said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of my way!' '' The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.``That does not scale.''
``That's what funding is for - suing people.''
-- Karl Larson, 11-Aug-2000
``Sweet zombie Jesus!''
-- Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, Futurama, ``The Deep South''
``Fry you half-mad, half-insane maniac. Be reasonable.''
-- ibid
``It's good to be cold when you're dead.''
-- me, 26-Sep-1999
``Unrealistic expectations are pre-meditated resentments.''
-- a caller on ``Car Talk''
``If it weren't for fiction, we wouldn't know anything at all.''
-- Lefty, ``Lives of the Cowboys'', ``A Praire Home Companion''
Review Questions
``Countless could be a number including zero.''
-- me, 23-Aug-00
``668 - The Neighbor of the Beast''
-- Stu May, 23-Aug-00
``He could be president of the universe and he'd still be fucking with tweety.''
-- Karl Larson, 23-Aug-00
``...the vanity of hands...''
-- Harrison Ford, ``Inside the Actors' Studio'' (in particular, in reference to surgeons)
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to pour Drano
down its throat and then rip its head off.
(Thanks to Harlan Ellison for that lovely imagery! :)
``Power corrupts; and absolute power... is pretty cool!''
-- Stu May, 14-Sep-2000
``Oaklahoma's not known for fish.''
-- David Jordan, 14-Sep-2000
``You're pretty much fucked after you've lost your skin.''
-- Stu May, 20-Sep-2000
``If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.''
``Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.''
``Mars University: Knowledge Brings Fear''
-- Futurama, ``Mars University''
Ankh if you love Isis.
``I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people
in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly
not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.''
-- Monty Python
``I'm Brian!''
``I'm Brian!!''
``I'm Brian, and so's my wife!!!''
-- Monty Python, ``The Life Of Brian''
Brian: ``You are all individuals!''
Crowd: ``We are all individuals!''
Lone Man At The Back Of The Crowd: ``I'm not...''
-- ibid
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
``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
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention:
Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal.
The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and add ten percent.
``Do you believe in the user?''
-- ``Tron''
A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
``Q: Do you find that children irritate you?''
``A: No, I find that I can digest them easily!''
-- Stu May, 25-Oct-2000
``The advantages of stupid people only go so far.''
-- Stu May, 27-Oct-2000
``Watch Horror Films - Keep America Strong!''
-- ``Creature Features''
Check out Craig's Quotes (including a bunch of UNIX 'fortune' program quotes, such as...)
A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.and
You can't make a program without broken egos.
``I love high-tech gagets!''
``That's just wrong.''
-- Bryan Stansell
WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
Firings will continue until morale improves.
``He's my sister.''
-- Robert De Niro, Flawless
``The ends justify the means.''
``The `ends' is bullshit - the `means' is what you live with.''
-- ``The Corruptor''
``Because the name is the thing, and the truename is the true thing.
To speak the name is to control the thing.''
-- Mr. Underhill, The Rule of Names, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1964
``What we've got here, is, failure to communicate. Some men, you just can't reach.''
-- Strother Martin, Cool Hand Luke
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.
``Well, my husband passed away -- it's been almost two years now.''
``My department doesn't have any reccord of that, Mrs. Bickerman.''
``Well, I'm sorry -- incomplete records haunt me so.''
-- ``Lake Placid''
``Nobody dies in Newport - they couldn't even kill Sunny von Bülow in Newport!''
-- ``Conspiracy Theory''
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
``Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.''
-- Rich Kulawiec
``This is part of your growing experience.''
-- Marielena Tidwell, 25-Jan-2001 (in reference to essentially telling someone
talking over someone else to shut up and listen)
``Before I was a drug addict I had so many different problems. Now I just have
one - drugs. Gave my life real focus.''
-- Lyle, ``Cecil B. Demented''
We've all heard the ``herding cats'' analogy with regard to managing
programmers. Managing sysadmins is like leading a neighborhood gang of
neurotic pumas on jet-powered hoverbikes with nasty smack habits and
opposable thumbs. Oh, and as a manager you're a neurotic junkie puma
too, only they cut your thumbs off and whereas all the other pumas get
to drive around on their badass hoverbikes and fire chainguns at the
marketing department, YOU have to drive a maroon AMC Gremlin behind them
and hand out Band-Aids and smile a lot, when all you're REALLY thinking
about is how to get one of them to let you borrow his hoverbike for a
few minutes so you can show those fools how it's DONE.
-- Benjy Feen
If God is dead, who will save the Queen?
Mark Jorgensen's pretty cool film quotes.
``They don't have to be Mr. Business Head...''
``I'm not the evil Skippy...''
``All those dots will be people...''
-- Marielena Tidwell
Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing machines are so poor at I/O.
1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1
``A low center of gravity makes me feel healthy.''
-- John Hesse
``Nothing says `social conscience' like `check out my rack'! ''
-- Lewis Black, ``The Daily Show'', 31-Jan-2001
``My Netscape has no back button.''
``You're in Word.''
-- Part of an overheard conversation (the names have been changed to protect the guilty :)
``...there's nothing the President [of the United States] couldn't solve with two fists, an Indian companion
and a small army of birds and elephants.''
-- This American Life, 24-Feb-2001
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
Check out the IMDB Quotes Page. It includes quotes from all sorts of places, including Northern Exposure, among which are:
Chris Stevens: ``I can see how that can be a problem. You know, it's like Jung says, `The unconscious is revealed through the imagery of our dreams, which express our innermost fears and our desires.' ''``If those plants wind up in my office I'm going to attack your cube.''
Bernard Stevens: ``Jung said that?''
Chris Stevens: ``Yeah, I think it was Jung. Or maybe Vincent Price.''Grandma Woody: ``All we are, basically, are monkeys with car keys.''
``Death is every day. Death goes on, and on, and on...''
``And that's because life goes on, and on...''
-- Homicide: Life On The Street (Movie/Final Episode)
There is nothing so eloquent as fact
It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch
-- This American Life
``Business at the speed of egos.''
-- Dennis Graham
``What's misspelled wrong?''
-- Will Alexander
``Dirt doesn't need luck.''
``Grab a shovel - I'm only one skull short of a Mouseketeer reunion.''
-- Futurama, ``The Luck of the Fryish''
``The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic
hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.
There's also a negative side.''
-- Hunter S. Thompson
``I drank what?''
-- Socrates :)
Tech Support:
``Your soul will rot in hell!!''
``But that doesn't solve my issue!''-- Stu May
``It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black.''
-- The ``Despair''
poster from Despair, Inc., which you can
get if you like.
`` `A friend of mine worked at Vivid and knew that I watched
porn,' said Jon, 25, who asked that his last name be
withheld, [and] who now spends eight hours a day digitally
covering up female nipples for the company's front-page...''
-- Dot-Com
Refugees Find Welcome in Porn Industry, Los Angeles Times, by Ralph
Frammolino and P.J. Huffstutter, Times Staff Writers, Monday, April 23, 2001
``Doing stuff is overrated. Like Hitler - he did alot, but don't we all wish he
would'a just stayed home and gotten stoned?''
``Oh, I see - so your only options are to get stoned or commit genocide?''
-- The Tao of Steve
``You'd be amazed at how little we can accomplish in 500 hours.''
-- Me
``Human beings seem to have this endless ability to think they are at
the end of history. The only people who now are saying we know enough
are people who don't know enough.''
-- Dr. Richard Klausner, head of the National Cancer Institute, in
``The Thirty Years' War'', by Jerome Groopman, Recanati Professor of
Medicine, Harvard Medical School, The New Yorker, Jun 4, 2001, pg. 63
``Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.''
-- Sydney J. Harris
``I imagine Jesus standing in the front yard, among flamingos, saying, `Do you love me yet?' ''
-- Ricky Lee Jones
``Is he standing on one foot?''
-- Marielena Tidwell, 08-Jun-2001
This is a poem made up entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush. The quotes have been arranged only for aesthetic purposes, by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.
MAKE THE PIE HIGHER``Your denial is beneath you, and, thanks to the use of hallucinogenic drugs, I see through you.''
by George W. BushI think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses.
Rarely is the question asked, Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize Society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!
``Man - Microsoft is so broken!''
-- J. S. May, 12-Jun-2001
``Convert it to EBCDIC - that's called encryption, right?''
-- Jon T., 13-Jun-2001
``I didn't know that Jon Voight was Angelina Jolie's dad - I guess that's what
I get for largely not caring about that kind of crap.''
-- J. S. May
SERVE THE COMPUTER``Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.''
THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND
The Computer wants you to be happy. If you are not happy, you will be used as reactor shielding.
The Computer is crazy. The Computer is happy. The Computer will help you to become happy. This will drive you crazy.
Being a citizen of Alpha Complex is fun. The Computer says so, and The Computer is your friend.
Rooting out traitors will make you happy. The Computer tells you so. Can you doubt The Computer?
Being a Troubleshooter is fun. The Computer tells you so. Of course, The Computer is right.
Troubleshooters get shot at, stabbed, incinerated, stapled, mangled, poisoned, blown to bits, and occasionally accidentally executed. This is so much fun that many Troubleshooters go crazy. You will be working with many Troubleshooters. All of them carry lasers.
Aren't you glad you have a laser too? Won't this be fun?
There are many Traitors in Alpha Complex. There are many happy citizens in Alpha Complex. Most of the happy citizens are crazy. It is hard to say which are more dangerous -- Traitors or happy citizens. Watch out for both of them.
The life of a Troubleshooter is full of suprises.
STAY ALERT! TRUST NO ONE! KEEP YOUR LASER HANDY!-- ``Paranoia'', the role-playing game
``Damn -- I thought it would be a good time, but it was just your Palm Pilot.''
``uu.net said you have a unibrow -- that's why they're not paying.''
-- Dory Drago, 21-Jun-2001
Goto, n.:
A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
to complain about unstructured programmers.
-- Ray Simard
``[T]he determined Real
Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.''
-- Ed Post
I have often felt that programming is an art form,``Every machine is a new experience, and every script needs its own version of Perl.''
whose real value can only be appreciated
by another versed in the same arcane art;
there are lovely gems and brilliant coups
hidden from human view and admiration, sometimes forever,
by the very nature of the process.
``The Republicans want to be seen as pro-future.'' (Cool - I'm all
for a party that supports the passage of time.)
``I'm going to object to the whole `hitting a bullet with a bullet' metaphor.
I'm an engineer, so I want to be accurate. What we're doing is hitting an
offensive ballistic missile warhead, which is about the size of a garbage
can, with a supercomputer.''
-- Weenies, National Public Radio
``Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.''
-- J. Finnegan, USC
``One cannot guess the real difficulties of a problem before having solved it.''
-- Carl Ludwig Siegel
``I remember having only two [students] in one of the advanced
courses. One day they were both late for class, having been delayed at
the university bursar. When they arrived, they were shocked to find I
had begun without them and had already filled a whole section of the
blackboard.''
-- Carl Ludwig Siegel
The Deteriorata -- And here is another version
``Due to an artificial scarcity perpetuated by a former government agency
called Network Solutions, all online businesses took names that ended in
`.com,' sometimes paying upwards of a million dollars for the words
preceding the suffix.''
-- ``Exit Strategy'',
by Douglas Rushkoff (Just check it out)
``The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.''
-- Henry Kissinger
``Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics.
Even if you win, you're still retarded.''
-- A very special message from JRR's Shut The Fuck Up Foundation
Here are some things someone had to say.
``It's gotta be easy!''
-- Todd Stansell, 07-Aug-2001
``This war is mine!''
``Your war is arrogance. That makes it evil - that's mine.''-- Gabriel and Lucifer, The Prophecy
``Cute.''``He's a puppet, but he ain't nice.''
``What is it?''
``23rd chapter to Saint John's Revelations.''
``And..?''
``There is no 23rd chapter.''
``Well, maybe this is the teacher's edition.''-- Daggett and Joseph, ibid
``Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
is from the wrong kind of tree.''
-- Professor W.
``So much of life is knowing how tough to be.''
-- Ray Magliozzi
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
``Maybe I have changed since my death.''
``I don't think that's what it is.''
-- The Whole Nine Yards
``Dear Gary: It's Larry, and it's time for us to talk.''
Opening of a letter from Larry King to Gary Condit
``You gain STRENGTH, COURAGE & CONFIDENCE by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.''
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
``You must do the things you think you cannot do.''
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
The Captain... was juggling strategies for a spring campaign which would throw all available Imperial might against the Rebel... Cruel it may be, but most of us enjoy what we do - and the Captain more than anyone. This is a favorite game, matching wits with a Raker. He is blind to the dead, to the burning villages, to the starving children. As is the Rebel. Two blind armies, able to see nothing but one another.``Fear is the mind-killer.''-- The Black Company, Ch. 3: Raker, by Glen Cook
``Fear is always the enemy.''
-- Hummingbird, Wasteland of Flint, by Thomas Harlan, 2003, pg. 349 (paperback ed.)
``Eternity is the same for all things.''
-- Chill Factor, by Rachel Caine, 2005, pg. 289 (paperback ed.)
``Doing linear scans over an associative array is like trying to club someone to death with a loaded Uzi.''
-- Larry Wall, as quoted in Perl Cookbook by Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington, 1998, pg. 128
(Ha! - that's great! Not only is it a stupid waste of effort, but there's a high probability of killing yourself in the process.)
``The Bell Jar,'' too, has become a staple of ninth-grade English, an officially approved text for adolescents, a book about the culture of youth. The later ``Catcher in the Rye'' rewrites -- Thompson's [``Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas''] and McInerney's [``Bright Lights, Big City''] and Eggers' [``A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''] -- are not yet canonical in this way. People don't read them because their parents recommended them. They read them for the same reason they listen to alternative rock or go to see ``Pulp Fiction'' six times -- because these are things that teach them an attitude. They are sensibility manuals; they show what sort of unhappiness is in style this decade.1.79 x 1012 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's the law!-- Holden At Fifty by Louis Menand, The New Yorker, October 1, 2001, pg. 87
``The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
everybody and still nobody likes him.''
-- Jim Samuels
Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible.
``JESUS $AVE$ --- AND SO CAN YOU!!!! BUT FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY!!!
ACT NOW AND GET TWICE THE CHRIST, AT HALF THE PRICE!!!!!!!!!!''
-- CRAZY BOB'S JESUS WAREHOUSE
``Space is an illusion, disk space doubly so.''
-- stileproject.com
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
University, n.:
Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to fix it, and...``Wagner's music is better than it sounds.''
...look: look at humanity, in all its glory; the nightmares and the insecurities, the restlessness and the hunger for beauty and above all else Mortality, that merciless master whom we cannot escape. See the counting of days and hours, the endless sorrow and the tears and above all else the fear that it's all of it wasted, every bit of striving and blood and sweat that we pour into the world, for we have but a finite number of years and then what are we? This is what our gods are made of, this is our beginning and our end, the constant awareness of death which all other creatures on Earth have been spared, all but us! The great Fear that drives us to create, madly and endlessly, in the hope of leaving something behind when the darkness closes in and takes us at last...-- ``The Madness Season'', by C. S. Friedman, 1990, pg. 466-7 (paperback edition)
Here's a pretty good quotes page, including the following:
``I will be speaking today about work in progress, instead of completed research.
This was not my original intention when I chose the subject of this lecture,
but I did not get my computer programs working in time.''
-- Donald Knuth, Mathematical Topography
and
``Although robust enough for general use, adventures into the
esoteric periphery of the C shell may reveal unexpected quirks.''
-- /usr/man/man4.03/man1/csh.1 (this is so true!)
and
``Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.''
-- Dave Barry
``The world is a never-ending stream of shit to buy - or you can sleep in.''
-- Me
A layman knows he has to kick it;
An amateur knows where to kick it;
A professional knows how hard.
-- Chuck Polisher
``As for the New Aryan Nation... he would grind their stations to dust,
and then package that dust and sell it to tourists, so that it reached
every corner of the universe with its message: Your kind is not
wanted here.''
-- ``This Alien Shore'' by C. S. Friedman, 1998, pg. 271-2 (paperback edition)
``In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in the proper order
then why can't he?''
-- LinuxHardware.org
(Answer: proper grammar is not the most important thing in the universe)
What's Left To Do (My personal favorite: Rip Microsoft a new asshole! :)
Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
``We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.''
-- James E. Day, Postmaster General
``...if you don't have a wise person to go along with all the
smart people...''
-- Kurt Eichenwald, 17-Jan-2001, ``Fresh Air'', NPR
``U. S. President Ronald Reagan champions a compassionate campaign to
resupply the freedom fighters with machine guns, C4 plastique
explosives, and other humanitarian weapons they so desperately need in
their struggle against literacy teachers, health clinics and
agricultural cooperatives.''
-- ``Tribulation 99''
``Just because people are experiencing things doesn't mean they
have any insight into them...''
-- ``Bellweather'', by Connie Willis, 1996, pg. 56 (Bantam paperback edition)
``Bennett told me you're working on fads source analysis. Why did you
decide to work with fads?''
``Everybody else was doing it.''
-- ibid, pg. 98
``What do you think the most important quality for a scientist is?''
``Luck.... And good assistants.''
-- ibid
An entire site dedicated to quotes (which, sadly, no longer exists), including:
``Only the dead have seen the end of war.''``The dead know only one thing: it's better to be alive.''
-- George Santayana
``It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures.
As well ask men what they think of stone. War is always here. Before man was,
war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting the ultimate practitioner.''
-- Cormac McCarthy, ``Blood Meridian'', in ``Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War'',
by Mark Bowden
``I'm re-inventing the spoke.''
-- RJ White
``She may hear God, but she may not play God.''
-- ``Law and Order''
``In Washington, two inches of snow shut down everything
except the rats and the drug dealers.''
-- ``Oaths and Miracles'' by Nancy Kress, 1996, p. 212 (paperback edition)
``Washington D.C. -- the fount of all mistakes.''
-- Jana Lane, 29-Oct-2005
``Precedent is merely the assumption that somebody else, in the past with
less information, nevertheless knows better than the man on the spot....
To follow a tradation means to do things in the same grand style as your
predecessors; it does not mean to do the same things.''
-- ``Space Cadet'' by Robert A. Heinlein, 1948, pg. 180 (Ace paperback edition)
``Sometimes I think that [she] thinks that I am an idiot studying hard to
become a moron -- but flunking the course.''
``Well, don't let it throw you, kid. You'll be a moron, yet, if you just
keep trying.''
-- ibid, pg. 195
``We are tools of Darwin come creeping: that force of nature that slaughters
the weak in their beds and causes puppies to pee on the carpet.''
-- from EvilPeople,INC.(tm)'s
annual report
``If pimps and thieves were invariably sentenced, all decent people would get
to thinking they themselves were constantly innocent... that's what must
be avoided above all. Otherwise, everything would be just a joke.''
-- Albert Camus, ``The Fall''
``Alvin Fernald and Shoie Shoemaker were seated on the steps in front of Alvin's
house. It was one of the golden days of summer; the sun peered across Mrs.
Nickle's roof and burned down on the boys' backs. Alvin felt warm and good,
inside and out, because it was the first day of summer vacation.
``He and Shoie were discussing a problem - a rather pleasant problem. For a whole
semester they had been looking forward to vacation, and now that it was here,
they couldn't decide what to do with it. The vacation stretched like a broad,
smooth highway down the whole length of summer, and they couldn't make up their
minds how to spend the very first morning.''
-- ``Alvin's Swap Shop'' by Clifford B. Hicks, 1976
``Culture is what remains when everything else has been forgotten.''
-- anonymous member of the Académie Française, in ``Continuum thermomechanics:
The art and science of modelling material behaviour'', edited by G. A. Maugin,
R. Drouot, and F. Sidoroff, 2000, pg. 14.
The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's
outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by
mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once
tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims
the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding.
