Quotations

Some say the world will end in fire,/ Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire/ I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice,/ I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice/ Is also great/ And would suffice. ---- Robert Frost, Fire and Ice (1923) Big, undreamed-of things. The people on the edge see them first. -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr

The two rules for success in life are: 1) Never tell them everything you know.

"A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than 10 years' mere study of books. --- Longfellow, 1939

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. ----Albert Einstein

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. ----H. L. Mencken

A challenge to the designers of the world: Make signs unnecessary. ----Don Norman, "Turn Signals..."

You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.

My parents put us to sleep by tossing us up in the air. Of course, you have to have low ceilings for this method to work. ----Robert Plamondon

It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

The strangest whim has seized me... After all I think I will not hang myself today. ----G.K. Chesterton, "A Ballade of Suicide"

As I grow older and older And totter toward the tomb I find I care less and less Who goes to bed with whom. ----Dorothy Sayers

A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven. ----Boethius

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends. ----Joseph Conrad, "Lord Jim"

Man forgives woman anything save the wit to outwit him. ----Minna Antrim

Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities. ----Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

You see things, and you say "WHY?" But I dream things that never were, and I say "WHY NOT?" ----George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah"

Every passing hour brings the solar system 43,000 miles closer to globular cluster M13 in Hercules - and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. ----Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candle-light, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays. ----Henny Youngman

Every now and then when life gets complicated the only solution is to load up on heinous chemicals and drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas. ----Hunter Thompson

The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice.

He serves the state best, who opposes it the most. ----??

A solitary laugh is so often a laugh of superiority. ----Graham Greene, "Monsignor Quixote"

Bush is a nice fellow who gives very good parties. I just wish someone would find him a better job than running the country. ----Murray Gell-Mann

The proverbial German phenomenon of the `verb-at-the-end', about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic pushing and popping. ----Douglas Hofstadter, "Godel, Escher, Bach"

[disclaimer: *I* believe that men at most differ as heaven and hell, and women the same. -jak] For men at most differ as Heaven and Earth, But women, worst and best, as Heaven and Hell. ----Tennyson, "Idylls of the King, Merlin and Vivien"

It may be that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong but that's the way to bet. ----Damon Runyon

[This is like Microsoft's software: tested very well in the standard configuration, but poor testing on non-standard configurations makes it appear that the software is correct, and that errors are due to external effects. ] "Acts oddly on nights with full moon" ----Bugs section for catman from 4.2BSD UNIX Manual

If the human brain was so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't. ----Pugh

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever. ----Old Chinese saying

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. ----The Wizard of Oz

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. ----Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Ophelia: 'Tis brief, my lord. Hamlet: As woman's love. ----Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can't.

Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous. ----Confucius, "Analects"

When aiming for the common denominator, be prepared for the occasional division by zero.

It was loud in spots and less loud in other spots, and it had that quality which I have noticed in all violin solos of seeming to last much longer than it actually did. ----P.G. Wodehouse

Between two evils, I always choose the one I haven't tried. ----Mae West

I'm not *against* half-naked girls --- not as often as I'd like to be. ----Benny Hill

Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.

"Drive carefully." "What is it with women and 'drive carefully'? 'No, I'm going to steer with my feet and read the comic paper.'"

Nowadays people know the price of everything, and the value of nothing. ----Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program ----MPW C compiler error message

If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me! ----"Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)

Aerodynamics are for people who can't design engines. ----Enzo Ferrari

I can't see who's ahead --- it's either Oxford or Cambridge. ----John Snagge, BBC commentary on the Boat Race, 1949

True love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. ----Shelley, "Epipsychidion"

Love is a dog from hell. ----Charles Bukowski

And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away. ----Shelley, "Ozymandias"

She had a penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel. ----P.G. Wodehouse

When you are in it up to your eyebrows, keep your mouth shut.

One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet when well oiled.

A Senior mathematician [at Cambridge] was asked which language he used for some of his computing. He replied that he used a very high level language: RESEARCH STUDENT. ----Bob Dowling, "Quotes from lecturers at Cambridge"

Sign placed in front of recently washed church floor: PLEASE DON'T WALK ON THE WATER

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February. ----Joseph Wood Krutch

----------- | IML8 IML8 | License plate on a ----------- white Rabbit

More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason --- including blind stupidity. ----W. A. Wulf

Why wouldn't an enhanced deterrent, a more stable peace, a better prospect to denying the ones who enter conflict in the first place to have a reduction of offensive systems and an introduction to defensive capability. I believe that is the route this country will eventually go. ----Vice President Dan Quayle

Totally bounded: A set that can be patrolled by a finite number of arbitrarily near-sighted policemen. ----A. Wilonsky

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

It is good to have some friends both in heaven and hell. ----Proverb, 17th c.

Reporter: What do you think of Western Civilization? Gandhi : I think it would be a very good idea.

