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                Chapter XIII

        OF Auxiliary, Mixed, and National Arms

The second sort of unprofitable arms are auxiliaries, by whom I mean, troops
brought to help and protect you by a potentate whom you summon to your aid;

Auxiliaries may be excellent and useful soldiers for themselves, but are
always hurtful to him who calls them in; for if they are defeated, he is
undone, if victorious, he becomes their prisoner.  . . .

from _The Prince_, by Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513
%%
            HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 1

proof by example:
    The author gives only the case n = 2 and suggests that it
    contains most of the ideas of the general proof.

proof by intimidation:
    'Trivial'.

proof by vigorous handwaving:
    Works well in a classroom or seminar setting.
%%
            HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 2

proof by cumbersome notation:
    Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special
    symbols.

proof by exhaustion:
    An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful.

proof by omission:
    'The reader may easily supply the details'
    'The other 253 cases are analogous'
    '...'

%%
            HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 3

proof by obfuscation:
    A long plotless sequence of true and/or meaningless
    syntactically related statements.

proof by wishful citation:
    The author cites the negation, converse, or generalization of
    a theorem from the literature to support his claims.

proof by funding:
    How could three different government agencies be wrong?

proof by eminent authority:
    'I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-
    complete.'

%%
            HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 4

proof by personal communication:
    'Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete
    [Karp, personal communication].'

proof by reduction to the wrong problem:
    'To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is
    decidable, we reduce it to the halting problem.'

proof by reference to inaccessible literature:
    The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found
    in a privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian
    Philological Society, 1883.

proof by importance:
    A large body of useful consequences all follow from the
    proposition in question.
%%
            HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 5

proof by accumulated evidence:
    Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample.

proof by cosmology:
    The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or
    meaningless. Popular for proofs of the existence of God.

proof by mutual reference:
    In reference A, Theorem 5 is said to follow from Theorem 3 in
    reference B, which is shown to follow from Corollary 6.2 in
    reference C, which is an easy consequence of Theorem 5 in
    reference A.

proof by metaproof:
    A method is given to construct the desired proof. The
    correctness of the method is proved by any of these
    techniques.
%%
            HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 6

proof by picture:
    A more convincing form of proof by example. Combines well
    with proof by omission.

proof by vehement assertion:
    It is useful to have some kind of authority relation to the
    audience.

proof by ghost reference:
    Nothing even remotely resembling the cited theorem appears in
    the reference given.

%%
            HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 7
proof by forward reference:
    Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author,
    which is often not as forthcoming as at first.

proof by semantic shift:
    Some of the standard but inconvenient definitions are changed
    for the statement of the result.

proof by appeal to intuition:
    Cloud-shaped drawings frequently help here.
%%
             THE "FUN WITH USENET" MANIFESTO
Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other
reader.  Fun With Usenet postings are no exception.  Since there are some who
might question the rationale of some of the excerpts included therein, I have
written up a list of guidelines that sum up the philosophy behind these
postings.

    One.  I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY
good reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses.  For
instance, "I am not a goob" might become "I am ... a goob", but that's too
mundane to bother with.  "I'm flame proof" might (and has) become
"I'm ...a... p...oof" but that's REALLY stretching it.

    Two.  If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don't
put ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn't capitalized
before the cut. "I don't think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful
place" would turn into "the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place".  Imagine
the posting as a tape-recording of the poster's thoughts.  If I can set
up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without splicing,
I don't put ellipses in.  And by the way, I love using this mechanism for
turning things around.  If you think something stinks, say so - don't say you
don't think it's wonderful.   ...
-- D. J. McCarthy ([e-mail])
%%
    "And we heard him exclaim
     As he started to roam:
     `I'm a hologram, kids,
      please don't try this at home!'"
    -- Bob Violence
-- Howie Chaykin's little animated 3-dimensional darling, Bob Violence
%%
    "During the race
     We may eat your dust,
     But when you graduate,
     You'll work for us."
    -- Reed College cheer
%%
    "If there's ever anything I can do for you -- or, more to the point,
to you, don't hesitate to ask."
    "*What?*"
"Which word didn't you understand?"
%%
    "It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of
gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
    "Hit it."
-- Blues Brothers
%%
    "We want to see three things in the 1988 Republican Party Platform...
First, a constitutional amendment banning all abortions in the United States.
Second, increased funding for law enforcement and a mandatory death penalty
for drug dealers.  Third, LESS GOVERNMENT."
-- Speaker at a 1988 Republican Straw Poll in Iowa
%%
    "Yes, I am a real piece of work.  One thing we learn at Ulowell is
 how to flame useless hacking non-EE's like you.  I am superior to you in
 every way by training and expertise in the technical field.  Anyone can learn
 how to hack, but Engineering doesn't come nearly as easily.  Actually, I'm
 not trying to offend all you CS majors out there, but I think EE is one of the
 hardest majors/grad majors to pass.  Fortunately, I am making it."
-- "Warrior Diagnostics" ([e-mail])

"Being both an EE and an asshole at the same time must be a terrible burden
 for you.  This isn't really a flame, just a casual observation.  Makes me
 glad I was a CS major, life is really pleasant for me.  Have fun with your
 chosen mode of existence!"
-- Jim Morrison ([e-mail])
%%
    Algie's last letter to Lidia was written only a few days before
he died, but reached her some weeks later, as he had neglected to mark
it 'Correo Aereo'.  In this letter he reported the discovery of several
new contradictions in terms and mentioned, among other things, that
Piero della Francesca died on the same day that Columbus discovered
America, and that there is in Mexico a rat poison called The Last
Supper.  Such information is hard to come by these days; now that Algie
was gone, Lidia could not readily think of another source.
-- Shirley Hazzard, "Nothing in Excess"
%%
    Armitage crossed stiffly to the table and took three fat bundles
of New Yen from the pockets of his trenchcoat.  "You want to count it?"
he asked Yonderboy.
    "No," the Panther Modern said.  You'll pay.  You're a Mr. Who.
You pay to stay one.  Not a Mr. Name."
-- William Gibson, "Neuromancer"
%%
    Come... Dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and
unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the
forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.
    Dry your eyes...And let's go home.
-- Watchmen
%%
    For fifteen days I struggled to prove that no functions
analogous to those I have since called Fuchsian functions could
exist; I was then very ignorant.  Every day I sat down at my
work table where I spent an hour or two; I tried a great number
of combinations and arrived at no result.  One evening, contrary
to my custom, I took black coffee; I could not go to sleep;
ideas swarmed up in clouds; I sensed them clashing until, to put
it so, a pair would hook together to form a stable combination.
By morning I had established the existence of a class of
Fuchsian functions, those derived from the hypergeometric series.
I had only to write up the results which took me a few hours.
--Henri Poincare,  "Science et Methode"
%%
    I said I'm two and a half billion years old because when I was
young the earth was two billion years old and now it is four and a half
billion years old so I must be two and a half billion years old.
-- Paul Erdos
%%
    I think for the most part that the readership here uses the c-word in
a similar fashion.  I don't think anybody really believes in a new, revolution-
ary literature --- I think they use `cyberpunk' as a term of convenience to
discuss the common stylistic elements in a small subset of recent sf books.
-- Jeff G. Bone
%%
    If a schlemazl sold umbrellas, it would stop raining; if he sold
candles, the sun would never set; and if he made coffins, people
would stop dying.
%%
    Just because they found Martin Bormann's skull doesn't mean he's
dead, my best beloved; for everyone knows that competent observers from
every neutral country have reported sighting an old man in Argentina
whose head is wrapped in bandages, and only the hunted eyes show, winking
and blinking beneath the thousands of cranial splints...
-- William T. Vollman, "You Bright and Risen Angels"
%%
    Liberty Hulse of Middle Island was steadying an unidentified blonde
woman who was crying and appeared near a state of collapse.
    ``You have to eat,'' Hulse said to the woman. ``You have a beautiful
family, and you have to take care of them too.''
    Hulse explained to reporters that the woman ``hasn't eaten for weeks''
because of anxiety over the fate of two dogs who were ostensibly buried
in the cemetery in Middle Island about 60 miles east of New York City.
    Hulse said she also paid to have her dog buried there, and she
expressed concern that the cemetery might be bulldozed as a health
hazard because of an estimated quarter of a million animals buried
there.
    ``Are they going to bulldoze it?'' she asked. ``Over my dead body,
because they will have to kill me first.''
-- (UPI) Enraged pet owners curse cemetery owners, 7/9/91
%%
    Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo pilosophorum.
(Nothing so absurd can be said, that some philosopher has not said it.)
-- Cicero
%%
    No, son, you lose.  'Cause this is a Smith & Wesson I'm holdin'
here, an' a Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
-- Canada Bill Jones
%%
    On his was back to the lobby, his cigarettes forgotten,
he had to walk the length of the ranked phones.  Each rang in turn,
but only once, as he passed.
-- William Gibson, "Neuromancer"
%%
    One hysterical woman screamed: ``They killed my babies! They killed
my babies!''
-- (UPI) Enraged pet owners curse cemetery owners, 7/9/91
%%
    So we get to my point.  Surely people around here read things that
aren't on the *Officially Sanctioned Cyberpunk Reading List*.  Surely we
don't (any of us) really believe that there is some big, deep political and
philosophical message in all this, do we?  So if this `cyberpunk' thing is
just a term of convenience, how can somebody sell out?  If cyberpunk is just a
word we use to describe a particular style and imagery in sf, how can it be
dead?  Where are the profound statements that the `Movement' is or was trying
to make?
    I think most of us are interested in examining and discussing literary
(and musical) works that possess a certain stylistic excellence and perhaps a
rather extreme perspective; this is what CP is all about, no?  Maybe there
should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or something.  Something less
restrictive in scope than alt.cyberpunk.
-- Jeff G. Bone
%%
    The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing thing;
to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking at the
first ship or the first plough.  It made a man feel what he should feel, that
he was still in the childhood of the world.
-- G. K. Chesterton, "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown"
%%
    The wise man's eyes are in his head; but the fool walketh in darkness:
and I myself perceived also that one event happeneth to them all.
    Then said I in my heart, As it happeneth to the fool so it happeneth
even to me; and why was I then more wise?  Then I said in my heart, that this
is also vanity.
    For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever;
seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten.  And how
dieth the wise man?  As the fool.
-- Ecclesiastes 2:14-16
%%
    This cowboy looked at me and said
    With a sort of a smile,
    "A sorry hand is in the way all the time,
     A good one just once in awhile."

-- Cowgirl poet Georgie Sicking
%%
    Tie?  You want me to wear a *tie*?  Listen:  There's only one time in
a man's life when he should have a rope knotted around his neck, and that
time ain't yet come for me.
-- Canada Bill Jones
%%
    Time, because it is so fleeting, time, because it is beyond recall, is
the most precious of human goods and to squander it is the most delicate form
of dissipation in which man can indulge.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, "The Bum"
%%
    To the habitual reader, reading is a drug of which he is the slave;
deprive him of printed matter and he grows nervous, moody, and restless; then,
like the alcoholic bereft of brandy who will drink shellac or methylated
spirit, he will make do with the advertisements of a paper five years old; he
will make do with a telephone directory.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, "The Bum"
%%
    Well, punk is kind of anti-ethical, anyway.  Its ethics, so to speak,
include a disdain for ethics in general.  If you have to think about some-
thing so hard, then it's bullshit anyway; that's the idea.  Punks are anti-
ismists, to coin a term.  But nonetheless, they have a pretty clearly defined
stance and image, and THAT is what we hang the term `punk' on.
-- Jeff G. Bone
%%
    When I received the Nobel Prize, the only big lump sum of money I have
ever seen, I had to do something with it.  The easiest way to drop this hot
potato was to invest it, to buy shares.  I knew that World War II was coming
and I was afraid that if I had shares which rise in case of war, I would wish
for war.  So I asked my agent to buy shares which go down in the event of war.
This he did.  I lost my money and saved my soul.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
%%
    You are on the edge of a breath-taking view.  Far below you is an
active volcano, from which great gouts of molten lava come surging out,
cascading back down into the depths.  The glowing rock fills the farthest
reaches of the cavern with a blood-red glare, giving everything an eerie,
macabre appearance.  The air is filled with flickering sparks of ash and a
heavy smell of brimstone.  The walls are hot to the touch, and the thundering
of the volcano drowns out all other sounds.  Embedded in the jagged roof far
overhead are myriad twisted formations composed of pure white alabaster, which
scatter the murky light into sinister apparitions upon the walls.  To one side
is a deep gorge, filled with a bizarre chaos of tortured rock which seems to
have been crafted by the Devil himself.  An immense river of fire crashes out
from the depths of the volcano, burns its way through the gorge, and plummets
into a bottomless pit far off to your left.  To the right, an immense geyser
of blistering steam erupts continuously from a barren island in the center of a
sulfurous lake, which bubbles ominously.  The far right wall is aflame with an
incandescence of its own, which lends an additional infernal splendor to the
already hellish scene.  A dark, foreboding passage exits to the south.
-- Adventure
%%
    You know, all of these rules that may be completely correct for
normal people, make no sense for prodigies.  To say that Bach should
pay any attention to how he was socially adjusted is just a bad joke.
-- Paul Erdos
%%
    [On randomly generated sentences.] I think that it is hard to read
such material without amusement.  I feel a little admiration as well.  I would
never write, 'It happened one frosty look of trees waving gracefully against
the wall.'  I almost wish I could.  Poor poets endlessly rhyme love with dove,
and they are constrained by their highly trained mediocrity never to write a
good line.  In some sense, a stochastic process can do better; it at least has
a chance.
-- J. R. Pierce, "Symbols, Signals, and Noise"
%%
    ``After all, 13 years of being battered, pushed and otherwise
tormented is a long, long time. On the other hand ... you can't expect
me just to run away,'' he said.
-- L.A. Police Chief Darryl Gates, as quoted in the UPI story, "L.A. police
    chief rejects suggestion of retirement", 7/9/91
%%
                                _
                               / \
                              |\_/|
                              |---|
                              |   |
                              |   |
                            _ |=-=| _
                        _  / \|   |/ \
                       / \|   |   |   ||\
                      |   |   |   |   | \>
                      |   |   |   |   |   \
                      | -   -   -   - |)   )
                      |                   /
                       \                 /
                        \               /
                         \             /
                          \           /
                           |         |
                           |         |
                           |         |

-- Michael Westlund ([e-mail])
%%
                          (####)
                        (#######)
                      (#########)
                     (#########)
                    (#########)
                   (#########)
   __&__          (#########)
  /     \        (#########)   |\/\/\/|     /\ /\  /\               /\
 |       |      (#########)    |      |     | V  \/  \---.    .----/  \----.
 |  (o)(o)       (o)(o)(##)    |      |      \_        /       \          /
 C   .---_)    ,_C     (##)    | (o)(o)       (o)(o)  <__.   .--\ (o)(o) /__.
  | |.___|    /____,   (##)    C      _)     _C         /     \     ()     /
  |  \__/       \     (#)       | ,___|     /____,   )  \      >   (C_)   <
  /_____\        |    |         |   /         \     /----'    /___\____/___\
 /_____/ \       OOOOOO        /____\          ooooo             /|    |\
/         \     /      \      /      \        /     \           /        \

Homer          Marge           Bart            Lisa            Baby Maggie

                                THE SIMPSONS
%%
         EARTH
     smog  |   bricks
 AIR  --  mud  --  FIRE
soda water |   tequila
         WATER
%%
        "...'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not
matter.  'I' do not matter.  No word matters.  But man forgets reality
and remembers words.  The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his
fellows esteem him.  He looks upon the great transformations of the
world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon
reality for the first time.  Their names come to his lips and he smiles
as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming."
-- Siddartha, _Lord_of_Light_ by Roger Zelazny
%%
        "I can do a score of things that can't be done.  I can find a
thing I cannot see, and see a thing I cannot find.  The first is time,
and the second is spots before my eyes.  I can touch a thing I cannot
feel, and feel a thing I cannot touch.  The first is your heart, and
the second is sad and sorry."
-- James Thurber, "The Thirteen Clocks"
%%
        [May one] doubt whether, in cheese and timber, worms are generated,
        or, if beetles and wasps, in cow-dung, or if butterflies, locusts,
        shellfish, snails, eels, and such life be procreated of putrefied
        matter, which is to receive the form of that creature to which it
        is by formative power disposed[?]  To question this is to question
        reason, sense, and experience.  If he doubts this, let him go to
        Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice begot
        of the mud of the Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants.
                A seventeenth century opinion quoted by L. L. Woodruff,
                in *The Evolution of Earth and Man*, 1929
%%
        oh no godzilla
guns and planes cannot stop him
       tokyo is ablaze
-- haiku from Effector Online, Volume 1, Number 6
%%
       "What is the price of Experience?  Do men
    Buy it for a song?! and Wisdom for a
    Dance in the Street?  No! it is bought with the price
    Of all that a man hath: his Wife, his House, his Children--
    And Wisdom is sold in the desolate marketplace
    Where none come to buy and in the barren fields where
    Farmers plow for bread in vain."

-- Blake, The Four Zoas; Night the Second
%%
      ...and before I knew what I was doing, I had kicked the
      typewriter and threw it around the room and made it beg for
      mercy.  At this point the typewriter pleaded for me to dress
      him in feminine attire but instead I pressed his margin release
      over and over again until the typewriter lost consciousness.
      Presently, I regained consciousness and realized with shame what
      I had done.  My shame is gone and now I am looking for a
      submissive typewriter, any color, or model.  No electric
      typewriters please!
-- Rick Kleiner
%%
      I bought the latest computer;
      it came fully loaded.
      It was guaranteed for 90 days,
      but in 30 was outmoded!
-- The Wall Street Journal passed along by Big Red Computer's SCARLETT
%%
     Turning and turning in the widening gyre
     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
     Things fall apart: the centre cannot hold;
     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
     The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
     The best lack all conviction, while the worst
     Are filled with a passionate intensity.

     Surely some revelation is at hand;
     Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
     The Second Coming!  Hardly are those words out
     When a vast image out of SPIRITUS MUNDI
     Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
     A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
     A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
     Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
     Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
     The darkness drops again: but now I know
     That twenty centuries of stony sleep
     Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
     And what rough beast, its hour now come at last
     Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

-- W. B. Yeats, THE SECOND COMING
%%
    "Let us go forth not as defenders of the status quo,
    but as crusaders with a revolution idea - that
    government should be the servant and not the master
    of the people; that its purpose is to protect, not
    deny, each man's freedom; that the purpose of a free
    press is to liberate, not enslave the human spirit."

-- From the speech made by A. S. Hills upon taking office as President of the
   Inter-American Press Association
%%
    Catch a fly. Put it in the freezer compartment of your refrigerator for
    5 to 10 minutes. This slows him down considerably, so he's easier to
    handle. While he's in there, make a miniature paper airplane with a
    wing-span about double that of the fly. Take the cool dude out of the
    ice-box and super glue his tiny feet onto the upper surface of the paper
    airplane. As he warms up and revives, he will begin doing that most
    natural of all fly activities: he will try to fly. If you have not made
    your little airplane too heavy, the fly's wing beats will be adequate
    for lift off. However, carrying the added weight quickly tires the fly,
    so in mid-air, he will stop beating his wings, and the airplane will
    soar downward. Seeing his plight causes the fly to once again attempt to
    fly, with the same result. Little bursts of energy as the plane gains
    altitude, alternated with slow downward glides. A thread super glued to
    the plane will keep your aerial circus in the same room, or you can take
    your new pet fly out for a walk, er, fly.
-- Gary Benson ([e-mail])
%%
    In accepting an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame a few
years ago, General David Sarnoff [head of RCA] made this statement: "We are
too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of
those who wield them.  The products of modern science are not in themselves
good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value."  That
is the voice of the current somnambulism.  Suppose we were to say, "Apple pie
is in itself neither good nor bad; it is the way it is used that determines
its value." ...  There is nothing in the Sarnoff statement that will bear
scrutiny, for it ignores the nature of the medium, of any and all media, in
the true Narcissus style of one hypnotized by the amputation and extension of
his own being in a new technical form. ... It has never occurred to General
Sarnoff that any technology could do anything but _add_ itself on to what we
already are.
-- Marshall McLuhan, _Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man_ (1964)
%%
    UNIX Shell is the Best Fourth Generation Programming Language

    It is the UNIX shell that makes it possible to do applications in a small
    fraction of the code and time it takes in third generation languages.  In
    the shell you process whole files at a time, instead of only a line at a
    time.  And, a line of code in the UNIX shell is one or more programs,
    which do more than pages of instructions in a 3GL.  Applications can be
    developed in hours and days, rather than months and years with traditional
    systems.  Most of the other 4GLs available today look more like COBOL or
    RPG, the most tedious of the third generation languages.

-- _UNIX Relational Database Management:  Application Development in the UNIX
   Environment_ by Rod Manis, Evan Schaffer, and Robert Jorgensen.  Prentice
   Hall Software Series.  Brian Kernighan, Advisor.  1988.
%%
   "Are those cocktail-waitress fingernail marks?"  I asked Colletti as he
showed us these scratches on his chest.  "No, those are on my back," Colletti
answered.  "This is where a case of cocktail shrimp fell on me.  I told her
to slow down a little, but you know cocktail waitresses, they seem to have
a mind of their own."
-- The Incredibly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs
   National Lampoon, October 1982
%%
   "Daddy, Daddy, make
    Santa Claus go away!"
               "I can't, son;
            he's grown too
            powerful."
                     "HO HO HO!"
-- Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre
%%
   "Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulder,
    Computer Scientists stand on each other's toes."
-- someone on the net (please email attribution), about look&feel lawsuits
%%
   "People these days are reluctant to read the canonical texts, but they
love fiction. Not all fiction, mind you, for they are sick of exemplary themes
and far prefer the obscene and fantastic. How low contemporary morals have
sunk! Anyone concerned about public morality will want to retrieve the
situation."
-- Li Yu, in "The Carnal Prayer Mat" c. 1657 A.D.
%%
   Emacs is not an editor.  Emacs is a way of thinking about the world, and
as such is a way of thinking about editors.  The process of editing is Emacs,
but Emacs is more than the process of editing.  When you ask what Emacs does,
you are asking a question with no answer, because Emacs doesn't do, it is
done to.  Emacs just is.   ...  I hope this makes things clearer.
-- Scott Dorsey ([e-mail])
%%
   Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between
the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship.

   "Water!" it shrieked as it read the spectral report.  "A barrier of water
vapor!  A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library!
A civilized race could not have stooped so low!  A civilized race would not
have..."

   It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes.

- _Startide Rising_, by David Brin
%%
   In modern Europe, as in ancient Greece, it would seem that even inanimate
objects have sometimes been punished for their misdeeds.  After the revocation
of the edict of Nantes, in 1685, the Protestant chapel at La Rochelle was
condemned to be demolished, but the bell, perhaps out of regard for its value,
was spared.  However, to expiate the crime of having rung heretics to prayers,
it was sentenced to be first whipped, and then buried and disinterred, by way
of symbolizing its new birth at passing into Catholic hands.  Thereafter it
was catechized, and obliged to recant and promise that it would never again
relapse into sin.  Having made this ample and honourable amends, the bell was
reconciled, baptized, and given, or rather sold, to the parish of St.
Bartholomew.  But when the governer sent in the bill for the bell to the
parish authorities, they declined to settle it, alleging that the bell, as
a recent convert to Catholicism, desired to take advantage of the law lately
passed by the king, which allowed all new converts a delay of three years in
paying their debts.
-- Sir James G. Frazer, _Folklore In The Old Testament_
%%
   It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
completely. . . .Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
%%
   On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins.
>From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader.
   "...stupid creatures unworthy of the name `sophonts.'  Foolish, pre-sentient
upspring of errant masters.  We slip away from all your armed might, laughing
at your clumsiness!  We slip away as we always will, you pathetic creatures.
And now that we have a real head start, you'll never catch us!  What better
proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us!  What better proof..."
   The taunt went on.  Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring
the artistry of it.  These men are better than I'd thought.  Their insults
are wordy and overblown, but they have talent.  They deserve honorable, slow
deaths.
- David Brin, _Startide Rising_
%%
   POZZO:  He used to dance the farandole, the fling, the brawl, the jig,
       the fandango and even the hornpipe.  He capered.  For joy.  Now
       that's the best he can do.  Do you know what he calls it?
ESTRAGON:  The Scapegoat's Agony.
VLADIMIR:  The Hard Stool.
   POZZO:  The Net.  He thinks he's entangled in a net.

-- Samuel Beckett, _Waiting for Godot_
%%
   n
a+b
---  = x, donc Dieu existe.  Repondez!
 n
-- Leonhard Euler
%%
   n = ((n >>  1) & 0x55555555) | ((n <<  1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
   n = ((n >>  2) & 0x33333333) | ((n <<  2) & 0xcccccccc);
   n = ((n >>  4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n <<  4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
   n = ((n >>  8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n <<  8) & 0xff00ff00);
   n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);

-- Yet another mystical 'C' gem. This one reverses the bits in a word.
%%
   the sand remembers
once there was beach and sunshine
   but chip is warm too
-- haiku from Effector Online, Volume 1, Number 6
%%
  "Emergency!"  Stiggs screamed, ejecting himself from the tub like it was
a burning car.  "Dial 'one'!  Get room service!  Code red!"  Stiggs was on
the phone immediately, ordering more rose blossoms, because, according to
him, the ones floating in the tub had suddenly lost their smell.  "I demand
smell," he shrilled.  "I expecting total uninterrupted smell from these
f*cking roses."

  Unfortunately, the service captain didn't realize that the Stiggs situation
involved fifty roses.  "What am I going to do with this?" Stiggs sneered at
the weaseling hotel goon when he appeared at our door holding a single flower
floating in a brandy glass.  Stiggs's tirade was great.  "Do you see this
bathtub?  Do you notice any difference between the size of the tub and the
size of that spindly wad of petals in your hand?  I need total bath coverage.
I need a completely solid layer of roses all around me like puffing factories
of smell, attacking me with their smell and power-ramming big stinking
concentrations of rose odor up my nostrils until I'm wasted with pleasure."
It wasn't long before we got so dissatisfied with this incompetence that we
bolted.
-- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
   National Lampoon, October 1982
%%
  "Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and sixty-two of them had no more
desire to throw a stone than you had."
  "Satan!"
  "Oh, it's true.  I know your race.  It is made up of sheep.  It is governed
by minorities, seldom or never by majorities.  It suppresses its feelings and
its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise.  Sometimes the
noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.
The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-
hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive
and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.  Think of it!  One
kind-hearted creature spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally helps
in iniquities which revolt both of them.  Speaking as an expert, I know that
ninety-nine out of a hundred of your race were strongly against the killing of
witches when that foolishness was first agitated by a handful of pious lunatics
in the long ago.  And I know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted
prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in twenty puts any real heart
into the harrying of a witch.  And yet apparently everybody hates witches and
wants them killed.  Some day a handful will rise up on the other side and make
the most noise -- perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice and a
determined front will do it -- and in a week all the sheep will wheel and
follow him, and witch-hunting will come to a sudden end."
-- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
%%
  ... The subtlety of these methods implies an important source of
  unreliability; unreliable error recovery.  Thus it is important that
  system testing pay meticulous attention to fault simulation to
  uncover weaknesses in the recovery.  Data taken on electronic
  switching systems show that failure to recover from simplex faults
  is usually a significant source of total outage time....

-- Edwin A. Irland, "Assuring Quality and Reliability of Complex Electronic
    Systems: Hardware and Software," Proceedings of the IEEE, January 1988
%%
  ...These lovers of esoterica seem to derive a great deal of intellectual
  satisfaction out of not quite understanding what they are doing.
%%
  How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
  One, but you can never change it back again.
%%
  It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is
  exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself
  survives...  When liberty is taken away by force it can be
  restored by force.  When it is relinquished voluntarily by
  default it can never be recovered.

  -- Dorothy Thompson, American journalist, author (1894-1961)

%%
  Like almost all old [more than 70 years], large [more than 10,000 people]
institutions, the government did not get to be as successful as it is by acting
the way it does now.
-- Paraphrased  by [e-mail] from the original
statement by Robert Townsend, in _Up the Organization._
%%
  Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman wars, hideous drenchings of the
earth with blood; and we saw the treacheries of the Romans toward the Cartha-
ginians, and the sickening spectacle of the massacre of those brave people.
Also we saw Caesar invade Britain -- "not that those barbarians had done him
any harm, but because he wanted their land, and desired to confer the blessings
of civilization upon their widows and orphans," as Satan explained.
  Next, Christianity was born.  Then ages of Europe passed in review before us,
and we saw Christianity and Civilization march hand in hand through those ages,
"leaving famine and death and desolation in their wake, and other signs of the
progress of the human race," as Satan observed.
  And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars -- all over
Europe, all over the world.  "Sometimes in the private interest of royal
families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war
started by the aggressor for any clean purpose -- there is no such war in the
history of the race."
  "Now," said Satan, "you have seen your progress down to the present, and you
must confess that it is wonderful -- in its way.  We must now exhibit the
future."
  He showed us slaughters more terrible in their destruction of life, more
devastating in their engines of war, than any we had seen.
  "You perceive," he said, "that you have made continual progress.  Cain did
his murder with a club; the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and swords;
the Greeks and Romans added protective armor and the fine arts of military
organization and generalship; the Christian has added guns and gunpowder; a
few centuries from now he will have so greatly improved the deadly effectiveness
of his weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that without Christian
civilization war must have remained a poor and trifling thing to the end of
time."
-- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
%%
  The coming thing, Cowboy thinks.  Live forever in a bodily incarnation of
the eye-face, not limited to the speed of artificially enhanced
neurotransmitters but approaching the speed of light, extending the limits
of the interface, the universe.  Brain contained in a perfect liquid-
crystal analog.  Nerves like the strings of a steel guitar.  Heart a
spinning turbopump.  The Steel Cowboy, his body a screaming monochrome
flicker, dispensing justice and righting wrongs.  Who was that masked AI?
Dunno, pardner, but he left this silver casting of a crystal circuit.

  To Cowboy, it sounded pretty good.

-- Walter Jon Williams, _Hardwired_
%%
  These mysterious lines were seen on Arnold's visual display:

        LDA $FF
        STA $20
        TYX
        TAY
        LDX #$1B
        PHA

  It becomes curiouser and curiouser when one notes the clearly
  bitmapped, smooth scrolling characters.  A theory: 2 68000's
  control the display, while the 6502 is his brain.  AHA! you say --
  How could he ride a motorcycle like that with only 64K of
  addressable RAM?  Answer: Bank switching.
%%
  This might be the time Nostradamus was referring to when he wrote, "The
  Centaur shall fix the broken toys, resurrect the dead chrysanthemums and
  devour the half-eaten cake of love."
--  Brezsny's Real Astrology
%%
  one with nintendo
  halcyon symbiosis
hand thinks for itself
-- haiku from Effector Online, Volume 1, Number 6
%%
  vi is [[13~^[[15~^[[15~^[[19~^[[18~^ a muk[^[[29~^[[34~^[[26~^[[32~^ch better editor than this emacs.
I know I^[[14~'ll get flamed for this but the truth has to be said.
^[[D^[[D^[[D^[[D
    ^[[D^[^[[D^[[D^[[B^
-- Jesper Lauridsen ([e-mail]), from alt.religion.emacs
%%
 "I've finally learned what `upward compatible' means.    It means we
  get to keep all our old mistakes."
 -- Dennie van Tassel
%%
 "Someone's been mean to you! Tell me who it is, so I can punch him tastefully."
-- Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
%%
 "The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed
  entirely of lost airline luggage."
-- Mark Russell
%%
 "You realize she's talking about our hamburgers here."
-- Anonymous sixth grader during talk by animal
   right's activist; Newsweek, May 23, 1988
%%
 0001 Have you ever used a computer?
 0002 ... for more than 4 hours continuously?
 0003 ... more than 8 hours?
 0004 ... more than 16 hours?
 0005 ... more than 32 hours?
-- from The Hacker Test, Version 1.0, by Felix Lee, John Hayes and Angela Thomas
%%
 1955-1975: 36 Elvis movies.
 1975-1989: nothing.
-- Tom Neff
%%
 Cole's Law:
   Thinly sliced cabbage.
%%
 Fraternities have no SLACK, no matter how slack-jawed they may appear.
I taught elementary calculus here at the University of SLACK for several
years, and have observed these folks carefully.
 Although some of them looked like they had SLACK, it's clear to me that
this was just the result of not getting enough sleep after the puking contest.
 I mean, those guys don't watch enough television to have real SLACK.
-- William K Glunt ([e-mail])
%%
 In respect to lock-making, there can scarcely be such a thing as dishonesty
 of intention: the inventor produces a lock which he honestly thinks will
 possess such and such qualities; and he declares his belief to the world.
 If others differ from him in opinion concerning those qualities, it is open
 to them to say so; and the discussion, truthfully conducted, must lead to
 public advantage: the discussion stimulates curiosity, and curiosity stimu-
 lates invention.  Nothing but a partial and limited view of the question
 could lead to the opinion that harm can result: if there be harm, it will be
 much more than counterbalanced by good."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
   published around 1850.
%%
 Real Programmers always confuse Christmas and Halloween because
 OCT 31 == DEC 25 !
-- Andrew Rutherford ([e-mail])
%%
!    A good move
!!   An excellent move
!!!  An I.A. Horowitz move
-- E.C.O.
%%
!xob XINEX siht edisni kcuts m'I ,pleH
%%
" 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability"
- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"'My country right or wrong' is like saying, 'My mother drunk or sober.'"
-- G. K. Chesterton
%%
"'Tis not too late to seek a newer world."
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
%%
"'Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true."
-- Poloniouius, in Willie the Shake's _Hamlet, Prince of Darkness_
%%
"'To the Workers of the world, I am sorry.' -- Karl Marx"
-- Seen on the side of an East German factory
%%
"'Truth' never set anyone free. It is only *doubt* which will bring mental
 emancipation."
--Anton LaVey
%%
"(Humanity) is the measure of all things."
-- Protagoras
%%
"(The Chief Programmer) personally defines the functional and performance
 specifications, designs the program, codes it, tests it, and writes its
 documentation... He needs great talent, ten years experience and
 considerable systems and applications knowledge, whether in applied
 mathematics, business data handling, or whatever."
-- Fred P. Brooks, _The Mythical Man Month_
%%
"*Real* wizards don't whine about how they paid their dues."
-- Quentin Johnson ([e-mail])
%%
"... You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

"But that's not *fair*!"

"Of course it's not fair. We're *evil*. Look it up."
%%
"... and I realized, we did not live in a scientific society."
-- R. P. Feynman, "Cargo cult science"
%%
"... they [the Indians] are not running but are coming on."
--- note sent from Lt. Col Custer to other officers
    of the 7th Regiment at the Little Bighorn
%%
"... users of a tool are willing to meet you halfway; if you do ninety percent
 of the job, they will be ecstatic."
-- Software Tools, p.136.
%%
"... you're my best friend.  I don't have to be nice to you.
Besides, everybody knows I'm a jerk."
-- Wally West (the new Flash)
%%
"...Greg Nowak:  `Another flame from greg' - need I say more?"
-- Jonathan D. Trudel, [e-mail]

"No.  You need to say less."
-- Richard Sexton, [e-mail]
%%
"...I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want
to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the
Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet
people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business
there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press.  But so far, the whole
country is like a concentration camp.  The barbed wire on the fence around
the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark.  This openness that
you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed
to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders.  These
leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or
appease it.  He will say: "Yes, we can do business!"  This while his
military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a
population of 17 million.  Can you imagine that?
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
%%
"...I think that when statesmen forsake their private conscience for the sake
 of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos."
-- Sir Thomas Moore to Cardinal Woolsey in _A Man for All Seasons_
%%
"...I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by
reorganizing: and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion
of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
-- Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.
%%
"...Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial
 technology... Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain
 the world's democracies, not the world as a whole."
-- K. Eric Drexler
%%
"...Or, I may not feel that my belief-system needs to be self-consistent
 in a post-Goedelian epoch."
-- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
%%
"...The Universe is thronged with fire and light,
 And we but smaller suns, which, skinned, trapped and kept
 Enshrined in blood and precious bones, hold back the night."
-- Ray Bradbury
%%
"...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."
-- Plato, _Phaedrus_
%%
"...a most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"
-- _Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure_
%%
"...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products,
if they are built at all, are dogs!"
-- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987
%%
"...an animal loses not only its life but also its third dimension."
-- Roger M. Knutson, in _Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of
  Roads, Streets,and Highways_
%%
"...and it's finished!  It only has to be written."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"...as long as there is a Legion of super-Heroes, all else can surely
be made right."
-- Sensor Girl
%%
"...cops and reporters are much alike. Both are absolutely dedicated to
doing the job at hand, regardless of obstacles. And both, deep down, really
believe the rules don't apply to them."
-- Jim Barlow, Houston Chronicle
%%
"...if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust,
 this would be a better world."
-- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
%%
"...make -k all to compile everything in the core distribution.  This
will take anywhere from 15 minutes (on a Cray Y-MP) to 12 hours."
-- X Window System Release Notes
%%
"...one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking
 zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs."
-- Robert Firth
%%
"...poetry, like chastity, can be carried too far."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"...proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect."
- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
"...public television is one of the most extravagant, over-capitalized
institutions in our society .. a huge national conglomerate ...l almost
every one of the major local stations in public television has
an elaborate, state-of-the-art, and very expensive production
facility.  Most ... are scarcely used ... but there they are: costing
money and gathering dust."
-- C. M. Lichenstein, former Sr. VP, PBS
%%
"...skill such as yours is evidence of a misspent youth."
-- Herbert Spencer
%%
"...the American dream, in recent years the object of much
 denigration even within our own borders, turns out to have been
 the world's dream, as well."
-- Louis Rukeyser, on events in Eastern Europe
%%
"...the Pro-Life Action League opposes *all* forms of contraception..."
-- Joseph Scheidler, Executive Director, Pro-Life Action League,
    from The Wanderer, August 10, 1989, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking
    For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"...the value of the constitution depends on the good will
of government itself.  If the Supreme Court rules that the
Bill of Rights should not interfere with the important
business of government (which they have done on at least
two occasions), then the constitution is meaningless."
-- John Kormylo
%%
"...what's happening... we're huntin wabbits"
"Actually, muslim wabbits"
-- LAPD squad-car computer messages, as quoted in the Christopher Report, 7/91
%%
"...what's the point of ... new technology if you can't find some way to
 pervert it?"
-- G. A. Effinger, "Marid Changes His Mind", IASFM, 1/90
%%
"...word came down from on high that the group's members are to gather two of
 everything and put them on the ARC before the forty days and forty nights of
 rain come and wipe out the current systems and standards."
---James P. Roynan
in LAN Computing, July 1991
%%
"36 percent of the American Public believes that boiling radioactive milk
 makes it safe to drink."
-- results of a survey by Jon Miller at Northern Illinois University
%%
"40% of the water consumed in the Imperial Valley goes to grow sedan
 grass for export to Japan for raising Kobi beef."
-- Dan Beard, Staff Director, House Interior Committee,
    Water Policy in Western U.S., Regional Reporters Association, 5/20/91
%%
"90% of the water used in Nevada is for agriculture, yet fewer people are
 employed by agriculture in Nevada than at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas."
-- Dan Beard, Staff Director, House Interior Committee,
    Water Policy in Western U.S., Regional Reporters Association, 5/20/91
%%
"???"
-- DEC's RSTS/E operating system
%%
"A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money."
- Everett Dirksen
%%
"A bit of tolerance is worth a megabyte of flaming."
-- Henry Spencer
%%
"A body on vacation tends to remain on vacation unless acted upon by an outside
 force."
-- Carol Reichel
%%
"A book is the product of a contract with the Devil that inverts the Faustian
 contract, he'd told Allie.  Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two
 dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and
 gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least.
 Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins."
-- Salman Rushdie, _The Satanic Verses_
%%
"A box of punchcards could theoretically store 240,000 bytes of information,
 and usually stored less than 80,000.  Think about it."
-- Karlie-q
%%
"A burrito is almost always a wonderful thing."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"A car is just a big purse on wheels."
-- Johanna Reynolds
%%
"A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away a
perfectly good kitten."
-- Doug Larson
%%
"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
%%
"A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple
system that worked."
-- John Gall, _Systemantics_
%%
"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
-- anon
%%
"A dirty mind is a joy forever."
-- Randy Kunkee
%%
"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought."
-- Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers, "Gaudy Night")
%%
"A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
-- Mandelbrot, _The Fractal Geometry of Nature_
%%
"A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular."
-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging
their prejudices."
-- William James
%%
"A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
 He follows a lifestyle we don't endorse,
 He drinks the blood of a sheep, by force,
 The vampire horse, Count Ed!"
 -- Ron ([e-mail])
%%
"A killer stalks the halls of my high school. Innocent cheerleaders die
by knife. Teachers lock the classroom doors. I must find him, or I'll
flunk."
-- From a poem by Peggy Nadramia
%%
"A lecture is where the notes of the professor become the notes
 of the student without passing through the mind of either one."
-- anon
%%
"A little caution outflanks a large cavalry"
- Bismarck
%%
"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing."
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"A man about to speak the truth should keep one foot in the stirrup."
-- Old Mongolian Saying
%%
"A man came into the the office one day and said he was a sailor.  We
cured him of that."
-- Mark Twain, on his days as a doctor's apprentice in California
%%
"A mighty work deserves a mighty theme."
-- Herman Melville
%%
"A mind is a terrible thing to have leaking out your ears."
-- The League of Sadistic Telepaths
%%
"A pacifist who calls the police isn't one; hired violence is still violence."
-- Clayton E. Cramer optilink!cramer
%%
"A poet only writes about the things he cannot do."
-- A canard, sung by Meg in "The One Love of My Life",
    in Lerner's and Lowe's "Brigadoon"
%%
"A reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee"
-- Motto of Hunter S. Thompson's lawyer
%%
"A slower system is better than an incorrect one."
-- Mark Diekhans ([e-mail])
%%
"A stitch in time would have confused Einstein."
-- Anonymous
%%
"A survey is being made of this":  We need more time to think of an answer.
--Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
%%
"A system of economy is good when ... the farmer, the manufacturer, and the
 trader enjoy the full liberty of their property, their production, and their
 industry."
-- Eschasseriaux
%%
"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on."
- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
"A witty saying proves nothing."
-- Voltaire
%%
"ARTICLE NUMBERING IS IRRELEVANT.  ENCOURAGEMENT IS IRRELEVANT.  YOU WILL
 BECOME ONE WITH THE BORG."
-- Martin F. Rose ([e-mail])
%%
"Ada is PL/I trying to be Smalltalk.
-- Codoso diBlini
%%
"Ada is the work of an architect, not a computer scientist."
- Jean Icbiah, inventor of Ada, weenie
%%
"After SPACE BALLS, the Movie, now comes SPACE BALLS, the Operating System,
 on Your nearby IBM Mainframe..."
-- Till Poser ([e-mail])
%%
"After one week [visiting Austria] I couldn't wait to go back to the United
States.  Everything was much more pleasant in the United States, because of
the mentality of being open-minded, always positive.  Everything you want to
do in Europe is just, 'No way.  No one has ever done it.'  They haven't any
more the desire to go out to conquer and achieve -- I realized that I had much
more the American spirit."
-- Arnold Schwarzenegger
%%
"After the first year, Captain Kirk lost his secretary, Yeoman Rand.
 She used to bring him coffee (even heating it with a hand phaser in
 times of galley distress) and hand him clipboards with flashing lights
 on them for him to initial.  I wonder whatever happened to her..."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain."
-- Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
%%
"Aging is bad, but consider the alternative."
-- anon
%%
"Ah, you know the type.     They like to blame it all on the Jews or the Blacks,
'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that life's one big,
scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only
reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers."
-- an analysis of neo-Nazis and such, Badger comics
%%
"Ahead warp factor 1"
- Captain Kirk
%%
"Ahhh.  A man with a sharp wit.  Someone ought to take it away from him
before he cuts himself."
-- Peter da Silva, [e-mail]
%%
"All Bibles are man-made."
-- Thomas Edison
%%
"All God's children are not beautiful.    Most of God's children are, in fact,
barely presentable."
-- Fran Lebowitz
%%
"All I ask of my body is that it carry around my head."
-- Thomas Alva Edison
%%
"All Marxists, basically, are reactionaries, yearning for the Oriental
 despotisms of pre-Hellenic times, the neolithic culture that preceded
 the rise of self-consciousness and egoism."
-- Robert Anton Wilson, writing as "Justin Case".
%%
"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called
 Huckleberry Finn."
-- Ernest Hemingway
%%
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific."
-- Jane Wagner
%%
"All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as
 video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal
 value."
-- Carl Sagan
%%
"All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is
constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role
they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume."
-- Noam Chomsky
%%
"All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in.  I'm glad they
 are a snowman with protective rubber skin."
-- They Might Be Giants
%%
"All the system's paths must be topologically and circularly interrelated for
 conceptually definitive, locally transformable, polyhedronal understanding to
 be attained in our spontaneous -- ergo, most economical -- geodesiccally
 structured thoughts."
-- R. Buckminster Fuller [...and a total non-sequitur as far as I can tell. -kl]
%%
"All these black people are screwing up my democracy."
-- Ian Smith
%%
"All this will not be finished in the first 100 days.  Nor will it be finished
 in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even
 perhaps in our lifetime on this planet.  But let us begin."
-- John F. Kennedy (from his Inaugural Address)
%%
"All those moments will be lost, in time, like tears in rain.  Time to Die."
-- Roy Batty, in Blade Runner
%%
"All through human history, tyrannies have tried to enforce obedience by
 prohibiting disrespect for the symbols of their power.  The swastika is
 only one example of many in recent history."
-- American Bar Association task force on flag burning
%%
"All we are given is possibilities -- to make ourselves one thing or another."
-- Ortega y Gasset
%%
"Allright, nobody move!"
  "Take him, you fools!  He can only shoot one of us!"
"You're the one."
  "Nobody move."
-- Get Smart
%%
"Although Poles suffer official censorship, a pervasive secret police and laws
 similar to those in the USSR, there are thousands of underground publications,
 a legal independent Church, private agriculture, and the East bloc's first and
 only independent trade union federation, NSZZ Solidarnosc, which is an
 affiliate of both the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the
 World Confederation of Labor.  There is literally a world of difference
 between Poland - even in its present state of collapse - and Soviet society at
 the peak of its "glasnost."  This difference has been maintained at great cost
 by the Poles since 1944.
-- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
   gateway from EARN (European Academic Research Network)
   to Poland
%%
"Although plastic was brought into industrial use in 1909 by L.H. Baekeland of
 Yonkers, it was not until after World War II that the modern miracle substance
 was used in a wide variety of consumer goods, among them speedboats, dentures
 and flamingos. Previously flamingos were made of cement.  Before that they were
 made by other flamingos."
-- William E. Geist, The New York Times
%%
"America is a stronger nation for the ACLU's uncompromising effort."
-- President John F. Kennedy
%%
"Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy but, when put to
 the test, usually find it to be an 'inconvenience.'  We have opted instead
 for an authoritarian system *disguised* as a Democracy.  We pay through
 the nose for an enormous joke-of-a-government, let it push us around, and
 then wonder how all those assholes got in there."
--  Frank Zappa
%%
"An Academic speculated whether a bather is beautiful
 if there is none in the forest to admire her. He hid
 in the bushes to find out, which vitiated his premise
 but made him happy.
 Moral: Empiricism is more fun than speculation."
-- Sam Weber
%%
"An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
 Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
 new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax."
-- David Letterman
%%
"An entire fraternity of strapping Wall-Street-bound youth.  Hell - this
 is going to be a blood bath!"
-- Post Bros. Comics
%%
"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
%%
"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
%%
"An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself."
-- Albert Camus
%%
"An open mind has but one disadvantage: it collects dirt."
-- a saying at RPI
%%
"An organization dries up if you don't challenge it with growth."
-- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
%%
"An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of code."
-- an anonymous programmer
%%
"And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?"
-- Looney Tunes, The Scarlet Pumpernickel (1950, Chuck Jones)
%%
"And if You exist, why do you let your Evil churches exist????"
-- Michael S. Schechter

"Maybe because He is a libertarian?"
-- Mike Van Pelt
%%
"And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the bible
 were used to beat plowshares into swords..."
-- Alan Watts
%%
"And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing what
 the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions."
-- David Jones @ Megatest Corporation
%%
"And it's my opinion, and that's only my opinion, you are a lunatic.  Just
 because there are a few hundred other people sharing your lunacy with you
 does not make you any saner.  Doomed, eh?"
-- Oleg Kiselev,[e-mail]
%%
"And it's so portable --- at least, it worked on every VAX that I tried it on."
-- Tim McDaniel ([e-mail]) 6 Sep 90,
     <[e-mail]>
%%
"And kids... learn something from Susie and Eddie.
 If you think there's a maniacal psycho-geek in the
 basement:
    1)    Don't give him a chance to hit you on the
    head with an axe!
    2)    Flee the premises... even if you're in your
    underwear.
    3)    Warn the neighbors and call the police.
 But whatever else you do... DON'T GO DOWN IN THE DAMN BASEMENT!"
-- Saturday Night Live meets Friday the 13th
%%
"And now that the legislators and the do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so
 many systems upon society, may they end up where they should have begun: may
 they reject all systems, and try liberty..."
-- Frederic Bastiat
%%
"And remember, rebooting your brain can be tricky."
-- Eric Townsend (erict@flatline)
%%
"And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb."
-- Spaceballs
%%
"And the Lord God said unto Moses -- and correctly, I believe ..."
-- Field Marshal Montgomery, opening a chapel service
%%
"And they told us, what they wanted...
 Was a sound that could kill some-one, from a distance."
-- Kate Bush
%%
"And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead
 by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business
 product: a really sharp-looking report."
-- Dave Barry
%%
"Another lesson I learned was not to give pieces of my company away when
 it was small in exchange for investment capital.  In the first place,
 those shares would be worth millions today.  Even more important, when
 you bring in shareholders, the government can start looking around at
 your business and telling you what to do, and let me tell you, the
 government knows *nothing* about running a business!"
-- John McCormack, _Self-Made in America_
%%
"Another way to look at this is: if your computer is not capable of
 saturating *your* I/O bandwidth, you may be pissing away *your*
 wetware power. And last I checked, mine isn't increasing exponentially..."
-- Dan Mocsny ([e-mail])
%%
"Any excuse will serve a tyrant."
-- Aesop
%%
"Any fully matured science of ecology will have to grapple with the fact that
 from the ecological point of view, man is one of those animals which is in
 danger from its too successful participation in the struggle for existence."
-- Joseph Wood Krutch
%%
"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple
 his world.  To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than
 against them is to attain literacy."
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
%%
"Anyone attempting to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of
 course, living in a state of sin."
-- John Von Neumann
%%
"Anyone trying to split hairs will always find someone who has a sharper knife."
-- Jim Hurley ([e-mail]) 21 Sep 90
%%
"Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined."
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
"Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy."
-- John Dewey
%%
"Anyone who wants to be paid for writing software is a fascist asshole."
-- Richard M. Stallman
%%
"Anything created must necessarily be inferior to the essence of the creator."
-- Claude Shouse ([e-mail])

"Einstein's mother must have been one heck of a physicist."
-- Joseph C. Wang ([e-mail])
%%
"Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."
-- G. K. Chesterton
%%
"Are you police officers?"
  "No, ma'am.  We're musicians."
-- Blues Brothers
%%
"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist
 does the better."
-- Andre Gide
%%
"As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of
 Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity.  I collected some of
 their Proverbs..."
-- Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
%%
"As a rule software systems do not work well until they have been
 used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications."
-- Dave Parnas, Communications of the ACM (33, 6 June 1990 p.636)
%%
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and
 I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.
 This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
-- Matt Cartmill
%%
"As soon as you are willing to discard observational data because it conflicts
 with religion, you are giving up any hope of ever really understanding the
 universe.  As soon as you pick religion as the touchstone of reality, then we
 have to start discussing how one can demonstrate the correctness of one
 religion over another when different *religions* disagree."
--  Wilson Heydt ([e-mail])

"The answer is simple: kill the heretics.  History shows us that this is the
 actual solution that competing religions apply -- trial by combat or trial by
 ordeal.  God is the final arbiter.  What a sad waste of human potential it
 has proven to be."
-- Paul Hager ([e-mail])
%%
"As the expression goes, we spend our youth attaining wealth, and our wealth
 attaining youth."
-- Douglas Coupland, from _Generation X_ (Tales for an Accelerated Culture)
%%
"Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if one
 went to Harvard)."
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%%
"Ask not what A Group of Employees can do for you.  But ask what can
 All Employees do for A Group of Employees."
-- Mike Dennison, in response to an "inspirational" memo at Ferranti Controls
%%
"Assuming that either the left wing or the right wing gained
 control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles"
-- Pat Paulsen
%%
"Athens built the Acropolis.  Corinth was a commercial city, interested in
 purely materialistic things.  Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the
 old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth."
-- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%%
"Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed."
-- Robin, The Boy Wonder
%%
"Aww, if you make me cry anymore, you'll fog up my helmet."
-- "Visionaries" cartoon
%%
"BTW, does Jesus know you flame?"
-- Diane Holt, [e-mail], to Ed Carp
%%
"BYTE editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then
 print the chaff."
-- Lionel Hummel (uiucdcs!hummel), derived from a quote by Adlai Stevenson, Sr.
%%
"Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham
 Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
    1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
    2) Advising the President.
    3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin."
-- David Letterman
%%
"Batton down the hatches, several thousand Zulus approaching from the north."
-- Christopher Commision report of LAPD car-to-car computer message, 7/91
%%
"Be *excellent* to each other."
-- Bill, or Ted, in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
%%
"Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original
 in your work."
-- Gustave Flaubert
%%
"Be there.  Aloha."
-- Steve McGarret, _Hawaii Five-Oh_
%%
"Be warned that being an expert is more than understanding how a system is
 supposed to work.  Expertise is gained by investigating why a system doesn't
 work."
-- Brian Redman, Bell Communications Research, "UUCP UNIX-to-UNIX Copy",
    _UNIX NETWORKING_, edited by Stephen Kochan and Patrick Wood
%%
"Because he's a character who's looking for his own identity, [He-Man is]
 an interesting role for an actor."
-- Dolph Lundgren, "actor"
%%
"Because my name is Daffy,
 They think that I'm insane
 Please pass the ketchup,
 I think it's going to rain!

