QUES

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

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
--George Carlin

Math consists of proving the most obvious things in the least obvious
ways. --Polya

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact they do so. --Russell

Economy is a way of spending money without getting any fun out of it.
--Mencken

I'm proud to be paying taxes in the U.S. The only thing is, I could be
just as proud for half the money. --Godfrey

What luck for rulers that men do not think. --Hitler

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.
But I repeat myself. --Mark Twain

I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
--Woody Allen

Some mornings it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
--Emo Phillips

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. --Thomas Jefferson

Please don't ask me what the score is. I'm not even sure what game
we're playing.
--Ashleigh Brilliant

Masturbation is nothing to be ashamed of. It's nothing to be
particularly proud of, either.
--Matt Groening, "Basic Sex Facts for Today's Youngfolk"

Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people.
--The Refreshments, "Banditos"

There's too much blood in my caffeine system.

You mean you need drugs to hallucinate?

The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open
your mouth and remove all doubt.
--Groucho Marx

There are only two things that people are really good for-and no one
knows either of them.

The only shame in masturbation is the shame of not doing it well.
--Sigmund Freud

Life is 10% what happens and 90% how I react to it. --Lou Holtz

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the
flint which awaits the shock of iron before it can give forth its
spark.
--Henri-Frederic Amiel

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.

If you can't say something nice, then say something surreal.

I don't want the whole world. Just your half.

My candle burns at both ends;/It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends-/It gives a lovely light.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. --Probe Ultra

I love pressure. --Stanley Goodspeed, The Rock

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who
dares not is a slave. --William Drummond

All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
--Ashleigh Brilliant

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

A slipping gear could let your M203 grenade launcher fire when you
least expect it. That would make you quite unpopular in what's left of
your unit.
--In the August 1993 issue of PS magazine, the Army's magazine of
preventive maintenance

The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.
--Salvador Dali

A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.

That kind of so-called housekeeping where they have six Bibles and no
cork-screw. --Mark Twain

Why do born-again people so often make you wish they'd never been born
the first time? --Katherine Whitehorn

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough
to take it all away. --Barry Goldwater

Shin: A device for finding furniture in the dark.

I'd explain it to you but your brain would explode.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
--Bertrand Russell

Sometimes I wish life had a fast-forward button. --Dan Chopin

An indecent mind is a perpetual feast.

When I'm good, I'm very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better. --Mae West

Why inflict pain on oneself, when so many others are ready to save
us the trouble? --George W. Pacaud

Humor is the only reason to live. --Marcel Duchamp

There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
someone, or forbid your kids to do it.

If you don't disagree with me, how will I know I'm right? --Samuel Goldwyn

I've tried everything else to convince you. Now I'm going to be sensible.
--unnamed Congressman

If we [legislators] don't watch our respective tails, the people are
going to be running the government. --Bill Craven

I know myself too well to believe in pure virtue. --Albert Camus

There cannot be a crisis today, my schedule is already full.
--Henry Kissinger

"The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly
this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is
constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists."
-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Preface to Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an
understanding. --Samuel Johnson

Puritanism: the nagging fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a
good time. --H. L. Mencken

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge. --Marcus Aurelius

"It seems to me that the orthodox religions always know more about the
Devil than I do and can describe him in more detail, and if I hadn't a
nice type of mind I'd begin to wonder what company they keep when the
moon rides high in the sky and good witches are doing simple little
incantations and asking for spiritual guidance."
--Sybil Leek, Diary of a Witch

J : "It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
K : "Try it."
-- Men in Black

An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.

Some people who yearn for endless life don't know what to do with a
rainy afternoon.
--Harvey H. Potthoff

Those who don't read have no advantage over those who can't.
--Mark Twain

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

Life is great, but the hours are hell. --Gregory G. Parrish

If at first you *do* succeed, try not to look surprised.