When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain? ----Shakespeare, "Macbeth"

How Dare You Presume I'd Rather Be Thin? ----American badge, 1980's

If god had meant us to use the metric system he would have given us ten finger and ten toes. ----Judith Stone "Lighter Elements"

The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned. ----W. Somerset Maugham

When God makes a beautiful woman, the devil opens a new register. ----Ambrose Bierce

Arithmetic is being able to count to twenty without taking your shoes off. ----Mickey Mouse

Eve: I'm afraid Mr DeWitt would find me boring before too long. Miss Casswell : You won't bore him, honey; you won't even get a chance to talk. ----`All About Eve'

The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say 'When!' ----P.G. Wodehouse

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly. ----Shakespeare, "As You Like It"

Ohm: Where the art is. ----"Science made Stupid"

He had been kicked in the head by a mule when young, and believed everything he read in the Sunday papers. ----George Ade

[*disclaimer*: eek! -jak] It is true that liberty is precious - so precious that it must be rationed. ----Lenin

If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine. ----Rob Stampfli

If you don't like the weather in New England, wait a minute.

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair. ----George Burns

You can build a throne out of bayonets, but you can't sit on it for very long. ----Boris Yeltsin, Aug 91

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth. ----Peter Ustinov

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. ----John Donne, "Devotions"

Beware of Geeks bearing GIFs. ----Curtis Yarvin

Don't Drink and Derive ----T-shirt

University of California-Davis graduate student Ann Perkins, on her study of sheep sexuality: "It is very difficult to look at the possibility of lesbian sheep because if you are a female sheep, what you do to solicit sex is stand still. Maybe there is a female sheep out there really wanting another female, but there's just no way for us to know it."

A woman is a foreign land, Of which, though there he settle young, A man will ne'er quite understand The customs, politics, and tongue. ----Coventry Patmore, "The Angel in the House"

Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child. ----Vice President Dan Quayle

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example. ----La Rouchefoucauld There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. ----Oscar Wilde, 'Dorian Gray'

...Although this change is cosmetic only, we should remember the size of the cosmetic industry. ----Ronald A. Howard

Edito cum Emacs, ergo sum.

It takes a lot of experience for a girl to kiss like a beginner. ----Ladies' Home Journal, 1948

One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'. ----Vice President Dan Quayle

An international team of psychiatrists has flown to Uganda in an attempt to discover exactly what makes General Amin tick. And, more especially, what makes him go cuckoo every half hour. ----David Frost

If you don't find it in the Index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue. ----"Consumer's Guide", Sears, Roebuck and Co. (1897)

It is a far, far, better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known. ----Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"

I can sympathize with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness. ----Aldous Huxley, "Limbo"

Vi is a piece of wombat do. ----Title of 1985 European UNIX User Group debate

I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady. ----George Bernard Shaw, "Pygmalion"

So heavy is the chain of wedlock that it needs two to carry it, and sometimes three. ----Alexandre Dumas

On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners. ----George Mikes, "How to be an Alien"

NOTICE: Due to the shortage of robots and computers some of our workers are human and therefore will act unpredictably when abused. ----Project Gutenburg

Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured. ----La Bruyere, "Characters"

Aunt Dahlia guffawed more liberally than I had ever heard a woman guffaw. If there had been an aisle, she would have rolled in it... She was giving the impression of a hyena who had just heard a good one from another hyena. ----P.G. Wodehouse

Playing the banjo is a lot like throwing a javelin blindfolded...you don't have to be very good to get people's attention.

"I took a speed reading course. I read "War and Peace" in 20 minutes. It's about Russia." ----Woody Allen

In fact man's career has been less like a mountain torrent hurtling from rock to rock, than a great sluggish river, broken very seldom by rapids. ----Olaf Stapledon, "Last and First Men"

Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because it is hurtful. ----Benjamin Franklin

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. ----James Branch Cabell, "The Silver Stallion"

I can nail my left palm to the left-hand cross-piece but I can't do everything myself. I need a hand to nail the right, a help, a love, a you, a wife. ----Alan Dugan

My driving instructor had a pitchfork. And he wasn't a farmer. ----Blackie, Nightmare Cafe

What do you say to a convicted felon in Providence? "Hello, Mr. Mayor."