-- Mike Harding, ``The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac''
``I'm past standing on streetcorners and howling at the unattainable but I suspect no woman ever gets entirely beyond belittling you,
however subtly, for finding her attractive.''
-- Garrett, Faded Steel Heat by Glen Cook, 1999 (Plus: a dwarf named ``Dryzkaksghul Gnarrisson''!)
``It's not just protecting the Earth. It's all of the planets, all of the time.''
-- John D. Rummel, Ph.D., P.P.O. (Planetary Protection Officer) (This guy rocks!
You can check out the story about him at the
SF Chronicle.)
``We know a lot about life in Florida. We don't want to go all the way to Mars, and discover life from Florida.''
-- ibid
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
``This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.''
-- Wolfgang Pauli
``Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.''
-- Dave Barry
``In fact, the film has become so famous for its own badness that it's now beyond criticism.''
-- Cult Flicks and Trash Pics, 1996, in their review of Plan 9 from Outer Space
(Cool. And I know you're just asking yourself: `Gee, what can I do to
be beyond criticism?' Well, don't let it throw you, kid. You'll be beyond criticism, yet, if you just keep trying.)
``Everyone believes that he knows more because the number of symbolic expressions and scholarly phrases has been increased,
and no one cares that all these arts are no more than scaffolding for the sciences, and not science itself.''
-- Buffon
``If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.''
-- Albert Einstein
``...I'd rather lie to him than have him think I'm lying.... He really trusts me, in a way.''
-- Nick Charles, The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, 1933
Here's an... interesting quotes page, in English and Danish!
``It takes a million monkeys at typewriters to write Shakespeare, but only a dozen monkeys at computers to run Network Solutions.''
-- Patrick Delahanty (Man, that is sotrue!)
``He sat gazing out to sea long after the great ship had slipped down out of sight
below the horizon. Then with a sigh he climbed to his feet and began making his way
back along the harbor, dimly conscious that some part of him was still out there on
the ocean but not yet sufficiently self-aware to know which part it was.''
-- Out There Where The Big Ships Go by Richard Cowper, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August, 1979
``28. Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete.
Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?''
-- Alan J. Perlis, Epigrams in Programming,
ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
(Man -- can you imagine the bugs in a program that would take as long?)
Other good ones include:
``11. If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.''
and
``95. Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.''
``Do not create anything - it will be misinterpreted, it will not change, it will follow you the rest of your life.''
-- Bob Dylan, 1964
``It's perfectly normal in a healthy relationship to give up some of your identity.''
``Well, I don't want to do that, because... I don't have any extra.''
-- Sissy Spacek and Sarah Jessica Parker, in... some movie..?
``Gimme a second while I make this up again.''
-- Jamie Lloyd-Smith, 20-March-2002, in reference to a factual statement he just made.
``It would be comforting to know my species is destined for something that will
outshine its past and present. The Church, the Orthodox sects, all the Hanite
cults and factions and denominations, offer that hope, but they've surrounded it
with so much bullshit and in so many cases have given in to worldly temptations
which act against the hope, that they've forfeited any right to guide us toward
the brighter day.''
-- Cold Copper Tears by Glen Cook, 1988 (The Garrett Files edition, pg. 613)
``Nobody who wasn't down there will ever really understand. Not even those who shook our hands when we left. Not even
those who welcomed us back with mighty hugs and no conception whatsoever what it was like to sit there watching the life
bleed out of a man whose throat you'd cut so you could go on, undetected, to murder some other poor boy whose bad luck had
placed him in your path at the wrongest time possible in the entire history of the human species. So that someday, somewhere
far away, some woman would cry because she no longer had a son.''
-- Angry Lead Skies by Glen Cook, 2002
``You're right.''Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
``I'm always right, darling. You need to remember that.''
``You're right.'' They all are. All the time. Which means that there're really tens of thousands of realities all around us, happening all at the same time. Has to be, on the face of the evidence.-- ibid
Jerry Lewis, in reference to Peter Bogdanovich:
``Peter takes a sunset personally, and cries when his laundry comes back.''
The New Yorker, ``The Moviegoer'' by Tad Friend, April 8, 2002, pg. 39
(I think this is the only funny thing I've ever heard Jerry Lewis say, but it's hilarious!)
Heidegger, who was neither to repent nor recant his early Nazi fervor, eventually altered his theological position in one reagard. In an interview that he gave long after the war but ordered withheld from publication until his death, he announced that philosophy, after Nietzsche, could offer neither hope nor help for mankind's future. All we can do, he told a startled journalist, is to wait for a god to reappear. `Only a god', he said, `can save us now'.``Et tu, Cthulhu?''-- The New Yorker, ``After God'' by Claudia Roth Pierpont, April 8, 2002, pg. 89
``IT found me!''
-- slogan of the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu, from Everything Is Under Control by R. A. Wilson, pg. 100
``As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.
When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.''
-- Oscar Wilde
``Everything you've learned in school as `obvious' becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no
straight lines.''
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
``The dearest things - part of their value is that they cannot last.''
-- Finder by Emma Bull, 1994
``A good friend will bail you out of jail when you call. A true friend will be sitting next to you, going, `Dude, that was fuckin' awesome!' ''
``Wasting time is an important part of living.''
In reference to playing Clive Barker's Undying:
``This is an extremely sick, disturbing, and frightening game... it's no wonder I couldn't stop playing it!''
``The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science,''
he observed mildly... ``Come on, Ox, let's go out and get killed.''
-- Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart, 1984, pg 140 (paperback edition)
Ducharme's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as part of the problem.
``Conspiracy theory is the sophstication of the ignorant.''
-- Richard Grenier
``Where there's a will, there's a relative.''
-- Laura Dickerman
``You can have a collection of facts, but they may not add up to the truth.''
-- me, 13-Feb-1998
``Propaganda is something that has a foregone conclusion to it.''
-- Orvill Schell, 22-Apr-1998 (He may have said, ``in it''...)
``Everyone I know has memory problems now.''
-- Terry Gross, 22-Apr-1998
Here's a cool Smashing Pumpkins quote page, which includes the following:
``All we have is our music, our legion of fans, our millions of dollars and our youth.''Note that this page is actually part of Black Starla's home page, which has other cool stuff, including several quotes pages, with special kudos to the MST3K page!
-- Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, on The Simpsons
Here are some more great quotes I lifted from Starla:
``I used to be into sadomasochism, necrophilia, and beastiality, but then I realized I was just beating a dead horse.''And here's my favorite of all:``Kids worship the darndest things!''
-- Joel, MST3K, episode #424``Yeah, kids are always mutilating people.''
-- Crow T. Robot, MST3K, episode #421``No self-respecting scientist would have his shirt unbuttoned that far.''
-- Tom Servo, MST3K, episode #106``This movie sucks, Joel.''
-- Tom Servo, MST3K, episode #323``Two words: Get over it!''
-- Dr. Forrester, MST3K, episode #414(And, of course, the classic)
``Microsoft Service; could you hold for an hour?''
(MST3K, episode #324)
Joel asks Crow what he wants for Christmas:
Crow: ``I wanna decide who lives and who dies.''
(pause)
Joel: ``Oh, I dunnow...''
-- MST3K, episode #321
``Even these days, masturbating in public isn't considered de rigueur, unless, of course, you do it for a living.''
-- me, 09-May-2002
``640 whatevers ought to be enough for anybody. Nobody needs 1024 of anything.''
-- also Me
``Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.''
-- from a Slashdot post, as reported on Humorix
This page is full of cool stuff, including:
God is real... unless declared integer.and
Smash forehead on keyboard to continue.drsteve's First Law of Capitalism: You can always pay more.
``We have technology to take care of people like you!''
-- Bryan S.
Out of the corner of his eye, Trouble watched the two corporate men, sweating in the heat, bleeding from the lash, keep their heads down and their hoes going mechanically. If that was what you had to do to make it in a corporation, Trouble wanted none of that. Give me a rifle and plenty of ammunition. I'll show you how to get ahead.``A moment that loosens us from the cycle of despair is a treasure.''-- The Price of Peace by Mike Moscoe, 2000, pg. 230 (paperback ed.)
``New York... brings out the best of the worst of you.''
-- Dog Eat Dog by Jerry Jay Carroll, 1999, pg. 222 (paperback ed.)
``It's a tremendous responsibility, being an engineer,'' he said, his voice breaking. ``It's a very imperfect process. It's not so beautiful as science.'' He struggled to keep his composure. ``I have a lot of tough nights. I'm still not sleeping. I go to sleep for a little bit, but I wake up thinking--I have so many thoughts.''The following are from Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson, 1999, hardbound ed. (and about freakin' time, too!)He put his hands over his eyes, as though that would block out the thoughts. After a minute or so, he went on, ``There are all kinds of terrible things that take place on this planet, that nature brings on us. But this event had... Not only was it man against man but it was live on television, and we watched it, and you could reach out and touch it''-- he stretched out his hand toward the windows where the towers had once stood --``but there was nothing you could do.''
-- Leslie Earl Robertson (February 12, 1928 -- February 11, 2021), structural engineer, ``The Tower Builder'' by John Seabrook, The New Yorker, November 11, 2001
Rest in peace.
``Unfortunately, there are a lot more laptop computers floating around than there are filmmakers worth paying attention to.'' (pg. 53)``I was already so far past the point-of-no-return I couldn't remember what it had looked like when I'd passed it.''``How long do you want these messages to remain secret? Five years? Ten years? Twenty-five years?''
``I want them to reamin secret for as long as men are capable of evil.'' (pg. 55)``One of the most frightening things about your true nerd, for many people, is not that he's socially inept--because everybody's been there--but rather his complete lack of embarrassment about it.'' (pg. 646)
``...it is easier to introduce new complications than to resolve the old ones.'' (pg. 655)
``I don't think that teenagers are the way they are because of their age. It's because they have nothing to lose. They simultaneously have a lot of time on their hands and yet are very impatient to get on with their lives.'' (pg. 672)
``Nothing is a cliché when it's happening to you.''
-- ibid
``I got a fever! And the only prescription, is more cowbell!''
-- ``Superstar Reccord Producer
Bruce Dickinson''
(This, of course, leads to another great quote:
``What happened to that guy who died?''
-- Eric Bloom,
relating something that people say to him.)
These are from American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, 2001, hardbound ed.
``[America] is the only country in the world that worries about what it is.'' (pg. 91)``And it's a fine wake I'll be wanting, with the best of everything, and beautiful women shedding tears and their clothes in their distress, and brave men lamenting and telling fine tales of me in my great days.''
``You're dead, Mad Sweeney. You take what you're given when you're dead.''
``Aye, that I shall,'' sighed the dead man sitting in the back of the hearse.
(pg. 174)``Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world.'' (pg. 397)
``You know, I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don't need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It's what we do.''
There was silence, in the high place.
(pg. 421)``One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.
The tale is the map that is the territory.
You must remember this.''
-- from the Notebooks of Mr. Ibis (pg. 427)
When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
-- Edward A. Murphy Jr.
A nice list of quotes from Edward A. Murphy Jr. and an abridged collection of interdisciplinary laws.
``I will immediately add that to the top of my low-priority list!''
-- Brendan Kirby, Systems Administrator, MontaVista Software, 13-Jun-2002 (Thanks, Will! :)
``Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.''
-- Senator Soaper
Doggett: ``The more basic answer is what we're dealing with here is
simply a man. A psychotic killer with a deformed foot. You're familiar
with the principle of Occam's Razor?''
Scully: ``Yeah. You take every possible explanation and you choose the
simplest one. Agent Mulder used to refer to it as, `Occam's Principle
of Limited Imagination'.''
-- The X-Files, episode 8ABX04, ``Patience''
``Learn by Destroying''
-- Jeff Liebermann
``Unfortunately, the sadness kills the funny...''
-- Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy, 30-Jun-2002
I am not driven by hatred.``To try to find strength in righteousness is folly.
I am not driven by fear.
I am not driven by desire,
duty, or any rationale.
I can no longer feel any of these.
All that remains is
Retribution;
Cold and hard and final...-- Diablo
``It is easier to stab someone in the back than it is to look them
in the eyes. Society is built upon this principle, and it is universal
amongst those who rule...''
-- ibid
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts``Every time we disagree you throw that college stuff in my face!''
Benighted, walks under the mid-day sun
Himself is his own dungeon-- John Milton
``Please, Baker, spare us the alien-rights agenda -- put her in the cyclotron!''
-- Species II
The
Wave: Which would be more ammusing: a house full of puppies burning, or
a school bus full of children tumbling down a cliff?
Lemmy Kilminster: This is a difficult choice. They both have their appeal.
I'll go with the bus full of school children. At least dogs grow up to be faithful. School
children just grow up to be fucking people.
``Collectively, we never sleep.''
-- ibiblio.org
``Basic authentication should not be considered secure for any particularly rigorous definition of secure.''
-- The Apache Manual
``If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington
telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with
titles beginning with the word `National'.''
-- George Will
``Some Linux clusters are built for reliability instead of speed. These are not Beowulfs.''
-- The Beowulf FAQ
These are from Zero Effect, a very good movie starring Bill Pullman and Ben Stiller.
``The art of research is the ability to look at the details and see the passion.''``Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.''``Is this your kid?''
``Nope -- just a rental.''``No, that's a W2 -- WWII is the Second World War.''
``Some knowledge, some information, is like a terminal disease -- it's contagious, and it's fatal.''
``Even dangerous things can be safe, as long as you're careful.''
``Some questions are for answering -- others are better left to torture and torment for all eternity.''
``Discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.''
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgi,
Nobel Prize Laurete (Physiology and Medicine) (from a pretty pretty good
quotes page)
``We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this
decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because
they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the
best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we
are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which
we intend to win, and the others, too.''
-- JFK, September 12, 1962, Rice
University, Houston, Texas
``...peace is better than war because life is better than death.''
-- Mario Cuomo,
July 16, 1984, Democratic National Convention, San Francisco, California
``With great power comes great bureaucracy.''
-- Jamie Cate, Sep 23, 2002
``Do you read science fiction?''``What should I do?''
``I write science fiction.''
``Can I quote you on that?''
``Not until my next paper's been accepted.''-- conversation between myself and Harry Noller, Sep 23, 2002 (Harry: I hope it got accepted :)
``Only the Clan disregarded both physics and bureaucracy.''
``Why knock? It gives them time to load.''
-- ``To Trade The Stars'' by Julie E. Czerneda, 2002, pgs. 39 & 376 (papberback ed.)
``Everything outstanding that I do is in the future.''
-- Lisa Valdin, 10-Oct-2002
``There are plenty of fish in the sea... and some men, too!''
-- Sadie J. Ryan, 28-Oct-2002
``How can we use technology to help businesses cut costs?''
``Have them buy less of it.''
-- ``Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet'' (WARNING:
Irritating Popup)
``This tragic accident will not go unpunished!''
-- ``Mob Story''
``Never forget that, once upon a time, everything was new, and amazing.''
YOU NO DOUBT have heard about the Buddhist who said to the hot dog vendor, ``Make me one with everything.'' But you may not have heard that the hot dog vendor was also a Buddhist. He handed his customer a frankfurter with all the fixin's, and the customer handed him a $20 bill.``Doveryai, no proveryai''Several minutes passed. The customer finally said, ``Where's my change?'' The vendor replied: ``Change comes from within.''
-- Jon Carroll (and elsewhere, no doubt :)
I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed.``War is a crime. Ask the infantry and the dead.''I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of the line -- the survivors of a regiment of a thousand that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
-- ``Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the commander-in-chief of one of the greatest armies ever raised'' (Jon Carroll)
``You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.''
-- Dean Martin
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
funny
every color tastes the same
...
Actually seeing them
the paintings you've seen all your life
ten eleven hours in the Louvre
so tired knees are shaking
you will never see this again
never
but the Mona Lisa was in Pittsburgh
-- Joe Haldeman, ``Worlds Enough and Time'', In Dreams Awake, 1992, pg. 238 (hardback ed., excerpt)
``Have you ever done this before?'' she whispered, her eyes filled with the moonlight.
``No,'' he admitted reluctantly. ``Most girls I meet are suffering from hypothermia and are in borderline shock.''
-- ``Alien Taste'', by Wen Spencer, 2001, pg. 146 (paperback ed.)
``Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the gun.''
-- the ``good'' Ash, Army of Darkness
``People think I'm a 30-year-old drug addict, but actually I'm a 40-year-old alcoholic!''
-- something overheard by John Waters
``Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.''
-- Pablo Picasso
``But to me, time is like a table, or a floor. I can walk back to the Big Bang, or forward to the heat death of the universe....''-- ``Forever Free'', by Joe Haldeman, 1999, pg. 267 (hardback ed., excerpt)
``But you already know the future,'' Marygay said.
``It isn't a line. It's a table. There are all kinds of futures....''
Sara spoke up. ``Don't leave!'' He looked at her with an impatient expression. ``We see things like a line, a line of cause and effect. But you see millions of lines on your table.''
``An infinity of lines.''
``Okay. Is there anything else in the universe besides your table?'' He smiled. ``Are there other tables? Is there a room?''
``There are other tables. If they're in a room, I've never seen the walls.''
``There is only one thing people like that is good for them: a good night's sleep.''
-- Ed Howe
The amount of sleep required by the average person is just a few more minutes.
These are from, ``The Door Into Summer'', by Robert A. Heinlein, 1957 (Del Rey paperback ed.)
Engineering is the art of the practical... (p. 120)``Wayists don't try to convert people. We simply show them that they're already Wayists.''In a quarter of a billion people one little girl can drop out of sight like a pebble in the ocean. (p. 158)
``Time travel classified? Good God, why?''
``Hell, boy, didn't you ever work for the government? They'd classify sex if they could. There doesn't have to be a reason; it's just their policy.'' (p. 192)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 any way to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous... fatal. In the end. (p. 251)
``Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it; those who fail to learn history
correctly, why they are simply doomed.''
-- Achem Dro'hm, ``The Illusion of Historical Fact'', C.Y. 4971,
``Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda'', Episode 3, ``To Loose the Fateful Lightning''
``These children desperately need spiritual guidance.''
``These kids are very in touch with their inner savage.''
-- ibid
``The truth is never easy to pronounce...''
-- ,
techsploitation.com author, 01-Jan-2003,
The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Vol. 37, No. 14, pg. 24
``Your insolence is music to my ears!''
-- Apophis, Stargate SG-1: The Devil You Know
``You know you're in trouble when people start checking the
`Death to America' box.''
-- Jon Stewart, ``The Daily Show'', 20-Jan-2003
(Man, that is so true!)
These are from ``The Complete Ivory'' by Doris Egan (2001, paperback ed.)
``...they fell on their hosts and killed them, and set fire to their house. When the neighbors heard the noise, they came to investigate, but seeing the bloody weapons in the hands of the men, they were too timid to say anything. And the men said, `Go back to your homes, good neighbors. This is not because of anything you've done, and it's not because we're angry with you. It's just one of those things that happen because we are in this world.' '' (pg. 144)``There's no such thing as neutrality... there's indifference, and there's choice.'' (pg. 247)
``Everything can be converted to money...'' It was probably the closest this planet came to a universal religious statement. (pg. 251)
``I am a person who makes lists. This was something to add to the list of things I'd noticed changing as I got older. I'd noticed that making a fool of myself no longer seemed to be the soul-rending experience it once had been; that when I was badly treated by others, I understood when to make a fuss and when not; and now, I saw the third item: the knowledge that there was no court but the one in my head, and its judgements were all life sentences. I suppose I'll find other things to add as I go along... but the first two bits on the list had been a comfort to me; I saw now it would not all be that way.'' (pg. 275)
``Well, what are we to do with all these facts? They float in and out of consciousness, seemingly unconnected...'' (pg. 292).
``As an ancient philosopher once said, `I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.' '' (pg. 602 - that would have been Woody Allen.)
