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Quotes from famous people - Part 1
TANSTAAFL:
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Recursive:
adj.; see Recursive
Encryption:
A powerful algorithmic encoding technique
employed in the creation of computer manuals.
Epitaph:
Here lies an honest lawyer.
That *is* strange.
Perseverance:
A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
:: Ambrose Bierce ::
Plagiarize!
Let no one else's work evade your eyes!
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
And don't shade your eyes,
But Plagiarize! Plagiarize! Plagiarize!
-Tom Lehrer
Support:
The mailing of advertising literature to customers
who have returned a registration card.
Admiration:
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
Logic:
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with
the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
*
:: Ambrose Bierce ::
Abstainer --
a weak person who yields to the temptation
of denying himself a pleasure.
: Ambrose Bierce :
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't.
The label means the price went up.
The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went WAY up.
I prefer the sign "No Entry" to the one that says "No Exit."
-- Lec --
O, well, you win some, you lose some, but you gotta get dressed for 'em all.
:: Susan Kennedy, from Graves in Academe ::
Tiresias (to Oedipus):
How dreadful knowledge of the truth
can be when there's no help in truth!
-- Sophocles --
Everybody wants to *be* somebody; nobody wants to *grow*. --Goethe --
Running a business is about 95% people and 5% economics.
Never stand between a fire hydrant and a dog.
The easiest way to change history is to become a historian.
The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.
- Abraham Lincoln -
It takes little effort to watch a man carry a load.
He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
- Shakespeare -
Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
- Hermann Hesse -
Friction is a drag.
He who is flogged by fate and laughs the louder is a masochist.
He who always plows a straight furrow is in a rut.
The purity of a revolution can last a fortnight.
-- Cocteau --
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
- George Santayana -
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
-Balzac
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
Even if you win the rat race--you're still a rat.
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
-BUCKMINSTER FULLER
Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.
Beware lest in your anxiety to avoid war you obtain a master.
Demosthenes (B.C. 384-322)
The six steps in a project:
1) Unbounded enthusiasm
2) Total disillusionment
3) PANIC!!
4) Frantic search for the guilty
5) Punishment of the innocent
6) Promotion of the uninvolved.
Absence of occupation is not a rest;
a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
Cowper (1731-1800)
If your wife tells you to throw yourself off a cliff,
pray to God that it be a low one.
(Si tu mujer te dice que te tires por un tajo,
ruegale a Dios que sea bajo.)
-- Spanish proverb --
Moderation in temper is always a virtue;
but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Paine (1737-1809)
Today's robots are very primitive, capable of understanding only a few
simple instructions, such as "go left," "go right," and "build car."
- John Sladek -
A politician will do anything to keep his job -- even become a patriot.
:: William Randolph Hearst: Editorial, 28 Aug. 1933 ::
Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance,
but to do what lies clearly at hand.
Carlyle (1795-1881)
The only thing one can be proud of is of having worked in such a way
that an official reward for your labor cannot be envisaged by anyone.
:: Jean Cocteau ::
He who thinks he is raising a mound may only in reality be digging a pit.
: Ernest Bramah :
Few people think more than two or three times a year.
I have made an international reputation for myself by
thinking once or twice a week.
G. B. Shaw (1856-1950)
Laurel is green for a season,
and love is sweet for a day;
But love grows bitter with treason,
and laurel outlives not May.
Swinburne (1837-1909)
Even peace be may purchased at too high a price.
Franklin (1706-1790)
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
-Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm,
and yet he will be making gods by dozens.
-MONTAIGNE
If I wished to punish a province,
I would have it governed by philosophers.
Frederick II (1712-1786)
Any stigma will do to beat a dogma.
-Philip Guedalla (1889-1944)
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
- H. G. Wells -
Hating people is like burning down your house to get rid of a rat.
-Harry Emerson Fosdick
A heat full of coldness, a sweet full of bitterness, a pain
full of pleasantness, which maketh thoughts have eyes, and
hearts, and ears; bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned
by jealousy, killed by dissembling, buried by ingratitude;
and this is love.
