%% In 1969, Nixon commissioned a study on marijuana that recommended marijuana be decriminalized. Nixon rejected that conclusion out of hand. More recently, a former law counsel to the DEA filed a report that marijuana was factually and truthfully less dangerous than aspirin. That report, too, was summarily repressed and rejected. burnodo-NODAMSPAM-@onebox.com %% "I have been around Capitol Hill long enough to know that no legislation has a realistic chance of becoming law that will take hundreds of millions -- indeed, billions -- of dollars away from the Justice Department and state and local police agencies -- away from the war on drugs." --Sen. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) %% Unless we fallow our leaders blindly, we can never achieve true fredoom. Majoir Frank Burns M.A.S.H. Unit 4077 %% editorial - San Diego Union-Tribune After half a century, it should be apparent to everyone that the only people who support this drug war are those who are making money off it: drug dealers, prison guard unions, law enforcement, DEA, helicopter companies, members of Congress, ad nauseam. [...] And I for one am tired of paying taxes and seeing my constitutional rights eroded bit by bit to support an hysterical, useless, morally wrong and fascistic approach to an issue that belongs entirely between a doctor and patient: drug addiction. It's time to end this stupidity now. MATTHEW BRIGHT Rosarito %% "Even if marijuana use caused one to grow horns and piss fire, what right does the government have to punish someone, in any way, for using it in a way that doesn't potentially harm others?" Jeff Dallacqua %% > What do YOU think is the real reasons why pot is illegal? Basically money. Drug prohibition now supports an army of worthless parasites spending $75 billion to $100 billion a year of public money. See the references below. You think that the cops, the DARE phonies, the DEA, and the rest these freeloaders are going to give up their positions without a fight? Then there are all the firms that now make a fortune off of it--the drug testing companies, the "rehabilitation" experts, etc. Secondly, stupidity and ignorance. Didn't Mencken once remark that nobody ever lost money betting on the stupidity of the American people? "Drugs Are Bad: The Drug War Is Worse," in New York magazine, Feb. 5, 1996, stated that the direct budgetary costs of drug prohibition in America probably approach $100 billion yearly. The indirect costs are many times that. In a National Review article, William Buckley estimated the cost as $75 billion per year of public money.(The War On Drugs Is Lost. National Review February 12, 1996). jigo@erols.com %% If you're a politician, bureaucrat, or cop whose livelihood depends on the drug war, you're fully as contemptible as any pusher, smuggler, or cocaine baron -- more so, because, unlike them, you profit directly by destroying what was once the greatest freedom ever known to humankind. -- Mirelle Stein, _The Productive Class_ Just Say No to Gestapo Tactics http://www.freespeech.org/justsayno Abuses by the BATF http://www.hamnet.net/~n4zhg/batfabus.html %% "Nothing," once said Milton Friedman, "scares me about the notion of drugs being legal. ... What scares me is the notion of continuing on the path we're on now, which will destroy our free society." %% "The Partnership For a Drug-Free America really isn't for a drug-free America. It's a lobbying arm for the liquor and prescription drug industries. It's for an America free of the drugs that are in competition with those that are being protected legally." source: http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/08/18/maher/ %% There was NEVER a "public outcry" to 'do something' about drugs in this country till Harry Anslinger made up the marijuana scare.He lied(pot will make mexicans&blacks instantly insane,results in uncontrolable violence,rape of white women,etc.);to law makers,and farmers(this law will not effect hemp production),and to Doctors(this will not affect your ability to treat illness with cannabis).There was NO drug 'problem' till one was created by prohibition.The Drug War has been the excuse for self-seeking politicians to slowly strip away the rights and protections the BoR & the Const. guarenteed.It is a LIE from it's very inception.The violence and misery associated with this WAR Against the American People is solely the responsibility of those who continue the lies.They know the Truth but they are making too much money to stop.These are the Real killers of your children,the destroyers of your community,the thieves of your property and your liberty.Beleive them and you continue the madness;educate yourself and stop the insanity. earthsinger@themail.com %% "From 1984 to 1996, California built 21 new prisons, and only one new university." Source: Ambrosio, T. & Schiraldi, V., "Trends in State Spending, 1987-1995", Executive Summary- February 1997 (Washington DC: The Justice Policy Institute, 1997). %% "There ought to be limits to freedom." (George W. Bush, 1999). %% "If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees." -- President Bill Clinton "The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of the nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to the big lie than a small one, for they them- selves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell a big one." A.Hitler - Mein Kampf %% "President Clinton is one of the great Presidents." Al Gore %% "When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. We're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities." --Bill Clinton ( in reply