``I do like having acres of time to myself, and waking up when I choose, and taking long baths and playing loud music when I like; but that kind of thing wears thin quickly, and you start to wonder where everybody is.'' (pg. 604)
``...what a private individual may feel impelled to do should not have repercussions beyond his own conscience. One may disobey a law, and nevertheless believe that law to be necessary.''
``That's not what they teach on Athena.''
``They can afford to be finicky on Athena. The most that happens to anyone there is getting tossed off a committee.''
I'd once heard of a man who'd committed suicide after getting tossed off a committee. (pg. 717)What is it about us human beings, anyway? How can we possibly hurt each other as much as we do and still feel so put-upon while we're doing it? I sometimes feel we would all benefit greatly from having our lives recorded and played back, so we could see every wrong move we make from a spectator seat; every harmful remark and then a close-up on the eyes of the person we're talking to.'' (pg. 890)
``I want to be able to ping my toilet, and ssh in to my shoes.''
-- a major weenie I overheard
``Oh yeah. Ooo, ahh -- that's how it always starts. But then later there's
running, and then screaming...''
-- Dr. Ian Malcom, ``The Lost World: Jurassic Park''
``The only thing worse than robbing a bank is owning one.''
-- Bertolt Brecht
``Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.''
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)
``In Googlis non est, ergo non est.''
-- Kirk Strauser (Indeed :)
``You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.''
-- George Burns
``So... you're keeping me alive because you don't know DOS?''
-- ``The Prophecy II''
``Why would someone with two Ph.D.s become a Teamster?''
``For the money, I guess.''
-- Stargate SG-1: Wormhole X-treme
``We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.''
-- Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
``It was half-way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold.''
-- Hunter S. Tolkien, ``Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur''
(Taken from Jamie Bowden's email signature :)
``So I solved the problem by booting the machine the normal way, cd-ing over
to /etc, and typing 'rm *'. And then it just worked!''
-- Jeff Lerman, 07-Mar-2003 (This cracked me up!)
``Even the process of erasing is an act of creation.''
...And if you must put me in a box-- Dan Bern, ``Jerusalem''
Make sure it's a big box
With lots of windows
And a door to walk through
And a nice high chimney
So we can burn burn burn
Everything that we don't like
And watch the ashes
Fly up to Heaven
Maybe all the way to India
I'd like that...
Brainy Quote, which has such classics as:
``The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
-- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act III, scene 2
and
``Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.''
-- Charles Lamb
``If you want a simple life, use bash.''
-- Linux From Scratch
``Life is way easier with IRIX 6.5.''
-- SGI Freeware HowTo
``Sometimes the very young do not always do as they're told.''
-- The Knox, Stargate SG-1
God: ``Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent
on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch,
like a safecracker or a pickpocket.''
Bender: ``Or a guy who burns down a bar for the insurance money!''
God: ``Yes, if you make it look like an electrical thing. When you do
things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.''
-- Futurama, ``Godfellas''
``I so own you.''
-- Col. Jack O'Neill, to his android duplicate, Stargate SG-1
``Stop the war within yourself and you will do the world and humanity the greatest service.''
-- Ajahn Sumanobhikku, ``Questions from the City, Answers from the Forest''
``Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the
center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation
works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.''
-- Kelvin Throop III
``The city of Tokyo is an amazing sprawl - something out of William Gibson or Philip Dick...''
-- Anthony Bourdain, ``Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the
Culinary Underbelly'', 2000, pg. 270 (paperback ed.)
``I'll be right here. Until they drag me off the line. I'm not going
anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties
over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost.
``But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.''
-- ibid, pg. 302
``Everything that government does turns to dust or ashes, including the people.''
-- Jack L. Chalker, ``Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold'', 1981, pg. 313 (``The Four Lords
of the Diamond'' Science Fiction Book Club hardback ed.)
``I don't think she knows she's a robot.''
``How is that possible?''
``Well, the last time your consciousness was copied into a machine,
you didn't find out right away.''
-- ``Stargate SG-1: Menace''
``Transportation is a precise business.''
-- ``The Transporter''
``Black holes are where God divided by zero.''
-- Paul Barton
``Freaky Bug-Eyed Weirdo Girls Broke Everything''
-- Newspaper headline, ``The Powerpuff Girls'' movie
``For too long, apes and monkies have been under the thumb of man!
The time has come to oppose that thumb!''
-- Mojo Jojo, ibid.
``I... I... didn't know I could do this.''
``What you mean is that you did know that you couldn't -- it's
quite a different thing.''
-- Thursday Next and the Unitary Authority of Warrington (nee. Cheshire) Cat,
``Lost In A Good Book'', by Jasper Fforde, 2002, pg. 181 (hardback ed.)
``No Job Too Strange''
-- Kael Fischer, 28-May-2003
These questions about Australia were posted on an Australian Tourism Website. A native Aussie chose to respond as follows:
Q: Does it ever get windy in Australia? I have never seen it rain on TV, so how do the plants grow? (UK)Here's a page of some gnarly latin quotes, including:
A: We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.Q: Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street? (USA)
A: Depends how much you've been drinking.Q: I want to walk from Perth to Sydney - can I follow the railroad tracks? (Sweden)
A: Sure, it's only three thousand miles, take lots of water...Q: Is it safe to run around in the bushes in Australia? (Sweden)
A: So it's true what they say about Swedes.Q: It is imperative that I find the names and addresses of places to contact for a stuffed porpoise. (Italy)
A: Let's not touch this one.Q: Are there any ATMs in Australia? Can you send me a list of them in Brisbane, Cairns, Townsville and Hervey Bay? (UK)
A: What did your last slave die of?Q: Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Australia? (USA)
A: A-fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe. Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the Pacific which does not... oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Kings Cross. Come naked.Q: Which direction is North in Australia? (USA)
A: Face south and then turn 90 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we'll send the rest of the directions.Q: Can I bring cutlery into Australia? (UK)
A: Why? Just use your fingers like we do.Q: Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule? (USA)
A: Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is... oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Kings Cross, straight after the hippo races. Come naked.Q: Do you have perfume in Australia? (France)
A: No, WE don't stink.Q: I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in Australia? (USA)
A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.Q: Can I wear high heels in Australia? (UK)
A: You are a British politician, right?Q: Can you tell me the regions where the female population is smaller than the male population? (Italy)
A: Yes, gay nightclubs.Q: Do you celebrate Christmas in Australia? (France)
A: Only at Christmas.Q: Are there supermarkets in Sydney and is milk available all year round? (Germany)
A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of vegan hunter gatherers. Milk is illegal.Q: Please send a list of all doctors in Australia who can dispense rattlesnake serum. (USA)
A: Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca which is where YOU come from. All Australian snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.Q: I have a question about a famous animal in Australia, but I forget its name. It's a kind of bear and lives in trees. (USA)
A: It's called a Drop Bear. They are so called because they drop out of gum trees and eat the brains of anyone walking underneath them. You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.Q: I was in Australia in 1969 on R & R, and I want to contact the girl I dated while I was staying in Kings Cross. Can you help? (USA)
A: Yes, and you will still have to pay her by the hour.Q: Will I be able to speak English most places I go? (USA)
A: Yes, but you'll have to learn it first.
``Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.''
-- Publius Vergilius Maro, ``The Aeneid'' (If I can not move the gods,
I will set the forces of the underworld in motion.)
and
``Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum!''
(Don't you dare erase my hard disk!)
``Well, you know... there's alligators, and then there's 8 guys with flamethrowers.''
-- me, 09-Jul-2003
``What you say may be incomprehensable and boring, but that doesn't make it true.''
-- ``Split'', 1990
``Things must match the furniture.''
-- ibid
``One guy says he's found the way - that's how it starts. Communism, aerobics, religion, EST, vitamins, science, urban
planning, pantyhose -- everything, anything, to distract them from the fact that they're bored, meaningless, impotent
nothings, waiting to die.''
-- ibid
``Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't
matter and those who matter don't mind.''
-- Theodor Seuss Geisel (as provided by the quotedb,
and brought to my attention by brantshali)
``The problem with the gene pool is that there's no lifeguard.''
-- (thanks to Jay Li :)
``There's a time and a place for everything - and it's college.''
-- Homer Simpson (Thanks, Kael!)
``If nothing else gets done, we have to do that.''
-- Me
``People name stupid stuff all the time.''
-- Kim Reynolds (nee Foster :)
``I do my best thinking when I'm not.''
``My grandpa David or Groucho Marx said this -- we haven't figured out which one yet.''
-- Ally
``In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences.''
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
``That is yucky, and I won't do it.''
-- PHABRIX error message
``Getting stuff to work is all just a matter of dominance.''
-- Bucky Katt
These are from ``Virtual Light'', by William Gibson, 1991 (paperback ed.)
``...this feeling had come, that day, and swallowed everything up inside it, so big you couldn't really prove it was there except by an arithmetic of absence and the memory of better days.'' (pg. 184)drsteve's Second Law of Capitalism: Anyone else is a bigger idiot than you.``He couldn't figure out what `Cognitive Dissidents' meant; it wouldn't help him figure out what the theme, or whatever, was.'' (pg. 206)
``...like some terrible base stupidity at the core of things.'' (pg. 283)
``Something inside her stopped, learning this about bullets: that one second there isn't any hole, the next second there is. Nothing in between. You see it happen, but you can't watch it happening.'' (pg. 287)
``God-eater and his friends, if they weren't just one person, say some demented old lady up in the Oakland hills with a couple of million dollars' worth of equipment and a terminally bad attitude, had struck Rydell as being almost uniquely full of shit.'' (pg. 337)
``Good things happen - much more slowly than all the bad shit going on
all the time, but they do happen.''
-- Me
``In this phial is caught the light of Eärendil's star, set amid the waters
of my fountain. It will shine still brighter when night is about you. May it
be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.''
-- Galadriel, ``The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring''
The following are from ``Sundiver'', by David Brin, 1980 (paperback ed.)
``Oderint Dum Metuant (Let them hate, so long as they fear)'' -- Accius (pg. 15)``I didn't come half-way across the galaxy to wait for permission to do my job.''``Give the computers eyes to flash, and arms to put akimbo. Let them cast meaningful glances or stares that would kill if only stares could. Why should they not, the machines, begin to take on the aspect of those whom they absorb?'' (pg. 134)
``The measure of (mental) health is flexibility (not comparison to some 'norm'), the freedom to learn from experience... to be influenced by reasonable arguments... and the appeal to the emotions... and especially the freedom to cease when sated. The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns.'' -- Lawrence Kubie (pg. 193)
``When I came back around from the dark side, there in front of me would
be the landing area where the crew was, and the Earth, all in the view
of my window. I couldn't help but think that there in front of me was
all of humanity, except me.''
-- Michael Collins, Apollo 11 Command Module Pilot (thanks to Eric Siegerman for this)
The following are from ``Startide Rising'', by David Brin, 1983 (paperback ed.)
``...chance diverts all schemes.'' (pg. 35)``[Toshio] was, indeed, learning a lot working for Dr. Dart. One thing he had learned, which would serve him well if he ever did go on to graduate school, was to be very careful in choosing his research advisor.'' (pg. 211)
``It was beautiful! Everything was going on at once!'' (pg. 422)
``The Unauthorized Autobiography of Larry Ellison''
-- Dr. David Akey
``I apologize in advance for the late notice.''
-- UCB CNS network outage announcement
``I believe gay marriage is between a man and a woman.''
-- Arnold Schwarzenegger, candidate for Govenator of California (not even close, dude)
``um, duh, this is /., adn speling flaims are lame.''
-- Nucleon500 (oh, yeah!)
``With power comes responsibility, and with responsibility comes negligence.''
-- Jeff Lerman
``I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.''
-- Rudyard Kipling
(Thanks to The Unabageler for bringing this to my attention :)
Here's the Unofficial 3SI FAQ (Frigging Annoying Questions) (My favorite: the answer to ``Where can I get a service manual for my car?'')
``Fool! If this form developes as I hope, you will have plenty to be
afraid of before the night's over. Go on -- fix the electrodes! This storm
will be magnificent -- all the electrical secrets of heaven!''
-- Dr. Henry Frankenstein, ``Frankenstein'', 1931 (dir. James Whale)
Here's the Gettysburg PowerPoint presentation
``If you're still alive, there is always one more thing that you can do.''
-- Laurence Gonzales,
``National Geographic Adventure'' magazine, Nov. 2003, pg. 92
Michi Henning says: Don't Do This:
``I'm just rewriting the UNIX kernel in perl.''
``Well, what's that good for?''
``Well, I don't know, but it's cool, isn't it?''
``It wasn't really unusual, it was just unique.''
-- Bryan Stansell, 08-Oct-2003
``Apologies: In our last issue, we incorrectly listed Man-Loving Party Sluts Vol. 3
in actress Diane Lane's acting credits. The correct film title was Chaplain. We
apologize for the typo.''
-- The
Wave Magazine, Vol. 3, Issue 21, October 9-22, 2003, pg. 5.
also the home of:
The Wave: Catherine, this film can present such a pessimistic view of marriage. How do you keep such a positive outlook in your life?-- The Wave Magazine, Vol. 3, Issue 21, October 9-22, 2003, pg. 33.
Catherine Zeta-Jones: Take a day at a time and be kind. I think, especially in our business, we meet a lot of people and sometimes you spend so much time being nice to strangers. So just keep a clear head and be nice to each other. That's all the advice I can give.
George Clooney: Being married to Michael Douglas helps.
``Every time you go up a river, you owe something to `Heart of Darkness'.''
-- Daniel Mason, author of ``The Piano Tuner''
``[A] young man in charge of other young men doesn't work out too well.''
-- ``Tailgunner'' (senator, whatever) Joeseph McCarthy, in reference to Roy Cohn,
as quoted in ``Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations'', Volume I, Eighty-Third Congress,
First Session, 1953, Introduction, pg. xvi (which you can read
for yourself - something I highly recommend doing -- there is nothing dry
about this stuff.)
``This `MR. ROGERS' character is totally out of control.''
-- Bucky Katt
``Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.''
-- ``Angels in America'', HBO production
``Moral clarity kinda makes history a little less relevant, doesn't it?''
-- ``George W. Bush'', ``Le Show''
``You're way ahead of me by one step.''
-- Jeff, 07-Jan-2004
``There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap,
ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.''
-- Ed Howdershelt (Thanks to Gene Heskett for this!)
``Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?''
-- Get Your War On, motherfucker!
``...does just looking at things make you anti-Israel? OH MY GOD! I've been
looking at things all day!''
-- ibid
``They ALL float down here. When you're down here with us, you'll float too!''
-- ``It'' (1990)
``When you're going to kill a god, let someone else do your dirty work.''
-- Jigo, ``Princess Mononoke''
``He's a brainless, swollen, life-sucking god of death, but at sunrise he'll
vanish like a bad dream.''
-- ibid
``Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because
it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.''
-- George W. Bush
``I like to call him an idiot because he is one.''
-- Erin L. Cunningham, in reference to George W. Bush
In reference to Neal Stephenson's ``Quicksilver'':
Me: How far into it are you?
Joffa: *shrug* Quarter of an inch.
``If anyone knows how to get Oracle 8i 1.7.1 to install on frickin Windows XP,
you email me. Now.''
-- Life on the Unknown Road.
(apparently JIT compiling does not work on P4s. ``C'est ridiculous.'')
These are from the MST3K... interpretation of ``The Brain (I mean, ``The Head''..., I mean, ``The Brain'' :) That Wouldn't Die'':
``I'm your mother now, Frank.'' -- Dr. Clayton Forester``Perhaps the most important achievement of UNIX is to demonstrate that a powerful operating system for interactive use need not be expensive... it can run on hardware costing as little as $40,000...''``Kind of looks like a Jenny Holzer piece.'' -- Tom Servo, in reference to the opening credits
``Well, you're right -- the liver isn't in the skull.'' -- Crow T. Robot
``Tag -- you're God!'' -- Tom Servo
``Nothing's unbelievable if you have the nerve to experiment. I've been working on something like this for weeks!''
-- Dr. Bill Cortner, in reference to reanimating the dead (Weeks, I tell you -- weeks!)``Luke... join me or you'll star in `Corvette Summer'.'' -- Mike Nelson
``Aaagguuhh -- the road is attacking me!'' -- Crow T. Robot
``An American in vitro.'' -- Mike Nelson
``Look lady, I've got a girlfriend with her head in a Lasagne pan -- I've seen it all.'' -- Crow T. Robot
``A computer is like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.''
--Joseph Campbell
``A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in
human history -- with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.''
-- Mitch Ratliffe
``A human being is a computer's way of making another computer. Yes,
we are their sex organs.''
-- Solomon Short
``All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that
the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if
you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all
means, do not use a hammer.''
-- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
``There is only one satisfying way to boot a computer.''
-- J.H.Goldfuss
``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
``Where everyone else in New York offices does small things in stylish ways, they do
very big things with no style at all.''
-- ``Street Furniture'', by Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 06-Nov-2000, pg. 54-5 (in which
we also learn that there are, exactly, 1,976 alleys in New York City).
``To know your organism, you must eat it.''
-- Thomas Hunt Morgan, as quoted in ``Lord of the Flies'', by Jonathan Weiner,
The New Yorker, 05-Apr-1999, pg. 45-6.
``Wearing a seat belt cuts your chances of dying in an accidentby forty-three per cent.-- ``Wrong Turn'', by Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker, 11-Jun-2001, pg. 58.
If you add the protection of an air bag, your fatality risk is cut by forty-seven per cent.
But an air bag by itself reduces the risk of dying in an accident by just thirteen percent.''
``The nation that controls magnetism controls the universe.''
-- Chester Gould
``I have read of a place where humans do battle in a ring of jello.''
-- Teal'c, ``Stargate: SG-1'', Ascension
In reference to μ:
For all those times you wish you hadn't gone there -- now you didn't!-- Jeff
``Since the dawn of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun.''
-- Mr. Burns (Thanks, Kath! :)
``There was just a radical change when Ronald Reagan came in and
took down the solar pannels off the White House roof that Jimmy [Carter] put
up -- and essentially declared war on the sun.''
-- Who Killed The Electric Car?
``I dunnow - my understanding is that the term `other' is usually used
in reference to people who aren't `us', but maybe we shouldn't be
`otherizing' people who aren't `us'.''
-- Kath (You go, girl!)
``Practical applications are for the weak.''
-- Kath
``NVIDIA has supported stereo on the LINUX platform for some time. Their
drivers can be downloaded from their web site and they support all
flavors of LINUX (IA32, AMD64, IA64 and FreeBSD).''
-- Supporting
Stereo Visualization in LINUX, StereoGraphics Corp.
``Check out all his majesty!''
``I said consummate v's -- CONSUMMATE!!''
-- StrongBad (Speaking, of course, about Trogdor The Burninator - Yay!)
``Why would anyone eat CoolWhip when RediWhip exists?''
-- Anna Realini
``Houston, we have a problem.''
-- Jim Lovell, from Apollo 13
``They say madness runs in our family... heh... Some even call me mad...
And why..? Becauase I dared to dream of my own race of atomic monsters..!? Atomic
supermen with octagonal-shaped bodies that suck blood out of you...''
-- Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, Futurama, ``A Fishful of Dollars''
``It's also true that one of which wasn't.''
-- Kath (and, to be sure, it was)
``Wake me up when I'm rich.''
-- Me
``The only thing we can be reasonably sure about the future is that
even if it won't get any better, it will definitely be bigger.''
-- The Multi
Disk System Tuning HOWTO
``Another day, another mind-boggling adventure!''
-- Spaceman Spiff
Pass the toy.
-- Emmeline Sun, April 15, 1996
``Come to Kenya -- we've got lions.''
Or: bubblewrap!
``It's like an Ed Wood movie with lots of money.''