 Oh, you can't bounce a meatball,
 Try with all your might.
 Turn on the radio,
 I want to fly a kite!"
-- D. Duck ([e-mail])
%%
"Been through Hell?  Whaddya bring back for me?"
-- A. Brilliant
%%
"Before engaging in a battle of wits, make sure your opponent is armed."
-- East Texas Proverb
%%
"Behind every successful man is a surprised woman."
-- Maryon Pearson
%%
"Being against torture ought to be sort of a bipartisan thing."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"Being against torture ought to be sort of a multipartisan thing."
-- Karl Lehenbauer, as amended by Jeff Daiell, a Libertarian
%%
"Better late than before anybody has invited you."
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
"Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey
 wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup.  That's lost."
-- Ivan Chtcheglov
%%
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but
 inwardly they are ravening wolves."
-- Matthew 7:15
%%
"Beware of programmers carrying screwdrivers."
-- Chip Salzenberg
%%
"Bidet?  Try washing your whole body."
-- anon
%%
"Big Brother is hallucinating."
-- Elizabeth D Zwicky ([e-mail]), title of a comp.risks article
%%
"Bill Gates says no matter how much more power we can supply, he'll develop
 some really exciting software that will bring the machine to its knees."
-- Intel VP David House, In _EE_Times_, 16 October 1989
%%
"Bite off, dirtball."
-- Richard Sexton, [e-mail]
%%
"Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them
 seemed to come from Texas."
- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
%%
"Brain?  Brain?  What is 'brain'?"
%%
"Bring the little ones unto me, and I will get a good price for them."
-- Dr. Fegg
%%
"Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies."
-- Honore de Balzac
%%
"Bureaucracy is the enemy of innovation."
-- Mark Shepherd, former President and CEO of Texas Instruments
%%
"Bush has it backwards -- abortion is surgical; bombing is murder."
-- sign at anti-war march
%%
"But Calvin is no kind and loving god!  He's one of the _old_ gods!  He demands
 sacrifice!"
-- Calvin
%%
"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great
 Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve, the Magic
 and Indefatigable?"

"The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought,
 thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan
 Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
"But don't you see, the color of wine in a crystal glass can be spiritual.
 The look in a face, the music of a violin.  A Paris theater can be infused
 with the spiritual for all its solidity."
-- Lestat, _The Vampire Lestat_, Anne Rice
%%
"But then a new problem came up: the Jupiter probe, Galileo, was going to
 use a power supply that runs on heat generated by radioactivity. If the
 shuttle carrying Galileo failed, radioactivity could be spread over a
 large area."
-- Richard P. Feynmann, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
%%
"But this one goes to eleven."
-- Nigel Tufnel
%%
"Buy land.  They've stopped making it."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun."
-- P. J. Plauger, from his April Fool's column in April 88's "Computer Language"
%%
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
to suspect "Hungry."
-- a Larson cartoon
%%
"C is the assembly language of Tcl."
-- Karl Lehenbauer ([e-mail])

"Assembly language is also available."
-- Jordan Henderson  ([e-mail])
%%
"Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception."
-- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
[apparently, good TV reception is a basic necessity -- at least in Tucson  -kl]
%%
"Cache is, by definition, a compromise."
-- Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute

"Yes, cache is a compromise.  Mainly to your wallet and the speed of light."
-- Jim Hutchison (ucsd!celerity!hutch)
%%
"Call immediately.  Time is running out.  We both need to do something
 monstrous before we die."
-- Message from Ralph Steadman to Hunter Thompson
%%
"Calling J-Man Kink.  Calling J-Man Kink.  Hash missile sighted, target
 Los Angeles.  Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."
-- The Firesign Theatre movie, _J-Men Forever_
%%
"Can you imagine what it would be like if there had been ``look and feel''
 lawsuits over automobiles?"
-- Mark Diekhans ([e-mail])
%%
"Can you program?"  "Well, I'm literate, if that's what you mean!"
%%
"Can't you just gesture hypnotically and make him disappear?"
    "It does not work that way.  RUN!"
-- Hadji on metaphyics and Mandrake in "Johnny Quest"
%%
"Captain Picquard trusts his bartender's instincts and saves the Federation."
-- Karl's synopsis of a recent Star Trek episode
%%
"Capture him, beat him and treat him like dirt."
-- LAPD squad-car computer message, as quoted in the Christopher Report, 7/91
%%
"Card readers?  We don't need no stinking card readers."
-- Peter da Silva (at the National Academy of Sciences, 1965, in a
   particularly vivid fantasy)
%%
"Care to expound, or are you just going to leave us all with the
 impression that you're merely an inarticulate asshole?"
-- Jay "you ignorant splut!" Maynard ([e-mail])

"Lest I leave the wrong impression, I'm not inarticulate."
-- Walker Mangum ([e-mail])
%%
"Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world."
- The Beach Boys
%%
"Cats are soft-furred mammals, who are mildly and clumsily predatory.  They
 have anywhere from two to a dozen neurons. The baseline intellect of a cat
 has two states.  1) Chow state (feeding frenzy) 2) Asleep mode (unconscious
 on your bed with whiskers twitching)"
-- Elaine Richards
%%
"Christians maintain a higher enjoyment level in the intimacy of their love
 life than the population in general."
-- Beverly LaHaye, President, Concerned Women of America, in her book, _The
    Act of Marriage, The Beauty of Sexual Love_, 1976, as quoted in "The Far
    Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Civilisation is the art of living in towns of such size that everyone does
 not know everyone else."
-- Julian Jaynes
%%
"Civilization is a movement, not a condition; it is a voyage, not a harbor."
- Toynbee
%%
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy."
-- Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand's _The Fountainhead_
%%
"Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong."
-- Blair Houghton
%%
"Come on over here, baby, I want to do a thing with you."
- A cop, arresting a non-groovy person after the revolution, Firesign Theater
%%
"Committees do harm merely by existing."
-- Freeman Dyson
%%
"Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
 make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
 As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way.  If
 we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
 personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make
 computing a part of our lives?"
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
%%
"Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy."
-- Joseph Campbell
%%
"Computers are useless; they can only give answers."
-- Picasso
%%
"Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!"
-- Ben Jonson
%%
"Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."
-- Daffy Duck, from Looney Tunes "Ali Baba Bunny" (1957, Chuck Jones)
%%
"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."
-- Bernard Berenson
%%
"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "If it was so, it might be; and if
it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.  That's logic."
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
"Contrary to ongoing and recent media reports you will find the Report is
 well-balanced and completely deferential to the freedoms outlined in the
 first amendment."
-- Henry E. Hudson, Chairman, Attorney General's Commission on Pornography
%%
"Conversation is the best aphrodisiac."
-- Kelly Cota ([e-mail])
%%
"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts
 most subtly on the human will."
-- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"
%%
"Could you both just send hate mail a few times a day and post the synopsis
 in the year 2000?"
-- Wm E Davidsen Jr, [e-mail], to a couple guys in news.groups
%%
"Cover a war in a place where you can't drink beer or talk to a woman?
   Hell no!"
-- Hunter S. Thompson, on the US war against Iraq
%%
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false.  What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
entire intellectual heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
%%
"Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training."
-- Anna Freud

Well, sometimes, anyway.
-- Mark Brader, utzoo!sq!msb
%%
"Credo, quia absurdum est."  [I believe, because it is absurd.]
-- Tertullian, Roman lawyer, theologian and misogynist; man of questionable
      judgment
%%
"Crucifixes are sexy because there's a naked man on them."
-- Madonna
%%
"Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth."
-- Lillian Hellman
%%
"DO NOT, repeat, DO NOT blow the hatch!"
 "Roger....hatch blown!"
-- MAROONED
%%
"Dammit, we're all going to die, let's die doing something *useful*!"
-- Hal Clement, on comments that space exploration is dangerous
%%
"Danger, you haven't seen the last of me!"
   "No, but the first of you turns my stomach!"
-- The Firesign Theatre's Nick Danger
%%
"Data is a lot like humans:  It is born.  Matures.  Gets married to other data,
 divorced. Gets old.  One thing that it doesn't do is die.  It has to be
 killed."
-- Arthur Miller
%%
"Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged
 about forever."
-- button at the Boston Computer Museum
%%
"Decaffeinated coffee?  Kinda like kissing your sister."
-- Bob Irwin ([e-mail])
%%
"Democracy is also a form of worship.  It is the worship of Jackals by
 Jackasses."
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
"Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for the appointment
 by the corrupt few."
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"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
%%
"Destroying property is sometimes a good way to save lives."
-- Mary Meehan, Anti-Choice Columnist, "The National Catholic Register",
    about abortion clinic violence, 10/12/86, as quoted in "The Far
    Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Did U arrest the 85 yr old lady or just beat her up."
   "We just slapped her around a bit... she's getting m/t [medical treatment]
     right now."
-- LAPD squad-car computer messages, as quoted in the Christopher Report, 7/91
%%
"Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no
one else has thought."
- Albert Szent-Gyorgi
%%
"Do not be deceived.  Revolutions do not run backwards."
-- A. Lincoln, railsplitter, lawyer, imperialist
%%
"Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture,
 an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads."
-- John Galt, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
%%
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on
 your computer."
-- stolen from Brian Gollum
%%
"Do not speak of what men deserve.  For we each of us deserve everything,
 every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead Kings, and we each
 of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger.   Have we not eaten
 while another starved?  Will you punish us for that?  Will you reward us for
 the virtue of starving while others ate?  No man earns punishment, no man
 earns reward.  Free your mind of the idea of *deserving*, of *earning*, and
 you will begin to be able to think."
-- Odo, The Prison Letters (Ursula LeGuin, _The Dispossessed_)
%%
"Do not stop to ask what is it;
 Let us go and make our visit."
-- T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
%%
"Do what you wanna, do what you will;
 Just don't mess up your neighbor's thrill.
 And when you pay the bill, kindly leave a little tip
 To help the next poor sucker on his one-way trip."
    - Frank Zappa, "You Are What You Is"
%%
"Do you know that doing your best is not good enough?  First you must know
 what to do."
-- manufacturing-quality theorist W. Edwards Deming
%%
"Don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see."
-- Will Rogers
%%
"Don't discount flying pigs before you have good air defense."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"Don't drop acid, take it pass-fail!"
-- Bryan Michael Wendt
%%
"Don't get married.  Find a woman you hate and buy her a house."
-- anon
%%
"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.  Hate me because I'm beautiful, smart
and rich."
-- Calvin Keegan
%%
"Don't question luck."
-- Roberto Mesa
%%
"Don't take life too serious. It ain't no ways permanent."
-- Pogo, by Walt Kelly
%%
"Don't talk to me about disclaimers!  I invented disclaimers!"
-- The Censored Hacker
%%
"Don't think; let the machine do it for you!"
-- E. C. Berkeley
%%
"Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes.  I get stranger things than you free
 with my breakfast cereal."
- Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hithiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
"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
%%
"Don't worry about things that you have no control over, because you
 have no control over them.  Don't worry about things that you have
 control over, because you have control over them."
-- Mickey Rivers
%%
"Don't you know there ain't no devil, it's just god when he's drunk."
-- Tom Waits
%%
"Draft politicians, not human beings."
-- antidraft slogan coined by Jeff Daiell, 1979
%%
"Dump the condiments.  If we are to be eaten, we don't need to taste good."
-- "Visionaries" cartoon
%%
"During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has
 been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride
 and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity,; in both,
 superstition, bigotry, and persecution."
-- James Madison
%%
"Earnestness is just stupidity sent to college."
-- P.J. O'Rourke
%%
"Either sue me, or shut the hell up."
-- Greg Hennessy, [e-mail]
%%
"Elvis is my copilot."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"Engineering meets art in the parking lot and things explode."
-- Garry Peterson, about Survival Research Labs
%%
"Engineering without management is art."
-- Jeff Johnson
%%
"England's monarchy is how old?  1000 years?  Jesus, you guys must have a hell
 of a lot of laws!"
-- an anonymous sysadmin
%%
"Eraserhead is an example of the opposite of brainwashing.  It actually leaves
 a dirty bathtub ring on your mind."
-- David Fox ([e-mail])
%%
"Escaping through the lily fields, I came across an empty space
 It trembled and exploded, left a bus stop in its place..."
-- unknown
%%
"Even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness!"
-- from Fiddler On The Roof
%%
"Even if the propeller had the power of propelling a vessel, it would be found
 altogether useless in practice, because the power being applied in the stern
 would be absolutely impossible to make the vessel steer."
-- Sir William Symonds - British Royal Navy, 1837
%%
"Even if you start your laundry before 8 AM on Saturday, you will not finish
 folding it until after midnight on Sunday."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
-- Will Rogers
%%
"Even the most boundless love can end."
-- Rhett Butler, to Scarlet O'Hara, _Gone With The Wind_
%%
"Ever free-climbed a thousand foot vertical cliff with 60 pounds of gear
 strapped to your butt?"
   "No."
"'Course you haven't, you fruit-loop little geek."
-- The Mountain Man, one of Dana Carvey's SNL characters
[ditto]
%%
"Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was
 eating paper and a policeman was at the door.  Now all you have to do is
 bend a disk."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
  commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement
%%
"Every group has a couple of experts.  And every group has at least one idiot.
 Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained.  It's sometimes hard
 to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and
 pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits."
-- Chuq Von Rospach, [e-mail], about Usenet
%%
"Every institution I've ever been associated with has tried to screw me."
-- Stephen Wolfram
%%
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the
 part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of."
-- They Might Be Giants
%%
"Every opportunity we have to run our R&D scientists and engineers against
 our customers, we do it."
-- George Heilmeier, Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas
%%
"Every year a few research results pay the freight for all the rest."
-- Robert A. Frosch, General Motors
%%
"Everybody is talking about the weather but nobody does anything about it."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"Everyone is entitled to an *informed* opinion."
-- Harlan Ellison
%%
"Everyone's head is a cheap movie show."
-- Jeff G. Bone
%%
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"Everything to excess.  Moderation is for monks."
-- Lazarus Long
%%
"Evolution is what it is.  The upper classes have always died out; it's one of
 the most charming things about them."
-- Germaine Greer
%%
"Excuse me, Worker, I'll just be a nanosecond."
-- a computer, from Firesign Theater's "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus"
%%
"Excuses are like assholes: Everybody has one and they both stink."
-- unknown
%%
"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything."
-- Russell Baker
%%
"Facts are stupid things."
-- President Ronald Reagan
   (a blooper from his speech at the '88 GOP convention)
%%
"Failing to get them to do it your way might mean they're stupid, but it also
 means you failed to get them to do it your way."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"Faith" can be defined as "any man's hope that the human spirit is capable
of understanding"; that anything actually matters in the larger
universe; and that understanding anything could be important outside
of our own selfish whims and desire to survive. ...and somehow, because
it is important, understanding can go on without us, waiting only
to be rediscovered by the future, or at worst, pissed away, in spite
of all our prayers, and work, and suffering.

Every expression of the human spirit is an act of faith.
-- Ellyn Mustard ([e-mail])
%%
"Faith:  not *wanting* to know what is true."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
"Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint."
-- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
%%
"Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your
 aim."
-- Santayana
%%
"Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters;
united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels"
-- Goya
%%
"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though
 checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither
 enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows
 not victory or defeat."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
%%
"Faster than a speeding bullet.  More powerful than a locomotive.  Able to leap
 tall buildings in a single bound.

"'Look!  Up in the sky!'
"'It's a bird!'
"'It's a plane!'
"'No, it's Superman!'

"Yes, it's Superman, strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth
 with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

 Superman, who can change the course of mighty rivers; bend steel in his bare
 hands; and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great
 metropolitan newspaper, fights a never ending battle for Truth, Justice, and
 The American Way!"
%%
"File names are infinite in length where infinity is set to 255 characters."
-- Peter Collinson, "The Unix File System"
%%
"First, we were making the effort there so that people would have their own
 right to decide their own future, and could select their own form of
 government ... Now we're saying we're going to fight there so that we don't
 have to fight in Thailand, so we don't have to fight on the West Coast of the
 United States, so that they won't move across the Rockies.
-- Robert F. Kennedy, November 26, 1967
%%
"Flattery is all right -- if you don't inhale."
-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
"Flextime:  Starting a 10+ hour day up to an hour early (on a regular,
 scheduled basis with the approval of an immediate supervisor)."
-- A Ferranti International Controls "volunteer"
%%
"Flight Reservation systems decide whether or not you exist. If your information
 isn't in their database, then you simply don't get to go anywhere."
-- Arthur Miller
%%
"Flint Paper is insane.  I really respect that."
-- Max
%%
"Floggings will continue until morale improves."
-- anonymous flyer being distributed at Exxon USA
%%
"Football combines the worst elements of America:  Mass violence punctuated by
 committee meetings."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"For I lean on no dead kin, my name in mine for fame or scorn
 And the world began when I was born and the world is mine to win."
-- Badger Clark
%%
"For a male and female to live continuously together is...  biologically
 speaking, an extremely unnatural condition."
-- Robert Briffault
%%
"For instance, several years ago we tracked down a twelve-year-old girl who
 was going to have an abortion so that we could talk her out of it.  Talking
 a woman out of having an abortion is not news.  But tracking her down using
 a private detective is."
-- Joseph Scheidler, Executive Director, Pro Life Action League, "Closed:
    99 Ways to Stop Abortion", 1985, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For
    Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"For the church to say that abortion is not acceptable for a Catholic
 is fine.  To say directly or indirectly that on something that is a
 church teaching that you must also vote according to that -- that's
 not acceptable in a country based on the First Amendment."
-- Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy
%%
"For the love of phlegm...a stupid wall of death rays.  How tacky can ya get?"
-- Post Brothers comics
%%
"For the man who has everything... Penicillin."
-- F. Borquin
%%
"For the record, pot, like the _Reader's Digest_, is not necessarily habit-
 forming, but both can lead to hard-core addiction: heroin, in one case,
 abridged bad books in the other.  Either way you look at it, a withdrawal
 from a meaninful life."
-- Mordecai Richler, "Going Home Again"
%%
"For those of you who don't know, you know that after about three or four
 years of concern on this issue the board of the National Right to Life
 Committee voted to oppose ERA."
-- Dr. John Wilke, President, National Right to Life Committee, "Weekend",
    1/21/79, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a
    Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"For those who say I can't impose my morality on others, I say just watch me."
-- Joseph Scheidler, Executive Director, Pro-Life Action League, "Pro-Life
    Action News", 8/8/89, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For
    Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered, for just such an emergency."
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%%
"Free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty, I am free at last."
-- Martin Luther King
%%
"Free markets select for winning solutions."
-- Eric S. Raymond
%%
"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all."
-- Nathaniel Branden
%%
"Freedom" has no meaning of itself. There are always restrictions, be they
 legal, genetic, or physical. If you don't believe me, try to chew a radio
 signal.
-- Kelvin Throop III
%%
"Friends don't let friends run Xenix."
-- Stephen J. Friedl
%%
"From an operating system research point of view, Unix is -- if not dead --
 certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it."
-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix, Usenix keynote speech from Summer 1990
   [and no, that doesn't mean to VMS, MS-DOS or OS/2  -cookie ed.]
%%
"From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."
-- Dr. Seuss
%%
"Fuckin' A!  Purple Haze!!!"
-- Louie Gonzalez, Geometry class, 1973
%%
"GOTO statement considered harmful"
- E. W. Dijkstra, title to a letter in CACM 11, 3 (March, 1968)
%%
"Gentlemen, gentlemen!  You can't fight in here!  This is the war room!"
-- Doctor Strangelove
%%
"Genuinely skillful use of obscenities is uniformly absent on the Internet."
-- Karl Kleinpaste
%%
"Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own
 corrections.  You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."
-- Vilfredo Pareto
%%
"Giving money and power to the government is like giving
 whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%%
"Go on! Shoot me again! I enjoy it! I love the smell of burnt feathers
 and gunpowder and cordite!"
-- Daffy Duck, "Duck! Rabbit! Duck!"
%%
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"Go to Hell Mr. Stout -- you stink as a human being."
-- Deb Paul
%%
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire
%%
"God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are."
-- Billy Graham
%%
"God not only plays dice, He sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be
 seen."
- S. Hawking
%%
"God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and
 the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday."
-- William Bragg
%%
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
 courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
%%
"Good literature is about Love and War. Trash fiction is about Sex and
 Violence."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Gort, klaatu nikto barada."
-- The Day the Earth Stood Still
%%
"Gotcha, you snot-necked weenies!"
-- Post Bros. Comics
%%
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force!  It is a dangerous
 servant and a terrible master."
-- George Washington
%%
"Government sucks."
-- Ben Olson
%%
"Gozer the Gozerian:  As the duly appointed representative of the city,
 county and state of New York, I hereby order you to cease all supernatural
 activities at once and proceed immediately to your place of origin or
 the nearest parallel dimension, whichever is nearest."
-- Ray (Dan Akyroyd, _Ghostbusters_
%%
"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from
 mediocre minds."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"Griswold v. Connecticut first established and guaranteed the `right of
 privacy' in the conjugal act.  Sexual love, however, in a most profound
 way is anything but `private.'  Its very purpose is to break the bonds
 of privacy by physical consummation of an unreserved gift of self.  The
 contraceptive, however, denies the meaning of marital love by falsifying
 its bodily expression.  Love is no longer unreserved; something is held
 back.  `I cannot love all of you,' the contraceptive says, `because I
 cannot love all that might be created by you.'"
-- Edmund Miller, Anti-Abortion Commentator, Fidelity magazine, 10/89,
   as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned
   Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Gun control:  Hitting what you aim at."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Hah.  I know Tim Maroney.  I've smoked pot with Tim Maroney.  And K*nt Paul
Dolan is no Tim Maroney!"
-- Gary Strand ([e-mail])
%%
"Hankerin' for trouble, eh? Well I would like--"
 [aside] "I would like? I would like a trip to Europe!"
 "--I would like..."
-- Daffy Duck, "Dripalong Daffy"
%%
"Happiness is Planet Earth in your rear-view mirror."
-- Sam Hurt
%%
"Happiness is being famous for your financial
 ability to indulge in every kind of excess."
-- Calvin
%%
"Happiness is not a destination.  It's the trip."
-- anon
%%
"Have you got a 27 B stroke 6?"
%%
"Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific.  It is IN the
 Pacific.  It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right
 here."
-- Dan Quayle, Hawaii, Sep 1989
%%
"He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental effort,
 he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion."
-- Mick Farren, _When Gravity Fails_
%%
"He didn't run for reelection.    `Politics brings you into contact with all the
 people you'd give anything to avoid,' he said. `I'm staying home.'"
-- Garrison Keillor, _Lake_Wobegone_Days_
%%
"He don't know me vewy well, DO he?"   -- Bugs Bunny
%%
"He goes on about the wailing and gnashing of teeth.  It comes in one
 verse after another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there
 is a certain pleasure in contemplating the wailing and gnashing of
 teeth, or else it would not occur so often."
-- Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not a Christian"
%%
"He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the
 accomplice of liars and forgers."
-- French philosopher Charles Peguy
%%
"He who flames improperly risks making an ash of himself!"
-- Jeff Klumpp ([e-mail])
%%
"He's not dumb; he knows what he's doing.  He's done that for years ...
 he's learned that if the dream's big enough, the facts don't count."
-- Billy Florence, on the value of dreambuilding
%%
"Hello again, Peabody here..."
-- Mister Peabody
%%
"Hello to married men I've known.
 I'll soon have a wife and leave yours alone."
-- Charlie, singing "Go Home With Bonnie Jean", in
     Lerner's and Lowe's "Brigadoon"
%%
"Hello...  IRON CURTAIN?  Send over a SAUSAGE PIZZA!
 World War III?  No thanks!"
-- Zippy the Pinhead
%%
"Hello?...  What?...  Yes, Jeff...  Flame them."
-- phone conversation overheard in Peter da Silva's office
%%
"Help Mr. Wizard!"
-- Tennessee Tuxedo
%%
"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
 President's and Kings to the scum of the earth..."
-- Lily Tomlin
%%
"Here comes Mr. Bill's dog."
-- Narrator, Saturday Night Live
%%
"Here's a floppy with a tar of a compressed cpio archive... and they say Unix
 is hard to use..."
-- Karl
%%
"Here's something to think about:  How come you never see a headline like
 `Psychic Wins Lottery.'"
-- Comedian Jay Leno
%%
"Hey Ivan, check your six."
-- Sidewinder missile jacket patch, showing a Sidewinder driving up the tail
 of a Russian Su-27
%%
"Hi, I'm Professor Alan Ginsburg... But you can call me... Captain Toke."
-- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
%%
"Hi.  This is Dan Cassidy's answering machine.  Please leave your name and
 number... and after I've doctored the tape, your message will implicate you
 in a federal crime and be brought to the attention of the FBI... BEEEP"
 -- Blue Devil comics
%%
"History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions."
-- Ted Koppel
%%
"Hold still while I flame you."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"Home is is the place where your computer lives and runs your life."
-- Chrome Cowboy, [e-mail]
%%
"Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a
 cockatoo."
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"Honest Officer, had I known my health stood in jeprody I would never had lit
 one."
-- Maxim of the Hells Angels
%%
"How can a man of integrity get along in Washington?"
-- Richard Feynman
%%
"How do I explain to clients that society believes buying a rock (of
 cocaine) is three or four times as bad as raping a woman?"
-- Robert Jakovitch, Broward [FL] Assistant Public Defender
    [from AP story 12 July 1990]
%%
"How many teamsters does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
   "FIFTEEN!!  YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?"
%%
"How to make a million dollars:  First, get a million dollars."
-- Steve Martin
%%
"How's YOUR Endless Project coming?"
-- Mark Diekhans
%%
"I ... reject the argument put forth by many fundamentalists that science has
 nothing to do with religion because God is not among the things making up the
 universe in which we live.  Surely if a necessity for a god-concept in the
 universe ever turns up, that necessity will become evident to the scientist."
-- physicist Ralph Alpher, "Theology of the Big Bang," Religious Humanism,
    Vol. XVII, No. 1 (Winter 1983), pg. 12
%%
"I DO want your money, because god wants your money!"
-- The Reverend Jimmy, from _Repo Man_
%%
"I HATE arbitrary limits, especially when they're small."
-- Stephen Savitzky
%%
"I admire men of character, and I judge character not by how men deal with
 their superiors, but mostly how they deal with their subordinates, and that,
 to me, is where you find out what the character of a man is."
-- General Norman Schwarzkopf
%%
"I alone can bring order to this chaotic world... and all I demand is ...
 blind obedience."
-- Doctor Doom
%%
"I am ... a woman ... and ... technically a parasitic uterine growth"
-- Sean Doran the Younger
%%
"I am astounded ... at the wonderful power you have developed - and terrified
 at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record
 forever."
-- Arthur Sullivan, on seeing a demonstration of Edison's new talking machine
   in 1888
%%
"I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not
 cause for severity?  I WILL be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as
 justice.  On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with
 moderation...I am in earnest - I will not equivocate - I will not excuse - I
 will not retreat a single inch - and I WILL BE HEARD."
-- William Lloyd Garrison
%%
"I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have
 included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.  This
 technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's reign.  My
 carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat.  Better go by some more."
-- [e-mail], in alt.conspiracy
%%
"I am free, no matter what rules surround me.  If I find them tolerable,
 I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them.  I am free
 because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do."
-- Professor Bernardo de la Paz
%%
"I am interested in politics so that someday I will not
 have to be interested in politics."
-- Ayn Rand
%%
"I am made from the dust of the stars, the oceans flow in my veins."
-- Rush, "Presto"
%%
"I am not a pacifist, I celebrate the Fourth of July and all that that means,
 which was guns and bullets to get freedom."
-- Randall Terry, Executive Director, Operation Rescue, "Orange County
    Register," 3/20/89, about abortion clinic violence, as quoted in "The Far
    Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"I am thankful for one leg.  To limp is no disgrace --
 I may not be number one, but I can still run the race."
-- B.C.
%%
"I am the Devil, and I come to do the Devil's work."
-- Charles Manson
%%
"I am your density."
  -- George McFly in "Back to the Future"
%%
"I am, therefore I am."
-- Akira
%%
"I ask for your support for our brave men fighting tonight halfway around the
 world, not for territory, not for glory, but that their younger brothers and
 their sons and your sons can have a chance to grow up in a world of peace and
 freedom, and justice."
-- Richard M. Nixon, April 30, 1970
%%
"I asked you not to have a spaz attack in tx.general, BUT NOOOOO!!!!"
-- Karl, via John Belushi
%%
"I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is
 us."
-- Konrad Lorenz
%%
"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
"I believe in a God which doesn't need heavy financing."
-- Fletch
%%
"I believe in eight of the ten commandments; and I believe in going to church
 every Sunday unless there's a game on."
-- Steve Martin
%%
"I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this
 country what it once was... an arctic wilderness."
-- Steve Martin
%%
"I believe the use of noise to make music will increase until we reach a
 music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make
 available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."
-- composer John Cage, 1937
%%
"I call Christianity the *one* great curse, the *one* great intrinsic
 depravity, the *one* great instinct for revenge for which no expedient
 is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, *petty* -- I call it
 the *one* mortal blemish of mankind."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
"I can give you a sentence with the word horticulture.  You
 can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
"I can give you a sentence with the word punctilious.  There's
 a farmer with two daughters, Lizzie and Tillie.  Lizzie is
 all right, but you have no idea how punctilious."
-- Another member of the Algonquin Round Table
%%
"I can handle reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle it's
 much too confining."
-- Lilly Tomlin
%%
"I can't face the world in the morning.
 I must have coffee before I can speak."
-- Joseph Cotton in Shadow of a Doubt
%%
"I contemplate with sovereign reverence the act of the whole American people
 which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an
 establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus
 building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association in 1802
%%
"I couldn't remember things until I took that Sam Carnegie course."
-- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
%%
"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"I dislike companies that have a we-are-the-high-priests-of-hardware-so-you'll-
 like-what-we-give-you attitude.  I like commodity markets in which iron-and-
 silicon hawkers know that they exist to provide fast toys for software types
 like me to play with..."
-- Eric S. Raymond
%%
"I distrust a close-mouthed man.  He generally picks the wrong time to talk
 and says the wrong things.  Talking's something you can't do judiciously,
 unless you keep in practice.  Now, sir, we'll talk if you like.    I'll
 tell you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk."
-- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
%%
"I distrust a man who says 'when.'  If he's got to be careful not to drink too
 much, it's because he's not to be trusted when he does."
-- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_
%%
"I do not fear computers... I fear the lack of them."
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
 sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo its use."
-- Galileo
%%
"I don't agree at all with any partisan or other criticism of the United States
 build-up in Vietnam."
-- Richard M. Nixon, February 15, 1962
%%
"I don't believe in god because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
-- Clarence Darrow
%%
"I don't believe in psychology.  I believe in good moves."
-- Bobby Fischer
%%
"I don't believe in sweeping social change being manifested by one person,
 unless he has an atomic weapon."
-- Howard Chaykin
%%
"I don't believe that the answer to white racism is black racism."
-- Spiro T. Agnew, then Governor of Maryland
%%
"I don't even know what street Canada is on."
-- Al Capone
%%
"I don't know if I like the idea of seatbelt laws. Enforcing intelligence
 seems, somehow, unamerican."
-- David Pugh
%%
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they
 be considered patriots.  This is one nation under God."
-- George Bush in Free Inquiry magazine, Fall 1988
%%
"I don't know what their
 gripe is.  A critic is
 simply someone paid to
 render opinions glibly."
                 "Critics are grinks and groinks."
-- Baron and Badger, from Badger comics
%%
"I don't know where we come from,
 Don't know where we're going to,
 And if all this should have a reason,
 We would be the last to know.

 So let's just hope there is a promised land,
 And until then,
 ...as best as you can."
-- Steppenwolf, "Rock Me Baby"
%%
"I don't practice what I preach, because I'm not the kind of person I'm
 preaching to."
-- J. R. "Bob" Dobbs
%%
"I don't see the problem.  Satan is a Christian God.  Satanists are a
 kind of off-beat christians.  They don't need a group of their own --
 they belong in some christian group, or talk.religion.misc at most."
-- Thomas Gramstad ([e-mail])
%%
"I don't think Christians should use birth control.  You consummate your
 marriage as often as you like and if you have babies, you have babies."
-- Randall Terry, one of the people behind the current campaign to blockade
   health clinics and publicly harass and humiliate women
%%
"I don't think we should punish the criminal [a rapist] by killing his child."
-- Dr. John Wilke, President, National Right to Life Committee, "Search for
    Common Ground", taped for television 4/89, as quoted in "The Far
    Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"I feared that the committee would decide to go with their previous decision
 unless I credibly pulled a full tantrum."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"I figured there was this holocaust, right, and the only ones left alive were
 Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Cleavers."
-- Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
    is so nice
%%
"I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs."
- H. L. Mencken
%%
"I got a question for ya.  Ya got a minute?"
-- two programmers passing in the hall
%%
"I got everybody to pay up front...then I blew up their planet."
  "Now why didn't I think of that?"
-- Post Bros. Comics
%%
"I guess you just have to design carefully when you get near the edge."
-- Hugh LaMaster ([e-mail])
%%
"I hate quotations.  Tell me what you know."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
"I hate the itching.  But I don't mind the swelling."
-- new buzz phrase, like "Where's the Beef?" that David Letterman's trying
   to get everyone to start saying
%%
"I hate to agree with Tim Maroney on anything, but I guess this latest is
 an example of the fact that even a stopped clock is right twice a day."
-- Lee Lady, [e-mail]
%%
"I have a friend who just got back from the Soviet Union, and told me the people
 there are hungry for information about the West.  He was asked about many
 things, but I will give you two examples that are very revealing about life in
 the Soviet Union.  The first question he was asked was if we had exploding
 television sets.  You see, they have a problem with the picture tubes on color
 television sets, and many are exploding.  They assumed we must be having
 problems with them too.  The other question he was asked often was why the
 CIA had killed Samantha Smith, the little girl who visited the Soviet Union a
 few years ago; their propaganda is very effective.
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
%%
"I have a perfect cure for a sore throat. Cut it."
-- Alfred Hitchcock
%%
"I have been poor and I have been rich.  Rich is better."
-- Sophie Tucker
%%
"I have discovered the heart of bushido: to die!"
-- Yamamoto Tsunetomo
%%
"I have five dollars for each of you."
-- Bernhard Goetz
%%
"I have just one word for you, my boy...plastics."
- from "The Graduate"
%%
"I have more information in one place than anybody in the world."
-- Jerry Pournelle, an absurd notion, apparently about the BIX BBS
%%
"I have not the slightest confidence in 'spiritual manifestations.'"
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
"I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in
 those days I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics."
-- Richard Nixon
%%
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
 and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
 feature.  They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"I have short-term memory loss, though I like to think of it as Presidential
 eligibility."
--  Paula Poundstone
%%
"I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking
 his keys in his car; the other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell
 beating up a child."
-- Steven Wright
%%
"I honestly believe that the doctrine of hell was born in the glittering eyes
 of snakes that run in frightful coils watching for their prey.  I believe
 it was born with the yelping, howling, growling and snarling of wild beasts...
 I despise it, I defy it, and I hate it."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
"I just couldn't convince Texans that Dukakis was Greek for Bubba."
-- Lloyd Benson
%%
"I just want to be a good engineer."
-- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, concluding his keynote speech
   at the 1988 AppleFest
%%
"I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as
 a house.  So I reasoned that after college, I'd have to live cheaply in
 an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer."
-- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
%%
"I like a man who grins when he fights."
- Winston Churchill
%%
"I listen to feminists and all these radical gals -- most of them are failures.
 They've blown it.  Some of them have been married, but they married some
 Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom.  These women
 just need a man in the house.  That's all they need.  Most of the feminists
 need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home.  And
 they blew it and they're mad at all men.  Feminists hate men.  They're sexist.
 They hate men -- that's their problem."
-- Reverend Jerry Falwell
%%
"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years
 of maturity."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"I love you for your beauty; love me although I am ugly."
-- Miguel Cervantes, _Don_Quixote_
%%
"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience.  And
 in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the
 additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid"
-- the artificial person, from _Aliens_
%%
"I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously."
- Doctor Graper
%%
"I mean, like, I just read your article in the Yale law recipe, on search and
 seizure.  Man, that was really Out There."
   "I was so WRECKED when I wrote that..."
-- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
%%
"I must invent my own philosophical systems, or else be enslaved by other mens'"
-- William Blake
%%
"I never let my schooling get in the way of my education."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal
 in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast."
-- Ronald Reagan
%%
"I prefer rogues to imbeciles, because they sometimes take a rest."
-- Alexandre Dumas (fils)
%%
"I prefer the blunted cudgels of the followers of the Serpent God."
-- Sean Doran the Younger
%%
"I prefer to think that God is not dead, just drunk."
-- John Huston
%%
"I put one in each eye and two up each nostril."
-- Agent Cooper
%%
"I remember when I was a kid I used to come home from Sunday School and
 my mother would get drunk and try to make pancakes."
-- George Carlin
%%
"I resolved no to be offended easily by human nature, but I think I blew it."
-- Hobbes
%%
"I sat through it.  Why shouldn't you?"
-- David Letterman, it a spot promoting one of his shows
%%
"I saw _Lassie_. It took me four shows to figure out why the hairy kid never
 spoke. I mean, he could roll over and all that, but did that deserve a series?"
-- the alien guy, in _Explorers_
%%
"I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure."
-- Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"
%%
"I see a divine hand in this AIDS thing."
-- Dr. John Wilke, President, National Right to Life Committee, "Planned
    Parenthood and Sex Clinics", Fundraising Audiotape Mailout for Dr. James
    C. Dobson's "Focus on the Family", winter '87, as quoted in "The Far
    Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"I see little divinity about them or you.  You talk to me of Christianity
 when you are in the act of hanging your enemies.  Was there ever such
 blasphemous nonsense!"
-- Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"
%%
"I shall expect a chemical cure for psychopathic behavior by 10 A.M. tomorrow,
 or I'll have your guts for spaghetti."
-- a comic panel by Cotham
%%
"I shall fold my tens and silently slip away."
-- An Algonquinite with a losing card hand
%%
"I smell a rat."
  -- Patrick Henry, upon hearing about the Constitutional
     Convention, which eventually overthrew the first
     Federal Government of the United States
%%
"I swear -- by my life and my love for it -- that I will never live for the
 sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
-- John Galt, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
%%
"I take Him shopping with me. I say, 'OK, Jesus, help me find a bargain'"
--Tammy Faye Bakker
%%
"I think Michael is like litmus paper - he's always trying to learn."
-- Elizabeth Taylor, absurd non-sequitur about Michael Jackson
%%
"I think contraception is disgusting -- people using each other for pleasure."
-- Joseph Scheidler, Director, Pro-Life Action League
%%
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."
-- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell's
 suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra Day O'Connor's
 nomination to the Supreme Court
%%
"I think he said 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'"  "Nonsense, he was obviously
referring to all manufacturers of dairy products."
-- two people in the crowd in "The Life of Brian"
%%
"I think some additional software is in order, to prevent the posting of
 Latin without a translation."
-- Robert Frederking
%%
"I think their experience with us may have helped their contemptuousness;
 the ignorance they come by naturally."
-- Chuck McManis (personal communication)
%%
"I think there's a world market for about 5 computers."
-- Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM (around 1948)
%%
"I think they will be very effective in keeping Catholic legislators away
 from the Communion rail."
-- Idaho Senator Mike Blackbird, about ecclesiastical sanctions against
    politicians
%%
"I think this country would be in much better shape if all liberal arts
 majors agreed to get a good grip on algebra and trigonometry, if not calculus,
 and all engineering/science majors agreed to get a good grip on literature,
 art, music, etc."
-- John Keppy ([e-mail])
%%
"I think trash is the most important manifestation of culture we have in my
 lifetime."
-- Johnny Legend
%%
"I think; therefore, I can't be a Socialist."
-- Thomas Landsberger
%%
"I turn on my television set.  I see a young lady who goes under the guise
 of being a Christian, known all over the nation, dressed in skin-tight
 leather pants, shaking and wiggling her hips to the beat and rhythm of the
 music as the strobe lights beat their patterns across the stage and the
 band plays the contemporary rock sound which cannot be differentiated from
 songs by the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, or anyone else.  And you may try
 to tell me this is of God and that it is leading people to Christ, but I
 know better."
-- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocritical sexual pervert and TV preacher, self-described
 pornography addict, "Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and roll.",
 The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50.
%%
"I want more life, fucker!"
-- Roy Batty, in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner
%%
"I was brought up in the other service; but I knew from the first that the
 Devil was my natural master and captain and friend.  I saw that he was in
 the right, and that the world cringed to his conqueror only from fear."
-- Shaw, "The Devil's Disciple"
%%
"I was charged on minestrone, and invincible."
-- Vicki Brown, about AI programming.
%%
"I was not born to be forced.  I will breathe after my own fashion. ... If a
 plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man."
-- Henry David Thoreau
%%
"I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked if I had any questions.
 I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the speed of light and
 you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?  He said he couldn't
 answer that.  I told him sorry, but I couldn't work for him then."
-- Steven Wright
%%
"I will contend that conceptual integrity is *the* most important consideration
 in system design."
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
%%
"I will defend to your death my right to my opinion."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"I will make no bargains with terrorist hardware."
-- Peter da Silva
%%
"I woke up this morning, and I realized that somebody had broken into my
 apartment, stolen all my things and replaced them with exact duplicates.
 I asked my roommate if he noticed anything, and he said, 'Who are you?'"

"The other day I.... No, that wasn't me."

"My friend Bob is a radio DJ, and when he walks under a bridge, you can't hear
him talk."

