Quotable Quotes



"May your path be long, narrow, winding and dangerous, and leading to a most amazing view."

-- Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire



"We don't just *borrow* words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

-- James D. Nicoll



"The really valuable thing is the Intuition. The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it Intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why."

-- Albert Einstein



"Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be violent psychopath who knows where you live."

-- John F. Woods



"It's only words . . . unless they're true."

--David Mamet



Found in a fortune cookie:"You are a poor, pathetic, gullible fool who seeks advice from bakery products."



"It's a day so hot you wanna peel outa yer skin and loll about in yer bones."



About MS-DOS:

"... an OS originally designed for a microprocessor that modern kitchen appliances would sneer at...."

-Dave Trowbridge, _Computer Technology Review_, Aug 90



"The sun rose slowly, like a fiery furball coughed up uneasily onto a sky-blue carpet by a giant unseen cat"

--Michael McGarel, winner of the San Jose State University Bulwer-Lytton contest for best first lines



"If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever said it."

--T. Lehrer



"For every human problem, there is a neat, plain solution--and it is always wrong."

--H. L. Mencken



"A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually"

--Abba Eban



"[People] are fond of supposing that they are engaged in a difficult investigation into the nature of things when they are only disagreeing about the meaning of words."

--Bailey, Observations on Certain Verbal Disputes

in Political Economy, (1821), p.16



"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 not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the houses of its children."

--Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

[Source: Physicians for Social Responsibility]



"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents; it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning."

--Max Planck



"I have absolute confidence as to his integrity"

--George Bush, on Nixon, during Watergate.



"Suppose that you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

--Mark Twain



"Self-esteem is the basis of any real democracy"

--Gloria Steinem



"The Internet is like a large jellyfish. You can't step on it. You can't go around it. You have to go through it."



"Imagination is greater than knowledge"

-- Albert Einstein



Overheard at an Internet Enginering Task Force (IETF) meeting:"The only two activities where the participants are called users are drugs and computers."



From a fortune cookie: "All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy"



"In sound wisdom there are two sides"

--Zophar, Job 11:6



"Let me tell you, son, I was on the Information Superhighway when it was a dirt road and there weren't no cops."



"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

--Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince



"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present... As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew."

--A. Lincoln



"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?"

--PBS Signals Catalog



"fingerspitzengefuhl" (german)

-- a feeling in the tips of one's fingers, i.e., intuition.



"What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

--Thomas Jefferson



"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat."

--R. Heinlein



"No matter where you go, there you are."

--Buckaroo Banzai



"Faith is good, but skepticism is better"

--Guissepe Verdi



The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless. -- Chamfort

Housework can kill you if done right. -- Erma Bombeck

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

-- Erma Bombeck

The trouble with heart disease is that the first symptom is often hard to deal with: death. -- Michael Phelps, MD

A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who has never owned a car. -- Carrie Snow

When I was young we didn't have MTV; we had to take drugs and go to concerts. -- Steven Pearl

One of the first things schoolchildren in Texas learn is how to compose a simple declarative sentence without the word "shit" in it.

-- anonymous

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.--Churchill

"If you don't grow up by age 35, you don't have to."

--James Gurney, unicyclist and author of "Dinotopia"



"Space is bounded by it's own curvature, but stupidity extends beyond infinity"

--Severian



"Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it. I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle I find it too confining."

--Frank Kastenholz



"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."

--Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson)



"Jabberwocky"



'Twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

All mimsy were the borogroves

And the mome raths outgrabe.



"Beware the Jabberwock my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird

And shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"



He took his vorpal sword in hand

Long time the manxome foe he sought

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.



And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!



One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.



And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

He chortled in his joy.



'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

All mimsy were the borogroves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.



--Lewis Carroll



"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."

--Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut



"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, then change the way you think about it."

--Maya Angelou



"For many years it was believed that countless monkeys working on countless typewriters would eventually reproduce the genius of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the World Wide Web, we know this to be false."

--Anonymous



"It's not denial, I'm just very selective about the reality I accept."

--Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson)



"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."

--Emerson



"If you don't know where you want to go, we'll make sure you get taken."

--Microsoft ad slogan, translated into Japanese



"I have not yet begun to procrastinate."

--Jerry Hyman



"A computer and a cat are somewhat alike--they both purr,and like to be stroked, and spend a lot of the day motionless. They also have secrets they don't necessarily share."

--John Updike, The New Yorker



"Friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly."

--Anonymous



"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism."

--Carl Sagan