If you see an unattributed quote, or a wrongly attributed one, please e-mail me and tell me about it, and I'll fix the problem.
Whip me, beat me, make me write bad programming.
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.
--Bertrand Russell
Economy is a way of spending money without getting any fun out of it.
--H.L. 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
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.
--Abe Lincoln or Mark Twain (?)
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
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.
--Aug. 1993 issue, 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 or Gerald Ford (?)
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.
--Malcolm Kushner
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.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
--Susan Ertz, _Anger in the Sky_
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
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, 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
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
Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
--Mark Twain, 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
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, The Devil's Dictionary
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, The Devil's Dictionary
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 say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.
--Robert Kennedy
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.
...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. (the question, of course, is whether this is good or bad)
--Jeff Marder
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.
--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.
--The 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. <click> 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.
--R. A. Heinlein, spoken by Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
We got new evidence as to what motivated man to walk upright: to free his hands
for masturbation.
--Jane Wagner, _The Search for Signs of Intelligent
Life in the Universe_
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.
They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men and a virgin in the whole organization.
--Mayor Vincent J. 'Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city nativity scene removed
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
Bad Command or File Name. Good try, though.
Keyboard not found: press F1 to continue.
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
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.
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 Gilmore
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.
--Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut, or Chuck Reid (?)
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
--H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
Wit is educated insolence.
--Aristotle (384-322 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
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.
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?" "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
...Any organization could profit from a 10-year-old member with enough strength of character to refuse to swear falsely.
(on the Boy Scouts' refusing membership to Mark Welsh, who would not sign a religious oath)
--New York Times editorial, 12/12/93
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
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
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 senior programmers is like herding cats.
-- Dave Platt
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers,
a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
-- The Washington Post Magazine, 1985-06-09
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)
--The Jargon File
programming: n. A pastime similar to banging one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
--The Jargon File
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.
--Douglas Adams, spoken by 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.
--Kevin Smith, spoken by 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