"My father built a quicksand box in our back yard.  I was an only child,
eventually."

-- comedian Steven Wright
%%
"I woudn't recommend sex, drugs, or Unix for everyone, but they work for me."
Jim Thompson ([e-mail]), paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson
%%
"I would give the Devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake."
-- _A_Man_for_All_Seasons_ by Robert Bolt
%%
"I would never give artificial birth control to an unmarried person..."
-- Judie Brown, President, American Life League, "Nightline", 7/21/89,
   as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood
   pamphlet
%%
"I'll punch the first person who calls me a pacifist."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"I'll put an end to the idea that a woman's body belongs to her . . . the
 practice of abortion shall be exterminated with a strong hand."
-- Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_
%%
"I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
 That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood."
-- Daffy Duck, Looney Tunes, _Robin Hood Daffy_
%%
"I'll say it again for the logic impaired."
-- Larry Wall <[e-mail]>
%%
"I'll tell you what kind of guy I was.  If you ordered a boxcar full of
 sons-of-bitches and opened the door and only found me inside, you could
 consider the order filled."
-- Robert Mitchum
%%
"I'm a Leo.  Leos don't believe in this astrology stuff."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"I'm a living saint, but you can just call me Sister Cindy."
-- Sister Cindy
%%
"I'm a lover, not a hacker."
-- Jeff Daiell
%%
"I'm a mean green mother from outer space."
 -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors
%%
"I'm a self-made man, but I think if I had to do it over again, I'd call in
 someone else."
-- Roland Young
%%
"I'm against any law that I wouldn't break if I could get away with it."
-- A. Whitney Brown, SNL
%%
"I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State.  My idea
 is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both
 of them together is certain death."
-- George Carlin
%%
"I'm growing older, but not up."
-- Jimmy Buffett
%%
"I'm not a god, I was misquoted."
-- Lister, Red Dwarf
%%
"I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens."
-- Woody Allen
%%
"I'm not happy until I've violated somebody's civil rights and then put them
 in jail. ... That ruins their day ... but it makes mine."
-- Christopher Commision report of LAPD car-to-car computer message, 7/91
%%
"I'm such an *asshole*!"
    "I know how you feel, Chris... And you're right."
%%
"I've always wondered about that taping equipment, but I'm damn glad we have
 it.  Aren't you?"
-- President Richard Nixon, to chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, April 25, 1973
%%
"I've been called an evil genius by cities of assholes...  but I know who
 these people are!  And they're on my list!"
 -- Robert Crumb
%%
"I've been trey-dueced."
-- An Algonquinite with a hand of threes and twos
%%
"I've brought Gatsby to life.  I've accounted for his money.  I've fixed up
 the two weak chapters (VI and VII).  I've improved his first party.  I've
 broken up his long narrative in Chapter VIII."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, on revising his galley proofs
%%
"I've gone to hundreds of fortune-tellers' parlors, and have been told
 thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready
 to arrest her."
-- New York City Detective
%%
"I've got some amyls.  We could either party later or, like, start his heart."
-- "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie"
%%
"I've heard about these cult jamborees.  It's an international goon gathering.
 Lots of howling and drinking... Orgiastic worship of heathen idols... Great
 looking chicks in diaphanous robes..."
-- Sam
%%
"I've seen it.  It's rubbish."
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%%
"I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more
 of them who were paralyzed in the head"
- George Wallace
%%
"I've seen the forgeries I've sent out."
-- John F. Haugh II ([e-mail]), about forging net news articles
%%
"IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique' to destroy the
 competition..... IBM digs a big HOLE in the ground and covers it with leaves.
 It then puts a big POT OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at
 all this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor approaches the
 pot, he falls into the pit"
-- John C. Dvorak
%%
"IBM: It may be slow, but it's hard to use."
-- Andrew Tannenbaum <[e-mail]>,  author of Minix and Amoeba
%%
"IT'S THE TWO GODDAMNED CULTURES AGAIN !*! Bit-brained nerdery on one
 side, effete fin-de-siecle malaise on the other. And kingdoms of hybrid
 delight abandoned in the middle."
-- Jonathan Burns, [e-mail]
%%
"If Diet Coke did not exist it would have been necessary to invent it."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"If I can send the flower of the German nation into the hell of war without the
 smallest pity for the shedding of precious German blood, then surely I have
 the right to remove millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin."
-- Adolf Hitler
%%
"If I didn't have a Unix machine, I'd feel naked."
-- Guess Who
%%
"If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go
 to hell."
-- Jimmy Swaggart, 5/20/88
%%
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak."
-- Phil Wayne
%%
"If I ever get around to writing that language depompisifier, it will change
 almost all occurrences of the word "paradigm" into "example" or "model."
-- Herbie Blashtfalt
%%
"If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known
 will go to heaven, and very, very few persons."
-- James Thurber
%%
"If Jesus came back today, and saw what was going on in his name, he'd never
 stop throwing up."
-- Max Von Sydow's character in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters"
%%
"If John Madden steps outside on February 2, looks down, and doesn't see his
 feet, we'll have 6 more weeks of Pro football."
-- Chuck Newcombe
%%
"If Ricky Schroder and Gary Coleman had a fight on
 television with pool cues, who would win?
    1) Ricky Schroder
    2) Gary Coleman
    3) The television viewing public"
-- David Letterman
%%
"If a computer can't directly address all the RAM you can use, it's just a toy."
-- anonymous comp.sys.amiga posting, non-sequitur
%%
"If a guy tells me the probability of failure is
 1 in 10E5, I know he's full of crap."
-- Richard P. Feynmann, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
%%
"If a machine can be made so that an idiot can use it,
 then only an idiot will use it."
-- Tadao Ichikawa
%%
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and
 the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will
 lose that, too."
-- W. Somerset Maugham
%%
"If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to
 get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that
 netnews is far more addictive than cocaine."
-- Rob Stampfli
%%
"If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."
-- George Benard Shaw
%%
"If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?"
-- Author Unknown
%%
"If all men were brothers, would you want one to marry your sister?"
-- title of a Theodore Sturgeon short story
%%
"If all philosophers were required to present their ideas in novels,
 to dramatize the exact meaning and consequences of their philosophies
 in human life, there would be far fewer philosophers -- and far better
 ones."
-- Ayn Rand

"...and a lot more really bad novels!"
-- Jeremy York, [e-mail]
%%
"If anything can go wrong, it will."
-- Edsel Murphy
%%
"If at all possible, you should avoid being a young person or a wheat
 farmer when the president starts feeling international tension."
-- Dave Barry
%%
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
- Bert Lantz
%%
"If it doesn't come from you, shouldn't it come from Gerber?"
-- Bristol Meyers baby formula ad
%%
"If it sounds GOOD to YOU, it's bitchen; and if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's
 shitty."
-- Frank Zappa
%%
"If it's a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected
 within you is destroyed."
-- Kahlil Gibran, 1923
%%
"If it's not loud, it doesn't work!"
-- Blank Reg, from "Max Headroom"
%%
"If life had a vomit meter, we'd be off the scale."
-- Joe Bob Briggs
%%
"If money is your hope for independence you will never have it.  The only
 real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge,
 experience, and ability."
-- Henry Ford
%%
"If my film makes one more person miserable, I've done my job."
-- Woody Allen
%%
"If one is going to steal, it is considered somewhat sporting to inform the
 victims beforehand; for examples see any episodes of the BATMAN TV series."
-- Robert J Woodhead ([e-mail])
%%
"If only the Catholics would stick together and live up to their Faith [as
 regards birth control], they could control the world and the world's
 morality."
-- Dr. Claude Newbury, Director, HLI Johannesburg, "HLI Special Report," #62,
   as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood
   pamphlet
%%
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
 then we are a sorry lot indeed."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"If people behaved like governments, you'd call the cops."
-- Kelvin Throop
%%
"If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy."
-- Kurt Vonnegut
%%
"If projectile vomiting ever becomes an Olympic event, you'll do your country
 proud."
-- Hobson, "Arthur II"
%%
"If scientific discovery has not been an unalloyed blessing, if it has conferred
 on mankind the power not only to create but also to annihilate, it has at the
 same time provided humanity with a supreme challenge and a supreme testing."
-- John F. Kennedy
%%
"If that man in the PTL is such a healer, why can't he make his wife's
 hairdo go down?"
-- Robin Williams
%%
"If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a
 Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per per gallon, and
 explode once a year killing everyone inside."
-- Robert Cringely/InforWorld
%%
"If the bulk of American SF can be said to be written by robots, about
 robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written
 by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits."
-- Michael Moorcock
%%
"If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong."
-- Norm Schryer
%%
"If the conjecture `You would rather I had not disturbed you by sending you
 this.' is correct, you may add it to the list of uncomfortable truths."
-- Edsgar Dijkstra
%%
"If the human mind were simple enough to understand,
 we'd be too simple to understand it."
-- Pat Bahn
%%
"If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job.
 Let's hear it for OSI and X!  With those babies in the wings, we can count on
 being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening, paper
 folding, or something."
-- C. Philip Wood
%%
"If there isn't a population problem, why is the government putting cancer in
 the cigarettes?"
-- the elder Steptoe, c. 1970
%%
"If this country is worth saving, it's worth saving at a profit."
-- H. L. Hunt
%%
"If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in
 the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the
 private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the
 hustings or in the church.  At the next session you may ban books and the
 newspapers... Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding.
 Always feeding and gloating for more.  Today it is the public school teachers;
 tomorrow the private.  The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the
 magazines, the books, the newspapers.  After a while, Your Honor, it is the
 setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners
 and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the
 sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring
 any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind."
-- Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial

"The net effect of Clarence Darrow's great speech yesterday seemed to be
 precisely the same as if he had bawled it up a rainspout in the interior
 of Afghanistan."
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
"If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?"
-- Lily Tomlin
%%
"If we are to begin packaging ourselves as boxes of cereal, Democracy will
 die... for you could not win the presidency without proving unworthy of
 the job."
-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
"If we can't fix it -- we'll fix it so nobody can."
-- B. Gibbons
%%
"If we die, we want people to accept it.  We're in a risky business...
 The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."
-- Gus Grissom
%%
"If we do not succeed, then we face the risk of failure."
-- Dan Quayle, Vice-President of the United States
%%
"If we fail to draw the line in Vietnam we may find ourselves compelled to
 draw a defense line as far back as Seattle and Alaska, with Hawaii as a
 solitary outpost in mid-Pacific."
-- Senator Thomas J. Dodd, February 23, 1965
%%
"If we fail to make non-violent action a real, viable, obviously strong
 possibility  . . . then I think we're going to drift into guerrilla warfare."
-- John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe, Director, Prolife Nonviolent Action Project,
   "National Catholic Register," 1/4/87, about abortion clinic violence, as
   quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood
   pamphlet
%%
"If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry."
-- Chekhov
%%
"If you are beginning to doubt what I am saying, you are
 probably hallucinating."
-- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
%%
"If you can persuade your customer to tatoo your name on their chest, they
 probably will not switch brands."
-- an Indiana University professor, re: Harley-Davidson owners
%%
"If you can set the rules, you can win the game."
-- John McCormack
%%
"If you can write a nation's stories, you needn't worry about who makes its
 laws.  Today, television tells most of the stories to most of the people
 most of the time."
-- George Gerbner
%%
"If you can't debate me, then there is no way in hell you'll out-insult me."
-- Scott Legrand ([e-mail])

"You may be wrong here, little one."
-- R. W. F. Clark (RWC102@PSUVM)
%%
"If you can't drink a lobbyist's whiskey, take his money, sleep with his women
 and still vote against him in the morning, you don't belong in politics."
-- Speaker of the California Assembly Jesse Unruh
%%
"If you can, help others.  If you can't, at least don't hurt others."
-- the Dalai Lama
%%
"If you demand money from someone in exchange for your silence, it's called
 ``blackmail.''  If your lawyer demands money from someone in exchange for
 your silence, it's called ``a settlement.''
-- Karl
%%
"If you do everything, you'll win."
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson
%%
"If you don't make money off of it, it had better be either a religious
 experience or a hobby."
-- Lance Cooper
%%
"If you don't read news.groups, the net appears to be a rather tranquil place."
-- Karl Lehenbauer, about Usenet
%%
"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything."
-- F. Jeff Stiles, Southern Baptist preacher
%%
"If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do:  Pour a little
 Lavoris in the toilet."
-- Comedian Jay Leno
%%
"If you encounter these negroes shoot first, ask questions later."
-- LAPD squad-car computer message, as quoted in the Christopher Report, 7/91
%%
"If you get somebody to give you a dollar, they'll vote for you for the rest
 of their lives."
-- Hugh Parmer, Democratic candidate for the 1990 U.S. Senate, from Texas
%%
"If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find
 something in them to hang him."
-- Cardinal de Richelieu
%%
"If you juggle with knives, you're likely to get cut."
-- Kieran Donegal
%%
"If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets and
 fire them all off, wouldn't you?"
-- Garrison Keillor
%%
"If you meet the Buddha on the net, put him in your kill file."
-- Robert Firth
%%
"If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time
 serving it..."
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley, _The Forbidden Tower_
%%
"If you post it, they will flame."
-- The voice from Field of Dreams,
     according to Brian Frost ([e-mail])
%%
"If you substitute other kinds of intellectual property into the GNU
 MANIFESTO, it quickly becomes absurd."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"If you took all the sincerity in Hollywood and put it in the navel of a fruit
 fly, you'd still have room for three carraway seeds and a producer's heart."
-- Fred Allen
 %%
"Now, more than ever, it is evident that `good taste' only refers to that
 which reinforces the status quo."
-- Andre Peret
%%
"If you took everyone who's ever been to a Dead
 show, and lined them up, they'd stretch halfway to
 the moon and back... and none of them would be
 complaining."
-- a local Deadhead in the Seattle Times
%%
"If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways
 to be hospitable to the unusual person.  You don't get innovation as a
 democratic process.  You almost get it as an anti-democratic process.
 Certainly you get it as an anthitetical process, so you have to have an
 environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can
 deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc.,
   "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity",
   The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
"If you want to eat hippopatomus, you've got to pay the freight."
-- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory
%%
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead
 stuff."
-- Dave Enyeart
%%
"If you weren't my teacher, I'd think you just deleted all my files."
-- an anonymous UCB CS student, to an instructor who had typed "rm -i *" to
   get rid of a file named "-f" on a Unix system.
%%
"If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee."
-- broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center, Houston
  July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M.
%%
"If your computer doesn't multitask, it ain't shit."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"Ignorance is the soil in which belief in miracles grows."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
"Ignorance simplifies ANY problem."
-- R. Lucke
%%
"Ignorance transcends architecture."
-- James Gaskin
%%
"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
-- The New Mighty Mouse
%%
"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality
at any point."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
"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
%%
"In Western terms, love is like an extended software Q.A. suite.  True love
 is like a final acceptance test.  But one has to be willing to take bug
 fixes and work-arounds; otherwise, the software is never done."
-- The Usenet Oracle
%%
"In addition I think science has enjoyed an extraordinary success
 because it has such a limited and narrow realm in which to focus its
 efforts.  Namely, the physical universe."
-- Ken Jenkins
%%
"In corporate life, I think there are three important areas which contracts
 can't deal with, the area of conflict, the area of change and area of reaching
 potential.  To me a covenant is a relationship that is based on such things
 as shared ideals and shared value systems and shared ideas and shared
 agreement as to the processes we are going to use for working together.  In
 many cases they develop into real love relationships."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
"In ecology, as in economics, TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free
 Lunch) is intended to warn that every gain is won at some cost. Failure to
 recognize the "no free lunch" law causes the buffalo-hunter mentality
 syndrome -- the unthinking assumption that there will always be plenty because
 there always has been plenty."
-- Dr. Robert W. Prehoda
%%
"In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty."
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"In general, it is best to assume that the network is filled with malevolent
entities that will send in packets designed to have the worst possible effect"
-- the draft "Requirements for Internet Hosts" RFC
%%
"In general, it's very hard to protect oneself against omnipotent beings."
-- Barry Margolin ([e-mail]) 9 Sep 89, <[e-mail]>
%%
"In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved."
-- Butler
%%
"In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with
 the current."
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognise terrorism if it
 came up and bit him on his Internet."
-- Ross M. Greenberg
%%
"In our last congressional elections, there was less turnover in the House
 of Representatives than there was in the Soviet Politburo:  98.5% of the
 incumbents were reelected!"
-- John McCormick, _Self-Made In America_
%%
"In regards to Oral Roberts' claim that God told him that he would die unless he
 received $20 million by March, God's lawyers have stated that their client has
 not spoken with Roberts for several years.  Off the record, God has stated that
 "If I had wanted to ice the little toad, I would have done it a long time ago."
-- Dennis Miller, SNL News
%%
"In space, no one can hear you flame."
-- Tim P Scott, [e-mail]
%%
"In the Bowling Alley of Tomorrow, there will even be machines that wear
 rental shoes and throw the ball for you. Your sole function will be to
 drink beer."
-- Dave Barry
%%
"In the cafeteria just after lunch, (well, not *just* after, more like
 *during* lunch, about 12:28; say 12:30, give or take a few minutes),
 I leaned back in my chair (it was one of those aluminum chairs, good
 strength-to-weight, like titanium but not quite; but then of course
 titanium would be a bit of an overkill).  Anyway, I heard one of the
 girls talking about how boring she thought engineers could be."
-- Alan Denney ([e-mail])
%%
"In the carriages of the past you can't go anywhere."
-- Maxim Gorkey
%%
"In the face of entropy and nothingness, you have to kind of pretend it's not
 there if you want to keep writing good code."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"In the fight between you and the world, back the world."
-- Frank Zappa
%%
"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the
 role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.  I do not shrink from
 this responsibility -- I welcome it."
-- John F. Kennedy (from his Inaugural Address)
%%
"In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble."
-- Alan Perlis
%%
"Incest is a voluntary act on the woman's part."
-- Charles Rice, Professor of Law, Notre Dame University, in a pamphlet
   published by the American Life League
%%
"Inconceivable!"
  "You use that word a lot.  I don't think it means what you think it does."
-- The Princess Bride
%%
"Indecision is the basis of flexibility."
-- button at a Science Fiction convention
%%
"Indeed, to quarantine a person with AIDS or the AIDS virus does entail a
 loss, in the short run, of human freedom.  Agreed.  But the idea of human
 freedom isn't now, and never has been, absolute.  Besides, in the long run,
 as I have noted, all people with AIDS die."
-- John Lofton, Anti-Choice Columnist, The Washington Times, 3/31/89, as
   quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood
   pamphlet
%%
"Inferiority complex:  a conviction by a jury of your fears."
-- anon
%%
"Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times
 been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
%%
"Inquiry is fatal to certainty."
-- Will Durant
%%
"Insanity is hereditary.  You can catch it from your kids."
-- Erma Brombeck
%%
"Insanity is the exception in individuals.  In groups, parties, people,
 and times, it is the rule."
-- Nietzche
%%
"Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care
 what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything
 you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness.
 Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to
 insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the
 destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be,
 be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to
 insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as
 your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be
 yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your
 receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this
 thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."

-- Madrak, in _Creatures of Light and Darkness_, by Roger Zelazny
%%
"Insofar as love expresses itself, it is not expressing itself in terms of
 socially approved manners of life.  That's why it is all so secret.  Love
 has nothing to do with social order.  It is a higher spiritual experience
 than that of socially organized marriage."
-- Joseph Campbell
%%
"Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing."
-- G. Steinem
%%
"Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible.  And when it matures, out the window
 it flies.  We have to pounce on it earlier."
-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
"Interesting survey in the current Journal of Abnormal Psychology: New York
 City has a higher percentage of people you shouldn't make any sudden moves
 around than any other city in the world."
-- David Letterman
%%
"Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient.
 It's called 'rain'."
-- Michael McClary, in alt.fusion
%%
"Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers' every time
 someone writes `bible thumpers?'
-- Joel M. Snyder, [e-mail]
%%
"Is it just me, or does there seem to be an inordinate number of lurkers
 whose heads are imploding lately?  Maybe all these alternative viewpoints
 are too much for them to handle."
-- Trent Wohlschlaeger ([e-mail])
%%
"Is it really you, Fuzz, or is it Memorex, or is it radiation sickness?"
-- Sonic Disruptors comics
%%
"Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation to which the filing system
 has been lost?"
-- Quentin Crisp
%%
"Is this bullshit or fertilizer?"
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Is this foreplay?"
   "No, this is Nuke Strike.  Foreplay has lousy graphics.  Beat me again."
-- Duckert, in "Bad Rubber," Albedo #0 (comics)
%%
"Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen
 to weather forecasts and economists?"
-- Kelvin Throop, III
%%
"Israel today announced that it is giving up.  The Zionist state will dissolve
 in two weeks time, and its citizens will disperse to various resort
 communities around the world.  Said Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, 'Who needs
 the aggravation?'"
-- Dennis Miller, "Saturday Night Live" News
%%
"It ain't over until it's over."
-- Casey Stengel
%%
"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 aka Charles Farrar Brown
%%
"It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near
 him."
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
%%
"It does not pay a prophet to be too specific."
-- L. Sprague de Camp
%%
"It doesn't much signify whom one marries for one is sure to find out next
 morning it was someone else."
-- Rogers
%%
"It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan
 which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons,
 insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather
 than be the instrument of his army's downfall."
-- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
%%
"It had to be said: the world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrifice."
-- Howard Roark, in Ayn Rand's _The Fountainhead_
%%
"It has nothing to do with the size of Mr. Alnwick's company.  We go after
 companies large and small."
-- Rita Black, spokesperson for IBM, "Unix Today!", 5/29/89, page 51
%%
"It is a faith (not always justified) of theoretical physics that if man
 proposes what is sufficiently elegant, nature, pleased and flattered, will
 say yes."
-- Leon N. Cooper, "Introduction To The Meaning & Structure Of Physics"
%%
"It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
 coming up it."
-- Henry Allen
%%
"It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not."
-- Andre Guide
%%
"It is better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try, but
the result's the same."
-- Mike Dennison
%%
"It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
-- Alfred Adler
%%
"It is hard to overstate the debt that we owe to men and women of genius."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
"It is important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall
 out."
-- Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.
%%
"It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as
 one's hat keeps blowing off."
-- Woody Allen
%%
"It is not possible to convey sarcasm to certain members of the net without
 using a 2x4.  The smiley face merely reminds them of why their head is being
 dented."
-- John Woods
%%
"It is tempting to take the easy political path ... to get peace at any price
 now, even though I know that a peace of humiliation for the United States
 would lead to a bigger war or surrender later."
-- Richard M. Nixon, April 30, 1970
%%
"It is the creationists who blasphemously are claiming that God is cheating
 us in a stupid way."
-- J. W. Nienhuys
%%
"It isn't easy being a fat narcissist."
-- Jackie Gleason
%%
"It just goes to show what you can do if you're a total psychotic."
-- Woody Allen
%%
"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God but to
 create him."
 -Arthur C. Clarke
%%
"It might help if we ran the MBA's out of Washington."
-- Admiral Grace Hopper
%%
"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
%%
"It still brings to mind the question of what (if anything) can be done
 to show the media that 'cyberpunks' aren't just a bunch of pimple-faced
 geeks who sit around trying to break into bank computers or whatever."
-- James Hartman ([e-mail])

"But cyberpunks *are* a bunch of pimple-faced geeks who sit around trying to
 break into bank computers or whatever.  Re-read _Neuromancer_ and apply the
 inverse James Bond transformation to Case and his cohorts.  They're all
 supposed to be totally out of shape, with their disdain for the `meat'."
-- Peter da Silva ([e-mail])
%%
"It takes a smart man to know when he's stupid."
-- Barney Rubble
%%
"It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted
 to my kind of fooling."
- R. Frost
%%
"It took no computation to dance to the rock 'n roll station."
-- VU
%%
"It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the
 system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine some
 of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very sharp,
 probably not someone here on campus."
-- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, quoted in "The Technique,"
    Georgia Tech's newspaper, after the computer worm hit the Internet
%%
"It was just dumb luck that Unix managed to break through the Stupidity Barrier
 and become popular in spite of its inherent elegance."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"It was the Law of the Sea, they said.    Civilization ends at the waterline.
 Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."
- Hunter S. Thompson
%%
"It wasn't lies.  It was just bullshit, that's all."
-- Elwood Blues
%%
"It's OK to do the right thing... as long as you don't get caught."
-- The Lone Contractor
%%
"It's Woody Allen's fault," he had said, squeezing his bottle of Rolling Rock
 as if it were a hand grip.  "He had to go and ruin romantic love for all the
 rest of us for all time with his goddamn lobsters."
-- Ann Beattie
%%
"It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear."
-- Norm, from _Cheers_
%%
"It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times."
-- Augustus  McCrae
%%
"It's a great time to be alive and be a computer weenie."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of
 gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."
 "Hit it."
-- Jake and Elwood Blues
%%
"It's a very valuable function and requirement that you're performing, so
 have a great day and keep a stiff upper lip."
-- Dan Quayle, Prince William Sound, May 1989
%%
"It's better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all
 doubt."
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
"It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear."
-- Freeman Dyson

Freeman did indeed say that, but I'm probably the only person who was
listening to him at the time.  So, you won't find it written in any of
his books.
-- Russell Nelson <[e-mail]>
%%
"It's curtains for you, Mighty Mouse!  This gun is so futuristic that even
 *I* don't know how it works!"
-- from Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
%%
"It's easier to get forgiveness than permission."
-- Grace Murray Hopper
%%
"It's like deja vu all over again."   -- Yogi Berra
%%
"It's like pissing your pants to keep yourself warm."
-- Disparaging Danish engineering proverb describing short-term solutions
%%
"It's morally wrong to let a sucker keep his money."
-- Canada Bill Jones
%%
"It's my cookie file and if I come up with something that's lame and I like it,
 it goes in."
-- karl
%%
"It's no longer socially acceptable to talk about rape as a crime of
 passion, boys; it's like making jokes about black people and
 watermelons.  Unless you're from the "barefoot and pregnant" school of
 social relations, you should have enough sensitivity to avoid
 discussing extremely unpleasant violent acts in a flippant manner in
 front of people who must live in fear of being potential victims, or
 who are likely acquaintances of actual ones.

 Jim Muller is of course an exception, because he's an artiste."
-- Dave Touretzky
%%
"It's no sweat, Henry.  Russ made it back to Bugtown before he died.  So he'll
regenerate in a couple of days.  It's just awful sloppy of him to get killed in
the first place.  Humph!"
-- Ron Post, Post Brothers Comics
%%
"It's not just a computer -- it's your ass."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"It's not what we don't know that gets us into trouble, it's what we know that
 ain't so."
-- Will Rogers
%%
"It's real handy, havin' an Elder God in the band, eh?"
-- Post Brothers comics
%%
"It's ten o'clock... Do you know where your AI programs are?"  -- Peter Oakley
%%
"It's the best thing since professional golfers on 'ludes."
-- Rick Obidiah
%%
"It's the things that nobody knows anything about that we can discuss..."
--Richard P. Feynman
%%
"It's very hard for anything to make it out of Hollywood these days without a
 lame-ass wimpout ending tacked on at the whining request of test audiences
 selected from the most puerile of the Nielsen families, who are, as we all
 know, chosen on the basis of the number of cousin-cousin marriages in their
 family over the last ten generations."
-- Nix Thompson ([e-mail])
%%
"It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear
 of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility,
 or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain-damage [sic] baby
 even ten years later when she may be happily married."
-- Phyllis Schlafly
%%
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
-- John Wooden
%%
"It's when they say 2 + 2 = 5 that I begin to argue."
-- Eric Pepke
%%
"Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor
of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated,
it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."
-- Patti Smith
%%
"Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin."
-- Michael O'Donohugh
%%
"Jesus saves sinners... and redeems them for valuable cash prizes!"
-- John Wichers ([e-mail])
%%
"Jesus saves... but Gretzky gets the rebound!"
-- Daniel Hinojosa (hinojosa@hp-sdd)
%%
"Joy is wealth and love is the legal tender of the soul."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
"Judging a piece of fiction by the quality of its writing without considering
 its subject matter is like buying a car because it has a pretty paint job,
 without considering the state of its engine and transmission."
-- Kelvin Throop III
%%
"Just Say No."
-- Nancy Reagan
%%
"Just because you understand what something should look like doesn't mean
 you know how to build it."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"Just once I'd like to meet an alien menace that isn't immune to bullets."
-- The Brigadier, Doctor Who
%%
"Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
 of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?"
-- Patricia O Tuama, [e-mail]
%%
"Just the facts, Ma'am."
-- Joe Friday
%%
"Just think of a computer as hardware you can program."
-- Nigel de la Tierre
%%
"Just think, IBM and DEC in the same room, and we did it."
-- Ken Thompson, quoted by Dennis Ritchie
%%
"Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!"
-- Alan Perlis
%%
"Justice has nothing to do with what goes on in a courtroom, Justice is what
 comes out of a courtroom."
-- Clarence Darrow
%%
"Justice, like lightning, should ever appear
 To some men hope, to other mean fear."
-- Jefferson Pierce
%%
"Keep the wind in your solar sails..."
-- Glenn Clapp
%%
"Keeping proprietary and confidential information secret is the key to moving
 the computer industry into the 21st century."
-- Letter from Apple Computer and Rasterops to the Macintosh user community
%%
"Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit!"
-- Looney Tunes, "What's Opera Doc?" (1957, Chuck Jones)
%%
"Kitten:  small homicidal muffin on legs; affects human sensibilities to
 the point of endowing the most wanton and ruthless acts of destruction with
 near-mythical overtones of cuteness.  Not recommended for beginners.  Get
 at least two."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"Knowing when to optimize is as important as knowing how."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"L'extension des privileges des femmes est le principe general de tous progres
 sociaux."
-- Charles Fourier, 1808
%%
"Lab rats seem to have been bred for cancer hypersensitivity by the medical
 establishment and the FDA.  We are the kings and the rats taste our food."
-- James Salsman ([e-mail])
%%
"Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about."
-- B. L. Whorf
%%
"Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will
 serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of
 society...It is justified because...the program can give a sense of shared
 adventure and achievement to the society at large."
- Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
"Last night I watched the news and the end of the broadcast showed numerous
 changes favorable for the people (e.g., Rumania, Berlin Wall, etc.).  My
 fiancee and I turned to each other and said ``No images from the US.''"
-- Mike Shaff ([e-mail])
%%
"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy."
-- Dr. Emilio Lizardo
%%
"Laundry increases exponentially in the number of children."
-- Miriam Robbins
%%
"Laws don't work, unless they merely codify generally accepted behavior,
 in which case they are probably unnecessary."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"Lead us in a few words of silent prayer."
-- Bill Peterson, former Houston Oiler football coach
%%
"Lenin probably wouldn't understand.  But then, no one around he seems to care
 what he would think."
-- Lynn Ashby's report on Romania
%%
"Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal."
-- Igor Stravinsky
%%
"Let every man teach his son, teach his daughter, that labor is honorable."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
"Let me control a planet's oxygen supply, and I don't care who makes the laws."
-- Great Cthuhlu's Starry Wisdom Band (via Roger Leroux)
%%
"Let me guess, Ed.  Pentecostal, right?"
-- Starcap'n Ra, [e-mail]

"Nope.  Charismatic (I think - I've given up on what all those pesky labels
 mean)."
-- Ed Carp, [e-mail]

"Same difference - all zeal and feel, averaging less than one working brain
 cell per congregation. Starcap'n Ra, you pegged him.  Good work!"
-- Kenn Barry, [e-mail]
%%
"Let no one mistake it for comedy, farcical though it may be in all its
 details.  It serves notice on the country that Neanderthal man is
 organizing in these forlorn backwaters of the land, led by a fanatic,
 rid of sense and devoid of conscience.  Tennessee, challenging him too
 timorously and too late, now sees its courts converted into camp meetings
 and its bill of rights made a mock of by its sworn officers of the law."
-- H. L. Mencken, about the Scopes Monkey Trial
%%
"Let the evil minds of the world beware!  Ever and always shall
 the Avengers prevail!"
-- Thor
%%
"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that
 the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this
 century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of
 our ancient heritage -- and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing
 of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed...."
-- John F. Kennedy (from his Inaugural Address)
%%
"Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us."
-- militant religionists everywhere
%%
"Let's give discredit where discredit is due."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance.  It's the thing that makes
 America great.  If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we
 have tolerated the last eight years?"
-- Frank Zappa, Feb 1, 1989
%%
"Let's show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown!"
-- The Ghostbusters
%%
"Liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order."
-- Proudhon
%%
"Lies written in ink can never disguise facts written in blood.  Blood debts
 must be repaid in kind.  The longer the delay, the greater the interest."
-- Chinese author Lu Xun, 1926
%%
"Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of
 watching television."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"Life is a garment we continuously alter, but which never seems to fit."
-- David McCord
%%
"Life is a pinball machine.  You bounce around for a while, and then you drain."
-- Joe Bak
%%
"Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and
 because it has fresh peaches in it."
-- Alice Walker
%%
"Life is full of surprises when you're up th' stream of consciousness
 without a paddle..."
-- Zippy the Pinhead
%%
"Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...."
-- Thomas J. Kopp
%%
"Life sucks, but it's better than the alternative."
-- Peter da Silva
%%
"Life's a Cabaret... Long, dull, and full of Nazis."
-- Howard the Duck
%%
"Life's a bitch, and life's got lots of sisters."
-- Ross Presser
%%
"Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
-- Marvin the paranoid android
%%
"Like the ski resort full of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
 for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem."
-- Alan McKay
%%
"Little else matters than to write good code."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of
 nature are constantly broken for their sakes."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
"Live or die, I'll make a million."
-- Reebus Kneebus, before his jump to the center of the earth, Firesign Theater
%%
"Lobbyists threatening to withhold campaign contributions from
 lawmakers who don't support their special-interest causes could
 be violating bribery laws, Colorado House Speaker Bev Bledsoe
 warned yesterday."
-- The Denver Post, 3 May 1990, p. 1B
%%
"Look ma!  Three arms!"
-- J. Eric Townsend ([e-mail])
%%
"Look! There! Evil!.. pure and simple, total evil from the Eighth Dimension!"
-- Buckaroo Banzai
%%
"Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies."
-- D'Hericault
%%
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips
 over, pinning you underneath.  At night, the ice weasels come."
--Matt Groening
%%
"Love is always having to say I'm sorry."
-- Bob Irwin ([e-mail])
%%
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
 the ideal never goes unpunished."
-- Goethe
%%
"Love is never what we looked for and always takes us by surprise:  it's the
 rock on Coyote's head in the middle of the Road Runner chase.  It's not the
 pain of love Coyote minds, it's the *futility* of his inventions in the face
 of his fate."
-- Ian Shoales, Social Critic and Bitter Loudmouth
%%
"Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail."
-- A Kurt Vonnegut fan
%%
"Love your country but never trust its government."
-- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania
%%
"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"Luke, I'm yer father, eh.  Come over to the dark side, you hoser."
-- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew"
%%
"Lying lips are abomination to the Lord; but they that deal truly are his
 delight.
 A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.
 He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto
 him.
 Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with
 thy lips.
 Death and life are in the power of the tongue."
-- Proverbs, some selections from the Jewish Scripture
%%
"MTV.  An obedient tongue licking the shiny leather boot of rock and roll."
-- MTV commercial
%%
"Maintain an awareness for contribution -- to your schedule, your project,
 our company."
-- A Group of Employees
%%
"Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood."
-- D. B. Hudson
%%
"Mamma, don't let your babies grow up to be hackers."
-- Willie Nelson, with a little help from Bill Mathews
%%
"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick
 himself up and carry on..."
- Winston Churchill
%%
"Managing senior programmers is like herding cats."
-- Dave Platt
%%
"Many are the wonders of the Universe,
 and none so wonderful as Mankind!"
-- Sophocles
%%
"Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and
 those inside desperate to get out."
-- Montaigne
%%
"Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it."
-- Baskins
%%
"Master, why is the letter 'i' the symbol for current?"  "Because there is
 no letter 'i' in the word 'current'."  "Master, why do we use the letter
 'j' for sqrt(-1)?"  "Because we use the letter 'i' for current."  Whereupon
 the Master struck the Disciple, and the Disciple became enlightened.
%%
"May the Lord open your eyes and heart so that you may understand him more
 clearer."
-- Patrick Harubin, [e-mail], soc.religion.islam
%%
"May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house."
-- George Carlin
%%
"May your future be limited only by your dreams."
-- Christa McAuliffe
%%
"Maybe life is a grindstone; whether it polishes you or wears you down
 depends on what you're made of."
-- Kay Fletcher
%%
"Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; yeah, right.  To paraphrase,
 the net finds its own uses for garbage."
-- Eric Hughes ([e-mail])
%%
"Meanwhile, let it be clear what we do: we fight contraception-sterilization-
 abortion on six continents..."
-- Fr. Paul Marx, President, Human Life International, in his brochure,
    Human Life International Explained, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking
    For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Meet me in the bedroom in five minutes... and bring a cattle prod!"
-- Woody Allen's "What's Up Tiger Lily"
%%
"Memory serves wise commanders."
-- Tz'u-hsi, 638 AD
%%
"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves
 on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
-- D. P. Barron
%%
"Mind you, not as bad as the night Archie Pettigrew ate some
 sheep's testicles for a bet...God, that bloody sheep kicked him..."
-- Ripping Yarns
%%
"Mine!  Mine!  It's all mine!"
-- D. Duck
%%
"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect
 in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for
 safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye.  These
 institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you,
 affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of
 minorities.  There was never a country where the majority of people were in
 their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."
-- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
%%
"Money is the root of all money."
-- the moving finger
%%
"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations"
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
-- H. G. Wells
%%
"Morality is one thing.  Ratings are everything."
- A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
%%
"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all
 other causes combined."
-- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
%%
"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
"Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking
 the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe,
 from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man."
-- George Gaylord Simpson
%%
"Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a
 room."
-- Blaise Pascal
%%
"Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons
 for it afterwards."
-- Soren F. Petersen
%%
"Most people would like to be delivered from
 temptation but would like it to keep in touch."
-- Robert Orben
%%
"Mr. Spock succumbs to a powerful mating urge and nearly kills Captain Kirk."
-- TV Guide, describing the Star Trek episode _Amok_Time_
%%
"Mr. Watson, come here, I want you."   -- Alexander Graham Bell
%%
"My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch?  Next April?"
-- L. Mulloy
%%
"My father was an amazing man.  The older I got, the smarter he got."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"My father?  My father left when I was quite young.  Well actually, he
 was asked to leave.  He had trouble metabolizing alcohol."
 -- George Carlin
%%
"My goal is simple.  It is complete understanding of the universe, why it
 is as it is and why it exists at all."
 -- Stephen Hawking
%%
"My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn."
-- Louis Adamic
%%
"My head is bloodied, but unbowed."
-- From the poem "Invictus"
%%
"My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human systems,
 and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable.... We should be reluctant
 to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent to what we
 do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether or not we grapple
 with it. But we cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand, slow march
 of intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we
 can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny
 our history, our capabilities."
-- James A. Michener
%%
"My past is my own."
-- The Shadow (DC Comics)
%%
"My sense of purpose is gone! I have no idea who I AM!"
    "Oh, my God... You've.. You've turned him into a DEMOCRAT!"
-- Doonesbury
%%
"NASA Announces New Deck Chair Arrangement For Space Station Titanic."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"NASA Awards Acronym Generation System (AGS) Contract For Space Station Freedom"
-- Tom Neff
%%
"Nat Goldstein and Jim Simmons in Florida, Curtis Beseda out west who has
 destroyed abortion clinics, these men are looked up to by my arm of the
 movement as the foremost heroes of the movement ...."
-- James J. Condit, Jr., Cincinnatus Party's perennial candidate for city
    council, "Mike Cuthbert Show," WCKY_AM, 1/22/87, as quoted in "The Far
    Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Nature is very un-American.  Nature never hurries."
-- William George Jordan
%%
"Nature loves a vacuum.  Digital doesn't."
-- DEC sales letter
%%
"Neighbors!!  We got neighbors!  We ain't supposed to have any neighbors, and
 I just had to shoot one."
-- Post Bros. Comics
%%
"Neuro-linguistic programming is simply the zig-zag and swirl of menorgs and
 disorgs acting under the suction and pressure of the morphogenetic field."
-- Clark Brooks ([e-mail])
%%
"Neurotic: Self-taut person."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Never ascribe to malice that which is caused by greed and ignorance."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"Never counsel for contraception or refer to agencies making contraceptives
 available.  Some volunteers may feel that it is the lesser of two evils,
 reasoning that if the girl is going to be sexually active anyway, why not
 at least help her from getting pregnant with contraceptives.  This type of
 thinking is not only inaccurate but unacceptable and against the general
 pro-life philosophy, and Christian principles."
-- Robert J. Pearson, President, The Pearson Foundation, in his guidebook,
    _How to Start and Operate a Pro-Life Out-Reach Pregnancy Service Center",
    1984, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned
    Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Never face facts; if you do, you'll never get up in the morning."
-- Marlo Thomas
%%
"Never give a statist an even break.  The State has never given us one."
-- Andre Marrou
%%
"Never give in.  Never give in.  Never. Never. Never."
-- Winston Churchill
%%
"Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it
 became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. "You
 aren't nearly through this adventure yet," he added, and that was pretty
 true as well.
-- Bilbo Baggins, _The Hobbit_ by J.R.R. Tolkien, Chapter XII
%%
"Never put off until run time what you can do at compile time."
-- David Gries, in "Compiler Construction for Digital Computers", circa 1969.
%%
"Never try to catch two frogs with one hand."
-- Chinese Proverb
%%
"New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled, the
 humiliating question arises, 'Why then are you not taking part in them?'"
-- H. G. Wells
%%
"Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again.
 God -- I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again."
-- Woody Allen's character in "Hannah and Her Sisters"
%%
"Nine years of ballet, asshole."
-- Shelly Long, to the bad guy after making a jump over a gorge that he
   couldn't quite, in "Outrageous Fortune"
%%
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental."
-- Yogi Berra
%%
"No man is an island entire of itself.  Every man is a part of the continent,
 a piece of the whole...if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the
 less.  Any man's death diminishes me because I'm involved in mankind.
  Therefore, never send to know for whom the bell TOLLS, it tolls for thee."
-- John Donne
%%
"No man steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river, and he's
 not the same man."
-- Heraclitus
%%
"No man was ever taken to hell by a woman unless he already had a ticket in
 his pocket, or at least had been fooling around with timetables."
 -- Archie Goodwin
%%
"No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the Legislature is in
 session."
-- Lysander Spooner
%%
"No matter what temptation there is after an accident to be economical with
 the truth when rationalising it with hindsight, please remember it would be
 unforgivable if, by not revealing the facts or the complete truth, a similar
 incident became an unavoidable accident."
-- Captain Colin Seaman, British Aerospace's head of safety
%%
"No matter where you go, there you are..."
-- Buckaroo Banzai
%%
"No one can forbid us the future."
-- Inscription on the base of Paris's monument to Leon Gambetta
%%
"No one who accepts the sovereignty of truth can be a foot soldier in a party
 or movement.  He will always find himself out of step."
-- Sidney Hook
%%
"No problem is so big that you can't run away from it."
-- Snoopy
%%
"No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it."
 -- C. Schulz
%%
"No wife of *mine* is doing any dishes.  That's what we had the kid for."
-- from Deathlok comics #1
%%
"No!  We will not die like dogs.  We will fight like lions!"
-- The Three Amigos
%%
"No, it's 'Blessed are the meek.'  I think that's nice, 'cause really they have
 a hell of a time."
-- someone in the crowd in "The Life of Brian"
%%
"No, no, I don't mind being called the smartest man in the world.  I just wish
 it wasn't this one."
-- Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, WATCHMEN
%%
"Nobody but a lawyer can tell legal from illegal, and the lawyers can't
 tell right from wrong...."
-- Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, _Oath of Fealty_
%%
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could
 only do a little."
-- Edmund Burke
%%
"None of our men are "experts."  We have most unfortunately found it necessary
 to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
 ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job.  A man who knows a
 job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
 forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
 he is.  Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
 state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
 "expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible."
-- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work," p. 86 (1922):
%%
"Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends."
-- Woody Allen
%%
"No problem is too big it can't be run away from."
-- Linus
%%
"Note and initial":  Let's spread the responsibility of this.
-- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
%%
"Nothing can stop him.  Not even common sense."
-- Mark Komarinski
%%
"Nothing, not love, not greed, not passion or hatred, is stronger than a
 writer's need to change another writer's copy."
-- Arthur Evans
%%
"Now I know why they call television a medium: because nothing on it is rare
 or well-done."
-- Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
%%
"Now I've got the bead on you with MY disintegrating gun.  And when it
 disintegrates, it disintegrates.  (pulls trigger)  Well, what you do know,
 it disintegrated."
-- Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century
%%
"Now bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible -
 yea, and get the better of them."
-- W. Shakespeare, JULIUS CAESAR
%%
"Now here's something you're really going to like!"
-- Rocket J. Squirrel
%%
"Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the
 same place.  If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least
 twice as fast as that."
-- the Red Queen, from "Through the Looking Glass" (Lewis Carroll)
%%
"Now, telephone companies are not stupid, at least for large values of
 'stupid'."
-- Michael O'Brien (Mr. Protocol)
%%
"Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"Nuclear war would really set back cable."
- Ted Turner
%%
"Obedience.  A religion of slaves.  A religion of intellectual death.  I like
 it.  Don't ask questions, don't think, obey the Word of the Lord -- as it
 has been conveniently brought to you by a man in a Rolls with a heavy Rolex
 on his wrist.  I like that job!  Where can I sign up?"
-- Oleg Kiselev,[e-mail]
%%
"Observe that for the programmer, as for the chef, the urgency of the patron
 may govern the scheduled completion of the task, but it cannot govern the
 actual completion.  An omelette, promised in two minutes, may appear to be
 progressing nicely.  But when it has not set in two minutes, the customer
 has two choices -- wait or eat it raw.  Software customers have had the
 same choices."
-- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr, _The Mythical Man-Month_
%%
"Occupational regulation has served to limit consumer choice, raise
 consumer costs, increase practitioner income, limit practitioner
 mobility, deprive the poor of adequate service, and restrict job
 opportunities for minorities -- all without a demonstrated improvement
 in quality or safety." ...

"Critics of this hypothesis believe to the contrary, however, that
 regulators' and professional groups' self-interest has been and still
 is the primary motivator of regulatory legislation.  And indeed the
 evidence shows that consumers rarely engage in campaigns to license
 occupations.  If the purpose of licensing were to improve the quality
 of service, one would expect consumers, who might be the prime beneficiaries,
 to promote licensure, but licensing is systematically promoted by
 practitioners ..."