to the question of whether personal liberty might be outdated) (March 22 ,1994 MTVs "Enough is enough") [Source: Kim Weissman's CONGRESS ACTION: March 7, 1999] %% "It's just like the story of the grasshopper and the octopus. All year long, the grasshopper kept burying acorns for the winter, while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. But then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns. And also he got a racecar. Is any of this getting through to you?" - Philip J. Fry, 'Futurama' %% "A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." -- Saul Bellow %% |"There's no way to rule innocent men...When there aren't enough criminals, | | one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes | | impossible to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_ | %% 6/2/00 "If the United States Government should take an interest in you - well, think about those kids in the car in Jurassic Park when the raptor broke loose. . . The Federal Criminal Justice System -- "the feds" -- is/are an insane, mindless, heartless, cruel car-crushing, home seizing, family-destroying monster out of control. The federal judges, some of them the most accomplished dedicated lawyers in their communities, have been rendered toothless by a series of legislative and appellate judicial decisions that have given the prosecution - the police - everything on their wish list for the last 30 years." Top Story: A Leading Marijuana Lawyer Explains How the System Really Works - Posted by Jeffrey Steinborn, Esq. Source: http://www.potbust.com/ %% The "drug war" is not about drugs but fear-mongering and re-election and illegal-profit protection. -- Rules are written for those who lack the ability to truly reason, But for those who can, the rules become nothing more than guidelines, And live their lives governed not by rules but by reason. - James McGuigan %% "No laws, however stringent, can make the idle industrious, the thriftless provident, or the drunken sober" - Samuel Stiles %% God is subtle, but he is not malicious. Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born U.S. theoretical physicist. Remark, April 1921, during his first visit to Princeton University, later carved above the fireplace of the Common Room of Fine Hall in the former Mathematical Institute. In 1946, Einstein gave a freer translation: "God is slick, but he ain't mean." %% > "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not > Gary Cooper." > -Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the > leading role in "Gone With the Wind" %% Necessity is the excuse for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of the tyrant and the creed of the slave. -- William Pitt, 1763 %% "I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace; that two are called a law firm; and that three or more are called a congress." -- John Adams, in the musical "1776." %% "A zebra does not change its spots." Al Gore - The Toronto Sun - 11-19-95 %% "Any government official who...lies to the United States Congress will be fired immediately." Al Gore - Seattle Times - 06-29-87 %% "Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I hoed it. I've sprayed it, I've chopped it, I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it." Al Gore - New York Newsday - 02-26-88 %% "I didn't know I was in a Buddhist temple." Al Gore - 05-23-97 %% "When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. We're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities." --Bill Cliton ( in reply to the question of whether personal liberty might be outdated) (March 22 ,1994 MTVs "Enough is enough") [Source: Kim Weissman's CONGRESS ACTION: March 7, 1999] %% The problem is that the war on drugs encompasses so many things. It's become a war on cash, a war on minorities in certain areas (including white people in the wrong neighborhoods), war by proxy in Columbia, Honduras, Peru, etc.; a war on the Fourth and First Amendments, a war on privacy, a war on information, a war on the media, not to mention creating cash cows and sinecures for various law enforcement and private sector orgs. amk@rcn.net %% Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of it's victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those that torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. -- C.S. Lewis. %% "Gentlemen may cry, 'peace, peace'--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! Is life so precious, or peace so dear, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" -- Patrick Henry %% "America's freedom rests on five boxes: the Soapbox, the Ballot box, the Jury box, the Witness box, and the Cartridge box." Militia Proverb %% The War on Drugs was never, ever about drugs, it's about bigotry. You can change the law, but changing the prejudice and fear of bigots who hide behind drug war rhetoric is a far more challenging task. It's time to expose the Drug War and the bigots who promote the ideology of "Zero Tolerance." -- Steve Kubby, 1998 Libertarian candidate for Governor of California %% The overall goal of the DEA is not to put people who violate the unconstitutional anti-drug laws in jail? I must've missed something. . . %% "Every marijuana cigarette is loaded with immorality, debasing perversions, hatred, brutality, sex crimes, sadistic murder, insanity, and suicide. -_The Assassin of Youth_ "Asassin of Youth", a book by Harry Anslinger, once director of the Federal Narcotics Bureau, and our true enemy. %% The US Electorate had precious little to do with the original prohibition of narcotics. Even the Harrison Act, ramrodded thru a sleeping