A wonderful bird is the pelican, His beak holds more than his belican. He can take in his beak Enough food for a week, But I'm damned if I know how the helican! ----Dixon Lanier Merritt, "The Pelican"

Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art. ----Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle

Every \item command in item_list must have an optional argument. ----LaTeX p.168

Meddle not in the affairs of wizards For you are crunchy and good with ketchup. ----Bored of the Rings

Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands. ----Ambrose Bierce

To most people nothing is more troublesome than the effort of thinking. ----James Cryce

Girls Just Want To Have Funds. ----Bumper sticker

It is not enough that I should win. Everyone else must also lose. ----Ghenghis Khan

Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea? ----Rupert Brooke, "The Soldier"

Too many errors on one line (make fewer) ----MPW C compiler error message

Soon you will have forgotten the world, and the world will have forgotten you. ----Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"

Those who will not reason Perish in the act: Those who will not act Perish for that reason. ----W. H. Auden

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

/* * This means that the return which is executed * immediately after the call to artu actually returns * from the last routine which did the savu. * * You are not expected to understand this. */ ----Comment in UNIX Sixth Ed. Kernel

And finally, to these two who are about to wed, may he always have the last two words in any argument --- 'Yes dear'. ----Best Man's speech

It is a gorgeous gold pocket watch. I'm proud of it. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch. ----Woody Allen

For 41 years I have gone with a very natural hair "look" that was originally popularized by coconuts. ----Dave Barry

In the Lorimer [the Scots translation of the New Testament of the Bible] only the Devil speaks Standard English. ----McCrum, Cran and MacNeil, 'The Story of English'

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. ----Lewis Carroll

Ya gotta feel sorry for all them convicts in New Hampshire, stampin' out license plates that say "Live free or Die."

I bet the human brain is a kludge. ----Marvin Minsky

Can't cast a void type to type void (because the ANSI spec. says so, that's why) ----MPW C compiler error message

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. ----Nietzsche, "Thus Spake Zarathustra"

A true gentleman is a man who knows how to play the bagpipes --- but doesn't.

When one has to jump, it's so much safer to jump into deep water. ----Graham Greene, "Monsignor Quixote"

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not. ----H.L. Mencken

In the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, it's often useful to have a nice, solid piece of wood in your hands. ----Ian Faith, manager of Spinal Tap

To others we are not ourselves but a performer in their lives cast for a part we do not even know that we are playing. ----Elizabeth Bibesco, "Haven"

If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of toads, he would have made them cute and furry. ----Dave Barry

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. ----Oscar Wilde

What golden hour of life, what glittering moment will ever equal the pain its loss can cause? ----Valery, "Mauvaises pensees et autres"

Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point. ----Blaise Pascal, "Pensees"

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water. ----W. C. Fields

GUIs normally make it simple to accomplish simple actions and impossible to accomplish complex actions. ----Doug Gwyn

He makes no friend who never made a foe. ----Tennyson, "Idylls of the King, Lancelot and Elaine"

See the little phrases go, Watch their funny antics. The men who make them wiggle so Are teachers of semantics. ----F. Winsor, "Space Child's Mother Goose"

Too Lazy To Use Your Seatbelt? Rest In Peace.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we'd been saying they were. ----John F. Kennedy, 1961

May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world. ----The Quayles' 1989 Christmas card

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. ----Longfellow

She's the original good time that was had by all. ----Bette Davis, of another actress (Attrib.)

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love. ----W. Somerset Maugham

Parents --- people who use the rhythm method of birth control. ----May Flink

We are more anxious to speak than to be heard. ----Thoreau, "Journal"

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

Psychedelic drugs cause paranoia, confusion, and total loss of reality in politicians that have never taken them. ----Timothy Leary

The correct way to lie to the compiler is to be explicit and use a cast. ----Pete Becker

Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code. ----Dave Olson (?)

Only the most sophisticated of beings can lie and cheat, and get away with it. ----Don Norman, "Turn Signals"

It's been so long since I've had sex, I don't remember who gets tied up. ----Joan Rivers

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. ----Richard Nixon

Klein bottle for rent. Inquire within.

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible. ----P. J. O'Rourke, "Modern Manners"

I always have a quotation for everything --- it saves original thinking. ----Dorothy Sayers

WILL THE LAST PERSON LEAVING EAST GERMANY PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS?

And now we can solve the problem without any mathematics at all: just group theory. ----A Cambridge don

I have a midterm tomorrow and I'm being chased by Guido the Killer Pimp... ----`Risky Business'

She always tells her stories in the present vindictive. ----Tom Peace

There are only about twenty murders a year in London and not all are serious --- some are just husbands killing their wives. ----Police Commander G.H. Hatherill

To craunch a marmoset. ----Pedro Carolino, "English As She Is Spoke"

Don't be so humble. You're not that great. ----Golda Meir

God made the integers; all else is the work of Man. ----Kronecker

Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool. ----Kipling

Is she fat? Her favorite food is seconds. ----Joan Rivers, of Elizabeth Taylor

I don't want to live in a city [Los Angeles] where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light. ----Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, Annie Hall

Beware of programmers who carry soldering irons. ----Ron Baalke

There are things that are known, and things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception. Aldous Huxley, "The Doors of Perception"

If you love someone set them free. ----Sting And if they don't come running back, hunt them down and shoot them. ----Hell's Angels

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness. ----Joseph Conrad, "Under Western Eyes"

The US has a vital interest in that area of the country. ----Vice President Dan Quayle, referring to Latin America

Those see nothing but faults that seek nothing else. ----Thomas Fuller, "Gnomologia"

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders. ----Hal Abelson

The 'C' students run the world. ----Harry S. Truman

There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather... In the spring I have counted one hundred and twenty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. ----Mark Twain

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

I kiss you and I kiss you and you're still a frog. ----Peggy Bundy, 'Married With Children'

The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday --- but never jam today. ----Lewis Carroll, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

There is a tide in the affairs of men; Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life; is bound in shallows and in miseries. ----Shakespeare, 'Julius Caesar'

I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. ----Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H."

Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong. ----Thomas Jefferson

I can see by the way you dress that you don't give a hoot how you look. ----`Rebecca'

There once was a pretty young lass Who had the most beautiful ass Not, as you'd think Round, firm, and pink, But grey, with long ears, and eats grass. ----?

This year's Modesty Prize is awarded to the lecturer who said : "Of course, this isn't really the best way to do it. But seeing as you're not quite as clever as I am --- in fact none of you are anywhere near as clever as I am --- we'll do it this way." ----Bob Dowling, "Quotes from lecturers at Cambridge"

To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude: it is not retreat but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures. ----Samuel Johnson, "Rasselas"

Bigamy is having one husband too many. Monogamy is the same. ----Erica Jong, Fear of Flying

I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission... After all, we are a university, not a bathing establishment. ----David Hilbert, arguing unsuccessfully for the appointment of Emmy Noether to the faculty at Gottingen

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole; Its body wit And brevity its soul.

The only use I can find for vi is editing the emacs sources while porting them to a new machine. ----Larry Cambell

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface. The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters. ----Dwight D. Eisenhower

Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky. One can only assume that this has something to do with not smoking enough. ----Fran Leibowitz

Men shut their doors against a setting sun. ----Shakespeare, "Timon of Athens"

Abstinence makes the fond grow harder. ----Anon.

In my experience love was like an attack of flu and one recovered as quickly. Each love affair was like a vaccine. It helped you to get through the next attack more easily. ----Graham Greene, "The Captain and the Enemy"

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands. ----ee cummings

Visualize Whirled Peas

Ernie: My name is Colonel Napoleon Davenport, DSO, MC, OBE. Eric : That's a funny way to spell 'Davenport'. ----Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult. ----Charlotte Whitten

Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.

The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters. ----Genghis Khan

type in (cast) must be scalar; ANSI 3.3.4; page 39, lines 10-11 (I know you don't care, I'm just trying to annoy you) ----MPW C compiler error message

We are inclined to confuse freedom and democracy, which we regard as moral principles, with the way in which these are practiced in America --- with capitalism, federalism and the two-party system, which are not moral principles, but simply the accepted practices of the American people. ----Sen. James J. William Fulbright

Solutions are not the answer. ----Richard Nixon

Any time that is not spent on love is wasted. ----Tasso

What book gives the best introduction to distributed operating systems? I usually prescribe "Through the Looking Glass", because it's the best introduction to anything. ----???

Minds are like parachutes. They only work when open. ----Bumper sticker

Things are pretty mixed up, but I think the worst is over. ----LaTex

Why is a raven like a writing desk? Because there is a "B" in both. ----Lewis Carroll

In computer science, we stand on each other's feet. ----Brian K. Reed

Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much.

If men knew what women laughed about, they would never sleep with us. ----Erica Jong

I'm not looking for Miss Right --- I'm looking for Miss Right Now.

Contrepet du jour: Le colonel est arrive a pied par la Chine.

He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled. ----P.G. Wodehouse

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. ----Albert Einstein

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties. ----Jules Renard

Structs and unions represent type aggregation and type unification, that is, they are the 'AND' and 'OR' operators of type logic. ----John (Max) Skaller

Warm yourself by the fire of the wise but beware lest you burn yourself with their coals, for their bite is the bite of a jackal, and their sting is the sting of a scorpion, and their hiss is the hiss of a serpent, and all their words are burning coals. ----Davis (?)

Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women? ----Virginia Woolf

Sleep...oh! how I loathe those little slices of death... ----Longfellow

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date. ----Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me. ----Hunter S. Thompson

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them very little. ----Dr. Johnson

"You'll have to forgive me. I have a memory like a... like a... what are those things you drain rice in?" ----Douglas Adams, "Dirk Gently's..."

...And the lord said, 'lo, there shall only be case or default labels inside a switch statement' ----MPW C compiler error message

DeWitt : You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point. ----`All About Eve'

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. ----The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves. ----Lewis Carroll, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Statistics is a branch of theology ----A Cambridge research fellow

String literal too long (I let you have 512 characters, that's 3 more than ANSI said I should) ----MPW C compiler error message

If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. ----Isaac Newton

Q: What does a C programmer say to an Ada(tm) programmer? A: I'll have a burger and fries, no onions.