-- The Rule of Experts - Occupational Licensing in America.  By S. David
    Young.  Cato Institute, 1987.  ISBN 0-932790-62-3 (paper).  99 pages.
    (Quoted by Tony Harminc <[e-mail]> in comp.risks)
%%
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
-- Thomas Paine
%%
"Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix.  Everyone knows power tools
 aren't soluble in alcohol..."
-- Crazy Nigel
%%
"Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect; but it's a lot better than what
 we have now."
-- Eric Sheppard ([e-mail])
%%
"Of course, someone who knows more about this will correct me if I'm wrong,
 and someone who knows less will correct me if I'm right."
-- David Palmer ([e-mail])
%%
"Of course, this is a, this is a Hunt, you will -- that will uncover a
 lot of things.  You open that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things...
 This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have
 nothing to do with ourselves."
-- Richard Milhouse Nixon, 6/23/72
%%
"Of what importance is mere money -
 when there are worlds to be conquered -
 people to be enslaved?"
-- Doctor Doom
%%
"Oh God ... I'm *shot* ... Hey ... *wait* a second ... I'm
 *okay* ... Wow!  This is *cool!  Bullets don't hurt me!"
-- Superboy,  #2 of SUPERBOY THE COMIC BOOK (based on the TV series)
%%
"Oh beautiful, for smoggy skies, o'er insecticide waves of grain, and
 strip-mined mountain's majesty, above the asphalt plains!  America,
 America, man sheds his waste on thee!  And hides the pines, with
 billboard signs, from sea to oily sea!"
-- George Carlin (?)
%%
"Oh boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a REALLY BIG ram disk!"
-- [e-mail]
%%
"Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again."
-- Marvin The Paranoid Android
%%
"Oh dear, now I've made a terrible mess of things.  And all I wanted to do was
 rule the universe."
-- Dr. Zachary Smith
%%
"Oh honey, this is just the beginning.  Stick with me and we'll claw our way
 to the top."
-- John Water's "Hairspray"
%%
"Oh my!  An `inflammatory attitude' in alt.flame?  Never heard of such
a thing..."
-- Allen Gwinn, [e-mail]
%%
"Oh what wouldn't I give to be spat at in the face..."
-- a prisoner in "Life of Brian"
%%
"Oh yeah, laugh now!  But when the millions start pouring in, I'll be the one
 at Burger King, sucking down Whoppers at my own private table!"
-- Al Bundy
%%
"Oh, I know it's a penny here and a penny there, but look at me. I worked
 myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty."
-- Groucho Marx, "Monkey Business"
%%
"Okay," Bobby said, getting the hang of it, "then what's the matrix?  If
 she's a deck, and Danbala's a program, what's cyberspace?"
  "The world," Lucas said.
-- William Gibson, _Count Zero_
%%
"Old age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time."
-- a coffee cup
%%
"Old soldiers never die.  Young ones do."
-- Anon
%%
"On the market, there can be no such thing as exploitation."
-- Murray Rothbard
%%
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr.
 Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
 come out?'  I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas
 that could provoke such a question."
-- Charles Babbage
%%
"Once I was a tadpole, in the beginning of the begin;
 Then I was a toadfrog with my tail tucked in.
 Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree;
 Now I'm a professor with a Ph.D."
--Anonymous creationist's view of evolution
%%
"Once a ruler becomes religious, it [becomes] impossible for you to debate with
 him.  Once someone rules in the name of religion, your lives become hell."
 -- Colonel Moammar Qaddafi, at the General People's Congress in Tripoli
    in October, 1989
%%
"Once contraception is accepted and the purposes of sex are separated from
 procreation and marriage, sterilization and abortion become acceptable, and
 then infanticide, the precursor of outright euthanasia.  Furthermore,
 homosexuality and unnatural sexual activities become `natural and normal,'
 the venereal diseases get out of control, divorce and illegitimacy rates
 mount, and the family swiftly disintegrates."
-- Valerie Riches, Family Planning Educator, in her brochure,
    Contraception's Legacy, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For
    Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
 roars.  Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
 forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
 the railroad yards."
- H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters
  of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
%%
"Once lead the American people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such
 a thing as tolerance.  To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the
 spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into every fiber of our national
 life ..."
-- President Woodrow Wilson
%%
"Once they go up, who cares where they come down?  That's not my department."
-- Werner von Braun
%%
"Once you've had real champagne, you can never go back to Asti Spimanti."
-- Georgette Lundberg
%%
"One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a
 stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier."
-- Gustave Flaubert (letter to Madame Louise Colet, August 12, 1846)
%%
"One day I woke up and discovered that I was in love with tripe."
-- Tom Anderson
%%
"One lawyer can steal more than a hundred men with guns."
-- The Godfather
%%
"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work
 of one extraordinary man."
-- Elbert Hubbard

...yet.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"One man's Mede is another man's Persian."
-- A member of the Algonquin Round Table
%%
"One man's mate is another man's passion."
-- Jeff Daiell's description of adultery
%%
"One more drink and I would have been under the host."
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
"One of the most devastating enemies of the family is radical sex education
 in the public school.  It is more explicit than necessary for the good of
 the child.  Too much sex education too soon causes undue curiosity and
 obsession with sex."
-- Beverly LaHaye, President, Concerned Women for America, in her newsletter,
    4/81, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned
    Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"One of the problems I've always had with propaganda pamphlets is that they're
 real boring to look at.  They're just badly designed.  People from the left
 often are very well-intended, but they never had time to take basic design
 classes, you know?"
-- Art Spiegelman
%%
"One of us should bust in and confuse them while _I_
 head them off around front."
-- Sam
%%
"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
%%
"One time I removed all the hair from a mouse with Nair hair remover,
 just to see what it looked like.  And it looked beautiful."
-- David Lynch
%%
"Only a brain-damaged operating system would support task switching and not
 make the simple next step of supporting multitasking."
-- Calvin Keegan
%%
"Only a brave person is willing honestly to admit, and fearlessly to face, what
 a sincere and logical mind discovers."
-- Rodan of Alexandria
%%
"Only a mediocre man is always at his best."
-- W. Somerset Maugham
%%
"Only a mediocre person is always at his best."
-- W. Somerset Maugham
%%
"Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
-- Hannah Arendt.
%%
"Open Channel D..."
-- Napoleon Solo, The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
%%
"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
-- Dave Bowman, 2001
%%
"Opinions are like assholes:
 Everybody has one and nobody wants to look at the other guy's."
-- Jeff Stout
%%
"Optimization is not some mystical state of grace, it is an intricate act
 of human labor which carries real costs and real risks."
 -- Tom Neff
%%
"Organized Religion is like Organized Crime; it preys on peoples' weakness,
 generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible
 to eradicate."
-- Mike Hermann ([e-mail])
%%
"Our Constitution ... gives to bigotry no sanction."
-- George Washington
%%
"Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly.

In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket,
achieving an altitude of 41 feet.  In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth.

In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground
for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon
in Apollo 11."
-- Michael Collins
   Former astronaut and past Director of the National Air and Space Museum
%%
"Our journeys to the stars will be made on spaceships created by determined,
 hardworking scientists and engineers applying the principles of science, not
 aboard flying saucers piloted by little gray aliens from some other dimension."
-- Robert A. Baker, "The Aliens Among Us:  Hypnotic Regression Revisited",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2
%%
"Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press, and that cannot be
 limited without being lost."
-- Thomas Jefferson (1786)
%%
"Our reruns are better than theirs."
-- Nick at Nite
%%
"Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure
%%
"Out of register space (ugh)"
-- vi
%%
"Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother
 to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed.  Here's another of those self-satisfied
 doors.  Life!  Don't talk to me about life."
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%%
"Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy."
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"Patriotism is an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles."
-- George Jean Nathan
%%
"Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
-- Samuel Johnson
%%
"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
"Paul Lynde to block..."
-- a contestant on "Hollywood Squares"
%%
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
-- Karl, as he stepped behind the computer to reboot it, during a FAT, 1982
%%
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
-- The Wizard Of Oz
%%
"Peace is our profession."
-- Motto of Strategic Air Command

"Peace in our profession.   War is just a hobby."
-- Stationery available in PX, Barksdale SAC AFB
%%
"Pencil cursors are for user-interface weenies."
-- Rob MacLachlan
%%
"People don't form relationships, they take hostages."
-- anon
%%
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment or
 diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public,
 or some contrivance to raise prices."
-- Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_
%%
"People should have access to the data which you have about them.  There should
 be a process for them to challenge any inaccuracies."
-- Arthur Miller
%%
"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how
 hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
-- Calvin
%%
"People who live in glass houses shouldn't."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"People who use long lines DESERVE to lose."
-- Rob MacLachlan
%%
"Perestroika: could it happen here?"
-- Tom Neff
%%
"Perhaps I am flogging a straw herring in mid-stream, but in the light of
 what is known about the ubiquity of security vulnerabilities, it seems vastly
 too dangerous for university folks to run with their heads in the sand."
-- Peter G. Neumann, RISKS moderator, about the Internet virus
%%
"Perhaps the best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a
 time."
-- Dean Acheson
%%
"Personally, I always held my flower in a clenched fist."
-- Abbie Hoffman
%%
"Pessimists have already begun to worry about what is going to replace
 automation."
-- John Tudor
%%
"Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die."
- John W. Campbell
%%
"Plan to throw one away.  You will anyway."
- Fred Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
%%
"Plastic gun.  Ingenious.  More coffee, please."
-- The Phantom comics
%%
"Please refrain from making me puke on my workstation."
-- Alan Weiss ([e-mail]>
%%
"Please spare us all the attempts to get everyone to shorten their
 emotional bandwidth on-line until everyone sounds like a sober
 philosophy major calmly discussing the merits of post neo-realism
 as reflected in modernistic Danish furniture."
-- Chris Neckalson ([e-mail])
%%
"Poetry, like chastity, can be carried to far."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"Pok pok pok, P'kok!"
-- Superchicken
%%
"Politics is for the moment.  An equation is for eternity."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"Poor dead, there's nothing between his ears."
-- Margaret Thatcher, about Ronald Reagan,
    in the 6/2/88 issue of The New York Times
%%
"Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another."
-- Madonna
%%
"Poor man... he was like an employee to me."
-- The police commissioner on "Sledge Hammer" laments the death of his bodyguard
%%
"Posting to alt.flame has nothing to do with writing flames."
-- Patricia O Tuama ([e-mail])
%%
"Prais'd be the fathomless universe, for life and joy, and for objects and
 knowledge curious."
-- Walt Whitman
%%
"Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system]
 made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories." - Ted Nelson, October 1977
%%
"Problems are only opportunities in disguise."
-- Albert North Whitehead
%%
"Programmers are expensive.  Hardware is cheap."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"Pseudo-Judeo-Christian horror was no match for genuinely
 hypoglycemic hunger."
   -- Peni R. Griffin, "The Goat Man" (IASFM, 5/89)
%%
"Pseudocode can be used to some extent to aid the maintenance
 process.  However, pseudocode that is highly detailed -
 approaching the level of detail of the code itself - is not of
 much use as maintenance documentation.  Such detailed
 documentation has to be maintained almost as much as the code,
 thus doubling the maintenance burden.  Furthermore, since such
 voluminous pseudocode is too distracting to be kept in the
 listing itself, it must be kept in a separate folder.  The
 result: Since pseudocode - unlike real code - doesn't have to be
 maintained, no one will maintain it.  It will soon become out of
 date and everyone will ignore it.  (Once, I did an informal
 survey of 42 shops that used pseudocode.  Of those 42, 0 [zero!],
 found that it had any value as maintenance documentation."
-- Meilir Page-Jones, _The Practical Guide to Structured
     Design_, Yourdon Press (c) 1988
%%
"Psychoanalysis is the mental illness it purports to cure."
-- Karl Kraus
%%
"Psychoanalysis??  I thought this was a nude rap session!!!"
-- Zippy
%%
"Pull the trigger and you're garbage."
-- Lady Blue
%%
"Pull the wool over your own eyes!"
-- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
%%
"Put all your eggs in one basket, and WATCH THAT BASKET!"
-- Jerry Buchmeyer
%%
"Question Authority and the Authorities will question You."
-- Danny Low ([e-mail])
%%
"R&D is not something that can be useful alone... R&D is part of a product-
 making process."
-- Ralph E. Gomory, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New York City
%%
"Rage is a wind that blows out the candle of reason."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Rage, rage, against the dying of the light!"
-- Dylan Thomas
%%
"Reading legal mush can turn your brain to guacamole!"
-- Amiga ROM Kernel Manual
%%
"Real education must be limited to men who *insist* on knowing.  The rest
 is mere sheep-herding."
-- Ezra Pound
%%
"Real programmers don't bring paper bag lunches.  If the vending machine
 sells it, they eat it.  If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't
 eat it.  Vending machines don't sell quiche."
%%
"Real programmers don't comment their code.  If it was hard to write, it
 should be hard to understand."
%%
"Real programmers don't draw flowcharts.  Cavemen drew flowcharts, and look
 how much good it did them."
%%
"Reality is not binding on news admins."
-- Cathy Foulston ([e-mail])
%%
"Rebellion is like witchcraft. That's what it is, it's like witchcraft."
-- Missouri State Rep. Jean Dixon, on labeling "offensive music".
    USA Today, March 20, 1990
%%
"Regardless of the legal speed limit, your Buick must be operated at
 speeds faster than 85 MPH (140kph)."
-- 1987 Buick Grand National owners manual.
%%
"Reliable software must kill people reliably."
-- Andy Mickel
%%
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will
 fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."
-- Bertrand Russell
%%
"Remember Kruschev:  he tried to do too many things too fast, and he was
 removed in disgrace.  If Gorbachev tries to destroy the system or make too
 many fundamental changes to it, I believe the system will get rid of him.
 I am not a political scientist, but I understand the system very well.
 I believe he will have a "heart attack" or retire or be removed.  He is
 up against a brick wall.  If you think they will change everything and
 become a free, open society, forget it!"
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
%%
"Remember kids, if there's a loaded gun in the room, be sure that you're the
one holding it."
-- Captain Combat
%%
"Remember, IBM has always prided itself on its marketing prowess, and market
 segmentation was an essential part of that.  The last thing IBM wanted to
 do was compete with itself.  But it looks like that kind of thinking isn't
 going to work anymore."
-- An unnamed IBM official, InfoWorld, February 26, 1990, page 1, about
   the unhappiness of the AS/400 group that the System/6000 had an aggressive
   price/performance ratio, and a larger number
%%
"Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
Love is not music; Music is the best." -- Frank Zappa
%%
"Remember, extremism in the nondefense of moderation is not a virtue."
-- Peter Neumann, about usenet
%%
"Resist, expose, or stop immediately every public school or group sex
 education program, no matter what it is called or how it is diffused into
 the curriculum."
-- Fr. Paul Marx, President, Human Life International, in his brochure,
     From Contraception to Abortion, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking
     For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Revolution is the opiate of the intellectuals"
- "Oh, Lucky Man"
%%
"Right now I feel that I've got my feet on the ground as far as my head
 is concerned."
-- Baseball pitcher Bo Belinsky
%%
"Roman Polanski makes his own blood.  He's smart -- that's why his movies work."
-- A brilliant director at "Frank's Place"
%%
"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead."
-- W. Shakespeare, HAMLET
%%
"Roses are red, violets are blue; I'm schizophrenic and so am I."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"S.F.'S NO GOOD!!" They bellow till we're deaf.
 "But this looks good."  "WELL THEN IT'S NOT S.F.!!"
-- Kingsley Amis
%%
"SCCS, the source motel!  Programs check in and never check out!"
-- Ken Thompson
%%
"Sacred cows make great hamburgers."
-- Rober Reisner

How do they hold the spatula?
-- Stacey Campbell ([e-mail])
%%
"Sarcasm: barbed ire."
-- Author Unknown
%%
"Satanic Verses is a despicable book that could not have been written by
 a person who wished to behave decently and responsibly."
-- Orson Scott Card, Science Fiction author, Mormon, weenie
%%
"Say yur prayers, yuh flea-pickin' varmint!"
-- Yosemite Sam
%%
"Say, isn't that a twenty-story-high Gumby-shaped robot
 approaching at about Mach 8?"
   "What do you know...?  So it is."
%%
"Schemes to subvert the liberties of a great community require time to
 mature them for execution.  An army, so large as seriously to menace
 those liberties, could only be formed by progressive augmentations;
 which would suppose not merely a temporary combination between the
 legislature and the executive, but a continued conspiracy for a series
 of time.  Is it probable that such a combination would exist at all?
 Is it probable that it would be perserved in, and transmitted along
 through all the successive variations in a representative body, which
 biennial elections would naturally produce in both houses?  Is it
 presumable that every man the instant he took his seat in the national
 Senate or House of Representatives would commence a traitor to his
 constituents and to his country?  Can it be supposed that there would
 not be found one man discerning enough to detect so attrocious a
 conspiracy, or bold or honest enough to apprise his constituents of
 their danger?  If such presumptions can fairly be made, there ought
 to be at once an end of all delegated authority."
-- Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist Papers, #26
%%
"Science has proof without any certainty.  Creationists have certainty
 without any proof."
-- Ashley Montague
%%
"Science is about skepticism."
-- Eugene Miya
%%
"Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it."
-- Aubrey Eben
%%
"Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing."
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, _Computer Language_, Oct 90
%%
"Science makes godlike -- it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes
 scientific.  Moral:  science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is
 forbidden.  Science is the *first* sin, the *original* sin.  *This alone is
 morality.* ``Thou shalt not know'' -- the rest follows."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
"Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature... Life is
 either a daring adventure or nothing."
-- Helen Keller
%%
"Seed me, Seymour"
-- a random number generator meets the big green mother from outer space
%%
"Send lawyers, guns and money..."
-- Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song
%%
"Sex education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions."
-- Phyllis Schlafly
%%
"Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest."
-- Jimmy Swaggart, TV preacher, self-described pornography addict who paid
   prostitutes to commit "pornographic acts", hypocrite
%%
"Ships don't come in, they're built."
-- anon
%%
"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid."
-- Martin Mull
%%
"Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."
-- Vince Lombardi, football coach
%%
"Shut your eyes and you'll burst into flames."
-- The Log Lady
%%
"Sigh... Every day I thank my statuette of Wilma Flintstone that
 I was born normal."
-- Zippy the pinhead
%%
"Silent gratitude isn't very much use to anyone."
-- G. B. Stearn
%%
"Since the bicycle makes little demand on material or energy resources,
 contributes little to pollution, makes a positive contribution to health and
 causes little death or injury, it can be regarded as the most benevolent of
 machines."
-- S. S. Wilson
%%
"Six years for possession of a cigarette?...I got six months for possession
 of a deadly weapon!"
- cartoon by S. Harris
%%
"Slime is the agony of water."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
%%
"So far from God, so close to the United States"
-- Old Mexican proverb
%%
"So why don't you make like a tree... and get outta here."
-- Biff in "Back to the Future"
%%
"So-called Christian rock. . . . is a diabolical force undermining Christianity
 from within."
-- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocrite and TV preacher, self-described pornography addict,
 "Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and roll.", The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50.
%%
"Socialism is power, power, and more power."
-- Oswald Spengler, Hitler's intellectual forebear
%%
"Software is the heart and soul of a computer company."
-- DEC President Ken Olsen
%%
"Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
 'user-friendly'.... Their best approach, so far, has been to take
 all the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover."
-- Bill Gates, Pres., Microsoft, Inc.
%%
"Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon
 the wall instead of using it."
-- Gordon R. Dickson
%%
"Some people should be taken with a grain of salt; others with a whole shaker."
-- Blumstein ([e-mail])
%%
"Some people think like drummers, some people act like them."
-- Jason Titus
%%
"Some would sooner die than think.  In fact, they often do."
-- Bertrand Russell
%%
"Somebody said to me, `But the Beatles were antimaterialistic.'  That's a huge
 myth.  John and I literally used to sit down and say `Now, let's write a
 swimming pool'."
-- Paul McCartney
%%
"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they
 should live next door and just visit now and then."
-- Katherine Hepburn
%%
"Sometimes insanity is the only alternative"
-- button at a Science Fiction convention.
%%
"Sometimes it pays to stay in bed on Monday, rather than spending the rest of
 the week debugging Monday's code."
-- Dan Salomon
%%
"Sometimes you have to be a harsh cookie editor."
-- Karl
%%
"Sometimes you leave a mark, before you know the score."
-- Ric Ocasek, "You Got You", from the album "This Side Of Paradise"
%%
"Spending four or five hours a day tracing through CONSIO with an
 assembly-level debugger will take the spring out of anybody's step."
-- The Lone Contractor
%%
"Spock, did you see the looks on their faces?"
  "Yes, Captain, a sort of vacant contentment."
%%
"Spontaneous combustion!  What a stroke of luck!"
-- Max
%%
"Stalinism begins at home."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"Stan and I thought that this experiment was so stupid, we decided to finance
 it ourselves."
-- Martin Fleischmann, co-discoverer of room-temperature fusion (?)
%%
"Standards committees are not the best ways to create a standard.  Standards
 meetings and standards themselves are horribly political things.  One
 thing that people forget is that many standards are made by rather small
 groups of people.  A few good people can really save the day, and a few
 idiots can really make it miserable for years to come."
-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix
%%
"State run lotteries: think of them as tax breaks for the intelligent."
-- Evan Leibovitch
%%
"Stop annoying Mister President with impertinent questions, Junior."
-- Death Race 2000
%%
"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of
 government!"
-- M. Python
%%
"Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe."
-- Frank Zappa
%%
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward."
-- William E. Davidsen
%%
"Success covers a multitude of blunders."
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"Sudden de-compression Sucks!"
-- Dennis Robert Gorrie, [e-mail]
%%
"Summit meetings tend to be like panda matings.     The expectations are always
 high, and the results usually disappointing."
-- Robert Orben
%%
"Survey says..."
-- Richard Dawson, weenie, on "Family Feud"
%%
"TO MANKIND And the hope that the war against folly may someday be won, after
 all."
-- Dedicatory note of "The Gods Themselves"
%%
"Take Idaho's license plates - they say 'Famous Potatoes.'  Then there's New
 Hampshire - their license plates say 'Live Free ... or DIE!!'  I don't know, I
 think that somewhere between 'Famous Potatoes' and 'Live Free or Die' the
 truth lies.  And I think it's closer to 'Famous Potatoes.'"
-- George Carlin
%%
"Take off your engineering hat and put on your management hat."
-- Thiokol management, 1/27/86
%%
"Take that, you hostile sons-of-bitches!"
-- James Coburn, in the finale of _The_President's_Analyst_
%%
"Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed."
-- Lazarus Long, from Robert Heinlein's _Time Enough For Love_
%%
"Taxes?  We don't need no stinking taxes."
-- Jeff Daiell
%%
"Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to
 experience it."
-- Max Frisch
%%
"Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything,
 except over technology."
-- John Tudor
%%
"Tell the truth and run."
-- Yugoslav proverb
%%
"Thank heaven for startups; without them we'd never have any advances."
-- Seymour Cray
%%
"That government is best which governs least."
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"That government is best which governs not at all."
-- Henry David Thoreau
%%
"That is not the Usenet tradition, but it's a solidly-entrenched
 delusion now."
-- Brian Kantor ([e-mail])
%%
"That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest"
-- Thoreau (Sysop's note: and if so, what are we doing here?)
%%
"That's not a bug, that's merely an idiosyncracy."
-- mattb (formerly of sco)
%%
"The *evident* character of this defective cognition of which mathematics
is proud, and on which it plumes itself before philosophy, rests solely on
the poverty of its purpose and the defectiveness of its stuff, and is therefore
of a kind that philosophy must spurn."
-- G. W. F. Hegel
%%
"The ACLU has stood foursquare against the recurring tides of hysteria that
from time to time threaten freedoms everywhere... Indeed, it is difficult
to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the
Union's valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights
of people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised
by the majority they were at the time."
-- former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren
%%
"The Amiga is the only personal computer where you can run a multitasking
operating system and get realtime performance, out of the box."
-- Peter da Silva
%%
"The Avis WIZARD decides if you get to drive a car. Your head won't touch the
pillow of a Sheraton unless their computer says it's okay."
-- Arthur Miller
%%
"The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism."
-- George Will
%%
"The Book says BURN and DESTROY repent and redeem and revenge and deploy and
 rumble thee forth to the land of the unbelieving scum 'cause they don't go
 for what's in the Book and that makes 'em BAD."
-- Frank Zappa
%%
"The C committee took something that wasn't broken, and tidied it up without
 breaking it."
-- Dennis Ritchie ([e-mail]), about ANSI C standard X3J11
%%
"The C shell is flakier than a snowstorm."
-- Guy Harris
%%
"The Diabolonian position is new to the London playgoer of today, but not to
 lovers of serious literature.  From Prometheus to the Wagnerian Siegfried,
 some enemy of the gods, unterrified champion of those oppressed by them, has
 always towered among the heroes of the loftiest poetry."
-- Shaw, "On Diabolonian Ethics"
%%
"The Government just announced today the creation of the Neutron Bomb II.
 Similar to the Neutron Bomb, the Neutron Bomb II not only kills people
 and leaves buildings standing, but also does a little light housekeeping."
--  from "Global Village News" on Nickelodeon
%%
"The Heinlein Woman to me is this woman who goes out and rules the galaxy,
 smokes a cigar, uses a machine gun and all, but what she really wants is to
 bring her husband his slippers."
-- paraphrase, based on peter@sugar's memory of a quote by Joan D. Vinge
%%
"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through
 three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and
 Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.
 "For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can
 we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by
 the question 'Where shall we have lunch?'"
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
"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
%%
"The Lisa had problems, but it was a terrific piece of engineering that still
 puts the Macintosh to shame."
-- Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld
%%
"The Mets were great in 'sixty eight,
 The Cards were fine in 'sixty nine,
 But the Cubs will be heavenly in nineteen and seventy."
-- Ernie Banks
%%
"The NY Times is read by the people who run the country.  The Washington Post
 is read by the people who think they run the country.   The National Enquirer
 is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country..."
-- Robert J Woodhead ([e-mail])
%%
"The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want television?"
-- Philip K. Dick
%%
"The Soviet Union, which has complained recently about alleged anti-Soviet
 themes in American advertising, lodged an official protest this week against
 the Ford Motor Company's new campaign: `Hey you stinking fat Russian, get
 off my Ford Escort.'"
-- Dennis Miller, Saturday Night Live
%%
"The Street finds its own uses for technology."
-- William Gibson
%%
"The United States has entered an anti-intellectual phase in its history,
 perhaps most clearly seen in our virtually thought-free political life."
-- David Baltimore
%%
"The ability of two men to put on gloves, stand toe-to-toe, and pummel each
 other into insensibility... is what separates us from the animals."
-- Jim, on Taxi
%%
"The alternative to mutual trust, which is indeed a risky gamble, is the
 security of the police state."
-- Alan Watts
%%
"The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle: they're on
TV!"
-- Homer Simpson
%%
"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
%%
"The armchair quarterbacking of a former quarterback is worth more than the
 armchair quarterbacking of a schmuck."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its
 own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it
 is merely a process, not an art."
-- Alfred Stieglitz, circa 1895, about the Romantic-Impressionist school
    of photography
%%
"The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one
 which will last forever."
-- Anatole France
%%
"The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people
 who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything."
-- Jim Joyce, former computer science lecturer at the University of California
%%
"The best index to a person's character is a) how he treats people who can't
 do him any good and b) how he treats people who can't fight back."
-- Abigail Van Buren
%%
"The better technology does not always sell better, even if it is first."
-- William J. Spencer, Xerox Corporation
%%
"The biggest growth industry in UNIX is promoting standards."
-- Rikki Kirzner, Dataquest.
%%
"The bonds that links your true family is not one of blood, but of
 respect and joy in each others life.
 Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof."
-- Richard Bach
%%
"The cat is out of the bag.  Even Siskel and Ebert talk about it, and they're
 _professional art farts_, not amatuer Art History Majors forced to work in
 a computer company because they realized too late that a four-year investment
 in a liberal arts degree is about as useful on the job market as a bicycle
 with square wheels."
-- Chris Neckalson (sco!chrisn)
%%
"The chain that can be yanked is not the cosmic chain."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."
-- G. Fitch
%%
"The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity;
 the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a
 military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and
 private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion;
 and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes
 who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity."
-- Edward Gibbons, _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_
%%
"The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone
 is responsible. Universes of virtually unlimited complexity can be
 created in the form of computer programs."
-- Joseph Weizenbaum, _Computer Power and Human Reason_
%%
"The condition upon which God has given liberty to man is eternal vigilance."
-- John Philpot Curran
%%
"The country couldn't run without Prohibition.  That is the industrial fact."
-- Henry Ford, 1929
%%
"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold,
 persistent experimentation."
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt
%%
"The cow story is unlikely - cows are valuable, and don't fit into
 automatic teller machine slots."
-- ho95c.att.com!wcs
%%
"The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be
 missing."
-- William J. Broad
%%
"The day is very warm", intoned the priest, "but the noodles are getting cold".
"A cold noodle", he continued, "is like a dog without fur.... Recognizable,
but very unpleasent."
---- cruc!gevert
%%
"The difference between a rabbit and a rock is the information content, and the
 difference between a living and a dead rabbit is in the availability or
 usability of the information."
-- Dr. John A. Ball
%%
"The difference between fantasy
 and science fiction
 is that one hast
 honest politicians
 scrupulous lawyers,
 and altruistic doctors,
 while the other
 only has beings from outer space."
-- William John Watkins
%%
"The difference between the right word and a similar word is the difference
 between lightning and a lightning bug."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"The doughnut is...not unlike the ideal lover - rich, sensual,
 irresistably desirable, and available 24 hours a day."
-- David Hoffman
%%
"The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as
 rather silly.  I would rather use them to mimic something better."
--Edsger Dijkstra
%%
"The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand
 what he finds."
-- Claude Bernard
%%
"The fact is that one side thinks that the profits to be won outweigh the risks
 to be incurred, and the other side is ready to face danger than accept an
 immediate loss."
-- Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
%%
"The federal procurement system is like a software system with bugs.
 Every time it's broken down, somebody has patched it.  But keeping
 it together is getting harder and harder and costing more money.
 And at that point, an experienced software engineer would throw up
 his hands and say, 'Hey! Let's toss this out and start over.'"
-- James Paul,
   House Science, Space, and Technology Committee's Subcommittee
   on Investigations and Oversight.
%%
"The filter has discreting sources."
-- KSC FIDO, 1/28/86
%%
"The final twitch of "Political Correctness" grand peur has to do with the
 age-old fear of antinomian beastliness, lesbians holding black masses over
 copies of Derrida and so forth."
-- Alexander Cockburn
%%
"The following is not for the weak of heart or Fundamentalists."
-- Dave Barry
%%
"The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the
 sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment."
-- Richard P. Feynman
%%
"The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to
 safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster
 the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a
 source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity."

"Religion is verily the chief instrument for the establishment of order in the
 world and of tranquillity amongst it's peoples...The greater the decline of
 religion, the more grievous the waywardness of the ungodly. This cannot but
 lead in the end to chaos and confusion."
-- Baha'u'llah, a selection from the Baha'i scripture
%%
"The geeks shall inherit the earth."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"The genius of you Americans is that you never make any clear-cut stupid
 moves, only complicated stupid moves that leave us scratching our heads
 wondering if we might possibly have missed something."
-- Gamel Abdel Nasser
%%
"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make
 empty prophecies.  The danger already exists that mathematicians have made
 a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the
 bonds of Hell."
 -- Saint Augustine
%%
"The good thing about drawing a tiger is that it automatically
 makes your picture fine art."
-- Calvin
%%
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded
 on the Christian Religion."
-- George Washington
%%
"The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is, `What does
 woman want?'"
-- Sigmund Freud
%%
"The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly
 fact."
-- Thomas Henry Huxley
%%
"The greater the hold of government upon the life of
 the individual citizen, the greater the risk of war."
-- John Hospers
%%
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,
 well-meaning but without understanding."
-- Justice Louis O. Brandeis (Olmstead vs. United States)
%%
"The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace."
-- Holly Near
%%
"The hand that rocks the cradle can also cradle a rock."
--- Feminist saying, circa 1968-1972
%%
"The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
"The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics."
-- Plato
%%
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of moral
 crisis, preserved their neutrality."
-- Dante
%%
"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at
 children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end,
 which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up.  And one of the games which
 it is most attached is called, "Keep tomorrow dark," and which is also named
 (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet."  The
 players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have
 to say about what is to happen in the next generation.  The players then wait
 until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely.  Then they go and do
 something else.  That is all.  For a race of simple tastes, however, it is
 great fun."
-- G.K. Chesterton
%%
"The illegal we do immediately.  The unconstitutional takes a bit longer."
-- Henry Kissinger
%%
"The important thing is never to stop questioning."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the
 inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
-- Winston Churchill, [e-mail]
%%
"The judge ought to give 'em a chance to tell what evolution is.  Course we
 got them licked anyhow, but I believe in being fair and square and American.
 Besides, I'd like to know what evolution is myself."
-- Tennessee State Representative John Washington Butler,
   author of the Tennessee Anti-Evolution Law, during the Scopes Monkey Trial
%%
"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
"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
%%
"The less you know about home computers the more you'll want the new IBM PS/1."
-- Advertisment in the Edmonton Journal, Thursday, December 13, 1990
%%
"The lesser of two evils -- is evil."
-- Seymour (Sy) Leon
%%
"The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals.
 It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets....The press in its
 historical connotation comprehends every sort of publication which
 affords a vehicle of information and opinion."
-- Lowell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452 (1938), quoted by Mike
     Godwin in comp.org.eff.talk
%%
"The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is
 evidently not the good we are seeking, for it is merely useful for the sake
 of something else."
-- Aristotle
%%
"The life of the people must be freed from the asphyxiating perfume of our
 modern eroticism, as it must be from unmanly and prudish refusal to face
 facts....  The right to personal freedom comes second in importance to the
 duty of sustaining the race."
-- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1924
%%
"The light that burns twice as bright lasts half as long,
 and you have burned so very, very bright, Roy!"
-- Doctor Eldon Tyrell, in Blade Runner
%%
"The living dead don't NEED to solve word problems."
-- Calvin
%%
"The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The
 terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"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
%%
"The mass media is supported and sustained by commercial entities. And corn
 flakes and Shakespeare are simply not kissing cousins.  Leonard Bernstein and
 living bras are incompatible.  And you cannot sustain adult, probing,
 meaningful drama when the proceedings are interrupted every twelve minutes by
 a dozen dancing rabbits with toilet paper."
-- Rod Serling
%%
"The medium is the massage."
-- Crazy Nigel
%%
"The medium is the message."
-- Marshall McLuhan
%%
"The minority is always right."
-- Henrik Ibsen 1828-1906
%%
"The more you have, the more you have that needs fixing."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with
 judiciously placed print statements."
-- Brian Kernighan [1978]
%%
"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason."
-- Thomas Paine, _The Age of Reason_
%%
"The most important question in the study of government is 'how can we prevent
 government from going berserk and killing off half the population?'"
-- John Kormylo
%%
"The most important question when any new computer architecture is
 introduced is `So what?'"
-- someone in comp.arch
%%
"The most important thing in a man is not what he knows, but what he is."
-- Narciso Yepes
%%
"The net result is a system that is not only binary compatible with 4.3 BSD,
 but is even bug for bug compatible in almost all features."
-- Avadit Tevanian, Jr., "Architecture-Independent Virtual Memory Management
   for Parallel and Distributed Environments:  The Mach Approach"
%%
"The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.  Life
 is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured some whiskey
 onto my granola and faced a new day."
-- Peter Applebome
%%
"The number of Unix installations has grown to 10, with more expected."
-- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June, 1972
%%
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a necessity."
- Oscar Wilde
%%
"The only corporate defense against rationality is bureaucracy."
-- anon
%%
"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."
-- Salvador Dali
%%
"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member
 of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others ...
 over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
-- John Stuart Mill 'On Liberty' 1859
%%
"The only thing open about OSF is their mouth."
-- Chuck Musciano
%%
"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
%%
"The only way for a reporter to look at a politician is down."
-- H.L. Mencken
%%
"The part I think I'd like best is crushing people who get in my way."
-- Calvin
%%
"The pathology is to want control, not that you ever get it, because of
 course you never do."
-- Gregory Bateson
%%
"The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato chip
 market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food market and
 is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose."
-- James Finke, Pres., Commodore Int'l Ltd. (1982)
%%
"The picture's pretty bleak, gentlemen...  The world's climates are changing,
 the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a
 walnut."
-- some dinosaurs from The Far Side, by Gary Larson
%%
"The police are not there to create disorder.   The police are there to
 preserve disorder."
-- The late Richard J. Daly, Mayor of the city of Chicago
%%
"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism
 by those who have not got it."
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence
 of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars.  Verily, the
 learned men are the heirs of the Prophets."
-- A tradition attributed to Muhammad
%%
"The pyramid is opening!"
   "Which one?"
"The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
-- The Firesign Theatre
%%
"The question is rather: if we ever succeed in making a mind 'of nuts and
 bolts', how will we know we have succeeded?
-- Fergal Toomey

"It will tell us."
-- Barry Kort
%%
"The raytracer of justices recurses slowly, but it renders exceedingly fine."
-- Larry Phillips ([e-mail])
%%
"The real problem with SDI is that it doesn't kill anybody."
-- Tom Neff
%%
"The real test of an artist, of course, is not whether you can see each blade
 of grass, but whether the eyes follow you across the room."
-- Stewart Evans
%%
"The reason that God was able to create the world in seven days is that he
 didn't have to worry about the installed base."
-- Enzo Torresi
%%
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
 in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on
 the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"The religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
"The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal
 any part of what one has recognized to be the truth."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom...for we never know what is
 enough until we know what is more than enough."
-- William Blake
%%
"The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between a five-dollar bill
 and a whip deserves to learn the difference on his own back -- as, I think, he
 will."
-- Francisco d'Anconia, in Ayn Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_
%%
"The script had been written by this legendary dead guy that we know and there
 were about fifty-eleven-hundred pages of it.  Of this eight words were
 completely readable.  These were "oranges" in the title and "Close the
 curtains, Geoffrey, I'm amphibious", which was right at the end.  To be
 perfectly frank man, I wasn't even 100% sure about amphibious."
 -- Waldo "D.R." Dobbs, "D.R. and Quinch go to Hollywood".
%%
"The sendmail configuration file is one of those files that looks like
 someone beat their head on the keyboard. After working with it... I
 can see why!"
-- Harry Skelton (harry@usrgrp)
%%
"The shortest distance between two points is through Hell."
-- Brian Clark
%%
"The shortest distance between two points is under construction."
-- Noelie Altito
%%
"The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not
 be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but
 living, honored rules of conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil
 Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so."
-- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson
%%
"The sixties were good to you, weren't they?"
-- George Carlin
%%
"The so-called Christian world is contracepting itself out of existence."
-- Fr. L. Kieffer, HLI Reports, August 1989, as quoted in "The Far
    Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth."  I usually pick one small
 topic like this to give a lecture on.  Poets say science takes away from the
 beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms.  Nothing is "mere."  I too can
 see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.  But do I see less or more?
 The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel
 my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light.  A vast pattern -- of which
 I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one
 is belching there.  Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
 apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together.
 What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?*  It does not do harm to the
 mystery to know a little about it.  For far more marvelous is the truth than
 any artists of the past imagined!  Why do the poets of the present not speak
 of it?  What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but
 if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?"
-- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
%%
"The starting point of all individual achievement is the adoption of a
 definite purpose and a definite plan for its attainment."
-- Napoleon Hill
%%
"The strength of the Constitution lies entirely in the determination of each
 citizen to defend it.  Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do
 his share in this defense are the constitutional rights secure."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a
 soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with
 an idea."
-- _The Wizardry Compiled_ by Rick Cook
%%
"The time for action is past!  Now is the time for senseless bickering!"
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"The totality is present even in the broken pieces."
-- Aldous Huxley
%%
"The triumph of libertarian anarchy is nearly (in historical terms) at
 hand... *if* we can keep the Left from selling us into slavery and the
 Right from blowing us up for, say, the next twenty years."
-- Eric Rayman, usenet guy, about nanotechnology
%%
"The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
 appreciates how difficult it was."
-- Walt West
%%
"The truth knocks on the door and you say,
"Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so
it goes away.  Puzzling."
-- Robert Pirsig (quoted in Zen_To_Go, Jon Winokur)
%%
"The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if
 any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents
 as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false."
-- Saint Thomas Aquinas
%%
"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow
 sharper."
-- Eden Phillpots
%%
"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we *can*
 suppose."
-- J.B.S. Haldane
%%
"The urge to destroy is also a creative urge."
-- Bakunin
[ed. note - I would say: The urge to destroy may sometimes be a creative urge.]
%%
"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
 regarded as a criminal offense."
-- E. W. Dijkstra (1982)
%%
"The use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension
 of the Blues Brothers has been approved."
%%
"The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children
 produce adults."
-- Peter De Vries
%%
"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are
 perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust."
-- Lawrence Dalzell
%%
"The voters have spoken, the bastards..."
-- unknown
%%
"The way of the world is to praise dead saints and prosecute live ones."
-- Nathaniel Howe
%%
"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit."
-- The Shadow
%%
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-- Bertrand Russell
%%
"The wife you save may be your own."
-- Unofficial slogan of supporters of one of FDR's sons,
   a notorious womanizer, during the son's first congressional race
%%
"The woman of my dreams knows how to break into systems."
-- Doug Tygar
%%
"The world is coming to an end.  Please log off."
-- Bob Irwin ([e-mail])
%%
"The worst thing is when you have to kill someone you love
 because they're SATAN."
-- Judy Tenuda
%%
"Theater, art, literature, cinema... must be cleansed of all manifestations of
 our rotting world..."
-- Adolf Hitler
%%
"There are a lot of lies going around.... and half of them are true."
-- Winston Churchill
%%
"There are some good people in it, but the orchestra as a whole is equivalent
 to a gang bent on destruction."
-- John Cage, composer
%%
"There are some people who take a nickel's worth of knowledge and sit on it
 as if it were an Incan treasure."
-- unknown
%%
"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them."
-- Heisenberg
%%
"There are two was to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to
 doubt everything.  Both ways save us from thinking."
-- Alfred Korzybski
%%
"There can be no offense where none is taken"
-- Japanese proverb
%%
"There has been opposition to every innovation in the history of man, with the
 possible exception of the sword."
-- Benjamin Dana
%%
"There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan
 for."
-- Fred Hoyle
%%
"There is absolutely nothing loving about sex .... Lust is as destructive of
 love inside the marriage as it is outside."
-- Fr. John H. McGoey, Family Planning Educator, Human Life International
    Symposium on Human Sexuality, 4/25/86, as quoted in "The Far
    Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"There is also a thriving independent student movement in Poland, and thus
 there is a strong possibility (though no guarantee) of making an EARN-Poland
 link, should it ever come about, a genuine link - not a vacuum cleaner
 attachment for a Bloc information gathering apparatus rationed to trusted
 apparatchiks."
-- David Phillips, SUNY at Buffalo, about establishing a
   gateway from EARN (European Academic Research Network)
   to Poland
%%
"There is considerable evidence that great empires and civilizations have been
 undone not by barbarian invaders but by climatic change."
-- 1977 CIA report
%%
"There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum."
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
"There is no Father Christmas.  It's just a marketing ploy to make low income
 parents' lives a misery."
  "... I want you to picture the trusting face of a child, streaked with tears
   because of what you just said."
"I want you to picture the face of its mother, because one week's dole won't
 pay for one Master of the Universe Battlecruiser!"
- Filthy Rich and Catflap, 1986
%%
"There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing
 the rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries
 civilization will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements.
 We must provide a Great Age or see the collapse of the upward
 striving of the human race."
- Alfred North Whitehead
%%
"There is no difference between killing a four year-old child and aborting a
 pre-born 3-month-old [fetus]."
-- Randall Terry, Executive Director, Operation Rescue, in his film,
    "Higher Laws", as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves,"
    a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"There is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"There is no doubt I should be tarred and feathered."
-- Richard Sexton
%%
"There is no idea so sacred that it cannot be questioned, analyzed...
 and ridiculed."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"There is no knowledge that is not power."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
"There is no law that vulgarity and literary excellence cannot coexist."
-- A. Trevor Hodge
%%
"There is no law that vulgarity and literary excellence cannot coexist."
-- A. Trevor Hodge
%%
"There is no statute of limitations on stupidity."
-- Randomly produced by a computer program called Markov3.
%%
"There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things
 we don't know yet."
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
"There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
 do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way."
- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
%%
"There is such a fine line between genius and stupidity."
-- David St. Hubbins, "Spinal Tap"
%%
"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greater computer than
 the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a
 millisecond?"
  "The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt.
  "A mere abacus.  Mention it not."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
"There was a vague, unpleasant manginess about his appearance; he somehow
 seemed dirty, though a close glance showed him as carefully shaven as an
 actor, and clad in immaculate linen."
-- H.L. Mencken, on the death of William Jennings Bryan
%%
"There was no difference between the behavior of a god and the operations of
 pure chance..."
-- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
%%
"There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a howling
 away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were
 a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts.  I could never stand to
 see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was."
- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
%%
"There's a lovely paper which compares Unix to Zork in both cognitive and
 user motivational terms.  Maybe you like Unix because it's an adventure
 game?  Still, I just don't think Unix will succeed as a theme park (some
 small fraction of :-)"
-- Bruce Cohen
%%
"There's always been Tower of Babel sort of bickering inside Unix, but this
 is the most extreme form ever.  This means at least several years of
 confusion."
-- Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft,
   about the Open Systems Foundation
%%
"There's nothing remarkable about it.  All one has to do is hit the right
 keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself."
-- J. S. Bach
%%
"There's nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level
 wouldn't cure. "
-- Ross MacDonald
%%
"There's one constant in buying a suit:  It should fit."
-- The Houston Chronicle, 3/15/90
%%
"There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it
 is I'll get married again."
-- Clint Eastwood
%%
"There... I've run rings 'round you logically"
-- Monty Python's Flying Circus
%%
"Therefore, one should never admit a garrison larger than one's own forces,
 especially when composed of barbarians."
-- Polybios, writing in the mid-2nd century BC (paraphrased), after an
   account of the betrayal of Epeiros by its mercenary Gallic garrison to a
   passing fleet of Illyrian pirates. "Barbarians", of course, in the original
   sense of "non-Greeks"; "non-Arabs" or "non-Muslims" perhaps, in the Saudi
   case. -- Duncan Head
%%
"These are actually chunks of lung itself being coughed up.  I don't
 understand exactly what it is, but God has healed you right now.
 Amen."
-- Televangelist Pat Robertson
%%
"These dogs, I tell you, they are so smart, but they worry me sometimes.  For
 instance, I'm plucking this pale yellow cottage cheesy guck from their snouts,
 rather like cheese atop a microwave pizza, and I have this horrible feeling,
 for I suspect these dogs (even though their winsome black mongrel eyes would
 have me believe otherwise) have been rummaging through the dumpsters out behind
 the cosmetic surgery center again, and their snouts are accessorized with, dare
 I say, yuppie liposuction fat.  How they manage to break into the California
 state regulation coyote-proof red plastic flesh disposal bags is beyond me.  I
 guess the doctors are being naughty or lazy.  Or both."
-- Douglas Coupland, from _Generation X_ (Tales for an Accelerated Culture)
%%
"These patriots don't mince words... Okay, sure, they *are* dangerous,
 hopelessly ignorant, inbred, retarded borderline lunatics with an
 insatiable lust for the blood of sinners -- but at least they're *honest*
 about it."
-- Reverend Ivan Stang, cofounder of the Church of the Subgenius, about
   a group known as Free Love Ministries, in his book _High Weirdness By Mail_
%%
"They [La Prensa] accused us of suppressing freedom of expression.  This was a
 lie and we could not let them publish it."
-- Nelba Blandon, Interior Ministry Director of Censorship, quoted in
   The New York Times, 1984
%%
"They communicated by tap-dancing and farting."
-- _Breakfast_of_Champions_
%%
"They know your name, address, telephone number, credit card numbers, who ELSE
 is driving the car "for insurance", ...  your driver's license number. In the
 state of Massachusetts, this is the same number as that used for Social
 Security, unless you object to such use. In THAT case, you are ASSIGNED a
 number and you reside forever more on the list of "weird people who don't give
 out their Social Security Number in Massachusetts."
-- Arthur Miller
%%
"They ought to make butt-flavored cat food."   --Gallagher
%%
"They smell, they snarl and they scratch; they have a singular aptitude for
 shredding rugs, drapes and upholstery; they're sneaky, selfish and not at
 all smart; they are disloyal, condescending and totally useless in any
 rodent-free environment."
-- Jean-Michel Chapereau, on cats
%%
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
 safety deserve neither liberty not safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
%%
"They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true
freak cannot be made.  A true freak must be born."
-- K. Dunn, _Geek Love_
%%
"They, they've got guys who'll go in and knock their heads off."
-- Richard Nixon, May 5, 1971, discussing a proposal to use Teamsters Union
    members to attack Vietnam War protestors

