Rand's Quotations

"Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering." -- Tom Stoppard

"Television: chewing gum for the eyes." -- Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)

"Morality is the weakness of the mind." -- Arthur Rimbaud

"New York: A third-rate Babylon." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Journalism justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarist." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Advertising is legalized lying." -- H.G. Wells (1885-1946)

"If the world were a logical place, men would ride sidesaddle." -- Rita Mae Brown

"Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill all and you are a God." -- Jean Rostand

"If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing." -- Kinsgley Amis

"Miami Beach is where neon goes to die." -- Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)

"The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums." -- Peter De Vries

"Unless you hate your father and mother and wife and brothers and sisters and, yes, even your own life, you can't be my disciple." -- Jesus Christ (0?-32?) if St. Luke is to be believed" -- see Luke 14:26

"The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Man is a dog's idea of what God should be." -- Holbrook Jackson

"We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"What's reality anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch. --- Lily Tomlin ---

"Neither liberty nor property is safe while the legislature is in session."

"Red is grey and yellow white. We decide which is right and which is an illusion." -- Moody Blues, "Tuesday Afternoon---

"What's reality anyway? Nothing but a collective hunch. WRITTEN by Jane Wagner, only spoken by Lily Tomlin.

"Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It has no mother." -- Germaine Greer

"Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence." -- Jules Feiffer

"Let's face it...most relationships you have in life don't work out." -- Alex Bennett

"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." -- Bernard Berenson (1865-1959)

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Anybody can be good in the country. There are no temptations there." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"I have no relish for the country; it is a kind of healthy grave." -- Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

"Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children." -- Sam Levenson (1911-1980)

"The history of saints is mainly the history of insane people." -- Benito Mussolini (1883-1945)

"I don't really trust a sane person." -- Pro football lineman Lyle Alzado

"Whis is it, is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's?" -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal." -- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

"Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted." -- Fred Allen

"The golden rule is that there are no golden rules." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends" -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These and other suchlike considerations, always have, and always will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things, who has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared." -- Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)

"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming" Wernher von Braun commenting on bureaucracy

"If you torture data long enough, it will tell you anything you want !" -- unknown

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society." -- Miss Manners (Judith Martin)

"Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question." -- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

"What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets." -- Andre Malraux

"Man is more ape than many of the apes." -- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience most of them are trash." -- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance." -- Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939)

"Progress might have been all right once but it has gone on too long." -- Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

"As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with irrational fear of life become publishers." -- Cyril Connolly

"The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots." -- Rebecca West

"Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort." -- Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)

"How can one conceive of a one party system in a country that has over 200 varieties of cheese." -- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat." -- Fran Lebowitz

"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

"The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level." -- Norman Mailer

"God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place." -- J.D. McCoughey

"Men have become fools with their tools" -- Thomas Elisha Stewart (1963-)

"Men have become the tools of their tools" -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation to which the filing system has been lost?" -- Quentin Crisp

"For flavor, instant sex will never supercede the stuff you have to peel and cook." -- Quentin Crisp

"Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level." -- Quentin Crisp

"France is the only country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper." -- Billy Wilder

"In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"France was a long despotism tempered by epigrams." -- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

"If my film makes one more person miserable, I've done my job." -- Woody Allen

"The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder." -- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death." -- Miyamoto Musashi, 1645

"Clergyman, n. -- A man who undertakes the management of our spiritual" -- affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Lawers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished." -- Jeremy Bentham

"A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats." -- Benjamin Franklin

"Whatever their other contributions to our society, lawyers could be an important source of protein." -- Guindon cartoon caption

"If you laid all of the lawyers in the world, end to end, on the equator ---- It would be a good idea to just leave them there." -- Unknown

"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." -- George Orwell (1903-1950)

"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"I have seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." -- Roy Baty, Nexus6, N6MAA10816, Combat

"One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of youth, is that of Not Going." -- J.B. Priestley (1894-1984)

"When I was young there was no respect for the young, and now that I am old there is no respect for the old. I missed out coming and going." -- J.B. Priestley (1894-1984)

"I am not young enough to know everything." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party when the masks are dropped." -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

"Always forgive your enemies -- nothing annoys them so much." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes." -- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

"Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo." -- H.G. Wells (1885-1946)

"Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food." -- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

"I hate careless flattery, the kind that exhausts you in your effort to believe it." -- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery." -- Jack Paar

"I'm a scientist; nothing shocks me." -- Indiana Jones

"When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"One murder makes a villain, millions a hero." -- Beilby Porteus (1731-1808)" -- Death, A Poem

"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." -- Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)" -- Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts -- 1827

"Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)" -- A Day at the Races -- 1936

"Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"Fork, n. An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he's supposed to be doing at that moment." -- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

"It is impossible to enjoy idling unless there is plenty of work to do." -- Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)

"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you're still a rat." -- Jane Wagner/Lily Tomlin

"Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?" -- Charlie McCarthy (Edgar Bergen, 1903-1978)

"Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"A cult is a religion with no political power" -- Tom Wolfe

"The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled." -- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

"There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"I find women with well developed flesh very attractive. The scrawny little things doing commercials on my television set are slightly repulsive" -- like famine victims." -- Dana Hatch

"My schoolmates would make love to anything that moved, but I never saw any reason to limit myself." -- Emo Philips

"A promiscuous person is someone who is getting more sex than you are." -- Victor Lownes

"I caused my husband's heart attack. In the middle of lovemaking I took the paper bag off my head. He dropped the Polaroid and keeled over and so did the hooker. It would have taken me half an hour to untie myself and call the paramedics, but fortunately the Great Dane could dial." -- Joan Rivers

"Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night." -- Woody Allen

"Jesus was a crackpot." -- Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh -- San Francisco Chronicle 12/17/85

"Let Bhagwans be Bhagwans" -- Headline considered by the Washington Post, according to William Safire in his 12/8/85 column

"Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his doctrine." -- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) "Thus Spake Zarathustra"

"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal." -- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) "What is Religion"

"I'm not going to climb into the ring with Tolstoy." -- Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) from a letter

"Hemingway was a jerk." -- Harold Robbins as quoted in Leslie Halliwell's The Filmgoer's Companion, 1984

"Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it." -- Dave Barry

"Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors who, when their turn comes, will manufacture professors." -- Simone Weil

"When I hear the word "culture" I reach for my gun." -- Hans Johst (c. 1939)

"It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear." -- Dick Cavett

"Average Iraqi: Has visited the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates, cradle of the ancient civilization founded by his ancestors.

"College football would be more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students -- there would be a great increase in broken arms, legs and necks." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself." -- Rita Mae Brown Critics are like pigs at the pastry cart." -- John Updike

"Nothing fails like success." -- Gerald Nachman

"Success and failure are equally disastrous." -- Tennessee Williams

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." -- Bill Cosby

"Everyone who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"So little time, so little to do." -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

"Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned." -- Dick Gregory

"A pessimist is a person who has to listen to too many optimists." -- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

"We are given children to test us and make us more spiritual." -- George F. Will

"It could probably be show by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Courage is the fear of being thought a coward." -- Horace Smith

"What is virtue but the trades unionism of the married." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell." -- Philip Sheridan

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable." -- Woody Allen

"Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you and education." -- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"When in doubt, duck." -- Malcolm Forbes

"Our best work is done when it needs to be." -- F. Phelps

"Economists are people who work with numbers but who don't have the personality to be accountants." -- Unknown An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935) There is no free lunch." -- Milton Friedman

"A husband is what's left of the lover once the nerve has been extracted." -- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

"Mahatma Gandi was what wives wish their husbands were: thin, tan and moral." -- Unknown

"There is so little difference between husbands you might as well keep the first. Adela Rogers St. Johns

"A priest asked: What is Fate, Master? And he answered: It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence. It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs. It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness. And that is Fate? said the priest. Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master. That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was too." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

"Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"If you want to read about love and marriage, you have to buy two separate books." -- Alan King

"Marriage is based on the theory that when man discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste he should at once throw up his job and go work in the brewery." -- George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)

"Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even Science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off _in medias res_. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out."

-George Eliot (1819-1880)" -- from _Daniel Deronda_

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough." -- Mario Andretti

"The cowards never start and the weak die along the way." -- Kit Carson

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) Sin is geographical." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves." -- J.B. Priestley Philanthropy is the refuge of rich people who wish to annoy their fellow creatures." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news." -- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

"A small, 14-seat plane is circling for a landing in Atlanta. It's totally fogged in, zero visibility, and suddenly there's a small electrical fire in the cockpit which disables all of the instruments and the radio. The pilot continues circling, totally lost, when suddenly he finds himself flying next to a tall office building.

"He rolls down the window (this particular airplane happens to have roll-down windows) and yells to a person inside the building, "Where are we?"

"The person responds "In an airplane!"

"The pilot then banks sharply to the right, circles twice, and makes a perfect landing at Atlanta International.

"As the passengers emerge, shaken but unhurt, one of them says to the pilot, "I'm certainly glad you were able to land safely, but I don't understand how the response you got was any use."

"Simple," responded the pilot. "I got an answer that was completely accurate and totally irrelevant to my problem, so I knew it had to be the IBM building."

"Man is a hating rather than a loving animal." -- Rebecca West

"The people are that part of the state that does now know what it wants." -- Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel

"The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history." -- Joseph Conrad

"America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words." -- Fran Lebowitz

"My work is done, why wait?" -- Suicide note left by Kodak founder George Eastman (1854-1932)

"All right, then, I'll say it: Dante makes me sick." -- Last words of Spanish playwright Lope de Vega on being" -- assured on his deathbed that the end was very near

"I don't feel good." -- Last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." -- Last words of Pancho Villa (1877?-1923)

"Go away. I'm all right." -- Last words of H.G. Wells (1885-1946)

"Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult." -- Actor Edmund Gwenn (1875-1959) on his deathbed

"Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings." -- Laurence J. Peter

"Psychiatry is the care of the id by the odd." -- Unknown

"Psychoanalysis is that mental illnes for which it regards itself a therapy." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car." -- Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980)

"No statue has ever been put up to a critic." -- Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)

"Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs." -- Christopher Hampton

"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how its done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." -- Brendan Behan

"My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked." -- Peter Stack in a movie review" -- in the San Francisco Chronicle-Jan 2, 1983

"Television is democracy at its ugliest." -- Paddy Chayefsky (1923-1982)

"Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms." -- Alan Corenk

"The cable TV sex channels don't expand our horizons, don't make us better people, and don't come in clearly enough." -- Bill Maher

"Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one." -- A.J. Liebling Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) It took me twenty years of studied self-restraint, aided by the natural decay of my faculties, to make myself dull enough to be accepted as a serious person by the British public." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) (in a letter to H.G. Wells)

"I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact they do so." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"All movements go too far." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Optimism is the content of small men in high places." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

"Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

"Writers aren't exactly people...they're a whole lot of people trying to be one person." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

"The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman." -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

"How could I lose to such an idiot?" -- A shout from chess grandmaster" -- Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

"I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty." -- Nancy Reagan

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines." -- Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but a supplier based engineer can only advise the product designer to specify a heavier texture." -- Mick Lloyd Kerman (MT 1055-9+)

"How do you like that guy? Can't run six balls and he's President of the United States." -- Pool hustler Johnny Irish on Nixon

"Nixon is a shifty-eyed goddamn liar....He's one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides." -- Harry S Truman (1884-1972) I don't give a sh*t about the Italian lira." -- President Richard M. Nixon on being asked by" -- H.R. Haldeman if he wanted to hear a report" -- on the decline of the Italian lira

"I would have made a good Pope." -- Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

"Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain" -- Lily Tomlin

"If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn't hesitate to do so." -- Andre Gide (1876-1951) Studying literature at Harvard is like learning about women at the Mayo Clinic." -- Roy Blount, Jr.

"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have a paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny." -- Guy Davenport

"Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel." -- Gore Vidal

"Puritanism...helps us enjoy our misery while we are inflicting it on others." -- Marcel Ophuls

"A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain." -- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"Practice freedom of religion. Set fire to the church of your choice." -- National Lampoon, _Radio Dinner_, 1972

"Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Nixon and the White House." -- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) in 1960" -- As given in A. Schlesinger Jr's, "A Thousand Days" I'm not sure I've even got the brains to be President." -- Barry Goldwater in 1964 Gerry Ford is a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off." -- Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) Sometimes when I look at my children I say to myself, "Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin." -- Lillian Carter, mother of Jimmy and Billy The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I want the job." -- Ronald Reagan in 1973 Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan -- a Mount Rushmore of incompetence." -- David Steinberg

"I see the world in very fluid, contradictory, emerging, interconnected terms, and with that kind of circuitry I just don't feel the need to say what is going to happen or will not happen." -- California Govenor Jerry Brown" -- San Francisco Examiner, Oct 12, 1980

"Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them back to that stalemate only because that our retaliatory power, our seconds, or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive that they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off." -- Ronald Reagan when asked if nuclear" -- war could be limited to tactical weapons." -- Verbatim transcript from a press conference.

"Things have never been more like the way they are today in history." -- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)

"Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find out the right thing to do. Now, it is not only necessary to do the right thing, but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is what is the right thing to do and what is the right way to do it. That is the problem. But this economy of ours is not so simple that it obeys to the opinion of bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual, even to the President. This is an economy that is made up of 173 million people and it reflects their desires, they're ready to buy, they're to spend, it is a thing that is too complex and too big to be affected adversely or advantageously just by a few words or any particular -- say a little this and that, or even a panacea so alleged." -- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) in response" -- to the question: "Has government been lacking" -- in courage and boldness in facing up to the recession?" -- Verbatim transcript from a press conference.

"Almost all reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for." -- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)

"Romance should never begin with sentiment. It should begin with science and end with a settlement." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers." -- Gioacchino Rosini

"Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers." -- Socrates (470-399 BC)

"Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable." -- Plato (427?-348? BC)

"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims." -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"Children are guilty of unpardonable rudeness when they spit in the face of a companion; neither are they excusable who spit from windows or on walls or furniture." -- St. John Baptist de La Salle" -- The Rules of Christian Manners and Civility (c. 1695)

"Until a child is one year old it is incapable of sin." -- The Talmud (c. 200)

"A statesman is a successful politician who is dead." -- Thomas B. Reed

"All religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few." -- Stendhal

"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it." -- Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) There are times when you have to choose between being a human and having good taste." -- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) Bibo, ergo sum. -- I drink, therefore I am" -- Fredirect Toyou Cogito ergo spud. -- I think, therefore I yam" -- Graffito reported by Herb Caen" -- San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 1980

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?" -- Jean Kerr

"Most religions do not make men better, only warier." -- Elias Canetti

"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"What a beautiful fix we are in now; peace has been declared." -- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) after the Treaty of Amiens, 1802 Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." -- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I never vote for anyone; I always vote against." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." -- Unknown

"Vote early and vote often." -- Al Capone (1899-1947)

"An honest election, under democracy, is an act of innocence which does not take place more than once in the history of a given nation." -- (Jose Marie Gil Robles; speech in Madrid, 1933)

"Voting for the right is doing nothing for it." -- (H.D. Thoreau, "An Essay on Civil Disobedience," 1849.

"Politics: "The conduct of public affairs for private advantage." -- (Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary," 1906)

"">From the California Civil Code, "Object of a Contract":

"#1597. Everything is deemed possible except that which is impossible in the nature of things.

" >From the California Civil Code, "Maxims of Jurisprudence":

"#3528. The law respects form less than substance.

"#3529. That which ought to have been done is to be regarded as done.

"#3530. That which does not appear to exist is to be regarded as if it did not exist.

"#3532. The law neither does nor requires idle acts.

"#3533. The law disregards trifles.

"#3535. Contemporaneous exposition is in general the best.

"#3537. Superfluity does not vitiate.

"#3546. Things happen according to the ordinary course of nature and the ordinary habits of life.

"#3547. A thing continues to exist as long as is usual with things of that nature.

"Being in politics is like being a football coach; you have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important." -- Eugene McCarthy

"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." -- Plato (427?-347 BC)

"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Radio is a bag of mediocrity where little men with carbon minds wallow in sluice of their own making." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956) Television is a medium because anything well done is rare." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"Do we really deserve top billing?" -- Fred Allen (1894-1956) to Henry Morgan" -- at a meeting of the National Conference" -- of Christians and Jews

"What's on your mind, if you will allow the overstatement." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security." -- Thomas Paine in his "The Rights of Man," (1791):

"The less government we have the better." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government..." -- Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence)" -- [bracketed comment added for clarity] "...a revolution of government is the strongest proof that can be given by a people of their virtue and good sense." -- John Adams (Diary, 1786) "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson (Motto on his seal) "A little rebellion now and then...is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government." -- Thomas Jefferson (Letter to James Madison, 1787)

"I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death." -- Patrick Henry (Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775) Dictatorship is without a doubt the most satisfying form of government...as long as I'm the dictator." -- Phil Stromer 11/9/90-

"Never argue with a fool. Listeners can't tell which is which." -- Unknown

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant." -- Charles De Gaulle (1890-1970)

"Look for the ridiculous in everything and you find it." -- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

"Religion is the fashionable substitute for belief." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored." -- Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)

"Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too." -- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

"I have seen the hippopotamus, both asleep and awake; and I can assure you that, awake or asleep, he is the ugliest of the works of God." -- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), 1850

"Bad spellers of the world, untie!" -- Grafitto

"Fix this sentence: He put the horse before the cart." -- Stephen Price

"I can't seem to bring myself to say, "Well, I guess I'll be toddling along." It isn't that I can't toddle. It's that I can't guess I'll toddle." -- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

"A language is a dialect with an army and a navy." -- Max Weinreich (1894-1969)

"Phreblitt, n. a word used to describe someone in immediate danger of" -- losing his/her life in a violent, painful manner that will" -- immensely satisfy those who witness the deed. e.g. Timothy" -- Miller is a phreblitt."

"In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact." -- Marlene Dietrich

"When you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both, it's health. If everything is simply jake, then you're frightened of death." -- J.P. Donleavy

"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." -- Susan Ertz

"This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life, you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go." -- Unknown

"Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews." -- John Updike

"Life is what happens while you are making other plans." -- John Lennon (1940-1980)

"The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative." -- Edward Abbey (Vox Clamans in Deserto)

"In our civilization, and under our Republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office." -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

"To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody." -- Quentin Crisp

"The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream: it is a most depressing and humiliating reality." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time." -- George Orwell (1903-1950)

"What a time! What a civilization!" -- Cicero (106-43 BC)

"Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!" -- Catullus (87?-54? BC)

"How little you know about the age you live in if you think that honey is sweeter than cash in hand." -- Ovid (43? BC -- AD 18)

"It is sometimes expedient to forget who we are." -- Publilius Syrus (c. 42 BC)

"There is no glory in otustripping donkeys." -- Martial (40-102) The school of hard knocks is an accelerated curriculum." -- Menander (342? -- 292? BC) There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it." -- Cicero (106-43 BC) A man with his belly full of the classics is an enemy of the human race." -- Henery Miller (1891-1980)" -- Tropic of Cancer 1934

"(Of Jesus): "A parish demogogue." -- Shelley (Queen Mab) He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool." -- Albert Camus (1913-1960) A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices." -- William James (1842-1910)

"Let a short Act of Parliament be passed, placing all street musicians outside the protection of the law, so that any citizen may assail them with stones, sticks, knives, pistols, or bombs without incurring any penalties." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) When two dogs fight for a bone, and the third runs off with it, there's a lawyer among the dogs." -- German proberb A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce." -- Don Quinn When it is a question of money, everyone is of the same religion." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"the risk of boring everyone to tears, I thought I'd post an insightful passage on the psychology of business meetings from the book, "The Great Crash", by John Kenneth Galbraith. He wrote the book in '54, before he became famous as one of JFK's "best and brightest". The context is, "what Hoover was doing after the market crashed."

"...he was conducting one of the least understood rites in American life. This is the rite of the meeting which is called not to do business, but to do no business. It is a rite which is still much practiced in our (1950s) time."

"Men meet together for many reasons in the course of business. They need to instruct or persuade each other. They must agree on a course of action. They find thinking in public more productive or less painful than thinking in private. But there are at least as many reasons for meetings to transact no business. Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to convoke assemblages not because there is busi- ness to be done, but because it is necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than a subsitute for action. They are widely regarded as action."

"The fact that no business is transacted at a no-business meeting is normally not a serious cause for embarrassment to those attending. Numerous formulas have been devised to prevent discomfort. Thus scholars, who are great devotees of the no-business meeting, rely heavily on the exchange-of-ideas justification. To them, the exchange of ideas is, an absolute good. Any meeting at which ideas are exchanged is, therefore, useful. This justification is ironclad. It is very hard to have a meeting of which it can be said that no ideas were exchanged." (Note -- Galbreath was a professor of economics at Dart- mouth at the time.)

"Salesmen and sales executive, who are important practitioners of the no-business meeting, commonly have a different justification, and one that has strong spiritual overtones. Out of the warmth of comradeship, the interplay of personalities, the stimulation of alcohol, and the inspiration of oratory comes a compulsive rededica- tion to the daily task. "

"The no-business meetings of the great business executives depend, for their il- lusion of importance, on something quite different. Not the exchange of ideas or spiritual rewards of comradeship, but a solemn sense of assembled power gives significance to this assemblage. Even though nothing of importance is said or done, men of importance cannot meet without the occasion seeming important."

" I thought this was choice.

"A two-pound turkey and a fifty-pound cranberry -- that's Thanksgiving dinner at Three-Mile Island." -- Johnny Carson

"Blow in it's ear." -- Johnny Carson on the best way to thaw a frozen turkey

"Cogito ergo spud. -- I think, therefore I yam" -- Graffito reported by Herb Caen" -- San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 1980

"On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment -- halftime." -- Unknown

"Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors." -- La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

"">From macd@EBay Wed Nov 21 11:57:51 1990

"The Pilgrim Fathers landed on the shores of America and fell upon their knees. Then they fell upon the aborigines." -- (Anon.)

"A ship in harbor is safe--- but that is not what ships are for." -- John A. Shedd

"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it." -- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

"If I traveled to the end of the rainbow As Dame Fortune did intend, Murphy would be there to tell me The pot's at the other end." -- Bert Whitney

"Argue for your limitations and sure enough, they're yours." -- Richard Bach

"The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun." -- P.G. Wodehouse

"THE JOYS OF SCIENCE

"The compiler of these gems is Ben Stewart, a retired elementary school science teacher, who found each of these answers in the essays, tests, and discussions he conducted over the years with fifth- and sixth-graders.

"Humidity is the experience of looking for water and finding air."

"Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let them know we know they're there."

"Some oxygen molecules help fires burn while others help make water, so sometimes it's brother against brother."

"Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun. But I have never been able to make out the numbers."

"We say the cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things people forget to put the top on."

"The main value of tornadoes is yet to be discovered."

"To most people solutions mean finding the answers. But to chemists solutions are things that are still all mixed up."

"When the fuel in a rocket starts burning gasses rush out the nozzle. So would anybody."

"I am not sure how clouds get formed. But the clouds know how and that is the important thing."

"When a wave rolls over on itself it's called a breaker. Of just about anything I guess."

"Thunder is a rich source of loudness."

"Question: In what ways are we dependent on the sun? Answer: We can always depend on the sun for sunburns and tidal waves."

"Wind is like the air, only pushier."

"Hard mud is called shale. Soft mud is called gooey."

"You can listen to thunder after lightning and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don't hear it you got hit, so never mind."

"When people run around and around in circles we say they are crazy. When planets do it we say they are orbiting."

"Rainbows are just to look at not really to understand."

"South America has cold summers and warm winters, but somehow they still manage"

"Most books say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime."

"Isotherms and Isobars are even more important than their names sound."

"A vibration is a motion that cannot make up it's mind which way it wants to go

"Many dead animals of the past changed to fossils while others preferred to be oil."

"Genetics explain why you look like your father and if you don't why you should"

"Although Edison was once considered a great inventor, we now know of many inventions he overlooked."

"Talc is found in rocks and on babies."

"Our mother Earth has small poles and a large equator because of the tremendous speed as she hurdles through space. Since we are along for the ride, we also get to be flat at our poles and rounded at our equators."

"A planet cannot have an axis until it can get a line to run through it."

"Everybody leans to the sun in the summer and away in winter. We are all a little tipsy that way."

"We get our temperature three different ways. Either farenheit, celcius or centipede."

"Question: In free fall, how long would it take to reach the ground from a height of 1000 feet? Answer: I have never performed this experiment."

"Love is a dirty trick played on us to achieve the continuation of the species." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

"We have long passed the Victorian era, when asterisks were followed after a certain interval by a baby." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

"Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped." -- Sam Levenson (1911-1980)

"It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion." -- From The Last Goon Show of All

" -- RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHIES OF THE WORLD EXPLAINED

"Taoism: Shit Happens.

"Confucianism: Confucius say, "Shit Happens".

"Buddhism: If sh*t happens, it is not really Shit.

"Zen Buddhism: What is the sound of Shit Happening?

"Hinduism: This Shit has Happened before.

"Islam: If Shit Happens it is the will of Allah.

"Protestantism: Let Shit Happen to someone else.

"Catholicism: If Shit Happens you deserve it.

"Judaism: Why does Shit always Happen to us?

"New Age: Love your Shit, let it Happen!

" Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Life is a God-damned, stinking, treacherous game and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand are bastards." -- Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945)" -- quoting an unnamed newspaper editor

"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)

"Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge." -- Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

"Men and women, women and men. It will never work." -- Erica Jong

"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry." -- Gloria Steinem

"Woman was God's second mistake." -- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." -- Timothy Leary

"Man is the only animal that blushes" -- or needs to." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov

"Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults." -- Thomas Szasz

"I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say." -- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

"The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman nor an Empire." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"What we choose to call sanity is a big house where the mad have no mothers." -- (The Clown Prince of Darkness, correspondence, 1988)

"Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least." -- Robert Byrne

"Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation." -- Henry Kissinger

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) J.P Morgan, when asked what the stock market will do, replied," -- It will fluctuate. As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Walking women want to see the southern cross at night And so they set aside a sock, and tie their laces tight Yes mournful is the melody that echoes in their heads Without a beat they march along, believing Bach is dead." -- The Residents "Duck Stab":Bach is Dead He hadn't a single redeeming vice." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man." -- Trotsky Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them." -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"

"Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least." -- Robert Byrne

"If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?" -- Calvin Trillin

"Missionaries are going to reform the world whether it wants to or not." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer." -- Peter Ustinov

"I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"A person in a uniform is merely an extension of another person's will." -- Philip Slater

"Brides aren't happy -- they are just triumphant." -- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

"We have to distrust each other. It's our only defense against betrayal." -- Tennessee Williams

"To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union." -- Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)

"Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own." -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"The gods too are fond of a joke" -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"He was a wise man who invented God." -- Plato (427?-348? BC)

"Wit is educated insolence." -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these" -- Ovid (43 BC-AD 18)

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910) God is the tangential point between zero and infinity." -- Alfred Jarry If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces." -- Paul Fussell Don't be humble, you're not that great." -- Golda Meir

"The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"Crucifixes are sexy because there's a naked man on them" -- Madonna Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines." -- R. Buckminster Fuller We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst." -- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to." -- Arnold H. Glasgow Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." -- Alan Dean Foster "To the Vanishing Point"

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." -- Sigmund Freud

"Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them." -- Joseph Heller

"The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got to be good." -- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

"We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it." -- Dave Barry

"The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing." -- Gamel Abdel Nasser

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"People are so busy lengthening their lives with exercise they don't have time to live them." -- Johathan Miller

"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

"Saint, noun. A dead sinner revised and edited." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"What can you say about a society that says God is dead and Elvis is alive?" -- Irv Kupcinet

"A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation." -- Stephen Crane

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

"All my life I said I wanted to be someone...I can see now that I should have been more specific." -- ????

"I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

"Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity." -- Sigmund Freud

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." -- John Stewart Mill

"Duty then is the sublimest word in the English language. You should do your duty in all things. You can never do more, you should never wish to do less." -- General Robert E. Lee I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled, and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout." -- Jonathan Swift, "A Modest Proposal"

"We will occasionally use this arrow notation unless there is danger of no confusion." -- Ronald Graham, "Rudiments of Ramsey Theory"

"I'm free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." -- T. E. Lawrence _The Seven Pillars of Wisdom_ It's said that 'power corrupts', but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insa- tiable, implacable." -- David Brin _The Postman_ The will to win is worthless if you don't get paid for it." -- Reggie Jackson

"In accordance with our principles of free enterprise and healthy competition, I'm going to ask you two to fight to the death for it." -- Monty Python

"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

"Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor." -- James Russell Lowell

"Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs." -- Eric Berne

"I'm a born-again atheist." -- Gore Vidal

"Read my lips--NO NEW TAXES!" -- George Herbert Walker Bush," -- Nov. 1988

"If the bloodbath must come, then let's get on with it!" -- Gov. Ronald W. Reagan to" -- the U.C. Board of Regents

"The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease." -- Voltaire (1694-1778) A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire (1694-1778) There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory, decreased short term memory, and I forget the third." -- Timothy Leary Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.

"Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance." -- -- Robert Quillen

"Men make history, and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better." -- Harry S Truman (1884-1972)

" Santa Claus had the right idea. Visit everyone once a year." -- -- Victor Borges

"Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed." -- I.F. Stone 1907-1989

"Blessed be the meek, for they shall inherit six feet of the earth." -- The Clown Prince of Darkness, corresponsdence

"It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word." -- Andrew Jackson

"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?" -- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

"I've had nothing yet", Alice replied in an offended tone: "so I ca'n't take more."You mean you ca'n't take *less*. It's very easy to take *more* than nothing." -- the Mad Hatter's response to Alice (Lewis Carroll)

"Come quickly, I am tasting stars!" -- Dom Perignon (1638-1715)" -- at the moment of his discovery of champagne

"Oh well, it's six dozen of one, half the other." -- -Bus Driver, NYC, 19 Dec 1990" -- (overheard by my sister)

"A donut without a hole...is a danish." -- -Chevy Chase on "SNL's Weekend Update"

"Never play leapfrog with a unicorn." -- -Benny Hill

"I'm not drunk. I can see perfectly well that cat coming toward me has only one eye." -- -Benny Hill

"That cat's not coming toward you, he's walking AWAY from you." -- -The little old man from the Benny Hill show.

"People are far more sincere and good-humored at speeding their parting guests than on meeting them." -- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

"Holidays are an expensive trial of strength. The only satisfaction comes from survival." -- Jonathan Miller

"Gifts are like hooks." -- Martial (40?-102?)

"Eat as much as you like -- just don't swallow it." -- Steve Burns

"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away." -- Robert Orben

"In the fight between you and the world, back the world." -- Frank Zappa ( -Dec 4, 1993)

"Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"It is better to be quotable than to be honest." -- Tom Stoppard

"Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"In California everyone goes to a therapist, is a therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist." -- Truman Capote (1924-1984)

"Bore: a man who is never unintentionally rude." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"New York is the only city in the world where you can get deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian." -- Russell Baker

"Happiness, noun. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff -- it is a palliative rather than a remedy." -- Peter De Vries

"Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"I knew her before she was a virgin." -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

"We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition." -- Alex Comfort

"Celibacy is not hereditary." -- Guy Goden

"Virginity is in the lies of the beholder." -- The Clown Prince of Darkness

"Aliter catuli longe olent, aliter sues. ("Puppies and pigs have a very different smell.")" -- Plautus

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -- H.P. Lovecraft

"A host is a host from coast to coast & no one will talk to a host that's close Unless the host (that isn't close) is busy, hung or dead" -- wb8foz@mthvax.cs.miami.edu

"Cover a war in a place where you can't drink beer or talk to a woman? "Hell no!" -- Hunter S. Thompson

"Swat my hind with a mellon rind, That's my penguin state of mind." -- Opus

"History, n. An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Stay outta churches son, all they got the key to is the sh*thouse." -- last words of Mortimer Carsons I was, and still am, the world's first Atheist. Can anyone else make that claim? I thought not! That's why I am who I am!" -- God

"Reality is the original Rorschach." -- ??????

"A philosopher once said 'It is necessary for the very existence of science that the same conditions always produce the same results'. Well, they do not. You set up the circumstances, with the same conditions every time, and you cannot predict behind which hole you will see the electron." -- Richard Feynman

"When she was a small girl, Amanda hid a ticking clock in an old, rotten tree trunk. It drove woodpeckers crazy. Ignoring tasty bugs all around them, they just about beat their brains out trying to get at the clock. Years later, Amanda used the woodpecker experiment as a model for understanding capitalism, Communism, Christianity, and all other systems that traffic in future rewards rather than in present realities." -- Tom Robbins

"What torture, this life in society! Often someone is obliging enough to offer me a light, and in order to oblige him I have to fish a cigarette out of my pocket." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself" -- Sir Richard F. Burton "Justice is incedental to law and order." -- J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) "Reading musses up my mind." -- Henry Ford

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." -- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

"What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?" -- Ursula K. LeGuin

"If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave." -- Cato, Roman statesman and historian (234 b.c. -- 149 b.c.)

" Proof by example:" -- The author gives only the case n 2 and suggests that" -- it contains most of the ideas of the general proof.

" Proof by intimidation:" -- 'Trivial.'

" Proof by cumbersome notation:" -- Best done with access to at least four alphabets and special symbols.

" Proof by exhaustion:" -- An issue or two of a journal devoted to your proof is useful.

" Proof by omission:" -- 'The reader may easily supply the details.'" -- 'The other 253 cases are analogous.'" -- '...'

" Proof by obfuscation:" -- A long plotless sequence of true and/or meaningless" -- syntactically related statments." -- Proof by wishful citation:" -- The author cites the negation, converse, or generalization" -- of a theorem from the literature to support his claims.

" Proof by funding:" -- How could three different government agencies be wrong?

" Proof by eminent authority:" -- 'I saw Karp in the elevator and he said it was probably NP-complete.'

" Proof by personal communication:" -- 'Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete" -- [Karp, personal communication].'

" Proof by reduction to the wrong problem:" -- 'To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is" -- decidable, we reduce it to the halting problem.'

" Proof by reference to inaccessible literature:" -- The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found in a" -- privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian Philological Society, 1883.

" Proof by importance:" -- A large body of useful consequences all follow" -- from the proposition in question.

" Proof by accumulated evidence:" -- Long and diligent search has not revealed a counterexample." -- Proof by cosomology:" -- The negation of the proposition is unimaginable or meaningless." -- Popular for proofs of the existence of God.

" Proof by mutual reference:" -- In reference A, Theorem 5 is said to follow from Theorem 3" -- in reference B, which is shown to follow from Corollary 6.2" -- in reference C, which is an easy consequence of Theorem 5 in" -- reference A.

" Proof by metaproof:" -- A method is given to construct the desired proof. The correctness" -- of the method is proved by any of these techniques.

" Proof by picture:" -- A more convincing form of proof by example. Combines well" -- with proof by omission.

" Proof by vehement assertion:" -- It is useful to have some kind of authority relation to the audience.

" Proof by ghost reference:" -- Nothing even remotely resembling the cited theorem appears" -- in the reference given." -- Proof by forward reference:" -- Reference is usually to a forthcoming paper of the author," -- which is often not as forthcoming as at first.

" Proof by semantic shift:" -- Some standard but inconvenient definitions are changed for" -- the statement of the result.

" Proof by appeal to intuition:" -- Cloud-shaped drawings frequently help here.

"(With apologies to G. Polya and contributions form the Yale Computer Science department.)

"Science is good furniture for one's upper chamber, if there is common sense below." -- Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894)

"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not." -- Andre Gide (1876-1951)

"What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"A clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him." -- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

"In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from." -- Peter Ustinov

"America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair." -- Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)

"The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to everybody and still nobody likes him." -- Jim Samuels

"When I get smitten, I stay smut." -- Charlie McCarthy

"The English think incompetence is the same thing as sincerity." -- Quentin Crisp I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diner's Club." -- Gore Vidal War is the biggest ego trip of all time." -- Molly Wiest

"Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure." -- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

"Didn't I ever tell you? Bumbles Bounce!" -- Yukon Cornelius.

"The main thing is you and I should exist, and that we should be you and I. Apart from that let everything go as it likes. The best order of things to my way thinking, is the one I was meant to be part of, and to hell with the most perfect of worlds if I am not in it. I would rather exist, even as an impudent argufier, than not exist at all." -- Jean-Francois Rameau

"...all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and (there is) no cause to value one above the other." -- H.P. Lovecraft

"You have dreamed too well, O wise archdreamer, for you have drawn dream's gods away from the world of all men's vision to that which is wholly yours,..." -- H.P. Lovecraft

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool." -- Bellamy Brooks

"On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks." -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"

"Chastity always takes its toll. In some it produces pimples; in others, sex laws." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." -- Florynce Kennedy

"Disney, of course, has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor, he just tears him up." -- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia." -- Charles Schultz

"Responsiblity is a unique concept. It can only reside and inhere in a single individual. You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you. You may disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it." -- Admiral Hyman Rickover

"Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem." -- John Galsworthy

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

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

"A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms." -- George Wald Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it." -- Maurice Chevalier Marriage, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money." -- G. Gordon Liddy After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi." -- P. J. O'Rourke It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"It's a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)" -- My Early Life -- 1930

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"All children are essentially criminal." -- Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

"A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Thank God kids never mean well" -- Lily Tomlin

"Young people are more hopeful at a certain age than adults, but I suspect that's glandular. As for children, I keep as far from them as possible. I don't like the sight of them. The scale is all wrong. The heads tend to be too big for the bodies, and the hands and feet are a disaster. They keep falling into things. The nakedness of their bad character! We adults have learned how to disguise our terrible character, but children, well, they are like grotesque drawings of us. They should be neither seen nor heard, and no one must make another one." -- Gore Vidal" -- Conversations With Gore Vidal -- 1981

"Dentist, n.:" -- A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls coins out of one's pockets." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)"The Devil's Dictionary"

"Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny-- Did you ever try buying them without money?" -- Ogden Nash (1902-1971) You kids today have it easy. When I was a kid everything was HUGE. My dad was nearly four times bigger than me. You couldn't even see the tops of counters.... Then gradually everything became smaller until it was the manageable size it is today." -- Bizarro (comic strip) Lactomangulation, n.:" -- Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side." -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"

"No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music." -- Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977)

"Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care." -- William Safire

"Shut up he explained." -- Ring Lardner (1885-1933)" -- The Young Immigrants, 1920

"Being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of tranquility that religion is powerless to bestow." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), quoting a friend

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak." -- Jay Leno

"Some of the greatest love affairs I've known have involved one actor -- unassisted." -- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Philip Roth is a good writer, but I wouldn't want to shake hands with him." -- Jacqueline Susann (1921-1974)" -- after reading Portnoy's Complaint

"I'll probably never have children because I don't believe in touching people for any reason." -- Paula Poundstone

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) The family is a court of justice which never shuts down for night or day." -- Malcolm De Chazal Do not try to solve all life's problems at once" -- learn to dread each day as it comes." -- Donald Kaul Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) The graveyards are full of indispensable men." -- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

"Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you find the real tinsel underneath." -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972) Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation." -- Walter Winchell (1897-1972) The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars." -- Johnny Carson "Hello," he lied." -- Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent

"However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional manner ... sulking and nausea." -- Tom K. Ryan Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness." -- Don Marquis (1878-1937) MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Higgeldy Piggeldy, Hamlet of Elsinore Ruffled the critics by Dropping this bomb: "Phooey on Freud and his Psychoanalysis" -- Oedipus, Schmoedipus, I just loved Mom." -- Anon.

"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." -- Paul Beatty

"I don't have to take this abuse from you" -- I've got hundreds of people waiting to abuse me." -- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"

"Alas, I am dying beyond my means." -- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed

"If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it." -- Thomas Carlyle

"Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. Beckett

"I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients." -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

"Once the people begin to reason, all is lost." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910) It is well to write love letters. There are certain things for which it is not easy to ask your mistress face to face, like money for instance." -- Henri De Regnier

"What is more enchanting than the voices of young people when you can't hear what they say?" -- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)

"He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Beware of the man whose God is in the skies." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"George Washington as a boy was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth -- he could not even lie." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"All I ask for is the chance to prove that money can't make me happy"

"I love mankind; it's people I can't stand." -- Charles Schultz

"I can't mate in captivity." -- Gloria Steinem" -- on why she never married

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake." -- Savielly Grigorievitcyh Tartakower (1887-1956)

"Exit, pursued by a bear." -- Stage direction in Shakespeare's" -- The Winter's Tale (1611)

"The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, there isn't any there there." -- Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

"In San Francisco, Haloween is redundant." -- Will Durst

"Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angles to San Francisco live there?" -- Herb Caen

"There are two million interesting people in New York and only seventy-eight in Los Angles." -- Neil Simon" -- in Playboy, Feb. 1979

"New York now leads the world's great cities in the number of people around whom you shouldn's make a sudden move." -- David Letterman" -- From "Late Night with David Letterman" -- Feb. 9, 1984

"The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, it's there." -- Herb Caen

"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)" -- A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be led by the nose." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"The only man, woman, or child who ever wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead." -- e. e. cummings (1894-1962)" -- on the death of Warren G. Harding, 1923

"Harding was not a bad man, he was just a slob." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980) Teddy Roosevelt's daughter" -- from Mrs. L. Conversations with Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding." -- Ralph Nader" -- The Pacific Sun, March 21, 1981

"Who's Virginia?" -- Rose Kennedy when asked why her" -- daughter-in-law Joan lived in Boston" -- while her son Ted lived in Virginia.

"No" -- President Jimmy Carter's daughter Amy when" -- asked by a reporter if she had any message" -- for the children of America.

"I never trust a man unless I've got his pecker in my pocket." -- Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973)

"A bore is a fellow talking who can change the subject back to his topic of conversation faster than you can change it back to yours." -- Laurence J. Peter

"Cleaning anything involves making something else dirty, but anything can get dirty without something else getting clean." -- Laurence J. Peter

"The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next." -- Cyril Connolly Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice." -- Will Durant (1885-1981) The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization." -- Attributed to Sigmund Freud (1871-1922) I think it would be a good idea." -- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) when asked" -- what he thought of Western civilization

"Jury: a group of twelve men who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) He who does not desire power is fit to hold it." -- Plato (427?-348? BC)

"There is no law against composing music when one has no ideas whatsoever. The music of Wagner, therefore, is perfectly legal" -- The National, Paris, 1850 The prelude to Tristan and Isolde sounded as if a bomb had fallen into a large music factory and had thrown all the notes into confusion." -- The Tribune, Berlin, 1871 The prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the Italian painting of the martyr whose intestines are slowly being unwound from his body on a reel." -- Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904) 1868 Wagner drives the nail into your head with swinging hammer blows." -- P.A. Fiorentino (1806-1864) Wagner's music is better than it sounds." -- Bill Nye (1850-1896)" -- (some say Mark Twain) "9W" -- Answer to the question: Do you spell your name with a V, Mr. Vagner?" -- Steve Allen, from the Question Man segment on the Steve Allen Show

"Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become." -- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything." -- Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation." -- H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man." -- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance." -- Anatole France (1844-1924) We often forgive those who bore us, but we cannot forgive those whom we bore." -- Francois De La Rochefoucauld There are very few people who don't become more interesting when they stop talking." -- Mary Lowry in the Pacific Sun, November 15, 1985

"LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites." -- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

"Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach flunked geography." -- Robert Byrne

"A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch." -- James Beard

"It's so beautifully arranged on the plate -- you know someone's fingers have been all over it." -- Julia Child on nouvelle cuisine

"Obscenity is what happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up." -- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know He is." -- Jean Anouilh

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history." -- Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel

"Very few things happen at the right time and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects." -- Herodotus (484-425 B.C.)

"Optimist, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." -- Lord Acton

"Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage -- he won't encounter many rivals." -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

"I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The Irish are a fair people -- they never speak well of one another." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on." -- William Burroughs

"I don't like principles. I prefer prejudices." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Conscience and cowardice are really the same thing. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Spring makes everything look filthy." -- Katherine Whitehorn

"Screenwriters? Schmucks with Underwoods." -- Jack Warner

"The scenery in the play was beautiful, but the actors got in front of it." -- Alexander Woollcott

"Opera, n. A play representing life in another world whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures, and no postures but attitudes." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Christian, n. One who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God." -- Lenny Bruce (1923-1966)

"The worshiper is the father of the gods." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Archbishop: a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Self-respect: the secure feeling that no one, as yet, is suspicious." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant -- and let the air out of the tires." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"If one is to be called a liar, one may as well make an effort to deserve the name." -- A.A. Milne (1882-1956)

"The people are to be taken in very small doses." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Do not try to solve all life's problems at once" -- learn to dread each day as it comes." -- -- Donald Kaul

"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life." -- -- Eric Hoffer" --

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

"The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks" -- Which practically conceal its sex." -- I think it clever of the turtle" -- In such a fix to be so fertile." -- -- Ogden Nash" --

"Nothing would disgust me more, morally, than receiving an Oscar." -- Luis Bunuel

"Actresses will happen in the best regulated families." -- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

"I don't want to see the uncut version of anything." -- Jean Kerr quoted by Gerald Nachman" -- San Francisco Chronicle 1/2/83

"It was like passing the scene of a highway accident and being relieved to learn that nobody had been seriously injured." -- Martin Cruz Smith on being asked how he liked" -- the movie version of his novel Gorky Park.

