Sethi Family Quotations

Quotations...

Grab a comfy chair, sit back, and relax with some quotes that have given us pause to reflect on life, to laugh (at others and ourselves), or to simply be amused...


   I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd 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", Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)


   The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for
experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute
for intelligence.
-- Lyman Bryson


   QOTD:
A child of 5 could understand this! Fetch me a child of 5.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   If you think things can't get worse it's probably only because you
lack sufficient imagination.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and
tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will
have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor
its theories will hold water.
-- John William Gardner


   Re: Graphics:
A picture is worth 1000 words -- but only those to describe
the picture.  Hardly any sets of 1000 words can be adequately
described with pictures.
-- Alan Perlis


   Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you,
and just before you realize what is wrong with it.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
-- Woody Allen


   My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo of
the entire earth on it. On the back it said: Wish you were here.
-- Steven Wright


   Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and
long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his
pain and his aloneness without regret?
-- Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)


   This is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.  And now you know why.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist.  He explained
that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
each propose to ensure a win.  When they reconvened the gangster started with
the engineer:
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
electrical shock to the horse.
G:        That's very good!  But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist:  I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves
into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G:        Excellent, excellent!  But I want to hear from the physicist before
I decide what to do.  Physicist?  
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...


   Laugh when you can; cry when you must.


   You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
-- Alan Perlis


   If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had
lost his senses.  When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Life may have no meaning.  Or, even worse, it may have a meaning of
which I disapprove.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant, English Author and Cartoonist, (1933-)


   Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)


   "Some fellows pay a compliment like they expected a receipt." 
-- Kin Hubbard, humorist (1868-1930)


   What is mind?  No matter.  What is matter?  Never mind.
-- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875


   If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-- Abraham Maslow, Psychologist (1908-1970)


   The scene: in a vast, painted desert, a cowboy faces his horse.
Cowboy: "Well, youve been a pretty good hoss, I guess. Hardworkin.
Not the fastest critter I ever come acrost, but..."
Horse:  "No, stupid, not feed*back*.  I said I wanted a feed*bag*."
-- Your Daily Fortune


   All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second,
a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken
the first step.  With every additional step you enhance immensely the value
of your first. 
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)


   There is not much to choose between a woman who deceives us for another,
and a woman who deceives another for ourselves.
-- Emile Augier, French Dramatist (1820-1889)


   Life Sucks.  Cynical, misanthropic male, 34, looking for soul mate but
certain not to find her.  Drop me a note.  I'll call you, we'll talk and
I'll ask you out to dinner where I'll probably spend more than I can
afford in a feeble attempt to impress you.  Then we'll realize we have
absolutely nothing in common and we'll go our separate ways, more
embittered and depressed than before (if such a thing is possible).
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.
-- Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914),  The Devil's Dictionary


   "Tell the truth and run."
-- Yugoslav proverb


   On-line, adj.:
The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.
-- Benjamin Disraeli


   You can't go home again, unless you set $HOME.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us.  "He is full of
murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
their ignorance the hard way."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cats Cradle"


   It is far better to be deceived than to be undeceived by those we love.
-- Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld, French philanthropist (1613 - 1680)


   A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)


   Actor                   Real Name
Boris Karloff           William Henry Pratt
Cary Grant              Archibald Leach
Edward G. Robinson      Emmanual Goldenburg
Gene Wilder             Gerald Silberman
John Wayne              Marion Morrison
Kirk Douglas            Issur Danielovitch
Richard Burton          Richard Jenkins Jr.
Roy Rogers              Leonard Slye
Woody Allen             Allen Stewart Konigsberg
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It would be illogical to kill without reason.
-- Spock, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.4


   That unit is a woman. A mass of conflicting impulses.
-- Spock, "The Changeling"


   Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.
-- Sir Walter Raleigh


   The hardest thing is to disguise your feelings when you put a lot of
relatives on the train for home.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It's bad enough that life is a rat-race, but why do the rats always
have to win? 
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants,
today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
-- Dave Barry


   Time and tide wait for no man.
-- Geoffrey Chaucer, Poet (1343-1400)


   Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
-- Bergan Evans


   Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   What one fool can do, another can.
-- Ancient Simian Proverb


   Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to
conceal their thoughts.
-- Voltaire


   Never eat at a place called Mom's.  
Never play cards with a man named Doc.
And never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.
-- Nelson Algren, "What Every Young Man Should Know"


   It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious
to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look,
which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the day, that is the
highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details,
worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"


   Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
-- Indian proverb


   Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what 
one is talking about nor whether what is said is true.
-- Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)


   Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't
they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning
anything?  If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five
years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
-- The Best of Will Rogers


   Life is a series of rude awakenings.
-- R.V. Winkle


   A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   That government is best which governs least.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"


   Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of
watching television."
-- Cal Keegan


   "An honest god is the noblest work of man.  ... God has always resembled his
creators.  He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably
found on the side of those in power. ... Most of the gods were pleased with
sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine
perfume."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll


   "A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
-- Mandelbrot, _The Fractal Geometry of Nature_


   The wise man seeks everything in himself; the ignorant man tries to get
everything from somebody else.
-- Anonymous


   Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the
old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent
I can find for "landskap").  These laws were written down sometime in the
13th century, but date back even down into Viking times.  The oldest one is
the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some
Christian stuff.  In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the
Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc.  Here is
an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of
"lekare".
"If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it.  If an artist
is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with
fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring
it out on the hillside.  Then they shall shave off all hair from the
heifer's tail, and grease the tail.  Then the artist shall be given
newly greased shoes.  Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail,
and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip.  If he can hold her, he
shall have the animal.  If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what
he received, shame and wounds."
-- Anonymous


   Every now and then, when your life gets complicated and the weasels start
closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then
drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at
top volume and at least a pint of ether.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"


   "One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror."
-- W. K. Hartmann


   The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they seem to believe that
for a group of people to behave in a way detrimental to the common good
requires intent.
-- Anonymous


   * All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.
* When there are visible vapors having the prevenience in ignited
carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.
* Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.
* A plethora of individuals wither expertise in culinary techniques vitiated
the potable concoction produced by steeping certain coupestibles.
* Eleemosynary deeds have their initial incidence intramurally.
* Male cadavers are incapable of yielding testimony.
* Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be well
advised to refrain from catapulting projectiles.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Q:      Why haven't you graduated yet?
A:      Well, Dad, I could have finished years ago, but I wanted
my dissertation to rhyme.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
-- Lao Tsu


   "I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
-- Gautama Buddha


   The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree
that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Be nice to people on the way up, because you'll meet them on your way down.
-- Wilson Mizner


   Remember...
'tis better to have loved and lost 
than to live with a psycho for the rest of your life!
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand
years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man
is and will always be a wild animal.
-- Charles Galton Darwin


   Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
-- Isaac Newton, Mathematician and Physicist (1642 - 1727)


   Money is its own reward.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "Ninety percent of baseball is half mental."
-- Yogi Berra


   If the master dies and the disciple grieves, the lives of both have
been wasted.
-- Anonymous


   To err is human, to moo bovine.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is none
of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."  Don't use
excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.  Cutting his throat
is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"


   "A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks.  Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest.  This is a fal-
lacy.  Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.  Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done.  If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.  It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850


   I was working on a case.  It had to be a case, because I couldn't afford a
desk.  Then I saw her.  This tall blond lady.  She must have been tall
because I was on the third floor.  She rolled her deep blue eyes towards
me.  I picked them up and rolled them back.  We kissed.  She screamed.  I
took the cigarette from my mouth and kissed her again.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Stamp out organized crime!!  Abolish the IRS.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   [Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
vices I admire.
-- Winston Churchill


   Your mode of life will be changed to ASCII.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   kernel, n.:
A part of an operating system that preserves the medieval
traditions of sorcery and black art.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The door is the key.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Everything might be different in the present if only one thing had
been different in the past.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised
when others believe him.
-- Charles DeGaulle


   The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint
has a past and every sinner has a future.
-- Oscar Wilde


   Confession is good for the soul, but bad for the career.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
-- Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"


   "The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is
that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust."
-- Samuel Butler, English novelist, essayist, and critic, (1835-1902)


   If all else fails, lower your standards.
-- Anonymous


   You can always tell the people that are forging the new frontier.
They're the ones with arrows sticking out of their backs.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Don't tell me that worry doesn't do any good.  I know better.  The things
I worry about don't happen.
-- Watchman Examiner


   Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were
driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out.  They screamed down the
mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by
luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged
rocks.  They all got out of the car:
The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it
into town and have a specialist look at it."
The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back
in and see if it does it again."
-- Your Daily Fortune


   We are all worms.  But I do believe I am a glowworm.
-- Winston Churchill


   Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both.
-- Samuel Butler, English novelist, essayist, and critic, (1835-1902)


   Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today --
I think he's from the CIA.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   If you wish to be happy for one hour, get drunk.
If you wish to be happy for three days, get married.
If you wish to be happy for a month, kill your pig and eat it.
If you wish to be happy forever, learn to fish.
-- Chinese Proverb


   On a tous un peu peur de l'amour, mais on a surtout peur de souffrir
ou de faire souffrir.
[One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is afraid of
pain or causing pain.] 
-- Anonymous


   A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance
of turning around three times before lying down.
-- Robert Benchley


   You can have a dog as a friend.  You can have whiskey as a friend.  But
if you have a woman as a friend, you're going to wind up drunk and kissing
your dog.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Early to bed and early to rise and you'll be groggy when everyone else is
wide awake.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Remember thee
Aye, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.  Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there.
-- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"


   If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical
world.  One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by
the use of the mathematics of probability.
-- Vannevar Bush


   Laws of Computer Programming:
(1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
(2) Any given program costs more and takes longer.
(3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
(4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
(5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
(6) The value of a program is proportional the weight of its output.
(7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of
the programmer who must maintain it.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Let me put it this way: today is going to be a learning experience.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.
-- Anonymous


   It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take.  This
is untrue.  Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the
last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give
enough.
-- Quentin Crisp, "How to Become a Virgin"


   That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love,
that no one could have loved so before us, and that no one will love
in the same way as us.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


   To teach is to learn twice.
-- Joseph Joubert


   "The subspace W inherits the other 8 properties of V. And there aren't
even any property taxes."
-- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b


   Women give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.
-- Arnould


   Marriage is a lot like the army, everyone complains, but you'd be
surprised at the large number that re-enlist.
-- James Garner


   I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less
than half of you half as well as you deserve.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien


   The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps.  Members will grep
each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od.  Three
days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo.  Two
seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
friendly features of Unix.  Seminars include "Everything You Know is
Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
"cc C?  Si!  Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats.  No Reader Service No. is necessary because
all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
could tell them.
-- "Get GUMMed," Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84


   QOTD:
"This is a one line proof... if we start sufficiently far to the
left."
-- Anonymous


   Religion is the best defense against a religious experience.
-- Carl G. Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)


   Goldenstern's Rules:
(1) Always hire a rich attorney
(2) Never buy from a rich salesman.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Succumb to natural tendencies.  Be hateful and boring.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been
dead for two years.
-- Tom Lehrer


   If puns were deli meat, this would be the wurst.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance.  He of all men
should behave as though the law compelled him.  But it is the universal
weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine
we own.
-- H.G. Wells


   Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to
stick to one thing till it gets there.
-- Josh Billings


   There once was a man who went to a computer trade show.  Each day as
he entered, the man told the guard at the door:
"I am a great thief, renowned for my feats of shoplifting.  Be
forewarned, for this trade show shall not escape unplundered."
This speech disturbed the guard greatly, because there were millions
of dollars of computer equipment inside, so he watched the man carefully.
But the man merely wandered from booth to booth, humming quietly to himself.
When the man left, the guard took him aside and searched his clothes,
but nothing was to be found.
On the next day of the trade show, the man returned and chided the
guard saying: "I escaped with a vast booty yesterday, but today will be even
better."  So the guard watched him ever more closely, but to no avail.
On the final day of the trade show, the guard could restrain his
curiosity no longer. "Sir Thief," he said, "I am so perplexed, I cannot live
in peace.  Please enlighten me.  What is it that you are stealing?"
The man smiled.  "I am stealing ideas," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"


   If you don't know what game you're playing, don't ask what the score is.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Prison Vs. Work Debate
IN PRISON..you spend the majority of your time in an 8x10 cell.
AT WORK..you spend most of your time in a 6x8 cubicle.
IN PRISON..you get three meals a day.
AT WORK..you only get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.
IN PRISON..you get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK..you get rewarded for good behavior with more work.
IN PRISON..a guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK..you must carry around a security card and unlock and open
all the doors yourself.
IN PRISON..you can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK..you get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON..you get your own toilet.
AT WORK..you have to share.
IN PRISON..they allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK..you cannot even speak to your family and friends.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
-- Robert Benchley, Actor, author, and humorist (1889 - 1945)


   The garden is in mourning;
The rain falls cool among the flowers.
Summer shivers quietly
On its way towards its end.
Golden leaf after leaf
Falls from the tall acacia.
Summer smiles, astonished, feeble,
In this dying dream of a garden.
For a long while, yet, in the roses,
She will linger on, yearning for peace,
And slowly
Close her weary eyes.
-- Hermann Hesse, "September"


   I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; 
every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; 
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, 
as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy
friends or of thine owne were; 
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; 
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee. 
-- John Donne, poet (1573-1631)


   Suchness is neither that which is existence, nor that which is
nonexistence, nor that which is at once existence and nonexistence,
nor that which is not at once existence and nonexistence. 
-- Ashvaghosha (80 - 150 CE)


   Did it ever occur to you that fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?
Or that we drive on parkways and park on driveways?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   You have taken yourself too seriously.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Only two kinds of witnesses exist.  The first live in a neighborhood where
a crime has been committed and in no circumstances have ever seen anything
or even heard a shot.  The second category are the neighbors of anyone who
happens to be accused of the crime.  These have always looked out of their
windows when the shot was fired, and have noticed the accused person standing
peacefully on his balcony a few yards away.
-- Sicilian police officer


   My friends, I am here to tell you of the wonderous continent known as
Africa.  Well we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February 31.
We were 15 days on the water, and 3 on the boat when we finally arrived in
Africa.  Upon our arrival we immediately set up a rigorous schedule:  Up at
6:00, breakfast, and back in bed by 7:00.  Pretty soon we were back in bed by
6:30.  Now Africa is full of big game.  The first day I shot two bucks.  That
was the biggest game we had.  Africa is primerally inhabited by Elks, Moose
and Knights of Pithiests.
The elks live up in the mountains and come down once a year for their
annual conventions.  And you should see them gathered around the water hole,
which they leave immediately when they discover it's full of water.  They
weren't looking for a water hole.  They were looking for an alck hole.
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my
pajamas, I don't know.  Then we tried to remove the tusks.  That's a tough
word to say, tusks.  As I said we tried to remove the tusks, but they were
imbedded so firmly we couldn't get them out.  But in Alabama the Tuscaloosa,
but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying.
We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed.
So we're going back in a few years...
-- Julius H. Marx [Groucho]


   If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who wore fur
boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him.
-- Anton Chekhov


   In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are
present.
-- Tony Petito


   "Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...."
-- Thomas J. Kopp


   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 despised 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 doth 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 pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
-- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet" (III.i.55)


   Most people would rather be CERTAIN they're miserable, than RISK being
Happy. 
-- Robert Newton Anthony


   The end of labor is to gain leisure.
-- Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE)


   "...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
"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.  The name really is, 'The Aged
Aged Man.'"
"Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing!  The song is
called 'Ways and Means':  but that's only what it is called you know!"
"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this
time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said.  "The song really is
"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"


   The  White Rabbit put on his spectacles.
"Where shall  I  begin, please your Majesty ?" he asked.
"Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on
till you come to the end: then stop."
-- Lewis Carroll


   Women who want to be equal to men lack imagination.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious. 
-- Edsel Murphy


   It is impossible to defend perfectly against the attack of those who want
to die.
-- Anonymous


   better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus < north pole > town
cat /etc/passwd > list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice > giftlist
santa claus < north pole > town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad || good
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
-- Your Daily Fortune


   To lead people, you must follow behind.
-- Lao Tsu


   Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to
examine the laws of heat.
-- Christopher Morley


   "The fact of the matter is that the fossil record not only documents
evolution, but that it was the fossil record itself which forced natural
scientists to abandon their idea of the fixity of species and look
instead for a plausible mechanism of change, a mechanism of evolution.
The fossil record not only demonstrates evolution in extravagant detail,
but it dashes all claims of the scientific creationists concerning the
origin of living organisms."
-- Kenneth R. Miller, "Scientific Creationism versus Evolution" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 22.


