Oneliners 7
"You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, arenow extinct."
- M. Somerset Maugham
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
- Bert Lantz
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity."
- Oscar Wilde
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh."
- Voltaire
"IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique'
to destroy the competition..... IBM digs a big HOLE in the
ground and covers it with leaves. It then puts a big POT
OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all
this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor
approaches the pot, he falls into the pit"
- John C. Dvorak
"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them"
- Heisenberg
"It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted
to my kind of fooling"
- R. Frost
"Confound these ancestors.... They've stolen our best ideas!"
- Ben Jonson
And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that
cometh out of man, in their sight...Then he [the Lord!] said unto me, Lo, I
have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread
therewith.
[Ezek. 4:12-15 (KJV)]
I have stripped off my dress; must I put it on again? I have washed my feet;
must I soil them again?
When my beloved slipped his hand through the latch-hole, my bowels stirred
within me [my bowels were moved for him (KJV)].
When I arose to open for my beloved, my hands dripped with myrrh; the liquid
myrrh from my fingers ran over the knobs of the bolt. With my own hands I
opened to my love, but my love had turned away and gone by; my heart sank when
he turned his back. I sought him but I did not find him, I called him but he
did not answer.
The watchmen, going the rounds of the city, met me; they struck me and
wounded me; the watchmen on the walls took away my cloak.
[Song of Solomon 5:3-7 (NEB)]
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy
thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel
is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap
of wheat set about with lillies.
Thy two breasts are like two young roses that are twins.
[Song of Solomon 7:1-3 (KJV)]
How beautiful, how entrancing you are, my loved one, daughter of delights!
You are stately as a palm-tree, and your breasts are the clusters of dates.
I said, "I will climb up into the palm to grasp its fronds." May I find your
breast like clusters of grapes on the vine, the scent of your breath like
apricots, and your whispers like spiced wine flowing smoothly to welcome my
caresses, gliding down through lips and teeth.
[Song of Solomon 7:6-9 (NEB)]
Wear me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong
as death, passion cruel as the grave; it blazes up like blazing fire, fiercer
than any flame.
[Song of Solomon 8:6 (NEB)]
But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to
thee, to speak these words? Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the
wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?
[2 Kings 18:27 (KJV)]
When Yahweh your gods has settled you in the land you're about to occupy, and
driven out many infidels before you...you're to cut them down and exterminate
them. You're to make no compromise with them or show them any mercy.
[Deut. 7:1 (KJV)]
I just thought of something funny...your mother.
- Cheech Marin
In the beginning, I was made. I didn't ask to be made. No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter. But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
through life's mournful jungle, then so be it.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android, From Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the
Galaxy Radio Scripts
You will be successful in your work.
The life of a repo man is always intense.
If you're not careful, you're going to catch something.
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
Wherever you go...There you are.
- Buckaroo Banzai
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
- Joey Ramone
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived
at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capabe of. ... And if he does
know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to
decide a single human fate.
- C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
- Seneca
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
- General James Gavin
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke
You may call me by my name, Wirth, or by my value, Worth.
- Nicklaus Wirth
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
- Calvin Keegan
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
- Niels Bohr
The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact
mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
- Frank Zappa
Things are not as simple as they seems at first.
- Edward Thorp
The main thing is the play itself. I swear that greed for money has nothing
to do with it, although heaven knows I am sorely in need of money.
- Feodor Dostoyevsky
It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
- Robert Bly
Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.
- Alan Turing
Uncertain fortune is thoroughly mastered by the equity of the calculation.
- Blaise Pascal
After Goliath's defeat, giants ceased to command respect.
- Freeman Dyson
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
Do not allow this language (Ada) in its present state to be used in
applications where reliability is critical, i.e., nuclear power stations,
cruise missiles, early warning systems, anti-ballistic missle defense
systems. The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language
error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus:
It may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our cities. An unreliable
programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far
greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic
pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations.
- C. A. R. Hoare
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
way he did. In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
important to him than his table or his white robe.
- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
"It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."
- Hunter S. Thompson
In the pitiful, multipage, connection-boxed form to which the flowchart has
today been elaborated, it has proved to be useless as a design tool --
programmers draw flowcharts after, not before, writing the programs they
describe.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can
see only a very few things at once.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
...when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer has
been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
...computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
Software entities are more complex for their size than perhaps any other human
construct because no two parts are alike. If they are, we make the two
similar parts into a subroutine -- open or closed. In this respect, software
systems differ profoundly from computers, buildings, or automobiles, where
repeated elements abound.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
Digital computers are themselves more complex than most things people build:
They hyave very large numbers of states. This makes conceiving, describing,
and testing them hard. Software systems have orders-of-magnitude more states
than computers do.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
The complexity of software is an essential property, not an accidental one.