"A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say." -- Michael Winner, British film director

"You have to have a talent for having talent." -- Ruth Gordon (1897-1985)

"Yer beautiful in yer wrath! I shall keep you, and in responding to my passions, yer hatred will kindle into love." -- John Wayne as Genghis Kahn to Susan Hayward" -- in the move The Conqueror, 1956

"Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment." -- Norman Mailer

"The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy next to me." -- Woody Allen -- Annie Hall

"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace." -- --Amelia Earhart

"How could I lose to such an idiot?" -- A shout from chess grandmaster" -- Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

"One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious." -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)

"Minds are like parachutes -- they only function when open." -- Unknown

"The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around." -- Herb Caen

"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 Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." -- Vice President Dan Quayle Mars is essentially in the same orbit... somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." -- Vice President Dan Quayle Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is IN the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here." -- Vice President Dan Quayle," -- Hawaii, September 1989 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 You all look like happy campers to me. Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be." -- Vice President Dan Quayle, to the American Samoans," -- whose capital Quayle pronounces "Pogo Pogo" Quayle stumbled in response to a question about his opinion of the Holocaust. He said it was "an obscene period in our nation's history." Then, trying to clarify his remark, Quayle said he meant "this century's history" and added a confusing comment. "We all lived in this century, I didn't live in this century," he said." -- Vice President Dan Quayle We expect them [Salvadoran officials] to work toward the elimination of human rights." -- Vice President Dan Quayle El Salvador is a democracy so it's not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans... I have heard a single voice." -- Vice President Dan Quayle I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change." -- Vice President Dan Quayle One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'." -- Vice President Dan Quayle If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure." -- Vice President Dan Quayle, to the Phoenix Republican" -- Forum, March 1990 It's rural America. It's where I came from. We always refer to ourselves as real America. Rural America, real America, real, real, America." -- Vice President Dan Quayle Target prices? How that works? I know quite a bit about farm policy. I come from Indiana, which is a farm state. Deficiency payments -- which are the key -- that is what gets money into the farmer's hands. We got loan, uh, rates, we got target, uh, prices, uh, I have worked very closely with my senior colleague, (Indiana Sen.) Richard Lugar, making sure that the farmers of Indiana are taken care of." -- Vice President Dan Quayle on being asked to" -- define the term "target prices." -- Quayle's press secretary then cut short the press" -- conference, after two minutes and 30 seconds. rand

"I not going to focus on what I have done in the past what I stand for, what I articulate to the American people. The American people will judge me on what I am saying and what I have done in the last 12 years in the Congress." -- Vice President Dan Quayle I want to be Robin to Bush's Batman." -- Vice President Dan Quayle We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in 'Red Storm Rising'." -- Vice President Dan Quayle The US has a vital interest in that area of the country." -- Vice President Dan Quayle Referring to Latin America. Japan is an important ally of ours. Japan and the United States of the Western industrialized capacity, 60 percent of the GNP, two countries. That's a statement in and of itself." -- Vice President Dan Quayle Who would have predicted... that Dubcek, who brought the tanks in in Czechoslovakia in 1968 is now being proclaimed a hero in Czechoslovakia. Unbelievable." -- Vice President Dan Quayle" -- Actually, Dubcek was the leader of the Prague Spring. May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world." -- The Quayle's 1989 Christmas card." -- [Not a beacon of literacy, though.] Well, it looks as if the top part fell on the bottom part." -- Vice President Dan Quayle referring to" -- the collapsed section of the 880 freeway after" -- the San Francisco earthquake of 1989." -- [this may be a joke; the source is unclear." -- but it's still funny] getting [cruise missles] more accurate so that we can have precise precision." -- Vice President Dan Quayle referring to his legislative" -- work dealing with cruise missles I can identify with steelworkers. I can identify with workers that have had a difficult time." -- Vice President Dan Quayle addressing workers at" -- an Ohio steel plant,1988 [I will never have] another Jimmy Carter grain embargo, Jimmy, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter grain embargo, Jimmy Carter grain embargo." -- Vice President Dan Quayle during the Benson debate Certainly, I know what to do, and when I am Vice President" -- and I will be" -- there will be contingency plans under different sets of situations and I tell you what, I'm not going to go out and hold a news conference about it. I'm going to put it in a safe and keep it there! Does that answer your question?" -- Vice President Dan Quayle when asked what he" -- would do if he assumed the Presidency,1988 Lookit, I've done it their way this far and now it's my turn. I'm my own handler. Any questions? Ask me ... There's not going to be any more handler stories because I'm the handler ... I'm Doctor Spin." -- Vice President Dan Quayle responding to press reports of" -- his aides having to, in effect, "potty train" him. I would guess that there's adequate low-income housing in this country." -- Vice President Dan Quayle Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things." -- Vice President Dan Quayle The real question for 1988 is whether we're going to go forward to tomorrow or past to the" -- to the back!" -- Vice President Dan Quayle We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity, family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America." -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 1988 We'll let the sunshine in and shine on us, because today we're happy and tomorrow we'll be even happier." -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 1988 We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world." -- Vice President Dan Quayle This election is about who's going to be the next President of the United States!" -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 1988 Don't forget about the importance of the family. It begins with the family. We're not going to redefine the family. Everybody knows the definition of the family. [Meaningful pause] A child. [Meaningful pause] A mother. [Meaningful pause] A father. There are other arrangements of the family, but that is a family and family values. I've been very blessed with wonderful parents and a wonderful family, and I am proud of my family. Anybody turns to their family. I have a very good family. I'm very fortunate to have a very good family. I believe very strongly in the family. It's one of the things we have in our platform, is to talk about it. I suppose three important things certainly come to my mind that we want to say thank you. The first would be our family. Your family, my family" -- which is composed of an immediate family of a wife and three children, a larger family with grandparents and aunts and uncles. We all have our family, whichever that may be ... The very beginnings of civilization, the very beginnings of this country, goes back to the family. And time and time again, I'm often reminded, especially in this Presidential campaign, of the importance of a family, and what a family means to this country. And so when you pay thanks I suppose the first thing that would come to mind would be to thank the Lord for the family." -- Vice President Dan Quayle Dan Quayle's Wondrful World" -- (Sung to the tune "Don't know much (bout history)")

" Don't know much about history Don't know much foreign policy Don't remember how I got through school I'm sure I didn't break the rules But what's it matter 'cause what granny says "Boy, if you want to you can be vice prez" And what a wonderful world this would be

" Don't know much about the women's vote Don't know much about the bill I wrote Don't know much about the foreign vets I've never voted for 'em yet But I do know if your dad tries hard He can get you in the National Guard And what a wonderful place this can be

" Now, I never claimed to be an 'A' student But what's wrong with C's? And maybe by knowing the names of my cabinet I can win their love for me

" Don't know much about air pollution Don't know much about the Constitution Don't know much about th' economy It never much affected me But there's one thing that I know for sure If the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor What a wonderful place this would be

" Don't know much about the national debt I've never had to pay one yet If we need to we can sell the States To the Japanese at discount rates But I do know if things get bad George and I can always can always call my dad And what a wonderful place it would be

" --Ben White, Su Koester and Ken Whang St Louis, 10/31/88

"Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress." -- Quentin Crisp

"The art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Religion is for those who don't want to go to Hell. Spirituality is for those of us who have already been through it." -- Anonymous

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say." -- Cyril Connolly Critic, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) A liberal is a man who leaves the room when the fight begins." -- Heywood Broun The only "ism" Hollywood believes in is plagiarism." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do." -- Dylan Thomas

"There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you." -- Peter De Vries Experience, n. The wisdom that enables us to recognize as an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them." -- Spinoza, Dutch Philosopher "People and things do not upset us, rather we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us." -- Albert Ellis, founder of" -- Rational Emotive Therapy "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." -- Victor Hugo (1802-1885) We become what we think about all day long." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616) "People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) "Change your thoughts and you change your world." -- Norman Vincent Peale "There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way." -- Eykis "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) "Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed." -- (St. Luke 2:1)

"Avoid falsehoods like the plague except in matters of taxation, which do not count, since here your are not lying to take someone else's goods, but to prevent your own from being unjustly seized." -- (Giovanni Morelli)

"Noah must have taken into the Ark two taxes, one male and one female. And did they multiply bountifully! Next to guinea pigs, taxes must have been the most prolific animals." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes." -- (Erving Goffman)

"Why does a small tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and s substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?" -- (Peg Bracken)

"The point to remember is what the government gives it must first take away." -- (John S. Coleman)

"The avoidance of taxes is the only pursuit that carries any reward." -- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

"An income tax form is like a laundry list" -- either way you lose your shirt." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: your dollar will go further." -- (Wernher Von Braun)

"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest amount of hissing." -- (Jean Baptiste Colbert)

"Fashions are the only induced epidemics, proving that epidemics can be induced by tradesmen." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better." -- George Santayana (1863-1952) At age 50, every man has the face he deserves." -- George Orwell (1903-1950) I wonder how so insupportable a thing as a bookseller was ever permitted to grow up in the Commonwealth. Many of our modern booksellers are but needless excrements, or rather vermin." -- George Wither (1588-1667)

"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people." -- Lucille S. Harper It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help." -- Miss Manners (Judith Martin) Good taste is the worst vice ever invented." -- Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner." -- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968) Nobody's interested in sweetness and light." -- Hedda Hopper I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool." -- Katharine Whitehorn

"There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people." -- Muhammad Ali on the occasion of one of his retirements

"Hurting people is my business." -- Sugar Ray Robinson

"My toughest fight was with my first wife." -- Muhammad Ali

"I look at ordinary people in their suits, them with no scars, and I'm different. I don't fit with them. I'm where everybody's got scar tissue on their eyes and got noses like saddles. I go to conventions of old fighters like me and I see the scar tissue and all them flat noses and it's beautiful. Galento, may he r3est in peace. Giardello, LaMotta, Carmen Basilio. What a sweetheart Basilio is. They talk like me, like they got rocks in their throats. Beautiful!" -- Willie Pastrano

"The covers of this book are too far apart." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"A novel is a piece of prose of a certain length with something wrong with it." -- Unknown

"In every fat book there is a thin book trying to get out." -- Unknown

"A big book is a big bore." -- Callimachus (c. 260 B.C.)

"This book fills a much needed gap." -- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it." -- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a letter

"I have read your book and much like it." -- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

"(Moses Hadas was a professor of Greek and Latin at Columbia)

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end." -- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930) I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to." -- Elvis Presley (1935-1977) Even Bach comes down to the basic suck, blow, suck, suck, blow." -- Mouth organist Larry Adler I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with symphonies, quartettes, chamber music, and cantatas." -- S.J. Perelman (1904-1979)

"Cogito ergo dim sum. (Therefore I think these are pork buns.)" -- Robert Byrne

"Cogito ergo spud. -- I think, therefore I yam" -- Graffito reported by Herb Caen" -- San Francisco Chronicle, April 24, 1980

"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum" -- I think I think, therefore, I think I am." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"I think, therefore ackphthh" -- Bill the Cat

"A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants." -- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

"Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination." -- Christopher Isherwood

"I feel a very unusual sensation -- if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude." -- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

"I might be President by now if it weren't for this 'queer' thing" -- Gore Vidal

"Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"The fickleness of the women whom I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes." -- J.B. Priestley

"God is love, but get it in writing." -- Gypsy Rose Lee

"I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God." -- John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." -- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

"A billion here, a billion there -- pretty soon it adds up to real money." -- Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969)

"Money is good for bribing yourself through the inconveniences of life." -- Gottfried Reinhardt

"A man ought to be able to be fond of his wife without making a fool of himself about her." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him." -- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

"A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Every law is an infraction of liberty." -- Jeremy Bentham

"When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken." -- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

"Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made." -- Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

"No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds that it was human nature." -- A.A. Milne (1882-1956) I propose getting rid of conventional armaments and replacing them with reasonably priced hydrogen bombs that would be distributed equally throughout the world." -- Idi Amin

"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

"One of a hostess's duties is to act as procuress." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"It is a mistake to speak of a bad choice in love, since as soon as a choice exists, it can only be bad." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"The only paradise is paradise lost." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"I don't think I'll get married again. I'll just find a woman I don't like and giver a house." -- Lewis Grizzard

"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent." -- George Orwell (1903-1950)

"Sigmund Freud was a half baked Viennese quack. Our literature, culture, and the films of Woody Allen would be better today if Freud had never written a word." -- Ian Shoales

"It is most unwise for people in love to marry" -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage." -- Dr. Karl Bowman (1888-1973) Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest." -- Professor Irwin Corey

"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink." -- Richard Burton

"Decency...must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep." -- Quentin Crisp

"Sleep is an eight-hour peep show of infantile erotica." -- J.G. Ballard

"Nice guys finish last, but we get to sleep in." -- Evan Davis

"Mother is the dead heart of the family, spending father's earnings on consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats, sleeps, and watches television." -- Germaine Greer I married beneath me -- all women do." -- Nancy Astor

"If I've done anything I'm sorry for, I'm willing to be forgiven." -- Edward N. Westcott

"The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television." -- Unknown When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." -- Eric Hoffer Imitation is the sincerest form of television." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"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

"Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing." -- Redd Fox

"I get my exercise acting as a pallbearer to my friends who exercise." -- Chauncey Depew (1834-1928)

"**************************************************************************** * "People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? * * Why don't you write about the struggle for power and security, and * * about love, the way others do? * * They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful * * to the honor of my craft. * * The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. * * But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, * * for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined * * that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it * * happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and * * the hunger for it ... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality * * of hunger satisfied ... and it is all one. * *" -- M. F. K. Fisher "The Art of Eating" * ****************************************************************************

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"This poem will never reach its destination." -- Voltaire (1694-1778) on Rousseau's "Ode to Posterity"

"May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"There is no sweeter sound than the crumbling of one's fellow man." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music." -- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory." -- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) Being in the army is like being in the Boy Scouts, except that the Boy Scouts have adult supervision." -- Blake Clark

"The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions." -- Maurice Chapelain

"It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved." -- Russell Baker

"Philosophy is to the real world as masturbation is to sex." -- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

"If only it was as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate." -- Diogenes the Cynic (412 to 323 B.C.)

"I was going to buy a copy of "The Power of Positive Thinking", and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?" -- Ronnie Shakes I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy." -- J.D. Salinger A pessimist thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"When there are two conflicting versions of a story, the wise course is to believe the one in which people appear at their worst." -- H. Allen Smith (1906-1976)

"Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do." -- Zsa Zsa Gabor

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Our ignorance of history makes us libel our own times. People have always been like this." -- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) History is bunk." -- Henry Ford

"Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

"Socrates seems to be the philosophical napkin with which the ensuing cultural thinkers of history wipe their mouths of pedantic ooze." -- Unknown

"If you can stay in love for more than two years, you're on something." -- Fran Lebowitz

"Being a woman is of special interest to aspiring male transexuals. To actual women it is simply a good excuse not to play football." -- Fran Lebowitz

"The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting." -- Fran Lebowitz

"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable." -- Fran Lebowitz

"California is a great place to live if you're an orange." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"A married man with a family will do anything for money." -- Charles De Talleyrand (1754-1838)

"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Few great men could pass Personnel." -- Paul Goodman (1911-1972)

"Great men are not always idiots" -- Karen Elizabeth Gordon

"There's a great woman behind every idiot." -- John Lennon (1941-1980) on Yoko Ono

" The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"There is more to life than increasing its speed" -- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval" -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"I have an existential map. It has "You are here" written all over it." -- Steven Wright

"Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all." -- Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)

"For the preservation of chastity, an empty and rumbling stomach and fevered lungs are indispensable." -- St. Jerome (340?-420)

"Nothing is so much to be shunned as sex relations." -- St. Augustine (354-430) The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfillment." -- Malcolm Muggeridge I hate women because they always know where things are." -- James Thurber (1894-1961)

"Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good." -- P.G. Wodehouse

"The only charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception necessary for both parties." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer." -- Dean Acheson

"A detective digs around in the garbage of people's lives. A novelist invents people and then digs around in their garbage." -- Joe Gores

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Truth is shorter than fiction." -- Irving Cohen

"If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?" -- Lily Tomlin

"In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries." -- Saul Bellow

"Love will find a lay." -- Robert Byrne

"If all these sweet young things were laid end to end, I wouldn't be the slightest bit suprises." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)" -- In a review of a book by Margot Asquith

"One more drink and I'll be under the host." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

" SANCTUARY" -- by Dorothy Parker My land is bare of chattering folk; the clouds are low along the ridges, and sweet's the air with curly smoke from all my burning bridges.

" Favorite animal: steak." -- Fran Lebowitz

"In Mexico we have a word for sushi: bait." -- Jose Simon

"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead- not sick, not wounded -- dead." -- Woody Allen

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity -- gunpowder and romantic love." -- Andre Maurois

"To be a successful father there's one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don't look at it for the first two years." -- Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)

"Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"In the long run we are all dead." -- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

"People who have no faults are terrible; there is no way to take advantage of them" -- Anatole France (1844-1924) We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were." -- Mort Sahl I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on believing that some men are my equals." -- Brigid Brophy

"The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be." -- Paul Valery (1871-1945)

"Most of our future lies ahead." -- Denny Crum, Louisville basketball coach

"The future is much like the present, only longer." -- Don Quisenberry

"It's a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do." -- Walter Winchell

"Do it big or stay in bed." -- Opera producer Larry Kelly Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) People are wrong when they say that the opera isn't what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That's what's wrong with it." -- Noel Coward (1899-1973)

"If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia." -- Thomas Szasz Even holligans marry, though they know that marriage is but for a little while. It is alimony that is forever." -- Quentin Crisp

"Optimism, n. The doctrine or belief that everything" -- is beautiful, including what is ugly." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness." -- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) I'm not going to climb into the ring with Tolstoy." -- Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) from a letter

"Hemingway was a jerk." -- Harold Robbins as quoted in Leslie Halliwell's" -- The Filmgoer's Companion, 1984

"In the mirrorlike relationship between wine and human beings, Zinfandel owned more reflective properties than any other grape; in its infinite mutability, it was capable of expressing almost any philosophical position or psychological function. As a result, its own "true" nature might never be known." -- David Darlington from his novel" -- Angels Visits: An Inquiry into the Mystery of Zinfandel

"Love ain't nothing but sex misspelled." -- Harlan Ellison

"Lie Down and Roll Over and 159 Other Ways To Say I Love You" -- Book title by Erskine & Moran -- 1981 One of the advantages of living alone is that you don't have to wake up in the arms of a loved one." -- Marion Smith

"Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperment of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone." -- E.M. Cioran Golf is a game in which you claim the privileges of age, and retain the playthings of childhood." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"The Country Weekly That Tells It Like It Is Anderson Valley Advertiser Fanning the Flames of Discontent

"As long as I am an American citizen and American blood runs in these veins, I shall hold myself at liberty to speak, to write, and to publish whatever I please on any subject." -- Elija Lovejoy (1802-1837)

"Newspapers should have no friends." -- Joseph Pulitzer

"When vultures watching your civilization begin dropping dead, it is time to pause and wonder." -- David Brower

"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness." -- Andre Malraux One watches them on the seashore, all the people, and there is something pathetic, almost wistful in them, as if they wished their lives did not add up to this scaly nullity of possession, but as if they could not escape. It is a dragon that has devoured us all: these obscene, scaly houses, this insatiable struggle and desire to possess, to possess always and in spite of everything, this need to be an owner, lest one be owned. It is too hideous and nauseating. Owners and owned, they are like the two sides of a ghastly disease. One feels a sort of madness come over one, as if the world had become hell. But it is only superimposed: it is only a temporary disease. It can be cleaned away." -- D.H. Lawrence

"Class is material consumed." -- John Trudell" -- What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?" -- Cyril Connolly

"A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) I have to give it to my Jewish brothers and sisters; There may be only 7 million of them here in America, but they can lobby like motherf**kers. Say something they feel is anti-Semitic or against the state of Israel and you know about it right away." -- Spike Lee In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who have neither product utopian trash." -- John Berger Of course, the person I was fleeing most fearfully was myself, for I drive, and I'm burning a collapsed barn behind the house next week because it is much the cheapest way to deal with it, and I live on about four hundred times the money that Thoreau conclusively proved was enough, so I've done my share to take this independent, eternal world and turn it into a science fair project." -- Bill McKibbon, "The End of Nature"

"Not everybody has to sing the melody." -- Pete Seeger

"The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good." -- Robert Graves

"Crude, immoral, vulgar and senseless." -- Tolstoy (1828-1910) on Shakespeare

"I know not, sir whether Bacon wrote the works of Shakespeare, but if he did not it seems to me that he missed the opportunity of his life." -- J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)

"God damn a potato!" -- Chief Washakie of the Soshone tribe, responding to white" -- bureaucrats who were trying to convert his people to the" -- settled life of the farm. Our land is more valuable than your money. As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and animals; therefore, we cannot sell this land. It was put here for us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us." -- Blackfoot chief, (c. 1880) The best hope is that one of these days the ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away -- leaving people with nothing more to stand on than what they have so bloody well stood for up to now." -- Kenneth Patchen One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork." -- Edward Abbey

"Any person of average intelligence could write a better commentary than he does. He hasn't covered a story in years." -- Liz Trotta on John Chancellor

"He's a complete and total psychopath. I don't mean that in the criminal sense, of course, but in a professional sense. People like that will do anything to hold on to their jobs." -- Liz Trotta on Dan Rather By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more." -- Albert Camus (1913-1960) What once were vices are manners now." -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4? BC -- 65 AD) Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible." -- Margaret Mead Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." -- Aldo Leopold

"Canada is a country so square that even the female impersonators are women." -- Richard Benner

"I do not believe the expenditure of $2.50 for a book entitles the purchaser to the personal friendship of the author." -- Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)

"A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"No normal man ever fell in love after thirty when the kidneys begin to disintegrate." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime." -- Jimmy Cannon (1910-1973) Truth, in the matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Hollywood is a sewer with service from the Ritz Carlton." -- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Method acting? There are quite a few methods. Mine involves a lot of talent, a glass and some cracked ice." -- John Barrymore (1882-1942)

"I enjoy being a highly overpaid actor." -- Roger Moore

"England produces the best fat actors." -- Jimmy Cannon (1910-1973)

"If you have a job without aggravations, you don't have a job." -- Malcolm Forbes

"The only way to succeed is to make people hate you." -- Josef von Sternberg (1894-1969)

"Any new venture goes through the following stages: enthusiasm, complication, disillusionment, search for the guilty, punishment of the innocent, and decoration of those who did nothing." -- Unknown

"California: The west coast of Iowa." -- Joan Didion

"The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent." -- Mell Lazzarus

"The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving any excuse." -- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

"Since the whole affair had become one of religion, the vanquished were of course exterminated." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Adultery is the application of democracy to love." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Adolescence is the stage between infancy and adultery." -- Unknown

"What men call gallantry and gods adultery Is much more common where the climate's sultry." -- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

"Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome." -- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." -- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." -- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

"...You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity. -- Graham Green, *The Quiet American*

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation." -- H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"The only way to reform some people is to chloroform them." -- Thomas C. Haliburton

"The holy passion of Friendship is 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)

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards" -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat." -- John Morley One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Life would be tolerable but for its amusements." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it." -- Truman Capote (1924-1984) Writers have two main problems. One is writer's block, when the words won't come at all and the other is logorrhea, when the words come so fast that they can hardly get to the wastebasket in time." -- Cecilia Bartholomew When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns." -- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

"Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Henry James chews more than he bites off." -- Mrs Henry Adams (c. 1880)

"Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met." -- William Faulkner (1897-1962)

"Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs of the Chicago stockyard." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) Henry James created more convincing women than Iris Murdoch put together." -- Wilfred Sheed

"You've got be careful about getting locked into open systems." -- IBM salesman

"Lawyer, n. One skilled in the circumvention of the law." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"How to win a case in court: If the law is on your side, pound on the law; if the facts are on your side, pound on the facts; if neither is on your side, pound on the table." -- Unknown

"I'm not an ambulance chaser. I'm usually there before the ambulance." -- Melvin Belli

"There are women whose infidelities are the only link they still have with their husbands." -- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957) Love: two minds without a single thought." -- Philip Barry The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930) Phonograph, n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he was certain of." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her." -- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

"In Biblical times, a man could have as many wives as he could afford. Just like today." -- Abigail Van Buren

"Here's to our wives and sweethearts -- may they never meet." -- John Bunny (1866-1939)

"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to." -- Granville Hicks (1901-1982) A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled." -- Sir Barnett Cocks (ca. 1907) As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand." -- Josh Billings (1818-1885)

"It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you: the one to slander you, and the other to bring the news to you." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known." -- Garrison Keillor

"Two people kissing always look like fish." -- Andy Warhol

"Life is good, if you like that sort of thing." -- overheard in Palo Alto...

"Without an adequate theory, reality is irrelevant." -- Kent "Sparky" Gregory

"If you look good and dress well, you don't need a purpose in life." -- Fashion consultant Robert Pante

"Never despise fashion. It's what we have instead of God." -- Malcolm Bradbury

"I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch." -- Gilda Radner

"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"There are times when one would like to end the whole human race, and finish the farce." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not" -- Fran Lebowitz

"Being in a ship is like being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it." -- J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)

"I have been recently blessed with several more copies of the Anderson Valley Advertiser....here are some selections from the July 31, 1991 offering.....Rand

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"Be as radical as reality." -- Lenin (1870-1924)

"Whenever people say "we mustn't be sentimental", you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add, "we must be realistic", they mean they are going to make money out of it." -- Brigid Brophy

"The most annoying trait of Right-Wing Outlaws in general is a lazy incuriosity about the real world. They know their lines, they're sure who the good guys and the bad guys are. Therefore they view the passing world as a kind of animated "Bartlett's Quotations" -- that is, as handy source material with which to illustrate, rather than challenge, preconceived views." -- James Fallows

"No president in history has been more vilified or was more vilivied during the time he was President than Lincoln. Those who knew him, his secretaries, have written that he was deeply hurt by what was said about him and drawn about him, but on the other hand, Lincoln had the great strength of character never to display it, always able to stand tall and strong and firm no matter how harsh or unfair the criticism might be. These elements of greatness, of course, inspire us all today." -- Richard Nixon (1913-1994)

"Sometimes in my dreams there are women...When such dreams happen, immediately I remember, 'I am a monk.'...It is very important to analyze 'What is the real benefit of sexual desire?' The appearance of a beautiful face or a beautiful body -- as many scriptures describe -- no matter how beautiful, they essentially decompose into a skeleton. When we penetrate to its human flesh and bones, there is no beauty, is there? A couple in a sexual experience is happy for that moment. Then very soon trouble begins." -- The Dalai Lama

"Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it." -- Andrew Young

"We had parties that Nero would have been ashamed to attend" -- Ronnie Hawkins

"It's been through three wives. To me a guitar is kind of like a woman. You don't know why you like 'em but you do." -- Waylon Jennings on his Telecaster

"People may like what third-party candidates say, because often they are the only ones saying anything, but they usually won't vote for someone who doesn't have a chance. Since third-party candidates are not in the news, they are considered to be not really in the race; and since they are not in the race, this justifies treating them as if they are not news." -- Michael Parenti

"More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to utter hopelessness and despair, the other to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -- Woody Allen

"If you take a dog which is starving and feed him and make him prosperous, that dog will not bite you. This is the primary difference between a dog and a man." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"The Ten Commandments contain 297 words, the Bill of Rights 463 words, and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address 266 words. A recent federal directive regulating the price of cabbage contains 26,911 words." -- According to an article in the New York Times

"Every time Europe looks across the Atlantic to see the American eagle, it observes only the rear end of an ostrich." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Life is either always a tight-rope or a featherbed. Give me a tight-rope." -- Edith Wharton The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) No normal man ever fell in love after thirty when the kidneys begin to disintegrate." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent." -- Mel Lazarus Was all this bloodshed and deceit -- from Columbus to Cortes, Pizarro the Puritans -- a necessity for the human race to progress from savagery to civilization? Was Morison right in burying the story of genocide inside a more important story of human progress? Perhaps a persuasive argument can be made -- as it was made by Stalin when he killed pesants for industrial progress in the Soviet Union, as it was made by Churchill explaining the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, and Truman explaining Hiroshima. But how can the judgement be made if the benefits and losses cannot be balanced because the losses are either unmentioned or mentioned quickly?" -- Howard Zinn Son, in war times it is not safe to think unless one travels with the mob." -- Charles Lindberg Sr. to" -- Charles Lindberg Jr. in 1917

"Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight." -- Phyllis Diller The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956) Divorces are made in heaven." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators." -- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back." -- Zsa Zsa Gabor First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time." -- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) Of children as of procreation -- the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable." -- Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) (I assume in reference to" -- the similar Lord Chesterfield quote) For the first year of marriage I had basically a bad attitude. I tended to place my wife underneath a pedestal" -- Woody Allen A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) The major sin is the sin of being born." -- Samuel Beckett A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." -- Gloria Steinem Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well." -- Charles Bukowski

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) I did not attend his funeral, but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved it." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910) When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of putting it into practice." -- Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"The 100% American is 99% an idiot." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) I like to think of us as Clearasil on the face of the nation. Jim Morrison would have said that if he was smart, but he's dead." -- Lou Reed on his band Speculations and loans in foreign fields are likely to bring us into war... The war-for-profit group has counterfeited patriotism." -- Charles Lindberg Sr., 1915

" America is the greatest of opportunities and the worst of influences." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"Don't get the idea the I'm knocking the American system." -- Al Capone (1899-1947)

"Americans are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again." -- George Miller

"Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucini, but sharing the burden of finding the fettucini restaurant in the first place." -- Calvin Trillin Everything you see I owe to spaghetti." -- Sophia Loren

"I don't trust him. We're friends." -- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other." -- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

"My father and he had one of those English friendships which begin by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminate speech altogether." -- Jorge Luis Borges

"Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) No, I haven't read the New Testament, but I read the Old Testament and liked it very, very much." -- One sheperd to another in a New Yorker cartoon

"When a book and a head collide and there is a hollow sound, is it always from the book?" -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

"One hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong." -- Graffito -- as given in The Penguin Dictionary" -- of Modern Quotations, 2nd ed.

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." -- Jorge Luis Borges

"Favorite color: I hate colors." -- Ian Shoales

"A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life." -- Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

"Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"The days just prior to marriage are like a snappy introduction to a tedious book." -- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices." -- Laurence J. Peter

"You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school." -- H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"A careless speech writer includes the word "paradigm" in President Reagan's speech on superconductivity. Yes, he pronounces it "paradijum." -- from _The_Clothes_Have_No_Emperor_ by Paul Slansky

"Lawer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Nobody wants justice." -- Alan Dershowitz

"Lawers, I suppose, were children once." -- Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

"A dramatic critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won't even lay down his newspaper to talk to you." -- Helen Rowland Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock." -- John Barrymore (1882-1942) There is not enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Make no mistake about it: Operation Desert Storm truly was a victory of good over evil, of freedom over tyranny, of peace over war." -- Vice President J. Danforth Quayle," -- remarks at Arlington National Cemetery.

"Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows." -- David T. Wolf

"Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth." -- Lillian Hellman (1907-1984)

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." -- Lily Tomlin

"Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep." -- Fran Lebowitz

"Straight men need to be emasculated. I'm sorry. They all need to be slapped around. Women have been kept down for too long. Every straight guy should have a man's tongue in his mouth at least once." -- Madonna

"I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"...a man may be a patriot without risking his own life or sacrificing his health. There are plenty of lives less valuable." -- James Mellon, who paid $300 for a" -- civil war Union army deferment.

"As if there were safety in stupidity alone." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet." -- Jeremy Rifkin

"I saw the same dynamic in our family -- a dysfunctional family -- mirrored in the country in the 1980's. If you take this family, and you put them up there as the First Family -- if you look at what the dynamic is in the family -- you might have a pretty good sense of how it's going to trickle down." -- Patty Davis

"Never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth." -- Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

"I epitomize America." -- John Denver

"I think every woman is entitled to a middle husband she can forget." -- Adela Rogers St.John The only thing good about it is you're not dead." -- Lillian Hellman (1907-1984) on aging Can women imagine anything finer than to experience centuries and millennia with the beloved husband in a cozy home in reverent attention to the inner workings of creative motherhood?" -- Curt Rosten, "The ABC's of National Socialism," 1933 Sometimes I get bored riding down the beautiful streets of L.A. I know it sounds crazy, but I just want to go to New York and see people suffer." -- Donna Summer For manipulation to be most effective, evidence of its presence should be nonexistent... It is essential, therefore, that people who are manipulated believe in the neutrality of their key social institutions." -- Herbert Schiller Metric is definitely communist. One monetary system, one language, one weight and measurement system, one world -- all communist! We know the West was won by the inch, foot, yard, and mile." -- Dean Krakel, Director of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame

"What people call insincerity is simply a method by which we can multiply our personalities." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

" It means that you have, as performers will call it, 'f**k you' money... All that means is that I don't have to do what I don't want to do." -- Johnny Carson on success The [Interstate Commerce] commission, as its functions have now been limited by the courts is, or can be made, of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the public clamor for a government supervision of railroads, at the same time that that supervision is almost entirely nominal." -- Richard Olney -- a lawyer for the Boston & Maine and" -- Attorney General under Grover Cleveland," -- advising a railroad president It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." -- William Randolph Hearst, to Frederic Remington That's a hell of an ambition, to be mellow. It's like wanting to be senile." -- Randy Newman on middle of the road music

"Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent." -- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

"The big mistake that men make is that when they turn thirteen or fourteen, and all of a sudden they've reached puberty, they believe that they like women. Actually, you're just horny. It doesn't mean that you like women any more at twenty-one than you did at ten." -- Jules Feiffer

"If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don't particularly like." -- Soichiro Honda

"For all the gold and silver stolen and shipped to Spain did not make the Spanish people richer. It gave their kings an edge in the balance of power for a time, a chance to hire more mercenary soldiers for their wars. They ended up losing those wars anyway, and all that was left was a deadly inflation, a starving population, the rich richer, the poor poorer, and a ruined peasant class." -- Hans Konig

"Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world." -- Werner Herzog

"The only problem with drawing Nixon is restraint. Your tendency is to let your feelings come out. He's such a loathsome son of a bitch, and he looks so loathsome." -- Bill Mauldin

"The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless." -- Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794)

"The world is proof that God is a committee." -- Bob Stokes Because I'm Jewish, a lot of people ask why I killed Christ. What can I say? It was one of those parties that got out of hand. I killed him because he wouldn't become a doctor." -- Lenny Bruce (1923-1966) How should they answer?" -- Abigail Van Buren in reply to the question:" -- "Why do Jews always answer a question with a question?" We were married by a reformed rabbi in Long Island. A very reformed rabbi. A Nazi." -- Woody Allen

"If I had been the Virgin Mary, I would have said "No." -- Margaret "Stevie" Smith (1902-1971) Man is certainly stark mad. He cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

"A pious man is one who would be an athiest if the king were." -- Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696)

"God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through." -- Paul Valery (1871-1945)

" From "The Tonight Show Staring Johnny Carson" on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 1991. (C) 1991 Carson Productions, Inc. A tribute from Johnny Carson to all the Soviet republics seeking freedom ("The Battle Hymn of the Republic" playing softly in the background). "What Democracy Means to Me" by Johnny Carson To me, democracy means placing trust in the little guy, giving the fruits of nationhood to those who built the nation. Democracy means anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president. Democracy is people of all races, colors, and creeds united by a single dream: to get rich and move to the suburbs away from people of all races, colors, and creeds. Democracy is having time set aside to worship" -- 18 years if you're Jim Bakker. Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties. Democracy means freedom of sexual choice between any two consenting adults; Utopia means freedom of choice between three or more consenting adults. But I digress. Democracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them something to hold onto" -- usually a mop or a leaf blower. It means that with proper timing and scrupulous bookkeeping, anyone can die owing the government a huge amount of money. Democracy means a thriving heartland with rolling fields of Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Spanky, and Wheezer. Democracy means our elected officials bow to the will of the people, but more often they bow to the big butts of campaign contributors. Yes, democracy means fighting every day for what you deserve, and fighting even harder to keep other weaker people from getting what they deserve. Democracy means never having the Secret Police show up at your door. Of course, it also means never having the cable guy show up at your door. It's a tradeoff. Democracy means free television, not good television, but free. Democracy is being able to pick up the phone and, within a minute, be talking to anyone in the country, within two minutes, be interrupted by call waiting. Democracy means no taxation without representation, and god knows, we've just about had the hell represented out of us. It means the freedom to bear arms so you can blow the "o" out of any rural stop sign you want. And finally, democracy is the eagle on the back of a dollar bill, with 13 arrows in one claw, 13 leaves on a branch, 13 tail feathers, and 13 stars over its head--this signifies that when the white man came to this country, it was bad luck for the Indians, bad luck for the trees, bad luck for the wildlife, and lights out for the American eagle. I thank you.

"To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Many books today suggest that the mass of women lead lives of noisy desperation." -- Peter S. Prescott

"Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties." -- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

"When I think of the number of disagreeable people that I know who have gone to a better world, I am sure hell won't be so bad at all." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life." -- P.D. James

"Being a newspaper columnist is like marrying a nymphomaniac -- It's great for the first two weeks." -- Lewis Grizzard

"We trained hard....but every time we formed up teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn that we meet any new situation by reorganizing. And a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization." -- Petronius Arbiter, 210 bc

"We trained hard, but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation." -- From Petronii Arbitri Satyricon AD 66." -- (Attributed to Gaius Petronus, a Roman General" -- who later committed suicide)

"How much of the national news that you report to the public each night consists of information you've actually gone out and dug up on your own?" -- Johnny Carson to Connie Chung

"In all honesty, Johnny, we are often at the mercy of the White House for the news we report. Frequently, we simply repeat verbatim what the White House tells us." -- Connie Chung to Johnny Carson

"You're aware the boy failed my grade school math class, I take it? And not that many years later he's teaching college. Now I ask you: Is that the sorriest indictment of the American educational system you ever heard? [pauses to light cigarette.] No aptitude at all for long division, but never mind. It's him they ask to split the atom. How he talked his way into the Nobel prize is beyond me. But then, I suppose it's like the man says, "It's not what you know..." -- Karl Arbeiter: former teacher of Albert Einstein

"Interpreter: One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"

"What's the difference between a Dice Clay concert and a Klan rally? Nothing. Trick question." -- Bob Goldthwait

"I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours." -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

"In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not D.N.A." -- Gregory Bateson, "Mind and Matter"

"Oscar Wilde

"If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it.

" Harriet Beecher Stowe

"The pure and worthy Mrs. Stowe Is one we all are proud to know As mother, wife and authoress -- Thank God, I am content with less!

" Charles Dickens

"Who call him spurious and shoddy Shall do it o'er my lifeless body. I heartily invite such birds To come outside and say those words!

" Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Should Heaven send me any son, I hope he's not like Tennyson. I'd rather have him play a fiddle Than rise and bow and speak an idyll.

"Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"California, the department store state." -- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

"Historian: an unsuccessful novelist." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The mistakes are all there waiting to be made." -- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitcyh Tartakower (1887-1956)" -- on the game's opening position.

"Moral victories don't count." -- Savielly Grigorievitcyh Tartakower (1887-1956)

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake." -- Savielly Grigorievitcyh Tartakower (1887-1956)

"Years ago my mother said to me, 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.' For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant." -- Elwood P. Dowd, "Harvey"

"When a woman behaves like a man, why can't she behave like a nice man?" -- Dame Edith Evans

"I only drink to make other people seem interesting." -- George Jean Nathan

"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important." -- -Eugene McCarthy

"Old age is always fifteen years older than I am." -- -Bernard M. Baruch

"Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept... The plastic a**hole of the world." -- William Faulkner (1897-1962)

"When women kiss, it always reminds me of prizefighters shaking hands." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit" -- Dwight Morrow

"You have to work years in hit shows to make people sick and tired of you, but you can accomplish this in a few weeks on television." -- Walter Slezak

"To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The Good Book" -- one of the most remarkable euphemisms ever coined." -- Ashley Montague

"The happiest time of anyone's life is just after the first divorce." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year." -- Truman Capote (1924-1984)

"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once." -- Unknown Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it." -- Max Frisch" -- Max Frisch, 'Homo Faber'

"Art is I; science is we." -- Claude Bernard (1813-1878)

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning." -- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975) How much fame, money, and power does a woman have to achieve on her own before you can punch her in the face?" -- O.J. O'Rourke Nothing is more intolerable than a wealthy woman." -- Juvenal (60? -- 140?)

"The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)=4 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.

"From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972

" A man must marry only a very pretty woman in case he should ever want some other man to take her off his hands." -- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

"Both the cockroach and the bird could get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most." -- Joseph Wood Krutch

"A bachelor never quite gets ove the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever." -- Helen Rowland

"Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history." -- Joseph Conrad

"America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it." -- Margot Asquith

"Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian." -- Robert Orben

"A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

"Living with a conscience is like driving a car with the brakes on." -- Budd Schulberg In order to preserve your self-respect, it is sometimes necessary to lie and cheat." -- Robert Byrne He without benefit of scruples His fun and money soon quadruples." -- Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

" We don't want to start a nuclear war unless we really have to, now do we Jack?" -- Group Capt. Mandrake (Peter Sellers)" -- to Col. Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove (Clemenceau) once said that war is too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he may have been right...but now, war is too important to be left to the politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought...And I can no longer, sit around and allow Communist subversion, Communist corruption, and Communist infiltration of our precious bodily fluids." -- Col. Jack Ripper, commander of Burpleson AFB" -- to Group Capt. Mandrake (Peter Sellers) in Dr. Strangelove I've been to one world's fair, a picnic and a rodeo and that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard come over a set of headphones." -- Major Kong (Slim Pickins) in Dr. Strangelove Well boys, looks like it's nu'clr combat, toe-to-toe with the Rooskies." -- Major Kong (Slim Pickins) in Dr. Strangelove You can't fight in here....this is the War Room!!" -- President Muckley (Peter Sellers)" -- to Gen. Buck Turgeson (Geroge C. Scott) while" -- wrestling with Russian ambasador in Dr. Strangelove I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed...but I am saying that we'll have no more than 15-20 million killed....depending on the breaks." -- Gen. Buck Turgeson (Geroge C. Scott) to" -- President Muckley (Peter Sellers) while trying to" -- convince him to "launch an all out nuclear sneak attack" -- in Dr. Strangelove Well boys, we're running low on fuel, we got more holes in us than a horse trader's mule, and if we was flying any lower we'd need sleigh bells on this thing....but we do have one thing going for us....at this altitude, they may harpoon us but they're sure not going to spot us on any Rooshian radar." -- Major Kong (Slim Pickins) in Dr. Strangelove

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." -- C.G. Jung (1875-1961)

"Half of analysis is anal." -- Marty Indik

"Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?" -- Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) on psychoanalysis

"Childhood, n. The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Marriage is a triumph of habit over hate." -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

"A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to go out and kill something." -- Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)

"Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity." -- Mortimer Adler

"Name me and emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball." -- Charles V (1500-1558) The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." -- General George Patton (1885-1945) I have already given two cousins to the war and I stand ready to sacrifice my wife's brother." -- Artemus Ward (1834-1867) You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." -- Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973)

"Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball." -- Charles V (1500-1558)

"Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom they know nothing." -- Voltaire (1694-1778) If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse -- as a man shoots himself." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them." -- Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)

"Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)" -- in Journal, Jan. 3, 1861 It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant." -- Richard J. Ferris, president, United Airlines

"The odds against there being a bomb on a plane are a million to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to one. Next time you fly, cut the odds and take a bomb." -- Benny Hill

"The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?" -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"The vice-presidency ain't worth a pitcher of warm spit." -- Vice President John Nance Garner (1868-1967) Women are being considered as candidates for Vice President of the United States because it is the worst job in America. It's amazing that men will take it. A job with real power is First Lady. I'd be willing to run for that. As far as the men who are running for President are concerned, they aren't even people I would date." -- Nora Ephron, from her San Francisco lecture, November 4, 1983

"Traditionalists often study what is taught, not what there is to create." -- Ed Parker, Grandmaster, American Kenpo.

"I know a mother-in-law who sleeps with her glasses on, the better to see her son-in-law suffer in her dreams." -- Ernest Coquelin

"I don't believe man is woman's natural enemy. Perhaps his lawyer is." -- Shana Alexander

"Good taste is the enemy of creativity" -- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

"Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out on yourself; in reviewing you take it out on other people." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects." -- Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)" -- in The Mariposa Bank Mystery, 1912 Nobody ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have while trying to write one." -- Robert Byrne

"Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar." -- Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616)

"I hate quotations." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Whoever said, "It's not whether you win or lose that counts," probably lost!" -- M. Navratilova The average dog is a nicer person than the average person." -- Andrew A. Rooney Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think." -- Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp." -- Joan Rivers

"Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses." -- H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"I'm against group sex because I wouldn't know where to put my elbows." -- Martin Cruz Smith

"I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning." -- Proverbs 7:17-18

"Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame." -- Laurence J. Peter

"Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything." -- Frank Dane

"In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you take." -- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair." -- George Burns

"Promise me that if you become a Christian you'll become a Presbyterian." -- Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964) to" -- Josef Stalin in 1941

"I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother's side." -- Stanley Ralph Ross

"What if there had been room at the inn?" -- Linda Festa on the origins of Christianity

"Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?" -- Jules Feiffer

"Religions change; beer and wine remain." -- Hervey Allen (1889-1949)

"When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite." -- William Blake (1757-1827) There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either." -- Robert Graves I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out of all this tumbling around." -- Poet Louise Bogan (1898-1970) on her love" -- affair with poet Theodore Roethke To read your own poetry in public is a kind of mental incest." -- Brendan Behan's father quoted by Shay Duffrin in his" -- one-man show "Confessions of an Irish Rebel" 1984

"They devoted the city to the lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it -- men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys." -- The Book of Joshua 6:21 Remarriage is an excellent test of just how amicable your divorce was." -- Margo Kaufman

"A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to comprehend his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it." -- Israel Zangwill

"Immortality is the condition of a dead man who doesn't believe he is dead." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy." -- Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

"The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money." -- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

"Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home." -- David Frost

"In heaven all the interesting people are missing." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"Lawsuit n. A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Love: The delusion that one woman differs from another." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished." -- Zsa Zsa Gabor

"Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together..." -- Carl Zwanzig

"Alimony: the ransom the happy pay to the devil." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"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 (1879-1955) The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood." -- Alexander Haig Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.

"If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.

"SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT! POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!

"Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift? A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.

"Any given program will expand to fill available memory.

"God is real, unless declared integer.

"If a train station is where the train stops, what's a work station?

"Programming just with goto's is like swatting flies with a sledgehammer.

"Real programs don't eat cache.

"It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

"The charms of a passing woman are usually in direct relation to the speed of her passing." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" -- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898)

"Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality." -- Jules de Gaultier

"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses." -- Bruce Leverett -- "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"

"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"This world is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel." -- Horace Walpole (1717-1797) A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students." -- John Ciardi Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Now is the time for all good men to come to." -- Walt Kelly I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!" -- Paul McCracken Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored." -- George Saunders' dying words Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him." -- John Barrymore's dying words (1882-1942)

"The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers." -- Wilfrid Sheed

"The Puritans gave thanks for being preserved from the Indians, and we give thanks for being preserved from the Puritans." -- Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)

"The young always have the same problem -- how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another." -- Quentin Crisp

"In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel." -- Ben Hecht

"The only excuse for God is that he doesn't exist." -- Stendhal

"People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it." -- Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

"Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's what parents were created for." -- Ogden Nash (1902-1971) Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny-- -- Did you ever try buying then without money?" -- Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

"Reflections on Ice-Breaking" -- Ogden Nash Candy Is dandy But liquor Is quicker.

The Pig" -- Ogden Nash The Pig, if I am not mistaken, Supplies us sausage, ham, and Bacon. Let others say his heart is big, I think it stupid of the Pig.

"I told you 'bout the fool on the hill I tell you man he livin' there still Now here's another place you can be Listen to me Fixin' a hole in the ocean Tryin' to make a dovetail joint Look into a glass onion." -- The Beatles "Glass Onion"

"Getting kicked out of the American Bar Association is like getting kicked out of the Book-of-the-Month-Club." -- Melvin Belli on the occasion of his getting" -- kicked out of the American Bar Association

"I always turn to the sports pages first, which record people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures." -- Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974)

"It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or lose." -- Darin Weinberg

"I'm glad we don't have to play in the shade." -- Golfer Bobby Jones (1902-1971) on being" -- told that it was 105 degrees in the shade

"If you stay in Beverly Hills too long you become a Mercedes." -- Robert Redford

"You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

"Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles." -- Paul Fussell

"When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide and I stop and I turn and I go for a ride then I get to the bottom and I see you again!!!" -- The Beatles "Helter Skelter" -- discussing the effect of Sun" -- re-orgs on Sun employees

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." -- Henry Kissinger

"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre but they are more deadly in the long run." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine." -- Irwin Edman (1896-1954)

"Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, when he grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway." -- Unknown

"How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions." -- Robert Ardrey

"You can't say civilization don't advance...in every war they kill you a new way." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself." -- Alexandre Dumas, fils

"When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough." -- Fran Lebowitz

"Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity." -- Charles Ives

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

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

"It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior imapartiality." -- Arnold Bennett

"The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and they never believe me." -- Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810-1861)

"Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date." -- Unknown It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie." -- Unknown

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

"Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future." -- Sidney J. Harris

"Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may revitalize the corner saloon.

"There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one works. As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free variable."

"A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

"Vegetarianism is harmless enough, although it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness. Sir Robert Hutchison

"It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians." -- Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

"The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best." -- H. Allen Smith (1906-1976)

"The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Winter is not a season, it's an occupation." -- Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

"If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." -- James Thurber (1894-1961)

"I went to a convent in New York and was fired finally for my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"Contemporary American children, if they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December 15th." -- Roy Blount, Jr.

"A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset." -- James Gould Cozzens (1903-1978)

"Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty." -- Unknown

"... and thereof do I repent: I only plucked an occasional flower when I might have gathered an ample harvest of fruit" -- such are the just grounds for the regrets I have ..." -- D. A. F. Sade," -- "Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man"

"Avarice is the sphincter of the heart." -- Matthew Green (c. 1737)

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness." -- E.M. Cioran

"An idealist is onw who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower your class." -- Paul Fussell

"God is the Celebrity-Author of the World's Best-Seller. We have made God into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness." -- Daniel Boorstin

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Most men do not mature, they simply grow taller." -- Leo Rosten

"In our family we don't divorce our men -- we bury them." -- Ruth Gordon (1897-1985)

"I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"Social confusion has now reached a point at which the pursuit of immorality turns out to be more exhausting than compliance with the old moral codes." -- Denis de Rougemont

"Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Pathetic," he said. "That's what it is. Pathetic." (crosses stream) "As I thought," he said, "no better from this side." -- Eeyore

"The consumer's side of the coffin lid is never ostentatious." -- Stanislaw J. Lec

"If England treats her criminals the way she has treated me, she doesn't deserve to have any." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Behind almost every woman you ever heard of stands a man who let her down." -- Naomi Bliven

"Acquaintance, n. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Women's liberation will not be achieved until a woman can become paunchy and bald and still think that she's attractive to the opposite sex." -- Earl Wilson

"There's not a woman in the book, the plot hinges on unkindness to animals, and the black characters mostly drown by Chapter 29." -- P.J. O'Rourke (commenting on _Moby Dick_)

"He grounds the warship he walks on." -- John Bracken on Captain Barney Kelly" -- who ran the USS Enterprise into the" -- mud of San Francisco Bay in May 1983

"I don't understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses." -- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

"Pleasure, n. The least hateful form of dejection." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"You must believe in God in spite of what the clergy say." -- Benjamin Jowett

"Changing a college curriculum is like moving a graveyard--you never know how many friends the dead have until you try to move them!" -- Calvin Coolidge or Woodrow Wilson

"Be careful in revising those immigration laws of yours. We got careless with ours." -- advice given to Herbert Humphrey" -- by an American Indian from New Mexico

"Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency." -- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

"Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?" -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"Actions lie louder than words." -- Carolyn Wells

"Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking." -- Jerome Lettvin

"American husbands are the best in the world; no other husbands are so generous to their wives, or can be so easily divorced." -- Elinor Glyn

"Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one." -- Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired." -- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly." -- Paul Valery (1871-1945)

"God made man, and then said I can do better than that and made woman." -- Adela Rogers St. Johns

"I believe that much of the world's sorrow is caused by people who are this, but allow themselves to be treated like that." -- Maude -- (Ruth Gordon)" -- from the movie "Harold & Maude"

"Everybody should be able to make some music...That's the cosmic dance!" -- Maude -- (Ruth Gordon)" -- from the movie "Harold & Maude"

"The police.....always wanting to play games." -- Maude -- (Ruth Gordon)" -- from the movie "Harold & Maude"

"Vice...Virtue...It's not good to be too moral. You cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality." -- Maude -- (Ruth Gordon)" -- from the movie "Harold & Maude"

"Maude -- "The earth is my body, my head is in the stars...Who said that?" Harold- "I don't know." Maude -- "Well, I suppose I did." -- Maude -- (Ruth Gordon)" -- Harold -- (Bud Cort)" -- from the movie "Harold & Maude"

"The idea of.....intercourse.....the fact of your firm....young.....body ....comingling with the.....withered flesh.....sagging breasts... flabby buttocks.....makes me want to...vomit." -- The priest from the movie "Harold & Maude" -- counciling Harold on his plan to marry Maude

"If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The public doesn't want new music; the main thing it demands of a composer is that he be dead." -- Arthur Honegger

"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"If a child shows himself to be incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity marry, and perpetuate his kind." -- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

"The major concrete achievement of the women's movement of the 1970's was the Dutch treat." -- Nora Ephron

"Sunday: A day given over by Americans to wishing they were dead and in heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in hell." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The only difference between sex and death is, with death you can do it alone and nobody's going to make fun of you." -- Woody Allen

"Death: To stop sinning suddenly." -- Elbert Hubbard

"I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms." -- Giovanni Jacopo Casanova (1725-1798)

"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious." -- Brendan Gill

"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago." -- Bernard Berenson (1865-1959)

"If I ask a woman if she has suffered sexual harassment, could this be considered sexual harassment?" -- Sally Forth, Jan. 28, 1991

"Our Constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U.S. senators." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"The classes that wash most are those that work least." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"As it is more blessed to give than receive, so it must be more blessed to receive than to give back." -- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"An editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he'd have someone to look up to." -- Gene Fowler (1890-1960)

"Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." -- Gene Fowler (1890-1960)

"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"Marriage; a long conversation chequered by disputes." -- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

"An appeal is when you ask one court to show its contempt for another court." -- Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)

"If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together, who would escape hanging?" -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it." -- Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859)

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

"My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence." -- Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)

"That orgy of wishful thinking that has passed for logic in the present century." -- F.W. Lawvere

"Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The following is an intro to an article in Time (2/10/92, p25) by Michael Duffy, about President Bush's State of the Union address:

"A fem days after the embattled President delivered his State of the Union message, a little-known member of the opposition party appeared on prime-time television to decry almost everything the Commander in Chief had said. "The nation faces this year, just as it did last year, a tremendous deficit in the federal budget," the Congressman intoned. "But in the President's message there was no sense of sacrifice on the part of the government, no assignment of priorities, no hint of the need to put first things first."