congress, didn't explicitely outlaw narcotics; only the executive branch's twisted implementation (which was thoroughly chastised by the Supreme Court in 1924-- Linder, [268 U.S. 5]-- a decision completely ignored by federal narcotics enforcement bureaucrats) has led to the present day climate of near-complete prohibition & artificially created hysteria. Here's a question I've never heard a satisfactory answer for: why was a constitutional amendment required for alcohol prohibition, but never for drug prohibition? Another observation: even under nationwide alcohol prohibition, possession of alcohol was never illegal, only its sale & distribution. Why has this line been crossed as regards to narcotics? chip %% "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated: but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --C.S. Lewis %% When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I had nothing to hide. When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they've taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it. %% "In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other." --Voltaire %% "The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the USA," 1921 %% "Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." George Washington %% "Prohibition...goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded." -- Abraham Lincoln %% "Totalitarianism is when people believe they can punish their way to perfection." - Newt Gingrich at the President's Day Republican fundraiser %% Always recognize this: The war on Jews was a war on ordinary people. the War on Drugs is a war on ordinary people. Its not about drugs, its not about being "drug-free"-- its about government bureacracies that aggrandize their power by making war on *ordinary people*. %% "I am convinced that the devastating insights achieved when high on marijuana are real." - Carl Sagan %% "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care." -- DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis Young %% "The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than a small one." - Adolph Hitler, 1933 %% The only reason the US doesn't have a Gestapo is that the FBI, BATF, DEA, EPA etc. can't speak German. %% The "war on drugs" can never end. Why? Because it has become a multi billion dollar business employing more people than General Motors. According to a 1993 study, 82% of non death row prisoners are convicted of drug or drug related offenses. To do away with the war on drugs and pardon prisoners serving drug time would cause a national, and perhaps world wide recession. Think of all the thousands of prison guards, police, lawyers, judges, and support staff who are all dependant on a study flow of "drug criminals" to support the system. Add to this all the prison and court service contractors, prison building contractors, bondsmen, probation officers and social workers that the "war on drugs" supports, and you can see WHY it can never end unless a new kind of "criminal" is found to replace the "drug criminal" in supporting the system. %% "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards. On the road to tyranny, we've gone so far that polite political action is about as useless as a miniskirt in a convent." - Claire Wolfe, _101 Things To Do 'Til The Revolution_ %% "The War on Drugs was never, ever about drugs, it's about bigotry. You can change the law, but changing the prejudice and fear of bigots who hide behind drug war rhetoric is a far more challenging task. It's time to expose the Drug War and the bigots who promote the ideology of "Zero Tolerance." -- Steve Kubby, 1998 Libertarian candidate for Governor of California %% "Over 25,000 products can be manufactured from hemp, from cellophane to dynamite." - 1938 Popular Mechanics - %% Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason. -----Gerry Brooks (in the Toronto Globe & Mail) %% "The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced." - Albert Einstein %% Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason. -----Gerry Brooks (in the Toronto Globe & Mail) %% The WOD is a failure by its own stated goals. We have incarcerated an entire generation of lower class urban young men, mostly ethnic minorities, to prevent the moral abomination of people getting high on the substance of their choice, and yet people continue to choose to use these substances. Maybe it is time to rethink the policy. %% "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." - Thomas Jefferson - First inaugural address, 1801 %% "Taxes are the price we pay for an uncivilized society where politicians, law enforcement and the judiciary ignore the Bill of Rights." A truer, 1999 version of the famous quotation %% Ethan Nadlemann long ago raised the following point - just what is the drug problem he asked? Is it a health problem, is it a law enforcement problem, what is it? The drug problem is that the federal government of the United States won't follow the law when it comes to marijuana's regulation, and they never have. That's it. %% "The international drug business now generates more revenue than the international oil business, according to the UN. With that much money at stake, it will take some remarkable circumstances to change the minds of those who have vested interests in these drugs remaining illegal: Drug sellers, prison builders, the government, and various people who depend on the addiction industry for their livelihoods. To extend the analogy, the drug industry looks on legalization with the same horror the oil industry would view a practical demonstration of cold