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as
numbers increase. . . . the human question is not how many can
possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is
possible for those who do survive.
--Frank Herbert, Dune

What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
--Frank Herbert, Dune, Manual of Muad'Dib by Princess Irulan

It did not matter, after all. He was only one man. One man's fate is
not important.
"If it is not, what is?"
He could not endure those remembered words.
--Ursula K. Le Guin, spoken by Gaverel Rocannon, Rocannon's World

What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do
especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are
what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to
hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
--William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways

You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you
could do is give them a meaningful look.
--Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We
are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than
when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always
alone, let him be where he will.
--Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),V, Solitude

In wildness is the preservation of the world.
--Henry David Thoreau, Walking(1862)

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
--Henry David Thoreau

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves
and how little we think of the other person.
--Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), Notebooks(1935)

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal
life. (The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more
foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.)
--Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The
radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative
adopts them.
--Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker
will be sorry.
--Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), from Pudd'nhead Wilson's
Calendar(1894)

The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no
humour in heaven.
--Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may
not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
--Albert Camus

"Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy,
didn't seem to be on anyone else's list. I felt like the stranger in a
strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives."
--Richard Bach, Spoken by Leslie Parrish, The Bridge Across Forever

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if
old friends lacked certain quirks.
--Goethe

Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true.
--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Faith, noun. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks
without knowledge of things without parallel.
--Ambrose Bierce

Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished
from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.
--Ambrose Bierce

Which is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?
--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But
the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an
underachiever.
--Woody Allen

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
--Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the
urge to throw a snowball.
--Doug Larson

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 more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
--George Bernard Shaw

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that
never were and ask why not.
--George Bernard Shaw

The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it is actively
hostile to it.

Foolproof systems don't take into account the ingenuity of fools.
--Gene Brown

Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only
friends that they like.
--Unknown

"...that was the first thing I had to learn about her, and maybe the
hardest I've ever learned about anything--that she is her own, and
what she gives me is of her choosing, and the more precious because
of it. Sometimes a butterfly will come to sit in your open palm, but
if you close your hand, one way or the other, it--and its choice to be
there--are gone."
--Barbara Hambly, Spoken by John Aversin, Dragonsbane

"We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police."
--Jeff Marder (the question, of course, is whether this is good or
bad)

Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than
through mortal friends.
--S. Weir Mitchell

Another similarity is that Rush Limbaugh and Barney are both purple,
or would be if someone had the good sense to wrap some piano wire
around Rush's neck..
--from alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it.
--Aristotle

It's so much more friendly with two.
--Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne

To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our
human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making
to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily
the person one desires to be.
--Anna Louise Strong

The Soviet propaganda ministry ordered 10 million condoms from an
American manufacturer, all 16" long and 3" in diameter. The American
manufacturer filled the order, sending the merchandise in boxes marked
'medium.'

Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you
was more than bread. Now that I am without you, all is desolate; all
that was once so beautiful is dead.
--Conrad Aiken

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power - Abraham Lincoln

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

There are too many people; and too few human beings -- Robert Zand

"It gives me great pleasure to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible
nonconformist warmly acclaimed."
-- Albert Einstein

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them."
-- Henry David Thoreau

"I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary
ingredient in living, it's looking at life through the wrong end of a
telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's
realities." -- Dr. Seuss

"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head."
-- Sally Kempton

"The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr ."
--Muhammad

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

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know ."
--Ernest Hemingway

The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.
-- Chinese Proverb

Television - a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well-done.
--Ernie Kovacs

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
-- Ellen Parr

Puberty is like a roller coaster; full of mystery, fun and exciting curves...

"I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are
sure of." -- Clarence Darrow

"A person will be called to account on Judgement Day for every
permissible thing he might have enjoyed but did not." -- Talmud

"To laugh often and love much, to win the respect of intelligent
persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of
honest critics; to appreciate beauty; to give of one's self; to know
even one life has breathed easier because you have lived --- that is
to have succeeded."
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

"Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear
of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure
out whether you like it or not."
-- Virgil Thomson (Advice given at age 93)

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are,
not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of
plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Science has done more for the development of western civilization in
one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
-- John Burroughs, The Light of Day

God looked upon His work and saw that it was good. That is where the
clergy take issue with him.
-- Elbert Hubbard

I am too much a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley

It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his
companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only
ambition is to obey.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll "Individuality"

The equal toleration of all religions...is the same thing as atheism.
-- Pope Leo XIII, Immortal Dei

You know better than I that in a Republic talent is always suspect. A
man attains an elevated position only when his mediocrity prevents him
from being a threat to others. And for this reason a democracy is
never governed by the most competent, but rather by those whose
insignificance will not jeopardize anyone else's self-esteem.
-- Nicolo Machiavelli

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the
miserable. They find not only sanctuary in his arms, but also a kind
of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them
above their betters.
-- H.L. Mencken, Minority Report

Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
-- Dorothy Parker

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the
fashionable non-conformist. -- Ayn Rand

You can't say civilization don't advance...for in every war they kill
you in a new way. -- Will Rodgers

The fundamental cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid
are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
-- Bertrand Russell

There is one very serious defect in my mind in Christ's moral
character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel
that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in
everlasting punishment.
-- Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on
Religion and Related Subjects

We are told that sin consists in disobedience to God's commands, but
we are also told that God is omnipotent. If He is, nothing contrary
to His will can occur; therefore when the sinner disobeys His
commands, He must have intended this to happen.
-- Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish "

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. -- George Bernard Shaw

Just because I have a short attention span doesn't mean I

Out of Body. Back in Five Minutes.