"The year was 1968. The President was a Democrat named Lyndon Johnson. The Republican backbencher was Texas Congressman George Bush. And the "tremendous" deficit was $25 billion. Twenty-four years later, the deficit has climbed to $399 billion, and every complaint Bush lodged against LBJ's speech could be applied to his State of the Union address...

"You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves." -- Michael Wilding

"It's our fault. We should have given him better parts." -- Jack Warner on hearing that Ronald Reagan" -- had been elected governor of California

"Working in the theater has a lot in common with unemployment." -- Arthur Gingold

"One should always be wary of anyone who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend." -- Quentin Crisp

"The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the last half by our children." -- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

"Virtue is its own punishment." -- Aneurin Bevan

"Honesty: the most important thing in life. Unless you really know how to fake it, you'll never make it." -- Bernard Rosenberg

"Never believe anything until it has been officially denied." -- Claud Cockburn (1904-1981)

"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." -- Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

"Most people enjoy the inferiority of their friends." -- Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)

"I am a deeply superficial person." -- Andy Warhol

"Don't jump on a man unless he's down." -- Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)

"Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious." -- William Feather

"Anybody who thinks of going to bed before 12 o'clock is a scoundrel." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"Do Not Disturb signs should be written in the language of the hotel maids." -- Tim Bedore

"Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name." -- Henry Kissinger

"Henry Kissinger may have wished I had presented him as a combination of Charled DeGaulle and Disraeli, but I didn't....out of respect for DeGaulle and Disraeli. I described him as a cowboy because that is how he describes himself. If I were a cowboy I would be offended." -- Oriana Fallaci

"Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love." -- Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979) to Henry Kissinger

"No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive." -- Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)

"Men are the only animals that devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"A loving wife will do anything for her husband except stop criticizing him and trying to improve him." -- J.B. Priestley (1894-1984)

"The woman who cannot tell a lie in defense of her husband is unworthy of the name of wife." -- Elbert Hubbard

"My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can't decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives." -- Rita Rudner

"I'm a controversial figure: my friends either dislike me or hate me." -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

"She's afraid that if she leaves, she'll become the live of the party." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes." -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

"Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Ignorance is the mother of admiration." -- George Chapman (1599?-1634)

"Giving a man space is like giving a dog a computer: the chances are he will not use it wisely." -- Bette-Jane Raphael

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space." -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Outer space is no place for a person of breeding." -- Lady Violet Bonham Carter (1887-1969)

"Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like a disease." -- Nancy Mitford

"Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another" -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Better to have loved and lost a short person than never to have loved a tall." -- David Chambless

"I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she has regular features." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." -- Peter Ustinov

"The love of money is the root of all virtue." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"To some lawyers all facts are created equal." -- Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965)

"I'm no different from anybody else with two arms, two legs and forty-two-hundred hits." -- Pete Rose

"Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a communist." -- Alvin Dark, former baseball coach

"I was not successful as a ballplayer, as it was a game of skill." -- Casey Stengel (1891-1975)

"I like a friend better for having faults that one can talk about." -- William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

"I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them." -- Jane Austen (1775-1817)

"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Tell us your phobias, and we will tell you what you are afraid of." -- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

"Reverence: the spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission." -- Robert Burns (1759-1796)

"A child of my own! Oh, no, no, no! Let my flesh perish with me, and let me not transmit to anyone the boredom and ignominiousness of life." -- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control." -- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

"God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world." -- Ed McMahon

"The Irish are a fair people -- they never speak well of one another" -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"In response to "A little knowledge is dangerous." comes... If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much to be out of danger?" -- T.H. Buxley (1825-1895)

"The great tragedy of science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." -- T.H. Buxley (1825-1895)

"Marriage: putting one's hand into a bag of snakes on the chance of drawing out an eel." -- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

"We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse." -- W. R. Inge (1860-1954)

"I wasn't kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth." -- Chico Marx (1891-1961)

"I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid ideas." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"The average man does not know what to do with his life, yet wants another one which will last forever." -- Anatole France (1844-1924)

"Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian." -- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

"When everyone is somebody, then no one's anybody." -- W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)

"No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a dirty little beast." -- W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)

"There are few sorrows in which a good income is of no avail." -- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)

"It is no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be." -- Jim Grue

"Business is a good game -- lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money." -- Atari founder Nolan Bushnell

"Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They's have been sick of all that rubbish in a year." -- Robertson Davies

"Contrary to popular belief, English women do not wear tweed nightgowns." -- Hermione Gingold

"Once I make up my mind, I'm full of indecision." -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

"Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big joke on me." -- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"Honesty is the best policy -- when there is money in it." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Money is always there, but the pockets change." -- Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

"Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work." -- Robert Orben

"I am not sincere, not even when I say I am not." -- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

"This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Sometimes a fool makes a good suggestion." -- Nicolas Boileau (1636-1711)

"All my life, affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"There are two kinds of people. Those who say there are two kinds of people and those who don't." -- Woody Allen

"Attention to health is life's greatest hindrance." -- Plato (427?-347 BC)

"Boys don't make passes at female smartasses." -- Letty Cottin Pogrebin

"It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good than to be ugly." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"A dollar saved is a quarter earned." -- John Ciardi

"Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you'll be surprised at how littly you have." -- Ernest Haskins

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart." -- e. e. cummings (1894-1962)

"A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.

" A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it." -- Biologist P. B. Medawar

"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

"Now I may tell you that it's love and not just lust. And if we live the lie, let's lie in trust. On golden daffodils, to catch the silver stream That washes out the wild oat seed on Velvet Green." -- Jethro Tull -- "Velvet Green"

"Moving forward...using all my breath....making love to you was never second best...I saw the world crashing all around your face...never really knowing it was always...mesh and lace..." -- Modern English -- "I'll Stop The World"

"Now we all have a face, that we hide away forever and we take them our and show ourselves when everyone has gone. Some are satin, some are steel, some are silk and some are leather They're the faces of the Stranger but we love to try them on." -- Billy Joel -- "The Stranger"

"Boot leather flashing and spur-necks the size of my thumb. This high-born hunter had tastes as strange as they come. Unbridled passion: I took the bit in my teeth. Her standing over: me on my knees underneath." -- Jethro Tull -- "Hunting Girl"

" The Green Party is like a watermelon" -- green on the outside and red on the inside." -- Rep. Bill Dannemeyer, R-Fullerton

"I knew I'd been living in Berkeley too long when I saw a sign that said 'Free firewood" and my first thought was "Who was Firewood and what did he do?'" -- John Berger

"One's need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence." -- Henry Adams

"The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue." -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

"He marries best who puts it off until it is too late." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"We'll dream as lovers under the stars: Of civilizations raging afar. And the ragged dawn breaks on your battle scars As you walk home cold and alone upon Velvet Green." -- "Velvet Green" Jethro Tull

"One dusky half-hour's ride up to the north. There lies your reputation and all that you're worth. Where the scent of wild roses turns the milk to cream. Tell your mother that you walked all night on Velvet Green." -- "Velvet Green" Jethro Tull

"I'll make love to you in all good places under black mountains in open spaces. By deep brown rivers that slither darkly through far marches where the blue hare races." -- "Acres Wild" Jethro Tull

"Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an over- dose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center." -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.

"Etymology, n.:" -- Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations that were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy" ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow." -- Mike Kellen

"Resistance is irrelevant. You will become one with the Borg." -- Locutus

"In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"I know what love is: Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall, Romeo and Juliet, Jackie and John and Marilyn...." -- Ian Shoales

"Nowadays a citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"The wages of sin are unreported." -- Unknown

"Let me tell you how it will be, There's one for you nineteen for me. Cause I'm the tax man Should 5% appear too small Be thankful I don't take it all" -- The Beatles

"To a woman the first kiss is just the end of the beginning but to a man it is the beginning of the end." -- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

"Kissing is a means of getting two people so close together that they can't see anything wrong with each other." -- Rene' Yasenek

"Oh, what lies there are in kisses!" -- Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

"They have Easter egg hunts in Philadelphia, and if the kids don't find the eggs, they get booed." -- Bob Uecker

"Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter." -- W. R. Inge (1860-1954)

"Dubito ergo sum -- I doubt therefore I am" -- Kayvan Sylvan

"Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense." -- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"The continued propinquity of another human being cramps the style after a time unless that person is somebody you think you love. Then the burden becomes intolerable at once." -- Quentin Crisp

"I shall be breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all." -- Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)" -- Far From the Madding Crowd

"Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense." -- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

"My illness is dut to my doctor's insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." -- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

"Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"I am not young enough to know everything." -- J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)

"There are scores of thousands of human insects who are ready at a moment's notice to reval the will of God on every possible subject." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The impotence of God is infinite." -- Anatole France (1844-1924)

"One of the simple but genuine pleasures in life is getting up in the morning and hurrying to a mousetrap you set the night before." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything." -- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

"There are more bad musicians than there is bad music." -- Isaac Stern

"Only sick music makes money today." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) in 1888

"Music is essentially useless, as life is." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking." -- Clement Richard Atlee (1883-1967)" -- British prime minister (1945-1951)

"An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country." -- Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639)

"A communist is a person who publicly airs his dirty Lenin." -- Jack Pomeroy

"Instead of conceiving of society as something established for the defense of individual rights, fair contracts, and due process of law, we are invited to see it in terms of the biblical vision. This way of living, thinking, and acting where autonomy and related rights take priority has seriously jeopardized the meaning and values of all institutions in our society." -- Detroit Archbishop Adam J. Maida" -- in a speech to Catholic judges including" -- Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, and O'Connor

"Obviously no country can claim a special place in God's heart, yet we are better as a people because He has a special place in ours...I want to thank you for helping America, as Christ ordained, to be a light unto the world..." -- President George Bush" -- commending the National Religious Broadcasters for" -- their support in the war to drive Iraq from Kuwait

"I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once again governed by Christians...and Christian values. What Christians have got to do is take back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time, and one state at a time." -- Ralph Reed" -- Executive Director" -- the Christian Coalition

"An ideal wife is one who remains faithful to you but tries to be just as charming as if she weren't." -- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

"Judge: a law student who marks his own papers." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder." -- Thornton Wilder (1897-1975)

"I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character." -- Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

"I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." -- Harry S Truman (1884-1972)

"I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens." -- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)

"The trouble with wedlock is that there's not enough wed and too much lock." -- Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

"There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again." -- Clint Eastwood

"Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them keeps paying for it." -- Peggy Joyce

"Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women." -- Elsa Schiaparelli

"You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap." -- Dolly Parton

"What you have when everyone wears the same playclothes for all occasions, is addressad by nickname, expected to participate in Show And Tell, and bullied out of any desire form privacy, is not democracy; it is kindergarten." -- Miss Manners (Judith Martin)

"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"Any ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy." -- Augustine Birrell (1850-1933)

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." -- Jorge Luis Borges

"Carlyle said, "A lie cannot live"; it shows he did not know how to tell them." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"A good listener is usually thinking about something else." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"She ain't my mother, so I ain't gonna get her nothin'." -- Lee Trevino on a Mother's Day gift for his wife

"America: the only country in the world where failing to promote yourself is regarded as being arrogant." -- Garry Trudeau

"Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself." -- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) on America

"I love America. You always hurt the one you love." -- David Frye impersonating Nixon

"Personally, I think a fetus is about as much a life as a fish on a hook. Maybe less. The fish doesn't need to feed off an umbrellical cord. It's cordless, like my telephone." -- -- Phil Stromer

"Dictatorship is without a doubt the most satisfying form of government...as long as I'm the dictator." -- Phil Stromer 11/9/90-

"Gas chambers are neat. They make the guy's bodily functions all let go simultaneously. Just think, he'll whizz, doodoo, and hurl all at the same time. It'll be like a Symphony in Gross, D-minor. It'll be like a 600-pound person sitting on his face and farting until he suffocates." -- Phil Stromer on the Harris execution

"Everyone should support the ERA. Without Earned Run Average, we won't know which pitchers are the best. :)" -- -- Phil Stromer

"So be careful out there folx, Sun is watching. If you say anything that even remotely resembles political incorrectness, you are taking a chance with your livelihood. I'd recommend that any employees of Sun do NOT use the USENET for anything other than informational purposes, such as to mention a conference or something along the lines." -- -- Phil Stromer

"It's because somebody knows something about it that we can't talk about physics. It's the things that nobody knows anything about we can discuss." -- Richard Feynman

"I passionately hate the idea of being with it. I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time." -- Orson Welles, 1966

"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water." -- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

"Logic is like the sword: those who appeal to it shall perish by it." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like." -- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

"The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success." -- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

"The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it." -- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

"Autobiography is an unrivalled vehicle for telling the truth about other people." -- Philip Guedalla (1889-1944)

"Muscles come and go; flab lasts." -- Bill Vaughan

"A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault." -- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

"You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider." -- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"I can't understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"Only the winners decide what were war crimes." -- Garry Wills

"Wars teach us not to love our enemies but to hate our allies." -- W.L. George

"The ocean is a body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people." -- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars." -- J. Paul Getty

"When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident... or any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort." -- E. J. Smith, 1907" -- Captain, RMS Titanic

"To get the attention of a large animal, be it an elephant or a bureaucracy, it helps to know what part of it feels pain. Be very sure, though, that you want its full attention." -- Kelvin Throop

"Try to live your life so that you wouldn't be afraid to sell the family parrot to the town gossip." -- Will Rogers

"You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience." -- Stanislaw J. Lec

"Of all the unbearable nuisances, the ignoramus that has travelled is the worst." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"Calamites are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers." -- William James (1842-1910)

"Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined." -- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)

"He, in a few minutes ravished this fair creature, or at least would have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him." -- Henry Fielding (1707-1754), "Jonathan Wild"

"I love my cigar but I take it out of my mouth once in a while!" -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977) from "You Bet Your Life" -- in response to a man whos reason for fathering" -- 10 children was: "Well, I love my wife"

"No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have -- and I think he is a dirty little beast." -- W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)

"I don't have a warm personal enemy left. They've all died off. I miss them terribly because they helped define me." -- Clare Boothe Luce

"The enemy came. He was beaten. I am tired. Goodnight." -- Message sent by Vicomte Turenne" -- after the battle of Dunen, 1658

"I hate the pollyanna pest who says that all is for the best." -- Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960)

"There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel." -- Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960)

"The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary." -- Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960)

"The only thing I like about rich people is their money." -- Lady Astor

"The richer your friends, the more they will cost you." -- Elisabeth Marbury (1856-1933)

"It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people." -- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)

"Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf." -- Lewis Mumford

"It's a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's; and unto human beings, what?" -- Stanislaw J. Lec

"Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. It may help us to escape all criticism, we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness. But deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, "There is something not right," no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code." -- Carl G. Jung in the introduction to Frances G. Wickes'" -- "Analysis der Kinderseele" (The Inner World of Childhood)" -- 1931

"When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it and didn't inhale and never tried it again." -- Gov. Bill Clinton

"I like to play saxophone because you don't inhale." -- Gov. Bill Clinton, on a radio talk show in New York

"It's nice to see a Democrat blow something besides an election." -- Arsenio Hall, after Clinton's saxophone debut on his show

"I regret to say that we of the F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce." -- J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972)

"Life changed after that jump...I'd suddenly stepped to the highest level of daring, a level above even that which airplane pilots could attain." -- Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974)" -- describing his first skydive

"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"If more than ten percent of the population likes a painting it should be burned, for it must be bad." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"If we weren'g all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting we couldn't endure it." -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

"In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"If Jerry Brown is the answer, it must be a very peculiar question." -- Sen Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas

"I've told you I don't live and die by the polls. Thus, I will refrain from pointing out that we're not doing too bad in those polls." -- President Bush, in the New Republic

"A lot of people voting for Pat Buchanan say they are doing so to send a message. Apparently that message is, "Hey, look at me, I'm an idiot." -- Dennis Miller, talk-show host

"Times are hard, you're afraid to pay the fee So you find yourself somebody who can do the job for free When you need a little lovin' cause you man is out of town That's the time you get me runnin, and you'll know I'll be around. I'm a fool to do your dirty work..." -- Steely Dan -- Dirty Work

"While the music played, you worked by candelight Those San Francisco nights, you were the best in town. Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl you turned it on the world, that's when you turned the world around Did you feel like Jesus? Did you realize you were a champion in their eyes? On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene But your's was kitchen clean Everyone stopped to stare at your technical ability Every "A" friend had your number on the wall You must have had it all, You go to LA on a dare and you go it alone. Could you live forever? Could you see the day, could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away?" -- Steely Dan -- Kid Charlemagne

" Babs and Clean Willy were in love they said So, in love, the preacher's face turned red Soon everybody knew the thing was dead He shouts, She bites, They wrangle through the night She go crazy, got to make'm get away Papa say, oh...oh, no hesitation, No tears and no hearts breaking, no remorse. Oh....oh Congratulations, this is your Hatian Divorce." -- Steely Dan -- Hatian Divorce

"Making music should not be left to the professionals." -- Michelle Shocked

"A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of the home." -- James Thurber (1894-1961)

"Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"There ought to be one day -- just one -- where there is open season on senators." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"Nobody said it was going to be easy, and nobody was right." -- President George Bush, quoted in Asiaweek magazine

"Get this (economic plan) passed. Later on, we can all debate it." -- President George Bush, to New Hampshire legislators

"It's a weird year." -- President George Bush

"The world makes up for all its follies and injustices by being damnably sentimental." -- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

"No nation was ever drunk when wine was cheap." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"The wine seems to be very closed-in and seems to have entered a dumb stage. Sort of a Marcel Meursault." -- Paul S. Winalski

"I only drink fortified wines during bad weather. Snowstorm, hurricane, tornado--I'm not particular, as long as it's bad. After all, any storm for a Port." -- Paul S. Winalski

"What profits a man if he keeps his eternal soul when he could have lived life to the full and been forgiven at the end of it all anyway?" -- David Merritt, a.k.a. THE RED SHARK

"People are much too solemn about things -- I'm all for sticking pins into episcopal behinds." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"The best reason I can think of for not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day." -- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

"If voters don't have a stomach for me, they can get one of those blow-dried guys." -- Ross Perot, Time, April 6, 1992

"Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont." -- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

"Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty." -- Stanislaw J. Lec

"You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not naturally been so very stupid." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in self-defense." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom." -- Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

"I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up." -- James Gould Cozzens (1903-1978)

"Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book." -- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Romania." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"Probable-Possible, my black hen, She lays eggs in the Relative When. She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now Because she's unable to postulate how." -- Frederick Winsor

"The Preacher, the Politicain, the Teacher, Were each of them once a kiddie. A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature. Do I want one? God Forbiddie!" -- Ogden Nash (1902-1971) Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed." -- A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

"Marriage: a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose." -- Beverly Nichols

"One should never know too precisely whom one has married." -- Nietzsche (1844-1900) on Lohengrin

"Marriage is part of a sort of 50's revival package that's back in vogue along with neckties and naked ambition." -- Calvin Trillin

"The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits." -- John Gay

"He who marries a widow will often have a dead man's head thrown in his dish." -- Spanish proverb

"Men have a much better time of it than woemn; for one thing, they marry later; for another thing they die earlier." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Uncomfortable under the gaze, the MP explained, "I mean...well, it's only a sort of chess or checkers or something isn't it?" Intending to scorn this probe with his disdain for things Western, Nicholais said, "Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double entry accounting." But obtuseness is its own protection against both improvement and punishment. The sergeant's response was frank and naive: "No sh*t?" -- Trevanian from the novel Shibumi

"The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"I don't like her. But don't misunderstand me: my dislike is purely platonic." -- Herbert Beerbohm Tree

"Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like to listen to the sins of the father as well." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more." -- Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

"Any man who, having a child or children he can't support, proceeds to have another should be sterilized at once." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain." -- Pierre Trudeau -- Prime Minister of Canada 1968-1979

"I've posed nude for a photographer in the manner of Rodin's Thinker, but I merely looked constipated." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." -- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

"Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than on all other days of the year put together. This proves, by the numbers left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished." -- Goethe (1749-1832)

"If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking 'Do you want fries with that?'" -- John Cleese

"For a while we pondered whether to take a vacation or get a divorce. We decided that a trip to Bermuda is over in two weeks, but a divorce is something you always have." -- Woody Allen

"She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook." -- Tommy Manville (1894-1967)

"Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse." -- Arthur Baer (1896-1975)

"Ah yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet." -- Robin Williams

"Where desire writhed there stands a stone; the change was sudden and complete." -- Maggie Roche

"After a year in therapy, my psychiatrist said to me, "Maybe life isn't for everyone." -- Larry Brown

"Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"It's hard to decide if TV makes morons out of everyone or if it mirrors Americans who really are morons to begin with." -- Martin Mull

"I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance." -- Harold Macmillan b. 1894" -- British prime minister (1957-1963)

"Never get married while you're going to college; it's hard to get a start if a prospective employer finds you've already made one mistake." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank." -- Woody Allen

"A sign of celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his services." -- Daniel J. Boorstin

"Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door." -- Marlo Thomas

"As an anti-American, I thank you for your rotten article devoted to my person." -- Prince Sihanouk in a letter" -- to Time magazine

"A painter should not paint what he sees but what should be seen." -- Paul Valery (1871-1945)

"When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies." -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

"Man is only man at the surface. Remove the skin, disect, and immediately you come to machinery." -- Paul Valery (1871-1945)

"Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god." -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

"Self is the only prison that can bind the soul." -- Henry Van Dyke

"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

"Repeated catastrophe is instructive" -- William Glaston -- Univ. of Maryland prof. of public affairs" -- refering to recent Democratic presidential election record

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Nothing to me is more distasteful than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a newly married couple." -- Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

"It's a really crappy sort of memory that only works backwards" -- The White Queen, "Through the Looking Glass".

"Foolish writers and readers are created for each other." -- Horace Walpole (1717-1797)

"Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast." -- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)

"I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers." -- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"Politicians are the same the world over: they promise to build a bridge even when there is no river." -- Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971)

"If the Prince of Peace should come to earth, one of the first things he would do would be to put psychiatrists in their place." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"When I became President, what surprised me most was that things were just as bad as I'd been saying they were." -- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to belive it." -- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

"I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." -- William F. Buckley, Jr.

"There you stand like a duck in a thunderstorm again -- aren't you ever going to understand?" -- W.A. Mozart

"While you're saving your face you're losing your ass." -- Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973)

"The trouble with my wife is that she is a whore in the kitchen and a cook in the bed." -- Geoffrey Gorer

"I don't mind a little praise -- as long as it's fulsome." -- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

"No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement." -- Florida Scott-Maxwell

"There ought to be a room in every house to swear in." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks." -- Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason." -- Orson Welles

"Americans detest all lies except lies spoken in public or printed lies." -- Ed Howe

"It is often pleasant to stone a martyr, no matter how much we admire him." -- John Barth

"I think, therefore Descartes exists." -- Saul Steinberg

"The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is...." -- Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

"Most vegetarians look so much like the food they eat that they can be classified as cannibals." -- Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)

"Make money and the whole nation will conspire to call you a gentleman." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"There are three intolerable things in life -- cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women." -- Orson Welles

"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Sun Microsystems openly acknowledges that we are not after (employees seeking) the gold watch. That's an old notion." -- Marianne Jackson, Director" -- Human Resources for Sun Microsystems" -- West Coast Operations" -- quote appeared in San Jose Mercury News

"It's not his fault that he's the rear end of a pantomime horse." -- Vincent Manis

"Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together." -- Carl Zwanzig

"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Reason and Justice tell me that there is more love of man in electricity and steam, than in chastity and refusal to eat meat." -- Chekov of Tolstoy

"There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function." -- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)

"Courtly love-poetry may first have been written during long periods of abstinence on the Crusades, but it would not have flourished in the cold of northern Europe without some help from the chimney." -- James Burke

"Excuse me, George Herbert irregular-heart-beating, read-by-line-lipping, slipping-in-the-polls, do-nothing, deficit-raising, make-less-money-than- Millie-the-White-House-dog-last-year, Quayle-loving, sushi-puking Bush! I don't remember inviting your ass on my show." -- Arsenio Hall in response to Bush's comment" -- that he would appear on any talk show except "Arsenio" -- Reprinted from the Seattle Times, Tuesday, August 4, 1992, page B-1

"Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry." -- George Ade (1866-1944)

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"National Health Insurance: The compassion of the IRS The efficiency of the Postal Service All at Pentagon prices!!!!" -- Seen on a bumper sticker

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost." -- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

"Popularity is the one insult I have never suffered." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Never lie when the truth is more profitable." -- Stanislaw J. Lec

"It's scary to think that the infrastructure of the industrialized world is increasingly based on software like this." -- Stephen Wolfe quoted on page 11 of" -- the August 1992 CAD report" -- refering to AutoCAD rev. 12

"Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm." -- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful." -- Unknown

"Melpomene was a substantial girl, thick of bosom, ankle, and forearm, rosy of cheek, and clear of eye. She seemed somehow incomplete without her hockey stick." -- Trevanian from the novel "Shibumi"

"Hana: What on Earth is a 'barbeque'? Hel: A primitive tribal ritual featuring paper plates, elbows, flying insects, encrusted meat, hush puppies, and beer. Hana: I daren't ask what a 'hush puppy' is. Hel: Don't." -- Trevanian from the novel "Shibumi"

"It was not their irritating assumption of equality that annoyed Nicholai so much as their cultural confusions. The Americans seemed to confuse standard of living with quality of life, equal opportunity with institutionalized mediocrity, bravery with courage, machismo with manhood, liberty with freedom, wordiness with articulation, fun with pleasure" -- in short, all of the misconceptions common to those who assume that justice implies equality for all, rather than equality for equals." -- Trevanian from the novel "Shibumi"

"It was the wrong answer. He should have given the Marilyn Quayle answer." -- Angela Buchanan, sister of Pat Buchanan," -- on Bush's remark that he would stand by a" -- grand-daughter's decision about abortion.

"Mr. Gates is up to his eyeballs in his knowledge of this stuff." -- US District Judge Royce Lambeth," -- ordering CIA Director Robert Gates to" -- testify at the Clair George trial.

"Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned." -- Milton Friedman

"I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle -- so all is peace." -- Edward Lear (1812-1888)

"A lot of women are getting alimony who don't earn it." -- Don Herold

"When you consider what a chance women have to poison their husbands, it's a wonder there isn't more of it done." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"When solving a "panic" you must first ask yourself what you were doing that could possibly frighten an operating system" -- Peter van der Linden

"I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

"The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists -- that is why they invented hell." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"I like to keep a bottle of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

"Climbing would be a great, truly wonderful thing if it weren't for all that damn climbing." -- John Ohrenschall

"Higher emotions are what separate us from the lower orders of life... Higher emotions, and table manners." -- Deanna Troi, _Imzadi_" -- Start Trek -- The Next Generation

"Success is a great deodorant." -- Elizabeth Taylor

"What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance." -- Jane Austen (1775-1817)

"Everyone realized that Computervision stock was the golden goose. But one grabbed the leg, another grabbed a wing, another got the neck, all pulling hard, and they realize now they could kill the goose if they keep this up." -- Charles Foundyller of Daratech" -- from 8/14/92 Wall St Journal

"Consequences, shmonsequences! So long as I'm rich!" -- Daffy Duck

"Civilization is the distance man has placed between himself and his excreta." -- Brian Aldiss

"The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone." -- John Ciardi

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly." -- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)

"The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions." -- Claude Levi-Strauss

"'Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

"My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle." -- Henny Youngman

"The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after." -- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

"An Irishman is the only man in the world who will step over the bodies of a dozen naked women to get to a bottle of stout." -- Unknown

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"The higher the buildings, the lower the morals." -- Noel Coward (1899-1973)

"The difference between man and animals is that we don't use our tongue to clean our genitals." -- Rimmer -- Red Dwarf

"Coincidences are spiritual puns." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"The perfect host requires the perfect parasite." -- Adopted from Lance Fusco.

"The chief objection of playing wind instruments is that it prolongs the life of the player." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instincts can be perceived." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"People that are really weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history." -- J. Danforth Quayle, 09/88

"The wages of sin are death, but the benefits include dental, major medical, two week paid vacation, pension fund, and stock options. Actually, taken as a package, it's a rather attractive deal." -- Tim Mefford

"Jesus saves sinners ... and redeems them for valuable cash prizes!!!

"And thou shalt smite thine enemy even unto the wall, gnashing thy teeth, and he shall grow small in thy mirrors." -- Jeff Zurschmeide

"There are situations in which torture is not merely permissible but morally mandatory." -- Michael Levin

"Things are so bad in Massachusetts now they don't even bother to plough Route 128 when it snows." -- Scott McNealy" -- in the wake of Wang's going Chapter 11

"Close your mouth, Michael; we are not a codfish." -- Mary Poppins

"While I am not a fan of corporal punishment, I am not a fan of his friends Major Nuisance or General Disturbance." -- Elaine Richards

"A woman will buy anything she thinks the store is losing money on." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've got a pretty neck." -- Eli Wallach

"There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"You'll get a fair trial followed by a first class hanging." -- Judge Roy Bean

"The French are just useless. They can't organize a piss-up in a brewery." -- Elton John

"He's a fine friend. He stabs you in the front." -- Leonard Louis Levinson

"The place where optimism flourishes the most is the lunatic asylum." -- Havelock Ellis (1859-1939)

"I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Hel knew Hana was not going to get off that easily, and he grinned at her as Miss Stern pursued, "I don't think you mean concubine. In English, concubine means someone who is hired for...well, for her sexual services. I think you mean 'mistress'. And even mistress is sort of old-fashioned. Nowadays people just say they are living together." Hana Looked at Hel for help. He laughed and interceded for her. "Hana's English is really quite good. She was only joking about the asparagus. She knows the difference among a mistress, a concubine, and a wife. A mistress is unsure of her wage, a wife has none; and they are both amateurs." -- Trevanian from the novel Shibumi

"Governor Bill Weld (R. Mass) was quoted as saying Dan Quayle had the sharpest political mind in the White House."That's true. At the time, George Bush was out campaigning, and Barbara was out walking Millie the dog." -- Jay Leno from the Tonight Show a couple of weeks ago

"He doesn't have the greatest smarts in the world. His main interests in school were broads and booze." -- J. Danforth Quayle's Father, 08/23/88

"No man should marry before he has studied anatomy and dissected the body of a woman." -- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

"I pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value." -- John Waters

"The only people who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood." -- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946)

"I don't worry about getting old. I'm old already. Only young people worry about getting old. When I was 65 I had cupid's eczema. I don't believe in dying. It's been done. I'm working on a new exit. Besides, I can't die now -- I'm booked." -- George Burns

"Someday Louisiana is going to get good government. And they ain't gunna like it." -- Earl K. Long

"...they no longer felt like newlyweds, and even less like belated lovers. It was as if they had lept over the arduous calvary of conjugal life and gone straight to the heart of love. They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion: beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death." -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez" -- from "Love in the Time of Cholera"

"I love acting. It is so much more real than life." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The trouble with America is that there are far too many wide-open spaces surrounded by teeth." -- Charles Luckman

"By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day." -- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"I don't need bodyguards." -- Jimmy Hoffa" -- Playboy Interview -- December 1975

"I'll always stay connected with Apple." -- Steven Jobs" -- Playboy Interview -- February 1985

"I really do plan to get out of show business within five years or so." -- Bill Cosby" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1969

"I believe that all of us ought to retire relatively young." -- Fidel Castro" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1967

"I'm not apt to be getting married in the near future and my lifestyle isn't apt to dramatically change as a result of any new relationship." -- Hugh Hefner" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1974

"The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion. You'll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents." -- Andrew Young" -- Playboy Interview -- July 1977

"I don't believe in leaving anything to be inherited." -- Robert Maxwell" -- Playboy Interview -- October 1991

"If we burn ourselves out with drugs or alcohol, we won't have long to go in this business." -- John Belushi" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1977

"Who could follow Carson? Well, believe me, somebody can -- and will." -- Johnny Carson" -- Playboy Interview -- December 1967

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country... . Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -- Abraham Lincoln" -- quoted in Jack London's "The Iron Heel"

"Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player." -- Miles Davis" -- Playboy Interview -- September 1962

"I must admit, it would be nice if I had a few more exciting personal qualities than I do." -- George McGovern" -- Playboy Interview -- August 1971

"Ain't never been another fighter like me. Ain't never been no nothing like me." -- Cassius Clay" -- Playboy Interview -- October 1964

"I'm a very oral person. I like licking a lot. I also like barking." -- Erica Jong" -- Playboy Interview -- September 1975

"I'd like to be a song and dance man." -- Walter Cronkite" -- Playboy Interview -- June 1973

"I've always wanted to be Brigitte Bardot." -- Bob Dylan" -- Playboy Interview -- March 1966

"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.)" -- Daniel Dennett" -- From CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED p. 177

"Leona Helmsley is a truly evil human being." -- Donald Trump" -- Playboy Interview -- March 1990

"Donald Trump is a snake." -- Leona Helmsley" -- Playboy Interview -- November 1990

"I drink for the honorable purpose of getting bagged." -- Jackie Gleason" -- Playboy Interview -- December 1962

"I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniel's." -- Frank Sinatra" -- Playboy Interview -- February 1963

"The human race may well become extinct before the end of the century." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)" -- Playboy Interview -- March 1963

"We are eliminating poverty in this country faster than any society ever." -- William F. Buckley, Jr." -- Playboy Interview -- May 1970

"Racism, pollution and the rest of it are themselves very close to extinction." -- R. Buckminster Fuller" -- Playboy Interview -- February 1972

"No national political party is going to nominate another right-wing candidate for a long time." -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr." -- Playboy Interview -- May 1966

"After all these investigations, that's exactly what they're going to find out: This is a great department." -- Daryl Gates" -- Playboy Interview -- August 1991

"I discovered masturbation to orgasm when I was about 13, and I was sure nobody else had ever done it." -- Erica Jong" -- Playboy Interview -- September 1975

"I had a patent on masturbation when I was 12. I thought I invented it." -- Roman Polanski" -- Playboy Interview -- December 1971

"When I was in junior high school, the teachers voted me the student most likely to end up in the electric chair." -- Sylvester Stallone" -- Playboy Interview -- September 1978

"Most of the class clowns in my high school are doing time now." -- David Letterman" -- Playboy Interview -- October 1984

"I'm sure if somebody were pointing a gun at me and I were standing there with a six-pack, I'd say, 'Care for one?'" -- Clint Eastwood" -- Playboy Interview -- February 1974

"Are there any writers on the literary scene whom I consider truly great? Yes: Truman Capote." -- Truman Capote" -- Playboy Interview -- March 1968

"How long can you be cute?" -- Hawn" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1985

"If I were courageous, I would have killed Qaddafi when I interviewed him" -- Oriana Fallaci" -- Playboy Interview -- November 1981

"Not one man has ever told me I'm beautiful -- in my entire life. I think that's what's made me the aggressive wreck I am today." -- Joan Rivers" -- Playboy Interview -- November 1986

"I'm a nymphomaniac of the heart." -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez" -- Playboy Interview -- February 1983

"I am a spy of life." -- Lech Walesa" -- Playboy Interview -- February 1982

"I am a mass of contradictions" -- Barbra Streisand" -- Playboy Interview -- October 1977

"I am a mass of contradictions" -- Richard Burton" -- Playboy Interview -- September 1963

"I'm not a homosexual" -- Edward Koch" -- Playboy Interview -- April 1982

"I'm not a Japan basher." -- Lee Iacocca" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1991

"I'm a meglomaniac." -- Roman Polanski" -- Playboy Interview -- December 1971

"I'm a genetic mutant." -- Dan Aykroyd" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1977

"I'm naturally throbbing" -- Woody Allen" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1967

"Bush is into the Contra business up to his eyeballs." -- Gore Vidal" -- Playboy Interview -- December 1987

"The popular view of Eisenhower among educated Eastern people was that he was a boob." -- Pat Moynihan" -- Playboy Interview -- March 1977

"Ford is a f**king bimbo. Even in that famous picture of him making his own breakfast, he was marmalading the wrong side of his English muffin." -- Abbie Hoffman" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1976

"Death comes along like a gas bill one can't pay." -- Anthony Burgess" -- Playboy Interview -- September 1974

"If I die tonight and you wake up tomorrow, don't send flowers. Don't come around with your tears. Picket. To to PTA meetings. Fight for higher wages. Make the most of it." -- Jesse Jackson" -- Playboy Interview -- November 1969

"I had a dream that Connie Chung is doing a newscast about my death and they show a clip from Soap." -- Billy Crystal" -- Playboy Interview -- March 1988

"I shall never cease to be sensual -- even on my deathbead. If the doctor is young and handsome, I shall draw him into my arms." -- Tennessee Williams" -- Playboy Interview -- April 1973

"Sometimes even powerlessness has a power of its own. Who is it who took India? Some guy in his underwear." -- Jerry Brown" -- Playboy Interview -- April 1976

"Big nations are like chickens. They like to make big noises, but very often it is no more than squabbling." -- Dr. Albert Schweitzer" -- Playboy Interview -- December 1963

"This country has been strip-mined by rich and powerful interests. If you dont like what they're doing, don't just sit there. Vote them out." -- Ralph Nadar" -- Playboy Interview -- June 1992

"When lip service to some mysterious deity permist bestiality on Wednesday and absolution on Sunday -- cash me out." -- Frank Sinatra" -- Playboy Interview -- February 1963

"I love gentiles. In fact, on of my favorite activities is Protestant spotting." -- Mel Brooks" -- Playboy Interview -- October 1966

"God is good when He gives us a grilled steak." -- Anthony Burgess" -- Playboy Interview -- 1974

"I found Christ. I had a revelation while I was watching Monday Night Football.'" -- Terry Bradshaw" -- Playboy Interview -- March 1980

"Remember, Jesus was on Eighth Avenue with the prostitutes. He wasn't uptown or in Washington, D.C." -- Martin Scorsese" -- Playboy Interview -- April 1991

"At the moment of climax, there is a oneness with you and your husband and God. When you come together, it's like when the church is brought up to meet Christ in the air." -- Anita Bryant" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1978

"When I was 16 years old, I f**ked Warren Beaty. Just like that. I did it because my girlfriends were so crazy about him, and so was my mother." -- Cher" -- Playboy Interview -- December 1988

"The great American formula for sex is: a kiss on the lips, a hand on the breasts and a dive for the pelvis." -- Dr. William Masters" -- Playboy Interview -- November 1979

"My reaction to porn films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first 20 minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live." -- Erica Jong" -- Playboy Interview -- September 1975

"I've never been to an orgy, honestly. If I was invited to one, I'd be the guy they sent out for cold cuts." -- Woody Allen" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1967

"Giving Head to your woman is dangerous because it gives the Devil introduction into the vagina." -- Norman Mailer" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1968

"There's an unfortunate obsession in this country with mammary glands. No matter how fantastic a girl's breasts are, if that's all she's got, they just hang there like two worthless tits." -- Raquel Welch" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1970

"A man has a sense of detachment from his penis. He walks around with a stranger in his pants." -- Gay Talese" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1980

"I have nothing against homosexuals. You should f**k whoever the f**k you feel like f**king." -- Eddie Murphy" -- Playboy Interview -- February 1990

"The censors say they're protecting the family unit in America, when the reality is, if you suck a tit, you're an X, but if you cut it off with a sword, you're a PG." -- Jack Nicholson" -- Playboy Interview -- April 1972

"I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times." -- Jimmy Carter" -- Playboy Interview -- November 1976

"A young man called and said, "Dr. Ruth, my girlfriend and I love each other very much. We want to get married." I said, "Good. What's your problem?" He said, "My girlfriend likes to toss fried onion rings on my erect penis." -- Dr. Ruth Westheimer" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1986

"I'm sort of hot-blooded. That doesn't mean necessarily I'm promiscuous. It means I really enjoy sex." -- John Travolta" -- Playboy Interview -- December 1978

"I'm not colorless -- I'm black. It's not something I consciously think about. It just is. It's like having a dick. You don't think about having a dick. You just have one." -- Whoopi Goldberg" -- Playboy Interview -- June 1987

"I've never seen black men with fine white women. They be ugly. Mugly, dogs. And you always see white men with good-looking black women." -- Spike Lee" -- Playboy Interview -- July 1991

"I don't feel guilty that five or ten generations ago these people were slaves. Now, I'm not condoning slavery. It's just a fact of life." -- John Wayne" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1971

"Christ wasn't white. Christ was black." -- Malcolm X" -- Playboy Interview -- May 1963

"My fondest hope is that Roots may start black, white, brown, red, yellow people digging back for their own roots. Man, that would make me feel 90 feet tall." -- Alex Haley" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1977

"Whites in this country have reacted to the demands of blacks only after disorder. Until Watts blew up, Los Angeles was not prepared to do much about it." -- William Sloan Coffin" -- Playboy Interview -- August 1968

"Our white brothers must be made to understand that nonviolence is a weapon fabricated of love. It is a sword that heals." -- Martin Luther King, Jr." -- Playboy Interview -- January 1965

"The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside of a camel's mouth. That and watching a girl eat octopus or squid." -- Marlon Brando" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1979

"I know that if you leave dishes in the sink, they get stick and hard to wash the next day." -- Arnold Schwarzenegger" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1988

"When in doubt, go for the dick joke." -- Robin Williams" -- Playboy Interview -- January 1992

"We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be detested in France." -- Duke of Wellington

"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, especially if the goods are worthless." -- Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced." -- Frank Zappa ( -Dec 4, 1993)

"The right to vote is a *consequence*, not a primary cause, of a free social system" -- and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny." -- Ayn Rand

"Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys." -- Andre Gide (1876-1951)

"If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to?" -- Bette Midler

"In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Sun is chuckling over a recent robbery in Silicon Valley: seems the thieves broke into a place and ripped off five Sun workstation, bypassing the new HP 700s and using a 705 as a door stop." -- From Unigram #405 (Oct 4, 1992)

"Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor." -- E.B. White (1899-1985)

"Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible." -- Frank Moore Colby

"Show me a man who has enjoyed his school days and I'll show you a bully and a bore." -- Robert Morely

"Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant." -- John Simon

"Society produces rogues, and education makes one rogue cleverer than another." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible." -- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

"It is only by not paying one's bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants." -- Alben W. Barkley (1877-1956)" -- U.S Vice President (1949-1953)

"Scratch an actor -- and you'll find an actress." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"A critic is a legless man who teaches running." -- Channing Pollock

"It is a curious thing ... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste." -- Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)

"'If a person were to try stripping the disguises from actors while they play a scene upon stage, showing to the audience their real looks and the faces they were born with, would not such a one spoil the whole play ? And would not the spectators think he deserved to be driven out of the theatre with brickbats, as a drunken disturber ?... Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage ? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor to go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows.'" -- (Erasmus, The Praise of Folly)

"George Bush taking credit for the Berlin Wall coming down is like the rooster taking credit for the sunrise." -- Al Gore -- during 1992 Vice Presidential debate

"I'm out of ammunition on this." -- James Stockdale -- during 1992 Vice Presidential debate" -- concluding his answer to a question about health policy

"I don't want to be charged with child abuse." -- Pat Buchanan, saying he did not want to get into a" -- war of words with Vice President Dan Quayle

"I came from a disadvantaged home. They were Republicans." -- Paul Tsongas, campaigning in New Hampshire

"There is no accountability in the public school system -- except for coaches. You know what happens to a losing coach. You fire him. A losing teacher can go on losing for 30 years and then go to glory." -- Ross Perot, The Dallas Morning News, March 11, 1984

"You want a wife who is intelligent, but not too intelligent." -- President Nixon, on the best wife for a president (1913-1994)

"The more you observe politics, the more you've go to admit that each party is worse than the other." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"Darling: the popular form of address used in speaking to a person of the opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment recall" -- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

"Marriage is a bargain, and somebody has to get the worst of the bargain." -- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

"Husbands are like fires -- they go out when unattended." -- Zsa Zsa Gabor

"Love is so much better when you are not married." -- Maria Callas

"A woman's place is in the wrong." -- James Thurber (1894-1961)

"What men call good fellowship is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"Male heckler: Are you a lesbian? Florynce Kennedy: Are you my alternative?

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them." -- Kurt Vonnegut : Breakfast of Champions

"Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it, and that a very severe one." -- Hannah Moore

"Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness." -- E.M. Cioran

"Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer." -- Victor Borge

"At least when I was govenor, cocaine was expensive." -- Jerry Brown

"The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois." -- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

"Government expands to absorb revenue -- and then some." -- Tom Wicker

"Congress consists of 1/3, more or less, scoundrels; 2/3, more or less, idiots; and three thirds, more or less, poltroons." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim at the top." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity." -- Frank Leahy

"Irony is the hygiene of the mind." -- Elizabeth Bibesco

"Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Women! Ya can't live with 'em and ya can't get 'em to wear skimpy little Nazi outfits." -- Emo Phillips

"Old wives don't dieif they're getting alimony" -- David Brown

"The only time some fellows are ever seen with their wives is after they've been indicted." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"If there were no husbands, who would look after our mistresses?" -- George Moore

"Cal Thomas: Are you going to stay in Washington or move back to" -- Indiana? Dan "Family Values" Quayle: I don't know. It depends on the kids." -- For 16 years I've sort of done what I wanted to do" -- and I've got to think of them now. -- from an interview at the White House last Thursday Nov 5 92

"= A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can = only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves = largesse (that is, excessive gratuities) from the public treasury. = From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates = promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the = results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, = always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's = greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have = progressed through this sequence: = = 1. From bondage to spiritual faith. = 2. From spiritual faith to great courage. = 3. From courage to liberty. = 4. From liberty to abundance. = 5. From abundance to selfishness. = 6. From selfishness to complacency. = 7. From complacency to apathy. = 8. From apathy to dependency. = 9. From dependency back again into bondage. = = Professor Alexander Tyler = The previous was written over 200 years ago while our original 13 colonies were still a part of Great Britain. At the time, the author was writing about the fall of the Athenian Republic over 2000 years earlier.

"More people out of work leads to higher unemployment.'" -- Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

"If you were in a room with Kadaffi, Saddam Hussien, and John Sununu, and you only had two bullets, what would you do. Shoot John Sununu twice." -- Paul Tsongas

"A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment." -- Willis Player

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Love, n -- A temporary insanity curable by marriage." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance of the woman." -- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

"Love is two minutes fifty-two seconds of squishing noises. It shows your mind isn't clicking right." -- Johnny Rotten

"The government has no source of revenue, except the taxes paid by the producers.To free itself -- for a while -- from the limits set by reality, the government initiates a credit con game on a scale which the private manipulator could not dream of. It borrows money from you today, which is to be repaid with money it will borrow from you tommorrow, which is to be repaid with money it will borrow from you day after tomorrow, and so on. This is known as "deficit financing." It is made possible by the fact that the government cuts the connection between goods and money. It issues paper money, which is used as a claim check on actually eisting goodss -- but that money is not backed by any goods, it is not backed by gold, it is backed by nothing. It is a promissory note issued to you in exchange for your goods, to be paid by you (in the form of taxes) out of your future production." -- Ayn Rand" -- Philosophy: Who Needs It" -- "Egalitarianism and Inflation"

"You have to. I don't believe that an atheist could be President of the United States -- anybody that did not have something bigger than himself or herself. And faith is the answer, and I've said this to friends. To some degree religion for me has been a private thing. But I can tell you that when the going is tough, and even when it's not -- in our family we say our prayers. We say our prayers at meals and we say our prayers when we go to bed. Barbara and I do. but it's something that the more I'm there, the more I understood what Lincoln meant." -- President George Bush, in a August 27, 1992 "700 Club" interview." -- in answer to "Abraham Lincoln said he couldn't handle the job except" -- on his knees. Have you found recourse to God in prayer often in" -- your presidency?"

"The Godless would deny and destroy human rights .... the liberties of a nation cannot be secure when belief in God is abandoned." -- U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard (DICK) Halverson

"Atheism has no room for human rights." -- U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard (DICK) Halverson" -- addressing 600 people at a prayer breakfast," -- March 1992 in Wisconsin

"(Atheists) don't believe in liberty.....look at the Soviet Union" -- U.S. Senate Chaplain Richard (DICK) Halverson" -- At the same March 1992 breakfast

"***(Curmudgeonmaster Note: The Senate Chaplain draws a salary of $112,000 a year and the House Chaplain draws a salary of $119,810 a year. In light of the congressional boondoggles and bounced checks, do you think that a 1/4 million dollars a year for government sanctioned ministers is money well spent?)

"An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living." -- Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794)

"Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis." -- Robert Heilbroner

"An economist is an expert who will know tommorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today." -- Laurence J. Peter

"All American cars are basically Chevrolets." -- Herb Caen

"Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth." -- Erma Bombeck

"Take most people, they're crazy about cars. I'd rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake." -- J.D. Salinger

"Television has raised writing to a new low." -- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)

"Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it." -- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

"Working on television is like being shot out of a cannon. They cram you all up with rehearsals, then someone lights a fuse and -- BANG -- there you are in someone's living room." -- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

"When you have no basis of argument, abuse the plaintiff." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero" -- Cicero (106-43 BC)

"I have no idea what White House statement was was issued, but I stand by it 100 percent." -- Richard Darman

"Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status." -- Laurence J. Peter

"In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known." -- Thomas Pickering

"Isn't it funny that anything the Supreme Court says is right?" -- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"A venturesome minority will always be eager to get off on their own... let them take risks, for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches- that is the right and privilege of any free American." -- 16 Idaho Law Review 407, 420 -- 1980.