"Sure, Murderers.  Guys that really, you know, that's what they really do.
 It's the regular strikebuster types and all that... They're going to beat
 the shit out of some of these people.  And, uh, hope they really hurt 'em.
 You know, I mean go in... and smash some noses."
-- H. R. Haldeman's response
%%
"Things could be worse.  Suppose your errors were counted and published every
 day, like those of a baseball player."
-- Anonymous
%%
"Thinking small-minded is when you see your bus on the other side of the
 street and wish you could teleport across to catch it."
-- Kenneth Arromdee ([e-mail])
%%
"This could be the greatest night of our lives--but you're going to let
 it be the worst!"
-- John Blutarski
%%
"This generation may be the one that will face Armageddon."
-- Ronald Reagan, "People" magazine, December 26, 1985
%%
"This is no time for consensus government.  It's a time for leadership.  The
 average citizen doesn't know what the stakes are in Vietnam."
-- Richard M. Nixon, February 11, 1965
%%
"This is the life.  To be young, stupid, and have no future at all.  I love
 Brooklyn!"
-- Dan Akyroyd, "Samurai Night Fever", Saturday Night Live
%%
"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television."
-- David Letterman
%%
"This knowledge I pursue is the finest pleasure I have ever known.  I could
 no sooner give it up that I could the very air that I breath."
-- Paolo Uccello, Renaissance artist, discoverer of the laws of perspective
%%
"This one's got a lot more, uh, 640K that it can memorize."
-- CVN cable TV shopping channel
%%
"This was it. This was what he was, who he was, his being. He forgot to eat.
 Sometimes he'd resent having to leave the deck to use the toilet..."
-- William Gibson, _Neuromancer_
%%
"This will be dynamically handled, possibly correctly, in 4.1."
-- Dan Davison on streams configuration in SunOS 4.0
%%
"Those components (that software) which runs fastest and most reliable
 are those which aren't there."
-- Gordon Bell
%%
"Those who believe in astrology are living in houses with foundations of
 Silly Putty."
-  Dennis Rawlins, astronomer
%%
"Those who will be able to conquer software will be able to conquer the world."
-- Tadahiro Sekimoto, president, NEC Corp.
%%
"Those who worked the hardest are the last to surrender."
-- Gary Ward
%%
"Though a program be but three lines long,
 someday it will have to be maintained."
-- The Tao of Programming
%%
"Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so."
-- Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
%%
"Time is money and money can't buy you love and I love your outfit"
-- T.H.U.N.D.E.R. #1
%%
"Times are bad.  Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is
 writing a book."
-- Cicero
%%
"To IBM, 'open' means there is a modicum of interoperability among some of their
 equipment."
-- Harv Masterson
%%
"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
-- Woody Allen
%%
"To be against abortion and not against contraception -- it makes no sense
 because both of them are the same mentality."
-- Nancy O'Brien, Anti-Choice Activist, introducing Joan Andrews, 3/11/89,
    as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned
    Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"To be good, according to the vulgar standard of goodness, is obviously
 quite easy.  It merely requires a certain amount of sordid terror,
 a certain lack of imaginative thought, and a certain low passion for
 middle-class respectability."
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
"To block hats, that is everything."
-- character in a Woody Allen short story
%%
"To err is human, to compute divine. Trust your computer but not its
 programmer."
- Morris Kingston
%%
"To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois."
-- Jules Renard
%%
"To me, on of the most exciting things in the world is being poor, and
 survival, such an exciting challenge."
-- Thomas S. Monaghan, Founder, Domino's Pizza and Legatus, "National Catholic
   Reporter", 3/23/90, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves,"
   a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"To program is to understand."
-- Kristen Nygaard
%%
"To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social estab-
 lishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps, as part
 of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however, is the
 easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave,
 without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who believe in
 astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code
 that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or
 not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group
 of astronomers denounces it."
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
"To steal from a thief is not theft.  It is merely irony."
-- Zorro, while retrieving money taxed from Californians
%%
"To steal from one person is theft.  To steal from many is taxation."
-- Daiell's Law (a take-off on Felson's Law)
%%
"To take a significant step forward, you must make a series of finite
 improvements."
-- Donald J. Atwood, General Motors
%%
"To undertake a project, as the word's derivation indicates, means to cast an
 idea out ahead of oneself so that it gains autonomy and is fulfilled not only
 by the efforts of its originator but, indeed, independently of him as well.
-- Czeslaw Milosz
%%
"To your left is the marina where several senior cabinet officials keep luxury
 yachts for weekend cruises on the Potomac.  Some of these ships are up to 100
 feet in length; the Presidential yacht is over 200 feet in length, and can
 remain submerged for up to 3 weeks."
-- Garrison Keillor
%%
"Today there may be more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than in Eastern
 Europe."
-- George Will
%%
"Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few
 simple instructions such as 'go left', 'go right', and 'build car'."
-- John Sladek
%%
"Toroidal carbohydrate modules?  Make mine glazed!"
-- Zippy
%%
"Tourists -- have some fun with New york's hard-boiled cabbies.  When you get
 to your destination, say to your driver, "Pay? I was hitchhiking."
-- David Letterman
%%
"Trust me.  I know what I'm doing."
-- Sledge Hammer
%%
"Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy
 of him that brought her birth."
-- Milton
%%
"Turn on, tune up, rock out."
-- Billy Gibbons
%%
"U can c the color of the interior of the [vehicle]... dig."
"Ya stop cars with blk interior."
"Bees they naugahyde."
"Negrohide."
"Self tanning no doubt."
-- LAPD squad-car computer messages, as quoted in the Christopher Report, 7/91
%%
"UNIX should be used as an adjective."
-- AT&T
%%
"US out of North America, NOW!!"
-- Richard O'Rourke
%%
"US/Western repression of sexual knowledge and expression has left our twelve
 year olds less capable to deal with sex, and this justifies repression of
 sexual knowledge and expression to our twelve year olds."
-- Kent, our man from Xanth, commenting on the Netherland's
     new age of consent: 12
%%
"Umm, square root of two?  Ouch!"
-- The guy who blew a hole in the Pythagoreans' assertion that all numbers can
   be represented as a ratio of two integers, so they killed him
%%
"Under active consideration": We're searching the files for it.
-- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
%%
"Under consideration": We never heard of it.
-- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
%%
"Unemployment is an inconvenience."
-- John F. Haugh II
%%
"Unibus timeout fatal trap program lost sorry"
-- An error message printed by DEC's RSTS operating system for the PDP-11
%%
"Unix: a moment of convenience, a lifetime of regret."
-- old ITS hacker saying
%%
Unix: it's a nice place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit there.
%%
"Unless you are very rich and very eccentric, you will not enjoy the luxury of
 a computer in your own home."
-- Edward Yourdon, 1975.
%%
"Unlike most net.puritans, however, I feel that what OTHER consenting computers
 do in the privacy of their own phone connections is their own business."
-- John Woods, [e-mail]
%%
"Unlimited campaign spending eats at the heart of the democratic process."
-- Barry Goldwater
%%
"Until hard evidence is obtained and corroborated, the American people should
 not be frightened into believing that babies are being bred and eaten, that
 50,000 missing children are being murdered in human sacrifices, or that
 satanists are taking over America's day care centers...  An unjustified
 crusade against those perceived as satanists could result in wasted resources,
 unwarranted damage to reputations, and disruption of civil liberties."
-- Kenneth Lanning, head of the FBI's special unit in charge of
    investigating claims about satanic-cult crimes, in a report
    of his findings, June, 1989
%%
"Using an IBM PC is like juggling straight razors.
 Using a Mac is like shaving with a bowling pin."
-- Ted Nelson, _Computer Lib_
%%
"VMS is a text-only adventure game. If you win you can use Unix."
-- Bill Davidsen ([e-mail])
%%
"VMS isn't an operating system, it's a playpen for DEC system programmers."
-- Herb Blashtfalt
%%
"Vendi, vidi, parenthesi" -- I came, I saw, I programmed in Lisp!"
-- Dave W. Kimball
%%
"Waiter, there's no fly in my soup!"
-- Kermit the frog
%%
"War is Hell."
-- General William Sherman
%%
"War is like love; it always finds a way."
-- Bertold Brecht
%%
"War is the health of the State."
-- Proudhon (?)
%%
"War... is something that occurs not between man and man, but between States.
 The individuals who become involved in it are enemies only by accident."
-- Rousseau
%%
"We Americans, we're a simple people... but piss us off, and we'll bomb
 your cities."
-- Robin Williams, _Good Morning Vietnam_
%%
"We all say so, so it must be true."
-- the Bandar-log (monkey tribe), in Rudyard Kipling's _Jungle Book_
%%
"We all worry about the population explosion -- but we don't worry about it at
 the right time."
-- Arthur Hoppe
%%
"We are ... opposed to all forms of birth control with the exception of natural
 family planning [the rhythm method.]"
-- Judie Brown, President, American Life Lobby
%%
"We are not endeavoring to chain the future but to free the present. ... We are
 the advocates of inquiry, investigation, and thought. ... It is grander to
 think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed. ... I look for the
 day when *reason*, throned upon the world's brains, shall be the King of Kings
 and the God of Gods."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
%%
"We are on a threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition
 from nonlife to life."
-- Hans Moravec (on artificial intelligence)
%%
"We are starting a movement in the state legislatures...to forbid the
 installation of clinics that dispense contraceptives."
-- Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum
%%
"We are totally opposed to abortion under any circumstances.  We are opposed
 to abortifacient drugs and chemicals like the Pill and the IUD, and we are
 also opposed to all forms of birth control with the exception of natural
 family planning."
-- Judie Brown, President, American Life League, Population Institute
    advertisement, "How Dense Can We Get?", The New York Times, 10/6/85,
    as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned
    Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"We are what we are and it's never enough."
-- Chris de Burgh
%%
"We came.  We saw.  We kicked its ass."
-- Bill Murray, _Ghostbusters_
%%
"We can no more blame our loss of freedom on congressmen than we can
 prostitution on pimps.  Both simply provide broker services for their
 customers."
-- Dr. W Williams
%%
"We can't allow the people to interfere with the smooth flow of democracy."
-- Kitchener city council member
%%
"We can't schedule an orgy, it might be construed as fighting."
--Stanley Sutton
%%
"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."
-- Ortega y Gasset
%%
"We dare not tempt them with weakness.  For only when our arms are sufficient
 beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed."
-- John F. Kennedy (from his Inaugural Address)
%%
"We dedicated ourselves to a powerful idea -- organic law rather than naked
 power.  There seems to be universal acceptance of that idea in the nation."
-- Supreme Court Justice Potter Steart
%%
"We demand source because we've been burned too much by its lack, not because
 we have this desire to add custom hacks to our kernels or utilities. Believe
 me, we'd all like to run stock systems, straight off the vendor distribution
 tapes; it'd be significantly less work.  But our users have this liking for
 working systems and prompt fixes for the bugs they find, neither of which the
 vendors we buy from have been particularly good in supplying."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand."
-- James Watt
%%
"We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
-- David Brower
%%
"We expect them [Salvadoran officials] to work toward the elimination of
 human rights."
-- Dan Quayle, El Salvador, Feb 1989
%%
"We fall into error if we attribute to strategy a power
  independent of tactical results."
-- Karl von Clausewitz, On War
%%
"We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written."
-- Robert Gould Shaw, abolitionist
%%
"We find that the sexual instinct, when disappointed and unappeased,
 frequently seeks and finds a substitute in religion."
-- Baron Richard Von Krafft-Ebing
%%
"We have luck only with women -- not spacecraft!"
-- R. Kremnev, builder of failed Soviet FOBOS probes
%%
"We have met the enemy and he is us"
- Walt Kelly (in POGO)
%%
"We have ways to make you scream."
-- Intel advertisement, in the June 1989 Doctor Dobbs Journal
%%
"We hold that each man is the best judge of his own interest."
-- John Adams
%%
"We jumped into this area without knowing what we were jumping into."
-- Hubert H. Humphrey, October 22, 1969
%%
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road.  They get
 run over."
-- Aneurin Bevan
%%
"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history."
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"We live, in a very kooky time."
-- Herb Blashtfalt
%%
"We love your adherence to democratic principles."
-- Vice President George Bush, to Ferdinand Marcos
%%
"We must all hang together, or we will surely all hang separately"
 - Benjamin Franklin
%%
"We must either institute conventional forms of expression or else pretend
 that we have nothing to express."
-- George Santayana, _Soliloquies In England_
%%
"We must make unceasingly clear to Hanoi that we do not seek nor will we accept
 a camouflaged surrender which would inevitably result in the United States
 writing off Southeast Asia."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, July 30, 1968
%%
"We must never forget that if the war in Vietnam is lost... the right of
 free speech will be extinguished throughout the world."
-- Richard Milhouse Nixon, 10/27/65
%%
"We need a new cosmology.  New Gods.  New Sacraments.  Another drink."
-- Patti Smith
%%
"We need to take a look at [the Constitution] and maybe, from time to time, we
 should curtail some of those rights."
-- Chicago Police Superintendent LeRoy Martin, 7/91
%%
"We never make assertions, Miss Taggart," said Hugh Akston.  "That is
 the moral crime peculiar to our enemies.  We do not tell -- we *show*.
 We do not claim -- we *prove*."
-- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_
%%
"We plan absentee ownership.  I'll stick to building ships."
-- George Steinbrenner, 1973
%%
"We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of
 annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn
 and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from
 being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented."
-- Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948
%%
"We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement."
-- Richard J. Daley
%%
"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course,
 powerful muscles, but no personality."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"We walked on the moon -- you be polite."
-- Joni Mitchell
%%
"We want to create puppets that pull their own strings."
-- Ann Marion

"Would this make them Marionettes?"
-- Jeff Daiell
%%
"We want to see three things in the 1988 Republican Party Platform...  First,
 a constitutional amendment banning all abortions in the United States.
 Second, increased funding for law enforcement and a mandatory death penalty
 for drug dealers.  Third, LESS GOVERNMENT."
-- Speaker at a 1988 Republican Straw Poll in Iowa
%%
"We will be better and braver if we engage and inquire than if we indulge in
 the idle fancy that we already know -- or that it is of no use seeking to
 know what we do not know."
-- Plato
%%
"We will bury you."
-- Nikita Kruschev
%%
"We will rediscover a [New York City] river so extravagantly polluted that new
 life forms will emerge from it spontaneously, demanding welfare and voting
 rights."
-- Douglas Adams
%%
"We wish to incorporate into the machine -- in the form of circuits --
 only such logical concepts as are either necessary to have a complete
 system or highly convenient because of the frequency with which they
 occur and the influence they exert in the relevant mathematical
 situations."
-- Burks, Goldstine, and von Neumann (1946)
   (from _Computer Stuctures: Readings and Examples_, C. Gordon Bell (ed)
    McGraw-Hill Book Company, (c) 1971, page 97)
%%
"We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid
 (D.N.A.).  This structure has novel features which are of considerable
 biological interest."
-- Watson and Crick, 1953
%%
"We're going to do it the way we always have -- the super-dumbass way...
 It's what we know."
-- The Lone Contractor
%%
"We're hosed."
-- Next, Inc.'s Steve Jobs said after workstations running a demo program
     crashed at the SPA symposium.
%%
"We're the weirdest monkeys ever."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"We've got a carrot and stick policy, and the carrot is, if he pulls out, he
 doesn't get the stick."
-- James Baker, U.S Secretary of State, 12/5/90, about Saddam Hussein
%%
"We've got everyone convinced except the people who have to make the decision."
-- name withheld by request
%%
"Well I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many
 men happy."
-- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage
%%
"Well hello there Charlie Brown, you blockhead."
-- Lucy Van Pelt
%%
"Well, Art is Art, isn't it?  Still, on the other hand, water is water!  And
 East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them
 like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.
 Now, uh... Now you tell me what you know."
-- Groucho Marx, "Animal Crackers"
%%
"Well, Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable,
 And Lightness has a call that's hard to hear."
-- Indigo Girls
%%
"Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *can*
 you believe?!"
-- Bullwinkle J. Moose
%%
"Well, it don't make the sun shine, but at least it don't deepen the shit."
-- Straiter Empy, in _Riddley_Walker_ by Russell Hoban
%%
"Well, it's garish, ugly, and derelicts have used it
 for a toilet.  The rides are dilapidated to the point
 of being lethal, and could easily maim or kill innocent
 little children."
  "Oh, so you don't like it?"
"Don't like it?  I'm CRAZY for it."
%%
"Well, social relevance is a schtick, like mysteries, social relevance,
 science fiction..."
-- Art Spiegelman
%%
"Well, well, well!  Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in
 poison!  How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil?  Come
 and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!"
- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
%%
"Well, you know, it sounds like they've got their own nuts on an anvil and
 they're hammering away at them."
-- Dave Crocker
%%
"Well, you see, it's such a transitional creature.  It's a piss-poor
 reptile and not very much of a bird."
-- Melvin Konner, from "The Tangled Wing", quoting a zoologist who has
    studied the archeopteryz and found it "very much like people"
%%
"Well," said Programmer, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows."

"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said End-user.  "For I am an End-user
 of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me."

"It means the Thing to Do."

"As long as it means that, I don't mind," said End-user humbly.

-- Chris Mathes, uunet!metter!chris, with apologies to C. Robin And W. T. Pooh
%%
"Were there no women, men might live like gods."
-- Thomas Dekker
%%
"What a hell of a heaven it will be, when they get all these hypocrites
 assembled there!"
-- Mark Twain
%%
"What a pinhead!  Does he not fear us?!"
-- Max
%%
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind -- or not to have a mind at all.
 How true that is." -- V.P. Dan Quayle, garbling the United Negro College
 Fund slogan in an address to the group (from Newsweek, May 22nd, 1989)
%%
"What a wonder is USENET; such wholesale production of conjecture from
 such a trifling investment in fact."
-- Carl S. Gutekunst
%%
"What can you say about a society that says God is dead and Elvis is alive?"
-- Irv Kupcinet
%%
"What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? A stick!"
 - Bill Kirchenbaum, comedian -
%%
"What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to win
 wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent? In
 independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded that
 it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, the simultaneous
 peaking of four of the many cycles of American life. First, a base of
 technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done. Second, a period
 of national uneasiness about America's place in the scheme of human activities
 must exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses the national
 attention upon the direction to proceed.  Finally, an articulate and wise
 leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with words and
 action the great thing to be accomplished. The motivation of young Americans
 to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of conditions....
 The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John Kennedys appear. We must
 begin to create the tools of leadership which they, and their young
 frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward."
-- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt, Sen., New Mexico
%%
"What happened to the kaboom?
 There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!"
-- The Martian
%%
"What if" is a trademark of Hewlett Packard, so stop using it in your
 sentences without permission, or risk being sued.
%%
"What is inconceivable about the universe is that it is at all conceivable."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that
 they are extreme, but that they are intolerant.  The evil is not what
 they say about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."
-- Robert F. Kennedy
%%
"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is
 the exact opposite."
-- Bertrand Russell, _Sceptical_Essays_, 1928
%%
"What man has done, man can aspire to do."
-- Jerry Pournelle, about space flight
%%
"What masquerades as sex education is not education at all.  It is selective
 propaganda which artificially encourages children to participate in adult
 sex, while it censors out the facts of life about the unhappy consequences.
 It is robbing children of their childhood."
-- Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum, 2/81, as quoted in "The Far
    Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"What people have been reduced to are mere 3-D representations of their own
 data."
-- Arthur Miller
%%
"What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying."
-- Nikita Khrushchev
%%
"What's a polar bear?"
  "A rectangular bear after a coordinate transform."
-- Bill White ([e-mail])
%%
"What's the date?"
    "May the fourth."
"Then May the fourth be with you."
-- Count Duckula
%%
"What's the definition of a good flame?  One you agree with..."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"What's up in the ghetto, boy. Oh they just captured the suspect. A day
 without violence is like a day without sunshine. The sun shone last
 night."
-- Christopher Commision report of LAPD car-to-car computer message, 7/91
%%
"What?!  LEAVE school???"
-- Zonker Harris, Doonesbury
%%
"When Barbary Pirates demand a fee for allowing you to do business, it's
 called 'tribute money'.  When the Mafia demands a fee for allowing you to do
 business, it's called 'the protection racket'.  When the State demands a fee
 for allowing you to do business, it's called 'sales tax'."
-- Jeff Daiell
%%
"When I was [in Canada] I found their jokes like their roads -- not very
 long and not very good, leading to a little tin point of a spire which
 has been remorselessly obvious for miles without seeming to get any
 nearer."
-- Samuel Butler
%%
"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president; I'm
 beginning to believe it."
-- Clarence Darrow
%%
"When I was young, my position was: dynamite.  It was only later that I
 realized that this sort of thing cannot be rushed.  It must rot away like a
 diseased member."
-- Hitler, on the churches.
%%
"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
%%
"When anyone says `theoretically,' they really mean `not really.'"
-- David Parnas
%%
"When helping with this problem, please flame me good so that others will learn
 from my brazen irresponsibility."
-- Russell Earnest ([e-mail])
%%
"When in doubt, print 'em out."
-- Karl's Programming Proverb 0x7
%%
"When in doubt, use brute force."
-- Ken Thompson
%%
"When it comes to humility, I'm the greatest."
-- Bullwinkle Moose
%%
"When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have inlaws."
-- Jef Poskanzer ([e-mail])
%%
"When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results."
-- Calvin Coolidge
%%
"When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
"When people aren't stupid Usenet is even more useful.  Too bad this
 happens so rarely."
-- Jef Poskanzer <[e-mail]>
%%
"When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense
 of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to
 see the cliff ahead of them."
-- _Dune_, by Frank Herbert
%%
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro..."
-- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%%
"When the government attempts to regulate everything, all is lost."
-- Thibaudeau
%%
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat everything as if
 it were a nail."
-- Abraham Maslow
%%
"When things are at their darkest, pal, it's a great man who can kick back
 and party."
-- Olin Shivers
%%
"When you buy peace at any price it is always on the installment plan for
 another war."
-- Richard M. Nixon, January 29, 1966
%%
"When you're a child, you pledge allegiance to the flag.  When you grow up,
 you swear to uphold the Constitution.  Compare and contrast to the
 President's current actions."
-- Larry Wake ([e-mail])
%%
"When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by
 distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervor
 and emotion--the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all,
 probably right."
--Isaac Asimov
%%
"Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral standards upon 'B',
 'A' is most likely a scoundrel."
- H. L. Mencken
%%
"Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried"
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
"Where do we keep all our chainsaws, Mom?"
-- Calvin
%%
"Where does he get those wonderful toys?"
-- The Joker
%%
"Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is
 good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
"Where is it written in the Constitution that you may take children from their
 parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles
 of any war in which the folly or wickedness of government may engage it?"
-- Daniel Webster, 1814
%%
"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked.  "Begin at the beginning,"
 the King said, gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
-- _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_, Lewis Carroll
%%
"While today's digital hardware is extremely impressive, it is clear
 that the human retina's real time performance goes unchallenged.
 Actually to simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of
 even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution
 of about 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations 100 times
 and would take at least several minutes of time on a Cray supercomputer.
 Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting
 with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of 100 years of
 Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times each
 second."
-- John K. Stevens, "Reverse Engineering the Brain"
    Byte magazine, Page 287, April 1985,
%%
"Who alone has reason to *lie himself out* of actuality?  He who *suffers*
 from it."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%%
"Whoever did this [planted a pipe bomb at the Margaret Sanger Center] is a
 hero.  I think they are heroes.  The Bible commands us to rescue those
 being dragged to death."
-- Nancy O'Brien, Co-Director, "Project Jericho, "Channel 9 News," WCTO-TV,
    2/23/87, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned
    Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in
 the process he does not become a monster."
-- Nietzsche
%%
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is
 shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
"Why can one call the time component of the preceding 4-vector by the name
 energy?  For two reasons:  First, because this time component has the correct
 units -- the units of mass..."
-- From "Spacetime Physics" by Taylor and Wheeler
%%
"Why can't we ever attempt to solve a problem in this country without having
 a 'War' on it?"
-- Rich Thomson, from talk.politics.misc
%%
"Why did you hire that idiot?"
  "You can't fool all of the people all of the time, so I'm breeding
   them for stupidity."
-- President Weishaupt
%%
"Why do men go to war?  Because women are watching."
-- T. S. Eliot
%%
"Why do schools let anyone post?  Why not just leave it to us professionals?"
-- S. M. Ryan ([e-mail])

"Because there is no necessary relation between having a degree and the
 attribute of optical rectosis, as your posting demonstrates."
-- Bill Wells (twwells!bill)
%%
"Why do trans-atlantic transfers take so long?"
  "Electrons don't swim very fast."
-- [e-mail] and [e-mail]
%%
"Why don't the Japanese live in the mountains?  Certainly, they could;
 apparently they just don't want to."
-- [e-mail]
%%
"Why is that ridiculous toy on your head?"
  "Because if I wear it anywhere else, it chafes."
%%
"Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?"
-- Ronald Reagan
%%
"Why was the Ferranti flag taken down?  Jim Adamoli says that it was
 drooping too much.  A new flag is being made out of silk so that it
 will better catch the wind."
-- bulletin to employees

"Oh, yeah, the irony was too f*cking much!!!   It was made of broader,
 ``better-quality'' cloth, but it wouldn't fly.  Remind you of anything?"
-- Name Witheld For Obvious Reasons
%%
"Why waste negative entropy on comments, when you could use the same
entropy to create bugs instead?"
-- Steve Elias
%%
"Will your long-winded speeches never end?  What ails you that you keep on
 arguing?"
-- Job 16:3
%%
"William Safire would have a cow, but somehow that doesn't disturb me."
-- Evan Hunt ([e-mail])
%%
"Wish not to seem, but to be, the best."
-- Aeschylus
%%
"With friends like these, who need hallucinations?"
-- Buddy, "Night Court"
%%
"With molasses you catch flies, with vinegar you catch nobody."
-- Baltimore City Councilman Dominic DiPietro
%%
"Women have babies and men provide the support.  If you don't like the way
 we're made you've got to take it up with God."
-- Phyllis Schlafly, hypocrite who has had a successful business career and
   run for public office, who would apparently deny that to other women
%%
"Working on custom(ADM) is a lot like being drummer for Spinal Tap."
-- an anonymous SCO employee
%%
"Would I turn on the gas if my pal Mugsy were in there?"
   "You might, rabbit, you might!"
-- Looney Tunes, Bugs and Thugs (1954, Friz Freleng)
%%
"Writing programs needs genius to save the last order or the last millisecond.
 It is great fun, but it is a young man's game.  You start it with great
 enthusiasm when you first start programming, but after ten years you get a
 bit bored with it, and then you turn to automatic-programming languages and
 use them because they enable you to get to the heart of the problem that you
 want to do, instead of having to concentrate on the mechanics of getting the
 program going as fast as you possibly can, which is really nothing more than
 doing a sort of crossword puzzle."
-- Christopher Strachey, 1962
%%
"Xerox sues somebody for copying?"
-- David Letterman
%%
"Y'know, every once in a while, when you look off into the distance,
 you can see a shimmering in the atmosphere's coefficient of refraction,
 as someone, someone small and slow on the horizon, gets a clue."
-- Blair Houghton, who's yet to get one
%%
"Yes, and I feel bad about rendering their useless carci into dogfood..."
-- Badger comics
%%
"Yo baby yo baby yo."
-- Eddie Murphy
%%
"You and I as individuals can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but
 only for a limited period of time.  Why should we think that collectively,
 as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?"
-- Ronald Reagan
%%
"You are WRONG, you ol' brass-breasted fascist poop!"
-- Bloom County
%%
"You are what you want to be."
-- Brad Morrison
%%
"You are what you want to be."
-- Brad Morrison ([e-mail])
%%
"You can call Usenet a democracy if you want to.  You can call it a
 totalitarian dictatorship run by space aliens and the ghost of Elvis.
 It doesn't matter either way."
-- Dave Mack
%%
"You can hardly do anything that won't seem stupid later."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"You can have my Unix system when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers."
-- Cal Keegan
%%
"You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
 the continuing viability of Fortran."
-- Alan Perlis
%%
"You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"You can't get snot off of a suede jacket."
-- Lenny Bruce
%%
"You can't get very far in this world without your dossier being there first."
-- Arthur Miller
%%
"You can't stop abortion without fighting contraception: it is the gateway
 to abortion.  Not one of the 81 countries I've worked in has `clean'
 contraception without abortion -- not one.  Once there's contraception --
 separating sexual activity from procreation and teaching people to use
 each other's bodies for selfish pleasure -- abortion is always used as
 a backup."
-- Fr. Paul Marx, President, Human Life International, "Pro Life/Family
     Catalog", 1991, as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves,"
     a Planned Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"You can't teach seven foot."
-- Frank Layton, Utah Jazz basketball coach, when asked why he had recruited
   a seven-foot tall auto mechanic
%%
"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
-- Mark Twain
%%
"You cannot really know anything."
-- William Payne ([e-mail])

"How do you know?"
-- Dan'l DanehyOakes ([e-mail])
%%
"You don't drown by falling into water.  You drown by staying there."
-- Robert Allen
%%
"You don't go out and kick a mad dog.  If you have a mad dog with rabies, you
 take a gun and shoot him."
-- Pat Robertson, TV Evangelist, about Muammar Kadhafy
%%
"You don't have to explain something you never said."
-- Calvin Coolidge
%%
"You don't just go to the Black Lodge and walk out with your girlfriend."
-- Karl, explaining the last episode of Twin Peaks
%%
"You don't really understand something until you understand it in more than
 one way."
-- Marvin Minsky
%%
"You doubted Me," God tells the Lawgiver [Moses], "But I forgave
 you that doubt. You doubted your own self and failed to believe
 in your own powers as a leader, and I forgave you that also. But
 you lost faith in these people and doubted the divine possibilities
 of Human Nature. THIS loss of faith makes it impossible for
 you to enter the Promised Land."
-- The Midrash
%%
"You get what you settle for."
-- Thelma and Louise
%%
"You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, do you realise that?"
-- Peter Da Silva (sugar!peter)
%%
"You killed Ted, you medieval dickweed!"
-- Bill
%%
"You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid?  Well, MINE
 are even WORSE!"
-- Calvin
%%
"You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United
 States?  Because your hackers have so much mobility into the establishment.
 Here, there is no such mobility.  If you have the slightest bit of intellectual
 integrity you cannot support the government.... That's why the best computer
 minds belong to the opposition."
-- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
%%
"You know, I've never accidentally drilled a hole in myself while programming."
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
"You know, a lot of girls go out with me just to further their careers... damn
 anthropologists."
-- Emo Philips
%%
"You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are
 now extinct."
- M. Somerset Maugham
%%
"You know, we've won awards for this crap."
-- David Letterman
%%
"You look at your needs, at your competitors, at what you can afford,
 and you cut your cloth accordingly."
-- Ian Ross, AT&T Bell Laboratories
%%
"You must either master politics or be mastered by those that do."
-- Anonymous
%%
"You must have an IQ of at least half a million."  -- Popeye
%%
"You must learn to run your kayak by a sort of ju-jitsu.  You must learn to
 tell what the river will do to you, and given those parameters see how you
 can live with it.  You must absorb its force and convert it to your users
 as best you can.  Even with the quickness and agility of a kayak, you are
 not faster than the river, nor stronger, and you can beat it only by
 understanding it."
-- Strung, Curtis and Perry, _Whitewater_
%%
"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation
as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases
which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence."
-- C. A. Beard
%%
"You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape."
-- Ellyn Mustard
%%
"You pathetic jugglers never lowered yourselves to developing the software.
 You should have paid a little more attention to R & D."
-- Cyberpunk comics
%%
"You put a couple cockroach heads on toothpicks next to that and it'll
 definitely keep the bugs away."
-- Karl suggests a use for a really bad photo of... Karl
%%
"You say I'm cool, I'm no fool,
 but then you wind up applying to grad school..."
-- Matt Groening
%%
"You shouldn't make my toaster angry."
-- Household security explained in "Johnny Quest"
%%
"You show me an American who can keep his mouth shut and I'll eat him."
-- Newspaperman from Frank Capra's _Meet_John_Doe_
%%
"You stay here, Audrey -- this is between me and the vegetable!"
-- Seymour, from _Little Shop Of Horrors_
%%
"You tried it just for once, found it alright for kicks,
 but now you find out you have a habit that sticks,
 you're an orgasm addict,
 you're always at it,
 and you're an orgasm addict."
-- The Buzzcocks
%%
"You tweachewous miscweant!"
-- Elmer Fudd
%%
"You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?"
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians
%%
"You'll pay to know what you really think."
-- J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
%%
"You're a creature of the night, Michael.  Wait'll Mom hears about this."
-- from the movie "The Lost Boys"
%%
"You're only as old as your comic collection."
-- Dan Thorsland
%%
"Your attitude determines your attitude."
-- Zig Ziglar, self-improvement doofus
%%
"Your butt is mine."
-- Michael Jackson, Bad
%%
"Your development gets rotten if you take too long to market it."
--- Hitoshi Aoike, JVC Ltd., Tokyo
%%
"Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberrys!"
-- Monty Python and the Holy Grail
%%
"Your opal may cure my brother of some demon-taint, but *my* bad attitude is
 no sickness!  It's one-hundred percent all natural!"
-- Ron Post
%%
"Your posting is just the kind of BS that leads me to believe that moderation
 is necessary.  As it happens, you are simply wrong.  On all counts."
-- Bill Wells ([e-mail])

"Funny, this is just the kind of quasi-religious didacticism that leads me to
 believe that objectivism is not philosophy and that it's basically a Rand fan
 club."
-- Tim Maroney ([e-mail])

"I've added to my understanding that you refer to calling a bullshitter a
 bullshitter as ``quasi-religious didacticism''."
-- Bill Wells ([e-mail])
%%
"Your reality is lies and balderdash, and I'm glad to say that I have no grasp
 of it."
-- Baron Munchausen
%%
"Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
-- Dave Mack ([e-mail])

"Yours is."
-- Allen Gwinn ([e-mail]), in alt.flame
%%
"[In the U. S. Army] An officer does not take an oath of loyalty to the
 Commander-in-Chief.   He takes an oath of loyalty to the Constitution."
-- Sam Donaldson
%%
"[Leslie Stahl was] a pussy compared to Rather."
-- George Bush
%%
"[On Mars] there are canals, we believe, and water.  If there is water, there
 is oxygen.  If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
 -- Dan Quayle, VP of the United States
 %%
"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, riddle them with bullets."
-- David Bedno ([e-mail])
%%
"[The vector] has never been of the slightest use to any creature."
-- Lord Kelvin
%%
"[Yasser Arafat] might say 'this', and then come back later and say 'this',
 and the new 'this' could cancel out the old 'this'."
-- Ronald Reagan
%%
"[advise] the ruler to govern the state as one cooks a small fish -- that is,
 don't turn it so often in the pan that it disintegrates."
-- Lao-tzu
%%
"`Self-esteem' [has been] promoted over and over again as the new panacea,
 along with teaching `responsibility.'  However, parents must remember that
 `self-esteem' is a double-edged sword.  While it may be true that a child
 needs a great deal of self-confidence to reject undesirable peer influence,
 it will, at the same time, require a defiantly self-confident child to have
 the courage to violate his or her family values and/or Judeo-Christian
 heritage, and engage in the `responsible' promiscuity being promoted by
 the liberal sex educators."
-- Margo Szews, Anti-Choice Educator, A.L.L. About Issues, June - July '89,
   as quoted in "The Far Right, Speaking For Themselves," a Planned
   Parenthood pamphlet
%%
"jackpot:  you may have an unnecessary change record"
-- message from "diff"
%%
"my terminal is a lethal teaspoon."
-- Patricia O Tuama
%%
"some people get pissed
 when you play with your mind
 in a different way
 than they play with theirs
 these people are called ASSHOLES"
-- the jambi's
%%
#define BITCOUNT(x)    (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
#define  BX_(x)        ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777)            \
                 - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333)            \
                 - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))

-- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
%%
``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_
%%
'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power
 and magic in it.'
-- Goethe
%%
(To Walter Cronkite):
"Well Walter, I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number
 of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running
 up and down a street."
- Neil Armstrong
%%
(null cookie; hope that's ok)
%%
**ROG** writes
> ...who have no clue about reality.  Nothing could compare with
> the beauty of the real world around us and you should work as hard
> at preserving the environment and making the world safe for our progeny as
> you do at hiding in your computer screens.   I bet you couldn't
> read a story from alt.sex.bondage without getting an erection.

Could someone please tell me how to access the "alt.sex.bondage"
newsgroup?
-- Robert Ward ([e-mail])
%%
"It is the cunning of form to veil itself continually in the evidence of
 content.  It is the cunning of the code to veil itself and to produce itself
 in the obviousness of value."
-- Baudrillard
%%
------------------------------
"I don't even listen to 2 Live Crew, being more of a John Denver kind of guy."
-- Scott Dietzen
------------------------------
"First off, I'm embarrassed to be Dietzen's friend because I don't like
 anyone who listens to John Denver.  I want everyone to know that he threw
 that in there just to make you think he was a complete idiot."
-- Bill Chiles
------------------------------
%%
... 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 book is worth attention for only two reasons:  (1) it attacks
attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and
plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple
jeering.
-- Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot,
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201
%%
... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope, and eventually
we were all forced to turn to it.  By the summer of '85, the valley had more
satellite dishes per capita than an Eskimo village on the north slope of
Alaska.

Mine was one of the last to go in.  I had been nervous from the start about
the hazards of too much input, which is a very real problem with these
things.  Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels
all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams
into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
-- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_
%%
... The important thing isn't so much *what* you want to ban; it's the fact
that you participate in the banning process.  That's what democracy is all
about.
-- Dave Barry, What To Ban On Video, _Bad Habits_
%%
... The neutron bomb is a nuclear device that kills people without destroying
buildings.  Many people feel this is inhumane; they much prefer the old-
fashioned humane-type nuclear devices that kill people *and* destroy
buildings.

Western Europe's reaction to the neutron bomb has been mixed: most buildings
are for it, and most people are against it, on the grounds that it might
kill them.  They're always wallowing in sentiment, those Western Europeans.
-- Dave Barry, _Bad Habits_
%%
...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 frustrated 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
%%
...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, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46
%%
...At that time [the 1960s], Bell Laboratories scientists projected that
computer speeds as high as 30 million floating-point calculations per
second (megaflops) would be needed for the Army's ballistic missile
defense system.  Many computer experts -- including a National Academy
of Sciences panel -- said achieving such speeds, even using multiple
processors, was impossible.  Today, new generation supercomputers operate
at billions of operations per second (gigaflops).
-- Aviation Week & Space Technology, May 9, 1988, "Washington Roundup", pg 13
%%
...Compare this with the unit of facial beauty, the Helen, first defined
by C. Marlowe.  A milliHelen, of course, will launch just one ship.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "Devil's Advocate", _UNIX Review_, May 1991
%%
...I don't care for the term 'mechanistic'. The word 'cybernetic' is a lot
more apropos. The mechanistic world-view is falling further and further behind
the real world where even simple systems can produce the most marvelous
chaos.
-- Peter da Silva
%%
...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and
concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our
family, the Hominidae.
-- Richard Leakey
%%
...It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united
opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to
give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond
the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
-- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
    The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
%%
...One thing is that, unlike any other Western democracy that I know of,
this country has operated since its beginnings with a basic distrust of
government.  We are constituted not for efficient operation of government,
but for minimizing the possibility of abuse of power.  It took the events
of the Roosevelt era -- a catastrophic economic collapse and a world war --
to introduce the strong central government that we now know.  But in most
parts of the country today, the reluctance to have government is still
strong.  I think, barring a series of catastrophic events, that we can
look to at least another decade during which many of the big problems
around this country will have to be addressed by institutions other than
federal government.
-- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence,
    vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy directory of
    Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC.
[the statist opinions expressed herein are not those of the cookie editor -ed.]
%%
...Saure really turns out to be an adept at the difficult art of papryomancy,
the ability to prophesy through contemplating the way people roll reefers -
the shape, the licking pattern, the wrinkles and folds or absence thereof
in the paper.  "You will soon be in love," sez Saure, "see, this line here."
"It's long, isn't it?  Does that mean --" "Length is usually intensity.
Not time."
-- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
%%
...Tucker v. Texas, 326 U.S. 517 (1946), in which a statute punishing
door-to-door distribution of literature was held invalid as an
abridgment of freedom of the press.
-- Supreme Court decision quoted by Mike Godwin in comp.org.eff.talk
%%
...Veloz is indistinguishable from hundreds of other electronics businesses
in the Valley, run by eager young engineers poring over memory dumps late
into the night.  The difference is that a bunch of self-confessed "car nuts"
are making money doing what they love: writing code and driving fast.
-- "Electronics puts its foot on the gas", IEEE Spectrum, May 88
%%
...computer hardware progress is so fast.  No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
...cyberpunk wants to see the mind as mechanistic & duplicable,
challenging basic assumptions about the nature of individuality & self.
That seems all the better reason to assume that cyberpunk art & music is
essentially mindless garbagio. Willy certainly addressed this idea in
"Count Zero," with Katatonenkunst, the automatic box-maker and the girl's
observation that the real art was the building of the machine itself,
rather than its output.
-- Eliot Handelman
%%
...difference of opinion is advantageious in religion.  The several sects
perform the office of a common censor morum over each other.  Is uniformity
attainable?  Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
%%
[e-mail] (Henry Spencer) wrote:
>The trouble is that getdate() is relatively
>costly and Geoff is reluctant to run it on every single article

...and then all sorts of people started coming up with rube goldberg
schemes to avoid parsing dates.  However, it turns out that even using
C news's getdate (which is 10% slower than the B news version), parsing
the dates in every article in a full Usenet feed takes about five Sun 3
CPU seconds per day.  And if you were to use the lex-based date parser
included in the MH distribution, you could get it down below a second
per day, although it hardly seems worth the (minimal) effort.

-- Jef Poskanzer ([e-mail])
%%
...it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
-- Sidney Hook
%%
...the Soviets have the capability to try big projects.  If there is a goal,
such as when Gorbachev states that they are going to have nuclear-powered
aircraft carriers, the case is closed -- that is it.  They will concentrate
on the problem, do a bad job, and later pay the price.  They really don't
care what the price is.
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
%%
...the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality
tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
-- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
%%
...the prevailing Catholic odor - incense, wax, centuries of mild bleating
from the lips of the flock.
-- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
%%
...there can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is
the practice of truth.
-- George Jacob Holyoake
%%
...this is an awesome sight.  The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
-- The Firesign Theater
%%
...though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage from
beginning to end.
-- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
%%
...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
%%
...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has
 been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
/*
 * this atrocity is necessary on SPARC because registers modified
 * by the child get propagated back to the parent via the window
 * save/restore mechanism.
 */
-- SunOS 4.0 vfork.h
%%
1 1 was a race-horse, 2 2 was 1 2. When 1 1 1 1 race, 2 2 1 1 2.
%%
186,000 Miles per Second.  It's not just a good idea.  IT'S THE LAW.
%%
8)   Use common sense in routing cable.  Avoid wrapping coax around sources of
     strong electric or magnetic fields.  Do not wrap the cable around
     fluorescent light ballasts or cyclotrons, for example.
-- Ethernet Headstart Product, Information and Installation Guide,
   Bell Technologies, pg. 11
%%
> From [e-mail] Thu Mar  2 13:59:11 1989
> Subject: Returned mail: unknown mailer error 255

"Dale, your address no longer functions.  Can you fix it at your end?"
-- Bill Wolfe ([e-mail])

"Bill, Your brain no longer functions.  Can you fix it at your end?"
-- Karl A. Nyberg ([e-mail])
%%
> The Independent quotes this from The Progressive, Sept. 1990:
>
> "Louisiana State Rep. Carl Gunter, explaining why abortion should
> not be permitted even when the pregnancy results from incest:
> 'The way we get thoroughbred horses is through inbreeding.  With
> incest, you could get super-smart kids.'"

This undoubtedly explains State Representative Gunter's visibly high
intelligence...
-- Lefty ([e-mail])
%%
>>> >This is revisionist history.
>>> This is crap.
>>This is a lie.
>This is boring.

This is USENET...

-- Hank Bovis ([e-mail]),
    other attributions removed to protect the guilty
%%
>From Michael Davis' article "Thinking Like an Engineer: the Place of a Code of
Ethics in the Practice of a Profession", Philosophy and Public Affairs, Spring
1991, Vol. 20 #2:

   "Lund's [the engineer who expressed concern about the Challenger's O-rings]
   first response was to repeat his objections.  But then Mason said
   something that made him think again.  Mason asked him to THINK LIKE A
   MANAGER INSTEAD OF AN ENGINEER (the exact words seemed to have been "take
   off your engineering hat and put on your management hat.")  Lund did and
   changed his mind. The next morning the shuttle exploded, killing all aboard.
   An O-ring had failed."
-- RISKS-FORUM Digest 11.84
%%
>I would like to see a dictionary of Usenet slang written and added to the
>n.a.newusers postings.
-- Boyd Nation ([e-mail])

IMHO, if some newby wants a n.a.n newsfroup dictionary of net.slang put in
the crontab of a net.god's backbone site, the silly JEDR should email
him instead of posting the start of a flamefest I have to put in my kill
file or unsubscribe to.  BTW, that posting was a megabyte gilly.  What
a maroney!  Almost half a waldron of pompousity.  Imminent death of the
net predicted.  Perhaps he should ask his SO or MOTOS what net.slang
means.  Of if his MOTAS is a MOTSS, he should ask him?  Or just post his
question to /dev/null.

BTW, IMHO if you understood this whole posting, you've been on the
net far too long.  BCNU  :-)  TTFN.

-- Brad Templeton ([e-mail])
%%
>One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative.

Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
-- Chuq Von Rospach, [e-mail]
%%
>Optimisation is not free. Gratuitous optimisation can be translated directly
>into missing features or later release dates.
-- Peter da Silva ([e-mail])

...and more bugs.

...and performance optimization without thoughtful performance testing
is usually misdirected and, as above, at best does nothing and at worse
delays/worsens the product and drives up life-cycle costs.
-- your humble cookie editor
%%
>The "Catholic Church" *is not* the one true church.  The Holy Orthodox
>[Eastern] Christian Church is the one and only repository of the *fullness*
>of Christ's >    teachings.

Sorry, but the one _true_ church is the Church of the Forgotten Son, where
we worship the Almighty earthworm.  Not only is it more true than any of
the Christian churches, it's also less fulfilling and it tastes great.
Just thought you'd like to know.
-- Andrew. Kalinowitsch ([e-mail])
%%
>This is a duplicate article, and old as hell...now, who could be doing this???

"Somebody along the line fucked up."
-- Spenser Aden
%%
>Try staring at someone from a substantial distance.
>(Eventually they will turn around.)

ASTOUNDING! We all know that without* telepathy staring at the back of a
person's head would freeze them into helpless immobility!

Corollary: try staring at a cloud. eventually it will MOVE!
This parapsychology stuff is the GINCHIEST!!