Being Politically Correct means Always Having to Say You're Sorry.

Young at Heart. Slightly Older in Other Places.

The only evidence against evolution are its opponents.

The facts, though interesting, are irrelevant.

I cannot be bought... but I can be rented. -- Don O'Shaughnessy

If you can't say something nice about someone, come and sit right here
next to me. -- Alice Roosevelt Langsworth

"Push to test." "Release to detonate."

If God thought that nudity was OK, we would have been born naked.

Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the
mechanics German, the lovers Italian and it's all organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lovers
Swiss, the police German and it's all organized by the Italians.

Her kisses left something to be desired -- the rest of her.

"An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell
Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger." -- Dan Rather

Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink.
-- Lady Astor to Winston Churchill
Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it.
-- His reply

Lady Astor: "Mr. Churchill, you're drunk!"
Winston Churchill: "Yes, and you, Madam, are ugly. But tomorrow, I
shall be sober."

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god
than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other
possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
--Stephen F Roberts

I don't have a solution but I admire the problem.

Suicide is the most sincere form of self criticism.

Sex is like a bridge game: If you don't have a good partner, you
better have a good hand.

Sometimes I see myself fine, sometimes I need a witness;
And I like the whole truth,
but there are nights I only need forgiveness.
-- Dar Williams, "My Friends", The End of Summer

Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know
where we can find information upon it.
-- Samuel Johnson

I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then
go down and meet them with baseball bats.
-- Woody Allen, on the KKK

On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created jerks.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
-- G. B. Shaw

If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green
women you've got in the house.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so
many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
-- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"

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

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

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
-- Oscar Wilde

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
supposed to do.
-- R. A. Heinlein

Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
miss.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

"We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
hands for masturbation."
-- Lily Tomlin

In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just
one of the risks he takes.
-- Adlai Stevenson

"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."

If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.

Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.

We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.

You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
-- Dean Martin

What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
-- Ursula K. LeGuin

Boy, n.:
A noise with dirt on it.

Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-- Mike Adams

Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
and parking for the faculty.

Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!

The world is coming to an end. Please log off.

Mayor Vincent J. `Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city
nativity scene removed:
"They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men
and a virgin in the whole organization."

If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.

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

I get all excited when I think that someone's 1-900 sex call from a
cell phone might be passing through my body right now. --Dave Henry

Celebrate we will, because life is short but sweet for certain
-- Dave Matthews Band, "Two Step", Crash

Hey my love do you believe that we might last a thousand years
Or more if not for this, our flesh and blood
-- Dave Matthews Band, "Two Step", Crash

"Well," the Goddess said, "your heart didn't heal straight the last
time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals
straight this time." -- Diane Duane, _The Door into Shadow_

The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
-- Lew Mammel, Jr.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-- Oscar Wilde

"Some people think there's a woman to blame, but I know -- it's my
own damn fault"
-- Jimmy Buffett, Margaritaville

"I was drowning my sorrows, but my sorrows, they learned to swim."
--(U2) Until The End Of The World

"We are not without accomplishment. We have managed to distribute
poverty equally."
--Nguyen Co Thatch, Vietnamese foreign minister

"What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"People generally quarrel because they cannot argue."
--Gilbert K. Chesterton

"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed
with me."
--Dudley Field Malone

"I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can
say is they must change if they are to get better."
--G. C. Lichtenberg

"If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the
computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles
to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside."
--Robert X Cringely

"The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec."
--Marcus Dolengo

The robot is going to lose. Not by much. But when the final score is
tallied, flesh and blood is going to beat the damn monster."
--Adam Smith

"Bad Command or File Name. Good try, though."
--Anon

"Keyboard not found: press F1 to continue."
--Anon

"The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about
it."
--William Gibson