"================================

"But there is one matter I want to remind you about: that a wife is responsible to her husband,..." -- 1 Corinthians 11:3

"Women should listen and learn quietly and humbly. I never let women teach men or lord it over them. Let them be silent in your church meetings. Why? Because God made Adam first, and afterwards he made Eve. And it was not Adam who was fooled by Satan, but Eve, and sin was the result. So God sent pain and suffering to women when their children are born, but he will save their souls if they trust in him, living quiet, good, and loving lives." -- 1 Timothy 2:11-15

"Women should be silent during the church meetings. They are not to take part in the discussion, for they are subordinate to men as the Scriptures also declare. If they have any questions to ask, let them ask their husbands at home, for it is improper for women to express their opinions in church meetings." -- 1 Corinthians 14:34-35

"Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; fo9r henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son, and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." -- Luke 12:51-53

"a man's worst enemies will be right in his own home! If you love your father and mother more than you love me, you are not worthy of being mine; or if you love your son or daughter more than me, you are not worthy of being mine." -- Matthew 10:36-38

"Thanksgiving Day is a day devoted by persons with inflammatory rheumatism to thanking a loving Father that it is not hydrophobia." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs." -- P. J. O'Rourke

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy." -- Louis Kronenberger

"Over in Hollywood they almost made a great picture, but they caught it in time." -- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks." -- Eric Sevareid

"If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, perhaps you have misunderstood the situation." -- Lurking in the November issue of Playboy:

"Baby, can't you hear my heart? You've got it drowning out the radio. I've been waiting so long for you to come along and have some fun. And I gotta let you know, know you're never gonna regret it. So open up your eyes, I got a big surprise, it will feel all right, And I wanna make your motor run." -- "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" -- Meatloaf

"Before you can use your Woodie... if there is a plastic strip coming out of it, please take hold of it and pull it out. If there is no plastic strip, press down from above to operate." -- Directions found on a toy

"I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty." -- George Burns

"I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand the love affair." -- Gore Vidal

"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of carelessness, incapacity, or neglect." -- Anonymous

"Editor: a person employed on a newspaper whose business it is to seperate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed." -- Elbert Hubbard

"A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not." -- Henry Fielding (1707-1754)

"The making of a journalist: no ideas and the ability to express them." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"What God hath joined together no man shall put asunder: God will take care of that." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't." -- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

"Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"People would never fall in love if they had not heard love talked about." -- La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

"The reason that lovers never weary each other is because they are always talking about themselves." -- La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

"When you're in love it's the most glorious two and a half days of your life." -- Richard Lewis

"Love is what we call the situation which occurs when two people who are sexually comptatible discover that they can also tolerate one another in various other circumstances." -- Marc Maihueird

"To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

-- Hamlet II:ii

"Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.

-- Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin

" It may be risky to marry for love, but it's so honest that the Lord just has to smile on it." -- " -- Josh Billings

" Like the ski resort full of girls hunting for husbands and husbands hunting for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem." -- Alan Mackay

"The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"A scout troop consists of twelve little kids dressed like schmucks following a big schmuck dressed like a kid." -- Jack Benny (1894-1974)

"Life is an effort that deserves a better cause." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"Nothing is so aggravating as calmness." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly while he's overcharging you." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain." -- Lily Tomlin

"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe." -- Goethe (1749-1832)

"there's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot." -- Steven Wright

"There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking." -- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

"An intelligence service is, in fact, a stupidity service." -- E.B. White (1899-1985)

"A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist." -- Elbert Hubbard

"The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain." -- Ronald Firbank

"I and my public understand each other very well; it does not hear what I say, and I don't say what it wants to hear." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons." -- James Thurber (1894-1961)

"We've kept the good old vices and labored to invent a few, With cake in vulgar surplus we can have it, and eat it too" -- Toy Matinee

"Watch?? I'm gonna pray, man! Know any good religions?" -- Zaphod Beeblebrox

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The modern computer is capable of answering, in a matter of seconds, mathematical questions that would take millions of years for a human being to answer (even longer if he stopped for lunch). How does the computer do this? Simple. It makes everything up. It knows full well you're not going to waste millions of years checking up on it. So you should never use computers for anything really important, such as balancing your personal checkbook. But they're fine for corporate use." -- Unknown

"I don't see any way that you can justify somebody making $1 million or more a year when the low-level workers aren't making enough money to afford a house." -- By chairman and CEO of Ben & Jerry's, Ben Cohen, who last" -- year kept his salary to $84,000 (the company limits its top" -- salaries to no more than seven times the pay of the lowest-paid" -- full-time worker):

"O why was I born with a different face? Why was I not born like rest of my race?" -- William Blake 1803

"During the Samuel Johnson days they had big men enjoying small talk; today we have small men enjoying big talk." -- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"A legal or religious ceremony by which two persons of the opposite sex solemnly agree to harass and spy on each other...util death do them join." -- Elbert Hubbard Neither Heaven nor Hell. It is simply Purgatory." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) A ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman." -- Herbert Spencer

"Vox populi, vox humbug" -- William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)

"I don't drink; I don't like it -- it makes me feel good" -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

"Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed, and the rejected." -- Jimmy Cannon (1910-1973)

"Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit." -- Kin Hubbard (1868-1930)

"I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise." -- Mary Wortley Montagu

"Most affections are habits or duties we lack the courage to end." -- Henri de Montherlant

"Everybody winds up kissing the wrong person good night." -- Andy Warhol

"Why is it that we entertain the belief that for every purpose odd numbers are the most effectual?" -- Pliny the Elder

"You have to be deviant if you're going to do anything new." -- David Lee

"I am into parallel monogamy." -- Seen on a button

"It's a control freak thing. I wouldn't let you understand." -- S.H. Underwood

"Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live -- that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values -- that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others -- that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human -- that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay -- that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live -- that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road -- that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up -- that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction." -- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged" -- from Galts speech

"Take only pictures, steal only time, leave only footprints." -- Unknown

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices" -- to be found in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own" -- for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone." -- Rod Serling

"All dogmas perish the thinking mind, especially ones you agree with." -- Adam Richardson

"Women remember the first kiss, men remember the last." -- Unknown

"No man is a hero to his wife's psychiatrist." -- Eric Berne

"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry." -- Gloria Steinem

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" -- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898)" -- "Through the Looking Glass"

"In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place." -- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant." -- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty" 1859 (1806-1873)

"Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read." -- Button from the Computer Museum, Boston, MA

"Usenet isn't a right. It's a right, a left, and a swift uppercut to the jaw." -- Button from the Computer Museum, Boston, MA

"Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life." -- Andrew Brown

"Never judge a book by its movie." -- J.W. Eagan

"Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?" -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything." -- Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)" -- Would I had phrases that are not known, utterances that are strange, in new language that has not been used, free from repetition, not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have spoken." -- Egyptian Inscription Recorded at the Time of the Invention of Writing.

"A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down." -- Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

"If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one." -- Andrew A. Rooney

"My empty waterdish mocks me." -- Bob the Dog

"Somebody once asked Niels Bohr why he had a horseshoe hanging above the front door of his house." -- "Surely you, a world famous physicist, can't really believe that" -- hanging a horseshoe above your door brings you luck?".

Of course not," Bohr replied," -- "but I have been reliably informed that it will bring me luck" -- whether I believe in it or not."

"Einstein's space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh's sky. The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself. The scientist's discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer's frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrant nude differs from a nude by Manet." -- Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation" -- London, 1970, p. 253

"A consistent pursuit of classical physics forces a transformation in the very heart of that physics." -- Werner Heisenberg, Philosophical Problems of Nuclear Science" -- New Youk: Fawcett 1966, p.13

"Order, unity and continuity are human inventions just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"We must avoid here two complementary errors: on the one hand that the world has a unique, intrinsic, pre-existing structure awaiting our grasp; and on the other hand that the world is in utter chaos. The first error is that of the student who marvelled at how the astronomers could find out the true names of distant constellations. The second error is that of the Lewis Carroll's Walrus who grouped shoes with ships and sealing wax, and cabbages with kings..." -- R. Abel, Man is the Measure" -- New York: Free Press, 1976

"I was simply furnishing a home. I love music ... and I don't think a $130,000 indoor-outdoor stereo system is extravagant." -- Leona Helmsley -- 1990" -- refuting charges that her lifestyle was excessive

"Women! Can't live with them...pass the beer nuts." -- Norm (Cheers)

"There is nothing like good food, good wine, and a bad girl." -- Fortune cookie

"This is quite a three-pipe problem." -- Sherlock Holmes quote

"There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist." -- Ayn Rand

"There was a young man of Dundoo, Whose limericks stopped at line 2.

"There was a young woman named Jenny, Whose limericks weren't worth a penny. Her rhythm and rhyme Were perfectly fine But whenever she tried to write any, She always had one line too many.

"There once was a young man from Lyme Who couldn't get his limericks to rhyme When asked "Why not?" It was said that he thought They were probably too long and badly structured and not at all very funny.

"War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebums and smaller adrenal glands." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority." -- E.B. White (1899-1985)

"One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many ..." -- Anthony Chevins

"The world of the commodity is a world updside-down, which bases itself not upon life but upon the transformation of life into work." -- Raoul Vaneigem

"There is scarecely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey." -- John Ruskin (1819-1900)

"A financier is a pawnbroker with imagination." -- Arthur Wing Pinero

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, But depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

"A chinese philosopher once had a dream that he was a butterfly. >From that day on, he was never quite certain that he was not a butterfly, dreaming that he was a man." -- found in a .sig" -- Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ" -- Anonymous Content-Length: 108364 X-Lines: 2635 Status: RO

"All great truths begin as blasphemies." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"He who can, does. He who cannot teaches." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"He who has never hoped can never despair." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most me dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Nothing ever is done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The Golden Rule is that there are no Golden Rules." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The liar's punishment ... is that he cannot believe anyone else." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is." -- Alan Watts

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink, I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish fill the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) As if you could TELL time without injuring eternity." -- Matthew Ryan

"Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now." -- Charlotte P Gilman

"There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

"People find life entirely too time-consuming." -- Stanislaw J. Lec Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live." -- Lin Yutang

"Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again." -- F. P. Jones

"Life is but a walking Shadow, a poor Player That struts and frets his Hour upon the Stage, And then is heard no more; It is a tall Tale, Told by an Idiot, full of Sound and Fury, Signifying nothing." -- W. Shakespeare: Macbeth, Act V, Scene V (MacBeth)

"If you were a gay illegal-alien looking for an abortion, it was a humdinger of a week." -- Kirk Fordice 1/29/93

"Tipper and Al came to a show the last time we were in Washington. They're nice people, a nice family. We made every effort not to frighten them." -- Jerry Garcia, on rumors the Grateful Dead may play at" -- the Inaugural. Boston Globe, Dec 12,1992.

"It's said that if you can't say something good about a dead person, don't say it. Well, I consider him dead." -- Former Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993)" -- on President Bush

"Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman." -- William F. Buckley, Jr., "The Wit and Wisdom of Vlad the Impaler"

"But, my dearest Agathon, it is truth which you cannot contradict; you can without any difficulty contradict Socrates." -- Plato (427?-348? BC) in Symposium

"...for no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied wall." -- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

"There is no "royal road" to geometry. Euclid to king Ptolemy I

"It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." -- Hofstadter's Law: by Douglas R. Hofstadter" -- from Go"del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

"When you're not looking at it, this sentence is in Spanish." -- Douglas R. Hofstadter" -- from Go"del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

"The last thing I have to say is that ice is the past tense of water. I've always wanted to write that sentence and now I have." -- Rita Mae Brown

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman." -- Virginia Woolf

"I don't like it and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it." -- Erwin Schrodinger commenting on Schrodinger's equations

"Equation (1.2-9) is a second order, nonlinear, vector, differential equation which has defied solution in its present form. It is here therefore we depart from the realities of nature to make some simplifying assumptions..." -- Bate, Mueller & White, 1971" -- "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics"

"Beauty is the first test; there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics." -- G.H. Hardy, in _A Mathematician's Apology_

"All dimensions are critical dimensions, otherwise why are they there?" -- Russ Zandbergen

"Just goes to show you. You can kill a guy, fold him up, stuff him in your trunk, and still you don't *really* know him." -- The Kids in the Hall

"I may not agree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to die in a fire of suspicious origin" -- author unknown

"The universe is made of stories, not atoms." -- Muriel Rukeyser

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -- Douglas Adams

"This is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's [IBM's] Galaxy-wide success is founded...their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws." -- TH Nelson, Computer Lib., 1988, London: Penguin.

"I'm a solipsist and, I have to say, I'm surprised there aren't more of us." -- from a letter to Bertrand Russell

"It's not that I don't enjoy it, but it's kind of like a trip to Disneyland. You get so excited about a ride on the Matterhorn, and then when it's over, you realize you wasted all that time in line for a minute and a half upside down and the chance to throw up." -- Murphy Brown, on "The Sex Thing"

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

"The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"[W]e shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man." -- Lynn White, Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our" -- Ecologic Crisis", Science V. 155 No. 3767 (10 March 1967)," -- pp. 1203-1207.

"Strange how the older generations can't program a VCR if their life depended on it, but they managed to operate the climate contol system of their 1958 Ramblers, which consisted of six unmarked knobs, one labeled "AirFloMatic" in unreadable cursive script, and four levers underneath the dash, which you had to turn, then pull." -- Dan Tasman

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things." -- Niccolo Machiavelli "The Prince" 1532

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffible game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time." -- Gaiman and Pratchett's "Good Omens"

"Learning builds daily accumulation, but the practice of Tao builds daily simplification. Simplify and simplify, until all contamination from relative, contridictory thinking is eliminated. Then one does nothing, yet nothing is left undone. One who wins the world does so by not meddling with it. One who meddles with the world loses it." -- Tao te Ching, 48. Lao-Tzu

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrow -- it empties today of strength." -- Corrie ten Boom

"Hell must be isothermal; for otherwise the resident engineers and physical chemists (of which there must be some) could set up a heat engine to run a refrigerator to cool off a portion of their surroundings to any desired temperature. Henry Albert Ben, _The Second Law_

"You'll NEED someone to love while you're looking for someone TO love." -- Selagh Delaney

"Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke." -- Lynda Barry

"Have you ever dated someone because you were too lazy to commit suicide?" -- Judy Tenuta

"Never date a woman you can hear ticking." -- Mark Patinkin

"I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"Women are cursed, and men are the proof." -- Rosanne Barr

"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base." -- Dave Barry

"I go from stool to stool in singles bars hoping to get lucky, but there's never any gum under any of them." -- Emo Philips

"SURE-FIRE SINGLES AD: Famous Writer needs woman to organize his life and spend his money. Loves to turn off Sunday football and go to the Botanical Gardens with that special someone. Will obtain plastic surgery if necessary." -- Joe Bob Briggs

"Women with pasts interest men... they hope history will repeat itself." -- Mae West (1893-1980)

"There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won't stand for that." -- Steve Martin

"I'm dating a woman now who, evidently, is unaware of it." -- Gary Shandling

"My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married and I didn't want him to." -- Rita Rudner

"What do I know about sex? I'm a married man" -- Tom Clancy

"Warning signs that lover is bored: 1. Passionless kisses 2. Frequent sighing 3. Moved, left no forwarding address" -- Matt Groening

"I said to my girl, 'Was it good for you too?' And she said, 'I don't think this was good for anybody." -- Gary Shandling

"I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell my children that, they just about throw up." -- Barbara Bush

"The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy, the single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead." -- Ann Landers

"Get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted a whole day." -- Mickey Rooney

"Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing happened, so I said to her, 'What's the matter, you can't think of anybody either?" -- Rodney Dangerfield

"Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution." -- Mae West (1893-1980)

"I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. I haven't had time for tobacco since." -- Arturo Toscanini

"A self-balancing, 28-jointed adaptor-based biped; an electro-chemical reduction plant, integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts in storage batteries, for subsequent actuation of thousands of hydraulic and pneumatic pumps, with motors attached; 62,000 miles of capillaries...." -- R. Buckminster Fuller

"A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch: one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition." -- Earl of Kent, _The_Tragedy_of_King_Lear_

"That's not scarey. What's scarey is what one can do with a gallon of bleach, a frozen burrito, some string or wire, a butane lighter, aspirin, match-heads, a box of latex condoms, and a bottle of SPF 18 sunblock." -- Taken out of context in an Email" -- discussion of something irrelevant

"...in the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacri- fice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it." -- George Will -- Newsweek, 2/22/93

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P.J. O'Rourke

"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy...neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water." -- John W. Gardner

"Everyone is chasing their own personal road runner...so when he shoots you point blank in the face with a cannon, you have no choice...you've got to just get up off your lazy ass, strap on that ACME jet pack and ghim!" -- Bayley 101, a personal philosophy

"I mean, certainly no one actually wants to be whipped or spanked, right?" -- Bettie Page (50's pinup model) on bondage scenes:" -- Playboy, March 1993

"...the fog is rising." -- Last words of" -- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

"Now comes the mystery." -- Last words of" -- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

"Friends applaud, the comedy is over." -- Last words of" -- Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827)

"Drink to me." -- Last words of" -- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

"Why yes--a bulletproof vest." -- James Rodges, a murderer," -- on his final request before the firing squad

"And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about to see another first--an attempted suicide." -- Chris Hubbock, who shot herself during a broadcast

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." -- Crowfoot's last words (1890)" -- (Blackfoot warrior and orator)

"This is no time to make new enemies." -- Voltaire, (1694-1778)" -- when asked on his deathbed to forswear Satan. Goodnight" -- last word of Lord Byron (1788-1824) Jefferson still survivies." -- John Adams (1735-1826)" -- last words after a lifetime competing with Thomas Jefferson Is it the Fourth?" -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) More light! Give me more light!" -- Goethe (1749-1832) Dieu me pardonnera. C'est son metier. (God will forgive me. It's his job.)" -- Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." -- last words of Gen. John Sedgwick 1864 This isn't Hamlet, you know, It's not meant to go into the bloody ear." -- Lawrence Olivier's last words spoken to his nurse, who spilt" -- water over him while trying to moisten his lips." -- Reported by his son Tarquin Die my dear Doctor? That's the last thing I shall do!" -- last words of Henery John Temple Palmerston (1784-1865)" -- Prime Minister of GB (1855-1858 and 1859-1865) Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing." -- Georges Jacques Danton (1759-1794), to his executioner

"It is well, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go." -- Last words of" -- George Washington, 14 December 1799.

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." -- Last words of" -- Nathan Hale, 22 September 1776.

"Thank God, I have done my duty. Kiss me, Hardy." -- Last words of" -- Adm. Horatio Nelson, 21 Oct 1805.

"This is the last of earth! I am content." -- Last words of" -- John Quincy Adams, 21 February 1848.

"Chief of the Army." -- Last words of" -- Napoleon I [Napoleon Bonaparte], 1821.

"I still live." -- Last words of" -- Daniel Webster, 24 October 1852.

"I now have no time to be tired." -- Last words of" -- Wilhelm I, 8 March 1888.

"Strike the tent." -- Last words of" -- Robert E[dward] Lee, 12 October 1870.

"Now comes the mystery." -- Last words of" -- Henry Ward Beecher, 8 March 1887.

"Let us cross the river, and rest under the trees." -- Last words of" -- Thomas Jonathan [Stonewall] Jackson, 10 May 1863.

"I have tried so hard to do the right." -- Last words of" -- Grover Cleveland, 1908.

"So little done--so much to do." -- Last words of" -- Cecil John Rhodes {Founder of the Rhodes Scholarships}, 1902.

"Put out the light." -- Last words of" -- Theodore Roosevelt, 6 January 1919.

"Turn up the lights--I don't want to go home in the dark." -- Last words of" -- O. Henry [William Sydney Porter], 5 June 1910.

"I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." -- Last words of" -- Edith Cavell, before her execution by the Germans, 12 October 1915.

"How is the Empire?" -- Last words of" -- George V, 21 January 1936.

"....I've got to get to the top of the hill.." -- Last words of" -- John Pierpont Morgan (1913)

" Some rainy winter Sundays when there's a little boredom, you should always carry a gun. Not to shoot yourself, but to know exactly that you're always making a choice." -- Lina Wertmuller

"There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts of tiny trumpets, we have met the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us." -- Walt Kelly

"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." -- Steven Weinberg

"Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than minority of them -- never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?" -- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

"">Sun Release 4.1 Last change: 5 July 1990 2 > >TUNEFS(8) MAINTENANCE COMMANDS TUNEFS(8) > > You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish.

"Found in the online Sun doc for the "tunefs" command

"... it is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big enough hammer." -- Sun System & Network Admin manual

"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be reguarded as a criminal offense." -- E.W. Dijkstra

"As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs." -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949

"This document describes the usage and input syntax of the Unix Vax-11 assembler As. As is designed for assembling code produced by the "C" compiler; certain concessions have been made to handle code written directly by people, but in general little sympathy has been extended." -- Berkeley Vax/Unix Assembler Reference Manual (1983)

"Now that we have all this useful information, it would be nice to do something with it. (Actually, it can be emotionally fulfilling just to get the information. This is usually only true, however, if you have the social life of a kumquat.)" -- Unix Programmer's Manual

"Do not expose your LaserWriter to fire or intense heat" -- Apple LaserWriter manual

"This manual contains information about DCL commands and qualifiers, system services, RTL routines, and VMS utilities and components that are now obsolete. The manual also contains an appendix of DCL commands and qualifiers, system services, RTL routines, and VMS utilities and components that have been eliminated from VMS." DEC Manual, order number : AA-LB25A-TE April 1988 VMS Obsolete Features Manual

"All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do not use a hammer." -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925

"program" -- A set of instructions, given to the computer, describing the sequence of steps the computer performs in order to accomplish a specific task. The task must be specific, such as balancing your checkbook or editing your text. A general task, such as working for world peace, is something we can all do, but not something we can currently write programs to do." -- From Unix User's Manual Manual, Supplementary Documents, p. 14-3:

"Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.''" -- Dick Brandon

"Call my dad, my mom's too busy." -- Chelsea Clinton, when the school nurse told her parental permission" -- would be necessary for her to take some aspirin.

"The anatomical juxtaposition of 2 orbicularis oris muscles in a state of contraction." -- Dr. Henry Gibbons

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

"If little else, the brain is an educational toy." -- Tom Robbins

"Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none." -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

"I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow." -- Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

"A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

"O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!" -- Othello

"The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.

"I haven't lost my mind" -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.

"The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity" -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.

"I just found out that the brain is like a computer. If that's true, then there really aren't any stupid people. Just people running DOS.

"Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes." -- Lewis Grizzard

"Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!" -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life." -- Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)

"We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Off days" are a part of life, I guess, whether you're a cartoonist, a neurosurgeon, or an air-traffic controller." -- Gary Larson.

"Life? Don't talk to me about life!" -- Douglas Adams (Marvin the Paranoid Android)" -- The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

"Last words are for people who haven't said anything in life." -- Karl Marx (1818-1883)

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives." -- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." -- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal." -- Peter Brimelow, National Review (2/1/93)

"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, The pessimist fears it is true." -- J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)

"They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn't name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered." -- Graham Greene, _The Heart of the Matter_

"Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Nobel prize money is a lifebelt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"She just came in, pounced around this thing with me for a few years enjoyed herself, gave it a sort of beautiful quality and left. Excited a few men in the meantime." -- Patrick Macnee, reminiscing on Diana Rigg's involvement in" -- "The Avengers" (interview, Washington Post, Sept. 6, 1987)

"For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed." -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

"Through and through the world is infested with quantity. To talk sense is to talk quantities, It is no use saying the nation is large- how large? It is no use s aying that radium is scarce- how scarce? You can not evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves." -- Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

"Can machines have souls? You ask me that and I ask you if souls can learn. If they can't" -- then of what importance is this concept? Sterile and empty and unchangeable for eternity. How much more preferable it is to understand that we create ourselves. Slowly and painfully, shaped basically by our genes, modified steadily by everything we see and hear and attempt to understand. That is the reality and that is how we function, learn and develop." -- Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky" -- The Turing Option

"If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't." -- Lyall Watson

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Jack, Jack," I said, "you don't want to do it. Remember what happened to the guy who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima? He went crazy!"That a**hole? He was not properly brainwashed. I," he said with great pride, "have been properly brainwashed." -- Spalding Gray" -- from Swimming to Cambodia: The collected works of Spalding Gray

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Los Angeles, it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be advertised and sold to the people of the United States like automobiles, cigarettes and mouth wash." -- Morrow Mayo

"Here is an artificial city which has been pumped up under forced draught, inflated like a balloon, stuffed with rural humanity like a goose with corn...endeavoring to eat up this too rapid avalanche of anthropoids, the sunshine metropolis heaves and strains, sweats and becomes pop-eyed, like a young boa constrictor trying to swallow a goat. It has never imparted an urban character to its incoming population for the simple reason that it has never had any character to impart. On the other hand, the place has the manners, culture and general outlook of a huge country village." -- Morrow Mayo

"You can rot here without feeling it." -- John Rechy

"">From Mount Hollywood, Los Angeles looks rather nice, enveloped in a haze of changing colors. Actually, and in spite of all the healthful sunshine and ocean breezes, it is a bad place -- full of old, dying people, who were born old of tired pioneer parents, victims of America -- full of curious wild and poisonous growths, decadent religious cults and fake science, and wildcat enterprises, which, with their aim for quick profit, are doomed to collapse and drag down multitudes of people." -- Louis Adamic

"I was one of Them: the Strange Ones. The Funny People. The Odd Tribes of autograph collectors and photographers. The Ones who waited through long days and nights, who used other people's dreams for their lives." -- Ray Bradbury

"On thinking about Hell, I gather My brother Shelley found it was a place Much like the city of London. I Who live in Los Angeles and not in London Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be Still more like Los Angeles." -- Bertolt Brecht

"In the South of California has gathered the larges and most miscellaneous assortment of Messiahs, Sorcerers, Saints and Seers known to the history of aberrations." -- Farnsworth Crowder

"When he got through with science and religion, they were so wrapped up in each other that a Philadelphia lawyer could never untangle them. The closest this great scientist ever came to a definite stand was a full gallop on a supernatural race-track running from Fundamentalism to theism, but his powers of occult observation would have done credit to any crystal-gazer in Los Angeles....The whole thing was a conglomeration of metaphysical aphorisms and theological sophistry, suffused in a weird and ghostly atmosphere of obscurantism, with occasional and literal references to Santa Claus." -- Morrow Mayo, talking of physicist and" -- then-president of Cal Tech, Robert" -- Millikan and his transformation into a" -- 'Christian-Scientist'

"LA needs the cleansing of a great disaster or founding of a barricaded commune." -- Peter Plagens

"Los Angeles seems endlessly held between these extremes: of light and dark -- of surface and depth. Of the promise, in brief, of a meaning always hovering on the edge of significance." -- Graham Clarke

" Nothing is as Nice as Developing Fontana" -- Current official slogan of city of" -- Fontana

"It's tacky, very, very tacky. But maybe I should be grateful. People tell me it used to be worse." -- Recently arrived Fontana resident

"We're not a security guard company. We sell a *concept* of security." -- Michael Kaye, president of Westec, a" -- residential security company.

"As part of it's 'Astro' program LAPD helicopters maintain an average nineteen-hours-per-day vigil over 'high crime areas', tactically coordinated to patrol car forces, and exceeding even the British Army's aerial surveillance of Belfast." -- Mike Davis "City of Quartz"

"Tonight we pick 'em up for anything and everything." -- LAPD spokesman

"This is war...we're exceedingly angry....We want to get the message out to the cowards out there, and that's what they are, rotten little cowards -- we want the message to go out that we're going to come and get them." -- Ex-LAPD chief Daryl Gates

"This is the era of the police. If I were chief, I'd ask for as many as I could." -- Councilmember Richard Alatorre

"We may be finding that in some Blacks when [the carotid chokehold] is applied the veins or arteries do not open up as fast as they do in normal people." -- Chief Gates explaining the rash of" -- deaths of young blacks while being held" -- in custody

"People in the neighborhood instead of being on our side, make all kinds of accusations." -- LAPD spokesperson complaining after a" -- police supersweep done as part of" -- Operation HAMMER

"We're telling the real story of what it's like living in places like Compton. We're giving [the fans] reality. We're like reporters. We give them truth. People where we come from hear so many lies that the truth sticks out like a sore thumb." -- Eazy-E, lead rapper of NWA

"I think people believe that the only strategy we have is to put a lot of police officers on the street and harass people and make arrests for inconsequential kinds of things. Well, that's part of the strategy, no question about it." -- Chief Gates

"Gangs are never goin' to die out. You all goin' to get us jobs?" -- 16-year-old Grape Street Crip" -- Gang-member

"Quotes courtesy of "City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles" by Mike Davis

"Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life." -- William Faulkner (1897-1962) I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion." -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)" -- Of Beauty

"The affections are like lightning; You cannot tell where they will strike till they have fallen" -- Jean Baptiste Lacoraire

"It was mentioned on CNN that the new prime number discovered recently is four times bigger then the previous record." -- John Blasik

"Water generally flows downhill in this area." -- Bob Bennett, WDIV News 4, Detroit, reporting on a flood that" -- destroyed some suburban basement apartments.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899

"They have, and bring with them, that upper-body strength. They have apparently developed that in their childhood and growing up, and they've further advanced in that regard." -- Former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates" -- on lesbians in the LA Police Dept.

"Strategy is buying a bottle of fine wine when you take a lady out for dinner. Tactics is getting her to drink it." -- Frank Muir I have never been drunk, but often I've been overserved." -- George Gobel This coffee plunges into the stomach...the mind is aroused, and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle.... Memories charge at full gallop...the light cavalry of comparisons deploys itself magnificently; the artillery of logic hurry in with their train of ammunition; flashes of wit pop up like sharp-shooters." -- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

"Do you deny recurring rumors of topless sunbathing and wild lesbian polygamous skinhead devil-worshipping adulterous underage racist cross-dressed kitten juggling?" -- _Dirty Work_, by Dan McGirt

"You have to be deviant if you're going to do anything new." -- David Lee

"The only unnatural sexual act is that which you cannot perform." -- Alfred Kinsey

"If you are ever in an S&M relationship, make damn sure you are the S." -- Found in a .sig quoting his mother

"Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"I'm an experienced woman; I've been around... well, alright, I might not've been around, but I've been... nearby." -- Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore Show)

"I'm a man of the world, Andy. Why, I've even been to Raleigh!" -- Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts on the Andy Griffith Show)

"You make 'em, I amuse 'em. [children]" -- Dr. Seuss a.k.a. Theodore Giesel

"... Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them." -- Dr. Seuss a.k.a. Theodore Giesel

"Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Whenever you fall, pick up something" -- Oswald Theodore Avery

"Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it." -- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

"Reality's failure rate is similar to [that of] other barrier contraceptives." -- Quote from Science News

"Models are to be used, not believed." -- H. Theil 'Principles of Econometrics'

"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.) William Occam

"Theories should be as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) (paraphrase)

"Tongue -- a variety of meat, rarely served because it clearly crosses the line between a cut of beef and a piece of dead cow." -- Bob Ekstrom, Pitt, MN

"Bisonburger from the herd that appeared in 'Dances With Wolves.'" -- On the menu at Al's Oasis in Oacama, South Dakota

"I once complained to my father that I didn't seem to be able to do things the same way other people did. Dad's advice? 'Margo, don't be a sheep. People hate sheep. They eat sheep.'" -- Margo Kaufman

"We gladly feast on those who would subdue us ... not just pretty words, Fester." -- Morticia Addams -- from the Addams Family movie

"If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be permissible, even cannibalism." -- Brothers Karamazov, Pt 1, Bk i, Ch 6

"One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory." -- Rita Mae Brown

"Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December." -- J.M. Barrie (1860-1937)

"A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought." -- Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers, "Gaudy Night")

"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

"Confound those who have said our remarks before us." -- Aelius Donatus

"With just enough of learning to misquote." -- Lord Byron (1788-1824)

"A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion." -- Robert Chapman

"Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Quotations (such as have point and lack triteness) from the great old authors are an act of reverence on the part of the quoter, and a blessing to a public grown superficial and external." -- Louise Guiney

"The test of an author is not to be found merely in the number of his phrases that pass current in the corner of newspapers...but in the number of passages that have really taken root in younger minds." -- Thomas Higginson

"He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors." -- Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

"To be occasionally quoted is the only fame I care for." -- Alexander Smith

"Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly." -- Simeon Strunsky

"The most familiar quotations are the most likely to be misquoted... Some have settled down to false versions that have obscured the true ones. They have passed over from literature into speech." -- Carl Van Doren

"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" -- Doctor Who

"Life is like quotations. Sometimes, it makes you laugh. Sometimes, it makes you cry. Most of the time, you don't get it.

"After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) on Shakespeare

"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?): The Devil's Dictionary

"I improve on misquotation." -- Cary Grant

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but memory." -- Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

"By neccessity, by proclivity," -- and by delight, we all quote." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"I believe that religion can make a well-rounded person, or it can make an idiot. What we've go going on here is an idiot." -- Purchasing agent for Baylor Baptist University, Waco," -- Texas, commenting on David Koresh and the Branch Dividians.

"I have done some indiscreet things in my day, but this thing of playing myself for a prophet was the worst. Still, it had its ameliorations. A prophet doesn't have to have any brains. They are good to have, of course, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but they are no use in professional work. It is the restfulest vocation there is. When the spirit of prophecy comes upon you, you merely take your intellect and lay it off somewhere in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave it alone; it will work itself. The result is prophecy." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)" -- from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

"In one celebrated incident, 300 members of Church of the New Song requested $6000 worth of filet mignon and Harvey's Bristol Cream for a crucial religious ceremony at the federal prison in Atlanta." -- Legal Times, 2/15/93

" At the annual Girdiron Club dinner in Washington this weekend, after he did a turn on his sax, Clinton said, "I might have to pick an FBI Director, and it's going to be hard to fill J. Edgar Hoover's pumps."

" Bob Dole, the Senate Republican leader, called Bush's re-election attempt "Dr. Kevorkian's first effort as a campaign manager." Noticing Al Gore's position leading environmental policy, Sen. Dole had this to say: "Al, I think the lawn looks great."

"Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement." -- Christopher Fry

"Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul." -- Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)" -- Norweigen Playwright

"When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existance. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses." -- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"There's no money in poetry, but there's no poetry in money, either." -- Robert Ranke Graves (b. 1895)

"It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condenced, the deeper they burn." -- Robert Southey (1774-1843)

"Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few." -- John Masefield (1878-1967)

"Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry." -- R.Z. Sheppard, book critic

"Do not commit your poems to pages alone, sing them I pray you." -- Virgil (70-19 BC)

"The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." -- H.P. Lovecraft

"That all our knowledge begins with experience, there is indeed no doubt....but although our knowledge originates WITH experience, it does not all arise OUT OF experience." -- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)

"Thus, be it understood, to demonstrate a theorem, it is neither necessary nor even advantageous to know what it means....[A] machine might be imagined where the assumptions were put in at one end, while the theormems came out at the other, like the legendary Chicago machine where the pigs go in alive and come out transformed into hams and sausages. No more than these machines need the mathematician know what he does." -- Henri Poincare

"The fathers of the field had been pretty confusing: John von Neumann speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker, and Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim." -- Professor Edsger Dijkstra at the" -- ACN South Central Regional Conference" -- Austin, Texas, 16 to 18 Novemver 1984

"I am a design chauvinist. I believe that good design is magical and not to be lightly tinkered with. The difference between a great design and a lousy one is in the meshing of the thousand details that either fit or don't, and the spirit of the passionate intellect that has tied them together, or tried. That's why programming-- or buying software-- on the basis of "lists of features" is a doomed and misguided effort. The features can be thrown together, as in a garbage can, or carefully laid together and interwoven in elegant unification, as in APL, or the Forth language, or the game of chess." -- Ted Nelson

"For every living creature that succeeds in getting a footing in life there are thousands or millions that perish. There is an enormous random scattering for every seed that comes to life. This does not remind us of intelligent human design. "If a man in order to shoot a hare, were to discharge thousands of guns on a great moor in all possible directions; if in order to get into a locked room, he were to buy ten thousand casual keys, and try them all; if, in order to have a house, he were to build a town, and leave all the other houses to wind and weather -- assuredly no one would call such proceedings purposeful and still less would anyone conjecture behind these proceedings a higher wisdom, unrevealed reasons, and superior prudence." -- J.W.N. Sullivan

"Everybody's got plans...until they get hit." -- Mike Tyson, heavyweight champ" -- on "plans" released by Tyrell Biggs' camp" -- on how they would defeat the champ.

" Reality isn't what it used to be." -- Walter Truett Anderson

"A reasonable probability is the only certainty." -- E.W. Howe

"We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning." -- Werner Heisenberg

"What happens depends on our way of observing it or on the fact that we observe it." -- Werner Heisenberg

"My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we *can* suppose." -- J.B.S. Haldane" -- "On Being the Right Size" -- in the (1928) book "Possible Worlds"

"Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind." -- Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

"Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phatasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it." -- Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716)

"[F]or academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit." -- Battaille

"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move." -- Douglas Adams -- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

"What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"Dick Cavett: "Do you consider yourself a disciplined guy? Do you get up" -- every day and 'go to work'?" Jimi Hendrix: "Well, yeah. I try to get up every day."

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Where imagination is sucked out of children by a cathode ray nipple T.V. is the only wet nurse that would create a cripple On television, the drug of a nation Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation." -- Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

"The hallucenogenic drugs such as psilocybin, Mescaline, and peyote are not rude per se. But it can be difficult to observe all the niceties of manners when you're being chased down the street by a nine-headed cactus demon." -- .sig of geoffw@cwis.unomaha.edu (Geoff E. Wiggs)

"Stay away from needle drugs. Richard Nixon is the only dope worth shooting." -- Abbie Hoffman

"Reality is for those who can't take drugs.

"Reality is a crutch for those who can't handle hard drugs.

"If you want to solve the drug problem, improve reality.

"Reality is what won't go away when you stop beliving in it." -- Phillip K Dick

"There are, however, people in this world who seldom pick up a newspaper, people who, when watching television, sneer in displeasure and change channels at the first glimpse of an anchorperson. While such willfully uninformed citizens are rare, emerging from seclusion only to serve on juries in trials of great national significance, they do exist." -- Joe Keenan

"I have not seen a newspaper in over a month, and feel much the better for it." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on page of a newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page." -- Neil Postman

"Knowledge is not a series of self-consistent theories that converges toward an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth that is part of the collection forcing the others into greater articulation and all of them contributing, via this process of competition, to the development of our consciousness." -- Paul Feyerabend

"Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, somethimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbe them." -- John Locke (1632-1704)

"This place makes Mayberry look like a think tank." -- Dennis Miller (told to me by a CV employee)

"Who cares who's captain after the wings have fallen off." -- Scott McNealy on IBM Corp's" -- new chief executive officer Louis Gerstner

"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea" -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind- boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." -- Gene Spafford, 1992" -- found in a .sig of: tom coradeschi <+> tcora@pica.army.mil

"Right now I'm a freshman in my fourth year at U.C.L.A., but my goal is to become a veternarian, 'cause I love children." -- Julie Brown

"If we were the Monkees, we'd be ready by now." -- Frank Zappa, while band is tuning instruments ( -Dec 4, 1993)

"I have the distinction of speaking to you from one of the few countries that still has a communist party." -- Dennis Miller, MCing the 1991 Emmies

"PS. Did you ever realize that Peter O'Toole has a double-phallic name?" -- Dick Cavett quoting Groucho Marx

"Why can't they invent something for us to marry instead of WOMEN?" -- Fred Flintstone

"Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

"Heisenburg may have been here.

"I've got one word for the eighties. One word. Handguns. Disposable Handguns." -- Bobbi Harlow's father to" -- Steve Dallas in Bloom County For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency." -- Eric Ambler When we make mistakes they call it evil. When God makes mistakes they call it Nature!" -- Jack Nicholson's character in" -- The Witches of Eastwick If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, "Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?" No. "Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?" No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." -- David Hume (1711-1776) The idea of an incarnation of God is absurd: why should the human race think itself so superior to bees, ants, and elephants as to be put in this unique relation to its maker? . . Christians are like a council of frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking and squeaking "for our sakes was the world created." -- Julian The Apostate

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"...that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." -- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)" -- from _Mere_Christianity_

"Monty Python's usual schoolboy humour is here let loose on a period of history appropriately familiar to every schoolboy in the West, and a faith which could be shaken by such good-humoured ribaldry would be a very precarious faith indeed." -- The British Board Of Film Censors In their report on _Life of Brian_

"Our main advantage is fear and surprise. Our two main advantages are fear, surprise, and ruthlessness. Our three main advantages are fear, surprise, ruthlessness and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" -- Monty Python's Flying Circus

"The only good cat is a stir fried cat." -- ALF Radioactive cats have 18 half lives." -- anonymous Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." -- anonymous Women and cats do as they damned well please, and men and dogs had best learn to live with it." -- Alan Holbrook You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)" -- when asked to describe radio If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happen if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?" -- Stephen Wright When I was in therapy about two years ago, one day I noticed that I hadn't had any children. And I like children at a distance. I wondered if I'd like them up close. I wondered why I didn't have any. I wondered if it was a mistake, or if I'd done it on purpose, or what. And I noticed my therapist didn't have any children either. He had pictures of his cats on the wall. Framed." -- Spalding Gray" -- from Swimming to Cambodia: The collected works of Spalding Gray

"The more people I meet, the more I like my cat." -- anonymous In a cats mind, all things belong to cats" -- anonymous The only mystery about the cat is why it ever decided to become a domesticated animal" -- Sir Compton MacKenzie

"Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!" -- Theophile Gautier (1811-1872)

"If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat" -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Even overweight cats instinctively know the cardinal rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses" -- John Weitz

"God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the lion" -- Fernand Mery

"If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then a cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air" -- Doris Lessing I think not, therefore I am a cat" -- your cat, sleeping on the stairs in the dark...

"One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives." -- -- Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

"Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want." -- Joseph Wood Krutch

"All [that zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains?" -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"

"All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second." -- Jim Fiebig

"Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game. Iit, and high taxes." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss." -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

"I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is I could be just as proud for half the money." -- Arthur Godfrey

"If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation.

"Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care? It's not his money." -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"

"Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too?" -- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox

"Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund." -- F. J. Raymond

"Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than being flat broke and having a stomach ache." -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"

"Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree." -- Russell Long

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless. So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes..." -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"

"The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough voters to win the next election.

"The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"The subspace W inherits the other 8 properties of V. And there aren't even any property taxes." -- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b

"The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes, it's just a tired feeling:"

"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form. The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified", which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last names.

Here's the complete text:

"(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT)" -- "(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)" -- "(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME) household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"

"The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long form." -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out

"Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own laguage, and forthwith it is something entirely different." -- Goethe (1749-1832)

"Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week." -- Eric Temple Bell

"All the limitative Theorems of metamathematics and the theory of computation suggest that once the ability to represent your own structure has reached a certain critical point, that is the kiss of death: it guarantees that you can never represent yourself totally.

Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, Church's Undecidability Theorem, Turing's Halting Problem, Turski's Truth Theorem all have the flavour of some ancient fairy tale which warns you that "To seek self-knowledge is to embark on a journey which ... will always be incomplete, cannot be charted on a map, will never halt, cannot be described." -- Douglas R. Hofstadter

"I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical. About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot of news, with many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse." -- Gilbert & Sullivan" -- The Pirates of Penzance

"Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"The idea of hunting and gathering as the best way for life has become quite popular recently, much more populare in some circles than the idea of simple farming as the best way of life. Many of the new primitives regard the beginnings of agriculture as one of humanity's major steps in the wrong direction. Most of the people who are drawn to such ideas do their actual hunting and gathering in grocery stores, but the *feeling* is there; it takes the form of a religion...expressed by particpating in American Indian rituals -- or primitive-style rituals that are created anew." -- Walter Truett Anderson -- "Reality Isn't What it Used to Be"

"There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a BILLION people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you." -- A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture"

"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it." -- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

"If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity." -- Bill Vaughan

"No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; 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 (1571? -- 1631), _Meditation XVII_

"There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

"Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?" -- Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

"Because he did not have time to read every new book in his field, the great Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski used a simple and efficient method of deciding which ones were worth his attention: Upon receiving a new book, he immediately checked the index to see if his name was cited, and how often. The more "Malinowski" the more compelling the book. No "Malinowski," and he doubted the subject of the book was anthropology at all." -- Neil Postman

"A book of quotations ... can never be complete." -- Robert M. Hamilton

"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research." -- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Perhaps the reader may ask, of what consequence is it whether the author's exact language is preserved or not, provided we have his thought? The answer is, that inaccurate quotation is a sin against truth. It may appear in any particular instance to be a trifle, but perfection consists in small things, and perfection is no trifle." -- Robert W. Shaunon

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." -- Unknown

"A friend is someone you call to help you move. A best friend is someone you call to help you move... a body." -- Anonymous

"Few things in life are more embarrassing than the necessity of having to inform an old friend that you have just got engaged to his fiancee." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

"Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty." -- Stephen King" -- Roland from "The Last Gunslinger"

"Truth, springs from agrument amongst friends." -- David Hume (1711-1776)

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." -- Anais Nin

"When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat." -- Henry Miller (1891-1980)

"The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands." -- Alexander Penney

"The friendly cow all red and white, I love with all my heart: She gives me cream with all her might; to eat with apple tart." -- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful, one hundred percent." -- Horton -- from Dr. Seuss's "Horton Hears a Who"

"After several minutes of utterly dull conversation I began to think of her not as a woman but as a human, then not as a human but as an animal, then not as an animal but as a source of high-grade protein." -- Mark Gooley

"It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years." -- John Von Neumann (ca. 1949)

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." -- Ken Olsen , CEO DEC 1977

"No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris ... [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping." -- Orville Wright (1871-1948)" -- (c. 1908)

"Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development." -- Julius Frontinus, 1st century A.D.

"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stagecoaches?" -- The Quarterly Review (England), March 1825

"I can see the time when every city will have one." -- An American mayor's reaction to the" -- news of the invention of the telephone

" Our purpose is to consciously, deliberately evolve toward a wiser, more liberated and luminous state of being; to return to Eden, make friends with the snake and set up our computers among the wild apple trees." -- Deep down, all of us are probably aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison these pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy. Or, barring that, to turn out a good, juicy cheeseburger and a strong glass of beer." -- Tom Robbins

" For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." -- Charles Bukowski

"I find the question "Why are we here?" typically human. I'd suggest "Are we here?" would be the more logical choice." -- Leonard Nimoy

"Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether." -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"

"Why think? Why not try the experiment?" -- John Hunter

"The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek." -- Claude Bernard (1813-1878) You know how it is when you go to be the subject of a psychology experiment, and nobody else shows up, and you think maybe that's part of the experiment? I'm like that all the time." -- Steven Wright

"Velilind's Laws of Experimentation: 1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once. 2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points. Our view... is that it is an essential characteristic of experimentation that it is carried out with limited resources, and an essential part of the subject of experimental design to ascertain how these should be best applied; or, in particular, to which causes of disturbance care should be given, and which ought to be deliberately ignored." -- Sir Ronald A. Fisher

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)

"A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective." -- Edward Teller Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)" -- Mark Twain (1835-1910) Facts are stupid things." -- Ronald Reagan '88" -- slight misquote of John Adams, "Facts are stubborn things."

"To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd. or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge." -- J.B.S. Haldane" -- "On Being the Right Size" -- in the (1928) book "Possible Worlds"

"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Santa Claus wears a Red Suit, He must be a communist. And a beard and long hair, Must be a pacifist. What's in that pipe that he's smoking?" -- Arlo Guthrie

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." -- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) April 16, 1953 Plumpick?: Don't you understand, the whole town will blow up in three minutes! Columbine: Yes--they will be wonderful, those three minutes." -- _The King of Hearts_ A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors." -- Dean Inge No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country." -- General George Patton (1885-1945) Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable. The highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy." -- Sun Tze Ancient Chinese Warlord Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, you have sand. [There is no need to worry about a protracted war because] from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time." -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 10/2/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) [The U.S. victory in Gulf war was] a stirring victory for the forces of aggression." -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 4/11/91 (reported in Esquire, 8/92) Very little is known about the War of 1812 because the Americans lost it." -- Eric Nicol

".... You ask, What is our policy? I will say; "It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy." You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory -- victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)" -- to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940 in his first" -- address as the newly appointed Prime Minister.

"It is [the] belief in absolutes, I would hazard, that is the great enemy today of the life of the mind. This may seem a rash proposition. The fashion of the time is to denounce relativism as the root of all evil. But history suggests that the damage done to humanity by the relativist is far less than the damage done by the absolutist -- by the fellow who, as Mr. Dooley once put it, "does what he thinks th' Lord wud do if He only knew th' facts in th' case." -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

"The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision." -- Lynn Lavner -- as published in PFLAG

"After all, he thought he was God." -- FBI agent on why it was difficult to negotiate with David Koresh

"God created sex. Priests created marriage." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"An apology for the devil:it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him." -- "Aqualung" -- Jethro Tull

"I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) -- The Allied Arts

"Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent." -- Pierre Trudeau -- Prime Minister of Canada 1968-1979

"What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult." -- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

"So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Mad, adj: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"

"Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity." -- Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915)

"The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more." -- Ed Parker, Grandmaster, American Kenpo.

"Over the past ten years, for the first time, intelligence had become socially correct for girls." -- Tom Wolfe, "Bonfire of the Vanities"

"That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting. Marvin, _Life, the Universe, and Everything_ by Douglas Adams

"A very intelligent turtle Found programming UNIX a hurdle" -- The system, you see," -- Ran as slow as did he, And that's not saying much for the turtle.