Women who insist on having the same options as men would do well to consider the option of being the strong, silent type. ----Fran Leibowitz, "Metropolitan Life"

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work. ----Thomas A. Edison

Operator Precedence is that which causes statements such as *foo->bar to work properly. It is also that which causes statements such as *foo->bar NOT to work properly. ----greywolf@unisoft.com

I never use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom. ----Waldo Lydecker, in `Laura'

Oh, we have a few insects here --- like rats and mice. ----Bus driver in Bermuda

What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is. ----Vice President Dan Quayle winning friends while speaking to the United Negro College Fund

If you can dream --- and not make dreams your master... ----Kipling, "If"

Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best. ----Woody Allen

They'll never reach the moon, At least not the one we're after. ----Leonard Cohen

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horse-pond. ----Thomas Love Peacock

Time flies we say. Ah no, Alas time stays, we go.

Like all weak men, he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. ----W. Somerset Maugham, "Of Human Bondage"

Woody Allen was right when someone asked him if he thought sex was dirty and he said, `If you do it right.' Sex is not some sort of pristine, reverent ritual. You want reverent and pristine, go to church. ----Cynthia Heimel, "Sex Tips for Girls"

Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies. ----Bill Bulko

...there is ample precedent for naming laws and theorems for persons other than their discoverers, else half of analysis would be named for Euler. ----? quoted by W.Dunham in Journey through Genius

"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain." There was a long silence. "I suppose," said Pooh, "that's why he never understands anything." ----A. A. Milne

Never use a long word where a diminutive one will do. ----William Safire, "Fumblerules"

A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat.

Once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. ----Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

The left side is the right side and the right side is suicide. ----Moped rental man in Bermuda

I must down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over. ----John Masefield, "Sea Fever"

Call me paranoid but finding '/*' inside this comment makes me suspicious ----MPW C compiler error message

Contrepet du jour: Quand les Nippons arrivent, la Chine se souleve.

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes. ----Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness" but it doesn't work. ----Gallagher

Why is it that almost every man, when confronted by an unhappy woman, immediately assumes that her unhappiness is somehow related to him? ----Arthur C. Clark, "Garden of Rama"

Only skydivers know why the birds sing. ----Roch Charmet

In the midst of the word he was trying to say, In the midst of his laughter and glee, He had softly and suddenly vanished away --- for the Snark *was* a Boojum, you see. ----Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark

It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them the more noise they make in pouring out. ----Alexander Pope

Read my Lisp... No new syntax ----Francois Felix Ingrand (?)

Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer ----MPW C compiler error message

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same... ----Kipling, "If"

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over. ----Aneurin Bevan

DAMM: Drunks Against Mad Mothers ----Bumper Sticker

I'm furious about the Women's Liberationists. They keep getting up on soap-boxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket. ----Anita Loos

It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses. ----Mrs Patrick Campbell

rm doesn't remove files People remove files

In a post-chaise, behind blue silk blinds, you climb at a foot-pace up precipitous roads, listening to the postillion's song echoing across the mountain, amid the tinkling of goat-bells and the muffled noise of waterfalls. At sunset you breathe the scent of lemon trees on the shore of a bay. At night, together on the terrace of your villa, with fingers intertwined, you gaze at the stars and make plans for your future. ----Gustave Flaubert, "Madame Bovary"

The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones. ----Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"

Warning: Do not drive with Auto-Shade in place. Remove from windshield before starting ignition.

"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top." ----English Professor, Ohio University

If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And --- which is more --- you'll be a Man, my son! ----Kipling, "If"

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ----Sir J. Lubbock

It ain't what a man don't know that makes him a fool, but what he does know that ain't so. ----Josh Billings

HONK IF YOU THINK RHODE ISLAND SHOUDN'T WASTE SO MUCH MONEY ON SKOOLS ----Bumper Sticker, Don Bousquet

The South is dry and will vote dry. That is, everybody sober enough to stagger to the polls will. ----Will Rogers, "Oklahoma City"

55: It's not a good idea, it's just the law.

Wanted $10,000 reward Schrodinger's Cat Dead or Alive

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. ----Oscar Wilde

Man grows cold faster than the planet he inhabits. ----Albert Einstein

Women like silent men. They think they're listening. ----Marcel Achard

They also surf who only stand on waves.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say, "This poet lies --- Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces." ----Shakespeare, Sonnet 17

I am as pure as the driven slush. ----Tallulah Bankhead

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands. ----H.L. Mencken

For every complex problem there is an easy answer, and it is wrong. ----H.L. Mencken

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. ----William Congreve, "The Mourning Bride"

Semper Ubi Sub Ubi

"Mind you, not as bad as the night Archie Pettigrew ate some sheep's testicles for a bet...God, that bloody sheep kicked him..."