"I worry about my child and the Internet all the time, even though
she's too young to have logged on yet. Here's what I worry about. I
worry that 10 or 15 years from now, she will come to me and say
'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from
the Internet?'"
--Mike Godwin

"C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder,
but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
--Bjarne Stroustrup

"Perl - The only language that looks the same before and after RSA
encryption."
--Keith Bostic

"There are two major products to have come out of Berkeley: LSD and
UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."
--Jeremy S. Anderson

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This
expresses my idea of democracy."
--Abraham Lincoln, 1858

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no
more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the
power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
--John Stuart Mill

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness."
--David Dunham

"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would
steal them away."
--Ronald Reagan

"The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the
problem."
--Milton Friedman

"There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings;
but none when they are under the influence of imagination."
--Edmund Burke

"The more laws, the less justice."
--Marcus Tullius Cicero De Officiis

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

"Knowledge is power."
--Francis Bacon

"I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the
intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful
to these teachers."
--Kahlil Gibran

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it
goes on."
--Robert Frost

"You don't love a woman because she is beautiful, but she is
beautiful because you love her."
--Anon

"Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not
understand."
--Frederick the Great

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

"All that Communism needs to make it successful is someone to feed
and clothe it."
--'Columbia Record'

"The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level."
--Norman Mailer

"Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of
prophecies."
--H. L. Mencken

"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of
cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it."
--Blues Brothers

The Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it.
--John Gilmour

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But,
in practice, there is. "
-- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
-- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

"Wit is educated insolence."
-- Aristotle (284-322 B.C.)

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be
happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher."
-- Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but
when there is nothing left to take away."
-- Antoine de St. Exupery

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

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
-- Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."
-- Gloria Leonard

"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
-- Perelman

"America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was
founded so we could all be anything we damn well please."
-- P.J. O'Rourke

"Belief is not the beginning but the end of all knowledge."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Blaming 'society' makes it awfully easy for a person of weak
character to shrug off his own responsibility for his actions."
-- Stanley Schmidt

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving
words in evidence of the fact."
-- George Elliot

"Channeling is just bad ventriloquism. You use another voice, but
people can see your lips moving."
-- Penn Jillette

"Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that
curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly."
-- Arnold Edinborough

"Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."
-- Margaret Thatcher

"Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
-- W. Somerset Maugham

"For every prohibition you create you also create an underground."
-- Jello Biafra

"I am as frustrated ... as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest."
-- A. Whitney Brown

"I am not part of the problem; I am a Republican."
-- Dan Quayle

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."
-- Jorge Luis Borges

"I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck."
-- Rob Pike, commenting on The X Window System

"I'm a Leo. Leos don't believe in this astrology stuff."
-- Tom Neff

"If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying."
-- John Ruskin

"Making fun of born-again christians is like hunting dairy cows with a
high powered rifle and scope."
-- P.J. O'Rourke

"Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

"Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake
it."
-- Seymour Cray (on virtual memory)

"Pleasure is nature's test, her sign of approval."
-- Oscar Wilde

"Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and
some people have mediocrity thrust upon them."
-- Joseph Heller

"The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew
he never would be found out."
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay

"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."
-- Supreme Court Justice William Orville Douglas

"The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands."
-- Alexander Penney

"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them."
-- Werner Karl Heisenberg

"There's nothing better than good sex. But bad sex? A peanut butter
and jelly sandwich is better than bad sex."
-- Billy Joel

"Work and play are words to describe the same thing under different
conditions."
-- Mark Twain

"You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether
what you're doing is work or play."
-- Warren Beatty

It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
-- Alan Perlis

At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
the computer.

progasm /proh'gaz-m/ /n./ [University of Wisconsin] The euphoria
experienced upon the completion of a program or other computer-related
project.
-- The Jargon File

program /n./ 1. A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to
turn one's input into error messages. 2. An exercise in experimental
epistemology.
-- The Jargon File

"Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have
never forgotten this." -- Anonymous

"Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask
for what you want." -- Joseph Wood Krutch

"A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." -- David Hume

"To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby
state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition,
that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that
devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life
after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted,
medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character
worthy of laughter and derision."
--James Randi, challenging blasphemy laws in several US states

"Jesus died to take our wibbles away, so now we can go to zonk."

Humanity's first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt.

In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except
in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an
incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as part of
the latter.

JWs: "If we were to tell you that there is an army of angels
waiting in Heaven, and on the Day of Judgement they will be unleashed
upon the world to slay all the unbelievers, what would your response be?"
--Response: "Pre-emptive nuclear strike."