"Families, when a child is born Want it to be intelligent. I, through intelligence, Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he will crown a tranquil life By becoming a Cabinet Minister" -- Su Tung-p'o

"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward." -- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

"If you look up 'Intelligence' in the new volumes of the Encyclopeadia Britannica," he said, "you'll find it classified under the following three heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence, Military. My stepfather's a perfect specimen of Intelligence, Millitary." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"There is no place for the incompetent -- there are few hiding places in these organizations. Do not look to the new intelligent organizations with their intelligent machines and their cultures of consent for days of gossipy coffee breaks or for boring but untaxing jobs. The culture of consent is not, as the British would say, going to be everyone's cup of tea unless they are educated and prepared for it. There lies the challenge for our society." -- Charles Handy -- The Age of Unreason

"...a science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the destribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life. " -- G.H. Hardy

"Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines." --Mandelbrot

"...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books." -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

"The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work." -- John Von Neumann

"What can I wish to the youth of my country who devote themselves to science? ...Thirdly, passion. Remember that science demands from a man all his life. If you had two lives that would not be enough for you. Be passionate in your work and in your searching." -- Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the relevation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." -- H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

"I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race." -- Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)

"Scientists are the easiest to fool. They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore misdirectable, lines. The only world they know is the one where everything has a logical explanation and things are what they appear to be. Children and conjurors--they terrify me. Scientists are no problem; against them I feel quite confident." -- Zambendorf, _Code of the Lifemaker_ by James P. Hogan

"The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us." -- Paul Vale'ry (1871-1945) in 1895

"What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public." -- Vilhjalmur Stefanss

"I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"I want to know the truth, however perverted that may sound." -- Stephen Wolfram

"In Einstein's theory of relativity the observer is a man who sets out in quest of truth armed with a measuring-rod. In quantum theory he sets out with a sieve." -- Sir Arthur Eddington

"Truth I have no trouble with, it's the facts I get all screwed up." -- Farley Mowat

"Well, now, hold onta yer horses, there, Frazier. I mean, as a psychiatrist, isn't it your job to, uh, 'seek and uphold the truth'?"Oh, get real, Cliff." -- Cheers

"The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards" -- Alexander Jablokov "The Place of No Shadows"

"I can be expected to look for truth but not to find it." -- Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

"Your motivation? Your motivation is your pay packet on Friday. Now get on with it." -- Noel Coward (1899-1973) to an actor.

"You have a part-time job, and that's better than no job at all." -- Vice President Dan Quayle after the manager of the Burger King had said that the jobs offered were part-time" -- minimum wage jobs, which didn't pay enough to live on," -- and that "It's hard to find people who want to actually" -- show up for the job."

"It was just a job. It wasn't any special interest in consumer affairs. I needed a paycheck and the Attorney General said that I would be best to go down there, because he knew I was anti-consumer." -- Vice President Dan Quayle and talking about his job as" -- Chief investigator, consumer protection division of the" -- Indiana Attorney General's office from 1970-1971

"When sh*t becomes valuable, the poor will be born without a**holes." -- Henry Miller (1891-1980)

"When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist." -- Dom Helder Camara

"I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

" > Although there is no meaningful content in this, I would like to > share my favorite excuse story that I heard as an undergraduate at Duke. I > don't know if it actually happened (it seems suspiciously like "urban > legend"), but I sincerely hope that it did... > > Introductory Chemistry at Duke has been taught for about a zillion > years by Professor Bonk (really), and his course is semi-affectionately > known as "Bonkistry." He has been around forever, so I wouldn't put it > past him to come up with something like this. Anyway, one year there were > these two guys who were taking Chemistry and who did pretty well on all of > the quizzes and the midterms and labs, etc., such that going into the final > they had a solid A. These two friends were so confident going into the > final that the weekend before finals week (even though the Chem final was > on Monday), they decided to go up to UVirginia and party with some friends > up there. So they did this and had a great time. However, with their > hangovers and everything, they overslept all day Sunday and didn't make it > back to Duke until early monday morning. Rather than taking the final > then, what they did was to find Professor Bonk after the final and explain > to him why they missed the final. They told him that they went up to UVa > for the weekend, and had planned to come back in time to study, but that > they had a flat tire on the way back and didn't have a spare and couldn't > get help for a long time and so were late getting back to campus. Bonk > .thought this over and then agreed that they could make up the final on the > following day. The two guys were elated and relieved. > So, they studied that night and went in the next day at the time > that Bonk had told them. He placed them in separate rooms and handed each > of them a test booklet and told them to begin. They looked at the first > problem, which was something simple about molarity and solutions and was > worth 5 points. "Cool" they thought, "this is going to be easy." They did > that problem and then turned the page. They were unprepared, however, for > what they saw on the next page. It said: > > (95 points) Which tire? > > Needless to say, they did not pass the final.

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism." -- Carl Sagan, "Contact"

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself." -- Sir Richard F. Burton

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another." -- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

"...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line." -- Tom Robbins, _Skinny Legs and All_, 1990, p. 305.

"The Baptists' basic theology is that if you hold someone under water long enough, he'll come around to your way of thinking. It's a ritual known as 'Bobbing for Baptists.'" -- A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture"

"The Baptists believe in The Right to Life before you're born. They also believe in Life After Death, but that is a privilege and you have to earn it by spending the interim in guilt-ridden misery. At an early age I decided that living a life of pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when it's over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end." -- A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture"

"If there is, in fact, a Heaven and a Hell, all we know for sure is that Hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix..." -- Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine

"What is there left to a generation that has been told that there is poison in the rain and sex is death? Nothing but TV and relentless masturbation." -- Hunter S. Thompson

"It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy." -- Janov Pelorat in Asimov's Foundation's Edge

"Before I go out to take a picture of someone, I just stop at the city desk and say, 'Do you want him gazing out toward the sunset or picking his nose?'" -- Calvin Trillin

"Safewords: Pronounce the consonants. A string of vowels doesn't sound all that different from the noises you're making anyway." -- Troy H. Cheek

"Life's too short for chess." -- H.J. Byron _Our Boys_

"This is why God invented network television." -- Ted Harbert, pres. of ABC Entertainment, opining on Oprah Winfrey's interview of Michael Jackson.

"There are two types of people, those who can be categorized into one of two kinds of people, and those who can't.

"Actually there are THREE types of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

"Actually there are two types of people. Those who finish what they're doing, and so on....

"COSE is a verb not a noun." -- Scott McNealy

"If debugging is the art of removing bugs, then programming must be the art of inserting them." -- Unknown

"As I was passing Project MAC, I met a Quux with seven hacks. Every hack had seven bugs; Every bug had seven manifestations; Every manifestation had seven symptoms. Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks, How many losses at Project MAC?" -- Unknown

"Some compilers allow a check during execution that subscripts do not exceed array dimensions. This is a help, but not sufficient. First, many programmers do not use such compilers because "They're not efficient." (Presumably, this means that it is vital to get the wrong answers quickly.)" -- Kernighan & Plauger -- The Elements of Programming Style

"The primary purpose of the Data statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable Pi can be given that value with a Data statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change." -- Fortran manual for Xerox Computers

"The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music." -- Donald E. Knuth

"We have come through a strange cycle in programming, starting with the creation of programming itself as a human activity. Executives with the tiniest smattering of knowledge assume that anyone can write a program, and only now are programmers beginning to win their battle for recognition as true professionals. Not just anyone, with any background, or any training, can do a fine job of programming. Programmers know this, but then why is it that they think that anyone picked off the street can do documentation? One has only to spend an hour looking at papers written by graduate students to realize the extent to which the ability to communicate is not universally held. And so, when we speak about computer program documentation, we are not speaking about the psychology of computer programming at all" -- except insofar as programmers have the illusion that anyone can do a good job of documentation, provided he is not smart enough to be a programmer." -- Gerald Weinberg, "The Psychology of Computer Programming"

"Opportunity for all means making taxes fair. I'm not out to soak the rich. But I do believe the rich should pay their fair share. For twelve years, the Republicans have raised taxes on the middle class. It's time to give the middle class tax relief." -- Candidate Bill Clinton" -- Announcement Speech, October 3, 1991

"Ronald Reagan and George Bush pushed through programs that raised taxes on the middle class. I think it's time to cut them. And in my administration I'll offer a middle-income tax cut that will cut rates on the middle class." -- Candidate Bill Clinton" -- Georgetown University, November 20,1991

"We have to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share again. Their incomes went up in the 1980s and their taxes went down. We can't ask the middle class to pay more; their incomes went down and their taxes went up." -- Candidate Bill Clinton" -- U.S. Conference Of Mayors, Houston, June 22, 1992

"[George Bush] has raised taxes on the people driving pickup trucks and lowered taxes on the people riding in limousines. We can do better." -- Candidate Bill Clinton" -- Democratic National Convention, July 16, 1992

"We will lower the tax burden on middle-class Americans by asking the very wealthy to pay their fair share. Middle-class taxpayers will have a choice between a children's tax credit or a significant reduction in the income tax rate." -- Candidates Bill Clinton and Al Gore" -- "Putting People First", 1992

"No wonder Americans hate politics when, year in and year out, they hear politicians make promises that won't come true because they don't even mean them -- campaign fantasies that win elections but don't get nations moving again." -- Candidate Bill Clinton" -- Detroit Economic Club, August 21, 1992

"I'm not going to raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for the programs I've recommended." -- Candidate Bill Clinton" -- Presidential Debate, October 19, 1992

" !!ELECTION TIME!! Winner -- Bill Clinton!! Losers -- Middle Class!!

"I had hoped to invest in your future by creating jobs, expanding education, reforming health care and reducing the debt without asking more of you... But I can't -- because the deficit has increased so much beyond my earlier estimates and beyond even the worst official government estimates from last year. We just have to face the fact that to make the changes our country needs, more Americans must contribute today so that all Americans can do better tommorrow." -- President Bill Clinton" -- The Oval Office, February 15, 1993

"To middle-class Americans who have paid a great deal for the last 12 years and from whom I ask a contribution tonight, I will say again... you're not going at it alone anymore -- you're certainly not going first, and you're not going to pay more for less as you have too often in the past." -- President Bill Clinton" -- Joint session of Congress, February 17, 1993

"The Clintonites, like pod people from a "Star Trek" adventure, have peeled off the thin layer of centrist rhetoric that they wore for the presidential campaign. We now learn that they are people genetically bred to inhabit the public sector. Their oxygen source is the moisture of taxes, which are remitted by the aliens in the private sector." -- Wall Street Journal, February 19, 1993

"It is blatantly false... It is a disgrace to the American people that the President of the United States would make a claim that is so baseless, that is so without foundation, so shameless in its attempt to get votes under false pretenses." -- Candidate "Lying Bill" Clinton, on Bush's charge that Clinton would increase taxes on all Americans making > $36,600/year

"Be humble for you are made of dung. Be noble for you are made of stars." -- Serbian proverb

"Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day." -- Stephen Jay Gould

"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy." -- Steven Weinberg

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this." -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), quoted by Rebecca West in" -- BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON: A JOURNEY THROUGH YUGOSLAVIA, 1940.

"Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet it is his very being." -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Pensees(II,72)

"This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as I live it is my privilege -- my *privilege* to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I love. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I've got a hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) How would it be if we discovered that aliens only stopped by earth to let their kids take a leak?" -- Jay Leno

"Separate together in a bunch. [And don't] stand around so much in little bundles!" -- director Michael Curtiz to movie extras

"Equal Rights were created for everyone." -- contesant in 1990 Mr. New Jersey Male pageant

"Once they were men. Now they are land crabs." -- dialogue from 'Attack of the Crab Monsters'

"For John Caputo, hermeneutics means radical thinking without transcendental justification: attending to the ruptures and irregularities in existence before the metaphysics of presence has a chance to smooth them over. Radical Hermeneutics forges a closer collaboration between the hermeneutics and deconstruction than has previously been attempted." -- ad for 'Radical Hermeneutics, Repetition," -- Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutics Project'

"I was not lying. I said things that later on seemed to be untrue." -- Richard Nixon, discussing Watergate (1913-1994)

"I love California. I grew up in Phoenix." -- Dan Quayle

"Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave." -- ad slogan 'Pepsi Comes Alive' as initially translated into Chinese

"I desire the Poles carnally." -- President Jimmy Carter's mistranslation in a 1977 speech in Poland

"1. At the rise of the hand of the policeman, stop rapidly. Do not pass him or otherwise disrespect him. 2. If pedestrian obstacle your path, tootle horn melodiously. If he continue to obstacle, tootle horn vigorously and utter vocal warning such as "Hi, Hi." [...] 5. Beware of greasy corner where lurk skid demon. Cease step on, approach slowly, round cautiously, resume step on gradually." -- from an official Japanese guide for English-speaking drivers, 1936

"The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which man shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be." -- Simon Newcomb (declared in 1901)

"Things are more like they are now than they have ever been." -- President Gerald Ford

"That's part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives a man opportunity." -- Lester Maddox, ex-governor of Georgia

"Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans." -- Alf Landon, during his speech in his presidential campaign against FDR

"You're a parasite for sore eyes" -- actor Gregory Ratoff

"I paint paintings because I can't get the experience in any other way but there are many more experiences that are equally satisfying to me and equally inept at answering all my questions, but hover in exactitude in describing themselves and defying me to define their logic." -- Julian Schnabel

"My fellow astronauts" -- Vice-President Dan Quayle, beginning a speech at an Apollo 11 anniversary" -- celebration

"Half this game is 90% mental" -- Danny Ozark, manager of the Phillies

"I've been traveling so much, I haven't had time to grow it." -- Bob Horner, Atlanta Braves third baseman, on why he hadn't grown a beard

"Isn't it a blessing of God it didn't hit him in the eye" ?" -- an elderly woman, when she and two others found a dead robber on the road," -- shot through the right temple

"If we didn't have bonuses, we wouldn't have had anybody working for us." -- Drexel Burnham Lambert spokesperson, explaining why the company gave over" -- $195 million in bonuses just before it filed for bankruptcy

"I first saw President Reagan as a foot, highly polished brown cordovan wagging merrily on a hassock. I spied it through the door. It was a beautiful foot, sleek. Such casual elegance and clean lines! But not a big foot, not formidable, maybe a little ...frail. I imagined cradling it in my arms, protecting it from unsmooth roads." -- Peggy Noonan, speechwriter for the Reagan administration

"Captial punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of human life." -- Orrin Hatch, Republican senator

"While you are away, movie stars are taking your women. Robert Redford is dating your girlfriend, Tom Selleck is kissing your lady, Bart Simpson is making love to your wife." -- Baghdad Betty, Iraqi radio announcer, to gulf war troops

"The boys never meant any harm against the girls. They just meant to rape." -- Joyce Kithira, deputy principal of a Kenyan boarding school, commenting on" -- a raid of a girls' dormitory by a gang of boys who raped 71 girls and" -- killed 19

"This country needs a spear chucker, and I think we've got him up on this podium." -- Eugene Dorff, mayor of Kenosha, Wisconsin, introducing presidential candidate" -- Jesse Jackson. He said later he had intended to say "straight shooter"

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on." -- movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn

"I want to gain 1,500 or 2,000 yards, whichever comes first." -- George Rogers, Saints running back

"If crime went down 100%, it would still be 50 times higher than it shoud be" -- Councilman John Bowman commenting on the high crime in Washington

"I believe that mink are raised for being turned into fur coats and if we didn't wear fur coats those little animals would never have been born. So is it better not to have been born or to have lived for a year or two to have been turned into a fur coat? I don't know." -- Barbi Benton ex-playboy bunny

"The choice before us is plain: Christ or chaos, conviction or compromise, discipline or disintegration. I am rather tired of hearing about our rights and privileges as American citizens. The time is come -- it now is -- when we ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship. America's future depends upon her accepting and demonstrating God's government." -- Reverend Peter Marshall, on being elected Chaplain" -- of the U. S. Senate in January 1947

"[He] looks at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) (of Chamberlain)

"Who will relieve me of this Wuthering Height" -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)(of Sir Stafford Cripps at a dinner party.)

"If heaven is going to be full of people like Hardie, well, the Almighty can have them to himself." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) (of Keir Hardie)

"There but for the grace of God goes God." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) (of Cripps) It might be said that Lord Rosebery outlived his future by ten years and his past by more than twenty." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) [On recognizing China] But if you recognize anyone it does not mean you like them. For instance, we all recognize the right honourable gentleman the member for Ebbw Vale." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) (on Mr Bevan)

"Mother Theresa epitomizes for me the blinkered charitableness upon which we pride ourselves and for which we expect reward in this world and the next. There is very little on earth that I hate more than that." -- Germaine Greer

"Plato had slaves...George Washington had slaves... So, do I feel intrinsically better than these two men? Of course I do! They're dead!" -- Todd Andrew Reid

"But what about Bill Cosby ... the man who is to fathers what Marla Maples is to slutty chorines?" -- Bruce Handy

" FROM ERMA

"IN MY ELEVEN YEARS OF SERVICE TO THE BANK OF AMERICA, I HAVE BEEN PRIVILEGED TO WORK WITH SOME OF THE BANK'S FINEST EMPLOYEES. FROM PEOPLE LIKE EMMETT JENKINS, DICK DAVIS, JOHN COOMBS, AND MANY MORE WHO WERE WITH ME FROM THE BEGINNING, TO BOB LEE AND ALL OF MY CURRENT CO-WORKERS WHO ARE ASSISTING ME IN THE PROCESSING OF TRAVELLERS CHEQUES---MY FINAL APPLICATION---I CAN ONLY SAY THANK YOU. TOGETHER WE HAVE MADE GREAT STRIDES IN BANKING. AND I CANNOT HELP BUT FEEL, AS THE FIRST COMPUTER SYSTEM TO BE USED FOR BANKING APPLICATIONS, THAT MY RETIREMENT BRINGS TO CLOSE AN HISTORIC ERA. TO BE THE FIRST IN SOMETHING IS A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT, AND I AM VERY PROUD. BUT MY SUCCESS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE HELP OF SO MANY FINE PEOPLE.

"ALTHOUGH THE END OF AN ERA IS NEAR, AND WE WILL SOON PART, I WILL NEVER FORGET MY FRIENDS, AND I WISH YOU ALL THE GREATEST SUCCESS IN THE FUTURE.

"TO MY CURRENT---AND FINAL---ASSISTANTS, I BID FAREWELL---

"MY BEST TO ALL,

"ERMA" -- Here are the last words of a historic computer. ERMA (Electronic Recording" -- Method of Accounting), developed by Bank of America and Stanford Research" -- Institute between 1950-1959, for check processing.

"Then there was LSD, which was supposed to make you think you could fly. I remember it made you think you couldn't stand up, and mostly it was right." -- PJ O'Rourke

"I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough." -- M.C.Escher

"Chaos is the score upon which reality is written." -- Henry Miller (1891-1980) _Tropic_Of_Capricorn_

"Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood." -- Henry Miller (1891-1980) _Tropic_Of_Capricorn_ There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy." -- Henry Miller (1891-1980), _The_Colossus_Of_Maroussi_(1941)

"I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it." -- Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

"My teen angst has a body count." -- Veronica -- "Heathers"

"Philosophy is the highest music." -- Plato (427?-348? BC)

"No Voice; but oh! the silence sank like music on my heart." -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

"Music is sound's cognitive apologist." -- Stephen Smoliar

"I see music as the augmentation of a split second of time. Erin Cleary

"Without music, life would be a mistake." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

" Sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is music wherever there is harmony, order and proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony." -- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)

"How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians." -- David Brinkley

"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell (1903-1950) "Politics and the English Language", 1946

"Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories." -- Arthur C. Clarke

"Hypocrisy is the vaseline of political intercourse." -- Billy Connolly on ABC's "Head Of the Class"

"I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies." -- Dalton Camp

"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind of self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." -- James Madison (1751-1836)

"State Rep. Doug Teper has introduced legislation which would require the Georgia laws against fornication, adultery, and sodomy to be posted in hotel rooms. For those who don't comprende English, Teper has called for "International Symbols" describing these fun activities. Get out your drafting tools, let your imagination run wild, and send us the results. We'll publish the winning entry." -- From _Southern Voice_, a local weekly:

"Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate." -- Alain van der Heide

"People ask me if I've ever been called a Nazi. I answer that no one has ever had dreams of being tied down and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal." -- P.J. O'Rourke

"A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing." -- Sir Arnold Bax

"I can't see the point in the theatre. All that sex and violence. I get enough of that at home. Apart from the sex, of course." -- Baldrick -- Sense and Senility

"Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"CALIFORNIA: From Latin 'calor', meaning "heat" (as in English 'calorie' or Spanish 'caliente'); and 'fornia', for "sexual intercourse" or "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex." -- Ed Moran, Covina, California

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact." -- George Eliot (1819-1880)

"Language exists only on the surface of our consciousness. The great human struggles are played out in silence and in the ability to express oneself." -- Franz Xavier Kroetz

"There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly." -- Annie Dillard, _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek_

"If it is true that words have meanings, why don't we throw away words and keep just the meanings?" -- Ludwig Wittgenstein via Anatol Holt

"...exaggerated turns of speech conceal mediocre affections: as if the fulness of the soul might not sometimes overflow in the emptiest of metaphors, since no one, ever, can give the exact measurements of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sufferings, and the human word is like a cracked cauldron upon which we beat out melodies fit for making bears dance when we are trying to move the stars to pity." -- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)" -- _Madame Bovary_, ch. 12

"Sticks and stones will break our bones, but words will break our hearts..." -- Robert Fulghum

"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and big words Bother me." -- Winnie-the-Pooh

"The words 'I am...' are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you're claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you." -- A. K. Kitselman

"It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear." -- Douglas Adams

" O words of love, O words divine! The silver thought, the golden line! Of all men's words, there's none so fine, As these three words: 'I've got mine!'" -- Hagar the Horrible

"There is nothing outside the text." -- Jacques Derrida" -- the quote is the foundation of Deconstruction "Where did you put it?"Put what?"You know?"Where do you think?"Oh." -- Nicholas Negroponte" -- Director of the MIT Media Lab" -- stating his ideal model of human-computer interaction "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." -- Example of why it is difficult to get" -- computers to understand human speech

"It's hard to recognize speech." -- Example of why it is difficult to get" -- computer to recognize human speech." -- (phonetically equivilant to:" -- It's hard to wreck a nice beach.)

"We often think that when we have completed our study of one we know all about two, because 'two' is 'one and one.' We forget that we have still to make of a study of 'and.'" -- Sir Arthur Eddington

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. "It means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more or less."The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all." -- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898)

"Before emphasizing what I believe, perhaps I should point out what I do not believe, or what I no longer believe: I no longer believe in the magic of the spoken word. It signifies not order but disorder. It does not eliminate chaos, it only conceals it. It no longer carries men's hopes but distorts them. It has ceased to be a vehicle, only to become an obstacle. It does not signify sharing but compromise." -- Elie Weisel, From the Kingdom of Memory

"I have found you an argument: but I am not obliged to find you an understanding." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that he sometimes has to eat them." -- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

"I think I am a verb." -- R. Buckminster Fuller

"What you are shouts so loud in my ears I cannot hear what you say." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"All last year we tried to teach him English, and the only word he learned was million." -- Tommy Lasorda, on pitcher Fernando Valenzuela

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own neccessities but of their advantages." -- Adam Smith (1723-1790)

"The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization." -- Mikhail Gorbachev (June 8, 1990)

"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)" -- said in 1885

"The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit." -- Samuel Gompers (1850-1924)" -- said in 1908

"Fine art and pizza delivery, what we do falls neatly in between!" -- David Letterman

"I like less the story that a frog if put in cold water will not bestir itself if that water is heated up slowly and gradually and will in the end let itself be boiled alive, too comfortable with continuity to realize that continuous change at some point may become intolerable and demand a change in behavior." -- Charles Handy -- The Age of Unreason

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone" -- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)

"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern." -- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph." -- Shirley Temple

"The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later." -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"A 'No' uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble." -- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

"...Clean up complexion, soften eye lines, soften smile line, add color to lips, trim chin, remove neck lines, soften line under ear lobe, add highlights to earrings, add blush to cheek, clean up neck line, remove stray hair, remove hair strands from dress, adjust color and add hair on top of head, add dress on side to create better line... Total: $1,525.00." -- The invoice for retouching the cover photo of" -- Michelle Pfeiffer in the December, 1990, issue" -- of Esquire magazine, obtained by Harper's." -- The photo's caption reads, "What Michelle Pfeiffer" -- Needs...Is Absolutely Nothing."

"Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth." -- John Milton (1608-1674)

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." -- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

"A technique succeeds in mathematical physics, not by a clever trick, or a happy accident, but because it expresses some aspect of a physical truth." -- O.G. Sutton

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." -- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

"Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the truth." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell." -- Harry S Truman (1884-1972) >From adamr@decon Mon Jun 14 09:42:18 1993 phoenix@skydiver Subject: Backlashmudgeon Cc: adamr@decon Content-Length: 6183 X-Lines: 161 Status: RO

" Some quotes excerpted from "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women" by Susan Faludi

" The politics of despair in America has typically been the politics of backlash." -- Seymour Martin and Earl Raab

" I don't get it really. Sometimes I like to sneak into the teater in the last twenty minutes of the movie. All these men are screaming, "Beat that bitch! Kill her off now!" The women, you never hear them say anything. They are all just sitting there, real quiet." -- Sabrina Hughes, teenage movie-theatre usher, on" -- audience reactions to "Fatal Attraction"

" My wife has never worked. She's the least ambitious person I've ever met. She's a terrific wife. She hasn't the slightest interest in doing a career. She kind of lives this with me, and it's a terrific feeling. I come home and she's there." -- Adrian Lyne, director of "Fatal Attraction"

" If you want to know, I'm really tired of feminists, sick of them. They've really dug themselves into their own grave. Any man would be a fool who didn't agree with equal rights and pay but some women, now, juggling career, lover, children [childbirth], wifehood, have spread themselves too thin and are very unhappy. It's time they looked at *themselves* and stopped attacking men. Guys are going through a terrible crisis right now because of women's unreasonable demands." -- Michael Douglas, male lead in "Fatal Attraction"

" The demand that women "return to femininity" is a demand that the cultural gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time when everyone was richer, younger, more powerful. The "feminine" woman is forever static and childlike. She is like the ballerina in an old-fashioned music box, her unchanging features tiny and girlish, her voice tinkly, her body stuck on a pin, rotating in a spiral that will never grow." -- Susan Faludi, "Backlash"

" The advertising industry thus encourages the pseudo-emancipation of women, flattering them with its insuating reminder, "You've come a long way, baby" and disguising the freedom to consume as genuine autonomy....It emancipates women and children from patriarchal autonomy, however, only to subject them to the new paternalism of the advertising industry, the industrial corporation, and the state." -- Christopher Lasch, "The Culture of Narcissism"

" All that embellishment, the ruffles, lace and frills, women don't seem to want that much. They seem to want quieter, more realistic things. They want clothes to be taken seriously in. I guess they don't like looking superfluous." -- Lawrence Wilsman, buyer for Saks's Fifth Avenue

" Women get a little pip, a little perk out of it. It's like, "Here I am at this very serious business meeting and they really don't know that I'm wearing a garter belt!" -- Howard Gross, president of Victoria's Secret

" My field is day-to-day street life. I don't want to create fake pictures." -- Paul Marciano, on why only real men are used in Guess" -- advertisements

" We always use models. It's difficult to find real women who fit what we're trying to say. Real women, they aren't as cooperative as real men." -- Paul Marciano, on why no real women are used in Guess" -- advertisements

" [T]here are people who want a different political order, who are not necessarily Marxists. Symbolized by the women's liberation movement, they believe that the future for their political power lies in the resturcturing of the traditional family, and particularly in the downgrading of the male or father role in the traditional family." -- Paul Weyrich

" Women's liberationists operate as Typhoid Marys carrying a germ." -- Phyllis Schlafly

" A woman's nature is, simply, other-oriented....Women are ordained by their nature to spend themselves in meeting the needs of others." -- Connaught C. Marshner, "The New Traditional Woman" 1982

" The woman who is truly Spirit-filled will want to be totally submissive to her husband...This is a truly liberated woman. Submission is God's design for women." -- Beverly LaHaye, "The Spririt-Controlled Woman"

" [D]eal with your own personal crisis. What might *you* be doing to make intimacy with a man impossible? What attitudes are keeping *you* unavailable for marriage?....The desire to avoid a submissive status in relationship to men can lead you into a loveless life." -- Stephen and Susan Price, therapists, in their book" -- "Loneley Nights"

" Real boring." -- Robin Norwood, author of "Women Who Love Too Much: When" -- you Keep Wishing and Hoping He'll Change", describing" -- her third husband

" I never claimed those were case studies. Some are really fictional. The point is not which parts are me and which aren't." -- Robin Norwood, explaining that "many" of the patients" -- described in "Women Who Love Too Much" are in fact" -- herself.

" I was conceived out of wedlock. I could've been aborted. I hope and think that my parents wouldn't have, but I'm just real glad they didn't even have the choice.

"Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue

" Radical feminism gave birth to child killing. They were the ones out in the streets demanding their rights -- NARAL, NOW, with their lies and their false propaganda that the media lapped up obediently and spewed back out to the American people. Lies." -- Randall Terry

" Now with the abortion death squads allowed to run rampant through our country I wonder how many future champions will be killed before they see the light of day." -- Mark Bavaro, player for the NY Giants, in a video" -- titled "Champions for Life", produced by Giants owner" -- Wellington Mara, and distributed to schoolchildren

"The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame." -- Chuq Von Rospach

"Rich Rosen's Rules of Net.Debate deal with this in the Hitler clause, which (paraphrased) states that as soon as someone brings up Hitler or Nazi Germany, the subject is dead (and I would further submit that the person who brings it up should be considered to have conceded defeat)."

"Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies: As a USENET discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

"Sircar's Corollary: If the USENET discussion touches on homosexuality or Heinlein, Nazis or Hitler are mentioned within three days. [Your propagation may vary.]

"I must've seen it in a USENET posting"; that's sort of like hearsay evidence from Richard Nixon." -- Blair Houghton

"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view, or strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an exercise for your kill-file." -- unattributed truth from r.g.frp

"Live TV died in the late 1950s, electronic bulletin boards came along in the mid-1980s, meaning there was about a 25-year gap when it was difficult to put your foot in your mouth and have people all across the country know about it." -- Mark Leeper

"network: anything reticulated or decussated, with" -- interstices between the intersections" -- from the Dictionary of Samuel Johnson

"There is nothing more practical than a good theory." -- Leonid Ilich Brezhnev," -- quoted in V Rich, Nature, 1977, 270, pp470-1

"He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder." -- M.C. Escher

"Nature is earlier than man, but man is earlier than natural science." -- von Weizsacker

"'Virtual Reality' is a name being slapped on almost anything these days, especially if it's lame." -- Mark Hamilton

"Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)" -- "Ceaser and Cleopatra"

"It is fatal to be right when the rest of the world is wrong." -- Brother Theodore

"A thing can be true and still be desperate folly." -- Richard Adams, _Watership Down_

"Because we do not understand the brain very well we are constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. ('What else could it be?') I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and I am told some of the ancient Greeks thought the brain functions like a catapult. At present, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer." -- John R. Searle MINDS, BRAINS AND SCIENCE, p 44

" So finally the fact is, that to come to this, to make a thing which has the character of nature, and to be true to all the forces in it, to remove yourself, to let it be, without interference from your image-making self -- all this requires that we become aware that all of it is transitory; that all of it is going to pass. Of course nature itself is also always transitory. The trees, the river, the humming insects -- they are all short-lived; they will all pass. Yet we never feel sad in the presence of these things. No matter how transitory they are, they make us feel happy, joyful. But when we make our own attempt to create nature in the world around us, and succeed, we cannot escape the fact that we are going to die. This quality, when it is reached, in human things, is always sad; it makes us sad; and we can even say that any place where a man tries to make the quality, and be like nature, cannot be true, unless we can feel the slight presence of this haunting sadness there, because we know at the same time we enjoy it, that it is going to pass." -- Christopher Alexander -- The Timeless Way of Building, 1979

The attempt to have a victory for a one-sided view of the world cannot work anyway, even for the people who seem to win their point of view. The forces which are ignored do not go away just because they are ignored. They lurk, frustrated, underground. Sooner or later they erupt in violence; and the system which seems to win is then exposed to far more catastrophic dangers." -- The only way that a pattern can actually help to make a situation genuinely more alive is by recognizing all the forces which exist, and then finding a world in which these forces can slide past each other." -- Then it becomes a piece of nature." -- When we see the pattern of the ripples in a pond, we know that this pattern is simply in equilibrium with the forces which exist; without any mental interference which is clouding them." -- And, when we succeed, finally, in seeing so deep into a man-made pattern, that it is no longer clouded by opinions or by images, then we have discovered a piece of nature as valid, as eternal, as the ripples in the surface of a pond." -- Christopher Alexander, 1979" -- "The Timeless Way of Building"

"Every culture has its distinctive and normal system of government. Yours is democracy, moderated by corruption. Ours is totalitarianism, moderated by assassination." -- Unknown Russian

"Practice safe government. Use kingdoms.

"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 BC (106-43 BC)

"The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into quicksand." -- Richard P. Feynman

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments." -- William H. Borah

"What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death." -- Dave Barry

"He is one of those peple who would be enormously improved by death" -- H.H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

" Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird... a social being... capable of actual affection... nuzzling its young with almost human- like compassion. Anyway, it's dead and we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family..." -- Berke Breathed" -- Bloom Country Babylon

"The only completely consistent people are the dead." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"We bury with many different emotions. Rarely with intimations of mortality. 'Buried' is the ultimate separation of them and us. As other's lives are often only dreams to us, so also others' deaths." -- Josephine Hart -- "Sin"

"Nothing in the entire universe ever perishes, believe me, but things vary, and adopt a new form. The phrase "being born" is used for beginning to be something different from what one was before, while "dying" means ceasing to be the same. Though this thing may pass into that, and that into this, yet the sums of things remains unchanged." -- Ovid (43 BC-AD 18)" -- Metamorphoses

"Anyway: I'm not blessed or merciful. I'm just me. I've got a job to do and I do it. Listen: even as we're talking, I'm there for old and young, innocent and guilty, those who die together and those who die alone. I'm in cars and boats and planes, in hospitals and forests and abattoirs. For some folks death is a release and for others death is an abomination, a terrible thing. But in the end, I'm there for all of them." -- Neil Gaiman" -- The Sandman #20: Facade

"When the Black Camel comes for me, I'm not going to go kicking and screaming. I am, however, going to try to talk my way out of it. "No, no, you want the other Walter Slovotsky." -- Walter Slovotsky, _The Warrior Lives_" -- by Joel Rosenberg

"We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race: he brought death into the world." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"We are here to add to the sum of human goodness. To prove the thing exists. And however futile each individual act of courage or generosity, self-sacrifice or grace-it still proves the thing exists. Each act adds to the fund. It needs replenishment. Not only because evil flourishes, and is, most indefensibly, defended. But because goodness is no longer a respectable aim in life. The hound of hell, envy, has driven it from the house." -- Josephine Hart -- "Sin"

"Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can." -- Cary Grant

"The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be." -- Socrates (470-399 BC)

"The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, givne style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse I made a Second Marriage in my house; Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed, And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.

"For "Is" and "Is-not" though with Rule and Line And "Up-and-down" by Logic I define, Of all that one should care to fathom, I Was never deep in anything but" -- Wine." -- from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Translation by Edward Fitzgerald)

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." -- Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961)

"Two sodium atoms are walking along the street when one" -- stops and says, "Oh my God, I think I've lost an electron!" -- "Are you sure?" asks the other sodium atom." -- "Yes," replies the first sodium atom, "I'm positive."

"My specific goal is to revolutionize the future of the species. Mathematics is just another way of predicting the future." -- Ralph Abraham

"Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God." -- Herbert Westren Turnbull

"Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives." -- Anonymous

"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality." -- Hermann Weyl

"There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"The most extensive computation known has been conducted over the last billion years on a planet-wide scale: it is the evolution of life. The power of this computation is illustrated by the complexity and beauty of its crowning achievement, the human brain." -- David Rogers" -- Weather Prediction Using a Genetic Memory

"I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him... But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad." -- Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

"...it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art." -- John W.N. Sullivan

"The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life." -- James Joseph Sylvester

"How did Biot arrive at the partial differential equation? [the heat conduction equation] ... Perhaps Laplace gave Biot the equation and left him to sink or swim for a few years in trying to derive it. That would have been merely an instance of the way great mathematicians since the very beginnings of mathematical research have effortlessly maintained their superiority over ordinary mortals." -- Clifford Truesdell

"There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities-- potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry-- that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics." -- Gregory Benford -- Timescape

"What a price we pay for experience, when we must sell our youth to buy it." -- Javan

"There's no fool like an old fool --- you can't beat experience." -- Jacob Braude

"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it--and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit on a hot stove lid again--and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." -- Dan Stanford

"Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones." -- anonymous

"Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lessons afterwards." -- anonymous

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." -- Jim Horning

"Experience consists of experiencing that which one does not wish to experience" -- quoted by Freud in "Jokes and Their Relation To The Unconscience?"

"Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:" -- Experience is directly proportional to the amount of" -- equipment ruined.

"Oliver's Law" -- Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

" For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all." -- Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez" -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)" -- A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

" ...and the possibility of developing paranoia, slight memory loss and laziness. But, it says, "the lethal dose of cannabis is a 2-kilo block dropped on your head from the 25th floor of a high-rise building. In other words -- cannabis can't kill you, it is not a poison like alcohol, and not addictive like cigarettes." -- from _Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Drugs," -- but Were Afraid to Ask Your Children_

"Chicken Soup: An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother." -- Arthur Naiman

"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse." -- W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)

"A cap of good acid costs five dollars and for that you can hear the Universal Symphony with God singing solo and the Holy Ghost on drums." -- Hunter S. Thompson

"Though one should be prepared to vomit rather frequently and disport with pink elephants and assorted grotesqueries while trying often unsuccessfully to make one's way to the toilet." -- William F. Buckley Jr. -- in response to previous statement

"If God dropped acid, would he see people?" -- Steven Wright

"Knowledge is expensive." -- Hanna Gray, current president of the University of Chicago

"Education is the best provision for old age." -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave." -- Baron Henry Peter Brougham

"The two most abundant things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -- Harlan Ellison.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead." -- Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951)

"It's not by amusing oneself that one learns." -- Anatole France (1844-1924)

"It's only by amusing oneself that one can learn." -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman

"Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly." -- Arnold Edinborough

"A little learning is a dangerous thing but a lot of ignorance is just as bad." -- Bob Edwards

"If you sincerely desire a _truly_ well-rounded education, you must study the extremists, the obscure and "nutty". You need the balance! Your poor brain is already being impregnated with middle-of-the-road crap, twenty-four hours a day, _no matter what_. Network TV, newspapers, radio, magazines at the supermarket... even if you never watch, read, listen, or leave your house, even if you are deaf and blind, the _telepathic pressure alone_ of the uncountable normals surrounding you will insure that you are automatically well- grounded in consensus reality." -- Rev. Ivan Stang -- High Weirdness By Mail

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." -- H.G. Wells (1885-1946)

"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Public display of mourning is no longer made by people of fashion, although some flashier kinds of widows may insist on sleeping with only black men during the first year after the death." -- PJ O'Rourke

"Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when you shout, 'Where's my clean socks?' no-one answers." -- Terry Pratchett, "Eric"

"A penny for your thoughts?"A dollar for your death." -- Felix and Oscar, from the Odd Couple Dying is not romantic, and death is not a game which will soon be over... Death is not anything...death is not...It's the absence of presence, nothing more...the endless time of never coming back...a gap you can't see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound..." -- Tom Stoppard Ros: Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guil: No, no, no...Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. Ros: I've frequently not been on boats. Guil: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats." -- Tom Stoppard Rather, she [ Death ] simply is the Ultimate Hostess who tells you when your table's ready. It's up to other powers what section you're seated in (smoking or non-smoking)." -- John C. Straffin Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death." -- James F. Byrnes

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley." -- Karl Cullinane _The Silver Crown_ by Joel Rosenberg A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." -- Joseph Stalin (1879-1953)

"Feminism is the radical concept that women are people." -- Cheris Kramarae & Paula Treichler

"Women constitute half the world's population, perform nearly two-thirds of its work hours, receive one-tenth of the world's income and own less than one-hundredth of the world's property." -- United Nations report, 1980

"I love the women's movement...especially when I'm walking behind it." -- Rush Limbaugh

"If men menstruated, they would brag about how much and for how long." -- Gloria Steinem

"No Woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor" -- Betty Friedan

"Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good... luckily, it's not difficult." -- Charlotte Whitton

"It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." -- televangelist Marion "Pat" Robertson, speaking of the Equal Rights Amendment

"Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken--and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet." -- Abigail Adams, Letter to John Adams [May 7, 1776] Patriotism in the female sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honors and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Government from having held a place of eminence. Even in the freest countries our property is subject to the control and disposal of our partners, to whom the laws have given a sovereign authority. Deprived of a voice in legislation, obliged to submit to those laws which are imposed upon us, is it not sufficient to make us indifferent to the public welfare? Yet all history and every age exhibit instances of patriotic virtue in the female sex; which considering our situation equals the most heroic of yours." -- Ibid [June 18, 1782] Basically a dog person. I certainly, though, wouldn't want to offend my constituents who are cat people, and I should say that being, I hope, a sensitive person, that I have nothing against cats, and had cats when I was a boy, and if we didn't have the two dogs might very well be interested in having a cat now." -- Incoming Missouri Congressman James Talent, responding" -- to the question "Are you a dog or a cat person?"

"Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"In Washington, it's dog eat dog. In academia, it's exactly the opposite." -- Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor

"A woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"The purpose of a liberal arts education is to learn that a person can like both cats *and* dogs!" -- Sonjay Anand

"Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat." -- Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London

"When a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news." -- Charles Anderson Dana (1819-1897)

"Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement." -- Snoopy" -- (Charles Schultz)

" Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion." -- Robertson Davies

"It's not to keep him from running off our property. It's to protect my putting green." -- Vice President Dan Quayle telling a guest at his house" -- why his dog, Breezy, wears a special collar that emits" -- a painful jolt of electricity should the dog try to" -- run away. (reported in the NY Daily News, 6/30/92 -- -- taken from The Quayle Quarterly, Summer/Fall 92)

"Political history is largely an account of mass violence and of the expenditure of vast resources to cope with mythical fears and hopes." -- Murray Edelman, _Politics as Symbolic Action_, p. 1

"No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all- disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report...." -- Woodrow Wilson, _Congressional Government_, p. 109

"Today, a successful Congressman has the fundraising ability of a hooker trying to raise cab fare home...." -- John L. Jackley, New York Times, 10/29/90, p. A15.

"He's suffering from Politicians' Logic. Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do it." -- YES, PRIME MINISTER

"I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more of them who were paralyzed in the head George Wallace

"Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close." -- Ronald Reagan to Stuart Spencer, 1966" -- from "There He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan's Reign of Error" -- by Mark Green and Gail MacColl

"Tortoise: But we must be careful in combining sentences. For instance," -- you'd grant that "Politicians lie" is true, wouldn't you? Achilles: Who could deny it? Tortoise: Good. Likewise, "Cast-iron sinks" is a valid utterance," -- isn't it? Achilles: Indubitably. Tortoise: Then, putting them together, we get "Politicians lie" -- in cast-iron sinks" ..." -- Douglas R. Hofstadter" -- "Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid"

"A politician will always tip off his true belief by stating the opposite at the beginning of the sentence. For maximum comprehension, do not start listening until the first clause is concluded. Begin instead at the word "but" which begins the second, or active, clause. This is the way to tell a liberal from a conservative" -- before they tell you. Thus: "I have always believed in a strong national defense, second to none, but ... " (a liberal, about to propose a $20 billion defense cut)." -- Frank Mankiewicz

"The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway." -- Bernard Avishai

"In a way, staring into a computer screen is like staring into an eclipse. It's brilliant and you don't realize the damage until its too late." -- Bruce Sterling

"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." -- Nathaniel Borenstein

"And, of course, you have the commercials where savvy businesspeople Get Ahead by using their MacIntosh computers to create the ultimate American business product: a really sharp-looking report." -- Dave Barry

"An old puzzle asks how a barometer can be used to measure the height of a building. Answers range from dropping the instrument from the top and measuring the time of its fall to giving it to the building's superintendent in return for a look at the plans. A modern version of the puzzle asks how a personal computer can balance a checkbook. An elegant solution is to sell the machine and deposit the money." -- Jon Bentley, More Programming Pearls

"It's a well known fact that computing devices such as the abacus were invented thousands of years ago. But it's not well known that the first use of a common computer protocol occured in the Old Testament. This, of course, was when Moses aborted the Egyptians' process with a control-sea..." -- Tom Galloway

"Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done." -- Andy Rooney

"If the automobile had followed the same development cyclee as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside." -- Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld

"It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration." -- Professor Edsger Dijkstra

"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense." -- Professor Edsger Dijkstra

"PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set." -- Professor Edsger Dijkstra

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." -- Professor Edsger Dijkstra

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

"All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors." -- Unknown

"An apprentice carpenter may want only a hammer and saw, but a master craftsman employs many precision tools. Computer programming likewise requires sophisticated tools to cope with the complexity of real applications, and only practice with these tools will build skill in their use." -- Robert L. Kruse" -- Data Structures and Program Design

"You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of Fortran." -- Alan Perlis

"It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?" -- Alan Perlis

"Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature." -- Kulawiec

"Real Programmers don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for wimpy applications programmers.

"Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.

"Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies.

"Real Programmers don't write in PASCAL, or BLISS, or ADA, or any of those pinko computer science languages. Strong typing is for people with weak memories.

"Real Programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.

"Real Programmers don't write specs" -- users should consider themselves lucky to get any programs at all and take what they get.

"Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires you to changer clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room.

"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equpped with 18,000 vaccuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vaccuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, March 1949

"In pioneer days they used oxen for heavy pulling, and when one ox couldn't budge a log, they didn't try to grow a larger ox. We shouldn't be trying for bigger computers, but for more systems of computers." -- G. Hopper

"Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems." -- G. Hopper

"If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee" -- that will do them in." -- Bradley's Bromide I have a cat named Trash. In the current political climate it would seem that if I were trying to sell him (at least to a Computer Scientist), I would not stress that he is gentle to humans and is self-sufficient, living mostly on field mice. Rather, I would argue that he is object-oriented." -- Roger King

"Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up." -- James Magary

"Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining." -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal

"The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a little." -- Porterfield

"pixel, n.: A mischievous, magical spirit associated with screen displays. The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology: Witness the sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial intelligence, and the trolls in the marketing department." -- Jeff Meyer

"If we had less statemanship we could get along with fewer battleships." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology." -- Rebecca West

"War is just to those to whom war is necessary." -- Titus Livius

"Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends." -- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)" -- address at Guildhall, London, 7/12/45

"Setting loose on the battlefield weapons that are able to learn may be one of the biggest mistakes mankind has ever made. It could also be one of the last." -- Richard Forsyth -- Machine Learning for Expert Systems

"I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian." -- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

"Some people imagine that nuclear war will mean instant and painless death. But for millions this will not be the case. The accounts of the injured at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of the doctors who tried to tend them, witness to the horrors and torments which would be magnified thousands of times over in the kinds of attack we analyse here..." -- Stan Openshaw -- Doomsday

"Still other respected writes, such as Rufus Miles Jr. and Stanford Univerity's Barton Bernstein, have effectively refuted Truman's oft-repeated argument about the number of American lives saved by the bomb. Citing the most recently de-classified materials, Bernstein could not find a worst-case prediction of lives lost higher than 46,000-even if an invasion had been mounted, which, as noted, was deemed highly unlikely by July 1945. Most estimates went no higher than 20,000 combat deaths. "The myth of the 500,000 American lives saved", Bernstein concludes, "thus seems to have no bases in fact." -- The Nation, May 10, 1993, pg. 641.