fusion. They would do anything to stop it." piemantic@hotmail.com %% >>>Work like you don't need money, >>>Love like you've never been hurt, >>>And dance like no one's watching. >>>Happiness is a journey, not a destination. %% "There's no way to rule innocent men...When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws." -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_ %% "That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." -Thomas Jefferson %% "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle %% "Imagination is more important than knowledge" -Albert Einstein %% "What are called rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts." - T H Huxley, 1890 %% "The number of Americans arrested each year for marijuana offenses has increased by 43 percent since Clinton took office. There were roughly 600,000 marijuana-related arrests nationwide in 1995 -- an all-time record. More Americans were arrested for marijuana offenses during the first three years of Clinton's presidency than during any other three-year period in the nation's history. More Americans are in prison today for marijuana offenses than at any other time in our history." -- Eric Schlosser (August, 1994). %% =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= "We seek a free flow of information . . . a nation that is afraid to let the people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation afraid of its people." John F. Kennedy February 1962 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= %% If the shit fits, wear it. - Donald "Duck" Dunn %% "Winners-they come and go, Legends-they're forever." - David Lee Roth %% Moreover, prisons can be considered 'schools' for criminals where they get tougher and meaner (hard-core criminals) and society even sends them back to 'school' whenever they fail during the rest of their criminal career. Crime pays. Why? Because you can produce and sell substances which have become absurdly overpriced due to a ridiculous approach to ban them. The costs of the war on drugs is way out of proportion compared to the actual damage caused by substance-abuse. Moreover, most negative aspects of substance-abuse have their origin in an irresponsible person who never got a chance to use drugs in a social setting where responsible drug-use is a rule rather than an exception. Most people who abuse drugs are rather ignorant about both the nature of the drug and the (possible) consequences of usage. Niek Sprakel %% "Never Underestimate the Power of Stupid People in Large Groups" - Anon.**** %% "Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere." --President George Washington, 1794 %% "Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which this government was founded." --President Abraham Lincoln %% "As a lifelong Democrat and chief counsel of the House Judiciary Committee at the time of the Nixon impeachment, I believe I have a personal responsibility to speak out about the current impeachment crisis. And I believe my fellow Democrats on today's Judiciary Committee have a moral, ethical and constitutional responsibility to vote to impeach President Clinton. The positions taken by the President and his die-hard defenders in Congress and in the media are indefensible. ... I believe the President has personally brought his office into scandal and disrepute. He has lied repeatedly to the American people, has lied under oath in the Paula Jones case, has committed perjury several times before a criminal grand jury. ... I believe that Democrats should - and eventually some will - vote to impeach Mr. Clinton, who has betrayed the trust of both the country and the Democratic Party." Jerome M. Ziefman, Wall Street Journal, 10/6/98 pA22 %% -------------------------------- "Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." * C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) -------------------------------- %% An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. -Thomas Paine %% Support Perjury. Vote Democrat. %% It was Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) who once sponsored a bill in Congress to allow therapeutic use of marijuana. In 1982, Gingrich wrote an impassioned letter to the Journal of the American Medical Association attacking the "outdated federal prohibition" of medical marijuana. He decried the plight of "thousands of glaucoma and cancer patients" held hostage by "bureaucratic interference." Sixteen years later, Gingrich is Speaker of a House that just declared that marijuana "contains no plausible medicinal benefits." No, the plant wasn't corrupted. Gingrich was. %% MYTHS: Religion is about Tolerance and Love U.S. Law separates violent criminals from society The U.S. Government really needs to take more than 50% of what you earn. %% "I did not have sexual relations with that woman...Ms. Lewinsky." - President William Jefferson Blythe Clinton %% The most dangerous, and damaging effect of any individual's use of illegal drugs is the unreasonable prejudice held against them by an ignorant, and gullible society at large. KNVB %% "'Go back to bed America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America. Your government is in control again. Here, . . . here's 'American Gladiators'. Watch this. Shut up. Go back to bed America. Here's 'American Gladiators'! Here's 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate YOU on living in the 'Land of Freedom'!! Here you go America! You are FREE to do as we tell you! You are FREE to do as we tell you! . . . Oh, and don't forget to KEEP BUYING BEER (you morons)!'" The Late, Great Comedian, Bill Hicks (Paraphrasing the main-stream media) %% 'Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, mankind should think about getting more use out of the weapons we already have. ' -Deep Thoughts %% "It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." --Voltaire %% "There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others." H.J. Anslinger, Commisioner of Narcotics, at the Congressional hearings which led to the Marihuana Tax act of 1937 %% "If no one is shooting at you, you have nothing to complain about. If someone is, shoot back." --Curt Rich %% "The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this." Albert Einstein, "My First Impression of the USA," 1921 %% "politics" : poli- (many), tics (blood sucking creatures) %% "If a President of the United States ever lied to the American people, he should resign." Bill Clinton, in his 1974 campaign for US Representative %% "I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them. I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is: 'What are they in a position to do about it?'" (William S. Burroughs) %%  %% Verb doubling: a standard construction is to double a verb and use it as a comment on what the implied subject does. Often used to terminate a conversation. Typical examples involve WIN, LOSE, HACK, FLAME, BARF, CHOMP: "The disk heads just crashed." "Lose, lose." "Mostly he just talked about his --- crock. Flame, flame." "Boy, what a bagbiter! Chomp, chomp!" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% Soundalike slang: similar to Cockney rhyming slang. Often made up on the spur of the moment. Standard examples: Boston Globe => Boston Glob Herald American => Horrid (Harried) American New York Times => New York Slime historical reasons => hysterical raisins government property - do not duplicate (seen on keys) => government duplicity - do not propagate Often the substitution will be made in such a way as to slip in a standard jargon word: Dr. Dobb's Journal => Dr. Frob's Journal creeping featurism => feeping creaturism Margaret Jacks Hall => Marginal Hacks Hall -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% The -P convention: turning a word into a question by appending the syllable "P"; from the LISP convention of appending the letter "P" to denote a predicate (a Boolean-values function). The question should expect a yes/no answer, though it needn't. (See T and NIL.) At dinnertime: "Foodp?" "Yeah, I'm pretty hungry." or "T!" "State-of-the-world-P?" (Straight) "I'm about to go home." (Humorous) "Yes, the world has a state." [One of the best of these is a Gosperism (i.e., due to Bill Gosper). When we were at a Chinese restaurant, he wanted to know whether someone would like to share with him a two-person-sized bowl of soup. His inquiry was: "Split-p soup?" --GLS] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% Peculiar nouns: MIT AI hackers love to take various words and add the wrong endings to them to make nouns and verbs, often by extending a standard rule to nonuniform cases. Examples: porous => porosity generous => generosity Ergo: mysterious => mysteriosity ferrous => ferocity Other examples: winnitude, disgustitude, hackification. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% Spoken inarticulations: Words such as "mumble", "sigh", and "groan" are spoken in places where their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises in a com link. Another expression sometimes heard is "complain!" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% @BEGIN (primarily CMU) with @END, used humorously in writing to indicate a context or to remark on the surrounded text. From the SCRIBE command of the same name. For example: @Begin(Flame) Predicate logic is the only good programming language. Anyone who would use anything else is an idiot. Also, computers should be tredecimal instead of binary. @End(Flame) -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% AOS (aus (East coast) ay-ahs (West coast)) [based on a PDP-10 increment instruction] v. To increase the amount of something. "Aos the campfire." Usage: considered silly. See SOS. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% ANGLE BRACKETS (primarily MIT) n. Either of the characters "<" and ">". See BROKET. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% ARG n. Abbreviation for "argument" (to a function), used so often as to have become a new word. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% AUTOMAGICALLY adv. Automatically, but in a way which, for some reason (typically because it is too complicated, or too ugly, or perhaps even too trivial), I don't feel like explaining to you. See MAGIC. Example: Some programs which produce XGP output files spool them automagically. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BAGBITER 1. n. Equipment or program that fails, usually intermittently. 2. BAGBITING: adj. Failing hardware or software. "This bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar." Usage: verges on obscenity. Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the bag". Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS, CHOMPER, CHOMPING. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BANG n. Common alternate name for EXCL (q.v.), especially at CMU. See SHRIEK. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BAR 1. The second metasyntactic variable, after FOO. "Suppose we have two functions FOO and BAR. FOO calls BAR..." 2. Often appended to FOO to produce FOOBAR. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BARF [from the "layman" slang, meaning "vomit"] 1. interj. Term of disgust. See BLETCH. 