Hence, descriptions of a software entity that abstract away its complexity
often abstract away its essence.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
Except for 75% of the women, everyone in the whole world wants to have sex.
- Ellyn Mustard
The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems
and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting
language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best
dangerous.
- Bjarne Stroustrup in "The C++ Programming Language"
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
- Brian Kernighan
Perfection is acheived only on the point of collapse.
- C. N. Parkinson
There you go man,
Keep as cool as you can.
It riles them to believe that you perceive the web they weave.
Keep on being free!
Bingo, gas station, hamburger with a side order of airplane noise,
and you'll be Gary, Indiana. - Jessie in the movie "Greaser's Palace"
Hoping to goodness is not theologically sound. - Peanuts
Police up your spare rounds and frags. Don't leave nothin' for the dinks.
- Willem Dafoe in "Platoon"
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific."
-- Jane Wagner
"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple
his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than
against them is to attain literacy."
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
"Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way. If
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
a part of our lives?"
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
"The greatest warriors are the ones who fight for peace."
-- Holly Near
"No matter where you go, there you are..."
-- Buckaroo Banzai
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted.
Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be SHOT AGAIN!
"I'm growing older, but not up."
-- Jimmy Buffett
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
"I hate the itching. But I don't mind the swelling."
-- new buzz phrase, like "Where's the Beef?" that David Letterman's trying
to get everyone to start saying
Your own mileage may vary.
"Oh dear, I think you'll find reality's on the blink again."
-- Marvin The Paranoid Android
"Send lawyers, guns and money..."
-- Lyrics from a Warren Zevon song
"I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs."
- H. L. Mencken
"Remember, Information is not knowledge; Knowledge is not Wisdom;
Wisdom is not truth; Truth is not beauty; Beauty is not love;
Love is not music; Music is the best." -- Frank Zappa
I can't drive 55.
"And they told us, what they wanted...
Was a sound that could kill some-one, from a distance." -- Kate Bush
"In the face of entropy and nothingness, you kind of have to pretend it's not
there if you want to keep writing good code." -- Karl Lehenbauer
Badges? We don't need no stinking badges.
I can't drive 55.
I'm looking forward to not being able to drive 65, either.
Thank God a million billion times you live in Texas.
"Can you program?" "Well, I'm literate, if that's what you mean!"
No user-servicable parts inside. Refer to qualified service personnel.
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no
longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured
us. it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that
we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the
new bamboozles rise.)
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
Regarding astral projection, Woody Allen once wrote, "This is not a bad way
to travel, although there is usually a half-hour wait for luggage."
The inability to benefit from feedback appears to be the primary cause of
pseudoscience. Pseudoscientists retain their beliefs and ignore or distort
contradictory evidence rather than modify or reject a flawed theory. Because
of their strong biases, they seem to lack the self-correcting mechanisms
scientists must employ in their work.
-- Thomas L. Creed, "The Skeptical Inquirer," Summer 1987
Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and
bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we
don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly
serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up
for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
Do not underestimate the value of print statements for debugging.
Don't have aesthetic convulsions when using them, either.
As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear,
bearing hot new versions of their pieces -- faster, smaller, more complete,
or putatively less buggy. The replacement of a working component by a new
version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
efficient test cases will usually be available.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
Each team building another component has been using the most recent tested
version of the integrated system as a test bed for debugging its piece. Their
work will be set back by having that test bed change under them. Of course it
must. But the changes need to be quantized. Then each user has periods of
productive stability, interrupted by bursts of test-bed change. This seems
to be much less disruptive than a constant rippling and trembling.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed from one
mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but it
is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to organize
the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The manager of
architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and I were
threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities.
The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they could write
the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months, three more
than the schedule allowed.
The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they could prepare
the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating; it would be
well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule. Futhermore, if
the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling their thumbs
for ten months.
To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control program
team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time, but would
also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and it was. He
was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual integrity made
the system far more costly to build and change, and I would estimate that it
added a year to debugging time.
- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
The reason ESP, for example, is not considered a viable topic in contemoprary
psychology is simply that its investigation has not proven fruitful...After
more than 70 years of study, there still does not exist one example of an ESP
phenomenon that is replicable under controlled conditions. This simple but
basic scientific criterion has not been met despite dozens of studies conducted
over many decades...It is for this reason alone that the topic is now of little
interest to psychology...In short, there is no demonstrated phenomenon that
needs explanation.