"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to
laws, to reputation; all of which may be guides to an outward moral
virtue, even if religion vanished; but religious superstition
dismounts all these and erects an absolute monarchy in the minds of
men."
--Francis Bacon

"Ocean: A body of water occupying 2/3 of a world made for man --
who has no gills."
--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

"...Any organization could profit from a 10-year-old member with
enough strength of character to refuse to swear falsely."
--New York Times editorial, 12/12/93, on the Boy Scouts' refusing
membership to Mark Welsh, who would not sign a religious oath

Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "No, not if you did not know."
Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
--Annie Dillard, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth
the humble reasoning of a single individual."
--Galileo Galilei

"The happy do not believe in miracles."
--Goethe

"Why should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church which he
despises should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can the
apologists for the church exemption answer it?
--E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Church Is a Burden, Not a Benefit, In
Social Life"

"Jesus is just a word I use to swear with"
--Richard Harris

Of all the strange "crimes" that humanity has legislated out of
nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and
"indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place.
--Robert Heinlein, "Notebooks of Lazarus Long"

"A blow to the head will confuse a man's thinking, a blow to the foot
has no such effect, this cannot be the result of an immaterial soul."
--Heraclitus, 500 BC

If it happens, it must be possible.
--Murphy's Laws

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know
that you would lie if you were in his place.
--H. L. Mencken

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

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

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. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant.
--John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

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

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the
baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own
self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to
their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but
of their advantages.
--Adam Smith

"Morals - all correct moral rules - derive from the instinct to
survive; moral behavior is survival above the individual level -
as in the father dying to save his children."
--Robert Heinlein, _Starship Troopers_

"There will always be survivors."
--Robert Heinlein

there must be a thousand things you would die for
i can hardly think of two
but not everything is better spoken aloud/not when i'm talking to you
-- Indigo Girls, "Mystery"

"My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she
enjoyed it."
--Mark Twain (1835-1910)

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

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement
that something else is more important than fear."
-- Ambrose Redmoon

One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible
and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil. To think is to do.
-- Victor Hugo

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to
work hard at work worth doing.
-- Teddy Roosevelt

The time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time.
-- Bertrand Russell

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

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof.
Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.
-- Eric Temple Bell

It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my
hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.
-- Thomas Carlyle

The measure of our intellectual capacity is the capacity to feel
less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems.
-- C.W. Churchman

The fancier the name of the coffee shop, the crappier the coffee.
-- Vanya Cohen (1976- )

Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so
he can tell when he's really in trouble.
-- Dennis Fakes

"All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and
the books of all time."
--John Ruskin

"Whenever books are burned men also, in the end, are burned."
--Heinrich Heine

"All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost."
--J. R. R. Tolkien

"The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another
who shares the same books."
--Katherine Mansfield

"The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own
thinking."
--Christopher Morley

"She's a space monkey."
--Angie, on Jo Harjo.

Lottery -- a tax on people who are bad at math.

"Good, Fast, Cheap: Pick any two (you can't have all three)."
-- RFC 1925, "Fundamental Truths of Networking", Para. 2, Sec. 7a

"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

"A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a
one-way street." -- Doug Linder

"Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise
enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others."
-- Edward Abbey

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands,
hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats." -- H. L. Mencken

"Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would
choose pain." -- William Faulkner

"In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments -- there are
consequences." -- Robert Green Ingersoll

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
-- George Bernard Shaw

"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because
they quit playing." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they
are not even superficial." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"One form to rule them all, one form to find them, one form to bring
them all and in the darkness rewrite the hell out of them."
-- DEC, sendmail.cf

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are
only individuals. -- Charley Reese

"The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.'
But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself."
-- Thomas Szasz

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will
insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
-- Terry Pratchett

"There ain't no rules around here, we're trying to accomplish something."
-- Thomas Alva Edison

"To those who think that the law of gravity interferes with their
freedom, there is nothing to say." -- Lionel Tiger

"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not
subject to the regulation of conscience." -- Adam Smith

"We enact many laws that manufacture criminals, and then a few that
punish them." -- Benjamin Ricketson Tucker

"We were nearly one of the last to realize that in the age of
information science the most expensive asset is knowledge."
-- Mikhail Gorbachev

"When solving a panic you must first ask yourself what you were
doing that could possibly frighten an operating system."
-- Peter van der Linden

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words,
there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but
government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum. - I think that I think, therefore I
think that I am.