   "Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts." 
-- Vice President J. Danforth Quayle


   "Well, evolution is a theory.  It is also a fact.  And facts and
theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing
certainty.  Facts are the world's data.  Theories are structures of
ideas that explain and interpret facts.  Facts don't go away when
scientists debate rival theories to explain them.  Einstein's theory of
gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend
themselves in midair, pending the outcome.  And humans evolved from ape-
like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by
some other yet to be discovered."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"


   "We cannot disprove beliefs like these, especially if it is assumed 
that God took care that his interventions always closely mimicked 
what would be expected from evolution by natural selection.  All that
we can say about such beliefs is, firstly, that they are superfluous
and, secondly, that they assume the existence of the main thing we
want to explain, namely organized complexity.  The one thing 
that makes evolution such a neat theory is that it explains how 
organized complexity can arise out of primeval simplicity."
-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986), p. 316.


   "El arroyo de la sierra; Me complace mas que el mar."
[The stream of the mountain; pleases me more than the sea.]
-- Jose Marti, Guantanamera


   "Now we know the other side advocates intelligent design as a primary
characteristic of intelligent design when it is squared with the fossil
record.  The fossil record -- and I can give you specific examples -- is
characertized best by sequences of appearances and disappearances.  Now
think what that means.  What that means is that the characteristic that
best describes the intelligent designer who would have designed this 
fossil record is incompetent because everything the intelligent designer
designed, with about one percent exceptions, has immediately become
extinct.  Intelligent design has no explanation for the successive 
character in the fossil record, evolution has a perfect explanation, 
and that is the appearance of new forms and the extinction of others."
-- Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 22.


   "This is ri-god-damn-diculous"
-- Mr. John Wayne (aka Marion Robert Morrison)


   "In the November7th or November 14th issue of Science magazine, a 
number of investigators wanted to test the Darwinian hypothesis that you
folks say is never tested, and the way in which they did this was to take
the receptor protein for the human growth hormone -- it's a receptor to
which the human growth hormoe fits in precisely -- and they did a terrible
genetic disservice.  They mutated -- they cut out an essential amino acid
right in the middle of the receptor, called tryptophan.  With that gone,
just like that mousetrap, it wouldn't have been expected to work.  They
then allowed a natural selection process to take place to see whether the
cells under their own observation could mutate the receptor gene
sufficiently to bind the receptor, and after seven generations, lo and
behold, there it was.  It illustrates beautifully the ability of natural
selection to respond to mutations in proteins to co-evolve."
-- Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 25.


   "What about complex parasites?  Did this designer design complex 
parasites or is that evolution?  I mean, you get all the good things 
and evolutionists get all the bad things."
-- Michael Ruse in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 35.


   "Mi verso es un ciervo herido; Que busca en el monte amparo."
[My poems are like a wounded fawn; seeking refuge in the forest.]
-- Jose Marti, Guantanamera


   "To reject the idea that chance is something that could be used by the
divine is to limit the power of the divine considerably."
-- Barry Lynn in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 36.


   "Do you know the mind of God so well that you could rule out the 
possibility that God conceived evolution as the process to bring His
design to fruition? [...] The truth is that if you are saying that you
cannot imagine that a God could be that creative, that imaginative, 
then aren't you limiting in a very severe fashion your construct of
God?"
-- Barry Lynn in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, pp. 36-37.


   "I stand by all the misstatements that I've made." 
-- Vice President J. Danforth Quayle to Sam Donaldson, 8/17/89


   "Mr. Behe has of course compared, like it or not, compared the 
extraordinary complexity of the human cell to the mousetrap.  He said if
we look at that mousetrap, it was created by a human.  In fact, Mr. 
Miller improved on it, as you saw earlier tonight.  Therefore, if that's
complicated, then indeed the cell must also have been designed by an 
intelligence.  And as I thought about it tonight, it's a little bit --
we were all talking about nature analogies -- it's a little bit like
looking at a mole build a molehill.  You say, That's very interesting.  
Then we walk out in the woods the next day and we notice a big mountain
off in the distance.  And we say, Good grief, that's enormously large.  A
really big mole must have built that.  The truth of the matter is, it's
not logical.  We should be looking for different forces that result in
different things.  Your mousetrap was built by human hands because its 
components are inanimate objects.  Cellular life is living, vibrant,
breathing, changing matter.  You're not just comparing apples to oranges,
you are comparing plastic apples to organic oranges, and I think 
therefore this analogy fails."
-- Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 50.


   "If people are good only because they fear punishment,
and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
-- Albert Einstein


   I try to take one day at a time... but lately several days have
attacked me at once.
-- Steven Wright


   "In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that
it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that
apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not
merit equal time in physics classrooms."
-- Stephen J. Gould


   "As long as there are tests, there will always be prayer in
schools." 
-- Melissa Anderson


   If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains
the same, we must say "no"; if we ask whether the electron's position
changes with time, we must say "no"; if we ask whether the electron is
at rest, we must say "no"; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must
say "no". 
-- Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)


   "Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof"
-- Ashley Montagu (1905-1999)


   Violence stinks, no matter which end of it you're on.  But now and then
there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a
frying pan.  Sometimes people are just begging for that frypan, and if we
weaken for a moment and honor their request, we should regard it as
impulsive philanthropy, which we aren't in any position to afford, but
shouldn't regret it too loudly lest we spoil the purity of the deed.
-- Tom Robbins


   What we do not understand we do not possess.
-- Goethe


   Be different: conform.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   I'm sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding.
-- Anonymous


   Every man is apt to form his notions of things difficult to be apprehended,
or less familiar, from their analogy to things which are more familiar.
Thus, if a man bred to the seafaring life, and accustomed to think and talk
only of matters relating to navigation, enters into discourse upon any other
subject; it is well known, that the language and the notions proper to his
own profession are infused into every subject, and all things are measured
by the rules of navigation: and if he should take it into his head to
philosophize concerning the faculties of the mind, it cannot be doubted,
but he would draw his notions from the fabric of the ship, and would find
in the mind, sails, masts, rudder, and compass.
-- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764


   Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-- Albert Einstein


   Always think of something new; this helps you forget your last rotten idea.
-- Seth Frankel


   It is impossible for an optimist to be pleasantly surprised.


   love, n.:
When, if asked to choose between your lover
and happiness, you'd skip happiness in a heartbeat.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   To write a sonnet you must ruthlessly
strip down your words to naked, willing flesh.
Then bind them to a metaphor or three,
and take by force a satisfying mesh.
Arrange them to your will, each foot in place.
You are the master here, and they the slaves.
Now whip them to maintain a constant pace
and rhythm as they stand in even staves.
A word that strikes no pleasure?  Cast it out!
What use are words that drive not to the heart?
A lazy phrase? Discard it, shrug off doubt,
and choose more docile words to take its part.
A well-trained sonnet lives to entertain,
by making love directly to the brain.
-- Anonymous


   If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Quantity is no substitute for quality, but its the only one we've got.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky


   perfect guest:
One who makes his host feel at home.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Too much is just enough.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) on Whiskey


   This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-- William Shakespeare, Polonius in Hamlet, (I.iii.78)


   A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
-- Gloria Steinem


   All his life he has looked away... to the horizon, to the sky,
to the future.  Never his mind on where he was, on what he was doing.
-- Yoda


   The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of four
and eighteen.  At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all the answers.
-- Anonymous


   To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn
old falsehoods.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love"


   Aphasia:
Loss of speech in social scientists when asked
at parties, "But of what use is your research?"


   'On this point we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has nothing to do
with equalizing.  Socialism cannot ensure conditions of life and 
consumption in accordance with the principle "From each according to his 
ability, to each according to his needs."  This will be under communism.
Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social benefits:
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."'
-- Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_


   "Laws are only words words written on paper, words that change on society's
whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges,
and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed
would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are
applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool."
--  John J. Miller; And Hope to Die, in Jokertown Shuffle Wild Cards IX


   "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he
grows up."
-- Pablo Picasso


   "A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight and his punishment
is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
-- Oscar Wilde


   "A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words
become superfluous."
-- Ingrid Bergman


   "Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we
live."
-- Albert Einstein


   "Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream."
-- Edgar Allan Poe


   The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war.
Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss
Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews.
Bottle openers. 'Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back
of me, he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here.'
-- Jerry Seinfeld


   "In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: 
It goes on."
-- Robert Frost


   "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be
restrained."
-- William Blake


   "We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to
give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are
like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large
samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set
to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like."
-- Alfred Hitchcock


   "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who
could not hear the music."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche


   "One man's religion is another man's belly laugh."
-- Robert A. Heinlein


   "to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and
day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any
human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
-- e e cummings, poet (1894-1962)


   "A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems shorter than a
minute. But tell that same man to sit on a hot stove for a minute, it is
longer than any hour. That's relativity."
-- Albert Einstein


   "Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions
of thought. The imagination can transcend them, and more in a free sphere
of ideal existences."
-- Oscar Wilde


   "You can be watching T.V. and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the
President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can
drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a
better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All Cokes are
the same and all Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows
it, the bum knows it, and you know it. 
NATIONALISM IS A CREATED PRODUCT." 
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love,
and something to hope for."
-- Allan K. Chalmers


   Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do,
something to love, and something to hope for. 
-- Joseph Addison, writer (1672-1719)


   "One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have
believed it - they also believed the world was flat."
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he
hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however
measured or far away"
-- Henry David Thoreau


   "He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled
with falsehoods and errors."
-- Thomas Jefferson


   "In Germany, first they came 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 wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time
there was nobody left to speak up."
-- Pastor Marton Niemoller


   "A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)


   "When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box."
-- Italian proverb


   "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher
a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balanceaccounts,
build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, giveorders,
cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure,
program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die
gallantly. 
Specialization is for insects."
-- Robert A. Heinlein _The Notebook of Lazarus Long_


   "The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world
its own shame."
-- Oscar Wilde


   "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false,
and by rulers as useful."
-- Seneca the Younger


   "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious
books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers
and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down
for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find
that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit
of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
-- Buddha


   And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?" They
replied,"You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our
being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood
revealed." And Jesus replied, "What?"
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "Clocks slay time ... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by
little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."
-- William Faulkner


   "I regard it as the chief duty of the state to protect the individual and
give him the opportunity to develop into a creative personality; that is to
say; the state should be our servant and not we its slaves."
-- Albert Einstein


   "If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be
wearing little Electric Chairs around their necks instead of crosses"
-- Lenny Bruce


   "Ask youself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting
for us in our graves -- or whether it should be ours here and now and
on this earth."
-- Ayn Rand


   "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist,
not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is
not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the
coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this
picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own
soul."
-- Oscar Wilde


   "Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself,
yet, in other respects he is free; because, once thrown into the world, he
is responsible for everything he does."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre


   "The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have
to catch it yourself."
-- Ben Franklin


   "When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so
long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for
us."
-- Helen Keller


   "War does not determine who is right - only who is left."
-- Bertrand Russell


   "A clock just moves without thought or meaning - worthless without
interpretation."
-- Richard Paul EvanS


   "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure, and never simple" 
-- Oscar Wilde


   "I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I
am still choosing." 
-- Jean-Paul Sartre


   "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" 
-- Oscar Wilde


   "We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the
human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business,
engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But
poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. 
To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!... of the questions of these
recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless; of cities filled
with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?' 
Answer. That you are here -- that life exists." 
-- Tom Schulman, from The Dead Poets Society


   "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of
a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
-- Niels Bohr


   "To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three
parts dead."
-- Bertrand Russell


   "To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a
weakness still dominating the human mind."
-- Charlotte P. Gillman


   "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense
and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and
his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken


   "Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and
he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
-- Timothy Jones


   "Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."
-- Groucho Marx


   Nietzsche Aphorisms:
Out of life's school of war- What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed. 
Forbidden generosity.
There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to
give some of it away to imaginary beings. 
Death-The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a
precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls
have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of
life repulsive.
Luxury-The love of luxury is rooted in the depths of a man's heart: it
shows that the superfluous and immoderate is the sea wherein his soul
prefers to float.
Making use of ebb and flow-For the purpose of knowledge we must know how to
make use of the inward current which draws us towards a thing, and also of
the current which after a time draws us away from it.


   "It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I'm right."
-- Moliere


   "Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining."
-- Grateful Dead


   "Facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are delightful...Get your facts
first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   I guess I've been so wrapped up in playing the game that I never took
time enough to figure out where the goal line was -- what it meant to
win -- or even how you won.
-- Cash McCall


   My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
-- Dorothy Parker, part 3


   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.
-- Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London


   Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
listen to weather forecasts and economists?
-- Kelvin Throop III


   If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations
of the victors.  History is written by the survivors.
-- Max Lerner


   A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson


   Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
-- Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)


   Nothing is as simple as it seems at first
Or as hopeless as it seems in the middle
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
-- Anonymous


   There's something the technicians need to learn from the artists.
If it isn't aesthetically pleasing, it's probably wrong.
-- Anonymous


   Save energy: be apathetic.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   poverty, n.:
An unfortunate state that persists as long
as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
-- Anonymous


   System Administration is a dirty job, but someone said I have to do
it. 
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Ignorance is never out of style.  It was in fashion yesterday, it is the
rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.
-- Franklin K. Dane


   I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom
I knew as well.  Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the
narrowness of my experience.
-- Henry David Thoreau, _Walden_


   The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and
not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could
have materialized -- and never knowing.
-- David Viscott


   It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
-- Leonardo da Vinci


   It's easy to forgive... harder to forget.
-- Mental As Anything, "If you leave me, can I come too?"


   Good, to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.
-- Robert Silverberg, _Dying Inside_


   Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places.
-- Henry David Thoreau, _A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_


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


   Perhaps that was the whole trouble; what he felt for her was not so
much love as simply satisfaction at the idea of being in love.  Or
perhaps not.
-- Robert Silverberg, _Dying Inside_


   I would have you imagine, then, that there exists in the mind of man a block
of wax...  and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the
image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we
forget or do not know.
-- Plato, Dialogs, Theateus 191 [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when referring to image activation and termination.]


