karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) (10/21/90)
This file and the one preceding it contain quotes, sayings, aphorisms, fortune cookies and so forth that I've collected over the last few months from net postings and signatures, books, magazines and such. Please forward any corrections in attributions, etc, to me. I also collect cookies so please send your fortune cookies to me, if you're pretty sure they didn't come from here to begin with. WARNING TO RELIGIOUS FANATICS AND NARROW/CLOSE-MINDED PEOPLE IN GENERAL: Exercise your right to choose not to read this and help me exercise the right of free speech for myself and everyone quoted herein by not reading this if you think you are likely to be offended by it and make trouble. Thank you. ---------------- cut here ------------------------------------ %% "Most of the dogmatic religions have exhibited a perverse talent for taking the wrong side on the most important concepts in the material universe, from the structure of the solar system to the origin of man." -- George Gaylord Simpson %% "We must either institute conventional forms of expression or else pretend that we have nothing to express." -- George Santayana, _Soliloquies In England_ %% Memory: what wonders it performs in preserving and storing up things gone by or rather, things that are! -- Plutarch %% "Free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty, I am free at last." -- Martin Luther King %% "The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule among the infidels if any Catholic, not gifted with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma what scientific scrutiny shows to be false." -- Saint Thomas Aquinas %% "Ignorance transcends architecture." -- James Gaskin %% "The C committee took something that wasn't broken, and tidied it up without breaking it." -- Dennis Ritchie (dmr@alice.UUCP), about ANSI C standard X3J11 %% "Committees do harm merely by existing." -- Freeman Dyson %% I think the best way I've heard this put is "Pascal gives you a water pistol filled with distilled water. C not only gives you a loaded .357, it points it at your head as a default. Why do you think Pascal is taught in school? And which would you rather have when there was a hungry bear in the area?" -- Jim Harkins (jharkins@sagpd1.UUCP) %% "So far from God, so close to the United States" -- Old Mexican proverb %% In science, right conduct consists of evaluating evidence honestly and according to the canons of scientific reasoning. To misrepresent the evidence and the criteria of judgement is not merely to provide misinformation; it is to set an example of dishonesty. Telling lies to naive and trusting young persons is bad. Doing so for the purpose of proselytizing is worse. -- biologist Michael T. Ghiselin %% Our educational systems may very well be on the threshold of a new and even gloomier Dark Age of the 20th and 21st centuries, unless the anti- intellectualism and confused thinking creationists produce is overcome." -- Reverend James Skehan %% In article <10796@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes: >I'm not going to be as kind to FICC in general as you have been. >Something is wrong there. These three semiliterate fanboys send dozens >of messages a day, fewer than half of which are about anything in >particular. I haven't had a kill file since Weiner left, but I've been >sorely tempted to use one to avoid seeing anything from ficc. However, in article <10767@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.uucp (Tim Maroney) writes: >Kill files are an expression of resentment by the unmemorable or >untalented against the memorable and talented. Your appearance in kill >files merely marks the fact that you have more than once tried to make >people think, when they really would rather not. It is an honor. Will the real Tim Maroney please stand up? -- Mike Van Pelt (mvp@v7fs1.UUCP) %% "'To the Workers of the world, I am sorry.' -- Karl Marx" -- Seen on the side of an East German factory %% "Faith" can be defined as "any man's hope that the human spirit is capable of understanding"; that anything actually matters in the larger universe; and that understanding anything could be important outside of our own selfish whims and desire to survive. ...and somehow, because it is important, understanding can go on without us, waiting only to be rediscovered by the future, or at worst, pissed away, in spite of all our prayers, and work, and suffering. Every expression of the human spirit is an act of faith. -- Ellyn Mustard (mustard@ficc.ferranti.comm) %% "We find that the sexual instinct, when disappointed and unappeased, frequently seeks and finds a substitute in religion." -- Baron Richard Von Krafft-Ebing %% "I don't see the problem. Satan is a Christian God. Satanists are a kind of off-beat christians. They don't need a group of their own -- they belong in some christian group, or talk.religion.misc at most." -- Thomas Gramstad (bfu@ifi.uio.no) %% "'Truth' never set anyone free. It is only *doubt* which will bring mental emancipation." --Anton LaVey %% "I don't even know what street Canada is on." -- Al Capone %% "This will be dynamically handled, possibly correctly, in 4.1." -- Dan Davison on streams configuration in SunOS 4.0 %% Resolved, that the 67th General Convention affirm the glorious ability of God to create in any manner, whether men understand