-- Keith E. Stanovich, "How to Think Straight About Psychology", pp. 160-161
The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand
years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man
is and will always be a wild animal.
-- Charles Galton Darwin
Natural selection won't matter soon, not anywhere as much as concious selection.
We will civilize and alter ourselves to suit our ideas of what we can be.
Within one more human lifespan, we will have changed ourselves unrecognizably.
-- Greg Bear
"Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin."
-- Michael O'Donohugh
...though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage from
beginning to end. -- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
"It's like deja vu all over again." -- Yogi Berra
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal
"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?" he asked. "Begin at the beginning,"
the King said, gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
-- Thomas Jefferson
To be awake is to be alive. -- Henry David Thoreau, in "Walden"
A person with one watch knows what time it is; a person with two watches is
never sure. Proverb
You see but you do not observe.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle
unless there be two. -- Seneca
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb
to you till your life has illustrated it. -- John Keats
The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order
of space and time. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens.
-- Bengamin Disraeli
Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. -- Edmund Burke
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
-- James J. Ling
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
a rivalry of aim. -- Henry Brook Adams
Remember thee
Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there.
Hamlet, I : v : 95 William Shakespeare
Obviously, a man's judgement cannot be better than the information on which he
has based it. Give him the truth and he may still go wrong when he has
the chance to be right, but give him no news or present him only with distorted
and incomplete data, with ignorant, sloppy or biased reporting, with propaganda
and deliberate falsehoods, and you destroy his whole reasoning processes, and
make him something less than a man.
-- Arthur Hays Sulzberger
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy
based on excellence of performance. -- James Bryant Conant
You can observe a lot just by watching. -- Yogi Berra
If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of a circuit, I
see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by
electricity. -- Samuel F. B. Morse
"Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." -- Alexander Graham Bell
It's currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud.
-- J. C. R. Licklider
It is important to note that probably no large operating system using current
design technology can withstand a determined and well-coordinated attack,
and that most such documented penetrations have been remarkably easy.
-- B. Hebbard, "A Penetration Analysis of the Michigan Terminal System",
Operating Systems Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 1980, pp. 7-20
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side. -- James Baldwin
Small is beautiful.
...the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality
tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software.
-- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague
It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
-- Jean Cocteau
Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same
rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more efficient
would the current models be? If you have not already heard the analogy, the
answer is shattering. Today you would be able to buy a Rolls-Royce for $2.75,
it would do three million miles to the gallon, and it would deliver enough
power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you were interested in
miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on a pinhead.
-- Christopher Evans
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.
-- Robert Lucky
Get hold of portable property. -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the
remaining errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote
to this design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be
the result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system. -- A. L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual Storage Operating
Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2 Concepts and Philosophies," IBM Systems Journal,
Vol. 12, No. 4, 1973, pp. 382-400
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines. I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself. But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after
expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of
England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced,
I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer
of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men
who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...
If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere
triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution
of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification
might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert
that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express
an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man
distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of
such machinery impracticable...
And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that
exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement,
which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the
application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
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."
"Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free
with my breakfast cereal."
- Zaphod Beeblebrox in "Hithiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Uncompensated overtime? Just Say No.
Decaffeinated coffee? Just Say No.
"Show business is just like high school, except you get paid."
- Martin Mull
"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television."
- David Letterman
"Morality is one thing. Ratings are everything."
- A Network 23 executive on "Max Headroom"
Live free or die.
"...if the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust,
this would be a better world." - Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too
dark to read.
"Probably the best operating system in the world is the [operating system]
made for the PDP-11 by Bell Laboratories." - Ted Nelson, October 1977
"All these black people are screwing up my democracy." - Ian Smith
Use the Force, Luke.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
The power to destroy a planet is insignificant when compared to the power of
the Force.
- Darth Vader
When I left you, I was but the pupil. Now, I am the master.
- Darth Vader
"Well, well, well! Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in
poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come
and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!"
- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
"There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a howling
away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were
a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to
see anyone like that, especially when they were old like this one was."
- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
186,000 Miles per Second. It's not just a good idea. IT'S THE LAW.
Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.
Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely,
if ever, do they forgive them.
- Oscar Wilde
Single tasking: Just Say No.
"Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world."
- The Beach Boys
"Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them
seemed to come from Texas."
- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
"I think trash is the most important manifestation of culture we have in my
lifetime."
- Johnny Legend
By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials
(out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence
to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve
but appeared "abruptly."
- Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
- Hajime Karatsu
In order to succeed in any enterprise, one must be persistent and patient.
Even if one has to run some risks, one must be brave and strong enough to
meet and overcome vexing challenges to maintain a successful business in
the long run. I cannot help saying that Americans lack this necessary
challenging spirit today.