   The default Magic Word, "Abracadabra", actually is a corruption of the
Hebrew phrase "ha-Bracha dab'ra" which means "pronounce the blessing".
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The main problem I have with cats is, they're not dogs.
-- Kevin Cowherd


   Power corrupts.  And atomic power corrupts atomically.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him
keep her.
-- Sacha Guitry (1885 - 1957), Russian/French Playwright


   Bigamy is having one spouse too many.  Monogamy is the same.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The best portion of a good man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts
of kindness and love.
-- Wordsworth


   A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Each of us bears his own Hell.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)


   Women can keep a secret just as well as men, but it takes more of them
to do it.
-- Anonymous


   Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly.  An aide once asked him
how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.
The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.
-- Anonymous


   They don't know how the world is shaped.  And so they give it a shape, and
try to make everything fit it.  They separate the right from the left, the
man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They
only want to count to two.
-- Emma Bull, "Bone Dance"


   Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Poverty must have its satisfactions, else there would not be so many poor
people.
-- Don Herold


   A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother
drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
-- George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist, literary critic, and socialist (1856 - 1950)


   Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers.  There is, indeed, no wild beast
more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
If you are civil to the voluble, they will abuse your patience; if
brusque, your character.
-- Jonathan Swift


   Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
-- Bertolt Brecht (also attributed to Harold Coffin)


   It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a
better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat
your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of
attention, the harder the task.
-- Sydney J. Harris


   Marriage is the sole cause of divorce.
-- Anonymous


   I'd rather have two girls at 21 each than one girl at 42.
-- W.C. Fields


   An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize
winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen.  He was amazed to find that
over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the
open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not
let it spill out).  The American said with a nervous laugh,
"Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck,
do you, Professor Bohr?  After all, as a scientist --"
Bohr chuckled.
"I believe no such thing, my good friend.  Not at all.  I am
scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense.  However, I am told
that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."


   I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos.
-- Albert Einstein, on the randomness of quantum mechanics
Stop telling God what to do with his dice.
-- Niels Bohr's response to Einstein (also attributed to Enrico Fermi)


   One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists,
a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also
just stupid.
-- J.D. Watson, "The Double Helix"


   Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken
him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him.  Such an excess of
stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
-- Samuel Johnson


   Power corrupts.  Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987


   It takes a smart husband to have the last word and not use it.
-- Anonymous


   The other day I... uh, no, that wasn't me.
-- Steven Wright


   Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   All hope abandon, ye who enter here!
-- Dante Alighieri


   "Now we know how the electrons and light behave. But what can I call
it? If I say they behave like particles I give the wrong impression;
also if I say they behave like waves. They behave in their own
inimitable way, which technically could be called a quantum mechanical
way. They behave in a way that is like nothing that you have ever seen
before. Your experience with things that you have seen before is
incomplete. The behavior of things on a very tiny scale is simply
different. An atom does not behave like a weight hanging on a spring
and oscillating. Nor does it behave like a miniature representation of
the solar system with little planets going around in orbits. Nor does
it appear to be somewhat like a cloud or fog of some sort surrounding
the nucleus. It behaves like nothing you have ever seen before."
-- Richard P. Feynman, _The Character of Physical Law_


   "The self goes through changes.  If one doesn't change at different
stages of life, the self begins to get tired of itself, and is no
longer a creative phenomenon."
-- Stanley Kunitz, Poet Laureate of the United States


   They could but make the best of it, and went around with woebegone
faces sadly complaining that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays they
must look on light as a wave; on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays as
a particle. On Sundays, they simply prayed.
-- Banesh Hoffmann


   Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve.  Run
with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened.  Keep
the company of bums and you will become a bum.  Hang around with rich people
and you will end by picking up the check and dying broke.
-- Stanley Walker


   Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier


   All of us should treasure his Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a
Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks,
tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks:
"Just lie down on the floor and keep calm."
-- Robert Wilson, "John Dillinger Died for You"


   The world is coming to an end.  Please log off.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   What is a chair?  Well, a chair is a certain thing over there... how
certain?  The atoms are evaporating from it from time to time -- not
many atoms, but a few -- dirt falls on it and gets dissolved in the
paint; so to define a chair precisely, to say exactly which atoms are
chair, and which atoms are air, or which atoms are dirt, or which
atoms are paint that belongs to the chair is impossible.  
-- Richard P. Feynman, Vol 1, Lecture 12


   Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself.  I am
large.  I contain multitudes.
-- Walt Whitman


   I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have
gotten the hostages released.  I thank God they were satisfied with the
missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.
-- Oliver North


   When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or four years
ago, he is a broad-minded man who has courage enough to change his mind
with changing conditions.  When a man you don't like does it, he is a
liar who has broken his promises.
-- Franklin Adams


   QOTD:
The only easy way to tell a hamster from a gerbil is that the
gerbil has more dark meat.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   If you analyse anything, you destroy it.
-- Arthur Miller


   "Cheshire-Puss," she began, "would you tell me, please, which way I
ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't care much where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
-- Alice in Wonderland


   No woman ever falls in love with a man unless she has a better opinion of
him than he deserves.
-- Edgar Watson Howe


   Ever since I was a young boy,
I've hacked the ARPA net,
From Berkeley down to Rutgers,		
Any access I could get,			
But ain't seen nothing like him,	
On any campus yet,			
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,		
Sure sends a mean packet.		
He's a UNIX wizard,
There has to be a twist.
The UNIX wizard's got			
Unlimited space on disk.		
How do you think he does it?		
I don't know.				
What makes him so good?			
He's on my favorite terminal,					
He cats C right into foo,
His disciples lead him in,
And he just breaks the root,
Always has full SYS-PRIV's,
Never uses lint,
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,			
Sure sends a mean packet.
Ain't got no distractions,
Can't hear no whistles or bells,
Can't see no message flashing,
Types by sense of smell,
Those crazy little programs,
The proper bit flags set,
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,
Sure sends a mean packet.
-- UNIX Wizard (with apologies to The Who's Pinball Wizard)


   Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
-- Goethe


   The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system:
"But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay:
for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil."
-- Matthew 5:37


   "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
-- Vroomfondel


   In Germany they first came 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.
-- Pastor Martin Niemoller


   Write yourself a threatening letter and pen a defiant reply.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence.  He
can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless
existence recurring eternally.  The second characteristic of such a man is
that he has the strength to recognise -- and to live with the recognition --
that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones.
He creates himself by fashioning his own values; he has the pride to live
by the values he wills.
-- Nietzsche


   You only know what your mind can handle.
-- Anonymous


   I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens
who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known
something of what has been passing in their time.
-- H. Truman


   Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months. 
-- Oscar Wilde


   There are only two things in this world that I am sure of, death and
taxes, and we just might do something about death one of these days.
-- Anonymous


   Nothing is ever a complete failure;
it can always be used successfully as a bad example...
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-- Lord Acton


   What doesn't kill us, hurts like hell...
-- Your Daily Fortune


   modesty, n.:
Being comfortable that others will discover your greatness.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Go slowly to the entertainments of thy friends, but quickly to their
misfortunes.
-- Chilo


   If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from
many it's research.
-- Wilson Mizner


   "In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with 
the current."
-- Thomas Jefferson


   Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while
you're being miserable.
-- C.B. Luce


   An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.
-- Marlon Brando


   In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he
sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
"Why is the net wired randomly?", inquired Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play".
At this Minsky shut his eyes, and Sussman asked his teacher "Why do
you close your eyes?"
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.


   Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their
inability to set a bad example.
-- La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims"


   Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?
-- Patrick Sky


   ...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers.  No matter how assured
we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions.  This is true in religion as
it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive.
As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be
advised to leave them to heaven.  They will not, unfortunately, do us the
same courtesy.  They attack us and each other, and whatever their 
protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear
that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword.  My own belief in
God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge.  My respect
for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the
most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth.  But even well-educated Christians
are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.
Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every
recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it.  Some Christians, alas,
resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
-- Steve Allen, comedian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of Conviction", edited by Philip Berman


   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, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)


   "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought
which they avoid." 
-- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard


   Always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   All phone calls are obscene.
-- Karen Elizabeth Gordon


   "Oh, you hate your job?  Why didn't you say so?  There's a support
group for that.  It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."
-- Drew Carey


   Not suprisingly, we also have a couple of money-saving ideas that we submit
to the Pentagon free of charge:
(a) Don't kill anybody.
(b) Don't build things that do.
(c) And don't pay other people to kill anybody.
We expect annual savings to be in the billions.
-- Sojourners


   Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and
world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers
whiter teeth *and* fresher breath.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"


   For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
-- R. Clopton


   No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.
-- Anonymous


   The man she had was kind and clean
And well enough for every day,
But, oh, dear friends, you should have seen
The one that got away!
-- Dorothy Parker, _The Fisherwoman_


   Hi Jimbo.  Dennis.  Really appreciate the help on the income tax.  You wanna
help on the audit now?
-- "The Rockford Files"


   The perfect friend sees the best in you -- sees it constantly -- not just
when you occasionally are that way, but also when you waver, when you
forget yourself, act like less than you are. In time, you become more
like his vision of you -- which is the person you have always wanted to be.
-- Nancy Friday


   "Mi verso es de un verde claro; Y de un carmin encendido."
[My poems are soft green; my poems are also flaming crimson.]
-- Jose Marti, Guantanamera


   "Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot;
others transform a yellow spot into the sun." 
-- Pablo Picasso


   "Adventure lies not in discovering new landscapes, but in seeing with
new eyes." 
-- Marcel Proust


   Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
-- Francis Bacon


   When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone
to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910), "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"


   Ever wonder if taxation without representation might have been cheaper?


   Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
-- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"


   The man who runs may fight again.
-- Menander


   Dying is a very dull, dreary affair.  My advice to you is to have
nothing whatever to do with it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, his last words


   Statistics are no substitute for judgement.
-- Henry Clay


   Multics is security spelled sideways.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   ... Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth.  Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old.  Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected
it.  There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between 
prejudice and postjudice.  Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts.  Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards.  Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes.  Postjudice is not terrible.  You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also.  But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence.  In some circles it is even encouraged.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism", astronomer and writer (1934-1996)


   Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid, too.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   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, from "The Book of Insults"


   Now I lay me back to sleep.
The speaker's dull; the subject's deep.
If he should stop before I wake,
Give me a nudge for goodness' sake.
-- Anonymous


   Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she
With silent lips.  Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me...
-- Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus"


   I'm so miserable without you, it's almost like you're here.


   Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
Everything else causes cancer in rats.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It's amazing how much better you feel once you've given up hope.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
-- Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"


   Don't vote -- it only encourages them!
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet,
challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that
keeps the blood at heat.  Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents
itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb
of innocence.  To yield to its blandishments is so easy.  The wrong, it seems,
is venial...  Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of
adventurous youth.
-- Benjamin Cardozo


   ELWOOD: It's 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, half
a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.
JAKE: Hit it!
-- The Blues Brothers


   "Maybe, it's not too late, to learn how to love, and forget how to hate."
-- Ozzy Osbourne, "Crazy Train"


   "Me fail English?  But that am un-possible!"
-- Ralph Wiggum, "The Simpsons"


   One evening he spoke.  Sitting at her feet, his face raised to her,
he allowed his soul to be heard.  "My darling, anything you wish, anything
I am, anything I can ever be...  That's what I want to offer you -- not the
things I'll get for you, but the thing in me that will make me able to get
them.  That thing -- a man can't renounce it -- but I want to renounce it -- so
that it will be yours -- so that it will be in your service -- only for you."
The girl smiled and asked: "Do you think I'm prettier than Maggie
Kelly?"
He got up.  He said nothing and walked out of the house.  He never
saw that girl again.  Gail Wynand, who prided himself on never needing a
lesson twice, did not fall in love again in the years that followed.
-- Ayn Rand, "The Fountainhead"


   Time as he grows old teaches all things.
-- Aeschylus


   Chihuahuas drive me crazy.  I can't stand anything that shivers when it's warm.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Question: Is it better to abide by the rules until they're changed or
help speed the change by breaking them?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   double-blind experiment, n:
An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is
fooling both the subject and the lab assistant.  Often accompanied
by a strong belief in the tooth fairy.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from
the vexation of thinking.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1831


   * Neophyte's serendipity.
* Exclusive dedication to necessitious chores without interludes of
hedonistic diversion renders John a hebetudinous fellow.
* A revolving concretion of earthy or mineral matter accumulates no
congeries of small, green bryophytic plant.
* The person presenting the ultimate cachinnation possesses thereby the
optimal cachinnation.
* Abstention from any aleatory undertaking precludes a potential
escallation of a lucrative nature.
* Missiles of ligneous or osteal consistency have the potential of
fracturing osseous structure, but appellations will eternally
remain innocuous.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The descent to Hades is the same from every place.
-- Anaxagoras


   Shah, shah!  Ayatollah you so!
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "Johnny's life passed him by, like a warm summer day,
If you listen to the wind, you can still hear him play."
-- Bad Company, "Shooting Star"


   Conjecture: All odd numbers are prime.
Mathematician's Proof:
3 is prime.  5 is prime.  7 is prime.  By induction, all
odd numbers are prime.
Physicist's Proof:
3 is prime.  5 is prime.  7 is prime.  9 is experimental
error.  11 is prime.  13 is prime ...
Engineer's Proof:
3 is prime.  5 is prime.  7 is prime.  9 is prime.
11 is prime.  13 is prime ...
Computer Scientists's Proof:
3 is prime.  3 is prime.  3 is prime.  3 is prime...
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore.
-- Russian Proverb


   Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
-- Beckett


   If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on
my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with
the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton
Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
-- Gauss
Mathemeticians stand on each other's shoulders while computer scientists
stand on each other's toes.
-- Richard Hamming


   It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work. 
-- I Ching


   I. Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of
its situation.
Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland.  He
loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to
look down.  At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per
second per second takes over.
II. Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter
intervenes suddenly.
Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone
pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the
stooge's surcease.
III. Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
conforming to its perimeter.
Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless
cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through
the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole.  The
threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.
-- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980


   If we can't fix it, it ain't broke (Maintainer's Motto)


   I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
A bit or byte to read or write,
I/O, I/O, I/O...
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It is easier to forgive an enemy than it is to forgive a friend. 
-- Blake, 1804


   There is Jackson standing like a stone wall.  Let us determine to die,
and we will conquer.  Follow me.
-- General Barnard E. Bee (CSA)


   The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson


   There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced
by circumstances to meet.
-- Admiral William Halsey


   It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
-- Robert Benchley


   Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
-- Su Tung-p'o


   FROM THE DESK OF
Dorothy Gale
Auntie Em:
Hate you.
Hate Kansas.
Taking the dog.
Dorothy


   I object to intellect without discipline;  I object to power without
constructive purpose.
-- Spock, "The Squire of Gothos", stardate 2124.5


   Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
-- Ingrid Bergman


   Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers
HAS been approved. 
-- The Blues Brothers


   A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.
-- Groucho Marx


   There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"


   Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to
know the answers.
-- Gene Wolfe, "The Claw of the Conciliator"


   "Always walk a mile in a person's shoes before you criticize them;
that way, when you DO criticize them, you will be a mile away, and
you'll have their shoes."
-- Your Daily Fortune


   I let my heart fall into careless hands;
Careless hands don't care when dreams slip through.
-- Bob Hilliard and Carl Sigman, _Careless Hands_


   Pray, v.:  
To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a
single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
-- Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914),  The Devil's Dictionary


   A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Winston Churchill


   Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first
half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and
pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who
hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice
for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time
during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it
but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
-- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.


   Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember
and be sad.
-- Christina Rossetti


   Give a woman an inch and she'll park a car in it.


   "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with a dead 
girl or a live boy."
-- Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards


   Flugg's Law:
When you need to knock on wood is when you realize
that the world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.


   Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around us in awareness.
-- James Thurber


   Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is
no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.  
-- John Keats


   My God, I'm depressed!  Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times
as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending
mail about softball games.  And I've got this pain right through my ALU.
I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens.  I think it would
be better for us both if you were to just log out again.