it or not, and in this affirmation reject the limited insight and rigid dogmatism of the "Creationist" movement... -- from a 1982 resolution of the Episcopal Church %% "The effort of using machines to mimic the human mind has always struck me as rather silly. I would rather use them to mimic something better." --Edsger Dijkstra %% "Last night I watched the news and the end of the broadcast showed numerous changes favorable for the people (e.g., Rumania, Berlin Wall, etc.). My fiancee and I turned to each other and said ``No images from the US.''" -- Mike Shaff (shaff@elements.rpal.com) %% Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night, I can see paradise by the dashboard light. -- Meatloaf %% "The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle: they're on TV!" -- Homer Simpson %% "What a hell of a heaven it will be, when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!" -- Mark Twain %% "The bonds that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each others life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof." -- Richard Bach %% Gort, klaatu birada nikto. %% "If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him." -- Cardinal de Richelieu %% A host is a host from coast to coast And no one will talk to a host that's close Unless the host (that isn't close) is busy, hung or dead. -- David Lesher (wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu) %% "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly." -- G. K. Chesterton %% "Lobbyists threatening to withhold campaign contributions from lawmakers who don't support their special-interest causes could be violating bribery laws, Colorado House Speaker Bev Bledsoe warned yesterday." -- The Denver Post, 3 May 1990, p. 1B %% "Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed." -- Lazarus Long, from Robert Heinlein's _Time Enough For Love_ %% "The difference between the right word and a similar word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." -- Mark Twain %% "If we do not succeed, then we face the risk of failure." -- Dan Quayle, Vice-President of the United States %% "Laundry increases exponentially in the number of children." -- Miriam Robbins %% "Hawaii is a part of the United States that is an island and is right here." -- Dan Quayle, while in Hawaii %% "A killer stalks the halls of my high school. Innocent cheerleaders die by knife. Teachers lock the classroom doors. I must find him, or I'll flunk." -- From a poem by Peggy Nadramia %% "We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written." -- Robert Gould Shaw, abolitionist %% "Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal." -- Igor Stravinsky %% "Well, Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable, And Lightness has a call that's hard to hear." -- Indigo Girls %% "Once I was a tadpole, in the beginning of the begin; Then I was a toadfrog with my tail tucked in. Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree; Now I'm a professor with a Ph.D." --Anonymous creationist's view of evolution %% "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything." -- F. Jeff Stiles, Southern Baptist preacher %% "We all say so, so it must be true." -- the Bandar-log (monkey tribe), in Rudyard Kipling's _Jungle Book_ %% "Credo, quia absurdum est." [I believe, because it is absurd.] -- Tertullian, Roman lawyer, theologian and misogynist; man of questionable judgement %% JESUS SAVES, but Clones 'R' Us makes backups! -- William Lewis (wiml@blake.acs.washington.edu) %% "Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy." -- Joseph Campbell %% In article <2267@speedy.mcnc.org> spl@duck.ncsc.org (Steve Lamont) writes: >I hate "me too" postings Me too. -- Charleen Stoner, charleen@ADS.COM %% "As a rule software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications." -- Dave Parnas, Communications of the ACM (33, 6 June 1990 p.636) %% "The alternative to mutual trust, which is indeed a risky gamble, is the security of the police state." -- Alan Watts %% "And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the bible were used to beat plowshares into swords..." -- Alan Watts %% "Excuse me, Worker, I'll just be a nanosecond." -- a computer, from Firesign Theater's "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus" %% "No wife of *mine* is doing any dishes. That's what we had the kid for." -- from Deathlok comics #1 %% "The biggest growth industry in UNIX is promoting standards." -- Rikki Kirzner, Dataquest. %% "The world is coming to an end. Please log off." -- Bob Irwin (birwin@ficc.ferranti.com) %% "When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become president; I'm beginning to believe it." -- Clarence Darrow %% "Even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness!" -- from Fiddler On The Roof %% As we anarchists say: "There's no government like no government." -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy@druid) %% "I woke up this morning, and I realized that somebody had broken into my apartment, stolen all my things and replaced them with exact duplicates. I asked my roommate if he noticed anything, and he said, 'Who are you?'" "The other day I.... No, that wasn't me." "My friend Bob is a radio DJ, and when he walks under a bridge, you can't hear him talk." "My father built a quicksand box in our back yard. I was an only child, eventually." -- comedian Steven