-- Tim Mitchell, ([e-mail])
%%
>You may redistribute this article only to those who may freely do likewise.
>Chip Salzenberg at A T Engineering;  <[e-mail]> or <uunet!ateng!chip>

Thanks.  I think I'll just flush it.
-- Dale C. Cook, [e-mail]
%%
A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone somewhere is having fun.
%%
A comment from the Space Shuttle (!) computer IPL code, power failure handling:

     "OK!  LET'S GET ONE THING STRAIGHT.  I'M IN CHARGE OF THE CPU FOR THE
      NEXT 40 MILLISECONDS!"
%%
A comment on schedules:
 Ok, how long will it take?
   For each manager involved in initial meetings add one month.
   For each manager who says "data flow analysis" add another month.
   For each unique end-user type add one month.
   For each unknown software package to be employed add two months.
   For each unknown hardware device add two months.
   For each 100 miles between developer and installation add one month.
   For each type of communication channel add one month.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on a non-IBM
      system add 6 months.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on an IBM
      system add 9 months.
Round up to the nearest half-year.
--Brad Sherman
By the way, ALL software projects are done by iterative prototyping.
Some companies call their prototypes "releases", that's all.
%%
A conjecture both deep and profound
Is whether a circle is round.
    In a paper of Erdos
    written in Kurdish
A counterexample is found.
%%
A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Winston Churchill
%%
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
-- Samuel Johnson
%%
A friend who used to work at <research lab> related a story about a customer
support line at <company>.  The support person said something on the order of
"You're not our only customer, you know," to which his reply was, "But we're
one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."
-- from USENET
%%
A gift of flower will soon be made to you.
%%
A good USENET motto would be:
 a. "Together, a strong community."
 b. "Computers R Us."
 c. "I'm sick of programming, I think I'll just screw around for a while on
     company time."
-- A Sane Man
%%
A good workman is known by his tools.
%%
A host is a host from coast to coast
And no one will talk to a host that's close
Unless the host (that isn't close)
is busy, hung or dead.
-- David Lesher ([e-mail])
%%
A liberal is someone too poor to be a capitalist and too rich to be a communist.
%%
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.  Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, a big TV with a hi-fi VCR and a nice stereo, a
full fridge, a microwave, a UNIX system, two phone lines, a high speed modem,
and thou.
%%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.
I believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
%%
A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it's designed to be minimal.
The smallness of it is what's attractive.  It's weird, 'cause it's so
intellectually lame.  It's hard to see me doing that for the rest of
my life.  But at the same time, it's what I do best.
-- Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David Letterman"
%%
A man forgives only when he is in the wrong.
%%
A man is not complete until he is married -- then he is finished.
%%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%%
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
A netnews signature file:

Your eyes are weary from staring at the CRT for so | Evan M. Manning
long.  You feel sleepy.  Notice how restful it is  |      is
to watch the cursor blink.  Close your eyes.  The  | [e-mail]
opinions stated above are yours.  You cannot       | [e-mail]
imagine why you ever felt otherwise.               |
%%
A penny saved is a penny to squander.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is
never sure.
-- Proverb
%%
A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms.
-- George Wald
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
unless there be two.
-- Seneca
%%
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark
%%
A second voice interrupted, cutting off the controller.  "Pleiades, this is
Station Commander Perez.  Prepare to receive emergency telemetry."

"Affirmative."  Teresa swallowed, knowing what this meant.  She felt Mark
lean past her to make sure the ship's datasuck boxes were operating at top
speed.  In that mode they recorded every nuance for one purpose only, so
endangered spacers could obey rule number one of their trade . . .

    *Let the next guy know what killed you.*

-- David Brin, _Earth_
%%
A selection from the Taoist Writings:

"Lao-Tan asked Confucius: `What do you mean by benevolence and righteousness?'
 Confucius said:  `To be in one's inmost heart in kindly sympathy with all
 things; to love all men and allow no selfish thoughts: this is the nature
 of benevolence and righteousness.'"
-- Kwang-tzu
%%
A serious public debate about the validity of astrology?  A serious believer
in the White House?  Two of them?  Give me a break.  What stifled my laughter
is that the image fits.  Reagan has always exhibited a fey indifference toward
science.  Facts, like numbers, roll off his back.  And we've all come to
accept it.  This time it was stargazing that became a serious issue....Not
that long ago, it was Reagan's support of Creationism....Creationists actually
got equal time with evolutionists.  The public was supposed to be open-minded
to the claims of paleontologists and fundamentalists, as if the two were
scientific colleagues....It has been clear for a long time that the president
is averse to science...In general, these attitudes fall onto friendly American
turf....But at the outer edges, this skepticism about science easily turns
into a kind of naive acceptance of nonscience, or even nonsense.  The same
people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of
laetrile to eye of newt to the movement of planets.  We lose the capacity to
make rational -- scientific -- judgments.  It's all the same.
-- Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers
    Group
%%
A starship ride has been promised to you by the galactic wizzard.
%%
A stitch in time saves nine.
%%
A student asked the master for help... does this program run from the
Workbench? The master grabbed the mouse and pointed to an icon. "What is
this?" he asked. The student replied "That's the mouse". The master pressed
control-Amiga-Amiga and hit the student on the head with the Amiga ROM Kernel
Manual.
-- Amiga Zen Master Peter da Silva
%%
A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common parking problem.
%%
A well known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public
lecture on astronomy.  He described how the earth orbits around the sun and
how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars
called our galaxy.  At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back
of the room got up and said: "What you have just told is rubbish.  The world
is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."  The
scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortise standing
on?"  "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady.  "But
it's turtles all the way down!"
-- Stephen Hawking, _A Brief History of Time_
%%
AN EXPOSTULATION (Against too many writers of science fiction)

Why did you lure us on like this,
Light-year on light-year, through the abyss,
Building (as though we cared for size!)
Empire that cover galaxies,
If at journey's end we find
The same old stuff we left behind,
Well-worn Tellurian stories of
Crooks, spies, conspirators, or love,
Whose setting might as well have been
The Bronx, Montmartre, or Bethnel Green?

Why should I leave this green floored cell,
Roofed with blue air, in which we dwell,
Unless, outside its guarded gates,
Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits,
Strangeness that moves us more than fear,
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart
That finger tip at which we start
As if some thought too swift and shy
For some reason's grasp had just gone by?
-- C. S. Lewis
%%
Abandon all hope, ye who press ENTER here.
%%
Absolute:  Independent, irresponsible.  An absolute monarchy is one in which
the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.  Not
many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by
limited monarchies, where the sovereign's power for evil (and for good) is
greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Abstainer:  A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure.  A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but
abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Actors will happen in the best-regulated families.
%%
Adapt.  Enjoy.  Survive.
%%
Adde parvum parvo magnus acervus erit.
[Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]
-- OVID
%%
Administration:  An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive
the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
%%
After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
- Freeman Dyson
%%
After all is said and done, a lot more has been said than done.
%%
After all, financiers just own things, while a skilled person with a job
he loves has much, much more.
-- David Brin, _Earth_
%%
After winning the decathlon, Jim Thorpe was told by the King of Sweden, "You
are the world's greatest athlete."
Thorpe replied, "Thanks, King."
%%
After winning the pennant one year, Casey Stengel commented,
"I couldn'ta done it without my players."
%%
All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
-- Kingfish
%%
All extremists should be taken out and shot.
%%
All obvious theorems are true.
-- Pommersheim's Principle
%%
All obvious theorems are true.
-- Pommersheim's Principle

All true theorems are obvious.
-- Keane's Kriterion
%%
All programmers are optimists.  Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts
those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers.  Perhaps the hundreds
of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end
goal.  Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists.  But however the selection process works,
the result is indisputable:  "This time it will surely run," or "I just found
the last bug."
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
All religions have in common the periodical childlike surrender to a
Provider or providers who dispense earthly fortune as well as spiritual
health; some demonstrations of man's smallness by means of reduced
posture and humble gesture, the admission in prayer and song of misdeeds,
of misthoughts, and of evil intentions; fervent appeal for inner uni-
fication by divine guidance; and finally, the insight that individual
trust must become part of the ritual practice of man, and must become
a sign of trustworthiness in the community.
-- psychologist Erik Erikson
%%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%%
All things are either sacred or profane.
The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
The latter to the devil appertain.
-- Dumbo Omohundro
%%
All true theorems are obvious.
-- Keane's Kriterion
%%
Alliance:  In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their
hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately
plunder a third.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality.  All proffered
samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to
common tests.  It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse.  The characteristic
of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually
secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generally known;
authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary
ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is
conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in
religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics
where the method of free inquiry has made its way.  The "religious"
would be the last to be willing that either the history of the
content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those
to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device,
but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against
its being taught in any other spirit.
-- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
    from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
%%
Always look over your shoulder because everyone is watching and plotting
against you.
%%
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without
civilization in between.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
-- Allen Ginsberg
%%
An Animal that knows who it is, one that has a sense of his own identity, is
a discontented creature, doomed to create new problems for himself for the
duration of his stay on this planet.  Since neither the mouse nor the chip
knows what is, he is spared all the vexing problems that follow this
discovery.  But as soon as the human animal who asked himself this question
emerged, he plunged himself and his descendants into an eternity of doubt
and brooding, speculation and truth-seeking that has goaded him through the
centuries as relentlessly as hunger or sexual longing.  The chimp that does
not know that he exists is not driven to discover his origins and is spared
the tragic necessity of contemplating his own end.  And even if the animal
experimenters succeed in teaching a chimp to count one hundred bananas or
to play chess, the chimp will develop no science and he will exhibit no
appreciation of beauty, for the greatest part of man's wisdom may be traced
back to the eternal questions of beginnings and endings, the quest to give
meaning to his existence, to life itself.
-- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 193
%%
An object never serves the same function as its image -- or its name.
-- Rene Magritte
%%
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible;
a pessimist fears this is true.
%%
And do you not think that each of you women is an Eve?  The judgment of God
upon your sex endures today; and with it invariably endures your position of
criminal at the bar of justice.
-- Tertullian, second-century Christian writer, misogynist
%%
And it does matter.  An honest man or woman is an honest man or woman more
because he or she is honest in the small, everyday things that "don't matter"
individually, but which make up a well-lived life, than because of some single
great temptation that was passed.  A person who is concerned about individual
rights or about individual dignity makes his or her difference not because of
any sweeping great statement or action, but because of the accretion of small,
individually seemingly insignificant acts that spread that dignity and confirm
those rights through every action they take.  It matters because every action
you take, and every action I take is an expression of the human spirit.
-- William Oliver ([e-mail])
%%
And the crowd was stilled.  One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said.  Wide-eyed,
the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no
clothes!  He is naked!"
-- "The Emperor's New Clothes"
%%
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that
cometh out of man, in their sight...Then he [the Lord!] said unto me, Lo, I
have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread
therewith.
[Ezek. 4:12-15 (KJV)]
%%
Angular momentum makes the world go round.
%%
Annex Canada now!  We need the room, and who's going to stop us?
-- A Tom Neff .signature
%%
Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000,
illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0.  Considering government subsidies
of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war?
-- William A. Turnbow
%%
Another goal is to establish a relationship "in which it is OK for everybody
to do their best.  There are an awful lot of people in management who really
don't want subordinates to do their best, because it gets to be very
threatening.  But we have found that both internally and with outside
designers if we are willing to have this kind of relationship and if we're
willing to be vulnerable to what will come out of it, we get really good
work."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art.
-- H. L. Mencken

[Having the facts is hard.  --ed]
%%
Any given program, when running correctly, is obsolete.
%%
Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
-- Andy Finkel, computer guy
%%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%%
Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned -- I
support your right to enjoy it.  However, I would appreciate it if you
exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to
share your dogma, rapture or necrodestination.
-- Frank Zappa, _The Real Frank Zappa Book_
%%
Anyone can hate. it costs to love.
- John Williamson
%%
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Anything anybody can say about America is true.
-- Emmett Grogan
%%
Are you having fun yet?
%%
Aren't you glad you're not getting all the government you pay for now?
%%
As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject
of religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction
in the methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless
conversions -- to anything -- less likely.  Brian now realizes this and
has, after eleven years, left the sect he was associated with.  The
problem is that once the untrained mind has made a formal commitment to
a religious philosophy -- and it does not matter whether that philosophy
is generally reasonable and high-minded or utterly bizarre and
irrational -- the powers of reason are surprisingly ineffective in
changing the believer's mind.
-- Steve Allen, comedian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
    Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
%%
As Lisa hugged me, I started humming the theme song from the State Farm
Insurance TV commercial.  This is not because I am in any way a slave to
television -- it had to do instead with a strategy I had concocted for
torturing Lisa on her wedding day.  What I planned to do was to plant the
State Farm Insurance jingle subliminally in Lisa's mind, until she retched.
The State Farm Insurance jingle had an almost satanic sticking power.  Lisa
wouldn't be able to hum or even think about anything else but the State Farm
Insurance jingle for weeks.  Soon she would suffer a terrific nervous
breakdown -- the Big NB, as Lisa called it -- and spend the rest of her life
spiking volleyballs off the roof of a mental hospital.

"Like a good neighbor," I hummed softly, "State Farm is there."  Lisa didn't
seem to notice, but I could tell I had done some first-rate subliminal damage,
since she hummed the last two words along with me.  I had planted the first
seed.
-- Peter J. Smith, from _Make Believe Ballrooms_
%%
As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.  Seest thou a
man wise in his own conceit?
-- Proverbs 26:11
%%
As for the basic assumptions about individuality and self, this is the core
of what I like about cyberpunk. And it's the core of what I like about certain
pre-Gibson neophile techie SF writers that certain folks here like to put
down. Not everyone makes the same assumptions. I haven't lost my mind... it's
backed up on tape.
-- Peter da Silva
%%
As long as we're going to reinvent the wheel again, we might as well try making
it round this time.
-- Mike Dennison
%%
As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear,
bearing hot new versions of their pieces -- faster, smaller, more complete,
or putatively less buggy.  The replacement of a working component by a new
version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
efficient test cases will usually be available.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%%
As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
divinity.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%%
As we anarchists say: "There's no government like no government."
-- D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid)
%%
Ask not what you can do for your country,
but what your country's been doing to you.
-- Avengers
%%
Astrology is the sheerest hokum.  This pseudoscience has been around since
the day of the Chaldeans and Babylonians.  It is as phony as numerology,
phrenology, palmistry, alchemy, the reading of tea leaves, and the practice
of divination by the entrails of a goat.  No serious person will buy the
notion that our lives are influenced individually by the movement of
distant planets.  This is the sawdust blarney of the carnival midway.
-- James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate
%%
At West Point, the cadets had been full of bravado...But bravado was
grounded in ignorance;  true courage was possible only after one gained
the visceral comprehension that death was the potential price of valor.
-- Rick Atkinson, _The Long Grey Line_
%%
At any time, at any place, our snipers can drop you.  Have a nice day.
%%
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
%%
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
%%
Australia, n.   A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and
commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate
dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.
-- Ambrose Bierce, _The Devil's Dictionary_
%%
Baby On Board.
%%
Baby carriage bumper sticker:   ``POO-POO HAPPENS!''
-- Bob Irwin ([e-mail])
%%
Backed up the system lately?
%%
Badges?  We don't need no stinking badges.
%%
Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly goes straight to the bone.
%%
Been Transferred Lately?
%%
Before (Dean) Stockwell's recent comeback via BLUE VELVET and MARRIED TO THE
MOB, he had been selling real estate in Los Angeles.  Do you think that's
where he learned to lip-sync Roy Orbison songs?
-- Prof. Fred Hopkins
%%
Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are
bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized
standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political
conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime. . . .
   [I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope
of dealing with it. . . .
   [L]et us use the tools that we have.  Let us invoke the cooperation we have
the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink
the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held
to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have
committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
-- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
%%
Being schizophrenic is better than living alone.
%%
Better to kill time than have it kill you.
-- karl
%%
Beware of a tall dark man with a spoon up his nose.
%%
Bingo, gas station, hamburger with a side order of airplane noise,
and you'll be Gary, Indiana.
-- Jessie in the movie "Greaser's Palace"
%%
Birth, copulation and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks;
Birth, copulation and death.
-- T. S. Elliot, Sweeney Agonistes (1932)
%%
Blessed are they that run around in circles, for they shall be known as wheels.
%%
Blessed be those who initiate lively discussions with the hopelessly mute,
for they shall be know as Dentists.
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee...
 that will do them in.
%%
Brain damage is all in your head.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Brain off-line, please wait.
%%
Burnt Sienna. That's the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.
-- Ken Weaver
%%
But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to
thee, to speak these words?  Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the
wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?
[2 Kings 18:27 (KJV)]
%%
By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely
overwhelm me.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials
(out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence
to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve
but appeared "abruptly."
-- Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
%%
By repackaging age-old operating system features -- such as mutitasking
and virtual memory -- and marketing them as "innovations", and by making
non-competitive product agreements, IBM and Microsoft Corp. were able to
successfully pull a grand-scale commercial deception.

The sad part is that MIS managers are still falling for the old song and
dance.  To OS/2 die-hards: "Wake up and face it; OS/2 is d-e-a-d!"

-- Alex G. Christensen, _Information Week_, April 29, 1991
%%
By the time of the Great Renaming, net.suicide, along with net.rumors,
was mainly populated by refugees from net.bizarre, which was the first
popular group ever dropped by the backbone. This group of people acted
like a roving gang.  "Ah, here's a NEW almost-empty group to post
train schedules and core dumps in!"  Imagine their squeals of joy when
they discovered that posting to net.test got them mail from all over
the net.
-- Joe Buck, [e-mail], gives us some Usenet history
%%
Bye Bye
-- PDP 10
%%
Calm down -- it's only ones and zeros.
%%
Canada: a few acres of snow.
-- Voltaire
%%
Captain Penny's Law:
    You can fool all of the people some of the
    time, and some of the people all of the
    time, but you can't fool mom.
%%
Chaotic Evil means never having to say you're sorry.
%%
Charity:  a thing that begins at home and usually stays there.
%%
Children begin by loving their parents.  After a time they judge them.  Rarely,
if ever, do they forgive them.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
Chown up.  Chow down.
%%
Civilization Law #1:
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
one can do without thinking about them.
%%
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is gray, and yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is a quantization error.
-- Jef Poskanzer, from the doc to his oh-so-cool program that converts color
    bitmaps to greyscale ones.
%%
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
-- Helen Keller
%%
Collins's Law:
    If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything.

Corollaries ("Rabinovitch's Rules of Sane Dialogue"):
    1. Everybody who matters is stupid now and then.
    2. If I'm being stupid, that's my problem.
    3. If my being stupid makes you stupid, that's your problem.
    4. If you think you're never stupid, boy are you stupid!
%%
Come near me and I'll kill you.
-- Ron Post
%%
Commenting on the advantages of bisexuality, Woody Allen once remarked
"It doubles your chances of getting a date on Saturday night."
%%
Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a
pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
-- David Guaspari
%%
Computers are the most fun you can have with anything that isn't breathing.
-- Bruce Walker, CACM Forum
%%
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"
%%
Conference: A place where conversation is substituted for the dreariness of
 work and the loneliness of thought.
-- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
%%
Congresswoman:  Well, Mr. Dallas... we've heard your smut masquerading as
songs... and we've heard how teen prostitution, pregnancy, drug use, cults,
runaways, suicide and poor hygiene are sweeping this nation.  We thought you
might like to share with the committee any particular causes you might see
for those latter problems...

Steve Dallas:  I dunno.  Maybe the proliferation of narrow, suffocating
zealotry masquerading as parenting in this country.

-- Bloom County
%%
Conserve energy, kill yourself.
-- [e-mail]
%%
Contemptuous lights flashed flashed across the computer's console.
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%%
Could be you're crossing the fine line
A silly driver kind of...off the wall

You keep it cool when it's t-t-tight
...eyes wide open when you start to fall.
-- The Cars
%%
Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!
%%
Crystals are the subject of international fascination.  From crystal balls to
lasers, they have been prized in healing and science throughout the centuries.
Now Randall and Vicki Baer explore completely new horizons of crystal-based
knowledge.

Building on the foundation of their popularly acclaimed book, _Windows of
Light_, the Baers explore techniques, tools, and technologies for personal
and planetary transformation.  They detail advanced techniques for using
crystals in such areas as healing, stress management, mind-center activation,
and telethought communication, and they demonstrate the unification of the
spiritual and the scientific in a light-based sacred science.

The Baers explore visions of a new age based on higher planes of reality
and ultra-advanced crystal technologies.  An essential reference, _The
Crystal Connection_ is a landmark achievement in the field of crystal-based
sacred science.

Randall and Vicki Baer are internationally known authorities in the areas
of crystals, sacred science, and spiritual teachings.  Widely sought as
speakers, they are codirectors of the Starcrest Academy of Interdimensional
Law and Science, a project dedicated to worldwide seminars and advanced
educational programs in the sacred sciences.  They are the authors of
_Windows of Light: Quartz Crystals and Self-Transformation_, considered
the best work on the subject to date.

-- from the back cover of _The Crystal Connection_, Harper and Row,
ISBN 0-06-250033-3
%%
Cthulhu for President, if you're tired of choosing the LESSER of two evils.
%%
DE:  The Soviets seem to have difficulty implementing modern technology.
     Would you comment on that?

Belenko:  Well, let's talk about aircraft engine lifetime.  When I flew the
      MiG-25, its engines had a total lifetime of 250 hours.

DE:  Is that mean-time-between-failure?

Belenko:  No, the engine is finished; it is scrapped.

DE:  You mean they pull it out and throw it away, not even overhauling it?

Belenko:  That is correct.  Overhaul is too expensive.

DE:  That is absurdly low by free world standards.

Belenko:  I know.
-- an interview with Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 102
%%
Darwin was the great expansionism.  He shocked the world by arguing
convincingly that life is the creation of an autonomous process so simple that
it can be understood with just a moment of reflection.  No equations, photons
or computer read-outs required.  I can all be summarized in a couple of lines:
new variations in the hereditary material arise continuously, some survive and
reproduce better that others, and as a result organic evolution occurs.  And
even more briefly as follows: natural selection acting on mutations produces
evolution. Given enough time (and the Earth is over four billion years old)
even radically new kinds of organisms can be assembled this way, insects from
myriapods, amphibians from lungfish, birds from small dinosaurs, and even life
from inanimate matter.
-- Edward O. Wilson, "Biophilia"
%%
David Brinkley: The daily astrological charts are precisely where, in my
  judgment, they belong, and that is on the comic page.
George Will:  I don't think astrology belongs even on the comic pages.
  The comics are making no truth claim.
Brinkley:  Where would you put it?
Will:  I wouldn't put it in the newspaper.  I think it's transparent rubbish.
  It's a reflection of an idea that we expelled from Western thought in the
  sixteenth century, that we are in the center of a caring universe.  We are
  not the center of the universe, and it doesn't care.  The star's alignment
  at the time of our birth -- that is absolute rubbish.  It is not funny to
  have it intruded among people who have nuclear weapons.
Sam Donaldson:  This isn't something new.  Governor Ronald Reagan was sworn
  in just after midnight in his first term in Sacramento because the stars
  said it was a propitious time.
Will:  They [horoscopes] are utter crashing banalities.  They could apply to
  anyone and anything.
Brinkley:  When is the exact moment [of birth]?  I don't think the nurse is
  standing there with a stopwatch and a notepad.
Donaldson:  If we're making decisions based on the stars -- that's a cockamamie
  thing.  People want to know.
-- "This Week" with David Brinkley, ABC Television, Sunday, May 8, 1988,
   excerpts from a discussion on Astrology and Reagan
%%
David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans":
    * Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO
    * Many newspapers feature "JUMBLE"
    * Hourly motel rates
    * Vast majority of Elvis movies made here
    * Didn't just give up right away during World War II like some
        countries we could mention
    * Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies
    * Our well-behaved golf professionals
    * Fabulous babes coast to coast
%%
Dead?    No excuse for laying off work.
%%
Death:  to stop sinning suddenly.
%%
Decaffeinated coffee?  Just Say No.
%%
Definition of a hermaphrodite: a bisexual built for two.
-- Jeff Daiell
%%
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related
hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails
dangers that must not be underestimated.  Practitioners must take into
account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to
influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being.  The history
of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can
ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken
for a pleasure drug.  Special internal and external advance preparations
are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
experience.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%%
Deliver Us From Taxation
-- button, source forgotten
%%
Delta: A real man lands where he wants to.
-- David Letterman
%%
Delta: The kids will love our inflatable slides.
-- David Letterman
%%
Delta: We never make the same mistake three times.
-- David Letterman
%%
Delta: We're Amtrak with wings.
-- David Letterman
%%
Diet Pepsi isn't working.
-- note attached to the soda fountain in the 140 building at SCO

Then cut down on the Big Macs.
-- note attached to the note
%%
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build:
They have very large numbers of states.  This makes conceiving, describing,
and testing them hard.  Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states
than computers do.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
%%
Disobedience:  The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Do not allow this language (Ada) in its present state to be used in
applications where reliability is critical, i.e., nuclear power stations,
cruise missiles, early warning systems, anti-ballistic missile defense
systems.  The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language
error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus:
It may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our cities.  An unreliable
programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far
greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic
pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations.
-- C. A. R. Hoare
%%
Do not underestimate the power of the Force.
%%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
%%
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
Don't have aesthetic convulsions when using them, either.
%%
Do standards inevitably cause industries to calcify into obsolete technology?
Suppose we journey to the plains of Shinar and build a tower of bricks reaching
to heaven.  (That's the Tower of Babel, for those without a reading familiarity
with the Book of Genesis.)  Look, God Himself knows what standards can do, he
even said something like "The Sons of Men are all of one tongue and one
purpose, and now nothing shall be impossible for them."  So the Ancient of Days
had to step in and give us the wonderful gift of cultural diversity, to add
such a whopping translation overhead on every information transaction that we
bogged down forever into chaos and warfare.

-- Dan Mocsny ([e-mail])
%%
Don't eat yellow snow.
-- Frank Zappa
%%
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
-- G.K. Chesterton
%%
Don't force it, use a bigger hammer.
%%
Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts.
%%
Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash.
-- Bo Diddley
%%
Don't lose
Your head
To gain a minute
You need your head
Your brains are in it.
-- Burma Shave
%%
Don't panic.
%%
Don't tell me how hard you work.  Tell me how much you get done.
-- James J. Ling
%%
Don't wait for me to finish my smoke; jump me now, while there's still nine
of you.
-- Russ Post
%%
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
-- Kahlil Gibran
%%
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
-- Voltaire
%%
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
-- Paul Tillich, German theologian and historian
%%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%%
Dyslexics of the world, untie!
%%
EARTH:  Mostly harmless.
%%
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy
based on excellence of performance.
-- James Bryant Conant
%%
Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested
version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece.  Their
work will be set back by having that test bed change under them.  Of course it
must.  But the changes need to be quantized.  Then each user has periods of
productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change.  This seems
to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%%
Early victory is more than a good omen, it energizes the committed and
transforms the interested into more committed participants.
-- Brad Morrison ([e-mail])
%%
Eat shit -- billions of flies can't be wrong.
%%
Een schip op het strand is een baken in zee.
[A ship on the beach is a lighthouse to the sea.]
-- Dutch Proverb
%%
Eeny Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak.
-- Bullwinkle Moose
%%
Egotist:  A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary.  No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
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
%%
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
-- Hajime Karatsu
%%
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.
%%
Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals
and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas.
-- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%%
Everyone has a purpose in life.  Perhaps yours is watching television.
-- David Letterman
%%
Everyone who comes in here wants three things:
    1. They want it quick.
    2. They want it good.
    3. They want it cheap.
I tell 'em to pick two and call me back.
-- sign on the back wall of a small printing company in Delaware
%%
Everything you know is wrong.
-- The Firesign Theater
%%
Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact.
Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only
atheists could accept this Satanic theory.
-- Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, "The Pre-Adamic Creation and Evolution"
%%
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
%%
Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
-- Ellyn Mustard
%%
Excitement and danger await your induction to tracer duty!  As a tracer,
you must rid the computer networks of slimy, criminal data thieves.
They are tricky and the action gets tough, so watch out!  Utilizing all
your skills, you'll either get your man or you'll get burned!
-- advertising for the computer game "Tracers"
%%
Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
-- Poor Richard's Almanac
%%
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.  There are many examples of
outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but
they prevailed with irrefutable data.  More often, egregious findings that
contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts.  I have
argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic consciousness,"
and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of
neuroscience.  Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid
handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
offer more plausible alternatives.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
     Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
FORTRAN?  The syntactically incorrect statement "DO 10 I = 1.10" will parse and
generate code creating a variable, DO10I, as follows: "DO10I = 1.10"  If that
doesn't terrify you, it should.
%%
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
%%
Faire de la bonne cuisine demande un certain temps.  Si on vous fait attendre,
c'est pour mieux vous servir, et vous plaire.
[Good cooking takes time.  If you are made to wait, it is to serve you better,
 and to please you.]
Menu of Restaurant Antoine, New Orleans
[Also, what we're going to be telling our customers]
%%
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the
improbable.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect."
-- Keats
%%
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.

Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and
reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space.  In those days, spirits
were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri.  And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
was the Empire forged.
-- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
%%
Fast cars, fast women, fast algorithms... what more could a man want?
-- Joe Mattis
%%
Felson's Law:
    To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
    many is research.
%%
Finagle's Law:  The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum.
%%
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and
bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage.  But if we
don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly
serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up
for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
%%
First as to speech.  That privilege rests upon the premise that
there is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that it may not be
lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated.  It need not rest upon
the further premise that there are no propositions that are not
open to doubt; it is enough, even if there are, that in the end it is
worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.  Hence it
has been again and again unconditionally proclaimed that there are
no limits to the privilege so far as words seek to affect only the hearers'
beliefs and not their conduct.  The trouble is that conduct is almost
always based upon some belief, and that to change the hearer's belief
will generally to some extent change his conduct, and may even evoke
conduct that the law forbids.

[cf. Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1952;
The Art and Craft of Judging: The Decisions of Judge Learned Hand,
edited and annotated by Hershel Shanks, The MacMillian Company, 1968.]
%%
First learn computer science and all the theory.
Next develop a programming style. Then forget all
that and just hack.
-- George Carrette [1990]
%%
Flee at once, all is discovered.
%%
Flon's Law:
   There is not now and never will be a language in which it
   is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%%
Fools ignore complexity.  Pragmatists suffer it.
Some can avoid it.  Geniuses remove it.
-- Perlis's Programming Proverb #58, SIGPLAN Notices, Sept.  1982
%%
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Forty two.
%%
Found under windshield wiper:

"I have just hit and dented your car.  People are watching me.
They think I am leaving you my name and address.  They are wrong."
%%
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics:
 If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.
-- David Ellis
%%
Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the on roof
and gets stuck.
%%
>From Sharp minds come... pointed heads.
-- Bryan Sparrowhawk
%%
>From a long view of the history of mankind -- seen from, say, ten thousand
years from now -- there can be little doubt that the most significant event
of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of
electrodynamics.  The American Civil War will pale into provincial
insignificance in comparison with this important scientific event of the
same decade.
-- Richard P. Feynman
%%
>From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Dean Semler, cinematographer for "Dances With Wolves," is one of those select
Americans who got to meet Queen Elizabeth before her current visit to the
United States.

"I said I was director of photography, to which she replied, 'Oh, how terribly
 interesting.  Actually, I have a brother-in-law who is a photographer.'

"I replied, 'Oh, how terribly coincidental.  I have a brother-in-law who's a
 queen.'  She moved on without saying another word."
%%
>From the X-windows xwud(1) man-page...

This is a crude version of a more advanced utility that has never been written.
%%
Frouds Law:
 A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing
 first.
%%
Fullers Law of Cosmic Irreversibility:
 1 Pot T == 1 Pot P
 1 Pot P != 1 Pot T
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%%
Garbage In, Gospel Out
%%
Gary Hart:  living proof that you *can* screw your brains out.
%%
Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
%%
Genius is the talent of a man who is dead.
%%
Get hold of portable property.  -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
%%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
-- Calvin Keegan
%%
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs
pounding.
-- Abraham Kaplan
%%
Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it will make you feel
less responsible -- but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with
the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless
hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
are --"
-- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
%%
God grant me the senility to accept the things I cannot change,
The frustration to try to change things I cannot affect,
and the wisdom to tell the difference.
%%
God must love the common man; He made so many of them.
%%
God requireth not a uniformity of religion.
-- Roger Williams
%%
Gort, klaatu birada nikto.
%%
HOFSTADTER'S LAW:
     Everything takes longer and costs more than expected, even when
     taking into account Hofstadter's Law.
%%
HP had a unique policy of allowing its engineers to take parts from stock as
long as they built something.  "They figured that with every design, they were
getting a better engineer.  It's a policy I urge all companies to adopt."
-- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "Will Wozniak's class give Apple to teacher?"
   EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
%%
Hackers of the world, unite!
%%
Haiku haiku bo
Baiku banana fana
Fo faiku... haiku!
-- Bruce Steinberg  ([e-mail])
%%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
    Experience is directly proportional to the
    amount of equipment ruined.
%%
Harrison's Postulate:
    For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%%
Hartley's First Law:
  You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
  on his back, you've got something.
%%
Have you seen the latest Japanese camera? Apparently it is so fast it can
photograph an American with his mouth shut!
%%
He hasn't one redeeming vice.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
He that we last as Thurn and Taxis knew
Now recks no lord but the stilletto's Thorn,
And Tacit lies the gold once-knotted horn.
No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow,
Who's once been set his tryst with Trystero.
-- Richard Whorfinger, "The Courier's Tragedy"
%%
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains
a fool forever.
-- Old Chinese saying
%%
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
%%
He who shits on the road will meet flies on his return.
-- South African Saying
%%
He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
-- M. C. Escher
%%
He'll sit here and he'll say, "Do this!  Do that!"  And nothing will happen.
-- Harry S. Truman, on presidential power
%%
He's dead, Jim.
%%
Heisenberg might have been here.
%%
Her life was saved by rock and roll.
-- Lou Reed
%%
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.
-- Peter Drucker
%%
Here at Controls, we have one chief for every Indian...but only the brave get
scalped.
%%
Here is an Appalachian version of management's answer to those who are
concerned with the fate of the project:
"Don't worry about the mule.  Just load the wagon."
-- Mike Dennison's hillbilly uncle
%%
His heart was yours from the first moment that you met.
%%
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts
them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing
grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another...
Truly the imago state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every
moult is a step gained.
- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
%%
Hog's breath is better than no breath at all.
-- Hog's Breath Saloon, Fort Walton Beach, Florida
%%
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at
your side.
-- Han Solo
%%
Hoping to goodness is not theologically sound. - Peanuts
%%
Horizontal fragmentation results from market manipulation, the whim
of vendors, sheer incompetence, contempt for users, or the inability
of rival vendors to communicate. I'm talking about nonsense like
having 50 MS-DOS programs that each somehow find a different function
key to provide on-line help. I'm talking about differences between
products that make them incompatible and inconsistent while providing
no clear-cut technical advantage. Horizontal fragmentation vastly
increases the intellectual burden separating computer users from
solving their problems. Since it decreases the value of the computer
to the user while providing no offsetting benefit, it makes the
computer market smaller. This must eventually translate on average
into smaller paychecks for everyone who has tied their fortune to that
market.
-- Dan Mocsny ([e-mail])
%%
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy
thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.  Thy navel
is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor:  thy belly is like an heap
of wheat set about with lilies.
Thy two breasts are like two young roses that are twins.
[Song of Solomon 7:1-3 (KJV)]
%%
How beautiful, how entrancing you are, my loved one, daughter of delights!
You are stately as a palm-tree, and your breasts are the clusters of dates.
I said, "I will climb up into the palm to grasp its fronds."  May I find your
breast like clusters of grapes on the vine, the scent of your breath like
apricots, and your whispers like spiced wine flowing smoothly to welcome my
caresses, gliding down through lips and teeth.
[Song of Solomon 7:6-9 (NEB)]
%%
How can you be two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
-- Firesign Theater
%%
How did the computer scientist die in the shower?
He read the directions on the shampoo: Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat.
%%
How do you make a small fortune in Texas oil?

Start with a big one.
%%
How does a project get to be a year late? ... One day at a time.
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
How long does it take a DEC field service engineer to change a lightbulb?

It depends on how many bad ones he brought with him.
%%
How many Bavarian Illuminati does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Three: one to screw it in, and one to confuse the issue.
%%
How many Californians does it take to change a light bulb?
Four.  One to change the bulb and three to share the experience.
%%
How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

"That's a known problem... don't worry about it."
%%
How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
%%
How many Unix hacks does it take to change a light bulb?
   Let's see, can you use a shell script for that or does it need a C program?
%%
How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
Two.  One to change the bulb and one to mix the drinks.
%%
How many Zen Buddhist does it take to change a light bulb?

Two.  One to change it and one not to change it.
%%
How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?

None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out
 of the way.
%%
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?

"Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem."
%%
How many lesbians does it take to change a light bulb?
Two.  One to change the bulb and another to reflect on how much more gratifying
it was than a man.
%%
How many nuclear engineers does it take to change a light bulb ?

Seven:  One to install the new bulb, and six to determine what to do
        with the old one for the next 10,000 years.
%%
How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
None.  It's a hardware problem.
%%
How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
Only one, but it takes a really long time and the light bulb has to want
to change.
%%
How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

One to hold the giraffe and one to fill the bathtub with brightly colored
power tools.
%%
However many ways there may be of being alive,
it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead.
-- Richard Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker)
%%
However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise.
There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious
beliefs.  There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than
Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.
But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf
should be used sparingly.  The religious factions that are growing
throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom.
They are trying to force government leaders into following their position
100 percent.  If you disagree with these religious groups on a
particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of
money or votes or both.  I'm frankly sick and tired of the political
preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be
a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D."  Just who do
they think they are?  And from where do they presume to claim the
right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?  And I am even more angry as
a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who
thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll
call in the Senate.  I am warning them today:  I will fight them every
step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
Americans in the name of "conservatism."
-- Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981
%%
Hugh Downs' Four Rules for Investigating the Universe:
Rule #1-- When confronted with an apparent infinite or infinitely repeating
         pattern, expect some variant that keeps it from being infinite.
Rule #2-- When all investigation supports Rule 1, look for a situation which
         violates it.
Rule #3-- Be prepared for an infinite oscillation between Rules 1 and 2.
Rule #4-- Apply Rule 1.
%%
Human society - man in a group - rises out of its lethargy to new levels of
productivity only under the stimulus of deeply inspiring and commonly
appreciated goals.  A lethargic world serves no cause well; a spirited world
working diligently toward earnestly desired goals provides the means and
the strength toward which many ends can be satisfied...to unparalleled
social accomplishment.
-- Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two
great outrages upon its naive self-love.  The first was when it realized that
our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a speck in a world-system
of a magnitude hardly conceivable...  The second was when biological research
robbed man of his particular privilege of having been specially created, and
relegated him to a descent from the animal world.
-- Sigmund Freud
%%
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be
lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures,
but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.
-- Edward O. Wilson, "Biophilia"
%%
I REALLY like Bugs Bunny.  I think I just found out why.  A local weekly
(Metro) had an article on the wascally wabbit's 50th birthday party this
year, and they had the following quote about the animation studio where Bugs
Bunny cartoons were created...

"It's not every workplace that allows you to have an autographed picture of
Christ on the wall."

-- Scott Lieberman
%%
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by men who
are equally certain that they represent the divine will.  I am sure that
either the one or the other is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some
respects, both.

I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable that
God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty,
it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
I am here by the will of the people and I won't leave until I get my raincoat
back.
-- a slogan of the anarchists in Richard Kadrey's "Metrophage"
%%
I ask only one thing.  I'm understanding.  I'm mature.  And it isn't much to
ask.  I want to get back to London, and track her down, and be alone with my
Selina -- or not even alone, damn it, merely close to her, close enough to
smell her skin, to see the flecked webbing of her lemony eyes, the moulding
of her artful lips.  Just for a few precious seconds.  Just long enough to
put in one good, clean punch.  That's all I ask.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute --
where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)
how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom
to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or
political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely
because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the
people who might elect him.
-- from John F. Kennedy's address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
    September 12, 1960.
%%
I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability
more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjunction
with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder
child.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
%%
I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder.  It's a
very powerful emotion.  All children feel it.  In a first grade classroom
everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or
at least acknowledges it.  Something happens between first and twelfth grade,
and it's not just puberty.  Not only do the schools and the media not teach
much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
of wonder.  Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling.  Poor
popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
-- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
    Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys...and
the building started up.  So I took it out for a drive.  A cop pulled me over
for speeding.  He asked me where I live... "Right here".
-- Steven Wright
%%
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?
-- Shakespeare, king Henry IV, Part I
%%
I can't drive 55.
%%
I can't drive 65.
%%
I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man.  Therefore, I affirm both.
Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete.  Human unity
is the fulfillment of diversity.  It is the harmony of opposites.  It is
a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
-- Norman Cousins
%%
I complain often about my old age.  Now I have stopped complaining
because I can't get old anymore, the process is finished.
-- Paul Erdos
%%
I could prove God statistically.
-- George Gallup
%%
I did cancel one performance in Holland where they thought my music was so easy
that they didn't rehearse at all.  And so the first time when I found that out,
I rehearsed the orchestra myself in front of the audience of 3,000 people and
the next day I rehearsed through the second movement -- this was the piece
_Cheap Imitation_ -- and they then were ashamed.  The Dutch people were ashamed
and they invited me to come to the Holland festival and they promised to
rehearse.  And when I got to Amsterdam they had changed the orchestra, and
again, they hadn't rehearsed.  So they were no more prepared the second time
than they had been the first.  I gave them a lecture and told them to cancel
the performance; they then said over the radio that i had insisted on their
canceling the performance because they were "insufficiently Zen."
Can you believe it?
-- composer John Cage, "Electronic Musician" magazine, March 88, pg. 89
%%
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any Church that I know of.  My own mind is my own Church.
-- Thomas Paine
%%
I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself
to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon...
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
%%
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I don't want to be young again, I just don't want to get any older.
%%
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I find you lack of faith in the forth dithturbing.
-- Darse ("Darth") Vader
%%
I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after
expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of
England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced,
I have received neither an acknowledgment of my labors, not even the offer
of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men
who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...

If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere
triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution
of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification
might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert
that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express
an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man
distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of
such machinery impracticable...

And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that
exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement,
which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the
application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abstruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
-- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
%%
I have stripped off my dress; must I put it on again?  I have washed my feet;
must I soil them again?
When my beloved slipped his hand through the latch-hole, my bowels stirred
within me [my bowels were moved for him (KJV)].
When I arose to open for my beloved, my hands dripped with myrrh; the liquid
myrrh from my fingers ran over the knobs of the bolt.  With my own hands I
opened to my love, but my love had turned away and gone by; my heart sank when
he turned his back.  I sought him but I did not find him, I called him but he
did not answer.
The watchmen, going the rounds of the city, met me; they struck me and
  wounded me; the watchmen on the walls took away my cloak.
[Song of Solomon 5:3-7 (NEB)]
%%
I judge a religion as being good or bad based on whether its adherents
become better people as a result of practicing it.
-- Joe Mullally, computer salesman
%%
I just thought of something funny...your mother.
-- Cheech Marin
%%
I know engineers.  They love to change things.
-- Dr. McCoy
%%
I like the future, I'm in it.
%%
I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.
%%
I live in my own world.  But it's okay... They know me there.
%%
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
%%
I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
-- Mae West
%%
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
%%
I program, therefore I am.
%%
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis
socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for:  If they think
you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude.  I'm a
very technical boy.  So I decided to get as crude as possible.  These days,
though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to
crudeness.
-- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
%%
I really hate this damn machine,
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does just what I want,
But only what I tell it.
%%
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital
intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
I reject this stuffy academic polite rule-oriented linear adult debate-style
chain of iterated jerk-off grown-up bullshit.
-- Ron Record ([e-mail])
%%
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis
pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only
by a change in our world view.  We shall have to shift from the materialistic,
dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a
new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the
experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate
nature and all of creation.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman
%%
I simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
medieval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among us --
a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole
normal evolution of society.
-- Andrew D. White, author, first president of Cornell University, 1896
%%
I think an embryo/fetus/baby becomes a "person" when it is smarter than a
non-primate like a dog.  By those standards, chimpanzees and gorillas
are persons (although somewhat cognitively impaired -- kind of like
Fundamentalist Christians), but human newborns are not.
-- Dave Touretzsky
%%
I think most expert systems should be referred to as "that-guy-in-the-
corner-who-everyone-hates-but-can-answer-the-weirdest-questions systems".
Or more succinctly, "nerd systems".
-- Peter da Silva, [e-mail]
%%
I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
- Oscar Wilde
%%
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and
tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this
country with being sick and tired.  I'm certainly not.  But I'm
sick and tired of being told that I am.
-- Monty Python
%%
I think the best way I've heard this put is "Pascal gives you a water pistol
filled with distilled water.  C not only gives you a loaded .357, it points
it at your head as a default.  Why do you think Pascal is taught in school?
And which would you rather have when there was a hungry bear in the area?"
-- Jim Harkins ([e-mail])
%%
I think the problem isn't the amount of knowledge we have to assimilate
in our world, but the rate at which we can assimilate it.  Science,
engineering, and technology do not yield the "whys" of truth,
only the "hows."  In fact, they are not truths, but opinions from
the current reigning theories of how we think the physical world works.
-- eugene miya, [e-mail]
%%
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
%%
I took a fish head to the movies and I didn't have to pay.
-- Fish Heads, Saturday Night Live, 1977.
%%
I used to be indecisive; now I'm not sure.
-- Graffiti
%%
I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from
you.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
I waited and waited, and when nobody called, I knew it was from you.
%%
I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all
these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these
kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and
I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been
avoiding the beach.
-- Lucinda Childs (Philip Glass: Einstein On The Beach)
%%
I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards. I got a full house and
4 people died.
-- Steven Wright
%%
I was thinking of trademarking the lowercase letter l.  Then I could sue the
number 1 for look and feel...
-- Jonathan Kagle
%%
I will never lie to you.
%%
I will say one good thing for vi, after I learned that, the keys didn't change
 like they did for Nethack, but I still only use it when I have to.
-- Matt Ranney <[e-mail]>
%%
I wish you humans would leave me alone.
%%
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
%%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
-- Graffiti
%%
I'll feel a whole lot better when you're gone...
-- Tom Petty
%%
I'm Batman.
%%
I'm a clown.  That's my sole mechanism of defense.  Very few people will go
out of their way to punish a clown.
-- ???
%%
I'm driving my landrover through the dunes of ideas... rmmm!
It's cool, though.  I've got a rollbar.
-- Todd Rockoff
%%
I'm going to EUROPE this summer--but when I
GET BACK, I'll have TRAINING waiting for me
as a COMBAT ENGINEER !!!

Sound familiar?  Be all you can BE!

"Ya sluzhat v'Army!"
    --Russian for "I'm in the Army!"  (I serve in the Army)

-- Brad Morrison
%%
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, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
    Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
I'm sick of being trodden on!  The Elder Gods say they can make me a man!
All it costs is my soul!  I'll do it, cuz NOW I'M MAD!!!
-- Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee
%%
I've got a bad feeling about this.
%%
If A equals success, then the formula is:
   A= X + Y + Z
X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
If God had wanted man to fly, He would have given him airline tickets.
%%
If God had wanted man to go around nude, He would have given him bigger hands.
%%
If I had a shiny gun
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folks that cause me pains

Or, if I had some mustard gas
I could make the moments pass
bumping off the numbers of
people who I do not love

-- Dorthy Parker
%%
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
%%
If a reasonable launch schedule is to be maintained, engineering often cannot
be done fast enough to keep up with the expectations of the originally con-
servative certification criteria designed to guarantee a very safe vehicle.
In such situations, safety criteria are altered subtly -- and with often
apparently logical arguments -- so that flights can still be certified in
time.  The shuttle therefore flies in a relatively unsafe condition, with
a chance of failure on the order of a percent.  (It is difficult to be more
accurate.) ...

Let us make recommendations to ensure that NASA officials deal in a world of
reality, understanding technological weaknesses and imperfections well enough
to be actively trying to eliminate them.  They must live in a world of reality
in comparing the costs and utility of the shuttle to other methods of entering
space.  And they must be realistic in making contracts and in estimating the
costs and difficulties of each project.  Only realistic flights schedules
should be proposed -- schedules that have a reasonable chance of being met.
If in this way the government would not support NASA, then so be it.  NASA
owes it to the citizens from whom it asks support to be frank, honest, and
informative, so that these citizens can make the wisest decisions for the use
of their limited resources.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

-- Richard P. Feynman, conclusions of Appendix F: Personal Observations on
    the Reliability of the Shuttle, from his tenure with the presidential
    commission investigating the Challenger disaster, _What Do You Care What
    Other People Think?_
%%
If at first you don't succeed, you are running about average.
%%
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
plentiful as blackberries...
-- Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), literary essayist, author
%%
If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, Jolt Cola
would be a Fortune-500 company.