   "What I've done, of course, is total garbage."
-- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a


   The good (I am convinced, for one)
Is but the bad one leaves undone.
Once your reputation's done
You can live a life of fun.
-- Wilhelm Busch


   (No one can put you down without your full cooperation by Anonymous.)
Remember, no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt.


   I have never understood the female capacity to avoid a direct answer to
any question.
-- Spock, "This Side of Paradise", stardate 3417.3


   When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or four years
ago, he is a broad-minded man who has courage enough to change his mind
with changing conditions.  When a man you don't like does it, he is a
liar who has broken his promises.
-- Franklin Adams


   "I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.  "Of course you don't --
till I tell you.  I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
"But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice
objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master --
that's all."
-- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"


   Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a
mountain in a fog.  But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside
than in bed.  What kind of man would live where there is no daring?
And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure?
Is there a better way to die?
-- Charles Lindbergh


   Would you care to view the ruins of my good intentions?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Somewhat alarmed at the continued growth of the number of employees
on the Department of Agriculture payroll in 1962, Michigan Republican Robert
Griffin proposed an amendment to the farm bill so that "the total number of
employees in the Department of Agriculture at no time exceeds the number of
farmers in America."
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"


   ...we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands.  The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent.  Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe?  Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence!  Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position.  Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence - the "fact of evolution" -
into doubt.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol XII No. 2


   Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
-- Anonymous


   The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard
loom weaves flowers and leaves.
-- Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer


   Flee at once, all is discovered.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #2
What to do...
if you get a phone call from Mars:
Speak slowly and be sure to enunciate your words properly.  Limit
your vocabulary to simple words.  Try to determine if you are
speaking to someone in a leadership capacity, or an ordinary citizen.
if he, she or it doesn't speak English?
Hang up.  There's no sense in trying to learn Martian over the phone.
If your Martian really had something important to say to you, he, she
or it would have taken the trouble to learn the language before
calling.
if you get a phone call from Jupiter?
Explain to your caller, politely but firmly, that being from Jupiter,
he, she or it is not "life as we know it".  Try to terminate the
conversation as soon as possible.  It will not profit you, and the
charges may have been reversed.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
-- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"


   Absence is to love what wind is to fire.  It extinguishes the small,
it enkindles the great.
-- Anonymous


   "Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
you knowing nothing?"
-- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions


   Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not
original and the part that is original is not good.
-- Samuel Johnson


   Let your conscience be your guide.
-- Pope


   But it does move!
-- Galileo Galilei


   If the very old will remember, the very young will listen.
-- Chief Dan George


   When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple
of asterisked sentences:
It weighs less than 8 pounds.*
And costs less than $1,300.**
In tiny type were these "fuller explanations":
* Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out?  Well, all
this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power
pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks
will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you
might not be able to figure this out for yourself.
** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if
you really want to.  Or less.
-- Forbes


   When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve
people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
-- Norm Crosby


   "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward"
-- William E. Davidsen


   What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Life is like a simile.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
-- William Blake


   It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
-- Grace Murray Hopper


   "When it comes to humility, I'm the greatest."
-- Bullwinkle Moose


   We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always respect
their good judgement.
-- Anonymous


   The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible
worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
-- James Cabell, "The Silver Stallion"


   The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it posible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
perparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak...
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing material aid 
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality.  Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
of LSD as a sacred drug.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD


   Agnes' Law:
Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.


   ... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand.  Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
we can tell.  If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.  Even the standard
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
finite or an infinite number.
-- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"


   Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
-- Rich Kulawiec


   I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to
be.... The natural disposition is always to believe.  It is acquired
wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very
seldom teach it enough. 
-- Adam Smith


   Q:      Heard about the  who couldn't spell?
A:      He spent the night in a warehouse.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Bore, n.:
A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
-- Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914),  The Devil's Dictionary


   Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing
as division.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Time gets mighty precious,
When there's less of it to waste.
-- Bonnie Raitt, "Nick of Time"


   It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
-- Alfred Adler


   Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right,
and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right,
then the other was the left, but he never could remember how to begin.
-- Winnie the Pooh.


   Woody:  What's the story, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:   The Bobbsey twins go to the brewery.
Let's just cut to the happy ending.
-- Cheers, Airport V


   Woody:  Hey, Mr. Peterson, there's a cold one waiting for you.
Norm:   I know, and if she calls, I'm not here.
-- Cheers, Bar Wars II: The Woodman Strikes Back


   Sam:  Beer, Norm?
Norm: Have I gotten that predictable?  Good.
-- Cheers, Don't Paint Your Chickens


   A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single 
man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery


   Fifth Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
there is nothing important to do.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   You may my glories and my state dispose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.
-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"


   management, n.:
The art of getting other people to do all the work.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Reality is for people who lack imagination.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   There goes the good time that was had by all.
-- Bette Davis, remarking on a passing starlet


   Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions
seldom black or white.  Beware of the solution that requires one side to be
totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner.  The reason
there are two sides to begin with usually is because neither side has all
the facts.  Therefore, when the wise mediator effects a compromise, he is
not acting from political motivation.  Rather, he is acting from a deep
sense of respect for the whole truth.
-- Stephen R. Schwambach


   Sam:  What are you up to Norm?
Norm: My ideal weight if I were eleven feet tall.
-- Cheers, Bar Wars III: The Return of Tecumseh


   Many a man that can't direct you to a corner drugstore will get a respectful
hearing when age has further impaired his mind.
-- Finley Peter Dunne


   I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is fourteen days.
-- Totie Fields


   There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be 
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account.  The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
-- H. L. Mencken, 1930


   Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high
spirits. 
-- Robert Louis Stevenson


   Nuclear powered vacuuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years.
-- Alex Lewyt (President of the Lewyt Corporation, manufacturers of vacuum cleaners), quoted in The New York Times, June 10, 1955.


   Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
that like most books, it had too many words.  The plot was the same one that
all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
women.  There, that's it: 24 words.  But the guy who wrote the book took
*thousands* of words to say it.
Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
Or maybe only one of them kills the father.  It's impossible to tell because
what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages.  If all Russians talk
as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
major world power.
I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
the question of whether there is a God.  So why didn't he just come right
out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:
* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
-- Dave Barry


   The wages of sin are high but you get your money's worth.
-- Anonymous


   There's no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy.  There is
nothing good in war.  Except its ending.
-- Abraham Lincoln, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.5


   One day it was announced that the young monk Kyogen had reached
an enlightened state.  Much impressed by this news, several of his peers
went to speak with him.
"We have heard that you are enlightened.  Is this true?" his fellow
students inquired.
"It is", Kyogen answered.
"Tell us", said a friend, "how do you feel?"
"As miserable as ever", replied the enlightened Kyogen.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Nobody's gonna believe that computers are intelligent until they start
coming in late and lying about it.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall on
our heads tomorrow.  But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!
-- Adventures of Asterix


   Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
-- Irene Peter


   When your IQ rises to 28, sell.
-- Professor Irwin Corey to a heckler


   "He must be a 'practical' man who can see no poetry in mathematics."
-- W.F. White


   I'm going to Vietnam at the request of the White House.  President Johnson
says a war isn't really a war without my jokes.
-- Bob Hope


   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?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   clone, n:
1. An exact duplicate, as in "our product is a clone of their
product."  2. A shoddy, spurious copy, as in "their product
is a clone of our product."
-- Your Daily Fortune


   We are what we pretend to be.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.


   Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
-- Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)


   I've always made it a solemn practice to never drink anything stronger
than tequila before breakfast.
-- R. Nesson


   He asked me if I knew what time it was -- I said yes, but not right now.
-- Steven Wright


   philosophy:
Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   A friend in need is a pest indeed.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
-- George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist, literary critic, and socialist (1856 - 1950)


   I've had a perfectly wonderful evening.  But this wasn't it.
-- Groucho Marx


   No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
-- Aesop


   Stuckness shouldn't be avoided.  It's the psychic predecessor of all
real understanding.  An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an
understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
-- R. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"


   The trouble with the rat-race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
-- Lily Tomlin


   Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat.  You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles.  Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there.  The only difference is that there is no cat."
-- Anonymous


   Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not, when
a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent
songs.  I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as
those without might see and hear.  They told a tale which was then altogether
beyond my feeble comprehension: they were tones, loud, long and deep,
breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest
anguish.  Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God
for deliverance from chains.
-- Frederick Douglass


   If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you
really make them think they'll hate you.
-- Anonymous


   "Love your country but never trust its government."
-- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania


   So many women; so little nerve.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   He who renders warfare fatal to all engaged in it will be the greatest
benefactor the world has yet known.
-- Sir Richard Francis Burton


   Most people have a furious itch to talk about themselves and are restrained
only by the disinclination of others to listen.  Reserve is an artificial
quality that is developed in most of us as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
-- W.S. Maugham


   Whether weary or unweary, O man, do not rest,
Do not cease your single-handed struggle.
Go on, do not rest.
-- An old Gujarati hymn


   A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
7. PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS PROMPTLY AND WILLINGLY.
You should consider it a privilege to contribute, however modestly,
to the well-being of physicians and other humanitarians.
8. DO NOT SUFFER FROM AILMENTS THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.
It is sheer arrogance to contract illnesses that are beyond your means.
9. NEVER REVEAL ANY OF THE SHORTCOMINGS THAT HAVE COME TO LIGHT IN THE COURSE
OF TREATMENT BY YOUR DOCTOR.
The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one, and you have a
sacred duty to protect him from exposure.
10. NEVER DIE WHILE IN YOUR DOCTOR'S PRESENCE OR UNDER HIS DIRECT CARE.
This will only cause him needless inconvenience and embarrassment.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
-- William Congreve, dramatist (1670-1729)


   In science, it often happens that scientists say, 'You know, that's a really
good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change
their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.  They really
do it.  It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are
human and change is sometimes painful.  But it happens every day.  I cannot
recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)


   I used to live in a house by the freeway.  When I went anywhere, I had
to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway.
I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights.  Now it looks
like I'm the only one moving.
I was pulled over for speeding today.  The officer said, "Don't you know
the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?"  And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going
to be out that long."
I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out.  Now
my car goes 500 miles an hour.
-- Steven Wright


   One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as one
man would have produced alone.  These two plus two more will produce half
again as many ideas.  These four plus four more begin to represent a
creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many ...
-- Anthony Chevins


   What you see is from outside yourself, and may come, or not, but is beyond
your control.  But your fear is yours, and yours alone, like your voice, or
your fingers, or your memory, and therefore yours to control.  If you feel
powerless over your fear, you have not yet admitted that it is yours, to do
with as you will.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley, "Stormqueen"


   Everything is possible.  Pass the word.
-- Rita Mae Brown, "Six of One"


   No character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks,
however false.
-- Alexander Hamilton


   "Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time."
-- a coffee cup


   I went on to test the program in every way I could devise.  I strained
it to expose its weaknesses.  I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero.  I had found an error.  I
chased down the error and fixed it.  Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
Holes and the Fate of Stars"


   "The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the
sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment."
-- Richard P. Feynman


   Conversation, n.:
A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
is called the listener.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.
-- Dr. Karl Bowman


   Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.
-- Baba Ram Dass


   Why does a ship carry cargo and a truck carry shipments?


   Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   What does education often do?  It makes a straight cut ditch of a
free meandering brook.
-- Henry David Thoreau


   The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.


   Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.
-- Frederick Crane


   Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the
whole girl.
-- Stephen Leacock


   "Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it."
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
-- Robert Heinlein


   A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet--
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
-- Dorothy Parker, "One Perfect Rose"


   When I woke up this morning, my girlfriend asked if I had slept well.
I said, "No, I made a few mistakes."
-- Steven Wright


   +#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI)
+       /*
+        * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus
+        * this makes the year come out right.
+        */
+       year -= 42;
+#endif
(From the patch for 1.3.2: (kernel/time.c), submitted by Marcus Meissner)
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "There is only one requirement for any of us and that is to be
courageous, because courage, as you might know, defines all other
human behaviour.  And I believe, because I've done a bit of this
myself, that pretending to be courageous is just as good as the real
thing."
-- David Letterman, first show after the WTC attack, aired on 2001-09-17


   Having no talent is no longer enough.
-- Gore Vidal


   There are some things worth dying for.
-- Kirk, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3201.7


   It is all right to hold a conversation, but you should let go of it
now and then.
-- Richard Armour


   In Hollywood, all marriages are happy.  It's trying to live together
afterwards that causes the problems.
-- Shelley Winters


   We are not loved by our friends for what we are; rather, we are loved in
spite of what we are.
-- Victor Hugo


   There are three ways to get something done:
(1) Do it yourself.
(2) Hire someone to do it for you.
(3) Forbid your kids to do it.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Your children are not your children. 
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. 
They come through you but not from you, 
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. 
You give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. 
You may house their bodies but not their souls, 
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. 
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. 
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. 
-- Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)


   A crow perched himself on a telephone wire.  He was going to make a
long-distance caw.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard


   Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.  At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"


   You will find me drinking gin
In the lowest kind of inn,
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.
-- G.K. Chesterton


   For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.
-- Gore Vidal


   Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
Aleph-null bottles of beer,
You take one down, and pass it around,
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
before it is understood.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Madness has no purpose.  Or reason.  But it may have a goal.
-- Spock, "The Alternative Factor", stardate 3088.7


   A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
-- Aristotle


   I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
-- Francis Bellamy, 1892


   Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Inventory" [or "Not so Deep as a Well"?]


   Wouldn't this be a great world if being insecure and desperate were a turn-on?
-- "Broadcast News"


   "No program is perfect,"
They said with a shrug.
"The customer's happy--
What's one little bug?"
But he was determined,                  Then change two, then three more,
The others went home.                   As year followed year.
He dug out the flow chart               And strangers would comment,
Deserted, alone.                        "Is that guy still here?"
Night passed into morning.              He died at the console
The room was cluttered                  Of hunger and thirst
With core dumps, source listings.       Next day he was buried
"I'm close," he muttered.               Face down, nine edge first.
Chain smoking, cold coffee,             And his wife through her tears
Logic, deduction.                       Accepted his fate.
"I've got it!" he cried,                Said "He's not really gone,
"Just change one instruction."          He's just working late."
-- The Perfect Programmer


   I consider a new device or technology to have been culturally accepted when
it has been used to commit a murder.
-- M. Gallaher


   A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
7. PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS PROMPTLY AND WILLINGLY.
You should consider it a privilege to contribute, however modestly,
to the well-being of physicians and other humanitarians.
8. DO NOT SUFFER FROM AILMENTS THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.
It is sheer arrogance to contract illnesses that are beyond your means.
9. NEVER REVEAL ANY OF THE SHORTCOMINGS THAT HAVE COME TO LIGHT IN THE COURSE
OF TREATMENT BY YOUR DOCTOR.
The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one, and you have a
sacred duty to protect him from exposure.
10. NEVER DIE WHILE IN YOUR DOCTOR'S PRESENCE OR UNDER HIS DIRECT CARE.
This will only cause him needless inconvenience and embarrassment.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   There's too much beauty upon this earth for lonely men to bear.
-- Richard Le Gallienne


   While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
correctness never does.
-- Anonymous


   I have found little that is good about human beings.  In my experience
most of them are trash.
-- Sigmund Freud


   For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
-- Alexander Pope


   The human race never solves any of its problems.  It merely outlives them.
-- David Gerrold


   It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
-- Leonardo da Vinci


   Wish and hope succeed in discerning signs of paranormality where reason and
careful scientific procedure fail.
-- James E. Alcock, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12


   They're giving bank robbing a bad name.
-- John Dillinger, on Bonnie and Clyde


   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.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to eat.
-- John McNulty


   Programmers do it bit by bit.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   poisoned coffee, n.:
Grounds for divorce.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Kaufman's Law:
A policy is a restrictive document to prevent a recurrence
of a single incident, in which that incident is never mentioned.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Sex is like air.  It's only a big deal if you can't get any.
-- Anonymous


   They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even
drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man.  These things offer
pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
They are fools that think otherwise.  No great effort was ever bought.
No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
ever raised into being for payment of any kind.  No parthenon, no Thermopylae
was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone.  The payment for doing these
things was itself the doing of them.
To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
greatest pleasure known to man!  To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
spread only for demons or for gods."
-- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"


   The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that, you've got
it made.
-- Jean Giraudoux


   Q: What's the difference between praying at the church and praying at
the casino?
A: In the casino, you reallly mean it.
-- Jim Northrup


   Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis.
It makes sense, when you don't think about it.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Charlie was a chemist,
But Charlie is no more.
For what he thought was H2O,
Was H2SO4.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you.
Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "Man is incomplete until he gets married.  And after marriage, he is
finished..." 
-- Anonymous


   "The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while 
the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
-- William Stekel, physician and psychologist (1868-1940)


   To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education.
To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun.  To accuse neither
oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
-- Epictetus


   Let us treat men and women well;
Treat them as if they were real;
Perhaps they are.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson


   "This isn't true in practice -- what we've missed out is Stradivarius's
constant."  And then the aside: "For those of you who don't know, that's
been called by others the fiddle factor..."
-- From a 1B Electrical Engineering lecture.


   life, n.:
That brief interlude between nothingness and eternity.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Rascal, am I?  Take THAT!
-- Errol Flynn


   Q:      "What is the burning question on the mind of every dyslexic
existentialist?"
A:      "Is there a dog?"
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
-- Blaise Pascal


   "I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed.  Oh, I 
know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must 
be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people 
I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures and battles."
-- Bastian B. Bux


   Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
-- Publilius Syrus


   My death?  But you see, I will not die; it is the world that will end. 
-- Ayn Rand quoting an unknown ancient Greek philosopher (with some liberties)


   This door is baroquen, please wiggle Handel.
(If I wiggle Handel, will it wiggle Bach?)
-- Found on a door in the MSU music building


   Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
person a car. 
-- Anonymous


   If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to invent it.