Wright %% "Just think, IBM and DEC in the same room, and we did it." -- Ken Thompson, quoted by Dennis Ritchie %% In article <649.2686213d@desire.wright.edu> nyoung@desire.wright.edu (Nils R. Bull Young) writes: | I consider this to be a form of censorship of my access to the | free exchange of information and thus a First Amendment question. ... In common terms you can write a book, and no one can stop you or tell you what to write, but no one else is required to publish the book, or to read it. You can raise specious issues in net postings, but no one is required to agree, to carry your postings, or even read them. If everyone on the net adds you to their KILL file, you have no recourse. If every site checks incoming postings and blows your stuff away, thet's their right. Don't worry, a few individuals may ignore you, but the bulk of the net will read every word, if only to disagree. -- Bill Davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM) %% "A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking." -- anon %% "A lecture is where the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either one." -- anon %% "Aging is bad, but consider the alternative." -- anon %% "Before engaging in a battle of wits, make sure your opponent is armed." -- East Texas Proverb %% "Bidet? Try washing your whole body." -- anon %% Baby carriage bumper sticker: ``POO-POO HAPPENS!'' -- Bob Irwin (birwin@ficc.ferranti.com) %% "Don't get married. Find a woman you hate and buy her a house." -- anon %% "Football combines the worst elements of America: Mass violence punctuated by committee meetings." -- Author Unknown %% "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." -- Reinhold Niebuhr %% "Good literature is about Love and War. Trash fiction is about Sex and Violence." -- Author Unknown %% "Gun control: Hitting what you aim at." -- Author Unknown %% "Happiness is not a destination. It's the trip." -- anon %% "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." -- Frank Lloyd Wright %% "I can handle reality in small doses, but as a lifestyle it's much too confining." -- Lilly Tomlin %% "I just couldn't convince Texans that Dukakis was Greek for Bubba." -- Lloyd Benson %% "I will defend to your death my right to my opinion." -- Author Unknown %% "If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?" -- Author Unknown %% "If life had a vomit meter, we'd be off the scale." -- Joe Bob Briggs %% "Indecision is the key to flexibility." -- Author Unknown %% "Inferiority complex: a conviction by a jury of your fears." -- anon %% "Is this bullshit or fertilizer?" -- Author Unknown %% "It isn't easy being a fat narcissist." -- Jackie Gleason %% "It's better to be silent and thought a fool than speak and remove all doubt." -- Abraham Lincoln %% "It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not." -- Andre Guide %% "Love is always having to say I'm sorry." -- Bob Irwin (birwin@ficc.ferranti.com) %% "Managing senior programmers is like herding cats." -- Dave Platt %% "Never try to catch two frogs with one hand." -- Chinese Proverb %% "Neurotic: Self-taut person." -- Author Unknown %% "No problem is so big that you can't run away from it." -- Snoopy %% "Only a mediocre man is always at his best." -- W. Somerset Maugham %% "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." -- Author Unknown %% "People don't form relationships, they take hostages." -- anon %% "Rage is a wind that blows out the candle of reason." -- Author Unknown %% "Roses are red, violets are blue; I'm schizophrenic and so am I." -- Author Unknown %% "Sarcasm: barbed ire." -- Author Unknown %% "Ships don't come in, they're built." -- anon %% "Some would sooner die than think. In fact, they often do." -- Bertrand Russell %% "State run lotteries: think of them as tax breaks for the intelligent." -- Evan Leibovitch %% "They communicated by tap-dancing and farting." -- _Breakfast_of_Champions_ %% "The only corporate defense against rationality is bureaucracy." -- anon %% "The shortest distance between two points is under construction." -- Noelie Altito %% They don't make nostalgia like they used to. %% Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. %% "Waiter, there's no fly in my soup!" -- Kermit the frog %% What you see is rarely what you get. %% When you stay on the tracks, ignoring the facts, you can't blame the wreck on the train. -- from the song, "You Can't Blame . . " %% "You know how Einstein got bad grades as a kid? Well, MINE are even WORSE!" -- Calvin %% "Oh boy, virtual memory! Now I'm gonna make myself a REALLY BIG ram disk!" -- lennox@shire.hw.stratus.com %% "Decaffeinated coffee? Kinda like kissing your sister." -- Bob Irwin (birwin@ficc.ferranti.com) %% "The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with an idea." -- _The Wizardry Compiled_ by Rick Cook %% Lord FINCHLEY tried to mend the Electric Light Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right! It is the business of the wealthy man To give employment to the artisan. -- H. Belloc %% "I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. ... If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man." -- Henry David Thoreau %% "Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul." -- Mark Twain %% "From an operating system research point of view, Unix is -- if not dead -- certainly old stuff, and it's clear that people should be looking beyond it." -- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix, Usenix keynote speech from Summer 1990 [and no, that doesn't mean to VMS or MS-DOS -cookie ed.] %% "Standards committees are not the best ways to create a standard. Standards meetings and standards themselves are horribly political things. One thing that people forget is that many standards are made by rather small groups of people. A few good people can really save the day, and a few idiots can really make it miserable for years to come." -- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix %% In his '90 Usenix presentation, Dennis Ritchie reminded the audience that Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that X-windows was brain-dead and would soon die. "He was half-right. Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks." -- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of Unix, from an article in Unix Today %% This passage was written by a London reporter on the eve of the England-West Germany Soccer World Cup final of 1966... "If, on the morrow, the Germans defeat us at our national sport, be not dismayed. For twice in this century, we've defeated them at theirs." -- From the San Jose Mercury News, 7 July 1990 %% "Poetry, like chastity, can be carried to far." -- Mark Twain %% I REALLY like Bugs Bunny. I think I just found out why. A local weekly (Metro) had an article on the wascally wabbit's 50th birthday party this year, and they had the following quote about the animation studio where Bugs Bunny cartoons were created... "It's not every workplace that allows you to have an autographed picture of Christ on the wall." -- Scott Lieberman %% "All Marxists, basically, are reactionaries, yearning for the Oriental despotisms of pre-Hellenic times, the neolithic culture that preceded the rise of self-consciousness and egoism." -- Robert Anton Wilson, writing as "Justin Case". %% "Never put off until run time what you can do at compile time." -- David Gries, in "Compiler Construction for Digital Computers", circa 1969. %% "...cops and reporters are much alike. Both are absolutely dedicated to doing the job at hand, regardless of obstacles. And both, deep down, really believe the rules don't apply to them". -- Jim Barlow, Houston Chronicle %% "...the American dream, in recent years the object of much denigration even within our own borders, turns out to have been the world's dream, as well." -- Louis Rukeyser on events in Eastern Europe %% Sometimes you get the elevator and sometimes you get the shaft. %% "Of course the US Constitution isn't perfect; but it's a lot better than what we have now." -- Eric Sheppard (ce1zzes@prism.gatech.EDU) %% "If you get somebody to give you a dollar, they'll vote for you for the rest of their lives." -- Hugh Parmer, Democratic candidate for the 1990 U.S. Senate, from Texas %% Ranger is very! %% Crystals are the subject of international fascination. From crystal balls to lasers, they have been prized in healing and science throughout the centuries. Now Randall and Vicki Baer explore completely new horizons of crystal-based knowledge. Building on the foundation of their popularly acclaimed book, _Windows of Light_, the Baers explore techniques, tools, and technologies for personal and planetary transformation. They detail advanced techniques for using crystals in such areas as healing, stress management, mind-center activation, and telethought communication, and they demonstrate the unification of the spiritual and the scientific in a light-based sacred science. The Baers explore visions of a new age based on higher planes of reality and ultra-advanced crystal technologies. An essential reference, _The Crystal Connection_ is a landmark achievement in the field of crystal-based sacred science. Randall and Vicki Baer are internationally known authorities in the areas of crystals, sacred science, and spiritual teachings. Widely sought as speakers, they are codirectors of the Starcrest Academy of Interdimensional Law and Science, a project dedicated to worldwide seminars and advanced educational programs in the sacred sciences. They are the authors of _Windows of Light: Quartz Crystals and Self-Transformation_, considered the best work on the subject to date. -- from the back cover of _The Crystal Connection_, Harper and Row, ISBN 0-06-250033-3 %% Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art. -- H. L. Mencken [Having the facts is hard. --ed] %% >Optimisation is not free. Gratuitous optimisation can be translated directly >into missing features or later release dates. -- Peter da Silva (peter@ficc.ferranti.com) ...and more bugs. ...and performance optimization without thoughtful performance testing is usually misdirected and, as above, at best does nothing and at worse delays/worsens the product and drives up life-cycle costs. -- your humble cookie editor %% The hotel [in Kiev] checked us in very quickly. Unlike the one in Moscow, the door guard smiled, did not check our passes and did not wear a gun. The hotel serves excellent country food for lunch, including dumpling soup, pork and homemade ice cream. The waitress is friendly. Going from Moscow to Kiev is like going from New York to Texas. -- T. J. Rodgers, "High tech in the Ukraine", E. E. Times, 8/13/90, p. 16 %% "Do you know that doing your best is not good enough? First you must know what to do." -- manufacturing-quality