John Lyly (1554-1606)
He saw a lawyer killing a viper
On a dunghill hard by his own stable;
And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind
Of Cain and his brother Abel.
-S. T. Coleridge
The only thing God *didn't* do to Job was give him a computer.
:: I. F. Stone::
Everyone is a genius at least once a year;
a real genius has his original ideas closer together.
Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
The schools became a scene
Of solemn farce, where Ignorance on stilts,
His cap well lined with logic not his own,
With parrot tongue perform'd the scholar's part,
Proceeding soon a graduated dunce.
-William Cowper (1731-1800)
Every luxury must be paid for, and everything is a luxury,
starting with being in the world.
-- Pavese --
Then, my boy, beware of Daphne. Learn a lesson from a rat:
What is cunning in the kitten may be cruel in the cat.
-R. U. Johnson (1853-1937)
Happiness is not a reward - it is a consequence.
Suffering is not a punishment - it is a result.
Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Yesterday is a dream;
Tomorrow is a vision;
Today is a bitch.
He who will not reason, is a bigot;
he who cannot is a fool;
and he who dares not is a slave.
-Sir William Drummond
He who works with his hands is a laborer;
He who works with his hand and his head is an artisan;
He who works with his hand and his head and his heart is an artist.
- T. V. Smith -
One man with courage makes a majority.
Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)
When working toward the solution of a problem,
it always helps if you know the answer.
Liberty will not descend to a people;
a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is
a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.
Colton (1780-1832)
Culture is what your butcher would have if he were a surgeon.
- Mary Pettibone Poole -
Don't let your mind get in a rut.
The knife that spreads, may also cut.
-Phileas Fogg
Artificial Intelligence: The amazing, human-like ability of a computer
program to understand that the letter y means "yes" and
the letter n means "no."
A Wise Man can see more from the bottom of a well
than a Fool can see from the top of a mountain.
-Chinese Proverb
It comes as a great surprise to younger people that a husband
and a wife must work at marriage all the years of their life.
- Dr May E. Markewich -
It is better to be a coward for a minute
than dead for the rest of your life.
-Irish Proverb
One of the worst things that can happen in life
is to win a bet on a horse at an early age.
-Danny McGoorty (1901-1970)
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If it is not true that a divine
being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals
went entirely off its head.
-- Chesterton --
Feature: a desirable attribute of a program.
Bug: an undesirable attribute of a program
to be fixed in the near future.
Beature: an undesirable attribute of a program which
will not be fixed no matter how hard you beg.
Fug: a desirable attribute of a program which
has been repaired, thereby making a new bug.
A boss is like a diaper;
Always on your a**,
Always full of S***
-MARVIN
You cannot run away from a weakness.
You must sometime fight it out or perish.
And if that be so, why not now and where you stand?
- Robert Louis Stevenson -
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
-Will Rogers (1879-1935)
No man, however conservative, can stand before a class
day after day and refrain from saying more than he knows.
-- Morris Cohen --
There is but one way for a newspaperman
to look at a politician, and that is down.
:: Frank H. Simonds (1878-1936) ::
A modesty in delivering our sentiments leaves us a liberty
of changing them without blushing.
Thomas Wilson (1525?-1581)
It doesn't make sense. If you put two dollars on a horse
and twelve thousand on a car, it's the former they call gambling.
-ROBERT ORBEN
An infallible method of conciliating a tiger
is to allow oneself to be devoured.
Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967)
For, dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true?
Cling to it long enough, and not a doubt
It will turn true again, for so it goes.
-Robert Frost
Fame tends to be a lot of shits thinking you're no longer a threat.
:: Valerie Raworth ::
There are three rules for writing a novel.
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
-W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
If you want to get rich, you son of a bitch,
I'll tell you what to do:
Never sit down with a tear or a frown,
And paddle your own canoe.
-Anon. (ca. 1880)
Any fool can make a rule
And every fool will mind it.
-Thoreau
In matters of principle, stand like a rock.
In matters of taste, swim with the current.