Keep passing the open windows. ----John Irving

His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. ----Tennyson, "Idylls of the King, Lancelot and Elaine"

I'm not a fighter, I have bad reflexes. I was once run over by a car pushed by two guys. ----Woody Allen

C code. C code run. Run, code, run.

A conservative doesn't want anything to happen for the first time; a liberal feels it should happen, but not now. ----Mort Sahl

Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands. ----Jayne Mansfield

You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow. ----Lauren Bacall, in "To Have and Have Not"

When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, don't hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from the husband having brains. What good are brains to a man? They only unsettle him. ----P.G. Wodehouse, "The Adventures of Sally"

For the female of the species is more deadly than the male. ----Kipling, "The Female of the Species"

Cut out all those exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. ----F. Scott Fitzgerald

All things in life are a mingling of bitterness and joy; war has its delights, and marriage its alarms.

Darwin [made] a similar mistake, arguing for an infinitely old Earth until his mathematician friends took him aside and explained that infinity is strong and dangerous medicine and not just a big number. ----Timothy Ferris, "Coming of Age in the Milky Way"

Diplomacy: The art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.

Liars ought to have good memories. ----Algernon Sidney

And stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow. ----Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet"

Just Say "NO" To Marion Barry.

Tell me what company thou keepest, and I'll tell thee what thou art. ----Cervantes

I drank what? ----Socrates

Joel: "That's the movies, Ed. Try reality." Ed: [Pause] "No thanks." ----Northern Exposure

It's hardly surprising that aerobics never became popular in Provence. People get quite enough physical exercise in the course of a ten-minute chat. ----Peter Mayle, "A Year in Provence"

Friends are thieves of time. ----Proverb, 17th c.

Any time anybody touches anything, everything breaks. ----Andy Van Dam

Speech synthesis is like squeezing tooth-paste out of a tube and speech recognition is like trying to get it back in again.

Campaigns to bearproof all garbage containers in wild areas have been difficult, because as one biologist put it, "There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."

He gets on best with women who best knows how to get on without them. ----Ambrose Bierce

There are only so many people capable of putting together words that stir and move and sing. When it became possible to earn a very good living in advertising by exercising this capability, lyric poetry was left to untalented screwballs who had to shriek for attention and compete by eccentricity. ----Pohl & Kornbluth, The Space Merchants

`Print' makes a copy of the current man page on dead trees. ----TkMan help file

We are all in the gutters, but some of us are looking at the stars. ----Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not. ----Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

To stake all one's life on a single moment, to risk everthing on one throw, whether the stake be power or pleasure, I care not --- there is no weakness in that. ----Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf. ----Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

Mrs Cheveley: The higher education of men is what I would like to see. Men need it so sadly. ----Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

You were alone when you sat and talked with the others --- and they were alone. This is so wherever you are if it is night and a fire burns in free flames rising to a free wind. ----Beryl Markham, West With the Night

And so the little freighter sat upon the sea, and, though Africa came closer day by day, the freighter never moved. She was old and weather-weary, and she had learned to let the world come round to her. ----Beryl Markham, West With the Night

I suppose that when a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her, except continue to love her. ----Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his. ----Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

It's awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don't mind hard work when there is no definite object of any kind. ----Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Miss Prism: No married man is ever attractive except to his wife Chasuble: And often, I've been told, not even to her. ----Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

The only lesson we learn from history is that nobody learns a lesson from history. ----Hegel

Occasionally, you may experience some of the frustration that is always associated with being on the leading edge of a new technology. ----Steve Lerman, director MIT Project Athena

A diplomat is someone who thinks twice before saying nothing. ----Alex Dreier

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who. ----Kipling

She does not understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought World War Eleven. ----Joan Rivers

Veronica Wedge was a girl of a radiant blonde loveliness. Nature had not given her more than about as much brain as would fit comfortably into an aspirin bottle, feeling no doubt that it was better not to overdo the thing, but apart from that she had everything. ----P.G. Wodehouse, Galahad at Blandings

Success didn't spoil me; I've always been insufferable. ----Fran Leibowitz

Talk'st thou to me of ifs? Thou art a traitor. Off with his head! ----Shakespeare, Richard the Third

The "warn" operator is just like "die" except that it doesn't. ----Larry Wall and Randal Schwarz, Programming Perl

"Verbing weirds language." ----Calvin (talking to Hobbes)

They're weak. They're helpless. They babble incessantly. They have so much to learn. Aren't new parents cute? ----Michael Froomkin

The average term length of a member of congress is approaching 15 years, and the average term length of a convicted criminal is less than three. We've got that backward. ----Oliver North

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

I go zoom! ----three-year old, stopped by police after taking parents' car

It is good to remember that at any time some people are not paying attention, and at other times, no one is. ----Frederick Mosteller

Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere ----George Washington

They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. ----Benjamin Franklin

Solaris 2: Merely Evil, or Actually The Anti-Christ? ----Elizabeth Zwicky, SRI

DARE executive director Glenn Levant calls the studies [which showed Drug Abuse Resistance Education to be mostly ineffective] flawed and not comprehensive: "Scientists, will tell you bumble bees can't fly, but we know they can."