-- Kristin, in reference to Van Helsing, before she'd seen it (and, as it turned out, she was right)
Civilization is a religion.-- Stop Making Sense, liner notes (excerpts)
Nuclear weapons can wipe out life on Earth, if used properly.
Cats like houses better than people.
Schools are for training people to listen to other people.
``Never test the depth of water with both feet.''
-- noxes
MICROSOFT: Where do you want to go today?-- SiliconAddict
APPLE: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
LINUX: Are you coming or what?
``A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog
without bricks tied to its head.''
-- Brandon Sharitt
``No definition of `science' is complete without a reference to `terror'.''
-- Don DeLillo, Ratner's Star
``You know, back in 2000 a Republican friend of mine warned me that
if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd
lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched.
You know what? I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned
if all those things didn't come true.''
-- James Carville
Here's yet another pretty good quotes page
``The only `-omics' with any science in it is `economics'.''
-- Dr. Sydney Brenner
if only one thing that you know-- Demon Cleaner, Kyuss
imposters from the show
they'll try to trick you into
normal treatment
oh don't you listen to them say
shush them all away
i am the demon cleaner
madman so
i am the freedom cleaner
standing naked here to say
i'm the only way...
``[A] conversation has a life of its own and makes demands on its own behalf.
It is a little social system with its own boundary-maintaining tendencies;
it is a little patch of commitment and loyalty with its own heroes and villains.''
-- Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual, 1967, pp. 113-114 (quoted in Rawls,
Sociological Theory, 1987, 5:136-149).
``Email fixes everything.''
``If you can read this email, you don't need this information.''
``See - I can program anything!''
-- Jeff
``Our marriage is like the Electoral College - it works better if you don't think about it.''
-- News From Lake Woebegone
``Ah, music - a magic beyond all we do here!''
-- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, pg. 128
``It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live....''
-- ibid, pg. 214
``It is our choices... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.''
-- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, pg. 333
``This is school, Mr. Potter, not the real world.''
-- Harry Potter and Order of the Phoenix, pg. 244
``Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young...''
-- ibid, pg. 826
In reference to the sunset:
``It's like dawn, only different.''
-- Sadie Jane
``I'm a self-diagnosed hypochondriac.''
-- Aliya McIver, 2004-08-04
``Yeah, well, Steve makes everything sound easy!''
-- Jeff, 2004-08-09 (Yes, that's correct.)
``There's actually very little blood in this, except for the stuff that comes from the sprinklers.''
-- KB-F, in reference to Blade (turned out she was wrong, as she later admitted :)
``He doesn't understand tact -- it's just not his foreplay.''
-- Kath 04-Sep-2004
The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
``The illiteracy level of our children are appalling.''
-- George W. Bush, President of the United States of America and (alleged) native-born American English speaker, January 23, 2004 (Wow...)
``There is always a bullet in his gun, pain in his heart and a cold grey rain of rage in his eye.''
``America cries out for a president whose favorite Beatle is Ringo.''
``He was walking around with a big cup of coffee. You would call to him and he would say, `What, did you call me?' Then it seemed like he
was sleep walking, not really paying attention; he almost walked into me once too. If you left him alone for more than a couple of minutes,
you would come back to find him dozing off on the table. After we woke him he was wondering if he could go out and get some more coffee.''
-- from an anonymous student essay, left in a printer (got this from
Joe Varone's web page)
``Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.''
-- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)
``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
A free an independent press is essential to the health of a functioning democracy. It serves to inform the voting public on matters relevant to its well-being. Why they've stopped doing that is a mystery. I mean, 300 camera crews outside a courthouse to see what Kobe Bryant is wearing when the judge sets his hearing date, while false information used to send our country to war goes unchecked? What the fuck happened? These spineless cowards in the press have finally gone too far. They have violated a trust. ``Was the president successful in convincing the country?'' Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true? And the excuses. My God, the excuses! ``Hey, we just give the people what they want.'' ``What can we do, this administration is secretive.'' ``But the last season of Friends really is news.''-- Democracy (The Book), pg. 131
``I don't
care how many people we have to kill as long as my gasoline prices are lower.''
-- Some humanitarian in Lancaster City, Pennsylvania, July 9, 2004 (What if one of the
people we have to kill is you? What if the first person we have to kill is you?
What if the only person we have to kill is you?)
``I married beneath me. All women do.''
-- Nancy Astor (1879-1964)
``He has grand aspirations of micromanagement.''
-- Jacob Corn
``People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid.''
-- Soren Kierkegaard (Lifted from the QuoteDB)
``Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.''
-- Oscar Wilde
``Ultimately the bond of all companionship, wheather in marriage or in friendship, is conversation.''
-- Oscar Wilde (This guy was on!)
``It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more
desolation. War is hell.''
-- William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891), Union General in the American Civil War
``Companies claimed to be highly responsive, Jennifer thought, but you only had to chase a screaming man through their offices to realize it
wasn't true.''
-- Jennifer Government, by Max Barry, 2003, pg. 285 (hardback ed.)
These are from ``The Last Hot Time'' by John M. Ford, 2000
``The world is never ready for anything until it's too late. By which time something else has arrived.'' (pg. 118)``If I have to die of hunger, I want to do it in my sleep.''``Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for somebody put me in charge.'' (pg. 125)
``If you give people work that makes them feel strong and useful, then they will become strong and useful. Their strength, through you, is power, and astounding things can be done with that power. Impossible things.
``Keep the same people in fear, and you may get use from them, but never strength. If they find strength despite you, the first thing they will do with it is bring you down. No matter what it costs.'' (pg. 143)
``I am the future, where people have no morals and no emotions, but we have a bunch of kick-ass gadgets.''
-- ibid, Episode 43: Make Your Time
``You just never know when a girl might need a bullet.''
-- Winchester '73
``My Border Collie is smarter than your honor student''
``What is reading, but silent conversation.''
-- Charles Lamb
``I only have two left feet.''
-- Kristin Hersh, Me and My Charms (used in the movie Foxfire)
Overheard:
``So how did you get this job?''So there you go.
``You apply.''
``So why did you apply?''
``Because I needed a job.''
``Quod me nutrit me destruit''
(``That which nourishes me also destroys me'')
-- one of Brooke Ashlee's tattoos
(Angelina Jolie has one too)
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep; perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause -- there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd. -- Hamlet, William Shakespeare, act III, scene 1
``Motivation is often the limiting reagent.''
-- Kath (well, mostly :)
But the line
dividing good and evil
cuts through the heart
of every human being.
And who is willing
to destroy
a piece of his own heart?
-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (quoted in ``Humans'' by Robert J. Sawyer)
``My caution is its own punishment.''
-- KB-F
``Welcome to the desert of the real.''
-- The Matrix
``What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?''-- Tombstone
``A man like Ringo got a great empty hole right through the middle of 'im. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain, to ever fill it.''
``What does he need?''
``Revenge.''
``For what?''
``Bein' born.''
``My dad went to MIT, but he was always right.''
-- Robin Keller
Here's a bunch of Shakespeare quotes
``People have done even dumber things than elect Bush.... They elected Hitler.''
-- Harvey Pekar
Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.-- Speech drafted for (but thankfully never delivered by) U.S. President Nixon for use ``in the event of moon disaster'' during the first lunar landing. The text was found in a memo to H.R. (``Bob'') Haldeman from speechwriter William (``Bill'') Safire, dated July 18, 1969, unearthed in the U.S. National Archives.These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.
They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.
For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.
``If the engine doesn't work, we'll just be a permanent monument to the space program.''
-- Charles ``Pete'' Conrad, Jr., speaking to copilot Alan Bean just prior to liftoff from the
lunar surface, November 20, 1969
``There's no excuse. They were, after all, rocket scientists.''
-- Edward Tufte, on the failure of Morton Thiokol engineers in their
pre-launch presentations to make clear the link between cold weather
and O-ring failure that led to the Challenger disaster in 1987.
``This book said to me, `Let's celebrate the birth of our lord Jesus
Christ with yarn'.''
-- The Stepford Wives (2004)
``Some days you wake and immediately start to worry. Nothing in
particular is wrong, it's just the suspicion that forces are aligning
quitely and there will be trouble.''
-- Jenny Holzer, Bench #16
Hunter Stocton Thompson
``There are some jobs |
|---|
``He spoke to the world and said what people were afraid to say.''
-- John Hoag
``Houston is a cruel, crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with
no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It's a shabby,
sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich
pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West -- which can mean
just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.''
-- Hunter S. Thompson, 2004
``Don't worry. I know exactly what I'm doing.''
-- Hunter S. Thompson, September 10, 2001
``Let's say it's 1944. Let's say some E.T. is examining Earth, and let's suppose
he happens to drop in on an extermination camp in Poland. He's watching Nazis extract
the gold from the teeth of dead Jews, and he's asking himself, is this economic behavior
or is it part of the food chain or what? He's trying to make sense of it, but he never
will. Never. Because some things just don't make sense. Some things make no fucking
sense at all.''
-- Blind Lake, by Robert Charles Wilson, 2003, pg. 132 (paperback ed.)
``The more things change, the more they stay the same.''
-- Alphonse Karr
Here's yet another good quotes page.
As well as... this one!
These are from ``Expendable'' by James Alan Gardner, 1997 (paperback ed.)
``The best revenge is making them envy your freedom.'' (pg. 45) ``Secrets are flimsy things -- spread them around too many people, and they get torn.'' (pg. 52) ``...death isn't kept at bay by luck or posturing, but by constant attention to necessary details.'' (pg. 86) ``Down was inside me, a point halfway between navel and groin. The Chinese call that point the dantien, the center of the soul. I fell toward my center like rain.These are from ``Commitment Hour'' by James Alan Gardner, 1998 (hardback ed.)
``The center of my soul. The center of my soul. If I conceived a child, this was where it would grow. When I died, this was where I would run.'' (pg. 89) ``Even as a little girl, I never felt truly alone. I was constantly accompanied by responsibility...'' (pg. 167) ``Some jokes aren't worth explaining.'' (pg. 254)
``Tober Cove hated Neuts with the fierce burning hate you always aim at someone who says your pain is stupid and self-imposed.'' (pg. 7) ``Young man, I'm not a god, I'm a scientist. We're like gods, but more irresponsible.'' (pg. 19) ``Materialism isn't the same as greed. Materialism is reducing everything to an equation of tangible profit and loss. It's saying that a family of outsiders will cost this much for housing and this much for schooling and this much for ongoing annoyance factor, so if we get twice that many crowns back in payment, we should take the deal. Materialism is an uncomprehending blindness to anything that isn't right in front of your nose -- believing that material effects are the only things that exist, and there's nothing else you'd ever think to put on the scales. Hell, boy, materialism is the belief in scales at all: nothing is absolutely right or absolutely wrong, but just something to be weighed against everything else.'' (pg. 83) ``That's what I like to see. Abject submission.'' (pg. 83) ``I'm bad with explanations. Now and then I believe I understand why things happen... but then I always think better of it.'' (pg. 92) ``Even if it all balances out, some things can't be forgiven.'' (pg. 240)These are from ``Vigilant'' by James Alan Gardner, 1999 (paperback ed.) (If you think you're seeing a pattern here, you're right. But don't worry -- it will continue.)
``Here's the thing, the crucial thing: your life is full. And if you don't realize that... then you're just like the rest of us, but that's no excuse.'' (pg. 3) ``The Vigil's motto: Live in the Real and Name the Lies.'' (pg. 26) ``Whenever I go to a funeral, there's always something that makes me furious.'' (pg. 87) ``An Oolom proverb: Acting Wisely is Easy, Until it Isn't.'' (pg. 146) ``Funny how you forget about magic. Even when you say (as we all do) that you've never lost the spirit of childhood, you find that for years you haven't felt the slightest magical shiver. And you don't really acknowledge that till magic touches you again.'' (pg. 167) ``...bureaucrats love to dicker about minutiae, but have aneurysms when you suggest they question first principles.'' (pg. 213)These are from ``Hunted'' by James Alan Gardner, 2000 (paperback ed.)
``Fleeing through the dark doesn't give you much chance to appreciate alien ecologies.'' (pg. 103) ``You never know what crazy stuff doctors will come up with.'' (pg. 138) ``Get moving, you old sot.''These are from ``Ascending'' by James Alan Gardner, 2001 (paperback ed.)
``Right away, your magnificence.'' He gave her something that was nowhere near a salute, then grabbed Dade by the arm. ``Come on, Benny, we're off to fulfill the glorious Explorer tradation: getting our asses shot for no good reason.''
``That's what `expendable' means,'' Dade replied.
Tobit cuffed him in the helmet. ``Asshole -- you say that after we die.'' (pg. 341) ``It hurt to be smart. Understanding what really happened in the world just made you sick to your stomach.'' (pg. 378) ``Do the right thing and don't act like a jerk.'' (pg. 402)
``The council is a place where everyone schemes against everyone else, and people talk incessantly about Power with a capital `Pow'.'' (pg. 16) ``It is strange how the presence of additional people can make you feel more alone.'' (pg. 31) ``Now the test of civilization was not using my ax but abandoning it. This sounded very much like what humans call `irony'... and I do not like irony at all.'' (pg. 31) ``That is the nature of Science -- it is often confusing and terrible, but you must pretend you are not troubled or else Science People will call you names.'' (pg. 42) ``All I could do was glare at the alien ship, hoping if I hated them strongly enough, they would explode. This never works, but one must try it anyway -- one feels it ought to work if your loathing is sufficiently sincere.'' (pg. 108) ``Some mysteries are too pleasing to be questioned.'' (pg. 155) ``Having a perilous adventure is always better than comatose safety. Always, always, always, always, always.'' (pg. 178) ``...crusades have nothing to do with belief. They come from a powerful instinct to homoginize the population: to break up communities that are getting too insular and to shuffle around the breeding pool.'' (pg. 213) ``...what is the point of being an alien if you do not have Uncanny Abilities with which to incite terror in other species? If you cannot disrupt the lives and sanity of other races, you might as well stay at home.'' (pg. 248) ``I grant that the seat was comfortable -- like reclining on a mound of dead sheep whose bones have been softened with hammers.'' (pg. 254) ``With heroism, it is the thought that counts.'' (pg. 264) ``One cannot punch a computer in the nose.These are from ``Trapped'' by James Alan Gardner, 2002 (paperback ed.)
``On the other hand, one can kick loose a computer's metal housing and rip out its wires, dancing upon its circuit boards and smashing anything that says `Fragile, Do Not Stomp'.'' (pg. 307) ``Deliberate choices are the only sacred things in the universe. Everything else is just hydrogen.'' (pg. 347) ``Alas, Festina tells me it will take a long time for any admirals to wind up in court. First there must be an Extended Media Circus, then an Orgy Of Knee-Jerk Recrimination, then some Somber Universal Soul-Searching, followed by a Period of Desensitization Due To Massive Overexposure, leading to a Backlash Of Cynical Indifference, then Collective Amnesia And Perversely Partisan Revisionism, finally culminating in Cattle-Call Jury Auditions wherein hundreds of out-of-work actors vie for `cushy all-expenses-paid gigs with a high exposure quotient and very few lines to memorize'.'' (pg. 356) ``...grief makes fools of us all...'' (pg. 357) ``Even happy endings have little tears in their eyes.'' (pg. 357)
``Time travel always gives respectable physicists the screamie-weamies. Not that we're totally convinced it's impossible... but we know enough about the universe to realize just how much of the natural order time travel would screw up. The cliché of killing your grandfather isn't nearly as serious as killing the second law of thermodynamics.'' (pg. 88) ``We are all prisoners of our ten-year-old selves.'' (pg. 133) ``Yesterday. More distant than the farthest star.'' (pg. 268) ``Don't be a little paranoid; worry about everything, or let it all go.'' (pg. 368)These are from ``Radiant'' by James Alan Gardner, 2004 (hardback ed.)
``I thought I would die from loneliness -- not the sharp, aching kind but the dull, ongoing blur. It can feel like fatigue that never goes away; it can feel like dissatisfaction with everything around you; it can even feel like lust, as you lie alone in the dark and pretend someone else is there.These are from ``Pattern Recognition'' by William Gibson, 2003 (trade paperback ed.)
``But it's loneliness. Deep, helpless, hopeless.'' (pg. 11) ``In Eastern legends, death is always part of the story. Even if a hero dies peacefully at a ripe old age, you have to include that death as part of the hero's tale. Many Western champions just vanish into the sunset or `live happily ever after,' as if death passes them by... but in the stories I heard growing up, the time and manner of a hero's death were never glossed over. Often, they were the whole point.'' (pg. 84) ``Anatta [Sanskrit]: The precept that no one has a permanant self. Other religions may believe in an `immortal soul,' but the Buddha rejected this idea. He contended we are all composite beings, made of flesh, thoughts, emotions, etc., and all these change over time. There is no component one can point to and say, `That is my unchanging core'.'' (pg. 116) ``Tut spoke again to the dying man. The language was soft and beautiful -- purposely designed that way. Three centuries ago, the Unity's founders created a private language... partly to separate themselves from the Technocracy, partly as social engineering. The structures of language influence the structures of thought: not simplistically, but subtly. The way you're trained to speak predisposes you to patterns in the way you think. It isn't that you're incapable of thinking in other ways; it's just that you find some thoughts easier to articulate than others. Also, growing children hear more talk about easy-to-express topics than topics the language makes difficult. Inevitably, this affects their social and intellectual development -- some thoughts are `normal' while others aren't. By constructing a new language with a certain philosophical slant, the Unity had tried to make it harder for people to be bad citizens.
``Or so the rumor went. One should never entirely trust Technocracy gossip about the Unity... any more than one trusts divorced spouses talking about their exes.'' (pg. 183) ``Don't say you're sorry if you don't intend to change.'' (pg. 202) ``My people dreamed of becoming gods -- increasing our intelligence a thousandfold, abandoning our physical bodies and becoming pure energy -- yet we imagined we'd retain our original personalities. We'd be vastly more powerful, but the same people, with the same prejudices, conceits, fears, hatreds, blind spots, envies, distorted priorities, unexamined desires, irrational goals, unconfronted denials... ah, such fools. Believing we could don transcendence as easily as a new coat. So sure of our unquestioned values. So ready for a fall.'' (pg. 237) ``...the enlightened beings of this galaxy must be inured to the sounds of suffering -- they hear so much of it.'' (pg. 245) ``...gods are something you defy, not something you become. Humans should be standing on mountaintops, screaming challenges at the divine rather than coveting divinity ourselves. We should admire Prometheus, not Zeus... Job, not Jehovah. Becoming a god, or a godlike being, is selling out to the enemy. From the Greeks to the Norse to the Garden of Eden, gods are capricious assholes with impulse control problems. Joining their ranks would be a step down....
``Godhood is a phase of existence for those who aren't mature enough to be born human. Buddhists would never hurl defiance at the gods -- that's just rude -- but we don't envy the divine condition. The gods are stuck in celestial kindergarden: flashy powers, fancy toys, people prostrating themselves before your alter... it's just childish wish fulfillment. Hardly a situation that encourages enlightenment. If your karma condemns you to birth as a god, the best you can do is resist the urge to throw thunderbolts and hope that in the next life you'll get to be human.'' (pg. 248) ``I've met enough higher beings to know their tricks. They're all incorrigible show-offs, they love getting a rise out of lesser mortals, and they all know my goddamned name.'' (pg. 251) ``I [want to] become a cool demigod. Like a ninja Hercules, or a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Godzilla.'' (pg. 262) ``So what? What to do? What could anyone do?
``Simple. You did what you could, in the here and now. Nothing else was possible.
``The past was past. Remember, but let it go.
``The future was not yet with us. Wise people planned and prepared, but didn't obsess.