- Thomas Jefferson
"God is subtle but he is not malicious" - A. Einstein
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
- Heisenberg -
It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.
Beaumarchais (1732-1799)
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
-Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
Prefer diligence before idleness, unless you esteem rust above brightness.
Plato (B.C. 427?-347?)
Patriotism is the veneration of real estate above principles.
-George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)
The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally accepted idea
is worth a fortune to somebody.
-- Fitzgerald --
Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.
--Dumas --
A man's intelligence does not increase as he acquires power.
What does increase is the difficulty of telling him so.
-- D. Sutten --
Real Programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no
programmers write in BASIC, after the age of 12.
Love is the passionate affection which
causes a woman without any sense
to marry a man without any dollars.
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -
it is one damn thing over and over.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.
Emerson (1803-1882)
There are several good protections against temptation,
but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
In principle I am against principles.
: Tristan Tzara :
When the tide of life is against you,
When the current upsets your boat,
Don't cry about what might have been...
Just lie on your back and float.
- Ed Norton (approximate)
What is history but a fable agreed upon?
-Napoleon Bonaparte
Time goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays; WE go.
-Austin Dobson (1840-1921)
Alan's Motto:
It's easier to make true enemies than true friends.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and
hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins.
:: H. L. Mencken: In Defence of Women, 1923 ::
Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)
The old faiths light their candles all about,
But burly Truth comes by and puts them out.
-Lizette W. Reese
On adamant our wrongs we all engrave,
But write our benefits upon the wave.
-William King
There is no man so good who, were he to submit all his
thoughts and actions to the law, would not deserve
hanging ten times in his life.
Montaigne (1533-1592)
The average person who wears a bow tie is distrusted by almost everyone.
-John Malloy
God not only plays dice, He also sometimes
throws the dice where they cannot be seen.
:: Stephen Hawking ::
Round numbers are always false.
Johnson (1709-1784)
When choosing between two evils I always like
to take the one I've never tried before.
-Mae West (1892-1980)
The bright and dark paths out of the world have always existed.
Whoso takes the former, returns not; he who chooses the latter, returns.
Bhagavad Gita (c. B.C. 400)
The possibility does exist, of course, that I am paranoid...
But that's what they want me to think, isn't it?
- Ed Pearson
Zeal is fit for wise men, but flourishes chiefly among fools
John Tillotson (1630-1694)
He was a bold man indeed that first ate an oyster.
Two is company; three is a menage; four or more is an orgy.
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
-- Wilson Mizner --
In politics, an absurdity is not an impediment.
:: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) ::
A nation's preoccupation with history is not infrequently an effort
to obtain a passport for the future. Often it is a forged passport.
-- Hoffer --
A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
-- E. W. Hubbard --
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination
from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy,
indifference, and undernourishment.
Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899-1977)
The first human being who hurled an insult
instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
-Attributed to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
A bird does not sing because is has an answer.
It sings because it has a song.
-Chinese Proverb
You can demonstrate a program for an executive,
but you cannot make him computer literate.
The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass,
for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging
in so puerile an avocation?
-H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)
It's always easy to see both sides of an issue
we are not particularly concerned about.
In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse
in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present
to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak
of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
- Horace Mann -
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Swift (1667-1745)
Convictions in a politician are an infirmity
and may prove a very serious injury.
:: J. H. Wallis, 1935 ::
Digital circuits are made from analog parts.
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?
--Lec --
The path of precept is long; that of example short and effectual.
- Seneca -
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.
--Montaigne --
What dull barbarians are not proud of their dullness and barbarism?
:: Thackery ::
Children and subjects ... are seldomer in the wrong than parents and kings.
:: Chesterfield ::
The reason grandparents and grandchildren
get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
-Sam Levenson (1911-1980)
1) Hide and watch.
2) Kick ass and take names.
- Problem solving steps from Harvard MBA
We pray for wisdom, but God will as soon put bread and meat
in our cupboards without any endeavor of ours, as He will
give us wisdom without our trying to get it.