- Hajime Karatsu
Memories of you remind me of you.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
Life. Don't talk to me about life.
- Marvin the Paranoid Anroid
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
The world is coming to an end--save your buffers!
grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
It is your destiny.
- Darth Vader
Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no substitute for a good blaster at
your side.
- Han Solo
How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
How many NASA managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
"That's a known problem... don't worry about it."
To be is to program.
To program is to be.
I program, therefore I am.
People are very flexible and learn to adjust to strange
surroundings -- they can become accustomed to read Lisp and
Fortran programs, for example.
- Leon Sterling and Ehud Shapiro, Art of Prolog, MIT Press
"I am your density."
-- George McFly in "Back to the Future"
"So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here."
-- Biff in "Back to the Future"
"Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint."
-- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
The existence of god implies a violation of causality.
"I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously."
- Doctor Graper
Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic
functions of a computer.
- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
- Francis Bellamy, 1892
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his
ears. I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
-- Steven Wright
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big sattelite photo of
the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here".
-- Steven Wright
You can't have everything... where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright
I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards. I got a full house and
4 people died.
-- Steven Wright
You know that feeling when you're leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip
over? Well, that's how I feel all the time.
-- Steven Wright
I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys...and
the building started up. So I took it out for a drive. A cop pulled me over
for speeding. He asked me where I live... "Right here".
-- Steven Wright
"Live or die, I'll make a million."
-- Reebus Kneebus, before his jump to the center of the earth, Firesign Theater
The typical page layout program is nothing more than an electronic
light table for cutting and pasting documents.
There are bugs and then there are bugs. And then there are bugs.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
My computer can beat up your computer.
- Karl Lehenbauer
Kill Ugly Processor Architectures
- Karl Lehenbauer
Kill Ugly Radio
- Frank Zappa
"Just Say No." - Nancy Reagan
"No." - Ronald Reagan
I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a
very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom
everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or
at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade,
and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach
much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor
popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible
and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But there is a kind
of Gresham's Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the
good. And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community
ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the
media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful. Every newspaper
in America has a daily astrology column. How many have even a weekly
astronomy column? And I believe it is also the fault of the educational
system. We do not teach how to think. This is a very serious failure that
may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human
future.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And
in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the
additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli-
gence?" I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there,
and use the word *billions*, and so on. And then I say it would be astonishing
to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as
yet no compelling evidence for it. And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you
really think?" I say, "I just told you what I really think." "Yeah, but
what's your gut feeling?" But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's
okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
- Indiana University fans' chant for their perennially bad football team
If it's working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
If it's not working, the diagnostics say it's fine.
- A proposed addition to rules for realtime programming
It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
completely. . . .Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it posible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
perparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak...
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing materail aid
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality. Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
of LSD as a sacred drug.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis
pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only
by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic,
dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a
new conciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the
experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate
nature and all of creation.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related
hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails
dangers that must not be underestimated. Practitioners must take into
account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability to
influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being. The history
of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can
ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken
for a pleasure drug. Special internal and external advance preperations
are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful
experience.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability
more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjution
with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder
child.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
In the realm of scientific observation, luck is granted only to those who are
prepared.
- Louis Pasteur
core error - bus dumped
If imprinted foil seal under cap is broken or missing when purchased, do not
use.
"Come on over here, baby, I want to do a thing with you."
- A Cop, arresting a non-groovy person after the revolution, Firesign Theater
"Ahead warp factor 1"
- Captain Kirk
Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between
the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship.
"Water!" it shrieked as it read the spectral report. "A barrier of water
vapor! A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library!
A civilized race could not have stooped so low! A civilized race would not
have..."
It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes.
- Startide Rising, by David Brin
Harrison's Postulate:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
the population is growing.
Felson's Law:
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
many is research.
...Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it.
There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46
If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
- Sir Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
- Oscar Wilde
Unix: Some say the learning curve is steep, but you only have to climb it once.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
Sometimes, too long is too long.
- Joe Crowe
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one,
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
- Edmund Burke
Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are
bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized
standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political
conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime. . . .
[I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope
of dealing with it. . . .
[L]et us use the tools that we have. Let us invoke the cooperation we have
the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink
the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held
to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have
committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
- Thomas Paine
"I say we take off; nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
- Corporal Hicks, in "Aliens"
"There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way."
- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
"...proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect."
- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
"Athens built the Acropolis. Corinth was a commercial city, interested in
purely materialistic things. Today we admire Athens, visit it, preserve the
old temples, yet we hardly ever set foot in Corinth."
- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