``All anyone has is the present. Live there.'' (pg. 292) ``Gotama, Tathagata Buddah, hadn't become some miracle-working superman; he'd just purged himself of all his own bullshit.'' (pg. 314)
``She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.'' (pg. 1)``Faith without works is dead.''``And for an instant she sees that unconscious, unmarked face, its lower half obscured by the transparent mask, the evening's rain falling on closed eyes. And knows that this stranger may now inhabit the most liminal place of all, poised perhaps on the brink of nonexistence, or about to enter some existence unimagined.
``She cannot see what hit him, or what he might have hit. Or else the street itself had risen up, to smite him. It is not only those things we most fear that do that...'' (pg. 54)``You `know' in your limbic brain. The seat of instinct. The mammalian brain. Deeper, wider, beyond logic.'' (pg. 69)
``...he seems to somehow understand emotions without ever having partaken of them.'' (pg. 293)
``...experience has shown that when a vender says that a particular operation will have no
operational impact whatsoever, it usually means that it will have an operational
impact (e.g., the switch will start to billow smoke and play old Bee Gees music until it
is power-cycled).''
-- Michael Sinatra
``I've been to a ton of funerals. You seen one, you seen 'em all. Even mine.''
-- Six Feet Under
``We lead our lives, and when they end, sometimes we leave a little of ourselves behind.
``Sometimes we leave money, a painting... sometimes we leave a kind word....
``And sometimes, we leave an empty space.''
-- Dead Like Me
``Why do I keep losing all things, and people, that I care about?''
``That's what life is....''
-- ibid
``I know it's not our tradation to do things differently...''
-- A Bug's Life
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
``I wish I could think on my feet like Aaron Sorkin's scripted people.''
-- Kristin Balder-Froid, April 14, 2005
``After irony comes neo-sincerity.''
-- Art Spiegelman
``Sincerity is not enough''
-- Motto of the Unitarian Jihad
``I could'a been an astronaut.''-- The West Wing, ``Manchester'' (damn straight)
``You could not have been an astronaut.''
``I'd have made a great astronaut.''
``You're afraid of heights, speed, fire and small places.''
``I'd have overcome it to go to the moon.''
``She needs feedback, if it's just so she can learn to ignore it.''
-- Six Feet Under
``History tells us that human beings have short memories.''
-- Samir Khader, Sr. Producer, Al Jazeera, Control Room (Yep)
``As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I
became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.''
-- M. Cartmill (from Ana Gonzalez's email signature)
``...note that using taintperl introduces dependence on another large body
of code working correctly: we'd suggest you skip using taintperl if you
believe you can code at least as well as Larry Wall.[12]
[12] Hint: if you think you can, you are probably wrong.''
-- Practical UNIX and Internet Security, By Simson Garfinkel & Gene Spafford, 1996 (2/E)
``We all came of age in the cold war. We all fought the good fight.
I'm sure we can work something out.''
-- Legends: A Novel of Dissimulation, by Robert Littell (quoted in The New Yorker)
``Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?''
``To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.''
``The dog did nothing in the night-time.''
``That was the curious incident,'' remarked Sherlock Holmes.
-- The Adventure of Silver Blaze, by Arthur Conan Doyle
(because, really, you've just got to)
``Jesus God! is this the first thing you guys ever stole? You're a fine lot of lollipops!''
-- Sam Spade, The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett, 1929, pg. 188 (Black Lizard
Vintage Crime paperback ed.)
An enigma never gets an answer (Should've fixed the compression coil, Mal. Curse your sudden but inevitable cancellation!)
``...one mustachioed petty officer was in charge of a tripod-mounted antimatter gun that
would dispose of armored vehicles, or, indeed, anything at all.''
-- Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis, by Walter Jon Williams, 2002,
pg. 331 (paperback ed.) (Now THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!)
``...sometimes it's just easier to use a variable.''
-- MySQL, by Paul DuBois, 2005 (3/e), pg. 76 (footnote)
``Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.''
This page has AWESOME quotes, including these (and there's more there, if you look):
``You can only beat your head with a rock so many times.''
-- Kynn Bartlett``A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.''
-- Calvin (generally associated with Hobbes)``A common example... a C compiler which flooded the computer room with poison gas when presented with a right-shifted signed integer would be standards-conformant, but only if this was mentioned in the manual.''
-- Craig Berry``If you can keep your head while others around you are losing theirs, you've probably misjudged the situation.''
-- unknown``Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion. Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.''
-- Gary Zukav, ``The Dancing Wu Li Masters''Pearl Jam [were] the Black Sabbath of the 90's.
Polvo [were] the Velvet Underground of the 90's.
Smashing Pumpkins [were] the Boston of the 90's.
Nine Inch Nails [were] the Twisted Sister of the 90's.
Alanis Morisette [was] the Janis Ian of the 90's.
The Replacements were the '84 Tar Heels of the late 80's.
Columbus Crew are the Green Bay Packers of Major League Soccer.
Dr. Pepper is the Boba Fett of the Coca-Cola Company.
Derrida was the Chow Yun Fat of European post-structuralism.
Ross Perot is the Steve Garvey of Tibet.
Rotoblation is the Plymouth Volare of cardiology.
-- Klaatu
``It's like apples and grapes... it's worse - it's like cacti and octopi.''
-- JCL
``There are two kinds of spurs, my friend: those that come in by the door;
those that come in by the window.''
-- Tuco, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
``You see, in this world, there's two kinds of people, my friend: those with
loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig.''
-- Blondie, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
``There is much cruelty in the universe.''
``Yeah -- we seem to have a treasure map to it.''
-- Zhaan and Crichton, Farscape: Bone To Be Wild
``I long for the dumpster.''
-- Scorpius, Farscape: Self Inflicted Wounds, pt. 1: Could'a, Would'a, Should'a
``Reasonable common sense, judgment and the pursuit of mutual goodwill should
result in the positive resolution of scheduling conflicts.''
-- excerpt from the UC Berkeley Schedule of Classes
``See? Violence -- you'll get the hang of it.''
-- Farscape: Eat Me
``This is my home. All I need is more... what? Food? Family?
Is there a difference?''
-- ibid
``[Earth is] a backward planet full of xenophobic, superstitious morons. Nothing makes sense
if they didn't think of it first, and even then it's simplistic drivel.''
-- Rigel, Farscape: A Constellation of Doubt
Here is an excellent page of Calvin and Hobbes quotes, including:
``That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!''
and:
``It's only work if somebody makes you do it.''
The final words of
General John Sedgwick, Union Commander, killed in battle during US Civil War, 1864:
``They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist...''
``Brings back memories, huh?''
``Yeah... but what're you gonna do.''
-- Monk S3E15 16:00
``When Howard Hughes died, 400 people claimed to be his heirs... Twenty-two liars split two billion dollars.''
``Two billion? Billion? That's -- hang on, that's, two billion, divided by, twenty-two, people, that equals...
that equals a fuckload of money each!!''
-- Dead Like Me, ``Ashes to Ashes'' (season 2, episode 11)
``It's not my job to say who lives and dies... and it sure as shit isn't my job to give
anybody a little dignity when they do... My job sucks.''
-- ibid
``cup half full, cup half empty - show me the fucking cup!''
-- ``no messiah'' by lazy i
``Scientists are like Michael Douglas's characters - a little evil and very competitive.''
-- James Watson
``We're sorry to bother you at a time like this, Mrs. Twice. We would have come earlier, but
your husband wasn't dead then.''
-- Sargent... I mean, Captain... err... Detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin, Police Squad,
Episode 1: ``The Broken Promise'' (a.k.a. ``A Substantial Gift'')
Putting the future behind us, one day at a time.
``Perhaps the easiest way to make your writing more encyclopedic is to write about what people
believe, rather than what is so. If this strikes you as somehow subjectivist or collectivist or
imperialist, then ask me about it, because I think that you are just mistaken. What people believe is
a matter of objective fact, and we can present that quite easily from the neutral point of view.''
-- Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia founder (Well, what
people say they believe, anyway. Maybe...)
``Hiten Mitsurugi style -- or close to it, anyway!''
-- Yahiko Myojin, Rurouni Kenshin: Legend of Kyoto, Episode 52:
``To Make a Miracle: The Battle at the Aoiya'' (Just get it, and watch it)
``What is good in life, but friends, snacks and toys?''
``Linux gives us the power we need to crush those who oppose us.''
-- Switch To Linux (from uberGeek, which, sadly, no longer exists...)
``Oh, jeeze - you really are Radical Edward, they one they talk about.''
``Uh-huh! What've you heard?''
-- Faye Valentine and Radical Edward, Cowboy Bebop, Episode 9, ``Jamming with Edward''
From: The Software-RAID HOWTO,
Section, 5.1:
This is what you need for any of the RAID levels:(Man, Linux fuckin' rocks!!)All of this is included as standard in most GNU/Linux distributions today.
- A kernel. Preferably a kernel from the 2.4 series. Alternatively a 2.0 or 2.2 kernel with the RAID patches applied.
- The RAID tools.
- Patience, Pizza, and your favorite caffeinated beverage.
Overheard:
``How did they get the lights way up there?''These are from In Conquest Born by C. S. Friedman (1986)
``They're chemistry students -- they can do anything.''
``They have the practical knowledge we lack.''
``An uninspired ruler works to develop those relationships which will be most to his advantage. A great ruler determines the most desirable relationships and assumes them into being.'' (pg. 112)These are from The Forge of Mars by Bruce Balfour (2002)``Never underestimate man's ingenuity in masterminding his own destruction.'' (pg. 185)
``If a man understands the priorities of his fellows, he can lead them. If he fails in this, all the good intentions in the world won't buy him loyalty.'' (pg. 197)
``More than anything, it was the inefficiencies of modern society that had prompted her to try and change things by becoming an architect, unaware that the ancient profession was ruled by people who honored the past because they despised change.'' (pg. 211)``You can fool yourself all of the time, but you can't fool anyone else.'' (pg. 261)
``You might think, oh good, a chance to visit Mount Rushmore. Well, no: Mount Rushmore is a
Stalinist hellhole. But the rest of the state is splendid. Plus: bison.''
-- Jon
Carroll, SF Chronicle, March 9, 2006
``I am always beneath you, but NOTHING is beneath ME!''
-- The Underminer, ``The Incredibles'' (2004)
``I never look back, darling, it distracts from the now.''
-- ``E'' (Edna Mode), ibid
``I am my people.''
-- Scott Classen
``I heard about this place a long time ago -- a kind of floating scrap yard where they leave
wrecked gate parts, abandoned space ships and scrap metal. People moved in and started
living there -- squatters and drifters.''
``Why the hell would they wanna live there of all places?''
``There's no government, no nationality, no taxes and no cops!''
-- Jet Black and Faye Valentine, Cowboy Bebop, Episode 14, ``Bohemian Rhapsody''
``My inclusion of a site in this file does not constitute an endorsement of any kind.
In fact, I have never even been to many of these sites. As you go down the list
there are an increasing number of sites that I have never been to, or went to once
but will never visit again. Some of the sites in here are completely worthless,
but I don't remember exactly which ones, and I don't really care either.''
-- Ryan Kusnery's site list
``None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you.
You're locked up in here with me.
-- Rorschach, Watchmen, by Alan Moore
``This reminds me of an HBO series.''
-- KB-F, in reference to Desolation Row, by Bob Dylan
-- From Asphodel, That Greeny Flower, by William Carlos Williams, 1955
``I wanna live. I want to experience the universe, and I wanna eat pie.''
``Who doesn't?''
-- Stargate: SG-1, ``Urgo''
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Picture these...
``...rest assured I will beat them like a crying child in a department store.''
-- Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy, 05-Nov-2006 (indeed)
``You never know what you have until it's gone, and I wanted to know what I had, so I got rid of everything.''
-- Steven Wright, ``A.V. Club'' (inside``The Onion''), 09-Nov-2006 (v42, no. 45), pg. 18
Quotable Quote Alphabet Soup, which includes such gems as:
``who doesn't love The Ramones? they're like if The Beach Boys sniffed glue.''
-- baggins, 04-Aug-2003
and
``[Mena Suvari] looks like a preying mantis on crack.''
-- Cinnamongirl, 04-Aug-2003
and
``A dog looked at me with pity this morning as I gimped down the street. I showed him my thumbs and said 'Yea, but I got these.' ''
-- smax, 09-Dec-2004
``Sometimes you just gotta haul off and smack a duck.''
Erin Dueber (nee Cunningham :) (And, yes, this was an actual duck, and, yes, it actually got smacked - hard. But not by her.)
``Wow - that's a lot of parentheses.''
-- John McCarthy, inventor of Lisp
``Canada - it's like the apartment over a noisy party.''
-- Carl Mieczkowski
``It's 2002, and programming languages have almost caught up with 1958.''
-- Paul Graham
Greenspun's Tenth Rule: Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program
contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation
of half of Common Lisp.
Robert Morris's corollary: Including Common Lisp.
The Pirate Alphabet:
A -- The favorite word of Canadian pirates, ey?I AM THE VERY MODEL OF A MAJOR SUPER-CRIMINAL
B -- B stands for Beer!
C -- Da ting we sails da boat on
D -- Das beer! German pirates
E -- 'e needs a beer
F -- 'f only I had a beer
G -- Gee, I wish I had a beer
H -- H'aightch and everone one of us should have a beer
I -- I wish I had a beer
J -- The guy who sells us beer
K -- Jay's wife, she's a looker!
L -- Da place where bad pirates goes when dey dies!
M -- 'em folks needs beers
N -- 'nother beer
O -- Oh I wish I had a beer
P -- (*long pause*) Self-explanatree! (Disposing of used beer)
Q -- A French word meaning 'line for beer'
R -- A pirate's favorite word, Arrrh!
S -- What you fall on when you drink too much beer
T -- Why we beat the British
U -- You should have a beer
V -- Vikings! Svedish pirates
W -- You and you should have a beer
X -- Jay's former wife, she no longer sells us beer
Y -- Why not have a beer
Z -- Ze beer! French pirates
THE MASTER-MIND
I am the very model of a major super-criminal
My costume is impeccable, my inhibitions minimal
My plans for world dominion are both logical and sensible,
But only those who envy me dare call them reprehensible.
I've mass-destruction in my grasp, atomic and bacterical,
But sharpest yet my rapier wit is honed with barbs satyrical,
I've kryptonite, from green to white, for any such occasions
That I failed to factor Superman into my grand equations.
HENCHMEN
That he failed to factor Superman into my grand equations.
That he failed to factor Superman into my grand equations.
That he failed to factor Superman into my grand equations.
THE MASTER-MIND
Napoleon and Hitler were my gurus philosophical,
And Dr. Doom my mentor in my studies catastrophical,
I've added all the latest of improvements to my cranium,
From eyeballs periscopic to a coating of titanium.
HENCHMEN
He's added all the latest of improvements to his cranium,
From eyeballs telescopic to a coating of titanium.
THE MASTER-MIND
Of killing I'm a master, from zoology insidious,
To film critique in ways unique, and ambuscades euclidious,
My soul was bartered long ago to creatures quite infernal,
A price I paid quite gladly in exchange for life eternal;
With each and every stratagem I'm nearer to my victory
Except for super-heroes with opinions contradictory;
They upset my calculations which annoys me without measure,
And upon my hordes of lackies must be vented my displeasure...
HENCHMEN
[gradually inching off the stage]
Upon his hordes of lackies must be vented his displeasure
Upon his hordes of lackies must be vented his displeasure
Upon his hordes of lackies must be vented his displeasure...
THE MASTER-MIND
I wriggle through the penal codes through circumstance extenuous,
By employing only barristers reptilian and sinuous;
I escape from federal prisons and dimensions quite ethereal,
In time for juice and coffee, and a modest bowl of cereal.
HENCHMEN
[from the wings]
In time for juice and coffee, and a modest bowl of cereal,
In time for juice and coffee, and a modest bowl of cereal,
In time for juice and coffee, and a modest bowl of cereal
THE MASTER-MIND
For all my vast resources I have yet to be victorious,
But triumph now is imminent; the carnage will be glorious,
At last I shall achieve my quest for power unequivocal:
I am the very model of a major super-criminal!
HENCHMEN
At last he shall achieve his quest for power unequivocal:
He is the very model of a major super-criminal!Guy Hoyle © 2000
Please include copyright statement if this message is forwarded. (Of course ;)
``You never know what someone will believe.''
-- Deja Vu
``You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.''
-- Jeanette Rankin, first female member of Congress, as quoted in
the Santa Cruz Good Times, December 7-13, 2006
A few by Sir Winston Churchill (thanks Chris!)
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
It is well said, there is nothing wrong in change if it is in the right direction.
The Americans will always do the right thing... after they've exhausted all the alternatives.
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
``Scientists are never known for their ease-of-use.''
-- J. Corn, Esq.
``All my books have food on them.''
-- drsteve, 29-Dec-2006 (it's true, too)
``Some sins get instant punishment.''
-- Claus Fischer
``Life is a lonely and dangerous business, but I also think that things like insight get us through.''
-- Robert Stone, Jan 25, 2007, KQED's ``Forum''
``There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast.''
-- Anonymous, from The Quote Garden
``[Stephen] Colbert... employs irony -- that is, what he says is not
what he means. We are so used to people lying while hoping we think
they're telling the truth that people lying hoping that we understand
that they're lying can be unnerving.''
-- Jon
Carroll, SF Chronicle, January 26, 2007.
Which (by the way) also contains:
``Everyone asks for personnel changes, so the White House has personnel changes,
and everybody's like, oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
First of all, that's a horrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking.
This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs
on the Hindenburg.''
-- Stephen Colbert, White House Correspondents' Association's annual dinner, 2006
``What girl wants diamonds when she can have a Ken Dong group meeting?''
-- Shellie Weisfield, Feb 14, 2007 (Happy Valentine's Day!)
``Keep a pocketful of dimes and quarters with you at all times, and
constantly leave them in knee-level weird places where only a child would
ever look. Inside the hollow shafts of toilet-paper holders. Balanced
along the ridges of decorative molding. Inside pencil sharpeners at the
local elementary school. In the coin slots of gumball-dispensers (give
'em a half-turn). Imagine the eventual entertainment that will result.''
-- William J. Beaty's
Childhood Brain Modification
page (very... interesting).
``Fun will now commence.''
-- 7 of 9, Star Trek Voyager: Ashes To Ashes (Episode 238), March 1, 2000
You say, Columbus with his argosies``I Like The Way He Puts Yngwie J. Malmsteen To Distinguish Himself From All The Yngwies In The Business''
Who rash and greedy took the screaming main
And vanished out before the hurricane
Into the sunset after merchandise,
Then under western palms with simple eyes
Trafficked and robbed and triumphed home again:
You say this is the glory of the brain
And human life no other use than this?
I then do answering say to you: The line
Of wizards and of saviours, keeping trust
In that which made them pensive and divine,
Passes before us like a cloud of dust.
What were they? Actors, ill and mad with wine,
And all their language babble and disgust.-- ``You Say, Columbus with His Argosies'', by Trumbull Stickney
``...burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...''
-- from Howl, By Allen Ginsberg, 1956
``You have to go to Japan -- it's so orchestrated.''
-- Tessa Michaels
``Kirbytech™ For When OVERKILL is the Only Solution''
-- Karen Ellis, Planet Karen
``Everyone listens to Reason''
-- Snow Crash
``Since when'd you get two couches in here?''
``One of them is a special couch that only drunk people can see.''
-- Questionable Content
Which also brings us the (little-known) Fourth Law of Robotics:
Robots are powerless against the might of Duct Tape
and
``...dissolving a squirrel is a lot more work than you'd think.''
-- Pintsize
``...I was raised in the desert...''
-- George W. Bush, 14-Jun-2006 (courtesy of
Doonesbury)
``Ignorance doesn't make stuff not exist.''
-- Bucky Katt, Get Fuzzy, 08-Apr-2007 (Truer words...)