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. ----W. C. Fields

Yes, sometimes Perl looks like line-noise to the uninitiated, but to the seasoned Perl programmer, it looks like checksummed line-noise with a mission in life. ----Randal Schwartz

And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is. :-) ----Larry Wall

double value; /* or your money back! */ short changed; /* so triple your money back! */ ----Larry Wall in cons.c from the perl source code

echo "Your stdio isn't very std." ----Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

echo "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice." ----Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

If you want to program in C, program in C. It's a nice language. I use it occasionally... :-) ----Larry Wall

I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident. :-) ----Larry Wall on s/foo/bar/eieio

"It is easier to port a shell than a shell script." ----Larry Wall

Q. Why is this so clumsy? A. The trick is to use Perl's strengths rather than its weaknesses. ----Larry Wall

There is, however, a strange, musty smell in the air that reminds me of something...hmm...yes...I've got it...there's a VMS nearby, or I'm a Blit. ----Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

I know of no book which has been a source of brutality and sadistic conduct, both public and private, that can compare with the Bible. ----Lord Paget

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. ----M K Ghandi

We're marketeers, so truth is kind of a nebulous concept to us. ----Ray Scott, DEC field marketing rep

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. ----Calvin, quoted by Bill Watterson

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. ----Herbert Spencer

Lawyers should be buried 35 feet underground since, deep down, they are very nice people. ----Sanford Sherizen

If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot, stamping on a human face, forever. ----George Orwell, '1984'

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

Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws. ----Zarathustra

We shy away from those programs [showing recovered drug addicts advising children not to use drugs]. We don't want to give the message that you can use drugs and recover and everything will be fine. ----Tia Clark, U.S. Office for Substance Abuse Prevention

Bronze medals count too. ----Dr. Samuels

"Please return the newspapers so others can enjoy the violence as much as you did." ----Sign in Providence sub shop

Beware of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors --- and miss. ----Robert Heinlein

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ----Mark Twain

Larry King: "Don't you think it would be better to legalize victimless crimes like drugs and prostitution and divert the resources to more important things like the rapes and assaults and things like that?" Sen. Tom Harkin: "No, I don't agree with that at all." -Larry King Live, 1992

It has been truly said that hackers have even more words for equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people. ----The Jargon File 3.0.0

JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS ----Message on a Pepsi cup

Drug users should be shot. After all, this is a war and they are guilty of treason. ----Daryl Gates, testifying before Congress

Grooming oneself in front of others is considered to be disrespectful. ----Miss Manners

[...] FringeWare Inc. will hereafter endeavor to encourage its vendors and subcontractors to follow suit in countermanding oppression by pee-sniffing fascists who would usurp our individual rights, and the Board of Directors has collectively vowed to piss on anybody who tries to make us initiate testing. ----Drug testing policy statement by FringeWare Inc

If you try to write for the novice, you will communicate with the experts --- otherwise you communicate with nobody. ----Don Knuth, Mathematical Writing

We schoolmasters must temper discretion with deceit. ----Evelyn Waugh: Dr Fagan in Decline and Fall

Then there was the concert when the boys refused to sing 'God Save the King' because of the pudding they had had for luncheon. ----Evelyn Waugh: Dr Fagan in Decline and Fall

If someone is going to make a mistake costly to me, better for it to be an understandably incompetent human like myself than a mysteriously incompetent machine. ----J Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason

We had German prisoners on two of the farms. That wasn't so bad, but if they start putting Americans on my land, I'll just refuse to stand it. ----Evelyn Waugh, "Decline and Fall"

I have noticed again and again since I have been in the Church that lay interest in ecclesiastical matters is often a prelude to insanity. ----Evelyn Waugh, "Decline and Fall"

I don't think Lady Circumference is conscious of any definite divisions in the various branches of sport. I have often observed in women of her type a tendency to regard all athletics as inferior forms of foxhunting. ----Evelyn Waugh, "Decline and Fall"

I support drug testing. I believe every public official should be given a shot of sodium pentathol and asked "Which laws have you broken this week?" ----??

Cigarettes are a drug of entry for teen-agers to the world of hard drugs. ----Joseph Califano

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets? ----Dick Cavett, mocking the TV-violence debate

This is the snobbery of the people on the Mayflower looking down their noses at the people who came over on the second boat. - Mitch Kapor, on Usenet elitism

The road to wisdom? Well it's plain and simple to express: err and err and err again but less and less and less.

I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. ----George Bush

There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. ----Bertrand Russell

Sure we'll have Fascism, but it will come disguised as Americanism. ----Huey P. Long

I submit that an individual who breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law. ----Martin Luther King Jr.