   God is dead and I don't feel all too well either....
-- Ralph Moonen


   No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
-- Aristotle


   Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural
function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the
other.  There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the
brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.
Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only. ... It is quite
conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected.  But it
is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working
assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it.
Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot
logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
-- D.O. Hebb, "Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory", 1949


   The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain
disdain; he is anything but her ideal.  In consequence, she cannot help
feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is
their father.
-- H.L. Mencken


   Women sometimes forgive a man who forces the opportunity, but never a man
who misses one.
-- Charles De Talleyrand-Perigord


   And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the
hour of separation.
-- Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)


   Some husbands are living proof that a woman can take a joke.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   To be wise, the only thing you really need to know is when to say
"I don't know."
-- Anonymous


   I didn't believe in reincarnation in any of my other lives.  I don't see why
I should have to believe in it in this one.
-- Strange de Jim


   Too often, man becomes clever instead of wise.
-- Rod Serling, _Twilight Zone_


   Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws
of nature!
-- George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist, literary critic, and socialist (1856 - 1950)


   Jane and I got mixed up with a television show -- or as we call it back
east here: TV -- a clever contraction derived from the words Terrible
Vaudeville. However, it is our latest medium -- we call it a medium
because nothing's well done. It was discovered, I suppose you've heard,
by a man named Fulton Berle, and it has already revolutionized social
grace by cutting down parlour conversation to two sentences: "What's on
television?" and "Good night".
-- Goodman Ace, letter to Groucho Marx, in The Groucho Letters, 1967


   Sometimes I live in the country,
Sometimes I live in town.
And sometimes I take a great notion,
To jump in the river and drown.
-- _Goodnight Irene_ by The Weavers (Ledbetter cover)


   A man who keeps stealing mopeds is an obvious cycle-path.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Only those who leisurely approach that which the masses are busy about
can be busy about that which the masses take leisurely.
-- Lao Tsu


   If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.


   Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for
even the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
-- C.C. Colton


   Bedfellows make strange politicians.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Against his wishes, a math teacher's classroom was remodeled.  Ever
since, he's been talking about the good old dais.  His students planted a small
orchard in his honor; the trees all have square roots.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   There is more to life than increasing its speed.
-- Mahatma Gandhi


   We all know dreams can seem real but who knows if reality can be a dream?
-- Rod Serling, _Twilight Zone_ ("Shadow Play")


   I'm So Miserable Without You It's Almost Like Having You Here
-- Song title by Stephen Bishop.
She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft
-- Song title by Jerry Reed.
When My Love Comes Back from the Ladies' Room Will I Be Too Old to Care?
-- Song title by Lewis Grizzard.
I Don't Know Whether to Kill Myself or Go Bowling
-- Unattributed song title.
Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life
-- Unattributed song title.


   There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law.
No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.
-- Jean Giraudoux, "Tiger at the Gates"


   An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded summation,
leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your arguments, Sir
Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey responded, "That may be,
Milord, but at least you're better informed!"
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Lead me not into temptation... I can find it myself.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can.
-- Albertano of Brescia


   There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both plants
and animals.  When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis; and when
the lights go out, they turn into animals.  But then again, don't we all?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Never go to bed mad.  Stay up and fight.
-- Phyllis Diller, "Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints"


   Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not, when
a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent
songs.  I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as
those without might see and hear.  They told a tale which was then altogether
beyond my feeble comprehension: they were tones, loud, long and deep,
breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest
anguish.  Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God
for deliverance from chains.
-- Frederick Douglass


   To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
call it the target.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit.
[There is no great genius without some touch of madness.]
-- Seneca


   A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
-- Anonymous


   "You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?"
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians


   "An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a
cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." 
-- H.L. Mencken


   It is undignified for a woman to play servant to a man who is not hers.
-- Spock, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7


   "If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem."
-- C. Durance, Computer Science 234


   Life, in the state of nature, is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan


   Woody: Hey, Mr. P.  How goes the search for Mr. Clavin?
Norm:  Not as well as the search for Mr. Donut.
Found him every couple of blocks.
-- Cheers, Head Over Hill


   For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken


   I'm going through my "I want to go back to New York" phase today.  Happens
every six months or so.  So, I thought, perhaps unwisely, that I'd share
it with you.  
> In New York in the winter it is million degrees below zero and
the wind travels at a million miles an hour down 5th avenue. 
> And in LA it's 72.
> In New York in the summer it is a million degrees and the humidity
is a million percent.
> And in LA it's 72.
> In New York there are a million interesting people.  
> And in LA there are 72.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   C Code.
C Code Run.
Run, Code, RUN!
PLEASE!!!!
-- Your Daily Fortune


   The very remembrance of my former misfortune proves a new one to me.
-- Miguel de Cervantes


   Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
-- Publilius Syrus


   Now I lay me down to study,
I pray the Lord I won't go nutty.
And if I fail to learn this junk,
I pray the Lord that I won't flunk.
But if I do, don't pity me at all,
Just lay my bones in the study hall.
Tell my teacher I've done my best,
Then pile my books upon my chest.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   On a paper submitted by a fellow physicist:
"This isn't right.  This isn't even wrong."
-- Wolfgang Pauli


   Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones,
as the wind blows out candles and fans fires.
-- La Rochefoucauld


   I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's;
I will not Reason and Compare; my business is to Create.
-- William Blake, "Jerusalem"


   It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do,
that makes life blessed.
-- Goethe


   Happiness is not having what you want; it's wanting what you have.
-- Anonymous


   Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom.  The first is being a bore.
-- Cecil Beaton


   Every man thinks God is on his side.  The rich and powerful know that he is.
-- Jean Anouilh, "The Lark"


   No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.
-- Quintus Ennius


   If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
-- Sir Peter Medawar, "The Art of the Soluble", Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine (1915 - 1987)


   The greatest love is a mother's, then a dog's, then a sweetheart's.
-- Polish proverb


   I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of 
others, and all positive assertion of my own.  I even forbade myself the use 
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, 
such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc.   I adopted instead of them "I 
conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it 
appears to me at present".
When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the 
pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some 
absurdity in his proposition.  In answering I began by observing that in 
certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
case there appeared or seemed to me some difference, etc.
I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I 
engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I proposed my 
opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.  I had 
less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily 
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I 
happened to be in the right.
-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)


   Bershere's Formula for Failure:
There are only two kinds of people who fail: those who
listen to nobody... and those who listen to everybody.


   When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.
-- James H. Boren


   "Consider a spherical bear, in simple harmonic motion..."
-- Professor in the UCB physics department


   What you see is from outside yourself, and may come, or not, but is beyond
your control.  But your fear is yours, and yours alone, like your voice, or
your fingers, or your memory, and therefore yours to control.  If you feel
powerless over your fear, you have not yet admitted that it is yours, to do
with as you will.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley, "Stormqueen"


   Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.
-- Augustus Caesar


   Coach: What's the story, Norm?
Norm:  Thirsty guy walks into a bar.  You finish it.
-- Cheers, Endless Slumper


   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, "The Critic as Artist"


   A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
"Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-- Mahatma Gandhi


   "Violence accomplishes nothing."  What a contemptible lie!  Raw, naked
violence has settled more issues throughout history than any other method
ever employed.  Perhaps the city fathers of Carthage could debate the
issue, with Hitler and Alexander as judges?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Everything I like is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
-- Alexander Woollcott


   "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in trouble.  It's the
things we know that ain't so."
-- Artemus Ward, nom de plume of Charles Farrar Browne (1834 - 1867)
"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know
for sure that just ain't so."
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   Choose in marriage only a woman whom you would choose as a friend if she
were a man.
-- Joseph Joubert (1754 - 1824)


   No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
-- Aristotle (384 BCE - 322 BCE)


   The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.


   If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
-- Bert Whitney


   What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity.  We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly --
that is the first law of nature.
-- Voltaire


   What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word QUALITY cannot be
broken down into subjects and predicates.  This is not because Quality
is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate, and direct.
-- R. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"


   And say simply,
Very simply,
With Hope:
Good morning.
-- Maya Angelou, Clinton Inauguration, 1993


   Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later;
for another thing they die earlier.
-- H.L. Mencken


   Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
-- T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Man"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to system service dispatching.]


   Sic transit gloria mundi.
[So passes away the glory of this world.]
-- Thomas a Kempis


   Real programmers don't comment their code.  It was hard to write, it
should be hard to understand.


   The superfluous is very necessary.
-- Voltaire


   Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?"  The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay not so,"
Replied the angel.  Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished.  The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo!  Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
-- James Henry Leigh Hunt, "Abou Ben Adhem"


   May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
Thousand Caramels.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It is not the critic who counts, or how the strong man stumbled, or whether
the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who
knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, and who spends himself in a
worthy cause, and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that
he'll never be with those cold and timid souls who never know either victory
or defeat.
-- Teddy Roosevelt


   If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
word you say, talk in your sleep.


   "The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science
collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke
miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into
the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to 
abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all
fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion,
misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the
ideas of their opponents."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186


   You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.


   Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings
infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can
grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it
possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
-- Rainer Rilke


   Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can
doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all present
life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic time, is
as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ only with
respect to theories about how the process operates.
-- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life".


   "It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to
create him."
-- Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer (1917 - )


   The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time, the last 10% takes the
other 90% of the time.


   He who knows, does not speak.  He who speaks, does not know.
-- Lao Tsu


   Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself.
-- Antoine De Saint-Exupery


   The first myth of management is that it exists.  The second myth of
management is that success equals skill.
-- Robert Heller


   I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.
-- Jack Handey (aka, the inimitable Phil Hartman)


   What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
-- William Blake


   This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go,
explaining that Interactive Easyflow is a copyrighted package licensed for
use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it
and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do.
We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around
pirating copies of Interactive Easyflow; this is just as well with us since
we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of
making anything out of all the hard work.
If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go
around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much
attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not.  Just keep your doors
locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
-- License Agreement for Interactive Easyflow


   This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not.
-- A. E. Housman


   Microbiology Lab:  Staph Only!


   Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
-- William Pitt, 1783


   Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
than to understand him.
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky


   A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.
-- Chamfort


   When nothing can possibly go wrong, it will.


   Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.


   Churchill's Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
-- Winston Churchill


   No, his mind is not for rent
To any god or government.
Always hopeful, yet discontent,
He knows changes aren't permanent -
But change is.
-- Rush, "Tom Sawyer"


   Convention is the ruler of all.
-- Pindar


   Coach: How's life treating you, Norm?
Norm:  Like it caught me in bed with his wife.
-- Cheers, Any Friend of Diane's


   Coach: How's life, Norm?
Norm:  Not for the squeamish, Coach.
-- Cheers, Friends, Romans, and Accountants


   Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings, or eating with
chopsticks.  It looks easy until you try it.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Will you loan me $20.00 and only give me ten of it?
That way, you will owe me ten, and I'll owe you ten, and we'll be even!
-- Your Daily Fortune


   An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.


   Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their
minds cannot change anything.
-- G.B. Shaw


   As you grow older, you will still do foolish things, but you will do them
with much more enthusiasm.
-- The Cowboy


   In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to
his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's
kill all the lawyers."  That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment
was expressed by Thomas K. Connellan, president of The Management Group, Inc.
Speaking to business executives in Chicago and quoted in Automotive News,
Connellan attributed a measure of America's falling productivity to an excess
of attorneys and accountants, and a dearth of production experts.  Lawyers
and accountants "do not make the economic pie any bigger; they only figure
out how the pie gets divided.  Neither profession provides any added value
to product."
According to Connellan, the highly productive Japanese society has
10 lawyers and 30 accountants per 100,000 population.  The U.S. has 200
lawyers and 700 accountants.  This suggests that "the U.S. proportion of
pie-bakers and pie-dividers is way out of whack."  Could Dick Butcher have
been an efficiency expert?
-- Motor Trend, May 1983


   Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later;
for another thing they die earlier.
-- H.L. Mencken


   Every time you manage to close the door on Reality, it comes in through the
window.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to curve.
-- Wheeler


   A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating
his morning meal.  "I would like to give you this personality test", said
the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the
toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "If you are going through hell, keep going." 
-- Sir Winston Churchill


   Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
-- The Wizard of Oz


   You can't have everything.  Where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright


   We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the
machinations of the wicked.


   Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.


   "This is no time to make new enemies."
-- Voltaire, when asked on his deathbed to renounce Satan


   We are the unaware, led by the unqualified, to do the unnecessary, for the ungrateful.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of
a new system.  For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit
by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders
in those who would gain by the new ones.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513


   And as we stand on the edge of darkness
Let our chant fill the void
That others may know
In the land of the night
The ship of the sun
Is drawn by
The grateful dead.
-- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BCE.


   I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20
years ago.  When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors
would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, "Where are they
all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!"
Years later, I went back to the same hotel.  I noticed the room keys had
been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors.
There was a computer in every doorknob.
-- Danny Hillis


   If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.


   Life is a game.  In order to have a game, something has to be more
important than something else.  If what already is, is more important
than what isn't, the game is over.  So, life is a game in which what
isn't, is more important than what is.  Let the good times roll.
-- Werner Erhard


   "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
-- Voltaire


   The notes blatted skyward as they rose over the Canada geese, feathered
rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen
bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel Nature's maxim,
'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh.
-- Winning sentence, 1987 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.