Si hoc legere scis numium eruditionis habes.

I don't say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we
could. -- Orson Welles

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by
incompetence. -- Napoleon Bonaparte

Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but never hit softly.
-- Theodore Roosevelt

Listen to the experts. They will tell you why something can't be done.
Then, go ahead and do it. -- Lazarus Long

Managing programmers is like herding cats.

The Pledge of Allegiance says 'liberty and justice for all'. Which
part of 'all' don't you understand? -- Rep. Pat Schroeder (D) Colo.

I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really
believe what you just said -- William Buckley, Jr.

The number you have dialled is imaginary. Please rotate your phone
90 degrees and try again.

"Please leave your values at the front desk."
--In a Paris Hotel Elevator

"Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite
sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this
purpose."
--In a Zurich hotel

"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to
be taken seriously."
--Hubert Humphrey

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at
midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade
themselves of anything."
--Robert A. Heinlein

"I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of
confidence."
--Doug McLeod

"The standardized American is largely a myth created not least by
Americans themselves."
--Irwin Edman, The Uses of Philosophy

"Freedom is that instant between when someone tells you to do
something and when you decide how to respond."
--Jeffery Borenstein

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like
fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a
moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
--George Washington

"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve
greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."
--William Shakespeare

"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become
what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort
is his own personality."
--Erich Fromm, Man for Himself

"What about your first-born child? Would you be willing to give up your
first-born child?"
"Sure, as long as it's an ugly baby."
-- Eric and Maria

"...every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of
vengeance towards the innocent."
-- John Irving, _A Prayer For Owen Meany_

"I never told you, 'I told you so'
but I told you so."
-- Barenaked Ladies, Told You So.

"I never thought that it could be painless. But it is, I guess.
I had myself fooled into needing you. Did I fool you too?"
-- Barenaked Ladies, Told You So.

The UNIX philosophy basically involves giving you enough rope to hang
yourself. And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure.

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."

programming: n. The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper
(or, in these days of on-line editing, the art of debugging an empty
file). "Bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague
their inventor" ("Macbeth", Act 1, Scene 7)

programming: n. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall,
but with fewer opportunities for reward.

"Unix isn't so much an operating system as it is a painstakingly compiled
oral history of the hacker culture."

I tell you that I'll always want you near
you say that things change, my dear.
-- Tori Amos, Winter

Do I look like a freaking people person?

I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert.

"Don't you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you
free with my breakfast cereal."
-- Zaphod Beeblebrox, 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'

The past is stronger than my will to forgive
forgive you, or myself, I don't know.
-- Shawn Colvin, Riding Shotgun Down the Avalanche

'The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the ocean searching for a
suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for
life. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain any
more...so it eats it. It's rather like getting tenure.' - Michael Scriven

'Where's your sense of adventure?' 'At home in bed where every good sense
of adventure should be at 7:30 AM' -overheard in calculus class

There's a fine line between an attitude problem and thinking clearly.

Have you any idea how successful censorship is on TV? Don't know the
answer? Hmm. Successful. Isn't it? - Max Headroom

As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our
ignorance. - John Wheeler

You know, there's a million fine looking women in the world, dude.
But they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you.
- Silent Bob, Clerks

"Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES!!"
- Ghostbusters

"Gozer the Gozarian! Good evening. As a duly appointed representative
of the city, county, and state of New York, you are hereby ordered to
cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your
point of origin or nearest convienient parallel dimension!"
"That oughta do it, Ray, thank you very much."
- Ghostbusters

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire
off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near
the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like
tears in rain. Time to die." - Roy Batty, BladeRunner

"Wait, wait...I've always wanted to try this..."
(yanks)
"And the flowers are still standing!!"
- Ghostbusters

You're... mocking me, aren't you?
- Toy Story

"Dogs and cats, living together -- Mass hysteria!"
- Ghostbusters

"You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is
never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less
well known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when Death is
on the line!" - Princess Bride

"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything
as a career. I dont want to sell anything bought or processed or buy
anything sold or processed or repair anything sold, bought or processed
as a career. I don't want to do that."
- Say Anything

Inigo: You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.
Dread Pirate Westley: You seem a decent fellow... I hate to die.
- Princess Bride

"Everybody wants Mr. Toad's wild ride!" -- Chasing Amy

"You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton. I never
saved anything for the swim back." - Gattaca

 Go Back