These are from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, 1939
``Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.'' (pg. 37)These are from Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, 1940``The world was a wet emptiness.'' (pg. 139)
``The little dead man sat silent in his chair, beyond fear, beyond change.'' (pg. 167)
``...the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.'' (pg. 230)
``I felt like an amputated leg.'' (pg. 60)These are from The High Window by Raymond Chandler, 1942 (Yes, once again, there is a pattern.)``I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.'' (pg. 207)
``The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.'' (pg. 221)
``From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.'' (pg. 45)These are from The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler, 1943``He had a long narrow head packed with shabby cunning.'' (pg. 76)
``She had eyes like strange sins.'' (pg. 136)
``...when you pass in beyond the green lights of a precinct station you pass clear out of this world, into a place beyond the law.'' (pg. 177)
``I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again.'' (pg. 262)
``Doctors make many phone calls, talk to many people. Doctors look out of their front windows, doctors frown, doctors show nervousness, doctors have things on their mind and show the strain. Doctors are just people, born to sorrow, fighting the long grim fight like the rest of us.'' (pg. 29)These are from The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler, 1949``Look, Miss Fromsett, I'd like to be smooth and distant and subtle about all this too. I'd like to play this sort of game just once the way somebody like you would like it to be played. But nobody will let me -- not the clients, nor the cops, nor the people I play against. However hard I try to be nice I always end up with my nose in the dirt and my thumb feeling for somebody's eye.'' (pg. 137)
``...it isn't only the guilty who are afraid.'' (pg. 139)
``There are days like that. Everybody you meet is a dope. You begin to look at yourself in the glass and wonder.'' (pg. 47)These are from The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, 1953``Something happened to his face and behind his face, the indefinable thing that happens in that always baffling and inscrutable moment, the smoothing out, the going back over the years to the age of innocence.'' (pg. 154)
``They are what human beings turn into when they trade life for existence and ambition for security.'' (pg. 222)
``It was one of those hypersensitive moments when all your automatic movements, however long established, however habitual, become separate acts of will. You are like a man learning to walk after polio. You take nothing for granted, absolutely nothing at all.'' (pg. 28)These are from Playback by Raymond Chandler, 1958``The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer.'' (pg. 56)
``She had that fine-drawn intense look that is sometimes neurotic, sometimes sex-hungry, and sometimes just the result of drastic dieting.'' (pg. 160)
``I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.'' (pg. 186)
``He was the kind of guy who always wants to do the right thing but somehow winds up doing something else.'' (pg. 373)
``She was an outdoorsy type with shiny makeup and a horse-tail of medium blond hair sticking out at the back of her noodle.'' (pg. 16)``You can solve your emotional problems just by SPENDING MONEY! Wow! No wonder people like capitalism so much!''``When a woman is a really good driver she is just about perfect.'' (pg. 75)
``It's alright - it's just science.''
-- Allyn Schoeffler, 01-May-2007
``The airplane in question was a C-17 cargo plane named the `Spirit of Strom Thurmond'.''
-- Cheney Transported Inside Aluminum Casket,
from the wonkette.com Cheney section, 17 April, 2007.
``I can't believe the clowns who are in charge of our circus.''
-- Marcia S.
``The Internet eats privacy for breakfast.''
-- Jon
Carroll, SF Chronicle, June 19, 2006
``It's always breakfast time on the Internet.''
``I may have plans that I don't know about yet.'' (Schrödinger Plans!)
-- Kevin Jude, 28-Mar-2008
``In other news, a national poll released today says that 9 out of 10 people would like to kill 9 out of 10 people.''
-- Fight Man: Here 2 Hit, Marvel Comics, June 1993
``Wouldn't it be totally neat if life was more like a text-based adventure game?
'You look around and see that the answer is yes!' ''
-- Dinosaur Comics
(which leads us right into:
``You are caught in a maze of twisty little Sendmail rules, all obscure.''
-- Sendmail: Theory and Practice, Avolio and Vixie)
I LOVE Dinosaur Comics!!!!! Because of stuff like this:
``COLONEL SANDERS HAS BEEN ADDED TO YOUR REVENGE LIST''
-- Dinosaur Comics
Plus: Giant cubes! Twenty cars on a stick!! Beer-flavoured lakes!!!!!
We die as angels and come back as men.
No consolation that we chose to die
or that we only die to die again
or that our dying proves all death a lie.We go to rescue others trapped in Time
lost angels dazed and blinded by despair,
who can't remember life in the Sublime
and wander angels still but unaware.and think themselves mere things with lives so brief
one melancholy wail could tell it all.
trapped in the maze they build by their belief
obsessed by Bliss they cannot quite recall.We go to wake them, but we pay the cost
that we agreed to pay before we came,
that though our sacrifice will save the Lost
we cannot go back home again the same.Mere angels who know only perfect Bliss,
who have not died to men and back again,
know nothing of the taint of Time's abyss,
cut off from us by what we know of pain,turn from us there where Love and Glory sings
and hide their faces from us with their wings.-- We Die As Angels by William John Watkins, ``Asimov's Science Fiction'', May 2001
``So what's your impression of Alar?''
``That he is concealing something.''
``Like what?''
``I am unsure - he is concealing it.''
-- Stargate: SG-1, ``The Other Side''
``HEY T-REX YOU KNOW THERE'S ANOTHER WAY THE UNIVERSE COULD END''
``You wake up and it was all a crazy dream? You know what ALL OF CREATION would say
if that happened? `weaaaaaaaaak' ''
-- Dinosaur Comics
Here is a link to the mfx quote generator, which includes:
``Smoking is an expensive, slow, and unreliable method of suicide.''
and
``As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest
parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket is
a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers
the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins
to doubt... for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its
journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the
explosion of the charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard,
with his 'chair' in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian
Institution, does not know the relation of action to re-action, and
of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to
react... Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily
in high schools.''
-- New York Times Editorial, 1920 (nice - no wonder they had to fake the moon landings)
and
haiku's inventor
must have had seven fingers
on his middle hand
mfx also has much (all?) of the text of Jenny Holzer's piece, ``Truisms'' -- or you can see it as a self-refreshing pop-up window from the main page.
``You want m&ms, you tell me what happens to Harry Potter, and none of this `yes or no' shit!''
-- Kristin Balder-Froid, July 22, 2007
``if you really respected me, you'd trick me into falling in love with you.''
-- Dinosaur Comics
``Everything you need for a novel happens at about dog height.''
-- Garrison Keillor, News from Lake Woebegone, August 4, 2007
``It hurts to breathe.''
``Of course it does.''
-- Henry Fool
``[T]he world's a scary place - I admit it. But it's not my fault - I swear.''
-- ibid
``The Special Olympics is one of the sickest and most demented idea
[sic] since that time when I told Little 4 year old Timmy to go feed
that hungry electrical socket with a metal fork.''
-- JonnyKu
``Doctor John D. Zoidberg... is a lobster-like alien from the planet
Decapod 10, and is the neurotic and self-conscious staff doctor of
Planet Express. His knowledge of human anatomy and physiology is woefully
inadequate. He is penniless and usually eats the garbage that he finds
in a dumpster outside Planet Express headquarters, or anything else he
can scrounge.''
-- Wikipedia Futurama entry
``That which does not kill us makes us stranger.''
-- Trevor Goodchild, Aeon Flux, ``Thanatophobia''
``[W]hat makes pi so special? Why don't we celebrate Euler's Number day on... February 71st?''
-- Dinosaur Comics
(I laughed for 10 minutes when I read this - Go Ryan! Dammit - February 71st
should be an international holiday!)
``Gentlemen, all in all I think we've had a frightening but, uh, nonetheless very satisfactory day.''
-- The World President, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, ``Spectrum Strikes Back'' (How many of us
haven't thought the very same thing?)
``It's too late to quit while you're ahead.''
-- drjeff, 2007-11-06 (Unfortunately, he was right)
``In this world people must cherish whatever ties they have.''
-- Cowboy Bebop, Episode 24, ``Hard Luck Woman''
``That's why you're a sysadmin and * shouldn't be.''
-- JCL, 2007-11-14, from one sysadmin to another, about yet another
``...[S]ooner or later, we all outgrow what we were built to do.''
-- Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Episode 220, ``The Knight, Death and the Devil''
These are from Territory by Emma Bull, 2007
``Underlying every philosophy was the inevitability of death. The moral and ethical questions, the search for right living, the weighing of the evidence of one's senses -- it all came down to how fast, how far and which way you could run before you hit the end of the rope.
Of course, it wasn't until he was diagnosed with consumption that Doc had understood that. A death sentence had a way of focusing one's thinking. Until then he'd studied other men's philosophies and believed himself to be partaking of great thoughts. Now Doc had less interest in greatness and more in the length of the rope.'' (pg. 150)``In Renaissance paintings, angels had the same look of calm strength of remote mercy for humanity.'' (pg. 202)
``Do you know why one can't take the law into one's own hands? Because the law is too big to fit in one pair of hands. So if you feel you've got a comfortable grip on whatever you're holding, you can be pretty sure it's not the law.'' (pg. 291-292)
The scooby snack teaches the tornado.
Any lover can share a shower
with the cloud formation inside the tomato,
but it takes a real recliner
to bury the moldy globule.
A tape recorder seeks a sandwich.
When you see the ski lodge,
it means that the tattered customer goes to sleep.
The underhandedly fractured mortician secretly plans an escape
from a nearest industrial complex
a fire hydrant,
and the plaintiff from the cashier makes love
to a carelessly nuclear tape recorder.
-- (from an email virus I received, October 10, 2006)
Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.``So we said, `Screw this!' - we rented a car and we drove to Bosnia!''I Got What America Needs Right Here, by Jimmy Carter
I Would Say 'To Kill A Mockingbird' Captured The Most Interesting Part Of Our Lives, By Atticus Finch
and
``The kid's not even a week old, and he has the thousand-yard stare of a middle-aged man.''
-- Newborn Loses Faith In Humanity After Record 6 Days
``This never happened before.''
-- Pam's dying words, The X-Files, episode 6ABX15, ``Monday''
``"Now comes the mystery.''
-- Henry Ward Beecher's dying words (perhaps...), 1887
drsteve's Third Law of Capitalism: The thing you need the most is not for sale. But that's ok - the best things never are.
``...great even my actions have elipses...''
-- Lone-wolf-of-Egypt, The Green Llama Conspiracy (which includes a copy
of this page!)
Ok, this page is just AMAZING!!! TONS of quotes from Pulp Fiction, like:
``There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. `The path of the
righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and
the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and
good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For
he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I
will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those
who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am
the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.' I been sayin' that shit
for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really
questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to
say to a motherfucker 'fore you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some
shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin', it could mean
you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's
the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or
it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the
world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the
truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But
I'm tryin'. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd.''
-- Jules
and the definitive X-Files quote list, organized by episode. Rock.
``People are often in the wrong space group.''
-- Paul Adams (or so I was told)
``It's always Friday in the Berger lab.''
-- AJS, 2008-04-09
``An empty cup never sits well.''
-- Sheena Degnan, 18-Apr-2008
``A lot of people are just filling space between the light switch and the door.''
-- Allyn S. (with a bit of help from yours truly), 30-Apr-2008
Turning and turning in the widening gyre``I just didn't keep it in my pants anymore.''
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?-- ``The Second Coming'', by William Butler Yeats
``I swear to God I have an extra taste region on my tongue for savings.
I can taste the savings, and it tates delicious!''
-- Cyrus Maher, 02-May-2008
``I must remain mysterious at all times.''
-- Captain Cosmic, Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong
``Who needs flowers and chocolate when you've got Hitler's brain in a jar?''
-- QC
``That's why I got a Ph.D. - to find out everything the hard way!''
-- AJS, 2008-06-20
``[W]hen you're the pioneer you sometimes get some arrows in your back.''
-- The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, June 24, 2008
Me: ``Did she get her hair cut?''
Scott: ``Something happened to her.''
-- 25 July 2008 (You really had to be there.)
``There's digital, and there's real!''
-- Sirisha Rao and Andrew Wales, 25 July 2008
``I took tomorrow morning off.''
-- Jaime Fraser, 12-Oct-2008
``Treachery is the inevitable result of all affairs.''
-- C.G.B. Spender, a.k.a. The Cancer Man, The X-Files, episode 6ABX11, ``Two Fathers''
``I love it when a plan comes together.''
-- Colonel John ``Hannibal'' Smith, The A Team
Here's a few good ones.
``Somebody should get it before somebody else does.''
-- JCL, 2008-12-01
``You shouldn't mount yourself - that's bad.''
-- Navin, 2003-07-07
``Always superfluous, bloodshed... the deeper damage is best.''
-- John Langrishe, Deadwood
``The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.
-- The Go-Between, by L. P. Hartley
``It's like the past - they do things differently there.''
-- AG
``The past is a foreign language.''
``To be... and then there was a pizzaria.''
-- AG 02-Feb-2009
``The world does the best it can.''
-- Bernhard Schlink, NPR, 03-Jan-2009
``The world is haemorrhaging glass...''
-- dr5 & AG, 2009-03-13
``The Tube is Civilization!''
-- Tycho, Penny Arcade, 30-Oct-2002 (you know it's true)
``I'd call in dead for this.''
``As bad as today gets, soon my stomach will be brimming with beef.''
-- Dinosaur Comics
``Living in Berkeley is like living with the drugged-out techno-Amish.''
-- me, 2009-03-14 (Well, it IS!!)
``Sacagawea is box office poison.''
-- Mo Rocca, 2009-02-19, Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
``There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.''
-- Howard Zinn
``Ming is like a cross between Palpatine and Elmer Fudd.''
-- Mark Kulawik, 2009-04-30 (I Fudd)
``If there is a God, and I ever meet him,
I'm just going to kick him in the balls over and over.''
-- Tycho, Penny Arcade, 04-May-2005
(Well, I'd say that just about sums it up.)
``...users fall into this pit of learned helplessness...''
-- DCP, 2009-06-05
``When a comet or asteroid strikes a planet, it creates an enormous explosion that throws
rock, water, dinosaurs and air into space.''
-- Scientific American, May 2009, pg. 42 (Oh, yeah!)
``It's not going to get better, but it will get different.''
-- Mae R. Zelikow
``So, you're saying... he's a time traveler?''
``Is that any stranger than being able to read someone's mind?''
``...Yeah, it is.''
-- Heroes, Season 1, Episode 20 ``Five Years Gone''
``I'm not really here, Parkman. It's... an illusion, like... life.''
-- Heroes, Season 3, Volume 4: Fugitives, ``A Clear and Present Danger''
``A lie is a failure to understand onesself.''
-- The Treatment
``That's all we need -- indestructable rats running around with access to our PIN numbers.''
-- Mark K. (yeah -- we'd be pretty fucked)
``My liver is four times the size of your entire body. My liver has children.''
-- Blake S., 2009-07-30 (Happy Birthday, Blake!)
Overheard just before the start of a screening of Star Trek (the reboot):
``That guy Spock, or whatever his name is...''
``Retribution is always punished.''
-- F Wayne T-M, 18 May 2009
``If beautiful people want it, it doesn't matter how long it lasts.''
-- Mark K., 2009-08-29 (in reference to extremely short-lived elemental isotopes)
``Or how much it costs.''
-- drs, 2012-02-03 (in reference to en suite Sky Garage)
Do the Amish like Rage Against The Machine?
``Life is all about goodbyes.''
-- Ringo, Sukiyaki Western Django
``If he's so smart, why couldn't he make an iLiver?''
-- Jay W. (You know who he's talking about... No - not Blake...)
Back, by Popular Demand: The Mother of All Application Essays!
``If JumpStart and KickStart had a baby, it would be cfengine.
If JumpStart and nagios had a baby, it would be SNMP.''
-- me, unfortunately...
``Every time you fuck a girl without a condom, it's like fucking her with a blank check.''
-- Philip DeFranco
(or, his dad, anyway... Happy B-Day, Phil), December 1, 2009
``Death Milk: It's like the Death Star, but milk.''
-- AG 2009-12-03 (it was really bad milk)
``Do you think wireless technology is preventing us from evolving 'Umbilical Eye'?''
-- ibid (the answer is yes, as it turns out)
``I like your rules -- they're like dominos.''
-- me, 2009-12-03
``It's no use having friends you can't trust.''
-- Ben Linus, Lost, ``The Economist''
``Well, I just didn't have time to talk you back into hanging yourself.''
-- ibid, ``Dead Is Dead''
When the Guru administers, the users are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a sysop who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
And worst, one who is despised.
``For we can always see and feel much that the people in old photos
and newsreels could not: that their clothing and automobiles were
old-fashioned, that their landscape lacked skyscrapers and other
contemporary buildings, that their world was black and white and haunting
and gone.''
-- Robert Rosenstone Visions of the Past
(Thanks, Ryan -
we will live forever! Or until they turn off the lights, whichever comes first.)
``...[he] stood erect, looking straight out beyond the ship's
ever-pitching prow... [with] an infinity of firmest fortitude, a
determinate unsurrenderable wilfulness... [and] fixed and fearless
forward dedication...''
-- Moby Dick, Chapter 28 ``Ahab''
``Now, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices!
Bestow them, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble
league. Ha! Starbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits
to sit upon it. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that
man the deathful whaleboat's bow -
Death
to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!''
-- ibid, Chapter 36 ``The Quarter-Deck''
``Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with.
It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely
will not stop, ever, until you are dead!''
-- Kyle Reese, The Terminator
``Yeah - he doesn't think like an administrator.''
``Which is: Let's just get this done so we can go back to surfing the web.''
``DOS was great - you could GOTO places!''
-- M. Kulawik, 08-Feb-2010
Guys don't want to know what's on -- they want to know what else is on.
``Alien is the Citizen Kane of movies.''
-- Evan, 2010-04-16 (It's so true!)
``NetBackup is an embarrassment to mankind."
-- DCP, 20100323 (Oh, it so is!!)
``Wel you know thay livin innis playss it wuzza graybig sum kyna playss I dunno wut it wus it had all kyna playssis innit
big an lil lite and dark anna lohv things like you wud see a tree or a nannimal or fall downa hoal or inna the grynders I dunnow.
Thay din know nuthin nyther wut kyna playss it wus sum tyms thay liket sum tyms thay din. It had a lotv doors allover it
thay was alla time goin thru rong doors or uthers wus lookt wich thay cudn fyn the kee...''
-- ``Door (Deadtime Stories for Big Folk)''
by Russell Hoban and David Anderson, 1990
``We travel alot, and Paris is our favorite country.''
-- (overheard)
``I don't pay them for sex. I pay them to leave.''
-- Charlie Sheen
Audiance member: ``You have the vote of every thinking person!''
Adlai Stevenson: ``That's not enough madam, we need a majority!''
``Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.''
-- Thomas Alva Edison
``...a preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one.''
-- Broken Angels, by Richard K. Morgan, 2003, pg. 65 (trade paperback edition)
``With Google being so efficient, I almost don't mind Alzheimers anymore.''
-- MK, 2010-08-09
Here's a nice list, including:
``If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.''
-- Professor Irwin Corey
and
``The only interesting answers are those that destroy the question.''
-- Susan Sontag
``Mere description would be inadequate.''
-- Stargate Atlantis: ``Inferno'' (season 2, episode 19)
``Operation `This Will Most Likely End Badly' is a go.''
-- Stargate Atlantis: ``No Man's Land'' (season 3, episode 1)
``Nothing renews your appreciation for the military like the threat of invasion from life-sucking aliens.''
-- Stargate Atlantis: ``Misbegotten'' (season 3, episode 2)
``Were you a biter in preschool?''
-- F Wayne T-M, 2-Sep-2010
``The world of reduced-size Rolls Royces is a large one.''
-- AG 2010-09-02
``I think I'm about done with following current events.''