   There is one way to find out if a man is honest -- ask him.  If he says
"Yes" you know he is crooked.
-- Groucho Marx


   "Here's something to think about:  How come you never see a headline like
'Psychic Wins Lottery'?"
-- Jay Leno


   Lack of money is the root of all evil.
-- George Bernard Shaw


   The government has just completed work on a missile that turned out to be a
bit of a boondoggle; nicknamed "Civil Servant", it won't work and they can't
fire it.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   You are not a fool just because you have done something foolish --
only if the folly of it escapes you.
-- Anonymous


   For good, return good.
For evil, return justice.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be avoided
at all costs.
-- N. Alexander.


   Why is the alphabet in that order?  Is it because of that song?
-- Steven Wright


   Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real
with the ideal never goes unpunished.
-- Goethe


   "The release of emotion is what keeps us healthy.  Emotionally healthy."
"That may be, Doctor.  However, I have noted that the healthy release
of emotion is frequently unhealthy for those closest to you." 
-- McCoy and Spock, "Plato's Stepchildren", stardate 5784.3


   Anarchy may not be a better form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.


   Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is
by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is
relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate
truth.
-- Chuang Tzu


   Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying
of nothing.
-- Redd Foxx


   A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
unless there be two.  
-- Seneca


   Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due. 
-- William R. Inge, clergyman, scholar, and author (1860-1954)


   My father, a good man, told me, "Never lose your ignorance; you cannot
replace it."
-- Erich Maria Remarque


   If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid
with regard to external things. Don't wish to be thought to know
anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others,
distrust yourself. For, it is difficult to both keep your faculty of
choice in a state conformable to nature, and at the same time acquire
external things. But while you are careful about the one, you must of
necessity neglect the other.
-- Epictetus


   /* Halley */
(Halley's comment.)
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Poetry is what gets lost in translation. 
-- Robert Frost, poet (1874-1963)


   Do not think by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.


   Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or
believe to be beautiful. 
-- William Morris


   Some people cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the
first of that which comes; so with present time.
-- Leonardo da Vinci, (1452-1519).


   A witty saying proves nothing.
-- Voltaire


   Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open
sea of thought.
-- Francois Gautier, journalist (1950- )


   "The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity."
-- Oscar Wilde


   To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely
instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a
lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written
by men who lived, thought, and felt with style.
-- Aldous Huxley, writer (1894-1963)


   Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it
often substitutes for both.
-- John Andrew Holmes


   If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly
perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.
-- Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)


   Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why
should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
-- Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)


   It must be admitted that the fundamental disturbance of the human soul
springs first of all from men's considering phenomena as caused by human
beings to whom they attribute will, action, and motive power; then by
the fact that men, believing in myths, will always fear something
terrible, everlasting punishment as certain or probable, and are even
frightened of the insensibility of death, as if we should be conscious
of it; and finally by the fact that, as a result, men base all these
fears not on mature opinions, but on irrational fancies, so that they
are more disturbed by fear of the unknown than by facing facts. Peace of
mind lies in being delivered from all these fears.
-- Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)


   I never made a mistake in my life.  I thought I did once, but I was wrong.
-- Lucy Van Pelt


   It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one
who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The
other is mere business.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)


   "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed."
-- Robin, The Boy Wonder


   There is no frigate like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers like a page
Of prancing poetry.
-- Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886)


   And so it was, later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.
-- Procol Harum


   A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the
temper of the sufferer.
-- Joseph Addison, essayist and poet (1672-1719)


   I had a feeling once about mathematics -- that I saw it all.  Depth
beyond depth was revealed to me -- the Byss and the Abyss. I saw -- as
one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show -- a
quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to
minus.  I saw exactly why it happened and why tergiversation was
inevitable -- but it was after dinner and I let it go.
-- Winston Churchill


   I have discovered that all human evil comes from this:  man's being
unable to sit still in a room.
-- Blaise Pascal


   All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
-- Chou En Lai


   Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
-- Gustave Flaubert, novelist (1821-1880)


   Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady
purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
-- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, author (1797-1851)


   In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to
say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?
-- Cyril Connolly, critic and editor (1903-1974)


   Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
-- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet" (III.i.55)


   Do you have lysdexia?
-- Your Daily Fortune


   If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   That's life.
What's life?
A magazine.
How much does it cost?
Two-fifty.
I only have a dollar.
That's life.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year
of discussion. 
-- Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)


   If the secret sorrows of everyone could be read on their forehead, how 
many who now cause envy would suddenly become the objects of pity. 
-- Italian proverb


   Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of
proportion, a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are 
events of the same size. 
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   Because I do,
Because I do not hope,
Because I do not hope to survive
Injustice from the Palace, death from the air,
Because I do, only do,
I continue...
-- T.S. Pynchon


   History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives.
-- Abba Eban, diplomat and politician (1915 - 2002)


   The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings;
the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
-- Churchill


   Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies.
-- Charles D'Hericault


   It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly
one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to
suit facts.
-- Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and writer (1859-1930)


   If he once again pushes up his sleeves in order to compute for 3 days
and 3 nights in a row, he will spend a quarter of an hour before to
think which principles of computation shall be most appropriate.
-- Voltaire, "Diatribe du docteur Akakia"


   Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Comment"


   The most important things, each person must do for himself.


   Who loves me will also love my dog.
-- John Donne


   leverage, n.:
Even if someone doesn't care what the world thinks
about them, they always hope their mother doesn't find out.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Lighten up, while you still can,
Don't even try to understand,
Just find a place to make your stand,
And take it easy.
-- The Eagles, "Take It Easy"


   A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark


   Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about
astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked.
Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an
effect on our characters, lives, or destinies?  What force or influence,
what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human
beings and affect our development or fate?  No amount of scientific-sounding
jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central
problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which
celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way. . . .
Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents
the astrological influence. . . .If so, astrological predictions -- like those
of any scientific field -- should be easily tested. . . . Astrologers always
claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their
efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have
generously done such testing for them.  There have been dozens of well-designed
tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them. . . .
I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest
in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them
keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by
the firelight, afraid of the night.
-- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
"Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed," San Jose Mercury
News, May 8, 1988


   Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
-- Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)


   Weinberg's Principle:
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Mitchell's Law of Committees:
Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
held to discuss it.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Death to all fanatics!


   ... Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of
the person making the claim, not the critic.  It is not the responsibility
of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the
responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals
or colored lights never healed anyone.  The skeptic's role is to point out
claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidence and to
provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
the accepted body of scientific evidence. ...
-- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, pg. 215


   The wombat lives across the seas,
Among the far Antipodes.
He may exist on nuts and berries,
Or then again, on missionaries;
His distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
But I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.
-- "The Wombat"


   Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
-- Seneca


   Persistence in one opinion has never been considered a merit in political
leaders.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares", 1st century BCE


   "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to
puff and blow, "is to learn something.  That's the only thing that
never fails.  You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you
may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you
may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by
evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser
minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn.  Learn why the
world wags and what wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind
can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or
distrust, and never dream of regretting.  Learning is the only thing
for you.  Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
-- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"


   Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think
we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.
-- Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer (1917 - )


   Sad is his lot, who, once at least in his life, has not been a poet. 
-- Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, poet, statesman (1790-1869)


   Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
-- Jules Feiffer


   All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.
-- Susan Sontag (1933 - 2004)


   You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. 
-- Mario M Cuomo, 52nd Governor of NY (1932- )


   On a clear disk you can seek forever.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore 
good."  And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." 
-- John Brunner, science fiction writer (1934-1995)


   Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a
mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent
$600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his
experience?
-- Thomas J. Watson, industrialist (1874-1956)


   No two persons ever read the same book. 
-- Edmund Wilson, critic (1895-1972)


   To do great work a man must be very idle as well as very industrious.
-- Samuel Butler, poet (1612-1680)


   A calamity that affects everyone is only half a calamity. 
-- An Italian Proverb


   We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked
through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of
bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient
proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last
of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose one's own way.
-- Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)


   I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. 
-- Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)


   I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to
have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting
myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than
ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before
me. 
-- Isaac Newton, philosopher and mathematician (1642-1727)


   Please subdue the anguish of your soul. Nobody is destined only to
happiness or to pain. The wheel of life takes one up and down by turn.
-- Kalidasa, dramatist (c. 4th century)


   To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour. 
-- William Blake, poet, engraver, and painter (1757-1827)


   Without darkness there are no dreams. 
-- Karla Kuban, novelist


   You can not get anything worthwhile done without raising a sweat.
(The Zeroth Law Of Thermodynamics)
What ever you want is going to cost a little more than it is worth.
(The first Law Of Thermodynamics)
You can not win the game, and you are not allowed to stop playing.
(The Second Law Of Thermodynamics)


   The chains of wedlock are so heavy it takes two people to carry them, 
sometimes three.
-- Alexandre Dumas


   When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only
think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the
solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)


   We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. 
-- Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)


   If the rich could hire someone else to die for them, the poor would 
make a wonderful living. 
-- Jewish Proverb


   By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
-- Dorothy Parker


   It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can
truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I
have for them. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for
what they are, not for what they say.
-- Thomas Merton, writer (1915-1968)


   To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, 
but he can never know that he is dead. 
-- Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)


   When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the
rest of the world. 
-- John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)


   May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to
the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the
clouds. 
-- Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)


   Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing; 
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; 
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, 
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882)


   How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our
thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another
in the waking state?
-- Plato


   The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing
ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us. 
-- Robert Louis Stevenson, writer (1850-1894)


   Be nice to your grandparents, be nice to your parents, and be nice to
animals.  Because your grandparents can't hurt you, your parents CAN
hurt you, but animals... well, animals can bite you.
-- Sajjid Khan, host of "Ikke Pe Ikka"


   "Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief
or dogma.  It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is
counterfeit and what is genuine.  And a recognition of how costly it may
be to fail to do so.  To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in
the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own
allegiances.  To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim.
-- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility,"
New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area Skeptics, Inc.), Spring 1988


   Lend money to a bad debtor and he will hate you.


   For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in
despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the
implacable grandeur of this life.
-- Albert Camus


   If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have
schizophrenia.
-- Thomas Szasz


   Yea from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.
-- Hamlet


   I have gained this by philosophy:
that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.
-- Aristotle


   Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers.  My
opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.  There's many a bestseller
that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
-- Flannery O'Connor (1925 - 1964)


   Imbalance of power corrupts and monopoly of power corrupts absolutely.
-- Genji


   UNDER the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you 'grave for me:
"Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill."
-- Requiem, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)


   Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet.


   Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
-- Bette Davis


   Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him
is not at home.
-- Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)


   "Zindagi toh bewafaa hain, ek din thook raye gi;
Maot mehbooba hai, apney saath ley kar jayegi"
[Life is unfaithful, and will reject you one day;
Death is a true beloved, and will always take you with her]
[Life is unfaithful and will reject us one day;
Death is our true beloved and will take us with her]
-- Muqqadar Ka Sikander


   "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny
them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, philosopher and writer (c. 3 BCE - 65 CE)


   Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children.
Life is the other way around.
-- David Lodge, "The British Museum is Falling Down"


   Life is mostly froth and bubble, 
Two things stand like stone, 
Kindness in another's trouble, 
Courage in your own. 
-- Adam Lindsay Gordon, poet (1833-1870)


   To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient
solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
-- H. Poincare


   The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky


   To err is human - but it feels divine.
-- Mae West


   Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
-- Anonymous


   A good marriage would be between a blind wife and deaf husband.
-- Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)


   The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half
by our children.
-- Clarence Darrow


   Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. 
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, writer and philosopher (c. 3 BCE - 65 CE)


   The man who understands one woman is qualified to understand pretty well
everything.
-- Yeats


   Suffering alone exists, none who suffer;
The deed there is, but no doer thereof;
Nirvana is, but no one is seeking it;
The Path there is, but none who travel it.
-- "Buddhist Symbolism", Symbols and Values


   Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish.  Don't overdo it.
-- Lao Tsu


   Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves. 
-- Nathaniel Branden, psychotherapist (1930- )


   The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor,
to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-- Anatole France


   Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person
can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all
present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic
time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ
only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
-- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131


   The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
data.  Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon
shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days."  Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all.  The light we
receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that.  With these data we can compute the temperature
of Heaven.  The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation.  Using
the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C).  The exact
temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."  A lake of molten
brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
or 444.6C  (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.)  We have,
then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
-- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972


   At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new.  This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense.  Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism:  The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)


   When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing,"
it's the money.
-- Kim Hubbard


   Life is a grand adventure -- or it is nothing.
-- Helen Keller


   The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   To think contrary to one's era is heroism.  But to speak against it is madness.
-- Eugene Ionesco


   And I will do all these good works, and I will do them for free!
My only reward will be a tombstone that says "Here lies Gomez Addams --
he was good for nothing."
-- Jack Sharkey, The Addams Family


   Sam:   What do you know there, Norm?
Norm:  How to sit.  How to drink.  Want to quiz me?
-- Cheers, Loverboyd


   Sam:   Hey, how's life treating you there, Norm?
Norm:  Beats me...  Then it kicks me and leaves me for dead.
-- Cheers, Loverboyd


   Woody: How would a beer feel, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Pretty nervous if I was in the room.
-- Cheers, Loverboyd


   I have learned silence from the talkative,
toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind.
-- Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)


   Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when
you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"


   I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli-
gence?"  I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there,
and use the word *billions*, and so on.  And then I say it would be astonishing
to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as
yet no compelling evidence for it.  And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you
really think?"  I say, "I just told you what I really think."  "Yeah, but 
what's your gut feeling?"  But I try not to think with my gut.  Really, it's
okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
-- Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)


   The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind
of thing.  Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation
of these atoms is talking moonshine.
-- Ernest Rutherford, after he had split the atom for the first time


   A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to
you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to
you about yourself.
-- Lisa Kirk


   If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of
rubbish into it.
-- William Orton


   Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted.  In every
relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive.  If you
really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the end.
For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the qualities
I most admired in myself I gave up.  I stopped being loud and bossy ...
Oh, all right.  I was still loud and bossy, but only behind his back.
-- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn


   Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old
people are works of art.  
-- Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat and writer (1884-1962)


   Nature uses as little as possible of anything. 
- Johannes Kepler, astronomer (1571-1630)


   Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a
friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. 
-- Franklin P. Jones, businessman (1887-1929)


   The universe is ruled by letting things take their course.  It cannot be
ruled by interfering.
-- Chinese proverb


   You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history
of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the
things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with
all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.
-- James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987)


   Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
one went to Harvard).
-- Edgar R. Fiedler


   Never appeal to a man's "better nature."  He may not have one.
Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.
-- Lazarus Long


   I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the
stars.
-- Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)


   The master programmer moves from program to program without fear.  No
change in management can harm him.  He will not be fired, even if the project
is canceled. Why is this?  He is filled with the Tao.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"


   We laugh at the Indian philosopher, who to account for the support
of the earth, contrived the hypothesis of a huge elephant, and to support
the elephant, a huge tortoise.  If we will candidly confess the truth, we
know as little of the operation of the nerves, as he did of the manner in
which the earth is supported: and our hypothesis about animal spirits, or
about the tension and vibrations of the nerves, are as like to be true, as
his about the support of the earth.  His elephant was a hypothesis, and our
hypotheses are elephants.  Every theory in philosophy, which is built on
pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly
by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose
feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.
-- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764


   Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink
that they may live.
-- Socrates


   If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
-- Wittgenstein


   We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if only words were
taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things
themselves.
-- John Locke


   I don't need time. What I need is a deadline. 
-- Duke Ellington, jazz pianist, composer, and conductor (1899-1974)


   Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
-- Leonardo da Vinci


   If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
conclusion.
-- William Baumol


   The University of California Statistics Department; where mean is normal,
and deviation standard.


   Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity. 
-- Hanlon's Razor


   People hate as they love: unreasonably.
-- William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (1811-1863)


   Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
-- Walt Kelly


   How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our
thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another
in the waking state?
-- Plato


   At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on
the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is
quite untrue in practice.  Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather
than blinkers it.
-- G.L. Glegg, "The Design of Design"


   The onset and the waning of love make themselves felt in the uneasiness
experienced at being alone together.
-- Jean de la Bruyere


   "People can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that."
-- Homer Simpson


   It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate
between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital
connection between them.
-- Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)


   Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes and
weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes
and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons.
-- Popular Mechanics, March 1949


   Try to learn something about everything and everything about
something. 
-- Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist (1825-1895)


   to be nobody but yourself in a world 
which is doing its best night and day
to make you like everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle
any human being can fight and
never stop fighting.                   
-- e.e. cummings


   Put a rogue in the limelight and he will act like an honest man.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte, "Maxims"


   Virtue is a relative term.
-- Spock, "Friday's Child", stardate 3499.1


   And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine.
-- William Wordsworth, "She Was a Phantom of Delight"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to software interrupts.]


   Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer!  My joules!  Someone has stolen my
joules!"
"Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
a moment.  Perhaps they're mislead."
"No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence.  "I remember putting them
in my burette ... We must call a copper."
Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
of Lawrence Ium.
"We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
dangerous.  His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium.  Maybe I can
catch him there."  With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
-- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"


   Veni, vidi, vici.
[I came, I saw, I conquered].
-- Gaius Julius Caesar


   This guy runs into his house and yells to his wife, "Kathy, pack up your
bags!  I just won the California lottery!"
"Honey!", Kathy exclaims, "Shall I pack for warm weather or cold?"
"I don't care," responds the husband. "just so long as you're out
of the house by dinner!"


   It's faster horses,
Younger women,
Older whiskey and
More money.
-- Tom T. Hall, "The Secret of Life"


   Facts are the enemy of truth.
-- Don Quixote


   "If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry."
-- Chekhov


   Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also
deprive me of the possibility of being right.
-- Igor Stravinsky, composer (1882-1971)


   An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
-- James McNeill Whistler, painter (1834-1903)


   Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
-- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian


   Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
-- Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)


   He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet.
-- Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)


   Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more
uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right
and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of
men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped
them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always   
skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is  
based on "I am not too sure."
-- H.L.Mencken


   We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)


   The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so
much as to make settled things strange.
-- G.K. Chesterton, essayist and novelist (1874-1936)


   If a triangle could speak, it would say, that God is eminently triangular,
while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular.
-- Baruch Spinoza, philosopher (1632-1677)


   The course of true love never did run smooth.
-- William Shakespeare, playwright and poet (1564-1616)


   Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
-- Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president (1809-1865)


   Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed
from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"


   As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
-- Thomas A. Edison


   The principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What
happens is that the family 'gets together' alone.
-- Ashley Montagu, anthropologist and writer (1905-1999)


   The sign of intelligent people is their ability to control emotions
by the application of reason.
-- Marya Mannes, American writer and critic (1904 - 1990)


   If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light.  Take off all
your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness, and fears.
-- Glenn Clark


   I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my
telephone.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup, designer of C++ (1950- )


   Whenever you're called on to make up your mind, 
and you're hampered by not having any, 
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find, 
is simply by spinning a penny. 
No - not so that chance shall decide the affair 
while you're passively standing there moping; 
but the moment the penny is up in the air, 
you suddenly know what you're hoping. 
-- Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996)


   I know not how I came into this, shall I call it a dying life or a
living death?
-- Aurelius Augustinus, Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine), 354-430 CE


   Universe, n.:
The problem.


   Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a
mountain in a fog.  But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside
than in bed.  What kind of man would live where there is no daring?
And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure?
Is there a better way to die?
-- Charles Lindbergh


   The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is the most likely to be
correct.
-- William of Occam


   By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.  In fact, it is as
difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson


   He jests at scars who never felt a wound.
-- Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet, II. 2"


   I'd never join any club that would have the likes of me as a member.
-- Groucho Marx


   Romance, like alcohol, should be enjoyed, but should not be allowed to
become necessary.
-- Edgar Friedenberg


   The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time. 
-- William Butler Yeats, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939)


   I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or
whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
-- Chuang-tzu


   Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen
at all.  The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
-- Herodotus


   Men freely believe that what they wish to desire.
-- Julius Caesar


   Let early education be a sort of amusement, you will then better be able to
find out the natural bent of the child.
-- Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)


   Ah, but a man's grasp should exceed his reach, 
Or what's a heaven for?
-- Robert Browning, "Andrea del Sarto"


   It is never the shallower for the calmnesse. The Sea is a deepe, there is
as much water in the Sea, in a calme, as in a storme.
-- John Donne, poet (1573-1631)


   No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical.
-- Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)


   Woman was God's second mistake.
-- Nietzsche


   Dustin Farnum:  Why, yesterday, I had the audience glued to their seats!
Oliver Herford: Wonderful!  Wonderful!  Clever of you to think of it!
-- Brian Herbert, "Classic Comebacks"


   If you're constantly being mistreated, you're cooperating with the treatment.


   Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.
-- Roger Price


   You are never too old to be what you might have been. 
-- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)


   To be or not to be.
-- Shakespeare
To do is to be.
-- Nietzsche
To be is to do.
-- Sartre
Do be do be do.
-- Sinatra


   Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me why the sky's so blue,
And I will tell you just why I love you.
Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,
Phototropism makes ivy twine,
Rayleigh scattering makes sky so blue,
Sexual hormones are why I love you.


   He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little. 
-- Horace, poet and satirist (65-8 BCE)


   The secret of joy is the mastery of pain. 
-- Anais Nin, writer (1903-1977)


   "A philosopher ... is a sort of intellectual yokel who gapes and
stares at what sensible people take for granted, a person who cannot
get rid of the feeling that the barest facts of everyday life are
unbelievably odd."
-- Alan Watts


   Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it
is and not as it should be!
-- Miguel de Cervantes, writer (1547-1616)


   He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his
own.
-- Confucius (c. 551-478 BCE)


   There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give
cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind. 
-- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, author (1689-1762)


   But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain
For promised joy.
-- Robert Burns, "To a Mouse", 1785


   The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but 
progress.
-- Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)


   "You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then
I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the
terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve
them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and
unfairness of the universe." 
-- Marcus Cole, Babylon 5 "A Late Delivery from Avalon"


   Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave, 
let him obey his conscience.
-- James Freeman Clarke


   What we wish, that we readily believe.
-- Demosthenes


   I always pass on good advice.  It is the only thing to do with it.
It is never any good to oneself.
-- Oscar Wilde, "An Ideal Husband"


   "My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all."
"We will kill them all... most of them."
"... they are nowhere near the airport... they are lost in the desert... they can not read a compass... they are retarded."
"Yes, the American troops have advanced further. This will only make it easier for us to defeat them."
"Yesterday, we slaughtered them and we will continue to slaughter them."
-- Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, press conferences in 2003


   If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get
the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.  See in
college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural
method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall
learn what you have no taste or capacity for.  The college, which should
be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the
young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.
I would have the studies elective.  Scholarship is to be created not
by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.  The wise
instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the
attractions the study has for himself.  The marking is a system for schools,
not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to
put on a professor.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson


   Efficiency is intelligent laziness.
-- David Dunham


   "There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers.
While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain."
-- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800


   Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector Berlioz


   "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is
possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something
is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
-- Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer (1917 - )


   The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
procession but carrying a banner.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. 
-- Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, architect, and poet (1475-1564)


   Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.
-- Aldous Huxley, writer (1894-1963)


   Voodoo Programming:  Things programmers do that they know shouldn't work but
they try anyway, and which sometimes actually work, such as recompiling
everything.
-- Karl Lehenbauer


   I got the bill for my surgery.  Now I know what those doctors were
wearing masks for.
-- James Boren


   Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore
avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.
-- Socrates, philosopher (469?-399 BCE)


   A successful man is one who makes more money than a wife can spend. A
successful woman is one who can find such a man.
-- Lana Turner, actress (1921-1995)


   God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. 
-- Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)


   "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-- Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer (1917 - )


   If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in
the world.
-- Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)


   It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
-- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)


   When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they
do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.
-- Honore de Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)


   Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
-- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), novelist (1819-1880)


   "In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French.  I never
did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language. "
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   "We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient
characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, 'here
and now,' without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us
point-blank."
-- Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), Spanish writer, author


   The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves
and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson, writer (1850-1894)


   Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
-- Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)


   There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said
things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that
he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.
-- Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)


   In solitude, when we are least alone.
-- Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)


   "Who dares to teach must never cease to learn."
-- John Cotton Dana, 1912


   A bit beyond perception's reach
I sometimes believe I see 
that life is two locked boxes 
each containing the other's key. 
-- Piet Hein, poet and scientist (1905-1996)


   Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; Some
blunders and absurdities crept in; Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow
is a new day; You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be
encumbered with your old nonsense.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)


   To do nothing is sometimes a good remedy.
-- Hippocrates, physician (460-c.377 BCE)


   "What time is it?"
"I don't know, it keeps changing."
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.
-- Publilius Syrus


   I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
-- Joe Walsh


   It is Fortune, not Wisdom, that rules man's life.


   Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this:
to know so much and have control over nothing.
-- Herodotus


   "It says he made us all to be just like him.  So if we're dumb, then God is
dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side."
-- Frank Zappa


   I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting:
a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower


   I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.


   The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.
-- Mark Twain


   Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
-- Benjamin Disraeli


   Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.


   It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.
-- Aeschylus


   In a great romance, each person basically plays a part that the
other really likes.
-- Elizabeth Ashley


   Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
-- Oscar Wilde


   In the misfortune of our friends we find something that is not displeasing
to us.
-- La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims"


   Say!  You've struck a heap of trouble--
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you'd die--
Why, you've still the sunshine left you
And the big blue sky.
-- R.W. Service


   A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
that the system works.


   No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and
he's not the same man.
-- Heraclitus, philosopher (c. 540-470 BCE)


   It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.


   Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time.  So long
as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks
into, there is room for lateral movement.  Once this begins, its rate is
a matter of discretion.
-- Corwin, Prince of Amber


   We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
-- La Rochefoucauld


   Great acts are made up of small deeds.
-- Lao Tsu


   To the complaint, 'There are no people in these photographs,' I
respond, 'There are always two people: the photographer and the
viewer.'
-- Ansel Adams, photographer (1902-1984)


   Time sure flies when you don't know what you're doing.


   No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even
bored, solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on
himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.
-- Jack Kerouac


   Only the most acute and active animals are capable of boredom. A theme
for a great poet would be God's boredom on the seventh day of
creation.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche


   Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In
the boredom and the pain of it no less than in the excitement and
gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of
it because, in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and
life itself is grace.
-- Frederic Buechner


   Out of boredom can come chaos, surprise, and enlightenment.
-- Myrdene Anderson


   Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is
the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his
boredom when it comes not merely philosophically but almost with
pleasure. 
-- Aldous Huxley


   There is pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is rapture in the lonely shore, 
There is society where none intrudes, 
By the deep sea, and music in its roar: 
I love not man the less, but nature more. 
-- Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)


   Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
-- Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)


   Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you
food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but
not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or
happiness.
-- Henrik Ibsen, playwright (1828-1906)


   Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at
different speeds.  A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
-- Clive James


   Prof:   This is the chance for Fry to test my experimental
anti-pressure pill. (takes out a giant pill) 
Fry:    I can't swallow that!
Prof:   Well, then, good news! It's a suppository.
-- Futurama


   Leela:  I'm going to remind Fry of his humanity the way only a woman
can.
Prof:   You're going to do his laundry?
-- Futurama


   Fry:    Full price for gum!?  That dog won't hunt, Monsignor.
-- Futurama


   Fry:    I'm not a one-woman man, Leela.
Leela:  You'll be back to zero soon enough.
-- Futurama


   Prof:   Pfff!  Superstitious robot mumbo-jumbo!
2ACV18: Mumbo? perhaps.  Jumbo?  Perhaps not!  With all your modern
science, are you any closer to understanding the mystery of
how a robot walks or talks?
Prof:   Yes, you idiot!  The circuit diagram is right here on the
inside of your case! (opens case door)
2ACV18: I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe!
-- Futurama


   Bender: It's Leela's stupid emotions. Why can't she just drink herself 
happy like a normal person. 
-- Futurama


   Professor: Nothing is impossible!  Not if you can imagine it!  That's
what being a scientist is all about!
Qubert:    No... that's what being a magical elf is all about.
-- Futurama, A Clone of My Own


   Fry: I don't regret this... but I both rue and lament it.
-- Futurama, The Cryonic Woman


   Hermes: Dating an ex? Have you lost all self-respect, Fry???
Fry:    All what?
-- Futurama, The Cryonic Woman


   Leela:  Careful with that Doomsday device, Bender.
Bender:	What does it matter?  I'll never be a Globe Trotter.  My life,
and by extension everyone else's, is meaningless.
Leela:  Roger.
-- Futurama, Time Keeps On Slipping


   Bender:	My fembot may be in love with another manbot!
Leela:  Well, talk to her.  Tell her about your feelings in an open
and honest way.
Fry:    Yeah.  Either that or be a man.
-- Futurama, Bendless Love


   Michelle: I love you!  Don't you love me?
Fry:      Well... sure... to the extent a man *can* love a woman...
-- Futurama, The Cryonic Woman


   Woody:  Can I pour you a draft, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:   A little early, isn't it Woody?
Woody:  For a beer?
Norm:   No, for stupid questions.
-- Cheers, Let Sleeping Drakes Lie


   What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's
transparency.
-- George Nathan


   "Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons 
for it afterwards."
-- Soren F. Petersen


   For knighthood is not in the feats of war,
As for to fight in quarrel right or wrong,
But in a cause which truth cannot defer:
He ought himself for to make sure and strong,
Just to keep mixt with mercy among:
And no quarrel a knight ought to take
But for a truth, or for the common's sake.
-- Stephen Hawes


   Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
-- C.G. Jung


   f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   "To take a significant step forward, you must make a series of finite 
improvements."
-- Donald J. Atwood, General Motors


   I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that
either.
-- Jack Benny


   Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.


   When my freshman roommate at Cornell found out I was Jewish, she was,
at her request, moved to a different room.  She told me she didn't
think she had ever seen a Jew before.  My only response was to begin
wearing a small Star of David on a chain around my neck.  I had not
become a more observing Jew; rather, discovering that the label of Jew
was offensive to others made me want to let people know who I was and
what I believed in.
-- Susan Bolotin, "Voices From the Post-Feminist Generation"


   Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.  If your ideas are any good,
you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken


   Beauty, n.:
The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
-- Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914),  The Devil's Dictionary


   I am a man: nothing human is alien to me.
-- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)


   "When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last,
"what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh.  "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.  "It's the same thing," he said.


   If you can count your money you don't have a billion dollars.
-- J. Paul Getty (1892-1976)


   The drying up a single tear has more of honest fame than shedding seas of
gore.
-- Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)


   QOTD:
"Sure, I turned down a drink once.  Didn't understand the question."