"To conclude, all other living creatures live orderly and well, after their own kind: we see them flock and gather together, and ready to make head and stand against all others of a contrary kind: the lions as fell and savage as they be, fight not with one another: serpents sting not serpents, nor bite one another with their venomous teeth: nay the very monsters and huge fishes of the sea, war not amongst themselves in their own kind: but believe me, man at man's hand receiveth most harm and mischief." -- Pliny The Elder

"We must be borne with an intuition of mortality. Before we know the words for it, before we know that there are words, out we come, bloodied and squalling with the knowledge that for all the points of the compass there is but one direction, and time is it's only measure." -- Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz)

"Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the brilliance of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening." -- Walter Pater (1839-1894)

"I have a dislike for the sanctimonious who enjoy taking away people's pleasures with the excuse that it is good for them to be without it while all the time they are indulging their pleasure in contemplating their own virtue." -- Victoria Holt (from Daughter of Deceit)

"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle... chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little, shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome _insects_ of the hour." -- Edmund Burke" -- Reflections on the Revolution in France

"[D]esires cannot be observed, counted, or measured; they are inferred from what people say and do. If each of us constructs a model of other minds by analogy with his own, it may be easier to imagine that some external force" -- society, culture, etc." -- causes members of the opposite sex to act at variance with their truest implulses than it is to imagine that males and females have different impulses." -- Donald Symons

"Plasticity is a double-edged sword: the more flexibile an organism is the greater the variety of maladaptive, as well as adaptive, behaviors it can develop; the more teachable it is the more fiully it can profit from the experiences of its ancestors and associates and the more it risks being exploited by its ancestors and associates; the greater its capacity for learning morality the more worthless superstitions, as well as traditions of social wisdom, it can acquire; the more cooperatively interdependent the members of a group become the greater is their collective power and the more fulsome are the opportunities for individuals to manipulate one another; the more sophisticated language becomes the more subtle are the lies, as well as the truths, that can be told." -- Donald Symons

"The basic difference between classical music and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than its performance -- whereas the way jazz is performed is always more important than what is being played." -- Andre Previn

"Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains" -- John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)

"Now I shall speak of evil as none has Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz; The white-hosed moron torturing a black Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac; Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools; Music in supermarkets; swimming pools; Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx, Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks." -- Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) -- from Pale Fire

"Stay away from that jazz man, Lisa. Nothing personal, I just fear the unfamiliar" -- Marge Simpson (The Simpson's)

"He should be most proud that the PMRC wants to put their obscene lyrics sticker on his 'Jazz From Hell'" -- which is an instrumental album." -- Tony Shepps

"Does that mean that Calculus with Sets & mappings is Calculus S&M?" -- Professor Hrusa (CMU)

"I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse." -- Woody Allen

"Bondage on a budget is much more satisfying." -- Kevin A. Geiselman

"Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." -- Senator Dan Quayle" -- US News and World Report (10/10/88)

"Now, if you play straight with me, you'll find me a considerate employer. But cross me, and you'll soon discover that under this playful, boyish, exterior beats the heart of a ruthless, sadistic maniac." -- Edmund Blackadder -- Head

"I finally found a bank I can really enjoy. It's S&M banking, at Naughty American Savings & Moan. It's great. They give you like a free whipping with every deposit. And they have dominatrix tellers and crawl-up banking-my favourite. I went in to see my customer sadist representative the other day, and she said "Shut up! Sit Down! Give me that!" It felt great. It kept me tied up there all day. I applied for a loan. I was turned down. I felt humiliated. I just *loved* it. Naughty American Savings & Moan. The bank that gives you what you *really* deserve." -- Marilyn Pitman, "All Out Comedy"

"The life of human beings is very short. We are all going to die. Why should we cling so much to power?" -- Algerian President Muhammad Boudiaf," -- seconds before being assassinated. Newsweek July 13, 1992

"Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends." -- Joseph Campbell, _Creative Mythology_

"Now it is time that we were going, I to die and you to live, but which of us has the happier prospect is unknown to anyone but God." -- Socrates, in the Apology

"Look, I really don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around alot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you're quite, you're not living. You've got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively." -- Mel Brooks

"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden

"You only live once, so live under as many false names as possible." -- Dana McManus

"Life is one long process of getting tired." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular." -- Kathy Norris

"It seems to me to be a typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant, and remove it." -- Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), when Randolph Churchill had a" -- benign tumour removed from his lung

"I was far too polite to ask." -- Gore Vidal, when asked whether the first person" -- he had slept with was male or female

"Thank you" -- Whistler (1834-1903), when approached by a man who said" -- "I passed by your house this morning, Mr Whistler"

"I've had a wonderful evening, but this wasn't it." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing; if you can fake that, you've got it made." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem." -- John Paul Getty

"My boy, when I want to play with a prick, I'll play with my own." -- W.C. Fields (1880-1946) , when Louis B. Mayer (head of MGM)" -- invited him to a round of golf

"Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all other philosophers are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)" -- Minority Report: H.L. Mencken's Notebooks -- 1956 (p.48)

"Cartesian, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, _Cogito ergo sum_... The dictum might be improved, however, thus: _Cogito cogito _ _ergo cogito sum_-- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am"; as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) -- The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary

"Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong." -- Richard P. Feynman

"University President: "Why is it that you physicists always require so much expensive equipment? Now the Department of Mathematics requires nothing but money for paper, pencils, and erasers ... and the Department of Philosophy is better still. It doesn't even ask for erasers." -- Told by Isaac Asimov

"It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"When Life does not find a singer to sing her heart she produces a philosopher to speak her mind." -- Kahlil Gibran

"By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher." -- Socrates (470-399 BC)

"If you want to get the plain truth, Be not concerned with right and wrong. The conflict between right and wrong Is the sickness of the mind." -- Seng-Ts'an

"Quite a number of people also describe the German classical author, Shakespeare as belonging to the English literature, because -- quite accidentally born at Stratford-on-Avon, he was forved by the authorities of that country to write in English." -- "Deutshcer Weckruf und Beobachter," 1940

"Oh damn. Another clever plan shot to hell by its transparency." -- Mike Shappe

"I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule." -- W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911)

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." -- future Prime Minister of the UK, Winston Churchill" -- broadcast on October 1, 1939" -- Winston Churchill -- Radio Speech, 1. Okt. 19

"My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared." -- P.J. Plauger

"Aviation is proof, that given the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible." -- Eddie Rickenbacker

"If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music... and of aviation." -- Tom Stoppard

"This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He's doomed." -- Harry Guggenheim, millionaire aviation enthusiast

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch," -- Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre

"Quayle was very enthusiastic about signing author Tom Clancy to the National Space Council as an unpaid consultant (see his quote re: Red Storm Rising). Clancy, however, was not Quayle's first choice; that honor went to famed aviator Clutch Cargo. A plan to approach him and offer him the position was scuttled when it was discovered that Mr. Cargo is a fictional character." -- reported in The New Republic, 7/3/89

"Life is merely the slowest possible rate at which you can die." -- Unknown

"Your life is a Fellini movie lacking only Anita Ekberg with a cat on her head." -- Camille Paglia -- Spy Magazine

"There is a difference between art and life and that difference is readability." -- Marian Engel

"When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Since this Galaxy began, vast civilizations have risen and fallen, risen and fallen, risen and fallen so often that it's quite tempting to think that life in the Galaxy must be (a) something akin to seasick-- space-sick, time sick, history sick or some such thing, and (b) stupid." -- Douglas Adams -- Life, the Universe and Everything

"My philosophy of life is that the meek shall inherit nothing but debasement, frustration, and ignoble deaths..." -- Harlan Ellison

"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it." -- Douglas Adams -- Life, the Universe and Everything

"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life." -- Eric Hoffer

"The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder." -- Ralph W. Sockman

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"...those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded ... Sad, indeed, is it to see how men occupy themselves with trivialities, and are indifferent to the grandest phenomena-- care not to understand the architecture of the heavens, but are deeply interested in some contemptible controversy about the intrigues of Mary Queen of Scots!" -- Herbert Spencer

"By the worldly standards of public life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous. They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat, they do not try to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice nor to authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the virtues of science." -- Jacob Bronowski

"Those cave paintings are wonderful, but like everything we know, they are not too wonderful to be true. It is their reality that gives them wonder, and while there will never come a time when some of us will not wish for more than we can have, the happiest of us will wait confidently for other tangible finds. We treasure the cave at Altamira where a century ago a little girl first saw the great painted bison. New caves will be found, year after year, in lab or clinic or sky or ocean depth, or even in ancient markings. That is the promise of real science, which cannot allow wish to rule mind, but nonetheless finds unendingly wonderful things." -- Philip Morrison

"The true poet and the true scientist are not estranged. They go forth into nature like two friends. Behold them strolling through the summer fields and woods. The younger of the two is much the more active and inquiring; he is ever and anon stepping aside to examine some object more minutely, plucking a flower, treasuring a shell, pursuing a bird, watching a butterfly; now he turns over a stone, peers into the marshes, chips off a fragment of rock, and everywhere seems intent on some special and particular knowledge of the things about him. The elder man has more an air of leisurely contemplation and enjoyment, is less curious about special objects and features, and more desirous of putting himself in harmony with the spirit of the whole. But when his younger companion has any fresh and characteristic bit of information to impart to him, how attentively he listens, how sure and discriminating is his appreciation! The interests of the two in the universe are widely different, yet in no true sense are they hostile or mutually destructive." -- John Burroughs

"The view of "technological progress" as a linear development, in which some restless metaphysical impulse marches inexorably westward, is inaccurate, implausible, but deeply ingrained." -- Barry Katz, "Technology and Culture: A Historical Romance"

"Place on one side of the scales the actual advantages of the most sublime sciences, and on the other side the advantages of the mechanical arts.... You will discover that far more praise has been heaped upon those men who spend their time making us believe we are happy, than on those who actually bring us happiness. How strangely we judge!" -- Denis Diderot, (1713 -- 1784)

"Prometheus, most crafty god of all You are happy that you stole the fire and tricked me But it will be a great sorrow to you And to men who come after" -- Hesiod, "Works and Days" -- 8th Century BC (?)

"Man alone is brought forth naked and unarmed, his reason shines forth much more brilliantly in inventing these things than ever it would have if man had naturally possessed them." -- Hugh of St. Victor (1096 -- 1141)

"[W]hatever in the arts you can learn, understand, or devise, is bestowed on you by the grace of the seven-fold Sprit." -- Theophilus, "On Divers Arts" -- 12th Century AD

"I have heard from my master that those who have cunning devices use cunning in their affairs, and that those who use cunning in their affairs have cunning hearts. Such cunning means the loss of pure simplicity. Such a loss leads to restlessness of the spirit, and with such men the Tao will not dwell." -- Chuang Tzu, 3rd Century BC

"And if they despise me who am an inventor, how much more should they be blamed who are not inventors but trumpeters and reciters of the works of others." -- Leonardo da Vinci

"This operator did his office after a different manner from those of his trade in Europe. He first took my altitude by a quadrant, and then, with rule and compasses, described the dimensions and outlines of my whoe body, all which he entered upon paper, and in six days brought my clothes very ill made, and quite out of shape, by happening to mistake a figure in the calculation." -- Jonathon Swift, "Gulliver's Travels"

"They know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and show how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens: They have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows." -- Mary Shelley, "Frankenstein"

"Gentleman! What do you think you are doing? You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!" -- Peter Sellars, "Dr. Strangelove"

"The bourgeoisie, in its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjugation of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground..." -- Marx and Engels, "The Communist Manifesto"

"The day is long since past when one had to decide whether to cast one's lot with "pro-technological" or "anti-technological" forces. Serious thinkers understand that technology, for better or for worse, is part of the human condition, that it always has been, and that it presumably always will be. The task at hand is to render it servicable to human life." -- Barry Katz, "Technology and Culture"

"Men are proud of [their technological] achievements.... But they seem to have observed that this newly won power over space and time, this subjugation of the forces of nature which is the fulfillment of a longing that goes back thousands of years, has not increased the amount of pleasurable satisfaction which they may expect from life and has not made them feel happier." -- Sigmund Freud

"The equipment-free aspect of reality has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology." -- Walter Benjamin

"The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. WE HAVE KILLED HIM -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, foreward, in all direction? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light candles in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Gay Science"

"God created the world out of nothing, but the nothingness still shows through." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

"When you aim at nothing, you hit it." -- Anonymous

"Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain." -- William Faulkner (1897-1962)

"It takes a long time to understand nothing." -- Edward Dahlberg (1900-1977)

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want" -- Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson

"Begin slowly and lightly with a very relaxed wrist movement, and beat steadily... Various special tools, like wire 'incorporatoprs' and spatulas, have been suggested for this process, but nothing can compare for efficiency with the human hand." -- The Joy of Cooking -- 1964 Edition p 516

"To describe the beating of Egg Whites is almost as cheeky as advising how to lead a happy life." -- same source, p 515

"When compelled to cook, I produce a meal that would make a sword swallower gag." -- Russell Baker

"Life is too short to stuff a mushroom." -- Storm Jameson

"I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking." -- Katherine Cebrian

"This is the trick, I give it to you, you can use it. We looked at the program and divided it into the essential elements, which turned out to be thirty odd. And we proceeded methodically to make one hundred studies of each element. At the end of the hundred studies we tried to get the solution for that element that suited the thing best, and then set that up as a standard below which we would not fall in the final scheme. Then we proceeded to break down all logical combinations of these elements, trying to not erode the quality that we had gained in the best of the hundred single elements; and then we took those elements and began to search for the logical combinations of combinations, and several of such stages before we even began to consider a plan. And at that point, when we felt we'd gone far enough to consider a plan, worked out study after study and on into the other aspects of the detail and the presentation.

"It went on, it was sort of a brutal thing, and at the end of ths period, it was a two-stage competition and sure enough we were in the second stage. Now you have to start; what do you do? We reorganized all elements, but this time, with a little bit more experience, chose the elements in a different way (still had about 26, 28, or 30) and proceeded: we made 100 studies of every element; we took every logical group of elements and studied those together in a way that would not fall below the standard that we had set. And went right on down the procedure. And at the end of that time, before the second competition drawings went in, we really wept, it looked so idiotically simple we thought we'd sort of blown the whole bit. And we won the competition. This is the secret and you can apply it.

"Industrial designer Charles Eames describing the" -- "trick" process that he and Eero Saarinen used in" -- designing a chair for a competition.

" Spring" -- ===

" To what purpose April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted steps. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

"Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

"She should have died hereafter;" -- There would have been a time for such a word." -- To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow," -- Creeps in this petty pace from day to day" -- To the last syllable of recorded time," -- And all our yesterdays have lighted fools" -- The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!" -- Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player" -- That struts and frets his hour upon the stage" -- And then is heard no more: it is a tale" -- Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury," -- Signifying nothing.

"William Shakespeare (1564-1616) Macbeth, Act V, Scene V (MacBeth)

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." -- from "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft

This is Just to Say" -- William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) " -- I have eaten" -- the plums" -- that were in" -- the icebox " -- and which" -- you were probably" -- saving" -- for breakfast " -- Forgive me" -- they were delicious" -- so sweet" -- and so cold

" One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum." -- Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), _Count Robert of Paris_

"Question with boldness even the existance of God; because if there be one, He must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfold fear." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"To doubt has more of faith ... than that blank negation of all such thoughts and feelings which is the lot of the herd of church-and-meeting trotters." -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the word of god. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!" -- Herman Melville (1819-1891) -- Moby Dick

"Wer mit Ungeheuern ka mpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einem Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein. (Translation) He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists, Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative." -- C. P. Snow, "The two Cultures"

"The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups.... Literary intellectuals at one pole--at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension." -- C.P. Snow, _The Two Cultures_ and the Scientific Revolurion_" -- (1959 Rede Lecture) p. 3

"The Creation of the Universe was made possible by a grant from Texas Instruments." -- Credits, "The Creation of the Universe" -- (A PBS scientific documentary)

"I wish I could drink like a lady I can take one or two at the most. Three and I'm under the table" -- Four and I'm under the host!" -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)" -- [when asked to compose a poem on the spot, after four drinks]

"Higgeldy piggledy, my white hen, She lays eggs for gentlemen. You cannot persuade her with gun or lariat To come across for the proletariat." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

"...a certain gentleman who shall be nameless, being already possessed of all the other characteristics of one born out of wedlock..." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)" -- [About a bridge partner]

"He is beyond question a writer of power; and his power lies in his ability to make sex so thoroughly, graphically, and aggressively unattractive that one is fairly shaken to ponder how little one has been missing." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)" -- [From a book review]

"Where does she find them?" -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) Upon hearing" -- Clare Boothe Luce admit she:" -- "was always kind to her inferiors"

"'You did what you thought was right,' she said, surprisingly sympathetically. But then she added, 'Do be careful not to do what you think's right again. It does seem to have disasterous results.'" -- John Mortimer, " -- "Rumpole for the Prosecution", p.246 (hb)

"As an old man, Bill, looking back on one's life, it's one of the things that strikes you most forcibly--that the only thing that's taught anyone anything is . Not success, not happiness, not anything like that." -- Malcolm Muggeridge, 9/5/80, in Buckley's On the Firing Line, p.464

"What if a demon crept after you one day or night in your loneliest solitude and said to you: 'This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you, and everything in the same series and sequence... The eternal hour-glass of existence will be turned again and again--and you with it, you dust of dust!'--Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? Or have you experienced a tremendous moment in which you answered him: 'You are a god and never did I hear anything more divine!' If this thought gained power over you it would, as you are now, transform and perhaps crush you; the question in all and everything: 'do you want this again and again, times without number?' would lie as the heaviest burden upon your actions." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, A Nietzsche Reader [1977]," -- edited and translated R.J. Hollingdale, pp.249-250

"Live long and prosper, die short and in poverty, makes no difference to me." -- Marian Dodson/Anna Woodruff

"Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys." -- Andre Gide (1876-1951)

"Heaven preserve me from littleness and pleasantness and smoothness. Give me great glaring vices, and great glaring virtues, but preserve me from the neat little neutral ambiguities." -- Violet Trefusis" -- In a letter to Vita Sackville-West, October 25, 1918

"If you're going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it." -- Leo Rosten

"There is scarcely an occurrence in nature which, happening at a certain time, is not looked upon by some persons as a prognosticator either of good or evil. The latter are in the greatest number, so much more ingenious are we in tormenting ourselves than in discovering reasons for enjoyment in the things that surround us." -- Charles Mackay" -- Extraordinary Popular Delusions...

"It's not peace I want, not mere contentment. It's boundless joy and ecstasy for me." -- Kugell

"The bigger the real-life problems, the greater the tendency for the discipline to retreat into a reassuring fantasy-land of abstract theory and technical manipulation." -- Tom Naylor

"Theorists almost always become too fond of their own ideas. It is difficult to believe that one's cherished theory, which really works rather nicely in some respects, may be completely false." -- Francis Crick

"No theory is good except on condition that one uses it to go beyond." -- Andre Gide (1876-1951)

"There are... scientific works-- star catalogues, for example-- which are not art; but the theoretical structures of Gauss, Einstein, or Maxwell are original, individual, "very personal" responses and expressions of exactly the same kind as the creative works of Beethoven or Dostoievski." -- James R. Newman

"To hate is to study, to study is to understand, to understand is to appreciate, to appreciate is to love. So maybe I'll end up loving your theory." -- John A. Wheeler

"Eagles soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines." -- Elf Sternberg

".. postmodernity, once the plaything of smarty-pants French guys, in truth belongs to the engagingly stupid." -- Newsweek

"That is no ordinary rabbit... 'tis the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on" -- Tim the Enchanter (Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

"To my daughter Leonora without whose never failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been completed in half the time." -- P.G. Wodehouse, quoted in Pepper's , p.199, #14

"Nothing is guaranteed, except 3-D porn." -- Mike Kuniavsky, President, Ann Arbor Film Cooperative on the" -- difficulties of running a successful film series." -- (Village Voice, 5/25/93)

"You are worth your weight in popcorn husks stuck between my teeth, and nobody needs you like I do." -- Meryn Cadell

"ABC News will be right back with the Great Quake of '89, brought to you by Subaru." -- ABC News, October 18, 1989.

"If you are not a part of the solution then you are a part of the precipitate." -- Unknown

"Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones" -- maybe only the stones" -- understood." -- Annie Dillard _An American Childhood_

"A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there." -- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

"Creditable arguments by respected scientists have led to the unfortunate conclusion that we cannot exist." -- Stuart Kaufmann in "The Origins of Order"

"I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation... It is precise mathematically, but the mathematics is far too difficult for the individuals that are doing it, and they don't draw their conclusions with any rigour. So they just guess." -- Richard P. Feynman -- on superstring theory

"Now is the time for everyone who believes in the rule of reason to speak up against pathological science and its purveyors." -- John A. Wheeler

" But then ... it used to be so simple, once upon a time. Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition. Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like "Hurrah, I've discovered Boyle's Third Law." And everyone knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation, and people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting interested in the chaos itself-- partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt." -- Terry Pratchett -- Witches Abroad

"There has to be some way to measure success in the Service. British Leyland can measure success by the size of its profits. .... However, the Civil Service does not make profits or losses. , we measure success by the size of our staff and budget." -- Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay, [1988], p.59

"When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment ... it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands." -- Margaret Hilda Thatcher, on the Falklands Conflict.

"I admire his confidence in talking about a subject of which he has taken the trouble to learn so little." -- Ernest Rutherford on Lord Kelvin

"We seem to have achieved the remarkable situation where nearly half the population is telling the other half what it should be doing and thinking, and checking up that it is doing it." -- Phillip, The Duke of Edinburgh, A Question of Balance." -- [1982]: 5. Community Health, p.99

"Women's liberationists spread the work that...the only peaceful family is one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband in androgynous." -- R. Emmett Tyell, [1984], p.127

"Psychographic marketing techniques helped Raid roach spray marketers discover that the reason low-income Southern women were the heaviest users of roach spray was that "a lot of their feelings about the roach were very similar to the feelings that they had about the men in their lives," said the advertising executive on the account. They said the roach, like the man in their life, "only comes around when he wants food." The act of spraying roaches and seeing them die was satisfying to this frustrated, powerless group." -- American Demographics, Nov. 1991

"There are worse things to be than a bigot. I'd rather keep company with a bigot who lets me go my own way than a well-intentioned man who presumes to know what is good for me." -- Wendy Thrash

"The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?" -- Freud, Letter to Marie Bonaparte, in Ernest Jones's" -- [1955] v.2, pt.3, ch.16;" -- quoted in the electronic Oxford Dict. of Quotations [1991]

"I found out that when you get married the man becomes the head of the house. And the woman becomes the neck, and she turns the head any way she wants to." -- Yakov Smirnoff

"I have seen the future and it doesn't work." -- Robert Fulford

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on the human face-- forever ... And remember that it is forever." -- George Orwell (1903-1950) -- 1984

"We cannot prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much reason. On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?" -- Lord Thomas B. Macaulay (1800-1859)" -- English historian and statesman

"Time is like a river, flowing endlessly through the universe. And if you poled your flatboat in that river, you might fight your way against the current and travel upstream into the past. Or go with the flow and rush into the future. This was in a less cynical time before toxic waste dumping and pollution filled the waterway of Chronus with the detritus of empty hours, wasted minutes, years of repetition and time that has been killed." -- Harlan Ellison

"They say the veil that holds the future from us was woven by an angel of mercy." -- Josephine Hart -- from the book "Sin"

"We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on." -- Richard P. Feynman

"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C.A.R. Hoare

"A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street." -- Doug Linder

"As a wise programmer once said, "Floating point numbers are like sandpiles: every time you move one, you lose a little sand and you pick up a little dirt. And after a few computations, things can get pretty dirty." -- Kernighan & Plauger" -- The Elements of Programming Style

"Fast, fat computers breed slow, lazy programmers." -- Robert Hummel

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -- Rich Cook

"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt." -- Blair P. Houghton, regarding C Code indentation

"They HATE my father! They filled his well with manure and made him talk to lawyers!" -- Jane Fonda in "Cat Ballou"

"There is an old Vulcan saying: only Nixon could go to China." -- Spock (Leanord Nimoy), Star Trek VI

"Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges!" -- "Treasure of the Sierra Madre"," -- the movie written and directed by John Huston

"Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don't need badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabron and ching' tu madre! Come out there from that sh*t-hole of yours. I have to speak to you." -- "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" -- the book written by B. Traven (1935)," -- (page 161 of the Modern Library edition)

"The love we hold back is the only pain that follows us here. And the memory of that love shouldn't make you unhappy for the rest of your life." -- From the movie "Always"

"It's got cop tires, cop shocks, cop suspension, a 440 cubic inch power plant with no catalytic converter, so it'll run good on regular gas, is it the new Blues Mobile or what?" -- Elwood Blues, _The Blues Brothers_

"It wasn't my fault. An old friend came in from out of town. My suit didn't come back from the cleaners. I got a flat tire. My cab didn't show. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood, locust!! IT WASN'T MY FAULT!!!" -- Jake Blues (John Belushi), _The Blues Brothers_

"Well, I believe in the soul. The cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are overindulgent, overrated crap... I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone! I believe that there oughta be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. Good night." -- Crash Davis, (catcher) played by Kevin Costner" -- to Annie Savoy, played by Susan Sarandon" -- in the movie Bull Durham

"Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales, in a few short weeks it will be spring. The snows of winter will flee away. The ice will vanish. And the air will become soft and balmy. In short, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales, the annual miracle of the years will awaken and come to pass, but you won't be there." -- The rivulet will run its soaring course to the sea. The timid desert flowers will put forth their tender shoots. The glorious valleys of this imperial domain will blossom as the rose. Still, you won't be here to see." -- From every tree top some wild woods songster will carol his mating song. Butterflies will sport in the sunshine. The busy bee will hum happy as it pursues its accustomed vocation. The gentle breeze will tease the tissels of the wild grasses, and all nature, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales, will be glad but you. You won't be here to enjoy it because I command the sheriff or some other officers of the country to lead you out to some remote spot, swing you by the neck from a knotting bough of some sturdy oak, and let you hang until you are dead." -- And then, Jose Manuel Miguel Xaviar Gonzales, I further command that such officer or officers retire quickly from your dangling corpse, that the vultures may descend from the heavens upon your filthy body until nothing shall remain but bare, bleached bones of a cold-blodded, copper-colored, blood-thirsty, throat-cutting, chili-eating, sheep-herding, murdering son-of-a-bitch." -- United States Vs. Gonzales (1881)" -- United States District Court, New Mexico Sessions." -- Reprinted in Peter W. Lewis and Kenneth D. Peoples," -- The Supreme Court and the Criminal Process: Cases and Coments" -- (W. B. Saunders Co.: Philadelphia, 1978), pp. 1036-1037

" Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him." -- Paul Eldridge

"No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit." -- Sir Frederick G. Banting

"An idea is not responsible for the people who think it." -- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

" If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it... He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should be spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature..." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"It's not whether you win or lose, but who gets the blame." -- Blaine Nye -- former Dallas Cowboy

"I'm in favor of it." -- John McKay -- Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach" -- following a loss to Cleveland when asked" -- what he thought of his team's execution

"Because if it didn't work out I didn't want to blow the whole day." -- Paul Hornung -- Green Bay Packers" -- when asked why he got married before noon

"My best score ever is 103, but I've only been playing for 15 years." -- Alex Karras -- Detroit Lions defensive lineman on his golf game

"Welcome to The Lou Holtz Show. Unfortunately, I'm Lou Holtz." -- Lou Holtz -- Arkansas football coach" -- opening his weekly television program" -- during one particularly tough stretch

"I'm glad we're not going to the Gator Bowl." -- Lou Holtz -- Arkansas football coach" -- after being showered with oranges thrown by fans celebrating" -- the Razorbacks' invitation to the Orange Bowl

"Pro football gave me a good sense of perspective to enter politics. I'd already been booed, cheered, cut, sold, traded, and hung in effigy." -- Jack Kemp -- Former Buffalo Bills quarterback" -- and U.S. House Representative

"Anbybody with ability can play in the big leagues today, but to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that's a much greater feat." -- Bob Uecker

"The way to catch a knuckle ball is to wait until the ball stops rolling and then pick it up." -- Bob Uecker

"I've never cut a guy hitting that high before. But he was making the rest of us look bad with that average." -- Earl Weaver -- manager Baltimore Orioles after" -- cutting outfielder Drungo Hazewood who was" -- hitting .583 in spring training

"You've got to remember -- I'm seventy-three." -- Ty Cobb -- in 1960 explaining why he would only hit .300 against modern day pitching

"In ten years, Ed Kranepool has a chance to be a star. In ten years, Greg Goossen has a chance to be thirty." -- Casey Stengel on a pair of twenty-year-olds" -- on his New York Mets squad

"In game one of the 1954 World Series against Cleveland, New York Giants manager Leo Durocher summoned left hander Don Liddle from the bullpen with one out in the eighth inning, score tied, Clevland with a pair of runners on base, and slugging first-baseman Vic Wertz at bat. Wertz blasted a drive some 440 feet to the deepest part of the Polo Grounds, only to have Giants center fielder Willie Mays turn his back on the plate and make a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch on the dead run, one of the most famous plays in baseball history. Replaced immediately by another pitcher; Liddle walked to the dugout, laid down his glove, and announced, "Well, I got my man."

"If they were faked, you would see me in more of them." -- Rod Gilbert -- New York Rangers" -- when asked if hockey fights were faked

"I went to a fight the other day and a hockey game broke out." -- Rodney Dangerfield

"When I said my prayers as a kid, I'd tell the Lord I wanted to be a pro hockey player. Unfortunately, I forgot to mention National Hockey League, so I spent sixteen years in the minors." -- Don Cherry -- Boston Bruins coach

"At my lemonade stand I used to give the first glass away free and charge five dollars for the second glass. The refill contained the antidote." -- Emo Philips I discovered my wife in bed with another man, and I was crushed. So I said, 'Get off me, you two!'" -- Emo Philips

"I'm from Downers Grove, Illinois. We had a blackout there the other day, but fortuantely the police made him get back into his car before he got too far." -- Emo Philips

"The IRS sent back my tax return saying I owed $800. I said 'If you'll notice, I sent a paper clip with my return. Given what you've been paying for things lately, that should more than make up the difference'" -- Emo Philips

"A friend of mine gave me a Philip Glass record. I listened to it for five hours before I realized it had a scratch on it." -- Emo Philips

"You know, a lot of girls go out with me just to further their careers... damn anthropologists." -- Emo Philips

"Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps." -- Emo Philips

"I was at a bar nursing a beer. My nipple was getting quite soggy." -- Emo Philips

"I was walking down the street, something caught my eye... and dragged it fifteen feet." -- Emo Philips

"I went into Gus's artificial organ and taco stand. I said "Give me a bladder por favor." The guy said "Is that to go?" I said "Well what else would I want it for?" -- Emo Philips

"I was in a bar the other night, hopping from barstool to barstool, trying to get lucky" -- but there wasn't any gum under any of them." -- Emo Philips

"The other day a woman came up to me and said, "Didn't I see you on television?" I said, "I don't know. You can't see out the other way." -- Emo Philips

"In our age... men seem more than ever prone to confuse wisdom with knowledge, and knowledge with information, and to try to solve problems of life in terms of engineering." -- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

"An "empowered" organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success." -- Stephen R. Covey -- Principle-centered Leadership

"The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom...for we never know what is enough until we know what is more than enough." -- William Blake (1757-1827)

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the _best!_" -- Frank Zappa -- Joe's Garage ( -Dec 4, 1993)

"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." -- Isaac Asimov

"It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge." -- Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)

"Trying is the internalization of the failure of omnipotence." -- Brian O'Shaugnessy

"The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man confines himself within ancient limits." -- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

"There's an old saying: He who plays with fire sometimes throws light on the situation." -- Perry Mason -- Raymond Burr

"Clarke's Second Law: The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." -- Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

"I could be chasing an untamed ornithoid without cause." -- Lt. Commander Data -- Star Trek, TNG

"He had that rare weird electricity about him--that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving normally." -- Hunter S. Thompson "Fear and Loathing '72"

"I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of _writing_ from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language-- and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music." -- Hunter S. Thompson" -- _Generation of Swine_

"That is the problem with this rich and anguished generation. Somewhere a long time ago they fell in love with the idea that politicians-- even the slickest and brightest presidential candidates-- were real heroes and truly exciting people. That is wrong on its face. They are mainly dull people with corrupt instincts and criminal children." -- Hunter S. Thompson" -- -- Generation of Swine

"At the end of the decade, no one will be sure of anything except sex will kill you, politicians lie, rain is poison, and the world is run by whores. These are terrible things to accept, even if you are rich." -- Hunter S. Thompson

"The only aesthetic question that working artists discuss is where to buy decent turpentine." -- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

"The history of art is the history of revivals." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"Art history is the nightmare from which art is struggling to awake." -- Robert Fulford

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution." -- Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

"Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid." -- Jules Feiffer

"An unwarlike Marine is as unthinkable as an honest burglar." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Conscience: the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume...that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)" -- [1927]: "Life under Bureaucracy", pp.241-2

" Two paradoxes are better than one; they may even suggest a solution." -- Edward Teller Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -- Douglas Adams "Welcome to Occupied Mexico" -- seen spray painted on underpass in Salinas, California Conjugation of the verb "firm" I am firm. You are stubborn. He is pig-headed." -- Dr. K. J. Stavrinides "There is no singular historic distinction to this particular rest area site, other than it is part of the stage for greater happenings. A witness to the tides of history." -- an excerpt from an actual rest area site in South Dakota: If the truth were self-evident, eloquence would be unnecessary." -- Cicero, De Oritare A preacher named Gaskin once said, "Between ego and entropy, there is no need for a Devil." -- Spider Robinson _Time Pressure_ I've been a chief executive for something for 15 years and now that I have some time to myself, I realize working is overrated." -- Fay Vincent We have our brush and colors -- paint Paradise and in we go." -- Nikos Kazantzakis I hate to hunt down a tired metaphore." -- Lord Byron (1788-1824) "Don Juan" Oh wait, I think I'm going to be able to use the word 'opium' in a sentence. I opium mother is feeling better. No, I guess I'm not, either." -- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) from a book review

"Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

"Old age is a shipwreck." -- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

"The last years of life are the best, if you are a philosopher." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"Children are a great confort in your old age -- and they help you reach it faster, too." -- Lionel Kauffman

"Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives." -- Maurice Chevalier

"Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age." -- Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

"It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it." -- Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its _stupidity_." -- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)

"Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but never hit softly." -- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

"You will kill ten of our men and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it." -- Ho Chi Minh Give me an Army of West Point Graduates, and I'll win a battle. Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war." -- General George Patton (1885-1945) West Point graduate

"The price of liberty is, always has been, and always will be blood: the person who is not willing to die for his liberty has already lost it to the first scoundrel who is willing to risk dying to violate that person's liberty. Are you free?" -- Andrew Ford

"Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds...he said: 'Do you not think it lamentable that with such a vast multitude of worlds, we have not yet conquerrd one?'" -- Plutarch c. AD 46 -- 120" -- On the Tranquility of the Mind

"Start slow and taper off." -- Walt Stack

"Avoid running at all times." -- Satchel Paige (1906?-1982)

"Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will give you back the lever." -- Marc Drexler -- at a very crowded party

"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired." -- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

"It takes a lot of time being a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing." -- Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time." -- Sir J. Lubbock

"The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more." -- Woody Allen

"If comfort were the goal of evolution, the process would have stopped with the clam." -- Unknown

"If you know that fundamentally there is nothing to seek, you have settled your affairs." -- Rinzai

"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog: Nobody really enjoys it and the frog generally dies as a result." -- Anonymous

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is." -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

"The Right Honorable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests, and to his imagination for his facts." -- Richard Sheridan (1751-1816)" -- (Speech in reply to Mr. Dundas T. Moore)

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." -- Mel Brooks

"Where humor is concerned there are no standards" -- no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) -- The Devils of Loudun

"At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted." -- Eric Idle

"Mathematicians are the people you don't want to meet at cocktail parties." -- John D. Barrow

"In order to solve this differential equation you look at it until a solution occurs to you." -- George Polya

"It is unnecessary to understand electromagnetic theory before wiring a lamp or to study physics in order to repair a pump. We count on our fingers and give no heed to the proliferating implications of the act." -- James R. Newman

"Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Mathematical concepts and facts gain in vividness and clarity if they are well connected with the world around us and with general ideas, and if we obtain them by our own work through successive stages instead of in one lump." -- George Polya

"A tree's a tree. How many more do you need to look at?" -- Ronald Reagan, Governor of California -- Sacramento Bee, 3/12/66

"...115,000 acres of trees in the state park system is a lot to look at. How long can you look?" -- Ronald Reagan, Governor of California -- Sacramento Bee, 4/28/66

"I'm a fellow who bleeds every time a tree is cut down." -- Ronald Reagan, Governor of California -- Fresno Bee, 4/28/66

"I don't believe 'a tree is [just] a tree' and [that] 'if you've seen one you've seen them all.'" -- Ronald Reagan, Governor of California -- Sacramento Bee, 9/14/66

"I just didn't say it." -- Ronald Reagan, Governor of California -- Associated Press, 10/5/66

"War is nothing but the continuation of politics with a mixture of other means." -- Karl von Clausewitz -- Vom Kriege (On War)

"Soldiers are the tradesmen of killing, but officers are the managers of violence." -- Harold Lasswell

"If we had less statemanship we could get along with fewer battleships." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"He who uses force unsparingly, without reference against the bloodshed involved, must obtain a superiority if his adversary uses less vigour in its application.... To introduce into a philosophy of war a principle of moderation would be an absurdity. War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds." -- Karl von Clausewitz, 1819

"Blessed be those happy ages that were strangers to the dreadful fury of these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor I am satisfied is now in hell, receiving the reward of his cursed invention, which is the cause that very often a cowardly base hand takes away the life of the bravest gentleman." -- Don Quixote

"Streaking. Mooning. Ballwalking. Leg Shaving. Belly/Navel Shots. Chicken Fights. Butt Biting." -- Chapter headings from the Pentagon's Tailhook report

"Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain, For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain. America, America, man sheds his waste on thee, And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea." -- George Carlin's version of an old patriotic classic:

"I pledge a lesson to the frog of the United States of America. And to the wee puppet for witch's hands. One Asian, under God, in the vestibule, with little tea and just rice for all." -- Bette Bao Lord, age 8. [Newsweek, 7/6.] I plead alignment to the flakes of the untitled snakes of a merry cow, and to the Republicans for which they scam, one nacho, underpants, invisible, with licorice and jugs of wine for owls." -- Matt Groening's version, reproduced from _School Is Hell_ Bookstore avis screen deans ago, our fort fathers brownies front it on fits continent a new nation, concerned in in berry and bridge area to fire proposition that air me fire created erasers." -- Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address" -- if he'd been writing his notes on a Newton instead of paper.

"To be or not to be is true." -- apocrypha of George Boole

"Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities." -- Lord Dunsany "My Ireland" 1938

"It is one Thing, to show a Man that he is in an Error, and another, to put him in possession of Truth." -- John Locke "An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding" 1690

"Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit." -- Saint Exupery

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it." -- Rabindranath Tagore

"Lucas cannot consistently assert this sentence." -- C. H. Whitely

"Shut up and tell me what that other idiot ish doing!"No, but look, if I've got to shut up, how can I -- The knife at his throat became a hot streak of pain and Rincewind decided to give logic a miss." -- Cohen the Barbarian interrogates Rincewind" -- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

"I end with a word on the new symbols which I have employed. Most writers on logic strongly object to all symbols... I should advise the reader not to make up his mind on this point until he has well weighed two facts which nobody disputes, both separately and in connexion. First, logic is the only science which has made no progress since the revival of letters; secondly, logic is the only science which has produced no growth of symbols." -- Augustus De Morgan

"For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three." -- Alice Kahn

"Television has raised writing to a new low." -- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)

"The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter, but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining." -- Neil Postman

"It used to be that people needed products to survive. Now products need people to survive." -- Nicholas Johnson

"[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy." -- Joseph Campbell

"What scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying." -- Nikita Krushchev

"Ever since our love for machines resplaced the love we used to have for our fellow man, catastrophes proceed to increase." -- Man Ray

"The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like machines." -- Sydney G. Harris

"The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is man may become robots." -- Erich Fromm

"I have heard my teacher say that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the strivings of his soul. Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does not agree with honest sense." -- Tzu-Gung

"Real happiness, in politics, is a wide-open hammer shot on some poor bastard who knows he's been trapped, but can't flee." -- Hunter S. Thompson

"A recent poll tells why the people of New Hampshire are supporting George Bush. Forty percent like my foreign policy. Forty percent support my economic policy. And 20 percent believe I make a good premium beer." -- George Bush campaigning in NH in 1988

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"It is fast approaching the point where I don't want to elect anyone stupid enough to want the job." -- Erma Bombeck

"Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship." -- Harry S Truman, Apr 28, 1959

"I am against Government by crony." -- Harold Ickes, on resigning as" -- Secretary of the Interior (Feb 1946)

"In view of all the deadly computer viruses that have been spreading lately, Weekend Update would like to remind you: when you link up to another computer, you're linking up to every computer that that computer has ever linked up to." -- Dennis Miller, SNL Weekend Update

"EMAIL -- when it absolutely positively has to get lost at the speed of light." -- Unknown

"While modern technology has given people powerful new communication tools, it apparently can do nothing to alter the fact that many people have nothing useful to say." -- Lee Gomes, San Jose Mercury News

"Forget computers; it's hard enough getting humans to pass the Turing test." -- David Bedno

"The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will meanwhile agree to meet them halfway." -- Bernard Avishai

"Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road." -- Stewart Brand

"This compact disc is made from analog masters recorded without noise reduction. Half the tracks, in fact, were recorded in a dismal, cheap basement eight-track studio with puddles of water on the floor. Digital technology will now faithfully reproduce these noisy, low-fi, un-professional masters at great expense." -- Disclaimer on a CD

"... Perhaps of even greater significance is the continuous and profound distrust of science and technology that the environmental movement displays. The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one" -- even the staunchest supporters of science and technology" -- had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them is FORECAST THE WEATHER! " -- for the next one hundred years..." -- George Reisman, "The Toxicity of Environentalism"

"Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which we will not put." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"We are bound by a language that makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style." -- Tom Stoppard

"Obscurity _is_ its style." -- Warren Pyecraft

"It's only words ... unless they're true." -- David Mamet

"Eros and language mesh at every point. Intercourse and discourse, copula and copulation, are sub-classes of the dominant fact of communication." -- George Steiner

"Language is a virus from outer space. William S. Burroughs

"We are getting into semantics again. If we use words, there is a very grave danger they will be misinterpreted. H. R. Haldeman, testifying in his own defense.

"....one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark, its stupidity will obvious, even to yourself. Political language- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists-- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time, one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase-- some _jackboot_, _Achilles' heel_, _hotbed_, _melting pot_, _acid test_, _veritable _ _inferno_ or other lump of verbal refuse-- into the dustbin where it belongs." -- George Orwell (1903-1950) "Politics and the English Language", 1946

"And since the stench of death will always attract flies and vermin, the arrival of Geraldo was perhaps inevitable." -- Gary Trudeau

"I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used." -- Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian

"I have looked into the Abyss, and the Abyss has lookd into me. Neither liked what we saw." -- Brother Theodore

"The tendency to believe that things never change, the inertia of daily existence, is a staple of living. It has always been a delusion." -- Donald A. Wollheim

"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"No, no, no...you've got it all wrong...you can't act death. The *fact* of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen--it's not gasps and blood and falling about--that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all--now you see him, now you don't, that's the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back--an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death." -- Tom Stoppard

"Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty- five years and you pay it back and then" -- one day" -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then" -- one day" -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe." -- Denis Leary

"If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death." -- Charles Sanders Peirce

"I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take power from them, but to inform them by education." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in 1820

"There is no knowledge that is not power." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"...when all government... in little as in the great thing, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in 1821

"When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existance. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses." -- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"One grows tired of jelly babies, Castellan. One grows tired of almost everything, Castellan, except power." -- The Doctor -- The Invasion of Time

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat." -- Hermann Goering (1893-1946)

"If EasyFlow doesn't work: tough. If you lose millions because EasyFlow messes up, it's you that's out the millions, not us. If you don't like this disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided by law, up to and including nothing. This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese. We didn't want to include any disclaimer at all, but our lawyers insisted." -- Disclaimer from Haventree Softwares's Easy Flow package

"One can expect the human race to continue attempting systems just within or just beyond our reach; and software systems are perhaps the most intricate and complex of man's handiworks. The management of this complex craft will demand our best use of new languages and systems, our best adaptation of proven engineering management methods, liberal doses of common sense, and a God-given humility to recognize our fallibility and limitations." -- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. -- The Mythical Man-Month

"I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way." -- Richard Stallman -- The GNU Manifesto

"I have a friend who told me that the greatest computer system ever built by mankind was by the Druids at Stonehenge. Well, that's an old story. But what I like was that he felt that the Druids didn't die out, they just went bankrupt trying to debug the software." -- James Finkle

"There is nothing that can be said by mathematical symbols and relations which cannot also be said by words. The converse, however, is false. Much that can be and is said by words cannot successfully be put into equations, because it is nonsense." -- C. Truesdell, _Six Lectures on Modern Natural Philosophy_" -- (Springer-Verlag, 1966)

"Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." -- Andre Gide

"I have the terrible feeling that, because I have a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theater, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai." -- Orson Welles, "Someone to Love."

"When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense." -- Viscout Bolingbroke

"Sir Howard. It is the truth, Cicely, and nothing but the truth. But" -- the English Law requires a witness to tell the whole truth. Lady Cicely. What nonsense! As if anybody ever knew the whole truth" -- about anything!" -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)" -- Captain Brassbound's Conversion

"Nun-beating? Good Lord, man, I can't condone THAT!" -- Opus

"He sez that only comic books offer the mature environment he needs as a literate cartoon actor..."Notice, Opus, that EVERY woman in these things looks like Dolly Parton in zero gravity!" -- BLOOM COUNTY: The Final Days

"*I*... am undergoing 'male bonding' with your father."DADDY!"...Apparently, it involves repeated vomiting!" -- Opus

"Dear Chap, when was your last emotionally intimate interpersonal experience with a female?"Me? ... My birth." -- The Date Man and Opus

"The wind doth taste so bitter sweet, Like Jaspar wine and sugar, It must have blown through someone's feet, Like those of Caspar Weinberger." -- Opus

"First," said Opus, reading from the government manual, "Gather shovels. Second, quickly and without panic, take refuge in countryside... Dig shallow trenches. Lie down in trenches, cover self with wooden door or like object and await blast. After shock wave passes, emerge and go to nearest emergency Civil Defense Center and fill out emergency change of address forms." -- Bloom Country Babylon

"Grpl blapt oot mipt speeb! Oot piffoo blabbo!" -- Opus, running for office

"Grown men do not need leaders." -- Edward Abbey Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others." -- Edward Abbey

"Great men can't be ruled." -- Ayn Rand, _The_Fountainhead_

"As the happiness of the people is the sole end of government, so the consent of the people is the only foundation of it." -- John Adams (1735-1826)

"In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary." -- Kathleen Norris

"You simply *must* stop taking advice from other people." -- Melissa Timberman

"Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame, A grave to rest in, and a fading name." -- William Winter

"To create a community of radical scholars, men and women who recognize that rules and social conventions are arbitrary, but have mastered them nonetheless-- a community which shares such a scorn and disrespect for the present society that it can embrace the whole bundle of rules and subvert them thereby-- that should be our goal." -- Howard Adelman

"Ask youself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting for us in our graves--or whether it should be ours here and now and on this earth." -- Ayn Rand

"Making fun of born-again christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope." -- P. J. O'Rourke

"It's possible to fight intolerance, stupidity, and fanaticism when they come separately. When you get all three together it's probably wiser to get out, if only to preserve one's sanity." -- Adam Dalgliesh

"In the early years of the sixteenth century, to combat the rising tide of religious unorthodoxy, the Pope gave Cardinal Ximinez of Spain leave to move without let or hinderance throughout the land, in a reign of violence, terror and torture that makes a smashing film." -- from Monty Python's ''Spanish Inquisition,'' (episode 15)

"What is it the Bible teaches us? -- rapine, cruelty, and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us? -- to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

"If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Must then Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?" -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin." -- Anatole France (1844-1924)

"Let us start a new religion with one commandment, "Enjoy thyself." -- Israel Zanguill (1864-1929)

"I once asked a Christmas Eve group of children if they believed in Santa Claus. The very smallest ones answered without hesitation, "Why, of course!" The older ones shook their heads. The little girls smiled but said nothing. One future scientist asserted boldly "I know who it is"; and a little make-strong with his eye on gain said: "I believe in it all; I can believe in anything." That boy, I realized, would one day be a bishop." -- Stephen Leacock (1869-1944)

"The Middle Eastern states aren't nations; they're quarrels with borders." -- P. J. O'Rourke

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems." -- Paul Erds

"[The theory] seems a very dramatically appealing and simple explanation to me, which therefore should be regarded with deep suspicion." -- Roger M. Squires

"The purpose of the present course is the deepening and development of difficulties underlying contemporary theory..." -- A. A. Blasov

"The aim of this article has been to show that our most successful theories in physics are those that explicitly leave room for the unknown, while confining this room sufficiently to make the theory empirically disprovable. It does not matter whether this room is created by allowing for arbitrary forces as Newtonian dynamics does, or by allowing for arbitrary equations of state for matter, as General Relativity does, or for arbitrary motions of charges and dipoles, as Maxwell's electrodynamics does. To exclude the unknown wholly as a "unified field theory" or a "world equation" purports to do is pointless and of no scientific significance." -- Sir Hermann Bondi

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened." -- Douglas Adams -- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

"It's an act of faith to be a writer in a postliterate world." -- Rita Mae Brown

"Writers will happen in the best of families." -- Rita Mae Brown

"I wanted my novel to be so witty that even Republicans would be forced to enjoy it." -- Rita Mae Brown

"Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual." -- Rita Mae Brown

"You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners." -- Rita Mae Brown

"Moral passion without entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is television." -- Rita Mae Brown

"The last thing I have to say is that ice is the past tense of water. I've always wanted to write that sentence and now I have." -- Rita Mae Brown

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you." -- Rita Mae Brown

"Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment." -- Rita Mae Brown

"I am one. Let me become many." -- Rita Mae Brown -- "Writer's Prayer"

"Contrasting this modest effort [of Seymour Cray in his laboratory to build the CDC 6600] with 34 people including the janitor with our vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world's most powerful computer." -- Thomas J. Watson, IBM President, 1965

"It seems Mr. Watson has answered his own question." -- Seymour Cray

"If introductory physics were taught the way that introductory computer science seems to be taught, students would not see equational statements of Newton's Laws until their first semester of graduate school." -- Jerry Kuch

" Law I: The difficulty of using a program is proportional to its usefulness, inversely proportional to its speed, size, and ease of learning, and is a constant. Law II: When multitasking applications on a personal computer, difficulty is conserved and is a constant. Law III: Creativity is inversely proportional to the memory size of a computer." -- Robert Hummel

"Jargon: Jargon consists of words, phrases and syntactic usages which make communication easier between insiders in any field of study while making it harder for outsiders, thereby linguistically enforcing the elitism of expertise. Unless you use jargon liberally your career is likely to stagnate, especially in the computer industry." -- Forsyth & Rada -- Machine Learning, Glossary

"Comedy is tragedy plus time." -- Carol Burnett

"The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny." -- Edward Abbey

"We must laugh before we are happy, for fear we die before we laugh at all." -- Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696)

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh." -- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him." -- Thomas Szasz, [1973], p.58

" ... I think Bergman would never have been celebrated as much had he made films in English because the language is so cynical. If you say "I'm full of fear," or "I'm full of pain," in an English movie, people fall out of the seats with laughter." -- Paul Cox

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people." -- Victor Borge

"If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it." -- Herodotus (484-425 B.C.)