If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, you'd be
able to buy a nice little colonial split-level at Babbages for $34.95.

If programmers wrote programs the way builders build buildings, we'd still
be using autocoder and running compile decks.

-- Peter da Silva and Karl Lehenbauer, a different perspective
%%
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
-- Gerald Weinberg  (sysop's note: bull)
%%
If imprinted foil seal under cap is broken or missing when purchased, do not
use.
%%
If it glistens, gobble it!
-- Zippy the Pinhead
%%
If it smells good, eat it!
-- T-Shirt slogan for the Franklin Square Deli, Kent, Ohio
%%
If it's working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
If it's not working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
-- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
%%
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any
connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of
religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and
superficial answer is not far to seek....
The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various
denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor,
it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that,
if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival
denomination would get an unfair advantage.
-- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
     from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
%%
If only God would give me some clear sign!  Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss Bank.
-- Woody Allen
%%
If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible
and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience.  But there is a kind
of Gresham's Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the
good.  And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community
ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the
media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful.  Every newspaper
in America has a daily astrology column.  How many have even a weekly
astronomy column?  And I believe it is also the fault of the educational
system.  We do not teach how to think.  This is a very serious failure that
may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human
future.
-- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer,
     Vol. 12, Fall 87
%%
If something's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.
%%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
-- Stanley Garn
%%
If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a circuit, I
see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by
electricity.
-- Samuel F. B. Morse
%%
If this is a service economy, why is the service so bad?
%%
If we cannot learn from our mistakes, we just rename them; "Success".
-- Jon Loux
%%
If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution
inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy
%%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
If you don't watch it, you're going to catch something.
%%
If you permit yourself to read meanings into (rather than drawing meanings out
of) the evidence, you can draw any conclusion you like.
-- Michael Keith, "The Bar-Code Beast", The Skeptical Enquirer Vol 12 No 4 p 416
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the
largest shopping center in the world?
-- Richard M. Nixon
%%
If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your
mother, your Dad, your priest, to some guy on television, to any of the
people telling you how to do your shit, then you *deserve* it.  If you
want to be a schmuck, be a schmuck -- but don't wait around for respect
from other people -- a schmuck is a schmuck.
-- Frank Zappa, _The Real Frank Zappa Book_
%%
If you're dumb enough, you can fuck up anything.
-- [e-mail]
%%
If you're not careful, you're going to catch something.
%%
If you're not part of the solution,
you must be part of the precipitate.
%%
If you've seen one Grand Canyon, you've seen them all.
-- a member of the Monkey Wrench Gang
%%
If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all.
-- Spiro Agnew
%%
If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
-- Ronald Reagan
%%
If your lover doesn't like garlic, get a new lover.
-- Jeff Smith, The Frugal Gourmet
%%
Ignore previous fortune.
%%
Ill-chosen abstraction is particularly evident in the design of the ADA
runtime system. The interface to the ADA runtime system is so opaque that
it is impossible to model or predict its performance, making it effectively
useless for real-time systems.
-- Marc D. Donner and David H. Jameson.
%%
Imitation is the sincerest form of plagiarism.
%%
In Lisbon when heretics were publicly burned, it sometimes happened that one of
them, by particularly edifying recantation, would be granted the boon of being
strangled before being put into the flames.  This would make the spectators so
furious that the authorities had great difficulty in preventing them from
lynching the penitent and burning him on their own account.  The spectacle of
the writhing torments of the victims was, in fact, one of the principal
pleasures to which the populace looked forward to enliven a somewhat drab
existence.  I cannot doubt that this pleasure greatly contributed to the
general belief that the burning of heretics was a righteous act.  The same sort
of thing applies to war.  People who are vigorous and brutal often find war
enjoyable, provided that it is a victorious war and their is not too much
interference with rape and plunder.  This is a great help in persuading people
that wars are righteous.
-- Bertrand Russell, _Unpopular_Essays_, 1950
%%
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily
use only 10 percent of our brains...

This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of
"pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes.  As
a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it?  As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
it leaves much to be desired.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness:  Implications for
   Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
%%
In article ... [e-mail] (JM Ivler - Douglas Aircraft) writes:
>Mass junk mail. If all of us who use this
>group for what it was designed for start to mass mail the below message to the
>offenders, maybe they will have enough sense to go somewhere else. My bloody
>kill file is getting too damn big!

Mass junk mail?
Just say 'forward to [e-mail]'.
-- Jay Maynard, [e-mail]
%%
In article ... [e-mail] (Wee Willie) writes:
>Well I guess the summary says it all, where do I find Sports Illustrated GIF's
>or anything similar ????

I violate copyright and I'm OK,
I view all night and I scan all day.
  He violates copyright and he's OK,
  he views all night and he scans all day.
I buy magazines at the corner store,
When I've scanned them all, I'll buy some more.
  He buys magazines at the corner store,
  When he's scanned them all he'll buy some more.

Well, you get the idea...
-- J Eric Townsend ([e-mail])
%%
In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tim Maroney) writes:
>I'm not going to be as kind to FICC in general as you have been.
>Something is wrong there.  These three semiliterate fanboys send dozens
>of messages a day, fewer than half of which are about anything in
>particular.  I haven't had a kill file since Weiner left, but I've been
>sorely tempted to use one to avoid seeing anything from ficc.

However, in article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Tim Maroney) writes:
>Kill files are an expression of resentment by the unmemorable or
>untalented against the memorable and talented.  Your appearance in kill
>files merely marks the fact that you have more than once tried to make
>people think, when they really would rather not.  It is an honor.

Will the real Tim Maroney please stand up?

-- Mike Van Pelt ([e-mail])
%%
In article <[e-mail]> Jason bitches about IBM screwing all
of the people who were dumb enough to buy RTs, then...
-- Rad Morrison
%%
In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Steve Lamont) writes:
>I hate "me too" postings

Me too.

-- Charleen Stoner, [e-mail]
%%
In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Thomas Carter) says:
>     From dust thou didst come; To dust thou shalt return.

    One day it will be reasonably common for fans of the bible to point
    out the marvelous scientific accuracy of the bible in saying that
    mankind was created from dust. Those same fans will look back on
    current creationists with the same embarassment as current Christians
    look back on the pope of Galileo's time.

-- Chris Ho-Stuart ([e-mail])
%%
In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Nils R.
Bull Young) writes:
|   I consider this to be a form of censorship of my access to the
| free exchange of information and thus a First Amendment question.

...
In common terms you can write a book, and no one can stop you or tell
you what to write, but no one else is required to publish the book, or
to read it. You can raise specious issues in net postings, but no one
is required to agree, to carry your postings, or even read them. If
everyone on the net adds you to their KILL file, you have no recourse.
If every site checks incoming postings and blows your stuff away,
that's their right.

  Don't worry, a few individuals may ignore you, but the bulk of the net
will read every word, if only to disagree.

-- Bill Davidsen ([e-mail])
%%
In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Mehul Dave)
writes:
> I apologize for misposting this article to a wrong newsgroup.  It was
> intended for sci.philosophy.tech.  Sorry for the oversight.

Come, come; you needn't apologize.  News.groups is the very bastion
of synthetic a priori judgments, so why not attack the Kantian beast
in its lair?
-- Mike Siemon, [e-mail]
%%
In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
(John Reynolds) writes:
>Robert Tilton Ministries
>Box 819000 Dallas, TX 75381
>* Complete Instructions on How to Receive your Miracle (That is, send
>in "more money than you can afford", three times in 21 days)

It really works!  We prayed for OpenWindows V2 to ship on schedule and it
happened!  We didn't send him any money and a disk blew up on our server!
Praise ``Bob''!

-- [e-mail]
%%
In every language, the first word after "Mama!" that every kid learns to say
is "Mine!"  A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to
say "Mine!" when you grow up, has -- to put it mildly -- a fatal design flaw.

>From the time Mr. Developing Nation was forced to read _The Little Red Book_
in exchange for a blob of rice, till the time he figured out that waiting in
line for a loaf of pumpernickel was boring as fuck, took about three
generations. ...

Decades of indoctrination, manipulation, censorship and KGB excursions haven't
altered this fact: People want a piece of their own little Something-or-Other,
and, if they don't get it, have a tendency to initiate counterrevolution.
-- Frank Zappa, _The Real Frank Zappa Book_
%%
In his '90 Usenix presentation, Dennis Ritchie reminded the audience that
Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that
X-windows was brain-dead and would soon die.  "He was half-right.  Sometimes
when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks."
-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix, from an article in Unix Today
%%
In his book, Mr. DePree tells the story of how designer George Nelson urged
that the company also take on Charles Eames in the late 1940s.  Max's father,
J. DePree, co-founder of the company with Herman Miller in 1923, asked Mr.
Nelson if he really wanted to share the limited opportunities of a then-small
company with another designer.  "George's response was something like this:
'Charles Eames is an unusual talent.  He is very different from me.  The
company needs us both.  I want very much to have Charles Eames share in
whatever potential there is.'"
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
In many traditional corporations, too many people are fearful of saying what
they really think because they don't trust each other.  People believe their
opinions can get them in trouble.
-- John Scully, _Odyssey_
%%
In my opinion, Perl's biggest weaknesses are (1) its syntax is
fantastically complex (consider the multiple meanings of / and $), and
(2) it is a collection of features more than a coherent language for
expressing algorithms.
--  Dale Worley ([e-mail])
%%
In order to succeed in any enterprise, one must be persistent and patient.
Even if one has to run some risks, one must be brave and strong enough to
meet and overcome vexing challenges to maintain a successful business in
the long run.  I cannot help saying that Americans lack this necessary
challenging spirit today.
-- Hajime Karatsu
%%
In recognizing AT&T Bell Laboratories for corporate innovation, for its
invention of cellular mobile communications, IEEE President Russell C. Drew
referred to the cellular telephone as a "basic necessity."  How times have
changed, one observer remarked: many in the room recalled the advent of
direct dialing.
-- The Institute, July 1988, pg. 11
%%
In science, right conduct consists of evaluating evidence honestly and
according to the canons of scientific reasoning.  To misrepresent the
evidence and the criteria of judgment is not merely to provide
misinformation; it is to set an example of dishonesty.  Telling lies
to naive and trusting young persons is bad.  Doing so for the purpose
of proselytizing is worse.
-- biologist Michael T. Ghiselin
%%
In space, no one can hear you fart.
%%
In the beginning I was made.  I didn't ask to me made.  No one consulted
me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their
way through life's mournful jungle then so be it.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%%
In the beginning, I was made.  I didn't ask to be made.  No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
through life's mournful jungle, then so be it.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android, From Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the
     Galaxy Radio Scripts
%%
In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the
sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities
and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality...Whether this
educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-
democratic way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance
not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the
interests and activities of a society that is committed to the democratic
way of life.
-- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher
%%
In the future, etiquette will become more and more important.  That doesn't
mean knowing which fork to pick up -- I mean basic consideration for the
rights of other animals (human beings included) and the willingness,
whenever practical, to tolerate the other guy's idiosyncrasies.
-- Frank Zappa, _The Real Frank Zappa Book_
%%
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.
-- Robert Lucky
%%
In the interests of better foreign relations, "Cheesehead" is presented here
in several different languages.  Make friends with our world-wide neighbors:

   Cabasa de Quesa (Spanish)
   Cara de Quesa   (Spanish, actually "face of cheese", but equally as
            acceptable as "Cabasa de Quesa" in most social situations.
            It is important that this not be confused with "Casa de
            Quesa", which is "house of cheese", and another thing
            entirely.)
   Capa de Fromage (French)
   Head 'o Cheese  (Scottish/Welsh)
   Ahhh-yu-gotta-Chezehead (Japenese, spoken very fast)
%%
In the pitiful, multipage, connection-boxed form to which the flowchart has
today been elaborated, it has proved to be useless as a design tool --
programmers draw flowcharts after, not before, writing the programs they
describe.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true
or becomes true.
-- John Lilly
%%
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are
prepared.
-- Louis Pasteur
%%
In the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, it's often useful to have a nice,
solid piece of wood in your hands.
-- Ian Faith, manager of Spinal Tap
%%
In truth, there never was any remarkable lawgiver amongst any people
who did not resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would
not have been accepted by the people; for there are many good laws, the
importance of which is known to be the sagacious lawgiver, but the
reasons for which are not sufficiently evident to enable him to persuade
others to submit to them; and therefore do wise men, for the purpose
of removing this difficulty, resort to divine authority.
-- Machiavelli
%%
Inadmissible:  Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain kinds of
testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with,
and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves
alone.  Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was
unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous
actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are
daily undertaken on hearsay evidence.  There is no religion in the world
that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay
evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the
testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and
who are not known to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of
evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the
Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law...

But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved
that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to
mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women
were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and
in law.  Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than
the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death.
If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike
destitute of value.  --Ambrose Bierce
%%
Instead of whining to the net about it, why don't you talk to the news admins
at Berkeley?  If they won't trash sci.skeptic there, pass around a petition.
Threaten to set their dog on fire.  Whatever.  If nothing works, you can, as a
last resort, unsubscribe.
-- Dave Mack, [e-mail], responds to a flame in news.groups
%%
Is it possible that the solution to the software quality crisis was discovered
in Korea in the 15th century?  The following is from Daniel J. Boorstin, "The
Discoverers" quoting, apparently, Kim Won-Yong, "Early Movable Type in Korea"
(1954):

    "The supervisor and compositor shall be flogged thirty times for an error
    per chapter; the printer shall be flogged thirty times for bad impression,
    either too dark or too light, of one character per chapter."

Boorstin continues, "This helps explain both the reputation for accuracy earned
by the earliest Korean imprints and the difficulty that Koreans found in
recruiting printers."

-- Martin Minow, RISKS 11.37 [dated April 1, 1991]
%%
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.
-- Willie Sutton
%%
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it
is also very memorable.  I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize
the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360.  The manager of
architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were
threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities.

The architecture manager had 10 good men.  He asserted that they could write
the specifications and do it right.  It would take ten months, three more
than the schedule allowed.

The control program manager had 150 men.  He asserted that they could prepare
the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be
well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule.  Furthermore, if
the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs
for ten months.

To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program
team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would
also be three months late, and of much lower quality.  I did, and it was.  He
was right on both counts.  Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made
the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it
added a year to debugging time.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%%
It is best to avoid volcanos whenever possible.
%%
It is better to never have tried anything than to have tried something and
failed.
-- motto of jerks, weenies and losers everywhere
%%
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because
he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
-- Voltaire
%%
It is common sense to take a method and try it.  If it fails, admit it frankly
and try another.  But above all, try something.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%%
It is important to note that probably no large operating system using current
design technology can withstand a determined and well-coordinated attack,
and that most such documented penetrations have been remarkably easy.
-- B. Hebbard, "A Penetration Analysis of the Michigan Terminal System",
      Operating Systems Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 1980, pp. 7-20
%%
It is inconceivable that a judicious observer from another solar system
would see in our species -- which has tended to be cruel, destructive,
wasteful, and irrational -- the crown and apex of cosmic evolution.
Viewing us as the culmination of *anything* is grotesque; viewing us
as a transitional species makes more sense -- and gives us more hope.
-- Betty McCollister, "Our Transitional Species",
     Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1
%%
It is my purpose, as one who lived and acted in these days, to show how
easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented;  how
the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous...
We shall see how the counsels of prudence and restraint may become prime
agents of mortal danger;  how the middle course adopted from desires for
safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bull's eye of
disaster.
-- Sir Winston Churchill
    _Memoirs of the Second World War_ (Houghton Mifflin, 1959)
%%
It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat
somebody.
-- Richard M. Nixon
%%
It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
It is not well to be thought of as one who meekly submits to insolence and
intimidation.
%%
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
-- Robert Bly
%%
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 B.C. - A.D. 65)
%%
It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence.
-- W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876
%%
It is your destiny.
-- Darth Vader
%%
It may soon be time for you to look for a new line of work.
%%
It may stop, but it never ends.
-- Matt Howarth
%%
It might be worth reflecting that this group was originally created
back in September of 1987 and has exchanged over 1200 messages.  The
original announcement for the group called for an all inclusive
discussion ranging from the writings of Gibson and Vinge and movies
like Bladerunner to real world things like Brands' description of the
work being done at the MIT Media Lab.  It was meant as a haven for
people with vision of this scope.  If you want to create a haven for
people with narrower visions, feel free.  But I feel sad for anyone
who thinks that alt.cyberpunk is such a monstrous group that it is in
dire need of being subdivided.  Heaven help them if they ever start
reading comp.arch or rec.arts.sf-lovers.
-- Bob Webber
%%
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.
-- Machiavelli
%%
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
-- Edward Dahlberg
%%
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain
%%
It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been
always thus.
-- Dean Lattimer
%%
It was pity stayed his hand.
"Pity I don't have any more bullets," thought Frito.
-- _Bored_of_the_Rings_, a Harvard Lampoon parody of Tolkein
%%
It was sick...But it gave of the sanctified odor of serious art, and so
Sherman hesitated to be candid.
-- Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities"
%%
It's all very funny until someone loses an eye.
%%
It's better to be pissed off than pissed on.
%%
It's better to get mugged than to live a life of fear.
-- Freeman Dyson
%%
It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud.
-- J. C. R. Licklider
%%
It's great to be smart 'cause then you know stuff.
%%
It's not often that you get so much class entertainment outside your bedroom
window or outside your bedroom, period.
-- Groucho Marx
%%
It's not the critic that counts.  Not the man who points out 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 often
comes up short again and again.  Who knows the great enthusiasms and spends
himself in a worthy cause.  And who, if at best in the end, knows the triumph
of higher treatment and high achievement.  And who, at worst, if he fails, at
least fails while daring greatly so that his soul shall never be with those
cold and timid ones who know neither victory nor defeat.

-- Leo Buscaglia (I believe quoting John F. Kennedy)
%%
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop
(seen on a wall in Down by law)
%%
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine...
-- R.E.M, from the song of the same name.
%%
It's time to boot, do your boot ROMs know where your disk controllers are?
%%
Its not the size of the ship, its the size of the waves.
-- Little Richard
%%
JESUS SAVES, but Clones 'R' Us makes backups!
-- William Lewis ([e-mail])
%%
Jed: Do you know what's underneath every altar at a Catholic church?
Voice from the crowd:  Led Zeppelin records!
-- quote attributed to Brother Jed, from alt.brother-jed
%%
Jesus saves.  Moses invests.
%%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
- Southern California Oracle
%%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
Karl's version of Parkinson's Law:  Work expands to exceed the time allotted it.
%%
Kenneth, what's the frequency?
%%
Ketterling's Law:
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
%%
Kill Ugly Processor Architectures
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Kill Ugly Radio
-- Frank Zappa
%%
Kill files are an expression of resentment by the unmemorable or
untalented against the memorable and talented.  Your appearance in kill
files merely marks the fact that you have more than once tried to make
people think, when they really would rather not.  It is an honor.
-- Tim Maroney, who is in at least a few...
%%
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
-- Joey Ramone
%%
Laugh, and the world ignores you.  Crying doesn't help either.
%%
Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences:
 If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set.
%%
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 to the
    weight of its output.
(7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the
    programmer who must maintain it.
(8) Make it possible for programmers to write programs in
    English, and you will find that programmers cannot write
    in English.
-- SIGPLAN Notices, Vol 2 No 2
%%
Lead me not into temptation... I can find it myself.
%%
Let me play with it first and I'll tell you what it is later.
-- Miles Davis
%%
Let me state that programming is not the science of coding but the art of
finding solutions of non-formalized problems and expressing these solutions in
explicit and clear way.
-- Vadim Antonov ([e-mail])
%%
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.  Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.  And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we countenance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
%%
Life is a game.  Money is how we keep score.
-- Ted Turner
%%
Life is a process, not a principle, a mystery to be lived, not a problem to
be solved.
-- Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank Herbert??)
%%
Life is full of concepts that are poorly defined.  In fact, there are very few
concepts that aren't.  It's hard to think of any in non-technical fields.
-- Daniel Kimberg
%%
Life is not one thing after another.... it's the same damn thing over and over!
%%
Life is wasted on the living.
-- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
%%
Life's the same, except for the shoes.
-- The Cars
%%
Life.  Don't talk to me about life.
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android
%%
Like all women, she believed that rest and pleasure were bad for men.
-- Fritz Leiber, _Swords and Ice Magic_
%%
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
%%
Live Free or Live in Massachusetts.
%%
Live and learn... Die and forget it all.
%%
Live free or die.
%%
Long life is in store for you.
%%
Look at it this way: MSDOS is an overgrown program loader; the MacOS
is an overgrown user interface.  Neither is an operating system, but
the second is better for running applications.
-- Paul Placeway
%%
Lord FINCHLEY tried to mend the Electric Light
        Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
        It is the business of the wealthy man
        To give employment to the artisan.
-- H. Belloc
%%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%%
Love is a matter of chemistry, but Sex is a matter of physics.
%%
Love is in the offing.  Be affectionate to one who adores you.
%%
MS-DOS must die!
%%
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
-- Alan Turing
%%
Make money, not war.
-- slogan popular in libertarian circles in the early 70s
%%
Malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to Man.
%%
Many alligators will be slain,
but the swamp will remain.
%%
Many are called, few are chosen.  Fewer still get to do the choosing.
%%
Many are called, few volunteer.
%%
Marriage Ceremony:  An incredible metaphysical sham of watching God and the
law being dragged into the affairs of your family.
-- O. C. Ogilvie
%%
Marriage is a three ring circus:  The engagement ring, the wedding ring, and
the suffering.
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire
%%
Marriage is the sole cause of divorce.
%%
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.  Second marriage is
the triumph of hope over experience.
%%
Mature software:  code old enough that for every bug fixed, one or more new
bugs are created.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Mausoleum:  The final and funniest folly of the rich.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the
wrong direction.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Meekness:  Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Memories of you remind me of you.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by
or rather, things that are!
-- Plutarch
%%
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
and tears.  ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires
us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us sleeplessness,
inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness and acts that are
contrary to habit...
-- Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 377 B.C.), The Sacred Disease
%%
Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of
Casablanca.
%%
Mike's Law:
For a lumber company employing two men and a cut-off saw, the
marginal product of labor for any number of additional workers
equals zero until the acquisition of another cut-off saw.
Let's not even consider a chainsaw.
- Mike Dennison
[You could always schedule the saw, though - ed.]
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx
%%
Mind your own business, Mr. Spock.  I'm sick of your halfbreed interference.
%%
Miniscribe's troubles are daunting.  The company has floundered in its attempt
to settle 13 shareholder lawsuits, filed after a panel found that previous
managers circumvented financial controls and resorted to shipping bricks and
unfinished drives to shore up sagging revenue figures.
-- "Miniscribe Prognosis Is Hopeful," E. E. Times, Jan 15, 1990, pg 67
%%
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
-- Jean Cocteau
%%
Modern biology has been built upon two great ideas.  The first, a product of
the nineteenth century, is that all life descended from elementary, single-
celled organisms by means of natural selection.  The second, perfected
in the twentieth century, is that organisms are entirely obedient to the laws
of physics and chemistry.  No extraneous "vital force" runs the living cell.
-- Edward O. Wilson, "Biophilia"
%%
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
%%
Money talks...but all mine keeps saying is "goodbye"
%%
Moreover, freedom of the press includes "the right of the lonely
pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph as much as of the
large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition
methods."  Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 704 (1972).
-- Supreme Court decision quoted by Mike Godwin in comp.org.eff.talk
%%
Most non-Catholics know that the Catholic schools are rendering a greater
service to our nation than the public schools in which subversive textbooks
have been used, in which Communist-minded teachers have taught, and from
whose classrooms Christ and even God Himself are barred.
-- from "Our Sunday Visitor", an American-Catholic newspaper, 1949
%%
Most people exhibit what political scientists call "the conservatism of the
peasantry."  Don't lose what you've got.  Don't change.  Don't take a chance,
because you might end up starving to death.  Play it safe.  Buy just as much
as you need.  Don't waste time.

When  we think about risk, human beings and corporations realize in their
heads that risks are necessary to grow, to survive.  But when it comes down
to keeping good people when the crunch comes, or investing money in
something untried, only the brave reach deep into their pockets and play
the game as it must be played.

-- David Lammers, "Yakitori", Electronic Engineering Times, January 18, 1988
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
    The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
    the population is growing.
%%
Mr. DePree also expects a "tremendous social change" in all workplaces.  "When
I first started working 40 years ago, a factory supervisor was focused on the
product.  Today it is drastically different, because of the social milieu.
It isn't unusual for a worker to arrive on his shift and have some family
problem that he doesn't know how to resolve.  The example I like to use is a
guy who comes in and says 'this isn't going to be a good day for me, my son
is in jail on a drunk-driving charge and I don't know how to raise bail.'
What that means is that if the supervisor wants productivity, he has to know
how to raise bail."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
Mr. DePree believes participative capitalism is the wave of the future.  The
U.S. work force, he believes, "more and more demands to be included in the
capitalist system and if we don't find ways to get the capitalist system
to be an inclusive system rather than the exclusive system it has been, we're
all in deep trouble.  If we don't find ways to begin to understand that
capitalism's highest potential lies in the common good, not in the individual
good, then we're risking the system itself."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
%%
My aura can beat up your aura.
%%
My boss just told the quote-of-the-day(TM) after talking to our
friendly IBM salesguy who said:

     "You've got be careful about getting locked into open systems."

Heh!  Why don't I trust these people? :-)
--  Ian Dickinson ([e-mail])
%%
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
%%
My computer can beat up your computer.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
My father had the spirit and integrity of a scientist, but he was a salesman.
I remember asking him the question "How can a man of integrity be a salesman?"

He said to me, "Frankly, many salesmen in the business are not
straightforward -- they think it's a better way to sell.  But I've tried being
straightforward, and I find it has its advantages.  In fact, I wouldn't do it
any other way.  If the customer thinks at all, he'll realize he has had some
bad experience with another salesman, but hasn't had that kind of experience
with you.  So in the end, several customers will stay with you for a long time
and appreciate it."
-- Richard P. Feynman, _What Do You Care What Other People Think?_
%%
My mother is a fish.
-- William Faulkner
%%
My other computer is also a Unix system.
%%
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
NOWPRINT. NOWPRINT. Clemclone, back to the shadows again.
-- The Firesign Theater
%%
Natural selection won't matter soon, not anywhere as much as conscious
selection.  We will civilize and alter ourselves to suit our ideas of what we
can be.  Within one more human lifespan, we will have changed ourselves
unrecognizably.
-- Greg Bear
%%
Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting.
-- Billy Rose
%%
New York is a jungle, they tell you.  You could go further, and say that
New York is a jungle.  New York *is a jungle.*  Beneath the columns of
the old rain forest, made of melting macadam, the mean Limpopo of swamped
Ninth Avenue bears an angry argosy of crocs and dragons, tiger fish, noise
machines, sweating rainmakers.  On the corners stand witchdoctors and
headhunters, babbling voodoo-men -- the natives, the jungle-smart natives.
And at night, under the equatorial overgrowth and heat-holding cloud
cover, you hear the ragged parrot-hoot and monkeysqueak of the sirens,
and then fires flower to ward off monsters.  Careful: the streets are
sprung with pits and nets and traps.  Hire a guide.  Pack your snakebite
gook and your blowdart serum.  Take it seriously.  You have to get a
bit jungle-wise.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
-- David Letterman
%%
Newton realized that, according to his theory of gravity, the stars should
attract each other, so it seemed they could not remain essentially motionless.
Would they not all fall together at some point?  In a letter in 1691 to
Richard Bentley, another leading thinker of his day, Newton argued that this
would indeed happen if there were only a finite number of stars distributed
over a finite region of space.  But he reasoned that if, on the other hand,
there were an infinite number of stars, distributed more or less uniformly
over infinite space, this would not happen, because there would not be
any central point for them to fall to.

This argument is an instance of the pitfalls that you can encounter in
talking about infinity...

-- Stephen Hawking, _A Brief History of Time_
%%
No good deed goes unpunished.
%%
No matter how much money you spend, you can't make a racehorse out of a
pig.  You can, however, make an awfully fast pig.
%%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%%
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived
at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capable of. ... And if he does
know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to
decide a single human fate.
-- C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
%%
No user-serviceable parts inside.  Refer to qualified service personnel.
%%
Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
%%
Noncombatant:  A dead Quaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
None love the bearer of bad news.
-- Sophocles
%%
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb
to you till your life has illustrated it.  -- John Keats
%%
Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.
-- John Keats
%%
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan.  We may as well think of
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.  -- Edmund Burke
%%
Nothing is done until nothing is done.
%%
Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult
than to understand him.
-- Fyodor Dostoevski
%%
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
-- Hassan I Sabbah
%%
Now I lay me down to sheep
I pray the Lord the sheep's asleep
If, perchance, the sheep should wake
Simple friendship shall I fake.
-- Frances Grimble
%%
Now I lay me down to sleep
I hear the sirens in the street
All my dreams are made of chrome
I have no way to get back home
-- Tom Waits
%%
Now I lay me down to sleep;
Leave a message at the beep.
If I die before I wake,
Remember to erase the tape.
%%
Now I was heading, in my hot cage, down towards meat-market country on the
tip of the West Village.  Here the redbrick warehouses double as carcass
galleries and rat hives, the Manhattan fauna seeking its necessary
level, living or dead.  Here too you find the heavy faggot hangouts,
The Spike, the Water Closet, the Mother Load.  Nobody knows what goes on
in these places.  Only the heavy faggots know.  Even Fielding seems somewhat
vague on the question.  You get zapped and flogged and dumped on -- by
almost anybody's standards, you have a really terrible time.  The average
patron arrives at the Spike in one taxi but needs to go back to his sock
in two.  And then the next night he shows up for more.  They shackle
themselves to racks, they bask in urinals.  Their folks have a lot of
explaining to do, if you want my opinion, particularly the mums.  Sorry
to single you ladies out like this but the story must start somewhere.
A craving for hourly murder -- it can't be willed.  In the meantime,
Fielding tells me, Mother Nature looks on and taps her foot and clicks
her tongue.  Always a champion of monogamy, she is cooking up some fancy
new diseases.  She just isn't going to stand for it.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
Now and then an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Now, if the leaders of the world -- people who are leaders by virtue of
political, military or financial power, and not necessarily wisdom or
consideration for mankind -- if these leaders manage not to pull us
over the brink into planetary suicide, despite their occasional pompous
suggestions that they may feel obliged to do so, we may survive beyond
1988.
-- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45
%%
OLTION'S COMPLETE, UNABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
Bang!      ...crumple.
-- Jery Oltion
%%
OS/2 must die!
%%
Objects in your terminal are close than they appear.
%%
Obviously, a man's judgment cannot be better than the information on which he
has based it.  Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has
the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted
and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda
and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and
make him something less than a man.
-- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
%%
Ocean:  A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man --
who has no gills.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Of course, you're probably going to say it does in your ``analysis'' of
public-key systems, because you'll do anything to make RSA look better
than it really is.  Have fun making a fool of yourself.
-- Dan Bernstein ([e-mail]), in sci.crypt
%%
Oh hell.  Six bells and all's well.  Another week in my little gray cell.
Another week in which to excel.  Oh hell, sir.
-- A West Point Cadet's answer to, "What's the Sunday night poop?"
%%
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!
-- Sir Walter Scott
%%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
%%
On our campus the UNIX system has proved to be not only an effective software
tool, but an agent of technical and social change within the University.
-- John Lions (U. of Toronto (?))
%%
On the contrary!  A recent study in which microprocessors were implanted in
rhesus monkey brains via satellite shows clearly that...
-- Manhattan Chess Club Regulars
%%
On the subject of C program indentation:
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented
 six feet downward and covered with dirt."
-- Blair P. Houghton
%%
On weightlifting: "Picking up something heavy and then putting it back
down?  That's not sport, that's indecision."
-- Paula Poundstone
%%
Once at a dinner party when he was a young man, Winston Churchill, who
at the time had a moustache, was seated next to an older woman.   She
said to him, "Young man, I care neither for your politics nor for
your moustache."

He reassured here, "You are as unlikely to come into contact with the
one as with the other."
%%
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict, Sir, that
you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".  Disraeli replied,
"That all depends, Sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your
mistress."
%%
One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner
alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
   "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_, is
 published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its authorship.
 Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot of the Century.
 Do you think that fair criticism?"
   "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not
occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it."
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
a rivalry of aim.
-- Henry Brook Adams
%%
One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
merit a wise man's reflection.
-- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
    commenting on psi research
%%
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand
hat was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  He was renowned for
being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the time, which
obviously worried him, hence the act.  He preferred people to be puzzled
rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
-- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
%%
One of the saddest lessons of history is this:  If we've been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We're no
longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured
us.  it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that
we've been so credulous.  (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the
new bamboozles rise.)
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
%%
One of your cookies is the Pledge of Allegiance by that
Socialist scamp, Francis Bellamy.
It should read, for those wishing to recite it:

I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to The Union for which it stands,
with liberty
and justice for all.

-- Jeff Daiell
%%
One time as manager, Casey Stengel was sitting next to Mickey Mantle.
He mentioned playing in  Yankee Stadium, and Mantle expressed
surprise.  Stengel asked, "You think I was *born* sixty years old?"
%%
Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic
functions of a computer.
-- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
%%
Our business is run on trust.  We trust you will pay in advance.
%%
Our educational systems may very well be on the threshold of a new and
even gloomier Dark Age of the 20th and 21st centuries, unless the anti-
intellectualism and confused thinking creationists produce is overcome."
-- Reverend James Skehan
%%
Our schizophrenic societies progress by knowledge but survive on inspiration
derived from the very beliefs which that knowledge erodes.  I suggest that the
paradox can be at least intellectually resolved, not all at once but eventually
and with consequences difficult to perfect, if we pay due attention to the
sociobiology of religion. Although the manifestations of the religious
experiences are resplendent and multidimensional and so complicated that the
finest of psychoanalyst and philosophers get lost in their labyrinth, I
believe that religious practices can be mapped onto the two dimensions of
genetic advantage and evolutionary change.
-- Edward O. Wilson, "On Human Nature"
%%
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it is too
dark to read.
%%
Over the past ten years, for the first time, intelligence had become socially
correct for girls.
-- Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities"
%%
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions:  to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the
remaining errors by providing for recovery from them.  An interesting footnote
to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be
the result of two program errors:  the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system.  -- A. L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating
Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal,
Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 382-400
%%
PROGRAMMER:  (n)  Red-eyed, mumbling mammal capable of conversing with
             inanimate objects.
%%
Paranoia doesn't mean the whole world really isn't out to get you.
%%
Parking fees that Universal Studios collected from picketers of _The Last
Temptation of Christ_: $4,500
-- Harper's Index Nov. 1988
%%
Parkinson's Law:  The vehemence with which an issue is debated
                  is inversely proportional to its importance.
-- Bill Kinnersley
%%
Parkinson's Law:  Work expands to fill the time allotted it.
%%
People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange
surroundings -- they can become accustomed to read Lisp and
Fortran programs, for example.
-- Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
%%
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his
ears.  I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
-- Steven Wright
%%
Percentage of Redbook readers who say they would rather have their
genitals permanently numbed than go deaf: 70
-- Harper's Index
%%
Perfection is achieved only on the point of collapse.
-- C. N. Parkinson
%%
Perhaps the best way to characterize the relationship between DNA and meaning
is to say that DNA is the source of meaning.  It takes information about the
environment and turns it into behaviour - thus realizing meaning in the
pragmatic sense of the word.  DNA is the place where the two sides of meaning
meet, the place where reports become instructions.  DNA is thus what first
gave meaning to life; or, perhaps, what first created meaning, and therefore
life, or what first created life, and therefore meaning.  In any event, it is
very impressive stuff.
-- Robert Wright, Three Scientists and Their Gods
%%
Personally, should I ever form a globe spanning conglomerate,
I intend to do it fairly and without malice or dirty politics.

I hope you fellows don't make that too difficult a task;
I would have to have to have you all killed.
-- David Neal ([e-mail])
%%
Philosophy:  A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Philosophy:  unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
%%
Physician:  One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the
splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope,
for it balks at pig.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Pipo was born with few complications, but then the doctor accidently
dropped the infant on her head provoking her drunken father to drag
the physician outside where he would beat him to death with a live ocelot.
%%
Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure Ill never find out the
truth.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Pohl's law:
     Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
%%
Police up your spare rounds and frags.  Don't leave nothin' for the dinks.
-- Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
%%
Politician:  An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
organized society is reared.  When he wriggles he mistakes the agitation of
his tail for the trembling of the edifice.  As compared with the statesman,
he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
Politics:  A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Pournelle must die!
%%
Poverty: An unhappy state that persists as long as anyone lacks anything he
 would like to have.
%%
Practice is the best of all instructors.
- Publilius
%%
Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore.
-- Russian Proverb
%%
Pray:  To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single
petitioner confessedly unworthy.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
- Niels Bohr
%%
Presidency:  The greased pig in the field game of American politics.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or
from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
of individual human brains.
- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
  Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
%%
Proboscis:  The rudimentary organ of an elephant which serves him in place
of the knife-and-fork that Evolution has as yet denied him.  For purposes
of humor it is popularly called a trunk.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Proclaim liberty throughout the land until all the inhabitants thereof.
-- Leviticus 25:10
%%
Professional wrestling:  ballet for the common man.
%%
Program:  Any assignment that cannot be completed with one telephone call.
-- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
%%
Purple hum
Assorted cars
Laser lights, you bring

All to prove
You're on the move
and vanishing
-- The Cars
%%
Q.  How many libertarians does it take to change a lightbulb?

A.  Three - one to do it and two to argue whether it's principled to change it.
-- Bill Ware (?)
%%
Q. How many libertarians does it take to change a light bulb?

A. None - the market will take care of it.
-- Bill Ware (?)
%%
Q. What do you call three lawyers up to their necks in quicksand?

A. Not enough quicksand.
%%
Q. What's all wrinkled and hangs out your underwear?

A. Your mother.
%%
Q:  How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A:  Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%%
Q:  What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer
    salesman?

A:  The car salesman can probably drive!

-- Joan McGalliard ([e-mail])
%%
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in?  ...
Q: How about an example?

A: Ok.  Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the
Oilers to the Kings.  Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough.  WRONG.  Many more people might be interested.  This is a
big trade!  Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well.  If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin.  If not, use news.misc.

The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics.  He is
a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars.  Next, his name is Polish sounding.  So post to
soc.culture.polish.  But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created.  With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well.  (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)

You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.
If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
only show the the article to the reader once!  Don't tolerate this.
-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%%
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%%
Q: I cant spell worth a dam.  I hope your going too tell me what to do?

A: Don't worry about how your articles look.  Remember it's the message
that counts, not the way it's presented.  Ignore the fact that sloppy
spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that
soiled clothing would when addressing an audience.

-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%%
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars.  What
should I do?

A: Post the correct answer at once!  We can't have people go on believing
that!  Very good of you to spot this.  You'll probably be the only one to
make the correction, so post as soon as you can.  No time to lose, so
certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the
correction.

And it's not good enough to send the message by mail.  Since you're the
only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform
the whole net right away!

-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%%
Q: They just announced on the radio that Dan Quayle was picked as the
Republican V.P. candidate.  Should I post?

A: Of course.  The net can reach people in as few as 3 to 5 days.  It's
the perfect way to inform people about such news events long after the
broadcast networks have covered them.  As you are probably the only person
to have heard the news on the radio, be sure to post as soon as you can.

-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
%%
Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi.
(What Jove may do, is not permitted to a cow.)
%%
Quoting court decisions is not a very useful activity when arguing with
someone who is engaging in their constitutionally protected right to
disagree with those decisions and attempting to change the environment
in which they are made.  You might believe that any legal decision by the
courts is ipso facto correct and moral, but that's not the way most folks
in this country operate.  Look at Roe v. Wade... I happen to agree with
the goals of that decision, but there are a hell of a lot of people who
don't, and they have managed to get it changed, to some extent.  Jeff is
in the same position, and can quite reasonably argue that these statistics
are irrelevant to his position.
-- Peter da Silva ([e-mail])
%%
READ UNHAPPY - MAKNAM
-- LISP 1.5
%%
Ranger is very!
%%
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.
-- Confucius
%%
Real wealth can only increase.
- R. Buckminster Fuller
%%
Refreshed by a brief blackout, I got to my feet and went next door.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, "This is not a bad way
to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for luggage."
%%
Remember thee
Ay, 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.
Hamlet, I : v : 95   William Shakespeare
%%
Remember, an int is not always 16 bits.  I'm not sure, but if the 80386 is one
step closer to Intel's slugfest with the CPU curve that is asymptotically
approaching a real machine, perhaps an int has been implemented as 32 bits by
some Unix vendors...?
-- Derek Terveer
%%
Remember, there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
-- Frank Zappa
%%
Remember:  Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
-- Dave Butler
%%
Repel them.  Repel them.  Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
-- Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team
%%
Resolved, that the 67th General Convention affirm the glorious ability of
God to create in any manner, whether men understand it or not, and in this
affirmation reject the limited insight and rigid dogmatism of the
"Creationist" movement...
-- from a 1982 resolution of the Episcopal Church
%%
Response From: [e-mail] (Michael Coleman)
To the question: is there a COBOL mode for GNU emacs:

Isn't it pitiful when the editor you are using is a better programming
environment than the *language* you are using??

BTW, there is a COBOL and a Fortran mode.
%%
Riches:  A gift from Heaven signifying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I
am well pleased."
-- John D. Rockefeller, (slander by Ambrose Bierce)
%%
SHOP OR DIE, people of Earth!
[offer void where prohibited]
-- Capitalists from outer space, from Justice League Int'l comics
%%
Saint:  A dead sinner revised and edited.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proven innocent.
- George Orwell
%%
Save the whales.  Collect the whole set.
%%
Scientific innovation sometimes sounds like poetry, and I would claim that it
is, at least in the earliest stages.  The ideal scientist can be said to think
like a poet, work like a clerk, and write like a journalist.
-- Edward O. Wilson, "Biophilia"
%%
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
%%
Seen on a button at an SF Convention:
Veteran of the Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force.  1990-1951.
%%
Seen on the wall in a New York subway station:
"There are no integers n > 2 and x, y, z > 0, such that
    x^n + y^n = z^n
 I have found a truly wonderful proof of this.
 Unfortunately, my train is coming.
%%
Semper Fi, dude.
%%
Sendmail can safely be made setuid to root.
-- Eric Allman, "Sendmail Install & Operation Guide"
%%
Seven years of college, down the drain.
-- John Blutarski
%%
Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you wont either.
-- Joseph Fischer
%%
Sex is like air.  It's only a big deal if you can't get any.
%%
Sex is like snow... You never know how many inches you're going to get or how
long it will last.
%%
Ship it.
%%
Shit Happens.
%%
Sigmund Freud is alleged to have said that in the last analysis the entire field
of psychology may reduce to biological electrochemistry.
%%
Since computers do the sending, however, it's possible to address
a single package to a mailing list of recipients with a shared
interest in the subject matter -- be it cold fusion or hot
pornography.
-- Joe Abernathy <(C) 1990 Houston Chronicle>
%%
Since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer...we
have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself, but
nature exposed to our method of questioning.
-- Werner Heisenberg
%%
Sing and Dance the New Deal Away
-- A button from Our People's Underworld
%%
Single tasking: Just Say No.
%%
Sir, the cow she walks. She talks. She's full of chalk.  The lactose secretions
of the female of the bovine species are highly desirable to the n'th degree.
-- A West Point Cadet's answer to, "How's the Cow?", which roughly translates
     to, "How many servings of milk are left upon the table?".  (The "n'th"
     indicates the number of servings).
%%
Small is beautiful.
%%
So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and
our doubts serve to reassure us.
-- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
%%
So where the sheer incompetence of politicians and generals used to
start wars, the sheer incompetence of us computer people has now put an
end to it.  No mean feat.  For centuries humanity has been looking for
the Weapon That Would End War Forever.  We have found it.  War has
ended, not with the bang of a bomb, but with the gentle whisper of
crashing software.
-- Gerard Stafleu ([e-mail])
%%
Software Engineering: How to program if you cannot.
-- Dijkstra
%%
Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human
construct because no two parts are alike.  If they are, we make the two
similar parts into a subroutine -- open or closed.  In this respect, software
systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where
repeated elements abound.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
Some people hope to achieve immortality through their works or their children.
I would prefer to achieve it by not dying.
-- Woody Allen
%%
Someone is unenthusiastic about your work.
%%
Sometime, you've gotta break the rules.
%%
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
-- Sigmund Freud
%%
Sometimes you get the elevator and sometimes you get the shaft.
%%
Sometimes, too long is too long.
-- Joe Crowe
%%
Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal
power should not become too important in any church.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
%%
Statistics: A system for expressing your political prejudices in convincing
 scientific guise.
%%
Status quo:  The mess we're in.
-- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
%%
Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old.
-- Pink Floyd
%%
Strange, because they are so frankly and hysterically insane -- like all dreams:
a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad
ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single
happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short;
who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children
to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children
with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and
invented hell -- mouths mercy and invented hell -- mouths Golden Rules, and
forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who frowns
upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then
tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of
honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with
altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!
-- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
%%
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:  Ninety percent of everything is crud.
%%
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
-- Seneca
%%
Support Mental Health.  Or I'll kill you.
%%
Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same
rate as computers and over the same period:  how much cheaper and more efficient
would the current models be?  If you have not already heard the analogy, the
answer is shattering.  Today you would be able to buy a Rolls-Royce for $2.75,
it would do three million miles to the gallon, and it would deliver enough
power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II.  And if you were interested in
miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a pinhead.
-- Christopher Evans
%%
Suppose that there is something which a person cannot understand.  He happens
to notice the similarity of this something to some other thing which he
understands quite well.  By comparing them he may come to understand the
thing which he could not understand up to that moment.  If his understanding
turns out to be appropriate and nobody else has ever come to such an
understanding, he can claim that his thinking was really creative.
-- Hideki Yukawa
%%
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest
men in national government too.
-- Richard M. Nixon
%%
Surely every human being ought to attain to the dignity of the unit.  Surely
it is worth while to be one, and to feel that the census of the universe
would be incomplete without counting you.  Surely there is grandeur in knowing
that in the realm of thought you are without a chain; that you have the right
to explore all heights and all depths; that there are no walls or fences, or
prohibited places, or sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought; that
your intellect owes no allegiance to any being, human or divine; that you
hold all in fee, and upon no condition, and by no tenure, whatsoever; that
in the world of mind you are relieved from all personal dictation, and from
the ignorant tyranny of majorities.  Surely it is worth something to feel that
there are no priests, no popes, no parties, no governments, no kings, no gods,
to whom your intellect can be compelled to pay a reluctant homage.  Surely it
is a joy to know that all the cruel ingenuity of bigotry can devise no prison,
no dungeon, no cell in which for one instant to confine a thought; that ideas
cannot be dislocated by racks, nor crushed in iron boots, nor burned with
fire.  Surely it is sublime to think that the brain is a castle, and that
within its curious bastions and winding halls the soul, in spite of all worlds
and all beings, is the supreme sovereign of itself.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll, "The Free Soul"
%%
THE THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS
1 - A robot may not injure a human being, or,
through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2 - A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings
except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3 - A robot must protect its own existence as long as
such protection does not conflict with the First or
Second Law.
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
%%
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
-- Ken Kesey
%%
Taunting someone for using Andrew is like laughing at a
slave because he has lash marks on his back: in bad taste.
-- Robert Firth
%%
Tell a man that there are 300 billion stars in the universe, and he'll believe
you.... Tell him that a bench has wet paint upon it and he'll have to touch it
to be sure.
%%
Thank God a million billion times you live in Texas.
%%
That is the key to history.  Terrific energy is expended -- civilizations are
built up -- excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong.
Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top, and then
it all slides back into misery and ruin.  In fact, the machine conks.  It seems
to start up all right and runs a few yards, and then it breaks down.
-- C. S. Lewis
%%
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers.  What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
-- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
%%
The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion.  I could
never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
The Bible is true this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
-- Jordan Henderson ([e-mail])
%%
The CS Sage says:  Seek new employment prior to the imposition of performance
penalties on your project.
%%
The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose.
-- W. Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
%%
The F-15 Eagle:
    If it's up, we'll shoot it down.  If it's down, we'll blow it up.
-- A McDonnel-Douglas ad from a few years ago
%%
The Law of Software Envelopment

Every program at MIT attempts to expand until it can read mail.
Those programs which cannot expand are replaced by ones which can.
%%
The Messiah will come.  There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all
the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.
-- Rabbi Meir Kahane
%%
The Mets drafted a catcher as their first-ever pick.  Asked why,
Casey Stengel replied, "Well, without a catcher, we'd have a lot
of passed balls, don'tcha think?"
%%
The Middle East is certainly the nexus of turmoil for a long time to come --
with shifting players, but the same game: upheaval.  I think we will be
confronting militant Islam -- particularly fallout from the Iranian
revolution -- and religion will once more, as it has in our own more
distant past -- play a role at least as standard-bearer in death and mayhem.
-- Bobby R. Inman, Admiral, USN, Retired, former director of Naval Intelligence,
    vice director of the DIA, former director of the NSA, deputy director of
    Central Intelligence, former chairman and CEO of MCC.
%%
The President of these overly-united States was shaking
hands with the NY Yankees one day -- apparently during
summer.  When he got to Babe Ruth, the Bambino opened
with, "Hot as Hell, ain't it, Prez?"
%%
The Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
%%
The Seventh Edition licensing procedures are, I suppose, still in effect,
though I doubt that tapes are available from AT&T.  At any rate, whatever
restrictions the license imposes still exist.  These restrictions were and
are reasonable for places that just want to run the system, but don't allow
many of the things that Minix was written for, like study of the source in
classes, or by individuals not in a university or company.