   In the faces of men and women I see God.
-- Walt Whitman, poet (1819-1892)


   If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same
race, creed and color, we would find some other cause for prejudice by   
noon. 
-- George D. Aiken, US senator (1892-1984)


   A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which
is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was
yesterday.
-- Alexander Pope, poet (1688-1744)


   As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both
instances there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly
unchanged.  And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware
of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting
victims of the darkness.
-- William O. Douglas, judge (1898-1980)


   Leela:  Fry, this isn't TV, it's real life.  Can't you tell the
difference? 
Fry:    Sure, I just like TV better.
-- Futurama, When Aliens Attack


   Amy:    Oh, come on, Leela... deep down, all girls want to be Miss Universe.
Leela:  Not me.
Amy:    Really?  Maybe it's just cute girls.
-- Futurama, Lesser of Two Evils


   Fry:    So that's my story, Father Changstein Al-gamal.  Is there
anything religion can do to help me find my friend?
Father: Well, we could join together in prayer.
Fry:    Uh huh... but is there anything useful we can do?
Father: No.
-- Futurama, Godfellas


   Leela:  It'll take more than deadly, deadly bees to keep us from doing
our jobs.  Come on, boys!
Fry:    But Leela, we're no good!
Leela:  Listen, I'm scared, too.  But I'm more scared of disappointing
myself. 
Fry:    I'm not scared of that at all!
-- Futurama, The Sting


   I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do
because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
-- Susan B. Anthony, reformer and suffragist (1820-1906)


   Gambling may be a disease but it's the only disease where you can win
a bunch of money.
-- Norm MacDonald, Comedian


   It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.
-- Voltaire, writer (1694-1778)


   The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth; whether
it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth.  It is
the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based.  And if you can't
find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what
happened, then you don't deserve to wear that uniform.
-- Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek, The Next Generation, "The First Duty"


   The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look
at the men he has around him.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, political philosopher and author (1469-1527)


   The best writing is rewriting. 
-- E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)


   If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if
he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
-- Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)


   When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life
stands explained. 
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910), Notebook, 1898


   If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of
time looking for him further.
-- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)


   The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. 
-- L.P. Hartley, writer (1895-1972)


   I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
-- Antonio Porchia, writer (1886-1968)


   Everything secret degenerates, even the administration of justice;
nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and
publicity.
-- Lord Acton, historian (1834-1902)


   The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never
worshipped anything but himself.
-- Sir Richard Francis Burton, explorer, and writer (1821-1890)


   He's the best physician who knows the worthlessness of the most
medicines. 
-- Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)


   Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. 
-- Charles Darwin, naturalist and author (1809-1882)


   I would be strong, for there is much to suffer;
I would be brave, for there is much to dare;
I would be brave, for there is much to dare.
-- Howard A. Walter (1883-1918)


   It is only the great men who are truly obscene.  If they had not dared
to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
-- Havelock Ellis


   What you do is of little significance; but it is very important that
you do it.
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)


   No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back. 
-- Turkish proverb


   It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of
common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me
forever ineligible for public office.
-- H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)


   An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
really care to know.


   Patience is also a form of action. 
-- Auguste Rodin, sculptor (1840-1917)


   This life is yours.  Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made yourself.


   We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid.  She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that
is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
-- Mark Twain


   My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread, I'm
selling yeast.
-- Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936)


   I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so.
-- John Donne


   Substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very; your editor
will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)


   Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer.
It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who
watches over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide
people to follow His precepts -- there is just too much misery and
cruelty for that.  On the other hand, I respect and envy the people 
who get inspiration from their religions.
-- Benjamin Spock


   By all means marry: If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you
get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
-- Socrates


   Knowing ignorance is strength; ignoring knowledge is
sickness. 
-- Lao-Tzu, philosopher (6th century BCE)


   Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.
-- Stephen Swid, Executive (b. 1941)


   Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
War is peace.
-- George Orwell


   To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water
exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening
saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a
bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards
of the simple life.
-- John Burroughs, naturalist and writer (1837-1921)


   Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln, 16th US president (1809-1865)


   "Adversity doesn't build character, it reveals it."
-- Coach Vince Lombardi (?)


   "At every occasion in your life, do not forget to commune with
yourself and ask of yourself how you can profit by it."
-- Epictetus


   Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a
thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new
month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals
who ring bells and fire off pistols.
-- Thomas Mann, novelist, Nobel laureate (1875-1955)


   A teacher who is attempting to teach, without inspiring the pupil with
a desire to learn, is hammering on a cold iron.
-- Horace Mann, educational reformer (1796-1859)


   The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love
stop at the border?
-- Pablo Casals, cellist, conductor, and composer (1876-1973)


   "It is a sad fact that fifty percent of marriages in this country end
in divorce.  But hey, the other half end in death.  You could be one
of the lucky ones!"
-- Richard Jeni


   To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes
men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think
makes men martyrs or reformers - or both.
-- Elizabeth Charles, writer (1828-1896)


   One owes respect to the living. To the dead, one owes only the truth.
-- Voltaire, philosopher and writer (1694-1778)


   To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god. 
-- Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986)


   If you're going through hell, keep going. 
-- Sir Winston Churchill


   True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights.
If you hear bells, get your ears checked.
-- Erich Segal


   Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.
-- William Shakespeare


   I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has
read. 
-- Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)


   A man said to the universe: "Sir I exist!" "However," replied the
universe, "The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
-- Stephen Crane, writer (1871-1900)


   Nyquist said, 'The trouble with you, Selig, is that you're a deeply
religious man who doesn't happen to believe in God.'  Nyquist was
always saying things like that, and Selig never could be sure whether
he meant them or was just playing verbal games.
-- Robert Silverberg, _Dying Inside_


   In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to
contemplate.  
-- Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)


   There is no pillow so soft as a clear conscience. 
-- French proverb


   And Silence, like a poultice, comes
To heal the blows of sound. 
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)


   There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the
wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)


   "We forgot."
-- Alexander Hamilton, on the omission of God from the U.S. Constitution.


   "Bob said he wants to do three things with the rest of his life: make
art every day; eat great food, because he loves to eat; and
sleep... because he loves his dreams."
-- George Herms, Assemblage Artist, at a lecture March 18, 2005,
speaking about his good friend, artist Robert Rauschenberg, who
recently suffered a stroke and is now wheelchair bound.


   Sermon, n.:
An inspired message directed mainly at those who are not in attendance.
-- Wiley's Dictionary, B.C. 2005-03-24


   Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your
hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose
them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.
-- Carl Schurz, general and politician (1829-1906)


   I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be
what it may -- light, shade, and perspective will always make it
beautiful.
-- John Constable, painter (1776-1837)


   Time wears away error and polishes truth. 
-- Gaston Pierre Marc, Duc de Levis, writer (1764-1830)


   "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people
think. This rule is hard, because you will always find those who think
they know what is your duty better than you know it."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)


   A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but
otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the
world.
-- Paul Dudley White, physician (1886-1973)


   Loneliness... is and always has been the central and inevitable
experience of every man.
-- Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)


   I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself. 
-- Pietro Aretino, satirist and dramatist (1492-1556)


   It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your
country, and your principles, all at the same time.
-- Mignon McLaughlin, author (1915-)


   "When [men] say you're our soulmate, we really mean you have a nice ass."
-- Artie Lange, Howard Stern Show, 2004-09-09, 95 minutes in.


   Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. 
-- Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)


   "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." 
-- Pablo Picasso


   "Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others." 
-- Groucho Marx


   Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car
keys to teenage boys. 
-- P. J. O'Rourke


   If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn't have a job if
he was any smarter. 
-- John Gotti


   Experience is a dear teacher, and only fools will learn from no
other. 
-- Benjamin Franklin


   "Detachment is when, rather than feeling like you are losing them, you
know they are losing you."
-- Anonymous


   "Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional"
-- Anonymous


   To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of
medicine.
-- Henry Ward Beecher, preacher, and writer (1813-1887)


   Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is
not without comforts and hopes.
-- Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)


   Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them.
-- Will Rogers


   She refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring.  
-- Zelda Fitzgerald, 1922


   In their early passions women are in love with the lover, later they
are in love with love. 
-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)


   "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. But
my how we improve the score, as we practice more and more."
-- Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832)


   It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to suffering, but only to
one's own suffering. 
-- Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)


   "If you cannot convince them, confuse them."
-- Harry S. Truman


   Wesley: I miss her.  I feel empty.
Guinan: I know that sensation.  But there'll come a time when all
you'll remember is the love.
Wesley: I'm never going to feel this way about anyone else.
Guinan: You're right.
Wesley: I didn't expect you to say that.
Guinan: There'll be others.  But every time you feel love, it'll be
different.  Every time it's different.
Wesley: Knowing that doesn't make it any easier.
Guinan: It's not supposed to.
-- Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Dauphin", 1989


   Who has not for the sake of his reputation sacrificed himself?
-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)


   God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and
religions.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)


   A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're
dead. 
-- Leo Rosten, author (1908-1997)


   Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of
science makes skepticism a virtue. 
-- Robert King Merton, sociologist (1910-2003)


   As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to live it more
and more. 
-- Jules Renard, writer (1864-1910)


   You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell
whether a man is wise by his questions.
-- Naguib Mahfouz, writer (1911- )


   "The fact is, as we said at the beginning of our discussion, that the
aspiring speaker needs no knowledge of the truth about what is right
or good... In courts of justice no attention is paid whatever to the
truth about such topics; all that matters is plausibility... There are
even some occasions when both prosecution and defence should
positively suppress the facts in favor of probability, if the facts
are improbable. Never mind the truth -- pursue probability through
thick and thin in every kind of speech; the whole secret of the art of
speaking lies in consistent adherence to this principle."
-- Socrates, in Plato's Phaedrus


   By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.
-- Confucius


   SOBER: Son Of a Bitch, Everything's Real
-- Gary Busey, actor


   A sneer is the weapon of the weak. 
-- James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)


   The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self,
the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his
religion, his race or his holy cause. A man is likely to mind his own
business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind
off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.
-- Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)


   New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any
other reason but because they are not already common. 
-- John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)


   The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me
what I thought, and attended to my answer. 
-- Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)


   There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and
actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
-- Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)


   There is a field beyond all notions of right and wrong. Come, meet me
there. 
-- Rumi, poet and mystic (1207-1273)


   The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it;
but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it. 
-- Madame De Stael, writer (1766-1817)


   How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward. 
-- Spanish proverb


   Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings. 
-- W.H. Auden, poet (1907-1973)


   Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties,
nations, and epochs, it is the rule. 
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)


   The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story,
and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the
volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
-- J.M. Barrie, novelist, and playwright (1860-1937)


   Because we don't understand the brain very well we're constantly
tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to
understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain
was a telephone switchboard. (What else could it be?) And I was amused
to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought
that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared
the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared
it to a mill, and now, obviously, the metaphor is the digital
computer.
-- John R. Searle, philosophy professor (1932- )


   "You can't reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself
into."
-- Oscar Wilde


   Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it
will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, or a new
country.
-- Anais Nin, author (1903-1977)


   If you want to work on your art, work on your life. 
-- Anton Chekhov, short-story writer and dramatist (1860-1904)


   "Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."
-- Philos of Alexandria


   When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire
kind people.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel, theology professor (1907-1972)


   I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as
the greatest of dangers to be feared.  To preserve our independence, we must
not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.  If we run into such debts, we
must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts,
in our labor and in our amusements.  If we can prevent the government from
wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they
will be happy.
-- Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)


   Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could
do only a little. 
-- Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)


   My wife's the same way; when they marry you, they love the ground you
walk on.  And every year, more and more, they start to think they're
better than you.
-- King of all Blacks, Howard Stern Show, 2005-08-09


   For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live
in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner
... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion
galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit,
and it is very good for us to understand that.
-- Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996)


   Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. 
-- Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)


   We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we
love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed
person.
-- William Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965)


   We perceive when love begins and when it declines by our embarrassment
when alone together.
-- Jean de la Bruyere, essayist and moralist (1645-1696)


   The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't
change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His. 
-- Roger Ebert, film-critic (1942- )


   I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were
of one religion. 
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)


   Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? 
-- Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)


   We love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it
shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. 
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)


   There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with
the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts:
what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.
-- Dale Carnegie, author and educator (1888-1955)


   Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is
passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. 
-- Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)


   I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me
for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies. 
-- Pietro Aretino, satirist and dramatist (1492-1556)


   "Time and I against any two."
-- Spanish Proverb


   Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by
silence.  
-- Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (1821-1881)


   Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit
atrocities.
-- Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)


   People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of
foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.
-- Alice Walker, writer (1944- )


   Half the truth is often a great lie. 
-- Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)


   A man needs a little madness, or else he never dares cut the rope and
be free. 
-- Nikos Kazantzakis, writer (1883-1957)


   It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I
have not had time to remake the world. 
-- Will Durant, historian (1885-1981)


   "The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It
will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the
discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit,
and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and
misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day
is marred."
-- The Nation, Founding Prospectus, 1865


   Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. 
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer, and philosopher (1803-1882)


   The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere. 
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, writer (1906-2001)


   A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers. 
-- Robert Quillen, journalist and cartoonist (1887-1948)


   The best politics is right action. 
-- Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)


   Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half of
the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
-- Bertrand Russell


   I fear nothing, I hope for nothing, I am free. 
-- Nikos Kazantzakis, poet, and novelist (1883-1957)


   You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when
it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. 
-- Anne Lamott, writer (1954- )


   Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields
and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute
nature. Be cold and hungry and weary. 
-- Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)


   What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention
of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of
attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the
overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
-- Herbert Alexander Simon, economist, Nobel laureate (1916-2001)


   What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?
-- Theodore Roethke, poet (1908-1963)


   Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind. 
-- Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886)


   Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and 
goodness.
-- Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)


   The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born?
Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think
about these once in a while and watch your answers change.
-- Richard Bach, writer (1936- )


   When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is 
slavery. 
-- Maxim Gorky, author (1868-1936)


   Even historians fail to learn from history -- they repeat the same mistakes.
-- John Gill, "Patterns of Force", stardate 2534.7


   If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock,
not selling advice. 
-- Norman R. Augustine, industrialist (1935- )


   Kindness is not without its rocks ahead. People are apt to put it down
to an easy temper and seldom recognize it as the secret striving of a
generous nature; whilst, on the other hand, the ill-natured get credit
for all the evil they refrain from.
-- Honore De Balzac, novelist (1799-1850)


   if (argc > 1 && strcmp(argv[1], "-advice") == 0) {
printf("Don't Panic!\n");
exit(42);
}
(Arnold Robbins in the LJ of February '95, describing RCS)


   One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one 
person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute. 
-- William Feather, author, editor, and publisher (1889-1981)


   There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. 
-- Leonard Cohen, musician (1934- )


   We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the
same. 
-- Carlos Castenada, mystic and author (1925-1998)


   A certain amount of opposition is a help, not a hindrance. Kites rise
against the wind, not with it.


   I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller
boy.  I expostulated, but he replied: 'The bigs hit me, so I hit the
babies; that's fair.' In these words he epitomized the history of the
human race.
-- Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)


   There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,
and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all. 
-- Ogden Nash, author (1902-1971)


   The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to
write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book. 
-- Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)


   The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day
after the revolution. 
-- Hannah Arendt, historian and philosopher (1906-1975)


   Look into any man's heart you please, and you will always find, in
every one, at least one black spot which he has to keep concealed. 
-- Henrik Ibsen, playwright (1828-1906)


   Revolution, n.:
In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
-- Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914),  The Devil's Dictionary


   Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then
you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's
worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
-- Colette, writer (1873-1954)


   You teach best what you most need to learn.


   Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.
-- Pyrrhus


   Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Remember, if a million people believe in a foolish thing, it is still
a foolish thing.
-- Anatole France.


   No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining occurrence
different from the one identified by the given indication as an
indication-applied occurrence.
-- ALGOL 68 Report


   The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds
the other fellow of a dull one.
-- Sid Caesar


   Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
-- Ellyn Mustard


   The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
weather forecasters.
-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann


   My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director. 
-- Cole Porter, composer and songwriter (1893-1964)


   One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy. 
-- E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)


   Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. 
-- Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947)


   You attempt things that you do not even plan because of your extreme stupidity.
-- Your Daily Fortune


   Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.
-- Anonymous


   It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be 
unable to imagine how we might possibly have