The children who know how to think for themselves, spoil the harmony of the collective society that is coming, where everyone (would be) interdependent. ----John Dewey [ugh! -jak]

Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It is the aim of art to give it some. ----Jean Anouilh

Few people want to innovate or invent, when the punishment for being wrong is so disproportionate to the reward for being right. ----Vikram Seth (on China) 'From Heaven Lake'

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. ----Neil Armstrong

Many people talk of the nonviolent drug offender. That is a rare species. There is not some sterile drug type not involved in violence who is contributing some good to the community; that is ridiculous. They are contributing nothing but evil. ----DEA Director Thomas Constantine

In a very real sense, the writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratifications, is a curious anticlimax. ----Alfred Kazin

Everything should always be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. ----Albert Einstein

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? ----Robert Browning

"New Jersey: We've got the best politicians money can buy" ----suggested ad slogan for a NJ radio station

... nostalgia isn't what it used to be. ----Stan Kelly-Bootle

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter. ----Pascal

The blood lust by the DEA against marijuana users is being used to justify an abuse of civil rights and a penology which surely in decades ahead will bring to mind not civilized law enforcement but inquisitorial practices. ----William F. Buckley, Jr.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed individuals can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. ----Margaret Mead, American Anthropologist

How fortunate for those in power, that people do not think. ----Adolph Hitler

I'd like to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in terror like his passengers. ----Jack Handley?

It is not the business of the law to make anyone good or reverent or moral or clean or upright. ----Murray Rothbard

Petty laws breed great crimes. ----Ouida, 1880

Outside of the killings, [Washington] has one of the lowest crime rates in the country. ----Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC

There is no such thing as a harmless drug, but marijuana is far less harmful than either alcohol or tobacco. I believed rather naively that once people understood that, it would be legalized within 10 years. Marijuana doesn't make its users behave irrationally, but it certrainly makes non-users behavior irrationally. ----Lester Grinspoon

Thank you for pot smoking. ----Sign on the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers' Club

Perl doesn't have an enfatuation with forced privacy. It would prefer that you stayed out of its living room because you weren't invited, not because it has a shotgun. ----Perl 5 manual

"It was the only time I ever went into combat stoned," said American soldier Peter Lemon, describing how he smoked marijuana one night, then fought off two waves of Vietcong troops, dragged a wounded comrade to safety --- and won the Congressional Medal of Honor. ----Scot Morris, "The Book of Strange Facts & Useless Information"

I race cars, I play tennis, I fondle women, BUT, I have weekends off and I am my own boss. ----Arthur Bach

Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes crimes out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded. ----Abraham Lincoln

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the Prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this. ----Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the U.S.A." interview, 1921, reprinted in "Ideas and Opinions" (Bonanza Books)

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship ----Noam Chomsky

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy. ----Christopher Dawson, "The Judgement of the Nations"

All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself. ----Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"

The great masses of the people [...] will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. ----Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"

If the answer to crime was bigger prisons,and harsher sentences, then today the United States of America would be a Utopia. ----Canadian Justice Minister Allan Rock

The world is a dangerous place to live --- not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don't do anything about it. ----Albert Einstein

If you are a drug user, you're an accomplice to murder. [Thank goodness not many people take Nancy Reagan seriously -jak] ----Nancy Reagan

We must resist the temptation to pass laws that we can point to as evidence of our attitudes, without sufficient regard for what they can achieve in practice. ----Wm. C. Bartlett, Canadian Law and Government Division, "Arguments Against Further Gun Control Measures At This Time", 1994.

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster. ----Jonathan Swift

Seen on a VW Beetle's California license plate: "FEATURE" ----If you get the joke, you are a geek

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most opressive. It may be better to live under robber barons that omnipotent moral busybodies. ----C.S. Lewis

His great strength is that he is uncompromising. It would make him physically ill to think of programming in C++. ----Knuth on Dijkstra, in Dr. Dobb's Journal

The plural of anecdote is not data. ----A researcher, quoted by Maia Szalavitz

That the Web could be shrunk to the smallest common denominator is a shaking thought: what would be considered as "decent" would be defined by the [United] States, and what would be considered as politically correct by China. ----Jacques Gaillot, Catholic Bishop of Partenia

Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it. - Albert Einstein

When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a thumb. ----Steve Hoflich, comp.lang.c++

*Style*. Beauty. Grace. That's what matters. If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. ----Terry Pratchett, "Lords and Ladies"

You live and learn. At least, you live. ----Douglas Adams

Those who call the shots are never in the line of fire. ----Ani DiFranco

[Stephen A. Douglas accused Lincoln of being two-faced; Lincoln replied:] I leave it to my audience to decide. If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one? ----Abraham Lincoln

From a programmer's point of view, the user is a peripheral that types when you issue a read request. ----Peter Williams

We often seem to have a problem with me not reading your mind. ----jude to jak

One of the great commandments of science is: 'Mistrust arguments from authority.' ----Carl Sagan