- Brigham Young -
Knowledge - The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
It is with our passions, as it is with fire and water,
they are good servants but bad masters.
-Sir Roger L'Estrange
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
-Longfellow
The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women
submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
-William E. Borah (1865-1940) - speech in U.S. Senate
Politicians spend half their time making laws and the
other half helping campaign contributors evade them.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless.
Knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
- Samuel Johnson -
Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.
Emerson (1803-1882)
I've never known a person to live to be one hundred and be
remarkable for anything else.
Josh Billings (1815-1885)
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign
funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
:: Oscar Ameringer (1870-1943) ::
You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets, and wonder
when you have done that they do not delight in your company.
-- Dr. Johnson --
There are men whom a happy disposition, a strong desire of glory and esteem,
inspire with the same love for justice and virtue which men in general have
for riches and honors .... But the number of these men is so small that I
only mention them in honor of humanity.
--Helvetius --
Computer scientists can do anything except chemistry and accounting,
and that is by choice.
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way;
but to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.
:: Dryden ::
Justice is incidental to law and order.
--J. Edgar Hoover
Enjoy the spring of love and youth,
To some good angel leave the rest;
For time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year's nest.
Longfellow (1819-1892)
The sins that tarnish whore and thief
Beset me every day.
My most ethereal belief
Inhabits common clay.
-Gamaliel Bradford
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain -
and most fools do.
Dale Carnegie (1888-1955)
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.
Take which you please - you can never have both.
-Emerson (1803-1882)
It is a far better thing to try to succeed and fail
than to do nothing and succeed.
Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice,
neither, in my opinion, is safe.
Burke (1729-1797)
If you do not know how to lie, cheat, and steal,
turn your attention to politics and learn.
:: Josh Billings (1818-1885)
What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a year.
And that which was prov'd true before
Prov'd false again? Two hundred more.
-- Samuel Butler --
I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance
Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.
:: Ogden Nash ::
We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would
fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --
I think people should go into public office for a term or two, and then
get back into their businesses and live under the laws that they passed.
- MIKE CURB
The best advice for modern people, young and old,
facing all sorts of propaganda, is the single word,
Let us have Wine and Women, Mirth and Laughter;
Sermons and soda-water the day after.
Byron (1788-1824)
God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
- William Bragg -
Even in the purest democracies, such as the United States and Switzerland,
a privileged minority stands against the vast enslaved majority.
:: Mikhail A. Bakunin: Dieu et l'Etat, 1871 ::
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady
and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through
a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
In Koln, a town of monks and bones,
And pavements fanged with murderous stones,
And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches,
I counted two and seventy stenches,
All well defined, and several stinks!
Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, Nymphs, what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
-S. T. Coleridge
Without bigots, eccentrics, cranks, and heretics,
the world would not progress.
- Frank Gelett Burgess -
John Barrymore, in derogation of Leslie Howard's rather anemic Hamlet:
"When >>I<< stepped on stage, you could hear my balls >>clank!<<"
Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
The lightning-bug is brilliant, but he hasn't any mind;
He stumbles through existence with his head-light on behind.
-E. F. Ware
No, you never get any fun
Out of the things you haven't done.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
Realism...has no more to do with reality than anything else.
- Hob Broun -
It is impossible to make anything foolproof
because fools are so ingenious.
- Edsel Murphy, dec.
When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for
her except continue to love her.
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
The major fact about history is that in large part it appears criminal.
-- W. E. Arnold, Jr. --
Even the things you do after the flesh are spiritual.
-- Saint Ignatius --
Never leave anything to chance: make sure all your crimes are premeditated.
Many are cold, but few are frozen.
That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
- Thoreau -
There are a lot of lies going around.... and half of them are true.
- Winston Churchill -
What we shall be, we are becoming.
- Old Proverb -
The triumph of demagogues is short-lived, but the ruins are eternal.
:: Peguy ::
When the candles are out all women are fair.
Plutarch (46-120 A.D.)
Greater things are believed of those who are absent.
Tacitus (55-117 A.D.)