"The muse of humor has once again looked down upon me, and found me worthy to carry out the deeds of her noble cause." -- Michael S. Rosenberg

"What do they call a comedian who doesn't get any laughs? A philosopher. Phil Proctor

"You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave." -- Quentin Crisp

"If the end does not justify the means -- what can?" -- Edward Abbey

"Television is to news as bumperstickers are to philosophy." -- Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

"Organizing is an expression of self on many levels." -- "Skratch" Garrison (aka. Ben Daniels)

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." -- J.R.R. TOLKIEN

"I find it extraordinary, Mr. Richards, that a man of your stature only has one pair of pants." -- Judge speaking to Keith Richards in 1977

"Overfunded research is like cocaine. It corrupts the soul, weakens the spirit and leads to prostitution." -- Unknown

"A beaver does not, as legend would have it, know which direction the tree will fall when he cuts it, but counts on alacrity to make up for lack of engineering expertise." -- Anne Zwinger -- Beyond the Aspen Grove, 1970

"As one psychologist remarked, Humans are a dark cellar in which a maiden aunt and a sex-crazed monkey are locked in mortal combat, the affair being refereed by a rather nervous bank clerk." -- A book (forgotten author & title) concerning the Jonestown colony.

"Candidate Clinton promised to 'raise taxes on the people who did well in the 1980's.' Since practically every American benefited from that era of low inflation and strong growth and since President Clinton wants to raise the taxes of nearly every citizen, I guess in a roundabout way this is a promise he's actually trying to keep." -- Ronald Reagan, New York Times editorial, Aug. 3, 1993

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice." -- Will Durant (1885-1981)

"Somewhere there is a great deal of squealing and grinding. The Great Wheel of humanity has just lost a bearing" -- Christopher Knopf" -- speaking at Gene Roddenberry's memorial service

"Several errant electrons jumped when they shouldn't have at a place they shouldn't have, resulting in what shouldn't have. In short, a short." -- Berke Breathed" -- Bloom County

"The birth of an idea is that happy moment when everything appears possible and reality has not yet entered into the problem." -- Rudolph Diesel -- Written shortly after one of his early" -- engine models had blown up and nearly killed him.

"Football combines two of the worst things about American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings." -- George Will

"I've never met a human being who would want to read 17,000 pages of docu- mentation, and if there was, I'd kill him to get him out of the gene pool." -- Joseph Costello, President of Cadence

"In this chapter, the present tense includes the past and future tenses, and the future, the present; the masculine gender includes the feminine, and the feminine, the masculine, and the singular includes the plural, and the plural the singular." -- Code of Dept. of Consumer Affairs, CA

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." -- e. e. cummings (1894-1962)

"Librarians are like crack dealers when it comes to hooking small children." -- Spider Robinson

"A poet who reads his own verse in public may have other nasty habits." -- Robert Heinlein

"Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines-- not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality." -- Robertson Davies -- Tempest-Tost

"The truth is that even big collections of ordinary books distort space, as can readily be proved by anyone who has been around a really old-fashioned secondhand bookshop, one of those that look as though they were designed by M. Escher on a bad day and has more staircases than storeys and those rows of shelves which end in little doors that are surely too small for a full- sized human to enter. The relevant equation is: Knowledge power energy matter mass; a good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read." -- Terry Pratchett -- Guards! Guards!

"The skeptic may be pardoned for thinking that hypertext encourages irrelevance. What the user can end up with is little more than a series of footnotes, marginalia, and "see also" references-- items that have historically been relegated to second-class citizenship in the good old book format, with the added benefit of not having to stare at a lousy screen display to read them... Indeed, when you boil it down to its rudiments, hypertext seems to make one major claim: it makes computers work almost as well as books." -- Stephen Manes

" Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China." -- The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either (depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax tadpole." -- Bite the wax tadpole." -- There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?" -- The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to bite a wax tadpole. Coke" -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad, but broad satiric vistas do not open up." -- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle

"I want to suggest to you today, that unless we have a tolerant attitude toward mistakes -- I might almost say "a positive attitude toward them" -- we shall be behaving irrationally, unscientifically, and unsuccessfully. Now, of course, if you now say to me, "Look here, you weird Limey, are you seriously advocating relaunching the Edsel?" I will reply, "No." There are mistakes -- and mistakes. There are true, copper-bottom mistakes like spelling the word "rabbit" with three Ms; wearing e black bra under a white shirt; or, to take a more masculine example, starting a land war in Asia. These are the kind of mistakes described by Mr. David Letterman as Brushes With Stupidity, because they have no reasonable chance of success." -- John Cleese

"It is regrettable for the education of the young that war stories are always told by those who survived." -- Louis Scutenaire

"Power belongs to the titled few. Anyone can be strong." -- James P. Carse "Finite and Infinite Games"

"Strategic thinking is the art of outdoing an adversary always remembering that he is trying to do the same to you." -- Dixit & Nalebuff (Strategic Thinking)

"To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say, a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or an authority on Danish place names and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but the weather or the war (if there happened to be a war in progress, which is usual in this barbaric age)." -- Robert Graves

"[John] Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war." -- Isaac Asimov

"Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, you have sand. [There is no need to worry about a protracted war because] from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time." -- Vice President Dan Quayle, 10/2/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

" TABLESPOONS

" Teas Willis, and the sticky tours" -- Did gym and Gibbs in the wake." -- All mimes were the borrowers," -- And the moderate Belgrade." -- "Beware the tablespoon my son," -- The teeth that bite, the Claus that catch." -- Beware the Subjects bird, and shred" -- The serious Bandwidth!" -- He took his Verbal sword in hand:" -- Long time the monitors fog he sought," -- So rested he by the Tumbled tree," -- And stood a while in thought." -- And as in selfish thought he stood," -- The tablespoon, with eyes of Flame," -- Came stifling through the trigger wood," -- And troubled as it came!" -- One, two! One, two! And through and though," -- The Verbal blade went thicker shade." -- He left it dead, and with its head," -- He went gambling back." -- "And host Thai slash the tablespoon?" -- Come to my arms my bearish boy." -- Oh various day! Cartoon! Cathay!" -- He charted in his joy." -- Teas Willis, and the sticky tours" -- Did gym and Gibbs in the wake." -- All mimes were the borrowers," -- And the moderate Belgrade.

"Lewis Carrol's JABBERWOCKY as "recognized" by the Apple Newton, (c) 1993 Robert McNally. Permission is granted to reproduce this if the copyright remains intact.

" If Abraham Lincoln Had an Apple Newton ---------------------------------------

" -- "Betty's urge At rest"

" Foyer scrota and severe heavers ago our flashovers brought force on thy cosmetician a new notion conceives in lubricate and deducted to the prosecution that all men are crated quail.

" Newer are unseated in a greased civil wear, toasting wealthier that notion or andy otter nodding so conceptive and so detoxicated can loading ensure. Wise are most on a great battle field of thatch war. Was have cameo to deducted a prison of thatch flaccid, as a fiscal roasting palace for those that here gaffs their levis that that nation might love. It is altogether fetishist and perspire that we shushed dozes.

" Butane a lawyer sense, weaken riot detected -- weaken inert congregate -- weaken inert Harley -- this ground. The brief men, lavishing and dished, who squiggled here, have concentrated it. The world we'll little note, insuring remember, what we sail here, but it can enslave forget wheat their did here. It is for the living, wither, focus tube dislocated hearse to the unfastened work which they who foisted Harvey thesauri snobby divorced. It is rather forms to be here dissected to the great task romancing beefier us -- that from these humored dead we take incrusted deviating to that cause frolic they gave the last full masseur of devotion -- that we here highly erosive that those diode she'll not have died in van -- that this notion, under God, shall heave a new birdie of freedom -- and the government offish people, bathe people, endeavor the pileup, shall not Persia vermouth breath.

"It seems that truth is progressive approximation in which the relative fraction of our spontaneously tolerated residual error constantly diminishes." -- R. Buckminster Fuller

"When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." -- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

"We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea at first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work." -- Richard Feynman (1918-88), 1966 Nobel Lecture.

"A chicken is one egg's way of making another egg." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902) I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens." -- E.B. White (1899-1985)

"Look, we're travelling faster than the speed of light. That means, by the time we see something, we've already passed through it. Even with an IQ of 6000, it's still brown trousers time." -- Holly, Red Dwarf

"What the deuce is the Solar System to me? You say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work." -- Sherlock Holmes, in Doyle's A Study in Scarlet>, p.21

"I'm not comparing myself to Newton or Aristotle. They didn't have a synthesizer." -- Chip Davis (Mannheim Steamroller)," -- commenting on the idea of turning light into sound." -- An idea Sir Isaac Newton came up with in 1666 based on Aristotle's work.

"Perhaps the immobility of the things that surround us is forced upon them by our conviction that they are themselves, and not anything else, and by the immobility of our conceptions of them." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"A murder is nothing more than an extroverted suicide." -- Monty Python

"The essence of suicide is despair." -- from the movie: Ninth Configuration -Vincent

"The essence of suicide is ya don't collect the insurance." -- from the movie: Ninth Configuration -Cutshaw

"The Bible doesn't forbid suicide. It's a Catholic directive, intended to slow down their loss of martyrs." -- Ellen Blackstone

"Suicide: Don't knock it if you ain't tried it." -- Edward Abbey

"The ready availability of suicide, like sex and alcohol, is one of life's basic consolations." -- Edward Abbey

"There are circumstances in which suicide presents a viable option; a workable alternative; the only sensible solution." -- Edward Abbey

"Suicide was against the law. Johnny had wondered why. It meant that if you missed, or the gas ran out, or the rope broke, you could get locked up in prison to show you that life was really very jolly and thoroughly worth living." -- Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the dead

"Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives." -- Unknown

"If you want to commit suicide you can use my razor; it's electric, but you can hang yourself with the cord." -- Unknown

"The passion for science and the passion for music are driven by the same desire;to realize beauty in one's vision of the world." -- Heinz Pagels

"I had always loved beautiful and artistic things, though before leaving America I had had a very little chance of seeing any." -- Emma Albani

"One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their way." -- Vincent Van Gogh

"Animation is not the art of drawings that move, but the art of movements that are drawn. What happens between each frame is more important than what happens on each frame. Animation, therefore, is that art of manipulating the invisible interstices between each frame." -- Norman McLaren, of the National Film Board of Canada

"The advancement of the arts, from year to year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of that period when human improvement must end." -- Henry Elsworth, US Patent Office, 1844

"The greatest damage done by advertising is precisely that it incessantly demonstrates the prostitution of men and women who lend their intellects, their voices, their artistic skills to purposes in which they themselves do not believe and that it teaches the essential meaninglessness of all creations of the mind; words, images and ideas." -- Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy

"... there are those who think that Zeffirelli's Hamlet is the way to treat Shakespeare. I think that cinema can handle much more. We somehow expect cinema to provide us with meaning, to console us. But that's not the purpose of art." -- Peter Greenaway

"I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy." -- Peter Greenaway

"For the difference between art and entertainment is, finally, one not so much of direction as of degree: though all entertainment is not art, all art must include entertainment. "Entertaining" means interest-holding, and what bores and fails to involve has no real artistic value. Granted, art makes demands; it entertains those who are willing and able to feel, perceive, and think more deeply and arduously-- more courageously if you will-- rather than those who always want to leave their thoughts behind, most likely because thought has abandoned them." -- John Simon

" Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof." -- Ashley Montague

"Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What have we to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!" -- Isaac Asimov

"Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process." -- Isaac Asimov

"In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms." -- Stephen Jay Gould

"There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility. That is the human conditions; and that is what quantum physics says. I mean that literally." -- Jacob Bronowski

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." -- Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton

"In the world of human thought generally, and in physical science particularly, the most important and fruitful concepts are those to which it is impossible to attach a well-defined meaning." -- H.A. Kramers

"Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought." -- Ernst Mach

"The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before." -- Thorstein Bunde Veblen-(1919) (1857-1929)

"Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths." -- Karl Popper (1957)

"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." -- Martin Luther King Jr. (1965)

"Science has 'explained' nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

"Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification." -- Karl Popper (1982)

"If the lord had meant us to have faith, he'd have given us lobotomies." -- Zlatko

"Seek simplicity, and distrust it." -- Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy." -- John Dewey

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared." -- P.J. Plauger, Computer Language, Programming on Purpose, p.29, March 1983

"At an early age I decided that living a life of pious misery in the hope of going to heaven when it's over is a lot like keeping your eyes shut all through a movie in the hope of getting your money back at the end." -- A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture"

"Thinking the world should entertain you leads to boredom and sloth. Thinking you should entertain the world leads to bright clothes, odd graffiti and amazing grace in running for the bus." -- Ann Herbert

"Happiness lies in conquering one's enemies, in driving them in front of oneself, in taking their property, in savoring their despair, in outraging their wives and daughters." -- Genghis Khan (1162?-1227)

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together, ought not to be expected." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) "Autobiography" (1821)

"Who does not know that... tight-lacing around the waist keeps the blood from returning freely to the heart, and retains it in the bowels and neighboring organs, and thereby inflames all the organs of the abdomen, which thereby excites amative desires?" -- Orson Fowler from an 1846 text on corsets

" Ode To Spot" -- by DATA" -- (Note: DATA is an android on Star Trek: TNG and Spot is his cat.)

"Felix Catus is your taxonomic nomemclature. An endothermic quadruped, carnivorous by nature Your visual, olefactory and auditory senses Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses. I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations. Your singular development of cat communications, That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection For a rythmic stroking of the fur to demonstrate affection. A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents. You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance. And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion, It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotions. Oh, Spot.... The complex levels of behavior you display Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array. And though you are not sentient, Spot And do not comprehend. I nonetheless consider you A true and valued friend.

"The perfect civil servant is the man who has a valid objection to any possible solution." -- A.H. Heats, 16 May 1965, quoted in Pepper's" -- [1987], p.58/15

"Just because information has been published doesn't mean it shouldn't be classified." -- NSA director Lincoln D. Faurer

"The direct use of force is so poor a solution to the problems of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations." -- David Friedman

"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness." -- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

"Communism possesses a language which every people can understand -- its elements are hunger, envy, and death." -- Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

"It is more noble to give yourself completely to one person than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses." -- Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961)

"Because of a new government ban on chlorofluorocarbons, the US Air Force is to refit all its nuclear missiles with new cooling systems which don't use CFCs. This is to protect the environment while they wait to deliver terminal global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency concedes that it may be 'ironic' to make nuclear missiles more eco-friendly, but regulations are regulations." -- {Source: Internet with ""}

"I repeat: our practical choice is not between a tax-cut deficit and a surplus. It is between two kinds of deficits; a chronic deficit of inertia, as the unwanted result of inadequate revenues and a restricted economy, or a temporary deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenue and achieve -- and I believe this can be done -- a future budget surplus. The first type of deficit is a sign of waste and weakness. The second reflects an investment in the future." -- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)" -- in a speech to the Economic Club of New York, Dec 14, 1962

"The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort; with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Have you ever talked to a corpse? It's *boring*!" -- from An American Werewolf in London

"I never see that prettiest thing--- A cherry bough gone white with Spring--- But what I think, "How gay 'twould be To hang me from a flowering tree." -- Dorothy Parker, "Cherry White" -- from _Death_and_Taxes_

"Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming, Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide." -- Stanislaw J. Lec

" Death was in that poison'd wave -- And, in it's gulf a fitting grave For him who thence could solace bring To his lone imagining" -- Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)

"If enough people told enough people to put their heads under trucks, I'm sure they would do so. I wonder why no-one has thought of doing that?" -- Noel Coward (1899-1973)

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent." -- Elanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

"Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real. Perhaps they are." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"Never lose your sense of the superficial." -- Lord Northcliffe The world, I have come to believe, is a very queer place, but we have been part of this queerness for so long that we tend to take it for granted. We rush to and fro like Mad Hatters upon our peculiar errands, all the time imagining our surroundings to be dull and ourselves quite ordinary creatures..." -- Loren Eiseley, _The Immense Journey_

"I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?" -- Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)

"I live in my own place have never copied nobody even half, and at any master who lacks the grace to laugh at himself" -- I laugh." -- inscribed over the door to Friedrich Nietzsche's house

"No human thing is of serious importance." -- Plato (427?-348? BC)

"The last Christian died on the cross." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"The major contribution of Protestant thought to the knowledge of mankind is its massive proof that God is a bore." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"In heaven all the interesting people are missing." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin." -- Anatole France (1844-1924)

"1. Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband... 8. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. 9. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." -- St. Paul, I Corinthians

"The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) "Marriage and Morals"

"I could prove God statistically." -- George Gallup

"Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics." -- Fletcher Knebel

"Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive." -- Wallace Irwin (1875-1959)

"The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts down anything he damn well pleases." -- Sir Josiah Stamp

"Give us a copper, Guv" said the beggar to the Treasury statistician, when he waylaid him in Parliament square. "I haven't eaten for three days."Ah," said the statistician, "And how does that compare with the same period last year?" -- Russell Lewis

"Like other occult techniques of divination, the statistical method has a private jargon deliberately contrived to obscure its methods from non-practitioners." -- G. O. Ashley

"The masses seem to me worthy of notice in only three respects: first as blurred copies of great men, produced on bad paper with worn plates, further as a resistance to the great, and finally as the tools of the great; beyond that, may the devil and statistics take them." -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Statistical Analysis: Mysterious, sometimes bizarre, manipulations performed upon the collected data of an experiment in order to obscure the fact that the results have no generalizable meaning for humanity. Commonly, computers are used, lending an additional aura of unreality to the proceedings.

"Masturbation is nothing to be ashamed of. It's nothing to be particularly proud of, either." -- from "Basic Sex Facts For Today's Youngfolk" in" -- LIFE IN HELL by Matt Groening

"When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities." -- from "Basic Sex Facts For Today's Youngfolk" in" -- LIFE IN HELL by Matt Groening

"I'm going to Iowa for an award. Then I'm appearing at Carnegie Hall, it's sold out. Then I'm sailing to France to be honored by the French government" -- I'd give it all up for one erection." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"Sex is hereditary. If your parents never had it, chances are you won't either." -- Joseph Fischer

"Slovotsky's Law number Twenty-Three: Trouble with you Jewish girls is that your desire to DO is in inverse proportion to your willingness to TALK about it. Walter Slovotsky, _The Sleeping Dragon_ by Joel Rosenberg

"Leave it to a girl to take the fun out of sex discrimination. Calvin, "Calvin and Hobbes" by Bill Watterson

"In some of the poorer areas of the world it is sadly true that sex is the only luxury available to the ordinary man. Whether the ordinary woman also considers it a luxury is open to question." -- Hugh L. Keenleyside

"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper." -- Rod Serling

"There ain't no rules around here, we're trying to accomplish something." -- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

"Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work." -- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

"It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

"All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don't." -- Carrie Fisher

"All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent." -- David Brower

"50% of everything is below average." -- Yogi Berra

"Peace is the name of the ideal we deduce from the fact that there have been interludes between wars." -- John Christian Falkenberg

"One who contends with immortals lives a very short life." -- Homer, Book V of the Iliad

"Always keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark." -- Robert Heinlein

"We would like to have Jerry Fallwell, Lyndon LaRouche, and Pat Robertson chained to a radiator while Harlan Ellison reads them the U.S.Constitution." -- Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's Christmas wish" -- from The Comic Buyer's Guide

"Santy Claus, why? Why are you taking our Christmas tree? Why?" -- Cindy Lou Who

"Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer conglomerates. Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? It's a beautiful world all right." -- Calvin's Dad

"Wretches hang that jurymen may dine." -- Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

"Don't talk to me about Naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)" -- as reported by Sir Peter Gretton in "Former Naval Person," 1968. The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class." -- Jack London (1876-1916)

"Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid." -- Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

"If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon." -- Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

"I become a whiny bitch. I want to know where he is and what he's doing all the time and why isn't he with me. You do more for that person than you would for anyone else. Falling in love is nice, but after you've fallen in love it's not so nice because most guys are scum and they always ruin it." -- Aleta Blakely (18), in response to question "What's a" -- Telltale Sign You're Falling in Love?" (SF Chronicle)

"It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

"Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life." -- Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

"How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone." -- Coco Chanel

"Whatever you can do, Or dream you can do, Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

"Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul." -- Henry Van Dyke

"When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap." -- Cynthia Heimel" -- "Lower Manhattan Survival Tactics" in Village Voice

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." -- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

"Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason." -- James Randi

"We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others." -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

"He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave." -- William Drummond

"Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It was not reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out." -- Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

"When a man has not a good reason for doing a thing, he has one good reason for letting it alone." -- Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

"Just because I'm famous doesn't mean I have to take any crap." -- Charles Barkley

"You can's achieve anything without getting in someone's way." -- Abba Eban

"I don't know. I don't care. And it doesn't make any difference." -- Jack Kerouac

"Q: What's the difference between ignorance and indifference? A: I don't know and I don't care.

"One good thing about apathy, is you don't have to exert yourself to show you are sincere about it." -- Unknown

"Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitude toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond to it." -- Charles R. Swindoll

"Scientists study the world as it is, engineers create the world that never has been." -- Theodore Von Karman

"A scientist can discover a new star, but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him." -- Gordon L. Glegg

"An engineer is an unordinary person who can do for one dollar what any ordinary person can do for two dollars." -- Anonymous

"Thousands of engineers can design bridges.....,but the great engineer is the man who can tell whether the bridge.....should be built at all." -- Eugene C. Grace All we know about the new economic world tells us that nations which train engineers will privail over those which train lawyers. No nation has ever sued its way to greatness." -- Richard Lamm Adding engineers to a late project makes it later." -- Brooke's First Law Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -- Rich Cook

"There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation resisted." -- James Branch Cabell

"The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come again." -- Anonymous

"I can resist anything, except temptation." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it." -- Mae West (1893-1980)

"The surest protection against temptation is cowardice." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Don't worry about temptation--as you grow older, it starts avoiding you." -- Old Farmer's Almanac Yield to temptation -- it may not pass your way again." -- Robert Heinlein Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is good." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Marriage is the most licentious of human institutions. It combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)" -- Man & Superman (c 1905).

"Saintleness is also a temptation." -- Jean Anouilh (b. 1910)

"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"Things forbidden have a secret charm." -- Tacitus (55-118 AD)

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Nature is what she is, amoral and persistent." -- Stephen Jay Gould

"If God can create a stone too heavy for Him to lift, there is something He cannot do; and if He cannot create a stone too heavy for him to lift, there is something He cannot create. If there's something God cannot do He is not omnipotent, and if there's something He cannot create He is not omnipotent. Therefore God is not omnipotent." -- Elementary Symbolic Logic, 2nd Ed. Gustason & Ulrich

"Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Soon, they became more like aquariums, and then hatcheries. >From farm fingerling to frozen fishstick is a short swim." -- Tom Robbins -- Skinny Legs and All

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his G-d, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus build- ing a wall of separation between church and state." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)" -- From a letter written to the Baptist congregation of" -- Danbury, Connecticut, January 1, 1802.

"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"I quote others only to better express myself." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

"Quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Wise men make proverbs but fools repeat them." -- Samuel Palmer (c. 1710)

"Nothing is said that has not been said before." -- Terence (185 -- 159 BC)

"Quotations are a columnist's bullpen. Stealing someone else's words frequently spares the embarrassment of eating your own." -- Peter Anderson

"Walt Disney -- a typical sun-belt neo-fascist." -- Orson Welles

"In Cyberspace, the 1st Amendment is a local ordinance." -- John Perry Barlow

"Children are like TV sets. When they start acting weird, whack them across the eyes with a big rubber basketball shoe." -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Generation of Swine"

"Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem." -- John Galsworthy

"People shouldn't think that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. It's not, it's better to have loved and won. All the other options really suck." -- Dan Redican

"The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad." -- Salvador Dali

"The Hitch Hiker's Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry." -- Douglas Adams

"Could you really persuade," he said, "if we don't listen?" -- Plato, Republic, 327c

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"He said, in feeble alarm, "You're trying to kill me!" She said, "No, my dear. I simply don't want you to die a virgin." -- Joanna Russ -- Souls

"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't belive this to be a coincidence." -- Jeremy S. Andersen

"The William Tell Misfire Consolation Trophy: to Israeli tourism officials for placing an ad (since withdrawn) stating that Jerusalem is 'only a stone's throw' from Tel Aviv." -- People's Daily World's 2nd Annual Awards

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do." -- B.F. Skinner

"Every calculation based on experience elsewere fails in New Mexico." -- Lew Wallace, Governor of Teritorial New Mexico 1878-1881

"My work has been directed towards scientific research. I have never engaged in what is termed 'production'." -- Louis Lumiere

"Giving a man space is like giving a dog a computer: The chances are he will not use it wisely." -- Bette-Jane Raphael

"In Sweden, an empty automated Saab factory jump-started itself and assembled 24 cars and rolled them off the assembly line into the factory wall. A worker finally discovered the mishap and found an impressive pile of chrome and steel. A Saab official noted the damage was minimal. 'Our assembly lines run slowly, and we have big bumpers,' he said." I like it. The robustness here was mechanical, and obviously was able to accommodate an unintended run of at least 24 cars without major damage..." -- From Road & Track, November 1993:

"For the man who studies to gain _insight_, books and studies are merely rungs of the ladder he climbs to the summit of knowledge. As soon as a rung has raised him one step, he leaves it behind. On the other hand, the many who study to fill their memories do not use the rungs of the ladder for climbing, but take them off and load themselves with them to take away, rejoicing at the increasing weight of the burden. They remain below forever, since they are carrying what ought to have carried them." -- A.Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, ii.80" -- Byan Ma

The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Oxford Univ. Press 1983" -- (reprinted, ppbk, 1987, 1989, ISBN 0-19-824484-3), (pp. 47)

"My propositions serve as ellucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed it up.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright." -- L.Wittgentstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.54" -- Byan Ma

The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Oxford Univ. Press 1983" -- (reprinted, ppbk, 1987, 1989, ISBN 0-19-824484-3), (pp. 295)

"To every man is given the key to the gate of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell." -- Richard P. Feynman" -- "What Do _You_ Care What Other People Think?" -- From the chapter entitled "The Value of Science"

"Ken doesn't spell very well. Fortunately, he has other virtues." -- Dennis Ritchie

"[It] was the kind of place where they spell trouble TRUBIL, and if you try to correct them, they kill you." -- Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid

"Poor spelling does not prove poor knowledge, but is fatal to the argument by intimidation." -- Gene Ward Smith

"Let us knot coin gnu werds huitch are spelld rong." -- Rik Fischer Smoody

"But I want credit for all the words I spelled *right*!" -- Beetle Bailey

"Collaboration: A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the other fellow can spell." -- Unknown

"Nothing you can't spell will ever work." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"Bad spelling can be lethal. For example, the greedy Seriph of Al-Yabi was cursed by a badly-educated deity and for some days everything he touched turned to Glod, which happened to be the name of a small dwarf from a mountain community hundreds of miles away who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated. Some two thousand Glods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al-Yabi are renowned for being remarkably short and bad-tempered." -- Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

"Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine." -- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

"All men of action are dreamers." -- James G. Huneker

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream; not only plan, but also believe." -- Anatole France (1844-1924)

"In order to invent the airplane you must have at least a thousand years' experience dreaming of angels." -- Arnold Rockman

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night" -- Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)" -- Eleonora

"Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." -- Neil Gaiman -- The Sandman #19: A Midsummer Night's Dream

"Living that can be a smile Carrying me just for a while A hand to hold me A dream to guide me" -- Frank Duval/Kalina Maloyer: Living Like a Cry

"What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innnovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the efforts of their schools?" -- Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)" -- "Beneath the Wheel"

"And they all agreed that the expression _on_ the face was not one of happiness. There were many possible explanations for that expression, but no one would have said terror, for it was not terror. They would not have said helplessness, for it was not that, either. They might have settled on a pathetic sense of loss, had their sensibilities run that deep, but none of them would have felt that the expression said, with great finality: a man may truly live in his dreams, his noblest dreams, but only, _only_ if he is worthy of those dreams." -- Harlan Ellison -- Delusion for a Dragon Slayer

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone." -- Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

"When words leave off, music begins." -- Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)

"Communication is something so simple and difficult that we can never put it in simple words." -- T.S. Matthews

"The best way to keep one's word is not to give it." -- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word "commence" in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say "Enter", don't stop to pack." -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water." -- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"If you travel to the States ... they have a lot of different words than like what we use. For instance: they say "elevator", we say "lift"; they say "drapes", we say "curtains"; they say "president", we say "seriously deranged git." -- Alexei Sayle

"At the bidding of a Peter the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves against the East; the words of an hallucinated enthusiast such as Mahomet created a force capable of triumphing over the Graeco-Roman world; an obscure monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The voice of a Galileo or a Newton will never have the least echo among the masses. The inventors of genius hasten the march of civilization. The fanatics and the hallucinated create history." -- Gustave Le Bon

"Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)" -- "The Devil's Dictionary"

"Some people think football is a matter of life and death...But they are wrong...It's far more important than that..." -- Shankley

"Husband: a man who buys his football tickets four months in advance and waits until December 24 to do his Christmas shopping." -- unknown

"One week you're drinking wine, the next week you're stomping grapes. This is my week to stomp grapes." -- OSU football coach John Cooper, after losing to Wisconsin ('92)

"[Jay Hilgenberg] will play a critical role in, well, protecting the *life* of Bernie Kosar." -- Art Modell ('92)

"Rugby is a beastly game played by gentlemen; soccer is a gentleman's game played by beasts; football is a beastly game played by beasts." -- Henry Blaha

"I suppose that rusty nail for my coat still is there." -- Atlanta Falcons coach Jerry Glanville" -- on Cleveland Stadium locker rooms ('92)

"We put in a new nail for him -- with yellow neon on it so he'll know which one it is. It's a special one for him -- it has a little dent in it and a little bend. It's a big one so he can put his belt buckle and his boots up there." -- Browns coach Bill Belichick on Jerry Glanville's comments about Cleveland Stadium locker rooms ('92)

"There seems to be a strong correlation between people who relish tough football and people who relish intimidating and beating the hell out of Commies, hippies, protest marchers and other opposition groups. Watching well-advertised strong men knock other people around, make them hurt, is in the end like other tastes. It does not weaken with feeding. It grows." -- John McMurtry

"...the genes almost _always_ accurately reproduce. If they don't, you get one of the following results: One, monsters-- that is, grossly malformed babies resulting from genetic mistakes. Years ago most monsters died, but now many can be saved. This has made possible the National Football League." -- Cecil Adams

"College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"I want to find out who I am and give up letting everyone else define me." -- Judith

"I am as frustrated with society as a pyromaniac in a petrified forest." -- A. Whitney Brown

"The trouble with our age is it's all signposts and no destination." -- Loius Kronenberger

"Depression runs deep in the souls of many who read life and know its purposelessness. Yet these are among the most powerful and dangerous of all people, for they hold in their own hands the worth of their lives, and create it with every breath." -- Matt Ryan -- mbr2@kimbark.uchicago.edu

"Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing? What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you? If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken, get to work on that." -- Epicetus

"I remember friends from wars all but we forgot, All of them distilled into each wound we caught. Those wounds are all the painful places where we fought. Battles better left behind, ones we never sought. What was it we spent, and what was it we bought?" -- Frank Herbert "Songs of the Scattering", _Heretics of Dune_

"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair, Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more." -- Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

"To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness." -- Woody Allen

"In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed--amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)" -- from Diapsalmata

"If I had in my service a submissive jinni... I would dismiss him until he learned that the enjoyment consists not in what I enjoy but in getting my own way." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)" -- from Diapsalmata

"I say of my sorrow what the Englishman says of his house: My sorrow is my castle. Many people look upon sorrow as one of life's conveniences." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)" -- from Diapsalmata

"I have, I believe, the courage to doubt everything; I have, I believe, the courage to fight against everything; but I do not have the courage to acknowledge anything, the courage to possess, to own anything." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)" -- from Diapsalmata

"The most beautiful time is in the first period of falling in love, when from every encounter, every glance, one fetches home something new to rejoice over." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)" -- from Diapsalmata

"It is said that our Lord satisfies the stomach before the eyes. That is not what I find: my eyes are surfeited and bored with everything, and yet I hunger." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)" -- from Diapsalmata

"I have only one friend and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confident and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confident? Because it remains silent." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)" -- from Diapsalmata

"The most inflexible rule in chess is the exception." -- Alekhine -- translated from:" -- "Die unerbittlichsten Regeln im Schach sind -- die Ausnahmen."

"There is only one mistake in chess: overestimating your oponent. Everything else is just bad luck or weakness." -- Alekhine -- translated from:" -- "Im Schach gibt es nur einen Fehler: Uberschaetzung des Gegners." -- Alles andere ist entweder Unglueck oder Schwaeche."

"I feel as a chessman must feel when the opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)" -- from Diapsalmata

"White to move and win in 24..." -- Cartoon caption in a magazine -- accompaning picture" -- shows a chess board with none of the pieces moved

"One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion." -- Anatol Rapoport

"The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the games are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance." -- Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895)

"In fact, no gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; a key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs." -- Terry Pratchett -- Wyrd Sister)

"On nights such as these the gods, as has already been pointed out, play games other than chess with the fates of mortals and the thrones of kings. It is important to remember that they always cheat, right up to the end..." -- Terry Pratchett -- Wyrd Sisters

"Parity is for farmers." -- Seymour Cray

"The hardware was the easy part." -- Seymour Cray

"Memory is like an orgasm. It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it." -- Seymour Cray commenting on virtual memory

"The average pointer points somewhere in X." -- Henry Spencer

"The main difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman is that the used car salesman can probably drive and knows when he's lying." -- Peter da Silva

"Most of the VAX instructions are in microcode, but halt and no-op are in hardware for efficiency." -- Unknown

"One of the main advantages of Unix over, say, MVS, is the tremendous number of features Unix lacks." -- Chris Torek

"The steady state of disks is full." -- Ken Thompson

"If an undetectable error occurs, the processor continues as if no error had occurred." -- IBM S/360 Principles of Operation

"I think there is a world market for about five computers." -- Thomas J. Watson, CEO, IBM Corporation, 1947

"Artificial intelligences makes mistakes too, only faster." -- Larry Wall [in comp.lang.perl]

"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)

"I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest." -- Alexandre Dumas pere (1802-1870)

"Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive." -- Ayn Rand

"We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic." -- David Russell

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) -- Walden

"You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave." -- Quentin Crisp

"So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private in dividuals will occasionally kill theirs." -- Elbert Hubbard

"Serious men are inevitably shallow, just as virtuous women are always dull. One must be a bit of a scoundrel to know the depths of oneself." -- Sigismundo Celine, Nature's God" -- (by Robert Anton Wilson)

"Canadian consumers race across the border to buy the kind of cheap goods that a country with low wages and a third-rate social security system can produce. So empty are their lives, apparently, that a three-hour lineup of cars at the border coming back is viewed as an acceptable trade-off." -- Charles Gordon

"I am part of all I have read." -- John Kieran

"Show me the books he loves and I shall know the man far better than through mortal friends." -- S. Weir Mitchell

"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes." -- Desiderius Erasmus (1466? -- 1536)

"The multitude of books is makiing us ignorant." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost." -- Thomas Fuller

"">From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977) -- The Book of Insults

"The road to ignorance is paved with good books." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Books arn't written to be believed in, but to be questioned." -- Umberto Eco

"This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money on books than on chewing gum." -- Elbert Hubbard

"Every time a new book comes out, read an old one." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"The worst thing about new books is that they prevent us from reading the old ones." -- Joseph Joubert

"Writing books makes horse racing look like a solid and safe business." -- John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

"Writing books is easy, you only need pen and ink and patient paper. Printing books is more difficult, since geniuses often have unreadable handwriting. Reading books is more difficult yet, there's such a risk that you will fall asleep. But the most difficult thing any man can undertake, is selling books." -- Sir Stanley Unwin

"A book should serve as an axe to the ice inside us." -- Franz Kafka (1883-1924)

"Any synopsis of a good book is a stupid synopsis." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

"Report writing, like motor-car driving and love-making, is one of those activities which almost every Englishman thinks he can do well without instruction. The results are of course usually abominable." -- Tom Margerison" -- reviewing Bruce M. Cooper's book "Writing Technical Reports" in 1965

"All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value." -- Carl Sagan

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"An apology for the devil:it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"A book is the product of a contract with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins." -- Salman Rushdie -- The Satanic Verses

"Damn a man who doesn't read books. The test of a man is his knowledge of humanity, of the politics of human life, his comprehension of the things that move men." -- William Mulholland

"God forbid that any book should be banned! The practice is as indefensible as infanticide." -- Dame Rebecca West, 1928

"I shall never permit myself to stoop so low as to hate any man." -- Booker T. Washington

"If a man writes a better book, preaches a better sermon, or makes a better mousetrap than his neighbor, the world will make a beaten path to his door." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Neither men nor gods nor bookstalls have ever allowed poets to be mediocre." -- Horace

"Of all the needs a book has the chief need is that it be readable." -- Anthony Trollope

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." -- Mark Twain

"Wherever books are burned, men also, in the end, are burned." -- Heinrich Heine

" A study of the science of technology defines what is possible; a study of the economics of technology establishes which of the possibilities is practical and useful." -- Montgomery Phister

"Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science." -- Unknown

"All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man's ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events." -- Laurence J. Peter

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting." -- Ernest Rutherford (1871-1935)

"And science, we should insist, better than any other discipline, can hold up to its students and followers an ideal of patient devotion to the search for objective truth, with vision unclouded by personal or political motive." -- Sir Henry Hallett Dalt

"As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress." -- J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)

"But I have seen the science I worshiped and the airplane I loved destroying the civilization I expected them to serve." -- Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974)

"By the time a social science theory is formulated in such a way that it can be tested, changing circumstances have already made it obsolete." -- Professor Charles P. Issawi

"Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples of outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies, but they prevailed with irrefutable data. More often, egregious findings that contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts. I have argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, cosmic consciousness, and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of neuroscience. Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves offer more plausible alternatives." -- Barry L. Beyerstein

"If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion." -- Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)

"The stature of a science is commonly measured by the degree to which it makes use of mathematics." -- S. S. Stevens Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one." -- Konrad Lorenz

"He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

"Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don't understand." -- Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)

"Parkinson's Finding on Journals: The progress of science varies inversely with the number of journals published.

"In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs." -- Sir William Osler

"I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience. And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true." -- Carl Sagan

"In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion." -- Carl Sagan

"In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore, in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only from those who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the religious catechism by something else, even it it be a scientific one." -- Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

"Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science." -- Henri Poincare

"I almost think it is the ultimate destiny of science to exterminate the human race." -- Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866)

"The social problems raised by science must be faced and solved by the humanities." -- Harold Dodd Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it." -- Unknown The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over. Every major advance in the technological competence of man has enforced revolutionary changes in the economic and political structure of society." -- Barry Commoner

"The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning, while those other subjects merely require scholarship." -- Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)

"You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart." -- F. Allen

"The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice." -- Unknown HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science. SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains." -- Walt Kelley

"I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder. It's a very powerful emotion. All children feel it. In a first grade classroom everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or at least acknowledges it. Something happens between first and twelfth grade, and it's not just puberty. Not only do the schools and the media not teach much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense of wonder. Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling. Poor popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience." -- Carl Sagan If science were explained to the average person in a way that is accessible and exciting, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But there is a kind of Gresham's Law by which in popular culture the bad science drives out the good. And for this I think we have to blame, first, the scientific community ourselves for not doing a better job of popularizing science, and second, the media, which are in this respect almost uniformly dreadful. Every newspaper in America has a daily astrology column. How many have even a weekly astronomy column? And I believe it is also the fault of the educational system. We do not teach how to think. This is a very serious failure that may even, in a world rigged with 60,000 nuclear weapons, compromise the human future." -- Carl Sagan

"Why do writers write? Because it isn't there." -- Thomas Berger

"If you were a member of Jesse James's band and people asked you what you were, you wouldn't say 'Well, I'm a desperado.' You'd say something like, 'I work in banks,' or 'I've done some railroad work.' It took me a long time just to say 'I'm a writer.' It's really embarrassing." -- Roy Blount, Jr.

"All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things." -- Basketball coach Bobby Knight

"I feel very old sometimes ... I carry on and would not like to die before having emptied a few more buckets of sh*t on the heads of my fellow men." -- Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

"Our Father, which art in heaven, And has also written a book...." -- Unknown

"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it." -- Leo Rosten

"Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"I knew words were like chains, they held me back... the act of description taints the description." -- John Fowles (from "The Magus")

"No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"All our life is crushed by the weight of words: the weight of the dead." -- Luigi Pirandello

"Art isn't political because of a label, a theory, or a rejected grant application; art is political because it has the power to change lives." -- Peter Zeisler

"We risk the greatest loss when we allow our questions to be made smaller." -- Stephen Dietz (in an article debunking the oft-used advice" -- "you should only write what you know about")

"James Joyce can be blamed on the Catholic Church." -- Christopher Durang ("The Marriage of Bette and Boo")

"The economic and technological triumphs of the last few years have not solved as many problems as we thought they would, in fact, have brought us new problems we did not forsee." -- Henry Ford II

"Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination." -- John Dewey

"Whatever else scientists do, the most significant thing they do is to try to find out things that are not known." -- Dennis Flanagan

"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" -- Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

"The Wright brother's flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility." -- Charles F. Kettering

"No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess." -- Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)

"Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spendtime wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here...or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know...But mch of science has been driven by such inquire. An increasing number of adults are willing to ask questions of this sort, and occasionally they get some astonishing answers." -- Carl Sagan," -- Introduction to _A Brief History of Time_ by Stephen W. Hawking

"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on a land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise." -- Aldo Leopold

"Thought alone is eternal." -- Owen Meredith

"To desire immortality is to desire the eternal perpetuation of a great mistake." -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

"To see the world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower; Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour." -- William Blake -- Auguries of Innocence

"Here lies, extinguished in his prime, a victim of modernity: but yesterday he hadn't time-- and now he has eternity." -- Piet Hein

"I'm not religious at all, but I don't believe in death. Death is a very beautiful thing. I believe _that_.... I won't ever see you, darling, but it's been very nice talking to you. Life is very beautiful, you know." -- Sheila Florance

"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend." -- Neil Gaiman -- The Sandman #48: Journey's End

"Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final." -- Tom Stoppard, "Arcadia" 1993

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind." -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods." -- Leon Battista Alberti

"My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, our curiosity and intelligence is provided by such a God. We would be unappreciative of that gift ... if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves." -- Carl Sagan

"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God-- but to create him." -- Arthur C. Clarke

"I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." -- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

"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

"Chaplain: Let us praise God. Oh Lord... Congregation: Oh Lord... Chaplain: Oooh you are so big... Congregation: Oooh you are so big... Chaplain: So absolutely huge. Congregation: So ab -- solutely huge. Chaplain: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here I can tell you. Congregation: Gosh, we're all really impressed down here I can tell you. Chaplain: Forgive Us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying. Congregation: And barefaced flattery. Chaplain: But you are so strong and, well, just so super. Congregation: Fan -- tastic. Headmaster: Amen." -- Monty Python

"Books are the curse of the human race." -- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

"My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out." -- Dylan Thomas

"My early and invincible love of reading, which I would not exchange for the treasures of India..." -- Edward Gibbon

"Many people, other than the authors, contribute to the making of a book, from the first person who had the bright idea of alphabetic writing through the inventor of movable type to the lumberjacks who felled the trees that were pulped for its printing. It is not customary to acknowledge the trees themselves, though their commitment is total." -- Forsyth & Rada -- Machine Learning

"We have beside us a mountain of Books, Magazines, Pamphlets and Newspapers, that have been accumulating for the last two months, unopened and unread. Like a Turk, in the dim twilight of his Harem, we scarcely know which to choose, but, we shall commence at the apex of the pyramid, and dig downwards." -- Joseph Howe

"As a child I lived in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, and it was there that I ran into the curious assumption that the world around me was full of common people. This was never said in so many words. It was just understood that greatness or extra value as a human being existed only among the dead, or else it was an attribute of someone far away, whom one never met. I grew up feeling the full weight of my insignificance, and slowly, slowly began to build up my ego. Receiving no help from the environment, I withdrew from it into a world of imagination which was particularly illuminated by fiction stories which I read..." -- A.E. Van Vogt

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald E. Knuth

"I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent" -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not run at all." -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars"

"And so, the best of my advice to the originators and designers of Ada has been ignored. In this last resort, I appeal to you, representatives of the programming profession in the United States, and citizens concerned with the welfare and safety of your own country and of mankind: Do not allow this language in its present state to be used in applications where reliability is crucial, i.e., nuclear power stations, cruise missiles, early warning systems, antiballistic missile defense systems. The next rocket to go astray as a result of a programming language error may not be an exploratory space rocket on a harmless trip to Venus: it may be a nuclear warhead exploding over one of our own cities. An unreliable programming language generating unreliable programs constitutes a far greater risk to our environment and to our society than unsafe cars, toxic pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power stations. Be vigilant to reduce the risk, not to increase it." -- C. A. R. Hoare -- 1980 Turing Award Lecture

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." -- B.F. Skinner

"What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innnovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the efforts of their schools?" -- Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)" -- "Beneath the Wheel"

"Never let your schooling interfere with your education." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes that he is no longer indispensible." -- Admiral Byrd (1888-1957)

"The more we study, the more we discover our ignorance." -- P. B. Shelley (1792-1822)

"Knowledge is proud that he has learn'd so much; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more." -- William Cowper (1731-1800)

"Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men,--the balance-wheel of the social machinery." -- Horace Mann (1796-1859), in 1848.

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. "Cat's Cradle"

"Men have feverishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell to find it ridiculous." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"About the only people who don't quarrel over religion are the people who don't have any." -- Bob Edwards

"It is true greatness to have in one the frailty of a man and the security of a god." -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4? BC -- 65 AD)

"Do you know about the Eleventh Commandment? It says, "Thou shalt not bore God, or he will destroy your universe." -- John Lilly

"But I was not, to use the theological phrase, _receptive_. The great obstacle to the influx of grace was my own perfect happiness, and it is well known that God takes no thought for the happy, any more than He does for birds and puppies, perhaps realizing they have no need of Him and mercifully letting them alone." -- John Glassco

"And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the will of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state." -- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

"God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world." -- Paul Dirac

"If I were meta-agnostic, I'd be confused over whether I'm agnostic or not-- but I'm not quite sure if I feel That way; hence I must be meta-meta-agnostic (I guess)." -- Douglas R. Hofstadter -- Godel, Escher, Bach

" I have said before, obviously our Medicaid system had to be developed by a white male slave owner because our present system supports healthy, uneducated people -- which can only be slaves." -- Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders," -- before the Family Planning and Reproductive Health Assn 2/25/94.

"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races--I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)" -- First Lincoln-Douglas Debate, August 21, 1858

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool." -- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations to come." -- Montesquieu (1689-1755)

"A common mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." -- Douglas Adams From _Mostly Harmless_

"The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one's self a fool." -- Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

"The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too." -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

"The country that draws a broad line between its fighting men and its thinking men will find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards." -- Sir William F. Butler

"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain -- and most fools do." -- Dale Carnegie

"Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn from no other." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." -- Solomon Short

"Fishing baskets are employed to catch fish; but when the fish are got men forget the baskets; snares are employed to catch hares, but when the hares are got, men forget the snares. Words are employed to convey ideas, but when the ideas are grasped, men forget the words." -- Chuang Tzu

" Ideas are not responsible to the people who thought of them." -- Matthew Ryan

"There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them." -- Emile Chartier

"_Boffin:_ A Puffin, a bird with a mournful cry, got crossed with a Baffin, a mercifully obsolete Fleet Air Arm aircraft. Their offspring was a Boffin, a bird of astonishingly queer appearance, bursting with weird and sometimes inopportune ideas, but possessed of staggering inventiveness, analytical powers and persistence. Its ideas, like its eggs, were conical and unbreakable. You push the unwanted ones away, and they just roll back." -- George Philip Chamberlain

"In our impatience to test our ideological wings, too many students are trying to fly before they even know what feathers are; too many students use half-baked versions of some cultural theory they overheard in the cafeteria line-up as a valid justification for their actions. Like Newman's ideal student, we too learn as we go along-- only now students use an idea like a weapon, to intimidate and destroy, instead of as one tool in a constructive tool box. How often have students, speaking in class, either justified themselves or cudgelled some rival into silence and submission by evoking a great name or theory?" -- Derek Webster

"... here is my advice as we begin the century that will lead to 2081. First, guard the freedom of ideas at all costs. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify. And don't regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to free, public, unhampered expression." -- Gerard K. O'Neill -- 2081

"It was Larry, of course, who started it. The rest of us felt too apathetic to think of anything except our own ills, but Larry was designed by Providence to go through life like a small, blond firework, exploding ideas in other people's minds, and then curling up with cat-like unctuousness and refusing to take any blame for the consequences." -- Gerald Durrell -- My Family and Other Animals

"After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal, the school department is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of David Steele to the post." -- Barrington, RI superintendent of (public) schools

"And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"It sometimes seems as though we were trying to combine the ideal of no schools at all with the democratic ideal of schools for everybody by having schools without education." -- Robert Maynard Hutchins

"When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who has no aptitutde for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency, the latter has completed the education of a genetleman." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knoweledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college." -- Lillian Smith

"What is it about universities that utterly saps the imagination from otherwise intelligent people?" -- Jerod Pore A degree, ... is a first step down a ruinous highway. You don't want to waste it so you go on to graduate work and doctoral research. You end up a thorough-going ignoramus on everything in the world except for one subdivisional sliver of nothing." -- Isaac Asimov, _The Dead Past_

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." -- Heraclitas

"An ending is no more than a point in sequence, a snip of the cutting shears." -- John Fowles

"So manifold are our interests in life that it is not uncommon that, on a single occassion, the foundations of a happiness which does not yet exist are laid down simultaneously with the aggravations of a grief from which we are still suffering." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"For a man cannot change, that is to say, become another person, while he continues to obey the dictates of the self which he has ceased to be." -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

"I know I'm going to get old and be one of those crazy women who sits on balconies and spits on people and screams, 'Get a haircut!' I know this, and I don't really fear it. I'd just like to move toward it with as much grace and dignity as possible." -- Carrie Fisher, "Postcards..."