-- Mark, 08/31/10 (Man, no shit!)
``Perhaps the future is predetermined by the character of those who shape it.''
-- Stargate Atlantis: ``The Seer'' (season 4, episode 8)
``I'm done with grief counseling and I feel much better.''
-- Cameron Phillips
In all of the training my son received in the jungles of Central America,-- Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles: ``Queen's Gambit'' (season 1, episode 5)
nothing better prepared him for combat than the game of chess.
It taught him almost everything he needed to know about war.
That to win you must be patient, bold, calculating.And most of all, willing to sacrifice.
If there is a flaw in chess as a game of war, it is this:
unlike war, the rules of chess are constant, the pieces unchangeable.
You will never win the heart of a rook or the mind of a knight.
They are deaf to your arguments.
And so be it. The goal of a chess game is total annihilation.
But in war, even as the blood beats in your ears and you race after your enemy,
there is the hope that saner minds than yours will stop you before you reach your target.
In war, unlike chess, rules can be changed. Truces can be called.
The greatest of enemies can become the best of friends.In war, there is hope.
``Certain is a luxury.''
-- Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles: ``Strange Things Happen at the One-Two Point'' (season 2, episode 10)
``Well, that idea might make a stupid idea feel better about itself.''
-- Pushing Daisies: ``Bitter Sweets'' (season 1, episode 8)
``So, a knife in the eye is worth fifty bucks off your next purchase at the Sony store?''
-- You Kill Me
``A job is like a joke that you play on the world.''
-- Jeff Simmermon
``It's like some creepy guy took over Sesame Street and now he's touching my childhood in its bad parts with his grabby no-no hands.''
-- Allie, Hyperbole And A Half
``They can remember that war all they want, so long's they remember they lost.''
-- Emily Haynes, ``Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War'' by Tony Horwitz, 1998, pg. 52 (paperback ed.)
``...Velma showed me snapshots of her grandchildren. She talked about her crafts shop,
the macramé she'd made for Christmas, and an upcoming cross-burning she hoped to attend.''
-- ibid, pg. 98
``History, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers,
mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.''
-- from: ``The Devil's Dictionary'' by Ambrose Bierce, as quoted in ibid, pg. 157
``I was born in 1921 and was raised up with segregation and separate water fountains. It was stupid now that I think of it.
All those signs saying `white' and `colored' when most people couldn't even read.''
-- ibid, pg. 360
``...it turns out Dick Cheney no longer has a pulse, though he is stubbornly still alive.
Dick Cheney's blood now just flows continually, like the River Styx.''
-- Wonkette, July 19, 2010
``This is what your living room would be like if your living room was awesome.''
-- Mark Kulawik, in reference to the IMAX theater in the Metreon in San Francisco, Dec 1, 2010
``I think the important thing to understand about those period dramas is that the lasers are implied.''
-- Mark Kulawik, Jan 31, 2011
``To all you workers out there: every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death.''
-- Slacker, 1991
``Don't you know me, Joe?''
``Sure I know you, Ty, but I wasn't sure you wanted to know me. A lot of them don't.''
-- Ty Cobb and
``Shoeless'' Joe Jackson
``In legend I am a sadistic, slashing, swashbuckling despot who waged war in the guise of sport.''
-- Ty Cobb
``If you're gonna send someone to save the world, make sure they like it the way it is.''
-- Xander Cage, xXx
``Control and power aren't everything. Allow yourself to be the agent by which a cause greater
than any single individual triumphs.''
-- The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor, 2006, pg. 312 (paperback ed.)
``I always start these events with very lofty goals, like I'm going to do something special.
And after a point of body deterioration, the goals get evaluated down to basically where I am now --
where the best I can hope for is to avoid throwing up on my shoes.''
-- Nuclear engineer and ultrarunner Ephraim Romesberg, sixty-five miles into the Badwater Ultramarathon,
as quoted in Born To Run, by Christopher McDougall, 2009, pg. 123 (paperback ed.)
``I socked McCloor's jaw with my fist. I might just as well have hit somebody else for all it seemed to bother him.''
-- ``Fly Paper'' by Dashiell Hammett, 1929, in The Big Knockover, pg. 66 (paperback ed.)
``Afraid of the dark, afraid of the light of day...''
-- (paraphrased from) Turing's Delirium by Edmundo Paz Soldán, 2003, pg. 97 (hardback ed.)
``Instead of migrating all our servers to Windows, we should migrate all our servers to Firefox.''
-- William Morrell, 2011-05-24 (Brilliant!)
``Never tap a gauge harder than you would tap the bridge of your nose.''
-- David Seitz
Dear rewind button,-- dearblankpleaseblankThank you for making Jaws the quirky comedy about a bulimic shark that barfs up so many people the town has to open a beach.
Sincerely, life is nicer backwards
and
Dear little sister,andI am so glad I took you to the library to help you learn sign language so you could befriend the deaf kid at school.
Sincerely, just watched you sign ``I do'' to him
Dear periodic table,``That expression! It's like he's thinking, `Are you edible?' ''I see you've forgotten about me...
Sincerely, the element of surprise
These are from ``Neuromancer'' by William Gibson, 1984 (paperback ed.)
``The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.'' (pg. 3)These are from ``Count Zero'' by William Gibson, 1986 (paperback ed.)``A middleman's business is to make himself a necessary evil.'' (pg. 11)
``Sister, time, it be time, ya know wha mean?'' (pg. 113)
``I try to plan, in your sense of the word, but that isn't my basic mode, really. I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans, you see...'' (pg. 120)
`` `Motive,' the construct said. `Real motive problem, with an AI. Not human, see?' '' (pg. 131)
`` `No,' he said, and then it no longer mattered, what he knew, tasting the salt of her mouth where tears had dried. There was a strength that ran in her, something he'd known in Night City and held there, been held by it, held for awhile away from time and death, from the relentless Street that hunted them all. It was a place he'd known before; not everyone could take him there, and somehow he always managed to forget it. Something he'd found and lost so many times. It belonged, he knew -- he remembered -- as she pulled him down, to the meat, the flesh the cowboys mocked. It was a vast thing, beyond knowing, a sea of information coded in spiral and pheromone, infinite intricacy that only the body, in its strong blind way, could ever read.'' (pg. 239)
``His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains...'' (pg. 257)
``Many things, Marly, are perpetrated in my name. Aspects of my wealth have become autonomous by degrees; at times they even war with one another. Rebellion in the fiscal extremites.'' (pg. 13)And (because, well, yeah) these are from ``Mona Lisa Overdrive'' by William Gibson, 1988 (paperback ed.)``It was sometimes best, when you came to the mystery that was art, to come as a child. The child saw things that were too evident, too obvious for the trained eye.'' (pg. 102)
``She was never certain, afterward, that the voices were real, but eventually she came to feel that they had been a part of one of those situations in which real becomes merely another concept.'' (pg. 226)
`` `First thing you learn,' he said, with the tone of a man reciting a proverb, `is that you always gotta wait...' '' (pg. 115)
`` `But your -- your songs are sad.'
`My songs are of time and distance. The sadness is in you. Watch my arms. There is only the dance. These things you treasure are shells.' '' (pg. 227)
``But where could she hide? she asked. She had very little cash; the concept of currency, of coins and paper notes, was quaint and alien.``...the way a list appeals to those with faith in withheld meaning: the dream that if we linger long enough with anything, the truth of its significance is bound to be revealed.''
Here, he said, as she rode a lift down into Holland Park. `For the price of a ticket.'
The bulgy silver shapes of the trains.
The soft old seats in gray and green.
And warm, beautifully warm; another burrow, here in the realm of ceaseless movement...'' (pg. 218)``...all the banality of human evil.'' (pg. 285) (Ao, perhaps, all the evil of human banality...)
``Then her hand was a fist, which opened, as though she were letting something go.'' (pg. 302)
What are days for?``That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a long moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on that memorable day.''
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.-- Philip Larkin, ``Days'' (in ``One Day'', by David Nicholls)
``The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly
to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That
is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness...''
-- David Foster Wallace
``And afterward, when the leaves turned and the snow came, every now and then I would rise in everyone's minds like a tide.''
-- My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult, 2004, pg. 85 (trade paperback ed.)
``A photo says, You were happy, and I wanted to catch that. A photo says, You were so important to me that I put down
everything else to come watch.''
-- ibid, pg. 130
``Does it ever get to you -- seeing people dead?''
``Yeah, it did for awhile, but I got used to it.''
``It must be awful, getting used to it.''
``Yeah, it was pretty awful... but I got used to it. That's the worst part, you know -- getting used to it.
Something you never really get used to.''
-- Monk S4E3 03:43
``They don't realize that we are bringing them the plague.''
-- Sigmund Freud to Carl Jung, 1909
``That's number four, he's a hack. He makes inspector number ten look like inspector number six.''
-- Monk S4E10 06:00
``I hate Christmas.''
``How can you not like Christmas?''
``You wouldn't like it either if you hated it as much as I do.''
-- ibid
``We will raise your planet's temperature by one million degrees a day. For five days.''
``I am Lrrr, ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8. You are hereby conquered. Please line up in order of how much
beryllium it takes to kill you.''
-- Lrrr, ruler of the planet Omicron Persei 8, Futurama
``Only God can help the prairie.''
-- The Sea Of Grass
``Perl 7 will be the last major revision. In fact, Perl 7 will be so perfect, it will need no revision at all.
Perl 6 is merely the prototype for Perl 7. :-)''
-- Larry Wall
``The Pope wears red velvet Prada slippers made from the dreams of orphans.''
``They're probably really nice, then.''
-- MK and AG
``I love having a blasphemous password - it makes my day go just that much better.''
-- Me
``I used to know UNIX. I used it for two years.''
``Do you remember anything about it?''
``I remember the lilac screen. UNIX was always in lilac, wasn't it.''
-- (overheard) 18-Feb-2012
In response to the news that VeriSign, a ``pillar of Internet security'', was hacked:
``You shouldn't build a pillar on a swamp.''
-- ``MrEricSir'', 2012-02-14
``Fox News: Rich people paying Rich people to tell Middle Class people to blame Poor people.''
``Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to
listen to their equipment.''
``Real audiophiles only listen to pure sine waves!''
-- Slashdot, 2012-02-09
``There was way too much death, and not enough Venice.''
-- Mark Kulawik, Mar 06, 2012
``Is von Braun the guy who got us to the Moon? Or is he the guy whose V2
rockets wreaked havoc on behalf of the Nazis, and who designed ballistic
missiles for the United States? Frankly, he's both. Sometimes, we can
respect a person's genius without respecting all of their choices.''
-- Maggie Koerth-Baker, BoingBoing
``My granddad always told me he didn't care what book a man subscribed
to or who he worshipped so long as he didn't hate anyone who didn't
deserve it. He answered my questions about the world when the pastor
and my parents only told me, `God made it that way'.''
-- daevaflaev
``We like methodical. It is better than frantic, or desperate, or dangerous. I admire these
people exactly because they are methodical. They are trying. Every day, they get up and try.
The main complaint about our approach, as far as I can tell, is that they ought to try for
something harder. They all ought to stop using drugs.
``I think what's hard is to acknowledge reality. These people are living in the real world.
If they are boring, or live with narrowed vision or limited ambition, I am happy. I am proud.
Because I know what the other side looks like. It is ugly. Perhaps it is a national failing,
but I prefer moderate hope and some likelihood of success to the dream of perfection and the
promise of failure.''
-- The New Yorker, October 17, 2011, ``Getting A Fix'', by Michael Specter, pg. 45
``If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.''
-- Mark Twain
``I love kids. They're short, highly emotional people who don't know anything. They rely on their creativity and
immagination to get by in the world. A world, I might add, filled with giants. Amazing feat.''
-- The Answer Man
``You wake up in the morning and... you never know where the day is going to take you.''
-- Deputy Andy, Eureka, Season 4 Episode 19, ``One Small Step''
``Monet and Cézanne did more with brown than most people can do with an entire rainbow.''
-- (overheard, 2012-06-09)
``I don't know why the wifi doesn't work - sometimes it just doesn't.''
-- ibid
Bumper Sticker:
``give yourself incentives for getting shit done. The `one paragraph, one shot' method practically does your work for you.''
-- brotips, #2085
and
``if there's a room full of empty chairs and she chooses the one next to you, it's not a coincidence, bro.''
-- brotips, #2045
``There is no difference between justice and revenge.''
-- Me
Art: anything whose only purpose is to evoke a response.
``Does that mean toddlers are works of art?''
-- AG 2012-08-26
Ray Douglas Bradbury
``He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where
the silent air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and
let him out with a great puff of warm air onto the cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb.'' |
|---|
``Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well.''
-- Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, 1936, as quoted from
Esquire's 70 Greatest Sentences
``Twenty-four years later, on Wednesday, August 28, at nine-thirty o'clock, in full view of ten million people,
the little door in William F. Buckley Jr.'s forehead suddenly opened and out sprang that wild cuckoo which
I had always known was there but had wanted so much for others, preferably millions of others,
to get a good look at.''
-- Gore Vidal, A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley Jr., 1969,
ibid
And this is pretty cool: Opening Sentences
``This is L.A. Sitting in traffic in your own car is much more chic than actually getting anywhere.
Only squares want to be places.''
-- Devil Said Bang by Richard Kadrey, pg. 330 (hardback ed.)
``Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin
``Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos -- the only sysadmins that matter.''
-- Mark P. Nelson
``What part is not a game?''
-- me 2008-05-21
``I love this place - it reminds me of civilization.''
-- AG 2012-10-07
``The crime is the punishment.''
-- Amos Oz, ``Fima'', in ``The House Gun'', by Nadine Gordimer
``A tough life needs a tough language - and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers - a language powerful enough
to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.''
-- Jeanette Winterson, from ``In Defense of Poetry''
``Lampkin's First Rule of Legal Dynamics: when an irresistible force meets an immovable object,
stand aside and wait for the class action suit.''
-- Battlestar Galactica: Sine Qua Non
``The last thing I want is a reprieve.''
-- AG 2012-11-11 (Amen)
``If you can't control drug use in a maximum security prison how could you control drugs in a free society?''
-- Breaking the Taboo
``There's a point, far out there when the structures fail you, and the rules aren't weapons anymore,
they're... shackles letting the bad guy get ahead. One day... you may face such a moment of crisis.
And in that moment, I hope you have a friend like I did, to plunge their hands into the filth so that
you can keep yours clean!''
-- Jim Gordon, The Dark Night Rises
In reference to The Cars album ``Candy-O'':
``I shoplifted the 8-track... ;)''
-- xTrix2Kx
``I've probably spent more time in the CODBLOPS 2 emblem editor than in the actual game.''
-- ThisIsShagg (This made me laugh really hard!)
``How can you not like Archer? He's lovely. He's like a cross between Johnny Depp and a bottle of Jack Daniels.''
-- me 2013-04-02
``Don't do drugs, don't have unprotected sex, don't be violent. Leave that to me.''
-- Eminem (doing us all a big favor :)
``I'm definitely against marijuana, so whenever I get the opportunity I burn it.''
-- Grandmaster Caz, Something from Nothing: The Art Of Rap
``If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists,
Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.''
-- ``Modern art was CIA 'weapon'''
by Frances Stonor Saunders, The Independent, Sunday 22 October 1995
``Years from now they're gonna ask us, `Where were you, when they took over the planet?'
We're gonna say, `We just stood by, and watched.' ''
-- Agent Simmons, ``Transformers: Dark of the Moon'' (This line is the only good thing in this movie. It does, however,
have the advantage of being somewhat more broadly applicable than its original context.)
``I have to make sure the windows are not merely closed, but super-closed:
a new close I have invented that includes an extra half-tug at the end.''
-- Penny Arcade (You cannot, ever, be too sure.)
``The only place a woman should punch a man is in the face.''
-- ``The Good Guys''
``Once something's awful there's no point in reinventing it in a terrible way.''
-- Ian Vaino 2013-09-03
``With immortality comes sterility.''
-- ET
''Functional programming combines the flexibility and power of abstract mathematics with
the intuitive clarity of abstract mathematics.''
-- XKCD (In the hover, naturally)
``When all else fails, just keep on scrollin'!''
-- ST 2013-09-29
``I love scrolling.''
-- MK 2020-09-03
``If you're going to do something really stupid, at least be smart about it.''
-- me 2013-10-02
``There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.''
-- Henry David Thoreau
``I always think I've got it all figured out. Then I live another day and it gets more complicated.''
-- Scud The Disposable Assassin
``What's this?''
``Poitín. Irish moonshine.''
``Isn't this stuff illegal?''
``I fuckin' hope so.''
``You drink this poison and you wonder why you get blackouts.''
``I drink this poison because I get blackouts.''
-- Blitz
``i like sand because i don't really know what it is and there's so many of it''
-- @darth__mouth
(Thanks to Randall Munroe for this! :)
``Don't question my spirituality, now hand over the cash.''
-- Chuck, ``Chuck Versus the Crown Vic''
``If I had a letter, sealed it in a locked vault and hid the vault
somewhere in New York, then told you to read the letter, that's not
security, that's obscurity. If I had a letter, sealed it in a vault,
gave you the blueprints of the vault, the combinations of 1000 other
vaults, access to the best locksmiths in the world, then told you to
read the letter, and you still can't, that's security.''
-- Bruce Schneier (Not saying I agree, just framing the debate. Either way,
I've still got to find the f'ing vault first. Maybe it's: Security is
hiding the key, obscurity is hiding the lock.)
``I hope you like Guinness, sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for... food.''
-- Jack O'Neill, Stargate SG-1 ``Lost City: Part 1'' (7.21)
``The handbills still move us so because they touch so entirely on a
central truth: these people came together one morning with no common
purpose beyond making a living, and were killed by people whose evil
lay in the belief that without common purpose life has no meaning.
The lesson of these handbills is simple: that life is tragic and precious
and fragile, that there is an irreducible core of violence in the
world, and of fanatics in love with it, and that we failed once in our
responsibility to protect ourselves from them, and from it. They show,
in the faces of fanaticism's victims, why fanaticism is evil. He was not
wearing sunglasses on Tuesday; he was a happy person, who made choices.
He may be lost now, but he is not faceless.''
-- The New Yorker, July 7 and 14, 2014, ``Stones And Bones'', by Adam Gopnik, pg. 44
``The suffering of ordinary people, after all, has proven to be itself a weapon
with which political leaders attempt to impose their will.''
-- ibid, ``The State Of The Middle East: An Atlas Of Conflict And Resolution'', by Dan Smith, pg. 51
Question: What is the difference between romance and love?
Student Response: Romance is when you're walking on air, and maybe you see things that aren't there. Love, that's harder.
-- The Quarterly of the National Writing Project and The Center for the Study of Writing and Literacy, V14 N2, Spring 1992, pg. 1
``One of the reasons there's so much talk about money is that it's so much easier to talk about than the art.''
-- David Zwirner, The New Yorker, December 2, 2013, ``Dealer's Hand'', by Nick Paumgarten, pg. 40
``Imagination always failed to provide all the possible scenarios.''
-- Dreams Of The Golden Age by Carrie Vaughn, 2013, pg. 6 (paperback ed.)
``"He made it in his own image, as the Hebrews say.''
-- MK 2012-01-16 (in reference to JBack and its author)
``My doctor says you can't ask me any questions.''
-- MK 2013-02-04
``I'm not well-versed in the intellectual underpinnings of nihilism.''
-- MK 2013-02-11
`` `When you play the game of thrones you win or you die' - that's a great motto for a bathroom.''
-- MK 2013-03-25
``Scotland is like the Florida of Great Britain.''
-- MK 2013-12-06
``There's a CVE for binocular vision.''
-- MK 2014-11-25
``This is how I will die: crushed to death by a strawberry.''