theorist W. Edwards Deming %% "I ... reject the argument put forth by many fundamentalists that science has nothing to do with religion because God is not among the things making up the universe in which we live. Surely if a necessity for a god-concept in the universe ever turns up, that necessity will become evident to the scientist." -- physicist Ralph Alpher, "Theology of the Big Bang," Religious Humanism, Vol. XVII, No. 1 (Winter 1983), pg. 12 %% Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war? -- William A. Turnbow %% First learn computer science and all the theory. Next develop a programming style. Then forget all that and just hack. -- George Carrette [1990] %% "How do I explain to clients that society believes buying a rock (of cocaine) is three or four times as bad as raping a woman?" -- Robert Jakovitch, Broward [FL] Assistant Public Defender [from AP story 12 July 1990] %% "Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." -- Edmund Burke %% "No matter what temptation there is after an accident to be economical with the truth when rationalising it with hindsight, please remember it would be unforgivable if, by not revealing the facts or the complete truth, a similar incident became an unavoidable accident." -- Captain Colin Seaman, British Aerospace's head of safety %% "The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets....The press in its historical connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion." -- Lowell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452 (1938), quoted by Mike Godwin in comp.org.eff.talk %% Moreover, freedom of the press includes "the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph as much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods." Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 704 (1972). -- Supreme Court decision quoted by Mike Godwin in comp.org.eff.talk %% ...Tucker v. Texas, 326 U.S. 517 (1946), in which a statute punishing door-to-door distribution of literature was held invalid as an abridgement of freedom of the press. -- Supreme Court decision quoted by Mike Godwin in comp.org.eff.talk %% "We need a new cosmology. New Gods. New Sacraments. Another drink." -- Patti Smith %% Collins's Law: If you can't make a mistake, you can't make anything. Corollaries ("Rabinovitch's Rules of Sane Dialogue"): 1. Everybody who matters is stupid now and then. 2. If I'm being stupid, that's my problem. 3. If my being stupid makes you stupid, that's your problem. 4. If you think you're never stupid, boy are you stupid! %% "Occupational regulation has served to limit consumer choice, raise consumer costs, increase practitioner income, limit practitioner mobility, deprive the poor of adequate service, and restrict job opportunities for minorities -- all without a demonstrated improvement in quality or safety." ... "Critics of this hypothesis believe to the contrary, however, that regulators' and professional groups' self-interest has been and still is the primary motivator of regulatory legislation. And indeed the evidence shows that consumers rarely engage in campaigns to license occupations. If the purpose of licensing were to improve the quality of service, one would expect consumers, who might be the prime beneficiaries, to promote licensure, but licensing is systematically promoted by practitioners ..." The Rule of Experts - Occupational Licensing in America. By S. David Young. Cato Institute, 1987. ISBN 0-932790-62-3 (paper). 99 pages. (Quoted by Tony Harminc <TONY@vm1.mcgill.ca> in comp.risks) %% ...henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) wrote: >The trouble is that getdate() is relatively >costly and Geoff is reluctant to run it on every single article ...and then all sorts of people started coming up with rube goldberg schemes to avoid parsing dates. However, it turns out that even using C news's getdate (which is 10% slower than the B news version), parsing the dates in every article in a full Usenet feed takes about five Sun 3 CPU seconds per day. And if you were to use the lex-based date parser included in the MH distribution, you could get it down below a second per day, although it hardly seems worth the (minimal) effort. -- Jef Poskanzer (jef@well.sf.ca.us) %% "Theater, art, literature, cinema... must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world..." -- Adolf Hitler %% Better to kill time than have it kill you. -- karl %% "Your development gets rotten if you take too long to market it." --- Hitoshi Aoike, JVC Ltd., Tokyo %% "Every opportunity we have to run our R&D scientists and engineers against our customers, we do it." -- George Heilmeier, Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas %% "R&D is not something that can be useful alone... R&D is part of a product- making process." -- Ralph E. Gomory, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, New York City %% "The better technology does not always sell better, even if it is first." -- William J. Spencer, Xerox Corporation %% "You look at your needs, at your competitors, at what you can afford, and you cut your cloth accordingly." -- Ian Ross, AT&T Bell Laboratories %% "Every year a few research results pay the freight for all the rest." -- Robert A. Frosch, General Motors %% The meek will inherit the earth ... in pine boxes six feet long by ... -- -- uunet!sugar!karl -- Usenet access: (713) 438-5018