He loves his bonds, who, when the first are broke,
Submits his neck unto a second yoke.
-Herrick
Many are called, few are chosen.
Fewer still get to do the choosing.
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts, of life are not
only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.
Thoreau (1817-1862)
I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless
to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless
it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce.
-J EDGAR HOOVER
One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.
-Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
The three most important things a man has are, briefly,
his money, his private parts, and his religious opinions.
-- Samuel Butler --
Dear boy, it isn't that your manners are bad --
it's simply that you have no manners at all.
:: Margot Asquith ::
Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.
:: Shakespeare ::
Loveliest of lovely things are they
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)
Some women blush when they are kissed;
some call the police, some swear, some bite.
But the worst are those who laugh.
Anonymous
What lies beyond life shines not to those who are childish,
or careless, or deluded by wealth. "This is the only world:
there is no other," they say; and thus they go from death
to death.
Upanishads (c. B.C. 800)
When you try to make an impression, the chances are that
that is the impression you will make.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green,
you will not be made straight when you are dry.
-- African proverb --
The Army Axiom:
Any order that can be misunderstood has been misunderstood.
I think any man in business would be foolish to fool around with
his secretary. If it's someone else's secretary, fine.
- Barry Goldwater -
In seeking wisdom thou art wise;
in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool.
The Talmud (B.C. 500?-400? A.D.)
Beware of articulate incompetents.
COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
The personal computer market is about the same size as the
total potato chip market. Next year it will be about half the
size of the pet food market and is fast approaching the total
worldwide sales of pantyhose.
- James Finke,Pres.,Commodore Int'l Ltd.(1982) -
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when
they do it from religious conviction.
Pascal (1623-1662)
The gods play games with men as balls...
In wondrous ways do the gods make sport with men.
-Titus Maccius Platus (254-184 BC)
There is nothing in this world so sweet as love,
and next to love, the sweetest thing is hate.
Longfellow (1819-1892)
[He] was in his late forties, tall, reddish, and looked as if
life had given him an endless stream of two-timing girl friends,
five-day drunks, and cars with bad transmissions.
-- Richard Brautigan --
Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from
the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them,
are, taken as a mass, at least one step removed from honest men.
:: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) ::
In a family argument, if it turns out you are right - apologize at once!
It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.
- WILLIE SUTTON -
Poverty begins at home.
Time is just nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.
It's a bad hen that eats at your house and lays at another's.
Remember: when you point a finger, three fingers are pointing at you.
Severities should be dealt out all at once,
that by their suddenness they may give less offense;
benefits should be handed out drop by drop,
that they may be relished the more.
Machiavelli (1469-1527)
What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once,
and yet have no regard of throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.
John Howe (1630-1705)
He was never less at leisure than when at leisure;
nor that he was never less alone than when alone.
Cicero (B.C. 106-43)
There is 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; on such
a full sea we are now afloat; and we must take the current
when it serves, or lose our ventures.
Shakespeare (1564-1616)
It is human nature for those who are at odds
with their neighbors to try to get even.
- Brigham Young -
It is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the
same time saddled with a responsibility.
Gerald W. Johnson (born 1890)
Lap-Top: Smaller and lighter than the average secretary.
*
Portable: Smaller and lighter than the average refrigerator.
*
Transportable: Neither chained to a wall nor attached to an alarm system.
What you cannot avoid, welcome.
-Chinese Proverb
Mobius strippers never show you their back side.
Many a good hanging would prevent a bad marriage.
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
-- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) --
Lord Balfour's Contention:
Nothing matters very much, and very few things matter at all.
Take not too short a time to make a world-without-end bargain in.
-Shakespeare -
Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
Wellington (1769-1852)
Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend's friend has a friend; be discreet.
-- The Talmud --
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
-Francis Bacon
A horse may be forced to drink but a pencil must be lead...
In a steady state universe, rapid transit would not be feasible.
- Gwyneth Cravens
Life is too short to be small.
-- Disraeli --
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.
-- Mignon McLaughlin --
If all the girls at Vassar were laid end to end I wouldn't be surprised!