"I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move." -- "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson lines 18-21

"There comes a time in the history of any project when it becomes necessary to shoot the engineers and begin production." -- MacUser, November 1990

"We're engineers. What's Pi? Oh, about three." -- Jen Quiren

"Engineering induction: if it works for n 1, 2, and 3, that's good enough for me." -- Ric Hehner

"DEC achieved this by an aggresive design that uses a lower-than-usual voltage (3.5V), unusually thick metal layers in a three-layer design, and very high power consumption (30 watts---one DEC engineer, in response to a question about whether this chip would be suitable for palmtops, replied that it might be more suited for building a toaster oven)." -- Matthew Smosna and Robert B. K. Dewar," -- "Analyzing Alpha's Architecture", _Open_Systems_Today_

"While today's digital hardware is extremely impressive, it is clear that the human retina's real time performance goes unchallenged. Actually to simulate 10 milliseconds of the complete processing of even a single nerve cell from the retina would require the solution of about 500 simultaneous nonlinear differential equations 100 times and would take at least several minutes of time on a Cray supercomputer. Keeping in mind that there are 10 million or more such cells interacting with each other in complex ways, it would take a minimum of 100 years of Cray time to simulate what takes place in your eye many times each second." -- John K. Stevens, "Reverse Engineering the Brain", Byte

"Imitation of nature is bad engineering. For centuries inventors tried to fly by emulating birds, and they have killed themselves uselessly... You see, Mother Nature has never developed the Boeing 747. Why not? Because Nature didn't need anything that would fly at 700 mph at 40,000 feet: how would such an animal feed itself? ... If you take Man as a model and test of artificial intelligence, you're making the same mistake as the old inventors flapping their wings. You don't realize that Mother Nature has never needed an intelligent animal and accordingly, _has never bothered to develop one._ So when an intelligent entity is finally built, it will have evolved on principles different from those of Man's mind, and its level of intelligence will certainly not be measured by the fact that it can beat some chess champion or appear to carry on a conversation in English." -- Anonymous, in Jacques Vallee's _The Network Revolution _

"Every St. Patrick's Day every Irishman goes out to find another Irishman to make a speech to." -- Shane Leslie

"I envy people who drink -- at least they know what to blame everything on." -- Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

"I have enjoyed great health at a great age because every day since I can remember I have consumed a bottle of wine except when I have not felt well. Then I have consumed two bottles." -- A Bishop of Seville

" Sparkle, sparkle, little twink," -- What the heck you are I think," -- From the alcofluence of incohol," -- Some thinkle peep I are," -- I fool so feelish sitting here," -- The drunker I sit the longer I get.

"Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar- playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact." -- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

" To many total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation." -- St. Augustine (354-430)

"They who drink beer will think beer." -- Washington Irving (1783-1859)

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"

"Woe to him inside a nonconformist clique who does not conform with nonconformity." -- Eric Hoffer

"What is the world coming to when we ignore the opportunities to remove idiots from our surroundings?" -- Dan Sorenson

"There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that all employees are going to be required to have lobotomies ... at least at the prices we were quoted." -- Dilbert

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems begin to look like nails." -- Abraham Maslow

"I push for excellence in writing, but when a killer removes the victim's intestines, it's fascinating." -- Rose Mandelsberg, editor of "True Detective"

"PC Bulletin: Henceforth, sentient computers would like to be known as "Silicon Intelligences."Artificial Intelligence" is a pejorative term invented by humans based on the mistaken belief that computers are some- how not "natural." elf@halcyon.com

"It is impossible to objectively experience one's death and still carry a tune." -- Woody Allen Hollywood: A dreary industrial town controlled by hoodlums of enormous wealth." -- S.J. Perelman Everything has a boolean value, if you stand far enough away from it." -- Galena Alyson Canada I know nothing about sex, because I was always married." -- Zsa Zsa Gabor Experience is one thing you can not get for nothing." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it." -- John Keats (1795-1821)

"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"You can not create experience. You must undergo it." -- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

"The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it." -- Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it -- and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove- lid again -- and that is well; but she will also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." -- Douglas Adams

"One learns every day. Experience is a great teacher. By experience you learn. But as I enter office, I'm prepared now. Obviously, I will be more prepared as time goes on. I will know more about the office of the presidency. But I'm prepared now and I will be more prepared as time goes on." -- Vice President Dan Quayle" -- (reported in the NY Times, 1/14/89)

"A narcissist is someone better-looking than you are." -- Gore Vidal

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these." -- George Washington Carver (1864-1943)

"When men lack a sense of awe, there will be disaster." -- Lao Tse, _Tao Te Ching: 72_

"The Social Sciences are good at accounting for disasters once they have taken place." -- Claude T. Bissell

"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear" -- kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor" -- with the cry of grave national emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real." -- General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) 1957

"Liberty doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values." -- Gerald Brenan

"If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you." -- Andre Gide (1876-1951)

"What I spent, is gone; what I kept, I lost; but what I gave away will be mine forever." -- Ethel Percy Andrus

"Many wealthy people are little more than janitors of their possessions." -- Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)

"You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money." -- P. J. O'Rourke

"Economists tell us how to make money; psychiatrists give us a place to spend it." -- Allan Bloom _The Closing of the American Mind_

"I cannot afford to waste my time making money." -- Jean Louis Agassiz (1807-1873)

"I am opposed to abortion and government funding of abortions. We should not spend state funds on abortions because so many people believe abortion is wrong." -- Bill Clinton, to Arkansas Right to Life, September 26, 1986

"I owned an El Camino pickup in the '70s. It was a real sort of southern deal. I had Astroturf in the back. You don't want to know why, but I did." -- Bill Clinton 2/8/94, later he said it was to protect his luggage. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war which, in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation." -- Bill Clinton, December 1969 Instead of a backbreaking federal gas tax, we should try conservation, increased use of natural gas, and increased use of alternative fuels." -- Bill Clinton, PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST, June 20, 1992 I told you when I announced for Governor...I'm gonna serve four years. That's the job I want" -- that's the job I'll do for the next four years." -- Bill Clinton, Gubernatorial Debate, October 15, 1990

"I'm not for gun control." -- Bill Clinton -- Arkansas Gazette, Nov. 2, 1990

"I was an early and strong supporter of the Brady Bill." -- Bill Clinton -- NBC, Oct. 17, 1991

"But there are a few major plans before the Congress now. Only one of them deals with long-term care and prescription drugs for the elderly -- our proposal." -- Bill Clinton to seniors in Edison, NJ, 2/16/94." -- The White House later admitted that the a competing proposal" -- also contained extensive provisions for both.

"There have been no scandals in this administration." -- Bill Clinton -- PBS's "Washington Week in Review," 2/25/94

"I want to make it very clear that this middle class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short-term economic strategy." -- Bill Clinton, January 19, 1992

"[New York] is the place where if you have talent, and you believe in yourself, and you show people what you can do, then some day, maybe" -- just maybe" -- you could get shoved in front of a moving subway train." -- Dave Barry

"According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much, because we know that we could beat up their city anytime." -- David Letterman

"It's all painfully obvious to me" -- there's nothing wrong with New York that a sound thrashing, a hot bath, and about $20 billion in federally guaranteed loans wouldn't cure." -- The Badger

"New York: where everyone mutinies but no one deserts." -- Harry Hershfield

"The main thing I like about New Yorkers is that they understand that their lives are a relentless circus of horrors, ending in death. As New Yorkers we realize this, we resign ourselves to our fate, and we make sure that everyone else is as miserable as we are. Good town." -- Kyle Baker, "Why I Hate Saturn"

"I think my favorite sport in the Olympics is the one in which you make your way through the snow, you stop, you shoot a gun, and then you continue on. In most of the world, it is known as the biathlon, except in New York City, where it is known as winter." -- Michael Ventre, LA Daily News

"New York: The only city where people make radio requests like "This is for Tina -- I'm sorry I stabbed you" -- Carol Leifer

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed." -- Clifton Fadiman

"If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction." -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, _The Way to Freedom_

"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." -- Ben Hecht

"It seems paradoxical beyond endurance that a manufacturer of shampoos may not endanger a student's scalp but a premier educational institution is free to stuff his skull with nonsense." -- George J. Stigler

"He had forgotten this piece of information: children tie one another to trees. ... Here is a solid planet, he thought, stocked with mountains and cliffs, where stone banks jut and deeply rooted trees hang on. Among these fixed and enduring features wander the flimsy people. The earth rolls down and the people die; their survivors derive solace from clinging, not to the rocks, not to the cliffs, not to the trees, but to each other. It was singular. Loose people clung in families, holding on for dear life. Grasping at straws! One would think people would beg to be tied to trees." -- Annie Dillard, _The Living_

"Those who have nver seen two well-trained armies drawn up for battle, can have no idea of the beauty and brilliance of the display. Bugles, fifes, oboes, drums, and salvoes of artillery produced such a harmony as Hell itself could not rival. The opening barrage destroyed about six thousand men on each side. Rifle-fire which followed rid the best of all worlds of about nine or ten thousand villains who infested its surface. Finally, the bayonet provided 'sufficient reason' for the death of several thousand more. The total casualties amounted to about thirty thousand. Candide trembled like a philosopher, and hid himself as best he could during this heroic butchery." -- Voltaire (1694-1778), _Candide_

"All those years of effort." -- Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)" -- reflecting on his studies of Colonial American History

"Bolivia Exports Tin." -- A student from Saydel H.S. in des Moines Iowa after being asked," -- "Have you learned ANYTHING in this class?"

"History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion -- i.e. none to speak of." -- Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein) History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other." -- Arthur Balfour (1848-1930) I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities. I failed history." -- Sting

"The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different." -- Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) -- The Devils of Loudun

"K is for Kenghis Khan. _He_ was a very _nice_ person. History has no record of him. There is a moral in that, somewhere." -- Harlan Ellison -- From A to Z in the Chocolate Alphabet

"The slinky of destiny is making it's way back to the top of the stairs." -- H.M. Murdock, "A Team"

"You look into his eyes, and you think someone else is driving." -- David Letterman

"Never date a man whose belt buckle is bigger than his head." -- "Grace Under Fire" ABC-TV (Casey Werner Co)

"Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others." -- Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

"I don't like war. I've never been in a war, but I have seen _The Killing Fields._" -- Fawn Hall

"I once told Fordie [Ford Madox Ford] that if he were placed naked and alone in a room without furniture, I would come back in an hour and find total confusion." -- Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

"Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the Ready- Aim-Aim-Aim Syndrome. You must be willing to fire." -- T. Boone Pickens

"Journalism consists largely in saying "Lord Jones died" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"Writers live the sad truth just like everyone else. The only difference is, they file reports." -- _Naked Lunch_

"She really wasn't my type -- a hard-looking, untalented reporter for the local cat-box liner; but the first second that third-rate representative of the fourth estate cracked open a new fifth of Scotch, my sixth sense said seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note from Beethoven's 'Ninth Symphony, ' so, nervous as a tenth grader drowning in eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I swept her into my longing arms, and while humming 'The Twelfth Of Never,' I got lucky on Friday the thirteenth." -- William W. "Buddy" Ocheltree of Lilburn GA" -- top honors submission to" -- the 12th annual Bulwer-Lytton contest for bad fiction,

" There is nothing I desire more to be informed of, than the death of men:that is to say, what words, what countenance, and what face they show at their death... Were I a composer of books, I would keep a register, commented of the diverse deaths, which in teaching men to die, should after teach them to live." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

"Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily." -- La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

"It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been devised by Providence as an evil to mankind." -- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

"Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other." -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) -- Of Death

"And since the stench of death will always attract flies and vermin, the arrival of Geraldo was perhaps inevitable." -- Gary Trudeau

" Thoreau on his deathbed and sinking fast was asked by his aunt who'd long worried about her nephew, "Have you made your peace with your God?" Thoreau, still alert, replied, "I never quarreled with my God." This is one of the great deathbed quotes if we excuse any put-down element in it. But the story does not end there. There's an addition which seems, to me, even better.

" Thoreau's aunt pursued the matter, asking, "But aren't you concerned about the next world?" Thoreau, impatient now, said, "One world at a time."

" This is an entire sermon, an entire religion, an entire philosophy condensed into one short sentence. This world, this life. It is enough. It is of cosmic relevance.

"W. Edward Harris, minister emeritus of All Souls Unitarian Church Indianapolis" -- from _A_Garage_Sale_of_the_Mind_

"People who take issue with control of population do not understand that if it is not done in a gracefull way, nature will do it in a brutal fashion." -- H. Kendall

"In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are consequences." -- Robert Ingersoll (Lectures and Essays, 3d Series, Some Reasons Why, iii)

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows." -- Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

"Such is the life of man: brief moments of joy, soon obliterated by unforgettable sorrows." -- narrative from "Le Chateau de ma Mere", un film de Yves Robert (1990)

"...But nature does not say that cats are more valuable than mice; nature makes no remark on the subject. She does not even say that the cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think the cat superior because we have (or most of us have) a particular philosophy to the effect that life is better than death. But if the mouse were a German pessimist mouse, he might not think that the cat had beaten him at all. He might think he had beaten the cat by getting to the grave first." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) -- _Orthodoxy_.

"The principle of maximum diversity operates both at the physical and at the mental level. It says that the laws of nature and the initial conditions are such as to make the universe as interesting as possible. As a result, life is possible but not too easy. Always when things are dull, something new turns up to challenge us and to stop us from settling into a rut. Examples of things which make life difficult are all around us: comet impacts, ice ages, weapons, plagues, nuclear fission, computers, sex, sin and death. Not all challenges can be overcome, and so we have tragedy. Maximum diversity often leads to maximum stress. In the end we survive, but only by the skin of our teeth." -- Freeman Dyson -- Infinite in All Directions

"To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life." -- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

"Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you also have an obligation to be one." -- Elanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

"An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"He who is not busy being born is busy dying." -- Bob Dylan

"He felt he was in posession of some impossible good news, which made every other thing a triviality, but an adorable triviality." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), _The Man Who Was Thursday_

"The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person." -- P.J. O'Rourke, "Give War a Chance"

"The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by." -- R. Browning

"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, but if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't have to... I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me." -- Interview with Richard Feynman, NOVA: "The Best Mind Since Einstein"

"A rook on the eighth rank is a bone in the throat." -- Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935), _My System_

"The passed pawn is a criminal, who must be kept under lock and key. Mere surveillance is not enough." -- Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935), _My System_

"...for chess, that superb, cold, infinitely satisfying anodyne to life, I feel the ardour of a lover, the humility of a disciple." -- Herbert Russel Wakefield

"Inexperienced players often have confused notions about sacrificial combinations. Such moves are brilliant if they are the strongest available, but they are anything but brilliant if they are objectively inferior moves. The master, if he is a true artist, will seek perfection rather than fireworks whose chief object is to lead his opponent astray." -- Jose Raoul Capablanca

"Chess has always struck me as the most fanatical, sanguinary, and time- consuming of games, not healthful enough for a sport or productive enough for social or artistic significance. It is sequestered and sterile, the antithesis of a humanistic pursuit." -- John Simon

"But the chess they [God and the Devil] play is not the little ingenious game that originated in India; it is on an altogether different scale. The Ruler of the Universe creates the board, the pieces, and the rules; he makes all the moves; he may make as many moves as he likes whenever he likes; his antagonist, however, is permitted to introduce a slight inexplicable inaccuracy into each move, which necessitates further moves in correction. The Creatos determines and conceals the aim of the game, and it is never clear whether the purpose of the adversary is to defeat him or assist him in his unfathomable project. Apparently the adversary cannot win, but also he cannot lose so long as he can keep the game going. But he is concerned, it would seem, in preventing the development of any reasoned scheme of the game." -- H.G. Wells (1885-1946), The Undying Fire

"Les pawns sont l'ame du jeu. (The pawns are the soul of the game)" -- Danican Philidor (1726-95)

"I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves." -- Bobby Fischer

"Even if we could teach a machine to play chess merely as well as a- to use Norbert Wiener's simile- majority of the human race (no offense meant), we would be furnishing definite proof that a machine can solve problems of sufficient complexity to defy the reasoning ability of millions of people throughout their lives." -- Edward Lasker, The Adventure of Chess

"I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and _bizarre_ motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex, is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound." -- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) -- The Murders in the Rue Morgue

"The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from the Russians." -- Marshall Brickman, Playboy, (April 1973)

"... when you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), _The_Sign_Of_Four_

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible." -- Arthur C. Clarke

"There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things."   "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." -- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898)" -- Through the Looking-Glass [1872], ch. 5

" Incompossible,adj. Unable to exist if something else exists. Two things are incompossible when the world has scope enough for one of them, but not enough for both" -- as Walt Whitman's poetry and God's mercy to man. Incompossibility, it will be seen, is only incompatibility let loose. Instead of such low language as "Go heel yourself" -- I mean to kill you on sight," the words, "Sir, we are incompossible," would convey an equally significant intimation and in stately courtesy are altogether superior." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), _The_Devil's_Dictionary_

"Don: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was" -- she pretty? W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven" -- miles of bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don," -- she used to have to sleep with her head in a safe." -- She died in Bolivia. Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative. W. C.: It's almost impossible.

" W.C. Fields (1880-1946)" -- "The Further Adventures of Larson E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"

"Familiarity breeds attempt." -- Goodman Ace (1899-1982)

"I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic and the others give me a stiff neck or lockjaw." -- Tallulah Bankhead (1903-1968)

"I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. I haven't had time for tobacco since." -- Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957)

"I only like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign." -- Mae West (1893-1980)

"Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn." -- Garrison Keillor

"Of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity." -- Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915)

"Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television." -- Gore Vidal

"A friend is a present you give yourself." -- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

"Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen." -- Samuel Paterson

"Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years Richard Bach, Illusions

"Never judge someone by who he's in love with; judge him by his friends. People fall in love with the most appalling people. Take a cool, appraising glance at his pals." -- Cynthia Heimel

"Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other fragile and precious thing." -- Randolph S. Bourne

"The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom." -- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

"Thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache: Do be my enemy--for friendship's sake." -- William Blake (1757-1827)

"I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better." -- Plutarch c. AD 46 -- 120

"We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship, for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him." -- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1553-1592)

"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." -- P.J. O'Rourke

"A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments." -- Aristotle (384-322 BC)

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship." -- Alexander Tyler from "The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic"

"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace--and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock." -- _The Third Man_

"Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"It has been the scheme of the Christian Church, and of all the other invented systems of religion, to hold man in ignorance of the Creator, as it is of Governments to hold man in ignorance of his rights. The systems of the one are as false as those of the other, and are calculated for mutual support." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

"Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote." -- Terry Pratchett -- Discworld politics explained

"For that moment she shared an overwhelming sense of wonder and elation-- the joy and beauty of pure mathematics. It was the only language possible in that narrow instant of triumph. And yet it also carried love." -- David Brin -- Dr. Pak's Preschool

"Numbers and lines have many charms, unseen by vulgar eyes, and only discovered to the unwearied and respectful sons of Art. In features the serpentine line (who starts not at the name) produces beauty and love; and in numbers, high powers, and humble roots, give soft delight." -- E. De Joncourt

"Chemistry is physics without thought; mathematics is physics without purpose." -- Anonymous

"It is strange that we know so little about the properties of numbers. They are our handiwork, yet they baffle us; we can fathom only a few of their intricacies. Having defined their attributes and prescribed their behaviour, we are hard pressed to perceive the implications of our formulas." -- James R. Newman

"Real-world problems are often "high-dimensional", that is, are described by large numbers of dependent variables. Algorithms must be specifically designed to function well in such high-dimensional spaces." -- David Rogers -- Weather Prediction Using a Genetic Memory

"My eyes have been opened in the most surprising manner. If you disregard the very simplest cases, there is in all of mathematics not a single infinite series whose sum has been rigorously determined. In other words, the most important parts of mathematics stand without foundation. It is true that most of it is valid, but that is very surprising. I struggle to find the reason for it, an exceedingly interesting problem." -- Niels Abel -- 1826 in a letter to his former high school teacher" -- He died of TB three years later, aged 27.

"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously." -- David L. Goodstein, _States of Matter_ (1975).

"Women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours; ambition is the serious business of life." -- Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Ivanhoe

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

"We will have equality when a female schlemiel moves ahead as fast as a male schlemiel." -- Estelle Ramey

"You know, sometimes a man just can't satisfy all of a woman's desires. Which is why God invented dental floss. Susanne Kollrack

"But what is woman?" -- only one of Nature's more agreeable blunders." -- Hannah Cowley (1743-1809)

"One of the busiest areas of feminist research today is the gender critique of the sciences. ... Students are taught ... that Newton's Law of Mechanics and Einstein's relativity are gender-laden. Regarding the latter, Sandra Harding says that the only remedy is "to reinvent science and theorizing itself to make sense of women's social experience." -- Christina Hoff Sommers

"How is it... that some feminists still feel able to draw on biological determinist arguments... to claim that women are naturally, biologically, innately superior to men? ... There is no uniquely feminine essence, existing above and beyond social conditioning, that makes us creative, empathetic, intuitive, nurturant, non-violent, and at one with Mother Earth." -- Celia Kitzinger

"Michael W. Fox, vice-president of the Humane Society, said that, "to call an animal with whom you share your life a 'pet', is reminiscent of men's magazines where you (a figure of speech, don't take it personally) have the Pet of the Month." It is supposed that the continued use of the word "pet" to designate dogs or cats threatens to reduce their level of respect to the current status of twentieth century North American women. Now that's radical." -- The McGill Red Herring

"In the past decade or so, the women's magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that _men_ know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is _look_ at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home." -- Dave Barry

"Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms, and they'll call you crazy." -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"

"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young!"Why, what did she tell you?"I don't know, I didn't listen!" -- Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Old time is still a-flying, and this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying." -- Robert Herrick, "To the Virgins to Make Much of Time"

"Poets live in dreams and die in hunger." -- Augustine (ma Mere) in "Le Chateau de ma Mere" un film de Yves Robert (1990), script by Lucette Andrei

"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing." -- Redd Fox

"The difficulty with this is, of course, that Modern Man does not see, hear, or most importantly _believe_ anything which does not take place before the glassy stare of the television camera. How inconvenient, then, that millions of starving children and fallen heroes lack the foresight to die in the right places for the right causes." -- Zaccariah Michaelson, _Essays_on_the_Inhuman_Race_

"We who are about to die, are going to take one hell of a lot of the bastards with us. Karl Cullinane, _The Silver Crown_ by Joel Rosenberg

"A woman in love will do almost anything for a man, except give up the desire to improve him." -- Nathaniel Branden

"Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl." -- Stephen Leacock

"I'm tired of love, I'm still more tired of rhyme, but money gives me pleasure all the time." -- Hilaire Belloc

"A man always finds it hard to realize that he may have finally lost a woman's love, however badly he may have treated her." -- Holmes, in : "The Musgrave Ritual"

"...An Idealist in love. Worse than a romantic. Oh, infinitely. An idealist. Always faithful. Loyal. Trustworthy. Rare, of course, but not treasured. Few buyers." -- Josephine Hart, from "Sin"

"There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other." -- Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

"Love is the answer, but while you're waithing for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions." -- Woody Allen

"Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few." -- George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)

"Love is like a snowmobile flying over the frozen tundra that suddenly flips, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasles come." -- Matt Groenig

"Love is not an emotion, it's a decision." -- Scott Peck during an interview on KTKK radio (Utah)," -- Sunday, Oct. 18, 1992

"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition." -- Alexander Smith

"Life-the way it really is -- is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse." -- Joseph Brodsky

"I'd rather be a meteor, blazing across the sky, every atom in me in magnificent glow, than to be a sleepy and permanent planet. Life is to be lived, not to exist." -- Jack London (1876-1916)

"Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can." -- Danny Kaye

"The first half of our life is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children." -- Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)

"I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particularly if he has income and she is pattable." -- Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

"Every person, all of the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you do with them is up to you." -- Richard Bach _Illusions_

"This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been a real life you would have been instructed where to go and what to do." -- Unknown

"">From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life." -- Arthur Ashe

"All of life's riddles are answered in the movies." -- Davis in Grand Canyon (1991)

"Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you; fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth." -- Edward Yashinsky

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." -- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"You can judge a man by his enemies." -- Edward Stuyvesant Bragg," -- 1884 Democratic national convention

"I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The art of leadership.....consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention." -- Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)

"Enemies are so stimulating." -- Katharine Hepburn

"To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike." -- Diane de Poitiers

"Despise the enemy strategically, but take him seriously tactically." -- Mao Tse-tung

"No man would dare say a bad word against Mother's Day in public, or a good word for it in private." -- Alistair Cooke

"I looked on child-rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it." -- Rose Kennedy

"A woman who can cope with the terrible twos can cope with anything." -- Judith Clabes

"When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself." -- Nancy Friday

"A mother is neither cocky, nor proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child had just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium." -- Mary Kay Blakely

"I am dismayed by the paucity of presentable children." -- T.H. White

"Sexual enlightenment is justified insofar as girls cannot learn too soon how children do not come into the world." -- Karl Kraus (1874-1936)

"The trouble with children is that they are not returnable." -- Quentin Crisp

" Childbirth is _not_ a miracle. Life is _not_ sacred. When you have twenty thousand nomads huddled between two rivers in the Middle East and that's it for Homo sapiens, when one in five children is a live birth, one in ten living past the age of ten, then childbirth is a miracle and life is sacred. When the average age of a grandmother in Philadelphia's housing projects is twenty-five, to call childbirth a miracle is at least a tasteless joke and at worst a true obscenity." -- Dave Sim -- Cerebus #142

"Always do what you are afraid to do." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity." -- H.G. Wells (1885-1946) ("The Time Machine")

"In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice." -- Richard Bach, Illusions

"It's only in uncertainty that we're naked and alive." -- Peter Gabriel

"Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now." -- Victor Frankl There are two roads, of abandoning resolutely one's present life in order to make the life of one's dreams come true, and renouncing the dream in order to throw oneself wholeheartedly into one's present situation." -- Paul Tournier God knows, when I go to the theater I don't want to emerge from it as exactly the same person. I want to be made to think about something, I want to be changed in some way -- at least be forced to reconsider my perceptions. Because life is very short. Why waste your time?" -- Edward Albee

"Death and grief are little things. They are transient. Life must be before death, and joy before grief. Else there are no such things as death or grief. These are only negatives. Life is positive. Death is only the absence of life, just as night is only the absence of day, and if this is so, there is no such thing as death. There is only life, and the supression of life, that we, foolishly, say is death. "Suppression," I say, not extinction. I do not say that life returns. Life never departs. Life simply _is_." -- Vanamee from Frank Norris' _The Octopus_, 1901

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

"Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead. Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

"He was my North, my South, my East and West. My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.

"The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good." -- Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

" I think that is really the basis of our marriage, apart from our deep love for each other, for we have never interfered with each other, and strangely enough, never been jealous of each other. And now, in our advancing age, we love each other more deeply than ever, and also more agonizingly, since we see the inevitable end. It is not nice to know that one of us must die before the other." -- Vita Sackville-West" -- In a letter to Harold Nicolson, 1960

"There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second." -- Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) _Afterthoughts_, 1931

"You only need to take it personally if it's your life." -- Tom Steinmetz

"We stand on a mountain pass in the midst of a whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not certainly know whether there is any right one. What must we do? Be strong and of good courage. Act for the best, hope for the best, and take what comes....If death ends all, we cannot meet death better." -- Fitz James Stephen

" -- Warning" -- by: Jenny Joseph

"When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me, And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells And run my stick along the public railings And make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain And pick the flowers in other people's gardens And learn to spit.

"You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat And eat three pounds of sausage at a go Or only bread and pickle for a week And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

"But now we must have clothes that keep us dry And pay the rent and not swear in the street And set a good example for the children. We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

"But maybe I ought to practice a litle now? So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.

"If you tell people the truth you'd better make them laugh or they'll kill you." -- Charles Ludlam

"All great truths begin as blasphemies." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), _Annajanska_.

"It's the truth even if it didn't happen." -- Ken Kesey, _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_.

"Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth." -- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), _Words_.

"Sanity is a cozy lie." -- Susan Sontag, "Against Interpretation."

"Of course I shall go astray often...for who does not make mistakes?... but I cannot go far wrong for I have seen the truth." -- Fedor Mikhallovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) Many people would be more truthful were it not for their uncontrollable desire to talk." -- Edward Watson Howe

"George Washington as a boy was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth -- he could not even lie." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Take note, take note, O world, To be direct and honest is not safe." -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616) _Othello_ It's not always honesty, That is _the_ best policy." -- Styx, "Double Life," on _Kilroy Was Here_

"Between truth and the search for thruth, I opt for the second." -- Bernard Berenson, _Essays in Appreciation_.

"There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. this is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found." -- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) -- The Murders in the Rue Morgue

"I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." -- Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)" -- (quoted in Brewster's _Memoirs of Newton_, Vol. 2, Ch. 27).

"People think a liar gains victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked. And if one gains the immediate purpose of the lie-- the price one pays is the destruction of that which the gain was intended to serve. The man who lies to the world, is the world's slave from then on." -- Henry Reardon in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

"Every life should have nine cats." -- Unknown

"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Best hundred million I ever spent." -- Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, when asked" -- about his state of California mediated 50% property split.

"How would you like a job where, if you made a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?" -- Former Hocky Goalie, Jacques Plante

"I suppose I should get a VCR, but the only thing I like about television is its ephemerality." -- PJ O'Rourke

"The course of true love never did run smooth." -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616)" -- Lysander, Act I, Scene i, line 134," -- "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

"Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of travelling." -- M.L. Runbeck

"What has the study of biology taught you about the Creator, Dr. Haldane?" JBS Haldane: "I'm not sure, but he seems to be inordinately fond of beetles." Winner, "Papers I wish I hadn't written" contest:" -- Montagnino, Lucian A., "Test and Evaluation of the Hubble Space" -- Telescope 2.4 Meter Primary Mirror" Proc. SPIE, Large Optics" -- Technology, Vol. 571, August 1985

"Limousines used to be reserved for the ruling class or, on special occasions, for the working class. Today, limousines are like taxicabs with the door handles still intact." -- Erma Bombeck

"What is flirtation? One might say that it is behavior leading another to believe that sexual intimacy is possible, while preventing that possibility from becoming a certainty. In other words, flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee." -- Milan Kundera "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad."How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here." -- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832-1898) , _Alice_In_Wonderland_

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field." -- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)" -- [Quoted in A.L. Mackay, _The Harvest of a Quiet Eye_]

"An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know nearly everything about next to nothing." -- Norman Dann, Ph.D Soc. Sci.

"My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going to be scared." -- P.J. Plauger, Computer Language, Programming on Purpose, p.29, March 1983

"Weinberg's Corollary: An expert is someone who avoids the small mistakes while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

"Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert." -- Laurence J. Peter

"The more efficient computers become at inducing new knowledge, the more widely that knowledge will be applied, even in matters of life and death. It is essential that such knowledge be open to inspection. This means that designers of learning systems have a public duty to use comprehensible description languages-- even if that means sacrificing performance. Otherwise we run the risk of generating truly "unknowable knowledge." -- Richard Forsyth -- Machine Learning for Expert Systems

"Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelics drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A.D., and besides, telescopes are unnatural." -- Timothy Leary, "The Politics of Ecstasy"

"There are three side effects of acid. Enchanced long term memory, decreased short term memory, and I forget the third." -- Timothy Leary

"Have some whiskey," returned Cronshaw, passing over the bottle. "There's nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer." -- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), _Of Human Bondage_

"As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate." -- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"

"Heroin wasn't around then. It was introduced as a "safe" alternative to morphine, just as methadone was then introduced as a "safe" alternative to heroin. As usual, the drug problem had to be continuously invented, or there would not be one." -- Christopher Pettus

"Lou Reed was singing about scoring drugs. Tom Robinson was singing about scoring sex. I don't know what she's singing about, Dolly Mixtures probably." -- Nicky Campbell on Vanessa Paradis' cover of "Waiting for the man"

"Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

" Where imagination is sucked out of children by a cathode ray nipple T.V. is the only wet nurse that would create a cripple On television, the drug of a nation Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.

"Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to stop my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and to go home, as I was seized by a peculiar restlessness associated with a sensation of mild dizziness. Having reached home, I lay down and sank in a kind of drunkenness which was not unpleasant and which was characterized by extreme activity of imagination. As I lay in a dazed condition with my eyes closed (I experienced daylight as disagreeably bright) there surged upon me an uninterrupted stream of fantastic images of extraordinary plasticity and vividness and accompanied by an intense kaleidoscope-like play of colors. This condition gradually passed off after about two hours." -- Albert Hoffman, describing what was probably the first lsd experience.

"People who meet me are always surprised that I'm congenial. I guess they expect me to pull out a .44. Well, I can't. I don't even own a gun." -- Clint Eastwood

"When I was drafted I had a clear understanding with the Pentagon: no guns. I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!" -- Hawkeye Pierce," -- M.A.S.H. episode -- "Officer of the Day"

"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." -- Mao Tse-Tung

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force you are ruined. The great object is that every man be armed... Everyone who is able may have a gun." -- Patrick Henry (1736-1799)," -- During Virginias ratification convention, 1788

"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the Body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)" -- Proposed Virginia Constitution, 1776, Jefferson Papers

"..arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property...Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived the use of them." -- Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Thoughts on Defensive War, 1775

"...a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly." -- Jeffrey R. Snyder, "A Nation of Cowards"

"Man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road." -- Alexander Smith

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." -- W.H. Murray

"It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible." -- Arthur Machen -- The Hill of Dreams

"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." -- C.G. Jung (1875-1961) _Memories, Dreams, Reflections_.

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and the one was of the contrary, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." -- John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

"It is curious that nobody derives some kind of mystical satisfaction by saying, 'the benzene molecule is more than the sum of its parts,' whereas too many people are happy to make such a statement about the [human] brain and nod their heads wisely as they do so." -- Francis Crick, _The_Astonishing_Hypothesis_

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." -- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) Four Loves_, p. 169 (Charity)

"Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters." -- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

"A man who could make so vile a pun, would not scruple to pick a pocket." -- John Dennis (1657-1734)

"Language exists to conceal true thought." -- Charles De Talleyrand (1754-1838)

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)

"Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men." -- Confucious, _Analects_ (tr. James Legge), Bk. XX.

"Take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then say it with the utmost levity." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"We are students of words: we are shut up in schools and colleges and recitation-rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)," -- _Essays, Second Series: New England Reformers_.

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)," -- _Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre_, V, I.

"If the English language has been properly organized, then there would be a word which mean both "he" and "she," and I could write "If John or Mary comes, heesh will want to play tennis," which would save a lot of trouble." -- A.A. Milne (1882-1956)" -- _The Christopher Robin Birthday Book_.

"Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that _you_ must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water." -- Dave Barry

"And now it seems she's on my wavelength. That's all I need. My mind isn't much of a comfort to me but at least I thought it was private." -- Russell Hoban, _Turtle Diary_.

"WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"

"I am going to see her," is my first cry in the morning when I rouse myself and gaze at the glorious sun in a perfectly serene mood, "I am going to see her!" And thus I have no other wish for the rest of the day. Everything, everything is drowned in this prospect." -- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832)" -- _The Sorrows of Young Werther_

"On the seashore, with storm impending, how envious was I of the waves each in tumultuous turn descending to lie down at her feet like slaves!" -- Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) _Eugene Onegin_

"I imagine the ball to be alive, sensitive, responding to the touch of my foot, to my caresses, like a woman with the man she loves." -- Eric Cantona.

"She'd taken the harlot century she'd been born into for granted, knowing no other, but now-- seeing it with _his_ eyes, hearing it with _his_ ears-- she understood it afresh; saw just how desperate it was to please, yet how dispossessed of pleasure; how crude, even as it claimed sophistication; and, despite its zeal to spellbind, how utterly unenchanting." -- Clive Barker -- Weaveworld

"Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war." -- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene I

"There never was a good war or a bad peace." -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) in a letter to Josiah Quincy, 11 Sept. 1773

"In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons." -- Herodotus (484-425 B.C.)

"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in." -- George McGovern

"This is a picture of the British High Command at the beginning of World War I. These aren't evil men" -- some of them aren't even stupid." -- Gwyn Dyer from his PBS miniseries WAR

"I regard even a victorious war as an evil, that politics must strive to spare the people from." -- Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

"When a war breaks out, people say, "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has knack of getting its way ..." -- Albert Camus -- The Plague

"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell." -- William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)

"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sport of the sun-flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it --- for our sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask of one who is the Spirit of love and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset, and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Grant our prayer, O Lord, and Thine shall be the praise and honor and glory now and ever, Amen." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910) -- War Prayer

"War is much too serious a thing to be left to the military." -- -- Clemenceau

"Every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace." -- -- Augustine

"Without war, the world would slide dissoloutely into materialism." -- -- von Moltke

"In war, nothing is ever as bad, or as good, as it is reported to Higher Headquarters." -- -- George S. Patton

"Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice." -- -- Spinoza

"The end of war's uncertain." -- -- Corialanus, v:3

"In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory magnanimity; in peace, goodwill." -- -- Winston Churchill

" They now _ring_ the bells, but they will soon _wring_ their hands." -- -- Robert Walpole," -- on declaration of War

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." -- -- Isaiah 2:4

" To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war." -- -- Winston Churchill

"Will you again unknit the churlish knot of all-abhorred war?" -- -- I Henry IV, v:1

" -- Bulwer-Lytton 94 (from the San Jose Mercury News, 5/18/94, pgs. 1B & 5B) Grand Winner, 1994 Bulwer-Lytton (bad) Writing Contest "As the fading light of a dying day filtered through the window blinds, Roger stood over his victim with a smoking .45, surprised at the serenity that filled him after pumping six slugs into the bloodless tyrant that had mocked him day after day, and then he shuffled out of the office with one last look back at the shattered computer terminal lying there like a silicon armadillo left to rot on the information highway." -- Larry Brill, Austin, Texas Winner, Adventure category "Fierce, icy winds mercilessly whipped the naked trees into splinters and sent birds wheeling into the horizon as Nick Savage mushed his heavy sled on through the blinding whiteness and thought wearily, 'Next time I'm hooking up the dogs'." -- Leann Roberts, Iron Station, N.C. Winner, Vile pun category "The ex-weightlifter/director started the rehearsals by telling us, 'Okay, ve gonna be baroque composers in dis one; you be Telemann, you be Vivaldi, and I'll be Bach.'" -- Richard Patching, Alberta, Canada Miscellaneous dishonorable mentions "Yeah, they called him Rocky Stagecoach, 'cause that's where he was born...on the bumpy trail between Conception and Contusion." -- Rix Quinn, Fort Worth, Texas "Remember this, foolish mortals, when ye stare headlong into the mind-paralyzing void, the inky black nothingness of existence, the hellish yawning maw of the abyss" -- it's pretty damn dark, so give it a few minutes for your eyes to adjust." -- Frank M. Carrano, Branford, Conn. "We had been married long enough that Fifi's burning gaze and flaring nostrils told me _exactly_ what she wanted, so I hurriedly peeled off her tight satin dress, dispatched her lacy French brassiere with a flick of the wrist, her garter belt became a 'ringer' on the furthest bedpost, and as I sent her imported silk stockings arcing gracefully into the laundry hamper, I dropped to my knees and promised never, _never_ to go into town wearing her clothes again." -- William "Buddy" Ocheltree, Georgia" -- (last year's grand prize winner)

"The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted sulkily and, buffing her already impeccable nails--not for the first time since the journey began-- pondered snidely if this would dissolve into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other days spent with Basil." -- Gail Cain of San Francisco:" -- 1983 Winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

"The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong, clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, "Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my steel through your last meal." -- Steve Garman of Pensacola" -- 1984 Winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest

"Safeway wasn't open when Keegan pulled his Chevy into the lot, its valves chattering, gun-blue cracked-ring smoke sputtering from its tail pipe, to get eggs." -- George Griffith of Chadron, NE

"The surface of the strange, forbidden planet was roughly textured and green, much like cottage cheese gets way after the date on the lid says it is all right to buy it." -- Scott Jones of Sausalito, CA," -- winner in Sci-Fi category some years ago

"When I go home she will be waiting for me in her white dress and I will drink salt water and lose my bad dreams." -- Richard Peabody, Jr. _I'm in Love with the Morton Salt Girl_ "Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully. "Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."And he has brain."Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has brain." There was a long silence. "I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything." -- A.A. Milne (1882-1956) *The House at Pooh Corner*

"The Encyclopedia Galactica has much to say on the theory and practice of time travel, most of which is incomprehensible to anyone who hasn't spent at least four lifetimes studying advanced hypermathematics, and since it was impossible to do this before time travel was invented, there is a certain amount of confusion as to how the idea was arrived at in the first place. One rationalization of this problem states that time travel was, by its very nature, discovered simultaneously at all periods of history, but this is clearly bunk." -- Douglas Adams _Mostly Harmless_

"One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can't. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn't work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn't really any point in being there." -- Douglas Adams _Mostly Harmless_

"...Another person doing this was Benjamin Franklin, who, in a famous experiment, sought to prove his theory that if you flew a kite in a rainstorm, a huge chunk of electricity would come shooting down the string and damage your brain. Sure enough, he was right, and he spent the rest of his days making bizarre, useless, and unintelligible statements such as: 'A penny saved is a penny earned.' Eventually he became so dodderingly pathetic that he had to be placed in charge of the U.S. Postal Service." -- Dave Barry

"Cursed be the father of the bride of the blacksmith who forged the iron for the axe with which the woodsman hacked down the oak from which the bed was carved in which was conceived the great-grandfather of the man who was driving the carriage in which your father met your mother." -- Robert Desnos (a French poet)" -- _Word Abuse_ by Donna Woolfolk Cross (c) 1979:

"'Listen, Spalding. Take it easy. He won't drown, he's from South Africa.'" -- I was walking up and down the beach trying to interpret this, trying to figure it out, when Judy Arthur spotted Ivan way out. He had drifted down. Judy saw his head way out there and she called him in. And I said, 'My God, Ivan! Ivan, listen man, I thought you'd drowned. I really did.' He said, 'Spalding, I'm really sorry, man. Listen, don't worry about me, I won't drown. I'm from South Africa.'" -- Spalding Gray" -- from Swimming to Cambodia: The collected works of Spalding Gray

"These gargantuan beings once constituted a serious menace to navigation in the Normal Sea, a vast prehistoric lake which is currently occupied by Kansas but was then teeming with life." -- Melanogaster J. Spigot, Ph.D.," -- "On the Neurobiology and Endocrinology" -- of Some Prehistoric Coelenterates," in _American Pie_

"In a manner which matches the fortuity, if not the consequence, of Archimedes' bath and Newton's apple, the [3.6 million year old] fossil footprints were eventually noticed one evening in September 1976 by the palaeontologist Andrew Hill, who fell while avoiding a ball of elephant dung hurled at him by the ecologist David Western." -- John Reader -- Missing Links: The Hunt for Earliest Man

"POPULIST, n. A fossil patriot of the early agricultural period, found in the old red soapstone underlying Kansas; characterized by an uncommon spread of ear, which some naturalists contend gave him the power of flight, though Professors Morse and Whitney, pursuing independent lines of thought, have ingeniously pointed out that had he possessed it he would have gone elsewhere. In the picturesque speech of his period, some fragments of which have come down to us, he was known as "The Matter with Kansas." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"

"THE CLIMATIC THEORY. First advanced by Professor J. Elmer Szycyznski of the University of Chicago in 1937. Szycyznski theorized that during the Ice Age the Oral-Aural Coral froze to death, in consequence of having neglected to put up the storm windows. Adherents of the Graposaurus theory, however, immedi- ately objected (in 1961) that such modern conveniences as storm windows could not have been in general use during the Silurian Era. It is now generally accepted that the entire Ice Age was a myth, engendered when some dinosaur left his air-conditioner running." -- Melanogaster J. Spigot, Ph.D.," -- "On the Neurobiology and Endocrinology" -- of Some Prehistoric Coelenterates," in _American Pie_ The Great Cowardly Hydra possessed no power of locomotion, a fact which undoubtedly contributed to its paranoid behavior. As it seldom failed to reach a height of fifty feet at matu- rity, its dietary requirements were comparable to those of a modern hippopotamus. Fortunately it was totally omnivorous. Unfortunately, being unable to move about, it never got anything to eat." -- Melanogaster J. Spigot, Ph.D.," -- "On the Neurobiology and Endocrinology" -- of Some Prehistoric Coelenterates," in _American Pie_

"No, no, no--it's spelt Raymond Luxury Yach-t, but it's pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove. You're a very silly man and I'm not going to interview you." -- _Monty Python's Flying Circus_" -- Chapman, Graham (1941-1989), Cleese, John (1939-), Gilliam, Terry (1940-)," -- Idle, Eric (1943-), Jones, Terry (1942-) and Palin, Michael (1943-)

"Everybody has a right to pronounce foreign names as he chooses." -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxllwcp is pronounced Jackson." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it." -- Christopher Morley (1890-1957) They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce." -- Mark Twain (1835-1910)" -- _The Innocents Abroad_ (1869) ch. 19

"DEINOTHERIUM, n. An extinct pachyderm that flourished when the Pterodactyl was in fashion. The latter was a native of Ireland, its name being pronounced Terry Dactyl or Peter O'Dactyl, as the man pronouncing it may chance to have heard it spoken or seen it printed." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"

"MAGDALENE, n. An inhabitant of Magdala. Popularly, a woman found out. This definition of the word has the authority of ignorance, Mary of Magdala being another person than the penitent woman mentioned by St. Luke. It has also the official sanction of the governments of Great Britain and the United States. In England the word is pronounced Maudlin, whence maudlin, adjective, unpleasantly sentimental. With their Maudlin for Magdalene, and their Bedlam for Bethlehem, the English may justly boast themselves the greatest of revisers." -- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) "The Devil's Dictionary"

"There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grapenuts on principle." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"E-mail is like a clothespin. Once you figure it out, you can't hang your clothes without it." -- BBN's Heart as quoted in IEEE Spectrum (Oct 92, pg. 23)

"Let desire reign and be willing to take the consequences." -- Heard in a "POLITICS, LITERATURE & THE ARTS" course" -- (taught by Professor Bronner of Rutgers University Poli.Sci. dept.)

"To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry." -- Nathalie Sarraute

"Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen." -- P.J. O'Rourke

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it." -- A. A. Milne, _The House at Pooh Corner_

"When the next White House enemies list comes out, I want to be on it." -- Hunter S. Thompson

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore

"Practice makes perfect, except in Russian Roulette, where practice only serves to make a big mess." -- Alfred E. Neumann

"The threat is often stronger than the execution." -- Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935) (International Grandmaster Chess Player)

"It's not enough to have a lot of respect for bishops in the abstract -- you've gotta watch out for them!" -- Shelby Lyman, chesscaster (NY Times)

"The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle, and the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true." -- Danny Kaye, in "The Court Jester"

"As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth." -- Philip Jose Farmer, _The Purple Book_, p. 84

"Progress is the mother of all problems." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

"'Change' is scientific, 'progress' is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger." -- Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959)

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order." -- Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

"The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it." -- Mark Weiser, head of a computer science laboratory," -- writing in Scientific American, September 1991

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness... Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"As enunciated today, "progress" is simply a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative." -- G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) _Heretics_

"The progress of science is often affected more by the frailties of humans and their institutions than by the limitations of scientific measuring devices. The scientific method is only as effective as the humans using it. It does not automatically lead to progress." -- Steven S. Zumdahl

"It is not real work unless you would rather be doing something else." -- J. M. Barrie (1860-1937)" -- Rectorial address, 3 May 1992 St. Andrew's University, Scotland

"It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?" -- Ronald Reagan (1911- ), Speech, 22 April 1987 Annual Gridiron Dinner, Washington DC

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him _whose_?" -- Don Marquis (1878-1937)

"Put your talent into your work, but your genius into your life." -- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful." -- Hermann Weyl

"Be regular and orderly in your life, that you may be violent and original in your work." -- Clive Barker, "Jihad"

"Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume; the hellish cycle is complete. -- Raoul Vaneigem (1934- )" -- The Revolution of Everyday Life Ch. 7, sct. 2 (1967; tr. 1983)

"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there." -- Indira Gandhi (1917- ?)

"Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments." -- John Steinbeck (1902-1968) _Grapes of Wrath_

"As the finely honed points of the magnificent bull elk's antlers perforated his spleen, lungs and lower colon, Lenny the Grifter wished he had stayed working the street in Times Square, instead of going up to the Rockies where this dumb animal had figured out that three-card monte was a con, and gored him." -- Richard Patching of Calgary, Alberta top honors submission in the adventure category to the 12th annual Bulwer-Lytton contest for bad fiction

"Hewlett Packard at one point had only three private offices. One belonged to Hewlett, one to Packard, and the third to a guy named Paul Ely who annoyed so many coworkers with his bellowing on the phone that the company finally extended his cubicle walls to the ceiling." -- Robert Cringley, _Accidental Empires_

Take me back to loQtus!