I've always thought that Minix was a fine idea, and competently done.

As for the size of v7, wc -l /usr/sys/*/*.[chs] is 19271.

-- Dennis Ritchie, 1989
%%
The Swartzberg Test:
 The validity of a science is its ability to predict.
%%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
%%
The author should gaze at Noah, and ... learn, as they did in the Ark, to crowd
a great deal of matter into a very small compass.
-- Sydney, Smith, Edinburgh Review
%%
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and
fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
drifting side by side to our common doom.
-- Clarence Darrow
%%
The best way to be an organ donor is to buy a motorcycle and ride it
without a helmet.  The severe brain damage that follows results in slow
death, and emergency services often arrive fast enough so that good,
healthy organs can be taken.  In fact, this is such a common method that
people working in organ transplants refer to motorcycles as
``donorcycles.''
-- Jon Webb
%%
The bug starts here.
%%
The bug stops here.
%%
The challenge of space exploration and particularly of landing men on the moon
represents the greatest challenge which has ever faced the human race.  Even
if there were no clear scientific or other arguments for proceeding with this
task, the whole history of our civilization would still impel men toward the
goal.  In fact, the assembly of the scientific and military with these human
arguments creates such an overwhelming case that in can be ignored only by
those who are blind to the teachings of history, or who wish to suspend the
development of civilization at its moment of greatest opportunity and drama.
-- Sir Bernard Lovell, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it possible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
preparation...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
%%
The clothes have no emperor.
-- C. A. Hoare, about Ada.
%%
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity
often abstract away its essence.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
The computer can't tell you the emotional story.  It can give you the exact
mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
-- Frank Zappa
%%
The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems
and solutions we can imagine is very close.  For this reason restricting
language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best
dangerous.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup in "The C++ Programming Language"
%%
The contest was to predict the next, even nastier pitch for AT&T LD.
 A winner:
 "So I go to pick up Bobby from the daycare center and he's not there.  I get
  home, the phone's ringing and it's them.  The guy says, 'Lady, we've got
  your kid.  Say something to mommy, Bob. (SCREAM).  Please note, Mrs.
  Sanderson, the fiber-optic clarity of your son's ...'"
-- From Advertising Age, January 7, 1991, p24
%%
The contest was to predict the next, even nastier pitch for AT&T LD.
 Third Prize:
 I hear this crash and I find a rock, wrapped in paper, next to my living room
 window.  I open up the note and it says, "You want it in writing?  You got it.
 Next time, take the call.  MCI.  We know where you live."
-- From Advertising Age, January 7, 1991, p24
%%
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being
as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of
the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.  But we may hope that the
dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with
this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine
doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
The decision doesn't have to be logical, it is unanimous.
%%
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.  Nowhere
in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths,
Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in
Christianity.
-- John Adams
%%
The emperor has no clothes.
%%
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
-- Buckminster Fuller
%%
The essential ideas of Algol 68 were that the whole language should be
precisely defined and that all the pieces should fit together smoothly.
The basic idea behind Pascal was that it didn't matter how vague the
language specification was (it took *years* to clarify) or how many rough
edges there were, as long as the CDC Pascal compiler was fast.
-- Richard A. O'Keefe
%%
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective
support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has
its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way.
Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality,
and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is
recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation,
and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing
beyond the grave.  Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and
they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to
flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
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
%%
The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
%%
The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order
of space and time.  -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%%
The fault lies not with our technologies but with our systems.
-- Roger Levian
%%
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time.  The last 10% of a project
takes 90% of the time.
%%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
-- Abbie Hoffman
%%
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
-- Paul Erlich
%%
The first sign of maturity is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to
the left.
%%
The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization.
-- Alan Coult
%%
The following appeared in my MCI bill this month:

MCI> President Bush is proclaiming July 22 as Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
MCI> Family Appreciation Day, in honor of the 100th birthday of one of
MCI> America's most beloved and respected citizens.  Throughout her life,
MCI> family has been of utmost importance to Mrs. Kennedy.  Family
MCI> Appreciation Day calls upon Americans to rededicate themselves to family
MCI> values and relationships...
[ they then go on to encourage people to use the telephone a lot. ]

This Sunday, I encourage the following activities:

o Fornicate
o Get a divorce
o Shoot suction-cup darts at photos of JFK
o Fornicate
o Call up your long-distance operator and emit an ear-piercing shriek
o Tell your parents how they've screwed you up for life
o Assist a gay couple in adopting or conceiving
o Use the word "Chappaquiddick" (sic?) in a sentence
o Buy your pre-adolescent children a copy of Blue Boy
o Fornicate
o Spit on a rich person
o Fornicate

Thank you.

-- Erb (cooper@cs), Church of the Four-day Workweek
%%
The formalized CS education we have in Soviet Union yields really awful results
- for example the quantity of grads capable to write real programs is about
2-3% after the CS Dept. of Moscow U (not the worst one, be sure) - and those
students who CAN program all are self-educated hackers and as a rule they had
terrible conflicts with educational authorities. Some of the most talented
programmers here are still students in their 30s. Thus the practice is against
Dijkstra.
-- Vadim Antonov ([e-mail])
%%
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects
into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to
levitation.

Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the
character does not have fire resistance.

-- README file from the NetHack game
%%
The fourth law of thermodynamics:
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum.
%%
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
The game of life is a game of boomerangs.  Our thoughts, deeds and words
return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.
%%
The hell with the prime directive, let's kill something.
%%
The history of the rise of Christianity has everything to do with politics,
culture, and human frailties and nothing to do with supernatural manipulation
of events.  Had divine intervention been the guiding force, surely two
millennia after the birth of Jesus he would not have a world where there
are more Muslims than Catholics, more Hindus than Protestants, and more
nontheists than Catholics and Protestants combined.
-- John K. Naland, "The First Easter", Free Inquiry magazine, Vol. 8, No. 2
%%
The hotel [in Kiev] checked us in very quickly.  Unlike the one in Moscow,
the door guard smiled, did not check our passes and did not wear a gun.
The hotel serves excellent country food for lunch, including dumpling
soup, pork and homemade ice cream.  The waitress is friendly.  Going from
Moscow to Kiev is like going from New York to Texas.
-- T. J. Rodgers, "High tech in the Ukraine", E. E. Times, 8/13/90, p. 16
%%
The hypothesis:
Amid a wash of paper, a small number of documents become the critical pivots
around which every project's management revolves.  These are the manager's
chief personal tools.
-- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
The idea of man leaving this earth and flying to another celestial body and
landing there and stepping out and walking over that body has a fascination
and a driving force that can get the country to a level of energy, ambition,
and will that I do not see in any other undertaking.  I think if we are
honest with ourselves, we must admit that we needed that impetus extremely
strongly.  I sincerely believe that the space program, with its manned
landing on the moon, if wisely executed, will become the spearhead for a
broad front of courageous and energetic activities in all the fields of
endeavour of the human mind - activities which could not be carried out
except in a mental climate of ambition and confidence which such a spearhead
can give.
-- Dr. Martin Schwarzschild, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
The inability to benefit from feedback appears to be the primary cause of
pseudoscience.  Pseudoscientists retain their beliefs and ignore or distort
contradictory evidence rather than modify or reject a flawed theory.  Because
of their strong biases, they seem to lack the self-correcting mechanisms
scientists must employ in their work.
-- Thomas L. Creed, "The Skeptical Inquirer," Summer 1987
%%
The language provides a programmer with a set of conceptual tools; if these are
inadequate for the task, they will simply be ignored.  For example, seriously
restricting the concept of a pointer simply forces the programmer to use a
vector plus integer arithmetic to implement structures, pointer, etc.  Good
design and the absence of errors cannot be guaranteed by mere language
features.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup, "The C++ Programming Language"
%%
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal
%%
The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it
should have done.  Calculate that one rebellion in 13 states in the course
of 11 years, is but one for each state in a century and a half.  No country
should be so long without one.
-- Thomas Jefferson in letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787
%%
The life of a repo man is always intense.
%%
The magician is seated in his high chair and looks upon the world with favor.
He is at the height of his powers.  If he closes his eyes, he causes the world
to disappear.  If he opens his eyes, he causes the world to come back.  If
there is harmony within him, the world is harmonious.  If rage shatters his
inner harmony, the unity of the world is shattered.  If desire arises within
him, he utters the magic syllables that causes the desired object to appear.
His wishes, his thoughts, his gestures, his noises command the universe.
-- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 107
%%
The main thing is the play itself.  I swear that greed for money has nothing
to do with it, although heaven knows I am sorely in need of money.
-- Feodor Dostoyevsky
%%
The makers of fortunes have a second love of money as a creation of their
own, resembling the affection of authors for their poems, or of parents for
their children ... and hence they are very bad company, for they talk of
nothing but the praises of wealth.
-- Plato
%%
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
%%
The meek are contesting the will.
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not its mineral rights.
-- J. Paul Getty
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth.  The rest of us will go to the stars.
%%
The meek will inherit the Earth..... The rest of us will go to the stars.
%%
The meek will inherit the earth ... in pine boxes six feet long by ...
%%
The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out.
-- Tennessee Williams
%%
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer
becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
regularity for causes of a different nature.  For him neither the rule of
human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural
events.  To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural
events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this
doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge
has not yet been able to set foot.

But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives
of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.  For a doctrine which
is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will
of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress.  In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion
must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is,
give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast
powers in the hands of priests.  In their labors they will have to avail
themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself.  This is, to be sure, a more
difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to
correlate all its contents.
-- H. P. Lovecraft
%%
The notion of ideas as infectious diseases is one to which most
authoritarian religions and governments subscribe, and they hold
massive "hygienic" burnings of the "viral DNA" behind the ideas.
Promulgators of these "diseased" ideas are called "carriers of
spiritual impurity" (to use one phrase now popular in China) and
attempts are made to prevent the spread of these diseases.  This is a
naive and dangerous view of how ideas work and it is disturbing to see
it rationalized into Western pop psychology.
-- Tim Maroney ([e-mail])
%%
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts.  If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
-- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%%
The only flaw in the Hinckley trial is that it left a lot of people with the
impression that psychiatrists are just a bunch of bearded voodoo doctors who
espouse confusing and wildly contradictory theories that have nothing to do
with common sense.  This is totally unfair.  Many psychiatrists are clean-
shaven.
-- Dave Barry, Psychiatrist For Rent, _Bad Habits_
%%
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
%%
The only way to have real success in science, the field I'm familiar with, is
to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it
should be.  If you have a theory, you must try to explain what's good and what's
bad about it equally.  In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and
honesty.

In other fields, such as business, it's different.  For example, almost every
advertisement you see is obviously designed, in some way or another, to fool
the customer: the print that they don't want you to read is small; the
statements are written in an obscure way.  It is obvious to anybody that the
product is not being presented in a scientific and balanced way.  Therefore,
in the selling business, there's a lack of integrity.
-- Richard P. Feynman, _What Do You Care What Other People Think?_
%%
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
-- Brian Kernighan
%%
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a
profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr
%%
The place where I come from is a small town.
They think so small, they use small words.
But not me, I'm smarter than that.
I worked it out.
I've been stretching my mouth to let those big words come right out...
-- Peter Gabriel, "Big Time"
%%
The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of
the Force.
-- Darth Vader
%%
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side.
-- James Baldwin
%%
The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-
stuff.  He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the
imagination.  Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and
rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures.
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -
but that's the way to bet.
-- Damon Runyon
%%
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemporary
psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful...After
more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist one example of an ESP
phenomenon that is replicable under controlled conditions.  This simple but
basic scientific criterion has not been met despite dozens of studies conducted
over many decades...It is for this reason alone that the topic is now of little
interest to psychology...In short, there is no demonstrated phenomenon that
needs explanation.
-- Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology", pp. 160-161
%%
The reported resort to astrology in the White House has occasioned much
merriment.  It is not funny.  Astrological gibberish, which means astrology
generally, has no place in a newspaper, let alone government.  Unlike comics,
which are part of a newspaper's harmless pleasure and make no truth claims,
astrology is a fraud.  The idea that it gets a hearing in government is
dismaying.
-- George Will, Washing Post Writers Group
%%
The rule on staying alive as a program manager is to give 'em a number or
give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
%%
The scientists most esteemed by their colleagues are those who are both very
original and committed to the abstract ideal of truth in the midst of
clamoring demands of ego and ideology.  They pass the acid test of promoting
new knowledge even at the expense of losing credit for it.
-- Edward O. Wilson, "Biophilia"
%%
The sky above the port was the color of television,
tuned to a dead channel.
-- William Gibson, "Neuromancer"
%%
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor.  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can
see only a very few things at once.
-- Fred Brooks, Jr.
%%
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
-- Ed Bluestone
%%
The source codes and formal descriptions [for DES] were publically available
in USSR long before that posting. I've first seen it being a student and
hacking some Unix sources about 1982. Isn't it stupid to continue insisting on
export restrictions of the well-known technology?
-- Vadim Antonov ([e-mail])
%%
The spectacle of astrology in the White House -- the governing center of
the world's greatest scientific and military power -- is so appalling that
it defies understanding and provides grounds for great fright.  The easiest
response is to laugh it off, and to indulge in wisecracks about Civil
Service ratings for horoscope makers and palm readers and whether Reagan
asked Mikhail Gorbachev for his sign.  A contagious good cheer is the
hallmark of this presidency, even when the most dismal matters are concerned.
But this time, it isn't funny.  It's plain scary.
-- Daniel S. Greenberg, Editor, _Science and Government Report_, writing in
   "Newsday", May 5, 1988
%%
The sprung doors parted and I staggered out into the lobby's teak and flicker.
Uniformed men stood by impassively like sentries in their trench.  I slapped
my key on the desk and nodded gravely.  I was loaded enough to be unable to
tell whether they could tell I was loaded.  Would they mind?  I was certainly
too loaded to care.  I moved to the door with boxy, schlep-shouldered strides.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
%%
The tar pit of software engineering will continue to be sticky for a long time
to come.  One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just
within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most
intricate and complex of man's handiworks.  The management of this complex
craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best
adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common
sense, and ... humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations.
-- Frederick Brooks, Jr., The Mythical Man Month
%%
The telephone blasted Peter Fallow awake inside an egg with the shell peeled
away and only the membranous sac holding it intact.  Ah! The membranous sac
was his head, and the right side of his head was on the pillow, and the yolk
was as heavy as mercury, and it rolled like mercury, and it was pressing down
on his right temple and his right eye and his right ear.  If he tried to get
up to answer the telephone, the yolk, the mercury, the poisoned mass, would
shift and roll and rupture the sac, and his brains would fall out.
-- Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities"
%%
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed.  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 7*7 (49) times as much
as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all.  The light we
receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that ... 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 50 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 ... [However] 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, 444.6C.  We
have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
-- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
%%
The time is right to make new friends.
%%
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking.  Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable.  Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man.  It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions.  It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
light table for cutting and pasting documents.
%%
The unique operations of the (human) brain are the result of natural selection
operating through the filter of culture.  They have suspended us between the
two antipodal ideals of nature and machine, forest and city, the natural and
the artifactual, relentlessly seeking, in the words of geographer Yi-Fu Tuan,
an equilibrium not of this world.
-- Edward O. Wilson, "Biophilia"
%%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%%
The universe is their oyster, and they like it raw.
-- M. Howarth, referring to Those Annoying Post Brothers.
%%
The unnatural, that too is natural.
-- Goethe
%%
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high
aims are worth-while.  Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of
objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal
gratifications.  All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of
a good job well done.  There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment,
the Peace brought by something worth-while.
-- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
%%
The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.
-- Wavy Gravy
%%
The world is coming to an end--save your buffers!
%%
The world is no nursery.
-- Sigmund Freud
%%
The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.
-- Father Robert F. Capon
%%
Theorem: Every horse has an infinite number of legs

 Horses have an even number of legs.  Behind they have two legs,
 and in front they have fore legs.  This makes six legs, which is
 certainly an odd number of legs for a horse.  The only number
 that is both odd and even is infinity.  Therefore, horses have an
 infinite number of legs.
-- From "On the Nature of Mathematical Proofs", Joel Cohen
%%
There are bugs and then there are bugs.  And then there are bugs.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
There are no bugs, only unrecognized features.
%%
There are no saints, only unrecognized villains.
%%
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it  2) The rest of us
%%
There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
-- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
%%
There are two ways to improve on human factors in computing:
    Make the programmers less stupid and/or make the users less stupid.
    Both are necessary, neither are likely.

-- Digital Teddy Bear ([e-mail])
%%
There are very few problems which can't be solved by ripping a hole in reality.
%%
There is a difference between "celibate" and simply "not getting any".
It's like the difference between "fast" and "starve".

After all of Esther's posts, I still can't figure out exactly which
category she fits into.  Let's see if I can make this plain.  Esther:

  If Mel Gibson offered you a doughnut, would you eat it?

-- Ajay Jain
%%
There is a time in the tides of men,
Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
On the other hand, don't count on it.
-- T. K. Lawson
%%
There is no remedy for sex but more sex.
%%
There is no such thing as pure pleasure; some anxiety always goes with it.
%%
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
-- Swift
%%
There is something you must understand about the Soviet system.  They have the
ability to concentrate all their efforts on a given design, and develop all
components simultaneously, but sometimes without proper testing.  Then they end
up with a technological disaster like the Tu-144.  In a technology race at
the time, that aircraft was two months ahead of the Concorde.  Four Tu-144s
were built; two have crashed, and two are in museums.  The Concorde has been
flying safely for over 10 years.
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
%%
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
%%
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which, in
one way or another, almost every member of the team passed.  The term that
the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the practice --
was `signing up.'  By signing up for the project you agreed to do whatever
was necessary for success.  You agreed to forsake, if necessary, family,
hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left (and you might not, if
you had signed up too many times before).
-- Tracy Kidder, _The Soul of a New Machine_
%%
There will always be survivors.
-- Robert Heinlen
%%
There you go man,
Keep as cool as you can.
It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave.
Keep on being free!
%%
There's a bug somewhere in your code.
%%
These screamingly hilarious gogs ensure owners of     X Ray Gogs to be the life
of any party.
-- X-Ray Gogs Instructions
%%
They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
They are all fickle but one, sir.
-- A West Point Cadet's answer to, "How are they all?"
     (Suggestions as to what this could have meant are appreciated).
%%
They don't make nostalgia like they used to.
%%
Things are always at their best in the beginning.
-- Pascal
%%
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
%%
Things are not as simple as they seems at first.
-- Edward Thorp
%%
Think it's time I'm leavin' / Nothin' here to make me stay.
-- Led Zeppelin
%%
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms
industry is now in the American experience... We must not fail to
comprehend its grave implications... We must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence...by the military-industrial
complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, from his farewell address in 1961
%%
This is a serious lapse of taste and judgment but does not imply that they
are stupid, lazy, or incompetent.  Indeed, their intelligence, diligence,
and competence in service to the x86 are all too depressingly obvious.
-- Henry Spencer ([e-mail])
%%
This is now.  Later is later.
%%
This is, of course, totally uninformed speculation that I engage in to help
support my bias against such meddling... but there you have it.
-- Peter da Silva, speculating about why a computer program that had been
    changed to do something he didn't approve of, didn't work
%%
This passage was written by a London reporter on the eve of the England-West
Germany Soccer World Cup final of 1966...

"If, on the morrow, the Germans defeat us at our national sport, be not
dismayed.  For twice in this century, we've defeated them at theirs."

-- From the San Jose Mercury News, 7 July 1990
%%
This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered
french toast in the renaissance.
-- Steven Wright, comedian
%%
This ring, no other was made by the Elves
Who'd pawn their own mothers to grab it themselves.
Ruler of creeper, mortal and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop!

The power Almighty rests in this lone ring,
The power, allrighty, to do-your-own-thing!
If busted or broken it cannot be remade,
If found, send to Sorehed, the postage is pre-paid!

-- Inscription inside the Fell Ring, as read by Goodgulf Grayteeth.
     National Lampoon's _Bored of The Rings_
%%
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have
a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
no wires, no controls.
-- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
%%
Thoreau's Law:
 If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good,
 you should run for your life.
%%
Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever
church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused
of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with
religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers' money.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their
hearts, without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt,
without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only
in the God idea, not God Himself.
-- Miguel de Unamuno, Spanish philosopher and writer
%%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer, University of Toronto Unix hack
%%
Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night,
I can see paradise by the dashboard light.
-- Meatloaf
%%
Thufir's a Harkonnen now.
%%
Till then we shall be content to admit openly, what you (religionists)
whisper under your breath or hide in technical jargon, that the ancient
secret is a secret still; that man knows nothing of the Infinite and
Absolute; and that, knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about
his ignorance.  And, meanwhile, we will endeavour to be as charitable as
possible, and whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our
skepticism, we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon
by your own bluster.
-- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
%%
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
%%
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
-- Frequently attributed to Groucho Marx
%%
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
-- Graffiti
%%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.
%%
Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
To be awake is to be alive.
-- Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden"
%%
To be is to program.
-- Calvin Keegan
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the
target.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
To be, or what?
-- Sylvester Stallone
%%
To date, the firm conclusions of Project Blue Book are:
   1. no unidentified flying object reported, investigated and evaluated
      by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our
      national security;
   2. there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air
      Force that sightings categorized as UNIDENTIFIED represent
      technological developments or principles beyond the range of
      present-day scientific knowledge; and
   3. there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized
      as UNIDENTIFIED are extraterrestrial vehicles.
-- the summary of Project Blue Book, an Air Force study of UFOs from 1950
     to 1965, as quoted by James Randi in Flim-Flam!
%%
To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
-- C. K. Chesterton
%%
To err is human, to moo bovine.
%%
To err is human, to really foul up requires the root password.
%%
To follow foolish precedents, and wink
With both our eyes, is easier than to think.
-- William Cowper
%%
To know the world one must construct it.
-- Cesare Pavese
%%
To program anything that is programmable is obsession.
%%
To program is to be.
%%
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide a
test load.
%%
To think is human, to compute, divine.
%%
To update Voltaire, "I may kill all msgs from you, but I'll fight for
your right to post it, and I'll let it reside on my disks".
-- Doug Thompson ([e-mail])
%%
To write good code is a worthy challenge, and a source of civilized delight.
-- stolen and paraphrased from William Safire
%%
Today is the last day of your life so far.
%%
Trailing Edge Technologies is pleased to announce the following
TETflame programme:

1) For a negotiated price (no quatloos accepted) one of our flaming
   representatives will flame the living shit out of the poster of
   your choice. The price is inversely proportional to how much of
   an asshole the target it. We cannot be convinced to flame Dennis
   Ritchie. Matt Crawford flames are free.

2) For a negotiated price (same arrangement) the TETflame programme
   is offering ``flame insurance''. Under this arrangement, if
   one of our policy holders is flamed, we will cancel the offending
   article and flame the flamer, to a crisp.

3) The TETflame flaming representatives include: Richard Sexton, Oleg
   Kisalev, Diane Holt, Trish O'Tauma, Dave Hill, Greg Nowak and our most
   recent acquisition, Keith Doyle. But all he will do is put you in his
   kill file. Weemba by special arrangement.

-- Richard Sexton
%%
Trespassers will be shot.  Survivors will be SHOT AGAIN!
%%
Trespassers will be shot.  Survivors will be prosecuted.
%%
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind...
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
%%
Try the Moo Shu Pork.  It is especially good today.
%%
Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
Trying to shoot yourself in the foot in:
ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE: For those who like to load their own rounds before shooting
        themselves in the foot.
-- rhsmith
%%
Trying to shoot yourself in the foot in:
CLIPPER:  You grab a bullet, get ready to insert it in the gun so that you
        can shoot yourself in the foot, and discover that the gun that the
        bullet fits has not yet been built, but should be arriving in the mail
        _REAL_SOON_NOW_.
-- rboatright
%%
Trying to shoot yourself in the foot in:
DBase IV version 1.0: You pull the trigger, but it turns out that the gun was
        a poorly-designed granade and the whole building blows up.
-- akarna
%%
Trying to shoot yourself in the foot in:
DBase:  You squeeze the trigger, but the bullet moves so slowingly that by the
        time your foot feels the pain you've forgotten why  you shot
        yourself anyway.
-- rboatright
%%
Trying to shoot yourself in the foot in:
Forth:  yourself foot shoot.
-- akarna
%%
Trying to shoot yourself in the foot in:
Prolog: You attempt to shoot yourself in the foot, but the bullet, failing
        to find its mark, backtracks into the gun which then explodes in
        your face.
-- BG
%%
Trying to shoot yourself in the foot in:
SQL:    You cut your foot off, send it out to a service bureau and when it
        returns, it has a hole in it, but will no longer fit the attachment at
        the end of your leg.
-- rboatright
%%
Two men once wrote to Mark Twain.  Not having his
address, they marked the envelope,

Mark Twain
God knows where

They received a response from him:  "He did."
%%
Two things are certain about science.  It does not stand still for long,
and it is never boring.  Oh, among some poor souls, including even
intellectuals in fields of high scholarship, science is frequently
misperceived.  Many see it as only a body of facts, promulgated from
on high in must, unintelligible textbooks, a collection of unchanging
precepts defended with authoritarian vigor.  Others view it as nothing
but a cold, dry narrow, plodding, rule-bound process -- the scientific
method: hidebound, linear, and left brained.

These people are the victims of their own stereotypes.  They are
destined to view the world of science with a set of blinders.  They
know nothing of the tumult, cacophony, rambunctiousness, and
tendentiousness of the actual scientific process, let alone the
creativity, passion, and joy of discovery.  And they are likely to
know little of the continual procession of new insights and discoveries
that every day, in some way, change our view (if not theirs) of the
natural world.

-- Kendrick Frazier, "The Year in Science: An Overview," in
   1988 Yearbook of Science and the Future, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
%%
UNIX was never designed to keep people from doing stupid things,
because that policy would also keep them from doing clever things.
-- Doug Gwyn (1 Aug 90)
%%
Uh-oh.  Atarians can't hold a candle to the insecurity of Mac owners.  You
rankled Mac owners who feel the need defend yourself, please do so by flaming
in private.  And don't start something you can't finish.  I'm sure Apple's OS
for the 68000-based Macintoshs will support multitasking just as soon as Jean
Louis-Gasse invents it.  In the meantime, do whatever you need to do to make
sure other systems that have advanced the state of personal computers don't
enter your peripheral vision.  You'll be a lot happier, we'll be a lot happier.
-- Chuck McManis ([e-mail])
%%
Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
-- Blaise Pascal
%%
Uncompensated overtime?  Just Say No.
%%
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance
under which you can be booked.
-- Robert D. Sprecht (Rand Corp)
%%
Unfair competition: Selling cheaper than we do.
-- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
%%
University: A modern school where football is taught.
%%
Unix:  Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Use the Force, Luke.
%%
VMS must die!
%%
Vertical fragmentation is an inescapable part of technological
progress. If we compare the 8085 to the 80386 or a MIPS RISC CPU, we
can hardly expect to transparently preserve our entire intellectual
investment in the 8085 when we move up to new hardware with vastly
greater underlying capability. The bloodshed involved in upgrading is
highly variable. Since computers are in theory general-purpose
information processors, with the appropriate software tools the user
can "mine" old information and use it on new hardware. Nonetheless,
when hardware advances become revolutionary enough we eventually have
to throw out some of our old standards. In this case we face a clear
trade between the cost of junking our investment in our earlier ways
of doing things vs. foregoing the potential benefits of new and better
hardware. The bigger the previous investment, the bigger the benefits
of upgrading have to be before vertical fragmentation is justifiable.
-- Dan Mocsny ([e-mail])
%%
Victory or defeat!
%%
Vique's Law:
 A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
%%
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
%%
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%%
We are what we pretend to be.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, JR
%%
We decided it was night again, so we camped for twenty minutes and drank
another six beers at a Young Life campsite.  O.C. got into the supervisory
adult's sleeping bag and ran around in it.  "This is the judgment day and I'm
a terrifying apparition," he screamed.  Then the heat made O.C. ralph in the
bag.
-- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
   National Lampoon, October 1982
%%
We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish.
-- John Culkin
%%
We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should
govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the
center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major
prophet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual
concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get
Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God.
But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual
resources.  If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further
proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology,
the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and
they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and
think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that
much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
-- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"
%%
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
%%
We should all remember when Burroughs was using Virtual memory it was said to
be some kind of technical joke.  But later, hah, it was said to be ok.

And it was because the word had come down from the mountain.

IBM had spoken and the world listened.

The world as it used to be.

Amen.

-- Fred Rump ([e-mail])
%%
We stand today at a crossroads:  One path leads to despair and utter
hopelessness.  The other leads to total extinction.  Let us hope we have the
wisdom to make the right choice.
-- Woody Allen
%%
We want to create puppets that pull their own strings.
-- Ann Marion
%%
We will occasionally use this arrow notation unless there is danger of
 no confusion.
-- Ronald Graham, "Rudiments of Ramsey Theory"
%%
We will occasionally use this arrow notation unless there is danger of
no confusion.
-- Ronald Graham, Rudiments of Ramsey Theory
%%
We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism...
we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying
our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself.
-- Jerry Falwell
%%
We're fighting for this woman's honor, which is more than she ever did.
-- Rufus T. Firefly, in "Duck Soup"
%%
We're here to give you a computer, not a religion.
-- attributed to Bob Pariseau, at the introduction of the Amiga
%%
Wear me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong
as death, passion cruel as the grave; it blazes up like blazing fire, fiercer
than any flame.
[Song of Solomon 8:6 (NEB)]
%%
Weekends were made for programming.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
Were there fewer fools, knaves would starve.
-- Anonymous
%%
What can a pigeon do that a west Texas oil man can't do anymore?
A pigeon can still make a deposit on a new Mercedes.
%%
What did Mickey Mouse get for Christmas?

A Dan Quayle watch.

-- heard from a Mike Dukakis field worker
%%
What do you call it when someone rubs a Volkswagen van on your head?

A Fahrvergnoogie.
%%
What hath Bob wrought?
%%
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 is vice today may be virtue tomorrow.
%%
What is virtue today may be vice tomorrow.
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
%%
What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick.
%%
What the gods would destroy they first submit to an IEEE standards committee.
%%
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
%%
What to do in case of an alien attack:

    1)   Hide beneath the seat of your plane and look away.
    2)   Avoid eye contact.
    3) If there are no eyes, avoid all contact.

-- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
%%
What to say to annoy a performance artist:  "Hey, I saw something just
 like that on The Gong Show!"
-- Matt Groening
%%
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
-- Bengamin Disraeli
%%
What we do not understand we do not possess.
-- Goethe
%%
What you see is rarely what you get.
%%
What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?

A used car salesman knows when he's lying.
%%
When I left the meeting, I had the definite impression that I had found the
same game as with the seals: management reducing criteria and accepting more
and more errors that weren't designed into the device, while the engineers
are screaming from below, "HELP!" and "This is a RED ALERT!"
-- Richard P. Feynman, about NASA, _What Do You Care What Other People Think?_
%%
When I left you, I was but the pupil.  Now, I am the master.
-- Darth Vader
%%
When I see a congressman giving his opinion on something, I always wonder if
it represents his *real* opinion or if it represents an opinion that he's
designed in order to be elected.  It seems to be a central problem for
politicians.  So I often wonder: what is the relation of integrity to working
in the government?
-- Richard P. Feynman, _What Do You Care What Other People Think?_
%%
When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve
it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality.
-- Al Capone
%%
When Yahweh your gods has settled you in the land you're about to occupy, and
driven out many infidels before you...you're to cut them down and exterminate
them.  You're to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy.
[Deut. 7:1 (KJV)]
%%
When asked, "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United
States, then why do you live here?" Mencken replied, "Why do men go to zoos?"
%%
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one,
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
-- Edmund Burke
%%
When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never tried
before.
-- Mae West
%%
When everything has been seen to work, all integrated, you have four more months
of work to do.
-- C. Portman of ICL Ltd.
%%
When it is incorrect, it is, at least *authoritatively* incorrect.
-- Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
%%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%%
When one studies the biographies of the founders and leaders of the various
religions, one cannot help but be struck by the psychotic -- or at least
extremely abnormal -- behavior that has characterized so many of them.
Luther, Wesley, and Loyola had hallucinations ("visions").  St. Theresa
almost certainly was a hysteric.  The book _The Psychotic Personality_,
by Leon J. Saul and Silas L. Warner, devotes considerable space to the
psychotic personalities of Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science),
Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Mohammed, and the Rev. Jim Jones...
It seems significant that the founder of Christianity itself, St. Paul,
also suffered from epilepsy.
-- Frank Zindler, "Religiosity as a Mental Disorder," American Atheist magazine,
   April 1988, p. 27
%%
When the game-master smiles, it's already too late.
%%
When told he was making more per year than the President,
Babe Ruth replied, "Well, I had a better year than he did."
%%
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone.  Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge.  Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
-- General James Gavin
%%
When you don't have an education, you've got to use your brains.
-- Anonymous
%%
When you lose your power to laugh, you lose your power to think straight.
-- Inherit The Wind
%%
When you stay on the tracks, ignoring the facts, you can't blame
the wreck on the train.
-- from the song, "You Can't Blame . . "
%%
Whenever people agree with me, I always think I must be wrong.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
Where there is no vision, people perish.
-- Proverbs 29:18
%%
Wherever you go...There you are.
-- Buckaroo Banzai
%%
While it cannot be proved retrospectively that any experience of possession,
conversion, revelation, or divine ecstasy was merely an epileptic discharge,
we must ask how one differentiates "real transcendence" from neuropathies
that produce the same extreme realness, profundity, ineffability, and sense
of cosmic unity.  When accounts of sudden religious conversions in TLEs
[temporal-lobe epileptics] are laid alongside the epiphanous revelations of
the religious tradition, the parallels are striking.  The same is true of the
recent spate of alleged UFO abductees.  Parsimony alone argues against invoking
spirits, demons, or extraterrestrials when natural causes will suffice.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "Neuropathology and the Legacy of Spiritual
   Possession", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII, No. 3, pg. 255
%%
Who are the artists in the Computer Graphics Show?  Wavefront's latest box, or
the people who programmed it?  Should Mandelbrot get all the credit for the
output of programs like MandelVroom?
-- Peter da Silva
%%
Who in the name of God would bring a half-eaten eight-ounce jar of Hellman's
 mayonnaise to a public meeting?
-- Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities"
%%
Whom the gods would destroy, they first teach BASIC.
%%
Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein.
Book of Proverbs
%%
Why are many scientists using lawyers for medical
experiments instead of rats?

    a)  There are more lawyers than rats.
    b)  The scientist's don't become as
         emotionally attached to them.
    c)  There are some things that even rats
        won't do for money.
%%
Why explore the Universe? It is almost ironic that we should have to ask this
question because it is almost as though we have to apologize for our highest
attributes... we went to Mars, not because of our technology, but because of
our imagination.
-- Norman Cousins
%%
Why is Gerald Ratner so successful?  In just six years the Englishman has
parlayed a two-karat family business into the world's largest jewelry
retailer, with 1,000 stores in the U.S. (under the names Kay and Sterling)
and an equal number in Britain.  In a speech last week at London's Albert
Hall before the annual convention of the prestigious Institute of Directors,
Ratner, 41, offered a four-point program for becoming a multimillionaire.

Rule No. 1:  Understand your market.  His stores, he says, sell "cheap and
tacky products."  Rule No. 2: Form clear quality goals. "We also do cut-glass
sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray -- that
your butler can serve you drinks on -- all for 4.95 [$8.73].  People say,
`How can you sell this for such a low price?'  I say because it is total
crap."  Rule No. 3: Evaluate how your products stacks up against all the
competition.  "We even sell a pair of earrings for under 1 [$1.76], which
is cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer.  But I have to say
the earrings probably won't last as long."  Oh, yes, and Rule No. 4: Don't
write your own speeches.
-- Time magazine, May 6, 1991
%%
Why won't sharks eat lawyers?   Professional courtesy.
%%
Why would you WANT to port C news to your PC?  Wouldn't it be smarter
and about as cost-effective to port your PC over to the trashcan and buy
a real computer that runs a real operating system like Unix?
-- Brian Kantor ([e-mail])
%%
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits
that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?
Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?  We are a company of
ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only
be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by
falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for
our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe
the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures
to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map
of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...
-- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
%%
Wish and hope succeed in discerning signs of paranormality where reason and
careful scientific procedure fail.
-- James E. Alcock, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12
%%
With the news that Nancy Reagan has referred to an astrologer when planning
her husband's schedule, and reports of Californians evacuating Los Angeles
on the strength of a prediction from a sixteenth-century physician and
astrologer Michel de Notredame, the image of the U.S. as a scientific and
technological nation has taking a bit of a battering lately.  Sadly, such
happenings cannot be dismissed as passing fancies.  They are manifestations
of a well-established "anti-science" tendency in the U.S. which, ultimately,
could threaten the country's position as a technological power. . . .  The
manifest widespread desire to reject rationality and substitute a series
of quasirandom beliefs in order to understand the universe does not augur
well for a nation deeply concerned about its ability to compete with its
industrial equals.  To the degree that it reflects the thinking of a
significant section of the public, this point of view encourages ignorance
of and, indeed, contempt for science and for rational methods of approaching
truth. . . . It is becoming clear that if the U.S. does not pick itself up
soon and devote some effort to educating the young effectively, its hope of
maintaining a semblance of leadership in the world may rest, paradoxically,
with a new wave of technically interested and trained immigrants who do not
suffer from the anti-science disease rampant in an apparently decaying society.
-- Physicist Tony Feinberg, in "New Scientist," May 19, 1988
%%
Without a thorough understanding of tactics, there can be no effective
strategy; therefore, any general must have a good foundation in the
tactical aspects of warfare.  However, it is not necessary for a general
to be an excellent swordsman, musketeer, or tank gunner.  It is sufficient
to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and proper use of the forces
available, and to know the strengths and weaknesses of your enemy.
-- Phillip Harbison ([e-mail])
%%
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
way he did.  In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
important to him than his table or his white robe.
-- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
%%
Words must be weighed, not counted.
%%
Work was impossible.  The geeks had broken my spirit.  They had done too
many things wrong.  It was never like this for Mencken.  He lived like
a Prussian gambler -- sweating worse than Bryan on some nights and drunker
than Judas on others.  It was all a dehumanized nightmare...and these
raddled cretins have the gall to complain about my deadlines.
-- Hunter Thompson, "Bad Nerves in Fat City", _Generation of Swine_
%%
Xerox Innovates
Apple Litigates

(Now Xerox Litigates, too -- sigh)
%%
Yale is terrific for anything you wanna do,
so long as it doesn't involve people with sneakers,
guns, dope, lust, or sloth.
-- Tom Wolfe ``Bonfire of the Vanities''
%%
Yes sir.
No sir.
No excuse sir.
Sir, may I ask a question.
Sir, may I make a statement.
-- The five reponses a West Point Cadet may give to a superior
     during the Plebe year.
%%
Yes, many primitive people still believe this myth...But in today's technical
vastness of the future, we can guess that surely things were much different.
-- The Firesign Theater
%%
You aint nothin' but a black dog...
-- Dread Zepplin
      (A group featuring an Elvis impersonator backed up by a
       Reggae band singing your favorite Led Zepplin tunes)
%%
You are going to have a new love affair.
%%
You are in a maze of UUCP connections, all alike.
%%
You are sunlight and I, moon
  Joined by the gods of fortune
Midnight and high noon
  Sharing the sky
We have been blessed, you and I
-- MISS SAIGON
%%
You can do more with a kind word and a gun than with just a kind word.
-- Al Capone
%%
You can observe a lot just by watching.  -- Yogi Berra
%%
You can't have everything... where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright
%%
You can't tell which way the train is going by looking at the tracks.
-- unknown
%%
You can't underestimate the power of fear.
-- Tricia Nixon
%%
You have a mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a multitude of you
possess that.  This multitude see the comic side of a thousand low-grade and
trivial things -- broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurdities,
evokers of the horse-laugh.  The ten thousand high-grade comicalities which
exist in the world are sealed from their dull vision.  Will a day come when the
race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them -- and
by laughing at them destroy them?  For your race, in its poverty, has
unquestionably one really effective weapon -- laughter.  Power, money,
persuasion, supplication, persecution -- these can lift at a colossal humbug --
push it a little -- weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter
can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast.  Against the assault of laughter
nothing can stand.  You are always fussing and fighting with your other
weapons.  Do you ever use that one?  No; you leave it lying rusting.  As a
race, do you ever use it at all?  No; you lack sense and the courage."
-- Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_
%%
You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
%%
You have been selected for a secret mission.
%%
You know that feeling when you're leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip
over?  Well, that's how I feel all the time.
-- Steven Wright
%%
You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth.
-- Nicklaus Wirth
%%
You see but you do not observe.
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
%%
You taught me language, and my profit on't is, I know how to curse.
-- Caliban
%%
You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
%%
You will be successful in your work.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
You will feel hungry again in another hour.
%%
You will see the light at the end of the tunnel; unfortunately, it will be
the light of an oncoming freight train.
%%
You will soon meet a tall dark handsome stranger.
%%
You'll be called to a post requiring ability in handling groups of people.
%%
You're at the end of a road before a small brick building.  Around you is a
forest.  A stream flows out of the building and down a gully.
-- Adventure
%%
Your boss is thinking about you.
%%
Your good nature will bring unbounded happiness.
%%
Your own mileage may vary.
%%
Your project will be late.
%%
Youth is wasted on the young.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
Zero defects: The result of shutting down a production line.
-- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
%%
Zimmerman's Law of Complaints:
Nobody notices when things go right.
%%
[Astrology is] 100 percent hokum, Ted.  As a matter of fact, the first edition
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, written in 1771 -- 1771! -- said that this
belief system is a subject long ago ridiculed and reviled.  We're dealing with
beliefs that go back to the ancient Babylonians.  There's nothing there....
It sounds a lot like science, it sounds like astronomy.  It's got technical
terms.  It's got jargon.  It confuses the public....The astrologer is quite
glib, confuses the public, uses terms which come from science, come from
metaphysics, come from a host of fields, but they really mean nothing.  The
fact is that astrological beliefs go back at least 2,500 years.  Now that
should be a sufficiently long time for astrologers to prove their case.  They
have not proved their case....It's just simply gibberish.  The fact is, there's
no theory for it, there are no observational data for it.  It's been tested
and tested over the centuries.  Nobody's ever found any validity to it at
all.  It is not even close to a science.  A science has to be repeatable, it
has to have a logical foundation, and it has to be potentially vulnerable --
you test it.  And in that astrology is really quite something else.
-- Astronomer Richard Berendzen, President, American University, on ABC
    News "Nightline," May 3, 1988
%%
[Pornography] causes premarital intercourse, perversion, masturbation in
boys, wantonness in girls... Attention is given to sensationalists such
as Kinsey and Eberhard... who, finding fellow travelers in erstwhile
respectable media, manage to disseminate, directly and indirectly,
their absurd and dirty bleatings and pagan ideas.  It seems strange to
me that we credit -- I should say that our mass media credit -- the
unestablished generalities of a few so-called experts, but ignore the
overwhelming testimony of the true experts like J. Edgar Hoover.
-- Charles H. Keating, Jr., former anti-porn activist, the financier
    behind the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal (his anti-porn organization
    got in trouble in 1962 (!) for spending over 90% of the funds they
    raised)
%%
``Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours.''
-- Richard Bach

``Argue for your greatness and that too shall be yours.''
-- Michael Sky
%%
``I can understand the indifference of others, but SOMEONE has to do SOMETHING
   about this SOON -- before NOBODY CAN DO ANYTHING AT ALL!!!!''
-- William Kahan (shouting), 16 Feb 1990, on why `0.0/0.0' should not
%%
``Once again, we see that interesting correlation between saying "Blessed Be!"
 and being an idiot.''
-- Gene W. Smith, [e-mail]
%%
``They should open the ground and throw them in,'' she said. ``They should put
  them in a pit and let them rot.'' ``Putting them in jail would be too easy,''
  she added. ``They could eat and enjoy life.''
    Tedillo said she paid to have her 13-year-old Chihuahua, ``Poopsie,''
individually cremated and his ashes returned to her.  ``I received the ashes,
but you can imagine whose they might be,'' she said.
-- Pet Owner Rose Tedillo, quoted in UPI article "Enraged pet owners curse
   cemetery owners", 7/9/91
%%
apostrophy:  when your apostrophe atrophies.
-- David Bedno <[e-mail]>
%%
backups: always in season, never out of style.
%%
cause when love is gone, there's always justice.
and when justice is gone, there's always force.
and when force is gone, there's always mom.
-- laurie anderson
%%
core error - bus dumped
%%
[e-mail] (Dave Sill) writes:
> I don't mind open debate on theological issues, but it's quite rude to come
> into my church ranting and raving and trying to convert me.

[e-mail] (Matthew Farwell) writes:
> Why? Are you so insecure in your beliefs that you are frightened of vi users?

Hey, vi fanatics make the best converts.  They're already hooked on religion,
but, with respect to their first gods, they did not choose... wisely.  We have
ways of fixing that.
-- [e-mail], from alt.religion.emacs
%%
e-credibility: the non-guaranteeable likelihood that the electronic data
you're seeing is genuine rather than somebody's made-up crap.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%%
egrep patterns are full regular expressions; it uses a fast deterministic
algorithm that sometimes needs exponential space.
-- Unix manuals
%%
goddamn these haikus
I'm so sick of seeing them
when will it all end?
-- Curtis Galloway ([e-mail])
%%
grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
%%
interlard - vt., to intersperse; diversify
-- Webster's New World Dictionary Of The American Language
%%
[e-mail] (Jason Asbahr) writes:
> Really?  What about the price of supercomputers these days?
> (Or any day...)  What do we have that the NSA doesn't?

78 million IBM-PC clones?
-- Peter da Silva ([e-mail])
%%
language is a virus from outer space
and hearing your name is better than
seeing your face.
-- wm. burroughs, as paraphrased
          by laurie anderson
%%
lint(1) is the compiler's only means of dampening the programmer's ego.
%%
listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door;
        let's go.
-- ee cummings
%%
miracle:  an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment.
-- Webster's Dictionary
%%
panic: kernel trap (ignored)
%%
progasm: the feeling you get when your code works the first time