-- me 2015-02-14
``We're on the side of the demons, Chief. We're evil men in the gardens of paradise,
sent by the forces of death to spread devestation and destruction wherever we go.
I'm surprised you didn't know that.''
-- Col. Tigh, Battlestar Galactica: Occupation/Precipice
``Sometimes surviving can be its own death sentence.''
-- Col. Tigh, Battlestar Galactica: Hero
``Languages are something of a mess.''
-- The New Yorker, 2012-12-24+31, p86
``There are worse things than being a nonconformist - you could be a psychopath.''
-- MK
``Flipping through [my] father's old yearbooks... drinking in his youth as he had drunk in mine...''
-- ``Fuck Yeah Menswear'', p81
``I can explain it to you, but I cannot comprehend it for you.''
-- Ed Koch
``The machine is telling us it's safe. It's important to listen to the machine.''
-- AG 2013-03-03 (WRT crossing the street with the light)
``Given that most people wouldn't know how to be happy if you put them in a vat of happiness and drowned them in it.''
-- AG 2014-01-15
``The first Highlander was brilliant.''
``Yes... unfortunately, there could be only one.''
-- AG & dr5 2015-04-04
``You can get alot of nuance with Lego.''
-- AG 2015-04-26
``Alcatraz: It's so much more than just a prison!''
-- Alcatraz Island National Historic Landmark promotional material
``What's that island out there with the building on it that looks like a prison?''
-- (reported)
``He's from Ohio, originally; someone's gotta be.''
-- MT 2014-03-01 (in reference to Mark Kozelek)
``Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.''
-- Confucius
``The fog covers us like a soft grey mouse. There is a big wind that's been howling and blowing around all day. I wonder does it
have some place warm and cozy to go when finally it's out of breath and little again?''
-- The Spy Lady And The Muffin Man, p12-13
``Emerging from the Council Edifice into bright sunlight and the usual chaos of the village central
plaza, she realized that it was still midafternoon, still an ordinary day in the existence of the people, and
that no one's life had changed except her own.''
-- Lois Lowry, Gathering Blue, p50
``...poetry, and language, and how we use it to remind ourselves of how our lives should be lived...''
-- Lois Lowry, Messanger, p82
``...demonstrating the usual conviction of the French police that the human comedy as it unfolds is so
absorbing that to intervene and impose artificial order upon it would be inartistic.''
-- Adam Gopnik, "The People Who Pass", The New Yorker, 2014-01-13, p22
``My mind is like a bad neighborhood -- I never go there alone at night.''
-- SG, after Anne Lamott
`` `Faith is the evidence of things not seen.' Except the apostle wasn't a cop.''
-- Granite Falls
`` `Maybe your life is not something out there.' He waves his arm vaguely to the side.
`Maybe it is something in here.' He holds a fist against my chest. `And when you run
you take it with you. Sometimes you have to let go the life you planned, to make room
for the life that is waiting for you.' ''
-- The Eidolon, by Libby McGugan, 2013, p59 (paperback ed.)
``Gods of Metal... the idolatry of nuclear weapons - the blind faith that they somehow keep us safe.''
-- The New Yorker, 2015-03-09, p52
``The only real failure is the failure to try; and the measure of success is how we cope
with disappointment, as we always must.''
-- The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
``I cannot accept my conclusions, and so I must continue...''
-- Garry Winogrand
``And that is a problem, because the art that stands the best chance of
lasting is not necessarily the art that defines its age. It might instead
be art that captures what it is like to be alive at any given time. And
that feeling of aliveness might actually stand as an antidote, or even a
rebuke, to the preoccupations, the cant, the neuroses of the social and
political spheres. Art can expose the folly of its time by gesturing
frantically at external factors--look! We live in a media-saturated
culture! A violent culture! A globalised culture! Or it can try to go
a little further inside things.''
-- ``Age Of The Arbitrary'' by Sebastian Smee, November 14, 2013;
published in Prospect Magazine,
December 2013
``The idea emerges that every person's illness is somehow their own
fault, that it comes from nowhere but themselves: their genes, their
addictions, and their inherent human insufficiency. We enter a strange
shadow-world where for someone to engage in prostitution isn't the result
of intersecting environmental factors (gender relations, economic class,
family and social relationships) but a symptom of `conduct disorder,'
along with `lying, truancy, [and] running away.' A mad person is like a
faulty machine. The pseudo-objective gaze only sees what they do, rather
than what they think or how they feel. A person who shits on the kitchen
floor because it gives them erotic pleasure and a person who shits on
the kitchen floor to ward off the demons living in the cupboard are both
shunted into the diagnostic category of encopresis. It's not just that
their thought-process don't matter, it's as if they don't exist. The
human being is a web of flesh spun over a void.''
-- ``Book of Lamentations'' by Sam Kriss, The New Inquiry, 2013-10-18
``No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century
that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences
greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied
themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied,
perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise
the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With
infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their
little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It
is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No
one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human
danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them
as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental
habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there
might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready
to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds
that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish,
intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with
envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.''
-- (Oh, you know...)
``Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.''
-- Paul Graham
``...teaching kids which one is 'four' and what a square is has sorta been mined out.
I think it's time to teach our youth about malevolent oligarchs and their troubling
meditations on impermanence or whatever.''
-- Tycho (Yeah...)
``Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures. Everything is better than some things and worse than others.
Which you choose to compare your experiences and situation with determines whether you will be happy and grateful or sad and jealous.''
-- Leon Trotsky
``Say what you will about organized crime, at least it's organized.''
-- Miller, Leviathan Wakes, by James S. A. Corey, p20
``...don't worry -- I'll take care of the body.''
-- Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Penny Dreadful Season 1 Episode 8, ``Grand Guignol''
``The first [sf] story I read was 'Microcosmic God' by Theodore Sturgeon. It has sometimes occurred to me that it has
all been downhill from there.''
-- Gene Wolfe
``I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to.''
-- J. R. ``Bob'' Dobbs
``I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.''
-- Robert Penn Warren
``Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live
in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort
of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.''
-- William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude
``Patriotism is a devotion to a certain place and people, contrary to nationalism which is inseparable from lust for power.''
-- George Orwell (PsyWar 0:41:10)
``Equating super--patriotism with militarism, military endeavor, military achievements, military struggles and victories --- that's
all supposedly a special manifestation of super--patriotism. And I argue that a real patriot wants something different for his
country --- he wants social justice, he wants peace and stability, he wants fairness, he wants an end to racism and sexism, he
takes pride in his country's ability at social betterment rather than his country's ability to invade and knock around other
countries. A real patriot feels an attachment to his country, but not at the expense of other countries. He or she may feel a
special attachment to the history of his own country; he values the accomplishments of his country, like the abolition of slavery,
the emergence of collective barganing and the rights of working people for a better life, the gains made by women in terms of
being able to get into public life --- these are the kind of things that the real patriot would value.''
-- Michael Parenti, PsyWar 0:41:27
''War is an opportunity for the government to grow in power.''
-- Howard Zinn, PsyWar 0:46:57
``Most people who worry about morality ought to.''
-- Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town, p. 16
``I figured out why you're blacking out.''
``Oh, thank you, detective. I know--I've been drinking too much.''
``Well it's that, yeah--and I've been drugging you.''
-- Chuck Finlay (Sam Axe [Bruce Campbell]) Burn Notice S4E11 ``Blind Spot''
``Nougat, eh? I like a candybar that... fights back.''
-- The Tick S2E7 ``Lei-Lo Ho!''
``We're not meddling in an election, we're meddling in an investigation...''
-- Rudy Giuliani, 2019-05-09 (Oh, Rudy...)
``On the count of three, unsheath your churro!''
-- Megamind
``Just once I'd like to take off from a planet that wasn't on fire.''
-- Raven, The 100, ``Damocles, Pt. 2''
``Oh, I didn't tell you--- it's Saturday, right now...''
``What!? What happened to Thursday and Friday?''
``Don't worry--- those days are jackasses.''
-- Undone, ``Handheld Blackjack''
``Go, and be good citizens.''
-- The Practice, S1E2
``Beef is the new toilet paper.''
-- William Morrell, 2020-05-12 (It's true.)
``A diagnosis is a thing of the times.''
-- Thaisa Frank, 2020-05-24 (Also true.)
``I have ( the | a ) memory of a goldfish.''
-- Tasha 2020-05-24 (I'm not sure which she said...)
``Well, I'm a biologist, but, sure-- I can invent time travel, just gimme a minute.''
-- Jenna Simmons, Agents Of Shield, S5E02 02:50
``Social media... is a cesspool of questionable human behavior.''
-- Dr. Donald ``Ducky'' Mallard, NCIS, S12E18 09:15
``I watched a 100-hour lasagne recipe on YouTube the other day.''
-- MK 2021-01-28
``Tech Con Group Funeral Services -- helping you make peace with death.''
-- Stargate SG-1, ``Space Race''
Thor: ``Time-space distortions caused by the black hole have been interfering with my ship's long-range communicaitons.''
Carter: ``Understandable.''
Teal'c: ``Indeed. Or som'in'.''
-- Stargate SG-1, ``New Order: Part 1''
``I'm just trying to make this world a better place... one war at a time.''
-- Vandal Savage, The Legends Of Tomorrow
``The greatest tragedy of Trump was not his corruption -- he was certainly the most
corrupt president in the history of the United States -- the greatest tragedy was
all the people who surrendered their agency as human beings to Donald Trump. That
is the sign that something is very wrong in our society, where huge swaths of
people -- maybe as many as 1/3 of the people -- decided that their lives weren't
worthy enough and they would surrender their agency to basically a crook, to a
conman. It's basically the same principle that Hitler used to take over and that
most dictators use to take over. It's a pathetic construct though, because it means
there are an awful lot of Americans who have given up on themselves and we have to
figure out how to motivate them not to do that.''
-- former Governor of Vermont Howard Dean, 2021-03-23
``AEGIS? Those stapler-fondling bureaucrats? They'll drown you in red tape.
They'll file your file under 'Where The Fuck Is That Fucking File?' ''
-- The Tick, S01E6: ``Rising''
``If you were one of my men, I would have you shot.''
``If I was one of your men I'd shoot myself.''
-- RWBY Volume 3, 0:38:40 (This is all in the delivery.)
``I still don't understand. You said I was next in line to receive the Maiden's power. What do you mean by that?''
``The Maidens have existed for thousands of years, but, much like in nature, the seasons change -- no two Summers are alike.
When a Maiden dies, her power leaves her body and seeks out a new host, ensuring that the seasons are never lost, and
that no individual can hold on to the power forever.''
``So... how does the power choose?''
``Through a series of stupid and convoluted rules.''
``Qrow...''
``Hey-- don't get mad 'cause I'm right.''
-- RWBY Volume 3, 1:10:23
``I never understood guys who wanted to run in to burning buildings.''
``You chase murderers.''
``Not if they're on fire.''
-- Rizzoli & Isles, S02E15
``Guess I missed the funeral.''
``How'd you know about that?''
``What part of the future do you not understand?''
-- The Umbrella Academy, S01E01: ``We Only See Each Other At Weddings And Funerals''
``...what exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety?''
-- ``The Ecstasy of Influence''
by Jonathan Lethem, Harpers, 2007
``Sometimes science is more art than science, Morty. A lot of people don't get that.''
-- Rick And Morty, S01E06: ``Rick Potion #9''
``If you're out there murdering people, on some level you must want to be Christian.''
-- Boston Legal, S1E15
``The evening was going well, until my date noticed that my Roomba was a Frisbee glued to a bunch of rats.''
-- (adapted from) Mike Ginn, 2015-03-29 (Personally, I would have used duct tape, but I see the argument.)
``Welcome to the bottom of the barrel.''
-- The Good Place, S1E4: ``Jason Mendoza''
``...[T]he working defition of empathy is, being able to put yourself in the place of the person you're yelling at.''
-- Marc Maron, More Later, 2015
``Please expand your mind to eleven-dimensional thinking.''
-- The Orbital Children, S1E6 (Like, whoa...)
``Rule Number 93 of The Surface: Don't trust anyone who talks to cheese.''
-- Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, S02E02: ``The Goat Cheese Prophecy'' (No, do not.)
``...you discover a nameless man whose entire history's been erased -- no fingerprints, no criminal record.''
``Not even a highschool transcript.''
``That's impossible -- you'd need first-person access to a federal mainframe, credit ratings, countless private companies...''
``It'd be like taking spit out of the ocean.''
``How'd he do it?''
``Claimed he didn't. Said he was contacted by someone offering the service.''
``The Eraser.''
``What movie is that from?''
``I dunnow -- Flashdance?''
-- NCIS, S05E04, ``Identity Crisis'', 12:00
``There's always another shoe.''
-- Legacies, S4E10, ``The Only Way Out Is Through'', 1:30
``Coffee used to be my favorite food, but compared to this it tastes like liquid suffering.''
-- Free Guy (``this'' being bubble-gum ice cream :)
``What? I like stars and I was very unpopular in high school.''
-- Blindspot, S1E17, ``Mans Telepathic Loyal Lookouts'', 25:25
``Dude, Uber is the anti-Christ.''
``Well, I'm taking the anti-Christ to the airport.''
-- Me & MK 2017-02-22
``Sure, X. I'll help you murder a bison. For science.''
-- Youngbloods, by Scott Westerfeld, p234 (hardback ed.)
``The sucky thing about Windows is... you know...''
-- Arthur P, 2022-07-29
(yep)
``With each shot, we all die a little bit.''
-- Bones, S01E21, ``The Soldier On The Grave'' (Amen, brother. Amen.)
``In 16th century Turkey, the king kept stables of pony girls and pony boys for his pleasure.''
``Ok, the king of Turkey was a freak.''
``Why are you being so judgemental?''
``When you turn someone into an object of sexual pleasure, it's wrong.''
``How do you know?''
``It says in the bible.''
``Does not.''
``Then it got left out by mistake.''
-- Bones, S03E03, ``Death In The Saddle''
(A Few) Ops Lessons We All Learn The Hard Way -- this is a goldmine of useful information, including:
grep(1) > Splunk (there, I said it)
``There's always a mystery. It never ends.''
-- Doctor Z, The Venture Bros., S4E06, ``Self-Medication'' (All life is, is... exploring the mystery...)
``We had the kind of luck that turns a professional gambler into an amateur murderer.''
-- The Venture Bros., S4E12, ``Everybody Comes To Hank's''
(Not sure how I managed to leave this out until now... but here it is, at last.)
It was then, for Felix, it began. The hatred for the Briefing Officer had expanded to include his superiors, the Captain of the ship, the commanders of Fleet itself, and finally the thick-headed idiot humans who had undertaken something as asinine as interplanetary war in the first place. The hatred blazed brightly, then vanished. From somewhere inside came then a shock of all-consuming rage, the nova-like intensity of which startled even him. But then the rage was gone, too. It seemed to shoot away like a comet or a torch dropped flickering and shrinking into a bottomless well. What replaced the loathing and fury was something very different, something cold and distant and... only impersonally attentive. It was an odd being which rose from Felix and through him. It was, in fact, a remarkable creature. It was a wartime creature and a surviving creature. A killing creature.From a distant place, the frightened Felix scanned himself. He recognized little. Still, what he saw was a comfort of sorts, and he concentrated himself toward it, toward the coldness, the callous machine-like... The engine, he thought. It's not me. It's my Engine. It will work when I cannot. It will examine and determine and choose and, at last, act. It will do all this while I cower inside.
With fierce concentration, that which kept him Felix gave itself as fuel to that which could keep him alive.
-- Armor, by John Steakley, pg. 17-18 (1st paperback ed.)
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She was touched
and she gave her life
She took a
and she saw |
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through better eyes
-- RWBY V9 C2: Altercation At The |
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``Yeah, well... what's the point of having a time machine... if you can't fix your regrets...''
-- Timeless S1E7, ``Stranded''
``I consider you a friend... don't make me change my minds.''
-- Harvey Dent / Two Face, Beware The Batman S1E25, ``Twist''
``I don't have time for my life.''
-- AG 2023-08-09
``Did you know that, according to Microsoft, seventy percent of all CVs... are due to memory leakage?''
-- Jester Hartman, Senior Rust Engineer @ 500Blockchains Inc. (It's true!)
``What happens on the planet of Kitson... is contagious-- and burns.''
-- Agents Of Shield, S6E03 15:20
``There are times when the only choices you have left-- are bad ones.''
-- Fringe, S2E14, ``Jacksonville''
``I don't want to make a scene, I just want to do science!''
-- Gina, 2024-02-20 (Copy that!)
``There is a child-like innocence to his narcissism that is... refreshing.''
-- MK 2024-03-20 (agreed)
``Maybe I should just buy a TV while I'm here.''
``What's the matter with the one you have?''
``It broke. All we get is the Science Channel. I swear if I see one more show about the moon landing I'm going to scream.''
``Yeah, what could be more dull than the conquest of space.''
``Exactly.''
-- Monk S3E07 03:45
``Stop calling me The Prince of Darkness -- that's how rumors get started.''
-- Monk S3E12 27:30
``But he's the bad kind of hippie. He's the kind of hippie that breaks into people's offices, beats them up, and shoots
them in the head. Why? To steal their antique chairs.''
``Why didn't he take the chair?''
``Hello! It had a bullet hole in it, it had blood on it. He didn't want it anymore.
``He coulda washed it.''
``Randy-- I don't think we need to stand here and take apart the `Alice Cooper wants an antique chair' theory.''
-- Monk S5E02 36:15
``All they have to do is give me back my pasta maker if they don't want things to be weird.''
-- Bane, Harley Quinn S3E03 09:06
``Oh, what's the matter? Your bosses miffed you lost the time machine?''
``You should talk -- you've lost two of them.''
-- Timeless S1E13, ``Karma Chameleon''
``You're gonna do something bad.''
``Bad like I'm gonna forget your birthday, or bad like I screw up the Louisiana Purchase?''
``The second one.''
-- Timeless S2E04, ``The Salem Witch Hunt''
``Any last words-- SPY! --before we END your LIFE!?''
``Yes. Thank you.''
``Uhhh...''
``This isn't how I thought it would end, but at least I got to meet a super-intelligent French gorilla before I died.
Which means I was RIGHT about EVERYTHING! Too bad my so-called FRIENDS
will never know. So go ahead and open my brain -- at least SOMEONE cares what I think!''
-- My Adventures With Superman, S1E06, ``My Adventures With Mad Science'' (Go Jim-my! Go Jim-my! Go Jim-my!)
``Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.''
-- Gramsci
``The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.''
-- Tom Waits, ``Strange Innocence'', Vanity Fair, July 2001
``The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.''
-- Orson Welles, per Henry Jaglom
``Standards are written by people in a hurry to get things done. Forcing people to work together to create standards doesn't produce anything useful, particularly if they don't get used.''
and
``Embrace irrational strain design.''
-- Darren Platt
``Therapy doesn't work when you have to lie about everything.''
-- John Reese, Person Of Interest, S4E5, 03:10
``Being famous is like getting hit with a rock all the time.''
-- Varrick, The Legend Of Korra, S2E5, 06:10
``One of the leading passions of my life has been my hatred of modern civilization.''
-- William Morris
``All my other time was filled with other things.''
-- AG 2024-09-30
``I wish there was a nice, sweet, pretty air conditioning unit...''
-- AG 2024-10-06
``Every fight is a knife fight.''
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There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted. from the Preface to The Book Of Common Prayer, 1549 edition Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and others |
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Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. from ``Ariel's Song'', The Tempest, William Shakespeare, act I, scene 2
carved into the stone on the grave |
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If I knew the way I would take you home Ripple, The Grateful Dead |
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It's good to have a theme MK 2014-12-13 |
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This page kills fascists
Back to drsteve's Web Presence. Last Modified: December, 2024 by |
Her memories are my memories.
Sometimes I speak in words like this, but not often. |