Do it today; tomorrow it will be illegal.
Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed.
:: Penn ::
There are some jobs in which it is impossible for a man to be virtuous.
Aristotle (B.C. 384-322)
It is no good trying to teach people who need to be taught.
: Aleister Crowley :
Better trust all and be deceived,
And weep that trust, and that deceiving,
Than doubt one heart that, if believed,
Had blessed one's life with true believing.
Francis Anne Kemble (1809-1893)
We are not satisfied to be right,
unless we can prove others to be quite wrong.
-- Hazlitt --
If there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no
doubt; if there were no doubt, there would be no inquiry;
if no inquiry, no wisdom, no knowledge, no genius.
Landor (1775-1864)
Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.
-- George Bernard Shaw __
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made
The creed of the vast majority by governmental action.
It would be an inconvenient rule if nothing could be done
until everything can be done.
- Sir Winston Churchill -
Grant, O God, that we may always be right,
for thou knowest that we shall never change our minds.
-- Scottish prayer --
Much that is inexpressible would be hardly
worth expression, if one could express it.
: Lichtenberg :
Power feeds on its spoils, and dies when its victims refuse to be despoiled.
They can't persuade it to death; they can't vote it to death; they can't
shoot it to death, but they can always starve it to death.
:: Benjamin R. Rucker: Instead of a Book, 1893 ::
There are strings in the human heart that had better not be vibrated.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured;
but like the sun, only for a time.
Bovee (1820-1904)
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.
- H. L. Mencken -
Whatever the number of a man's friends, there will be times
in his life when he has one too few; but if he has only
one enemy, he is lucky indeed if he has not one too many.
Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.
Johnson (1709-1784)
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
:: Jonathan Swift ::
We are no longer happy as soon as we wish to be happier.
Landor (1775-1864)
1. Never be first.
2. Never be last.
3. Never volunteer for anything.
Fame is something which must be won;
honor is something which must not be lost.
-- Schopenhauer --
There is nothing that cannot be fixed.
- Old CIA Saying
He that will not be counselled, cannot be helped.
If you do not hear reason, she will rap you on the knuckles.
- Benjamin Franklin -
In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true
either is true or becomes true.
-JOHN LILLY
It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy
at some future time.
- Seneca -
So live that you wouldn't be ashamed
to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.
-- Will Rogers --
Marriage is the only union that can't be organized.
Both sides think they're management.
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed,
nothing is too strange to have happened.
-- Hardy --
The way which is bright appears to be dark.
The way which goes forward appears to fall backward.
The way which is level appears uneven.
Great virtue appears like a valley (hollow).
Great purity appears like disgrace.
Far-reaching virtue appears as if insufficient.
Solid virtue appears as if unsteady.
True substance appears to be changeable.
The great square has no corners.
The great talent is slow to mature.
Great music sounds faint.
Lao-Tzu (fl. B.C. 600)
TO DO IS TO BE -Socrates
TO BE IS TO DO -Sartre
DO BE DO BE DO -Sinatra
YABBA DABBA DO -Flintstone
Be your character what it will, it will be known;
and nobody will take it upon your word.
Chesterfield (1694-1773)
What is youth except a man or woman before it's fit to be seen?
-Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able
to entertain a thought without accepting it.
:: Aristotle ::
When vice prevails and impious men bear sway,
The post of honor is a private station.
:: Joseph Addison, in Cato, 1713 ::
Vilify! Vilify! Some of it will always stick. :: Beaumarchais ::
O Moon, when I gaze on thy beautiful face,
Careening along through the boundaries of space,
The thought has often come into my mind
If I ever shall see thy glorious behind.
-"A Housemaid Poet", quoted by Robert Ross in the Academy
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl
and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
-John Barrymore (1882-1942)
Keep America Beautiful.... emigrate.
There is dew in one flower and not in another, because one
opens its cup and takes it in, while the other closes
itself, and the drops run off. God rains His goodness and
mercy as widespread as the dew, and if we lack them, it is
because we will not open our hearts to receive them.
