The Wisdom of the Ages

(note: I found all these floating around cyberspace, so am not certain of their validity.)

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'Ignorance killed the cat, sir. Curiousity was framed.'

--C.J. Cherryh

'The desire for success lubricates secret prostitutions in the soul.'

--Norman Mailer

'The gods too are fond of a joke.'

--Aristotle

'To think is to differ.'

--Clarence Darrow

'Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.'

--Bertrand Russell

'The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is

relatively an exception.'

--Nietzsche

'Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their

survival has no value.'

--Bertrand Russell

'All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.'

--J. R. R. Tolkien

'He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It

is the means that determine the end.'

--Harry Emerson Fosdick

'The wise always use a number of ready-made phrases (at the moment I write

'nobody's business' is the most common), popular adjectives (like 'divine'

or 'shy-making'), verbs that you only know the meaning of if you live in

the right set (like 'dunch'), which give a homely sparkle to small talk and

avoid the necessity of thought. The Americans, who are the most efficient

people on the earth, have carried this device to such a height of

perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases

that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving

a moment's reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free

to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.'

--Maugham

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice

To reign is worth ambition though in hell:

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav'n.

--John Milton

'In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up

because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't

speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for

the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they

came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.'

--Niemouller

'He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a

monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into

you.'

--Friedrich Nietzsche

'I have looked into the abyss, and the abyss has looked into me. Neither

liked what we saw.'

--Brother Theodore

'A robin redbreast in a cage

Puts all of Heaven in a rage.'

--Blake

From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was convulsed

with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

--Groucho Marx

Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.

--Mark Twain

It's a nitwit idea. Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. The rest of the time

you go by the Book, which is mostly a collection of nitwit ideas that

worked.

--Niven and Pournelle (The Mote in God's Eye)

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast

as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits

have equal value.

--Carl Sagan

An apology for the devil:it must be remembered that we have heard one side

of the case. God has written all the books.

--Samuel Butler

The man who does not read good books is at no advantage over the man that

can`t read them.

--Mark Twain

But the chess they [God and the Devil] play is not the little ingenious

game that originated in India; it is on an altogether different scale. The

Ruler of the Universe creates the board, the pieces, and the rules; he

makes all the moves; he may make as many moves as he likes whenever he

likes; his antagonist, however, is permitted to introduce a slight

inexplicable inaccuracy into each move, which necessitates further moves in

correction. The Creatos determines and conceals the aim of the game, and it

is never clear whether the purpose of the adversary is to defeat him or

assist him in his unfathomable project. Apparently the adversary cannot

win, but also he cannot lose so long as he can keep the game going. But he

is concerned, it would seem, in preventing the development of any reasoned

scheme of the game.

-- H.G.Wells

'In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror,

murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci,

and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five

hundred years of democracy and peace--and what did they produce? The cuckoo

clock.'

--The Third Man

Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, 'I predict, Sir,

that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease'. Disraeli

replied, 'That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or

your mistress.'

A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit,

let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact remains that

there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another,

completely immune to any direct magical spell. It is for this group of

beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells. It

also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club

near your person at all times.

--Craig Gardner (The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII)

Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and took great

delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers. One day

Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted

The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing. 'Tell me, you dumb

beast,' demanded the Priest in his commanding voice, 'why don't you do

something worthwhile? What is your Purpose in Life, anyway?' Munching the

tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied 'MU'. (The Chinese ideogram for

No-Thing.) Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened. Primarily

because nobody understood Chinese.

--Camden Benares, Zen Without Zen Masters

Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic

formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific

mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned

with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply

demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The

brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three

distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely

hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each

nonexisted in an entirely different way...

Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately, no

one we know belongs.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV

will be fought with sticks and stones.

--Albert Einstein

Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.

Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:

Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to

a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to

be a cat.

The IQ of a group is equal to the lowest IQ of a member of the group

divided by the number of people in the group.

There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells and

fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated pools here

and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving them parched for

wonder. There are also those who believe that if you stick your fingers up

your nose and blow, it will increase your intelligence.

--Craig Gardner (The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII)

When someone says 'I want a programming language in which I need only say

what I wish done,' give him a lollipop.

Angular momentum makes the world go 'round.

There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.

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.

--Ohio U. English professor

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a

knob called 'brightness', but it doesn't work.

--Gallagher

One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to come up to you and

show you a nice, brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet

broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack

of spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do

not bet this man, for sure as you stand there, you are going to wind up

with an earful of cider.

--Damon Runyon

When it came time for me to give my talk on the subject, I started off by

drawing an outline of the cat and began to name the various muscles. The

other students in the class interrupt me: 'We know all that!' 'Oh,' I say,

'you do? Then no wonder I can catch up with you so fast after you've had

four years of biology.' They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff

like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.

--Richard Feynman (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!)

I believe that every human has a finite number of heart-beats. I don't

intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

--Neil Armstrong

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed

entirely of lost airline luggage.

--Mark Russel

You white people are so strange. We think it is very primitive for a child

to have only two parents.

--Australian Aboriginal Elder

'We tend to view Nature through a tiny slot from a narrow angle; others see

it from another angle and describe it in a different language. It sounds

different, but it is not. The universe is so rich in diversity that almost

anything one says about it is correct, provided one takes a broad enough

view.'

--Itzhak Bentov

No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the

Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy

friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am

involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell

tolls; It tolls for thee.

--John Donne (1571?-1631), Meditation XVII

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of

youth for those of age. --Ambrose Bierce

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake

when you make it again. --F. P. Jones

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in

it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove

lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again - and that is well;

but she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. --Mark Twain

Richard P. Feynmann, in Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynmann, is asked, by a

psychiatrist, how much he values human life. His answer:

'Sixty-seven.'

Pause, as the psychiatrist digests this. Then, he asks:

P: 'Why do you say that?'

F: 'Well, how are you *supposed* to measure the value of human life?'

P: 'No, I mean, why did you say `sixty-seven' and not, say, `seventy-two'?'

F: 'If I'd said `seventy-two', you'd've asked me the same damn question.'

'Someplace there would be a real ax, or something just as painful, Jasonic,

blade-to-meat final -- but at the distance she, Flash, and Justin had by

now been brought to, it would all be done with keys on alphanumeric

keyboards that stood for weightless, invisible chains of electronic

presence or absence. If patterns of ones and zeros were 'like' patterns of

human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be

represented in a computer record by a long string of ones and zeros, then

what kind of creature would be represented by a long string of lives and

deaths? It would have to be up one level at least -- an angel, a minor god,

something in a UFO. It would take eight human lives and deaths just to form

one character in this being's name -- its complete dossier might take up a

considerable piece of the history of the world. We are digits in God's

computer, she not so much thought as hummed to herself to a sort of

standard gospel tune, and the only thing we're good for, to be dead or to

be living, is the only thing He sees. What we cry, what we contend for, in

our world of toil and blood, it all lies beneath the notice of the hacker

we call God.' --Thomas Pynchon, _Vineland_, pp. 90-91.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always

ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is

one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and

splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the

providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision,

raising in one's favor all manner of unforseen incidents, meetings and

material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his

way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius,

power and magic in it. Begin it now.

-- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832)

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what

the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be

replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

--Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

'There is no history of mankind, there are only many histories of all kinds

of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political

power. This is elevated into the history of the world.' --Karl Popper

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. this is

a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of

it.

--Mark Twain

Part of the inhumanity of a computer is that, once it is competently

programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

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