NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/rec/humor/34543

Text File | 1992-11-21 | 10.8 KB | 391 lines

Newsgroups: rec.humor
Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!cs.uiuc.edu!sparc0b!pjl
From: [e-mail] (Paul Lucas)
Subject: My personal favorite list of quotes
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Keywords: quotes favorite
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 17:07:52 GMT
Lines: 379

    Here's my personal favorite quote list.  If anyone knows the
    author *for sure* of a quote that I currently have without a
    source, I'd appreciate e-mail telling me which quote and the
    author (i.e., I don't want: "Well, gee, I think so-and-so said
    this.").

    Enjoy!


Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
    -- Woody Allen

Sex is dirty only when it's done right.
    -- Woody Allen

Reality is what refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.
    -- Philip K. Dick

It's always easy to see both sides of an issue we are not particularly
concerned about.

The probability of someone watching you is proportional
to the stupidity of your action.

All generalizations are bad.
    -- R. H. Grenier

Dislexics of the world, untie!

Whining is anger through a small opening.
    -- Stuart Smalley

Good students don't "cheat"--they verify.

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
    -- Steven Wright

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

I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time."
So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.
    -- Steven Wright

I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards.
I got a full house and four people died.
    -- Steven Wright

I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.
    -- Steven Wright

Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
I think I've forgotten this before.
    -- Steven Wright

It doesn't matter what temperature the room is; it's always room temperature.
    -- Steven Wright

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
    -- Steven Wright

I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
    -- Brilliant

Inside every small problem is a large problem struggling to get out.

If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
    -- Kasspe

Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
    -- Manly's Maxim

Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers.
    -- Grossman's Misquote

Only someone who understands something absolutely
can explain it so no one else can understand it.
    -- Rudnicki's Nobel Prize Principle

If you don't understand it, it must be intuitively obvious.

I wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
There's a knob called "brightness," but that doesn't work.

Nothing will dispel enthusiasm like a small admission fee.
    -- Kim Hubbard

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.

A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views
after we have enlightened him with ours.

Any time you get a mouthful of hot soup, the next thing you do will be wrong.
    -- Zall's First Law

How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.
    -- Zall's Second Law

If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.

There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing.

After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch.
    -- Lorenz's Law of Mechanical Repair

Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner.
    -- Anthony's Law of the Workshop

Anything dropped in the bathroom falls in the toilet.
    -- Flucard's Corollary

Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major categories:
those that don't work, those that break down, and those that get lost.
    -- Russell Baker

The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
    -- Ehrlich

If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
    -- Lowery's Law

There is no mechanical problem so difficult that
it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance.
    -- William's Law

When all else fails, read the instructions.
    -- Cann's Axiom

When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
    -- Griffin's Thought

The other line moves faster.
    -- Ettore's Observation

Proofreading is more effective after publication.
    -- Barker

Paper is always strongest at the perforations.
    -- Corry

Life is a whole series of circumstances beyond your control.
    -- Van Roy's Truism

If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average.
    -- Leonard Levinson

If you do a job too well, you will get stuck with it.
    -- Slous

He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from the next freeway exit.
    -- Nowlan's Theory

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
    -- Walt Disney

To achieve the impossible, one must think the absurd;
to look where everyone else has looked, but to see what no one else has seen.

98% of all statistics are made up.

It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of
statistics.
    -- Fletcher Knebel

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
    -- Benjamin Disraeli

No matter where you go, there you are.
    -- Buckaroo Bonzai

In some ways we are more confused than ever, but we feel that we are
confused on a higher level and about more important things.

We're making progress.  Things are getting worse at a slower rate.

Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them.
    -- Will Rogers

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
    -- Harrison's Postulate

After all is said and done, much is said and little is done.
    -- Olmstead

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
    -- Olivier

The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
    -- Altito

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

Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
    -- Pardo

Needs are a function of what other people have.
    -- Jone's Principle

Reach out and grep someone.
    -- Back of an AT&T T-shirt

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
    -- Groucho Marx

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

Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
    -- Mae West

Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
    -- Ducharme's Precept

Always be sincere, even when you don't mean it.
    -- Irene Peter

I'll give you a definite maybe.
    -- Samuel Goldwyn

Sometimes you can observe a lot by watching.
    -- Yogi Berra

No wonder nobody comes here--it's too crowded.
    -- Yogi Berra

Nothing can be done in one trip.
    -- Snider

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

Nothing is as easy as it looks.
    -- Murphy's First Law

Everything takes longer than you think.
    -- Murphy's Second Law

Whatever can go wrong,
will go wrong.
    -- Murphy's Third Law

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong,
the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
    -- Murphy's Fourth Law

If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway.
    -- Murphy's Fifth Law

If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for,
will promptly develop.
    -- Murphy's Sixth Law

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
    -- Murphy's Seventh Law

After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself.
    -- Farnsdick's corollary

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
    -- Murphy's Eighth Law

Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
    -- Murphy's Ninth Law

Mother Nature is a bitch.
    -- Murphy's Tenth Law

It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.
    -- Murphy's Eleventh Law

Murphy was an optimist.
    -- O'Toole's Commentary

Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature,
volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well
pleases.
    -- Harvard's Law

Never replicate a successful experiment.
    -- Fett's Law

If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
    -- Finagle's First Law

The real world is a special case.
    -- Horngren's Observation

Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
    -- von Braun

It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
    -- Stewart's Law of Retroaction

It is not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
    -- Phil White

There are two rules for success...
1) Never tell everything you know.
    -- Roger H. Lincoln

When in doubt, predict that the present trend will continue.
    -- Merkin's Maxim

The right hand doesn't know that the left hand has been cut off.
    -- Paul D. Schmitter

The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity--
the rest is overhead for the operating system.

I haven't lost my mind; I have a tape back-up somewhere.

To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
    -- L. Peter Deutch

To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.

MS-DOS--Just say "no"
    -- David Yolt

OS/2...The nightmare continues...

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
    -- Woodrow Wilson

Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bit 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
    -- August De Morgan

Mostly, when you see programmers, they aren't doing anything.
One of the attractive things about programmers is that you cannot tell
whether or not they are working simply by looking at them.
Very often they're sitting there seemingly drinking coffee and gossiping,
or just staring into space.
What the programmer is trying to do is get a handle on all the individual
and unrelated ideas that are scampering around in his head.
    -- Charles M. Strauss

"Diplomacy" is letting them have it your way.

If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
    -- Harry S. Truman

Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.
    -- Albert Einstein

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.
    -- Albert Einstein

Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.

A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus nine times eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.

Anything that is designed to do more than one thing can't do any of them well.

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 their use.
    -- Galileo Galilei

Truth is.  Belief is not required.
    -- Gerry Roston

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
    -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
    -- Tussman

Once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken.
--
    - Paul J. Lucas                University of Illinois
      AT&T Bell Laboratories        at Urbana-Champaign
      Naperville, IL            [e-mail]