Beecher (1813-1878)
If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.
-Blake
Politics makes strange bedfellows rich.
:: Wayne G. Haisley, c. 1928 ::
Bedfellows Rule:
The one who snores will fall asleep first.
The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn't been asleep.
Man's capacities have never been measured;
nor are we to judge of what he can do by
any precedents, so little has been tried.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-Charles H. Duell, Director of the U.S. Patent Office, 1899
Anything worth saying has already frequently been said.
Anything hitherto unsaid should be regarded with the greatest suspicion.
- Sir Eric Ashby -
We are so accustomed to wearing a disguise before others
that eventually we are unable to recognize ourselves.
-- La Rochefoucauld --
The more humble a man is before God,
the more he will be exalted;
the more humble he is before man,
the more he will get rode roughshod.
Josh Billings (1815-1885)
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
There are two ways of being happy:
We may either diminish our wants or augment our means --
either will do -- the result is the same....
But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time,
young or old, rich or poor, sick or well;
and if you are very wise you will do both in such a way
as to augment the general happiness of society.
- Benjamin Franklin -
The only substitute for experience is being sixteen.
-- Gordon B. Hinkley, General Conference talk, October 4, 1986 --
Do not talk about disgrace from a thing being known,
when disgrace is, that the thing should exist.
William Falconer (1732-1769)
There are those ... who tolerate everything because they believe nothing.
- Robert Browning -
The old believe everything;
the middle-aged suspect everything;
the young know everything.
Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)
A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.
You should never wear your best trousers
when you go out to fight for liberty and truth.
-- Henrik Ibsen --
Nature didn't make us perfect, so she did the next best thing
-- she made us blind to our faults.
- A. J. Marshall -
All that time is lost which might be better employed.
:: Rousseau ::
All of us must become better informed.
It is necessary for us to learn from others' mistakes.
You will never live long enough
to make them all yourself.
:: Adm. Hyman G. Rickover ::
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated
than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Add little to little and there will be a big pile.
- Ovid -
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them
what they could and should do for themselves.
- Attributed to Abraham Lincoln -
If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger hands.
There needeth not the hell that bigots frame
To punish those who err:
Earth itself contains at once the evil and the cure.
-Shelley
Evans' and Bjorn's Law:
No matter what goes wrong, there is always somebody who knew it would.
Writing a program is nothing but debugging a blank page.
- Anonymous but frustrated Stanford programmer
Man must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind him
to the fact that each moment of his life is a miracle and a mystery.
- H. G. Wells -
UNIX: Sterile experts who attempt to palm off bloated, utterly
arcane, and confusing operating systems on rational human beings.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of
the people by the people for the people.
:: Oscar Wilde: The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891 ::
Boren's Maxim:
When in doubt, mumble.
Worry, the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.
George Washington (1732-1799)
The young, whether they know it or not, live on borrowed property.
- Sir Richard Livingstone -
It's a poor memory that doesn't work both ways.
No one tests the depth of a river with both feet.
- African Proverb
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
-- Blake --
Familiarity breeds attempt.
-Goodman Ace (1899-1982)
You may get a large amount of truth into a brief space.
:: Henry W. Beecher ::
The most trying fools are the bright ones.
-- La Rochefoucauld --
The mediocre borrow; the brilliant steal.
:: T. S. Elliot ::
Observation, not old age, brings wisdom.
Publilius Syrus (fl. B.C. 42)
It is what you aspire to rather than what you attain that brings into
being even what you do attain. Never set your sights too low.
-Miriam Allen De Ford
Brintnall's Law:
If you are given two contradictory orders, obey them both.
People with narrow minds usually have broad tongues.
When Po-chang was asked about seeking for the Buddha nature:
"It's much like riding an ox in search of the ox."
A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
- John A. Shedd -
Excellence when concealed, differs but little from buried worthlessness.
Horace (B.C. 65-8)
There is no great future for any people whose faith has burned out.
- Rufus Jones -
Only a fool fights on in a burning house.
-Klingon Proverb
A party which is not afraid of letting culture, business, and
welfare go to ruin completely can be omnipotent for a while.
:: Burckhardt ::
Ignorance is not innocence, but sin.
- Robert Browning -
There is no way out but through.
-Robert Frost
In youth and beauty wisdom is but rare!
Homer (c. B.C. 700)
In law nothing is certain but expense.
Samuel Butler (1612-1680)
Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that
Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice,
The weakness and the wickedness of luxury,
The negligence, the apathy, the evils
Of sensual sloth - produce ten thousand tyrants....
-Byron (1788-1824)
Let not thy will roar when thy power can but whisper.
:: Dr. Fuller ::
Peace is such a precious jewel that I would give anything for it but truth.
Matthew Henry (1662-1714)
Covenants without swords are but words.
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
Be charitable and indulgent to every one but thyself.
Joubert (1754-1824)
A philosopher is a man who doesn't know either, but he's
willing to put it into words that will keep you guessing.
Every man plays the fool once in his life, but to
marry is playing the fool all one's life long.
William Congreve (1670-1729)
When I get a little money, I buy books;
and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
- Erasmus -
You may either win your peace or buy it;
win it by resistance to evil;
buy it by compromise with evil.
John Ruskin (1819-1900)
Those people who are not governed by God will be ruled by Tyrants.
- William Penn -
Civilization is an exercise in masochism by most, in sadism by few.
- R. Geis
There is nothing that can't be made worse by telling.
-Terence -
Nothing is so difficult but that it may be found out by seeking.
Terence (B.C. 185-159)
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
:: R. W. Emerson: Journals, 1861-1865 ::
It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals,
for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for
the most part either an outsider, a servant, or a scapegoat.
:: Richard Hofstadter: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, 1963 ::
Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
- Honore de Balzac -
Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes so by chance.
-Shakespeare (1564-1616)
The fame of great men ought always to be estimated by the
means used to acquire it.
La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
He who knoweth the precepts by heart,
but faileth to practice them,
Is like unto one who lighteth a lamp
and then shutteth his eyes.
Nagarjuna (c. 100-200 A.D.)
A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest.
-Havelock Ellis
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
There is no point at which having arrived we can remain.
Pride will not act unless it be allowed that it can succeed;
and it will do nothing rather than not do it brilliantly.
Thomas Lynch (1749-1779)
The biggest mistake that you can make
is to believe that you are working for somebody else.
Love has power to give in a moment what toil can scarcely
reach in an age.
Goethe (1749-1832)
Never cut what you can untie.
Joubert (1754-1824)
The farther backward you can look,
the farther forward you are likely to see.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Isn't there any other part of the matzo you can eat?"
-Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962), on being served
matzo ball soup three meals in a row.
Of all the lunacies earth can boast,
The one that must please the devil most
Is pride reduced to the whimsical terms
Of causing the slugs to despise the worms.
-Robert Brough
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
-Shaw
He who cannot teach, teaches gym.
-Woody Allen
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital
is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed
if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior
of capital, and deserves the higher consideration.
- Lincoln - Message to Congress, 1861
The difference between capitalism and
socialism is that in capitalism, man exploits man,
while in socialism it's the other way around.
I hate careless flattery,
the kind that exhausts you in your effort to believe it.
-- Wilson Mizner --
Moderate riches will carry you...
if you have more, you must carry them.
History is a race between education and catastrophe. -H.G.
Wells
Random stomping seldom catches bugs.
This only is certain, that there is nothing certain, and
nothing more miserable and yet more arrogant than man.
-- Pliny --
I'm a lazy fellow. I work up to a certain point,
but beyond that point, I say the hell with it.
-Ronald Reagan
Two farmers each claimed to own a certain cow.
While one pulled on its head and the other pulled
on its tail, the cow was milked by a lawyer.
-Jewish parable
Rotten wood can not be carved - Confucius (Analects, Book 5, Ch. 9)
There is no liberty in wrongdoing. It chains and
fetters its victim as surely as effect follows cause.
- Joseph Cook -
Charnock's Law:
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
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