2. v. Choke, as on input. May mean to give an error message. "The function `=' compares two fixnums or two flonums, and barfs on anything else." 3. BARFULOUS, BARFUCIOUS: adj. Said of something which would make anyone barf, if only for aesthetic reasons. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BELLS AND WHISTLES n. Unnecessary but useful (or amusing) features of a program. "Now that we've got the basic program working, let's go back and add some bells and whistles." Nobody seems to know what distinguishes a bell from a whistle. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BIGNUMS [from Macsyma] n. 1. In backgammon, large numbers on the dice. 2. Multiple-precision (sometimes infinitely extendible) integers and, through analogy, any very large numbers. 3. EL CAMINO BIGNUM: El Camino Real, a street through the San Francisco peninsula that originally extended (and still appears in places) all the way to Mexico City. It was termed "El Camino Double Precision" when someone noted it was a very long street, and then "El Camino Bignum" when it was pointed out that it was hundreds of miles long. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BIN [short for BINARY; used as a second file name on ITS] 1. n. BINARY. 2. BIN FILE: A file containing the BIN for a program. Usage: used at MIT, which runs on ITS. The equivalent term at Stanford is DMP (pronounced "dump") FILE. Other names used include SAV ("save") FILE (DEC and Tenex), SHR ("share") and LOW FILES (DEC), and EXE ("ex'ee") FILE (DEC and Twenex). Also in this category are the input files to the various flavors of linking loaders (LOADER, LINK-10, STINK), called REL FILES. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BINARY n. The object code for a program. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BIT n. 1. The unit of information; the amount of information obtained by asking a yes-or-no question. "Bits" is often used simply to mean information, as in "Give me bits about DPL replicators". 2. [By extension from "interrupt bits" on a computer] A reminder that something should be done or talked about eventually. Upon seeing someone that you haven't talked to for a while, it's common for one or both to say, "I have a bit set for you." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BITBLT (bit'blit) 1. v. To perform a complex operation on a large block of bits, usually involving the bits being displayed on a bitmapped raster screen. See BLT. 2. n. The operation itself. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BIT BUCKET n. 1. A receptacle used to hold the runoff from the computer's shift registers. 2. Mythical destination of deleted files, GC'ed memory, and other no-longer-accessible data. 3. The physical device associated with "NUL:". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BLETCH [from German "brechen", to vomit (?)] 1. interj. Term of disgust. 2. BLETCHEROUS: adj. Disgusting in design or function. "This keyboard is bletcherous!" Usage: slightly comic. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BLT (blit, very rarely belt) [based on the PDP-10 block transfer instruction; confusing to users of the PDP-11] 1. v. To transfer a large contiguous package of information from one place to another. 2. THE BIG BLT: n. Shuffling operation on the PDP-10 under some operating systems that consumes a significant amount of computer time. 3. (usually pronounced B-L-T) n. Sandwich containing bacon, lettuce, and tomato. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BOGOSITY n. The degree to which something is BOGUS (q.v.). At CMU, bogosity is measured with a bogometer; typical use: in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say, "My bogometer just triggered." The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat (uL). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BOGUS (WPI, Yale, Stanford) adj. 1. Non-functional. "Your patches are bogus." 2. Useless. "OPCON is a bogus program." 3. False. "Your arguments are bogus." 4. Incorrect. "That algorithm is bogus." 5. Silly. "Stop writing those bogus sagas." (This word seems to have some, but not all, of the connotations of RANDOM.) [Etymological note from Lehman/Reid at CMU: "Bogus" was originally used (in this sense) at Princeton, in the late 60's. It was used not particularly in the CS department, but all over campus. It came to Yale, where one of us (Lehman) was an undergraduate, and (we assume) elsewhere through the efforts of Princeton alumni who brought the word with them from their alma mater. In the Yale case, the alumnus is Michael Shamos, who was a graduate student at Yale and is now a faculty member here. A glossary of bogus words was compiled at Yale when the word was first popularized (e.g., autobogophobia: the fear of becoming bogotified).] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BOUNCE (Stanford) v. To play volleyball. "Bounce, bounce! Stop wasting time on the computer and get out to the court!" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BRAIN-DAMAGED [generalization of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in Multics] adj. Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented. There is an implication that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage, because he should have known better. Calling something brain-damaged is really bad; it also implies it is unusable. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BREAK v. 1. To cause to be broken (in any sense). "Your latest patch to the system broke the TELNET server." 2. (of a program) To stop temporarily, so that it may be examined for debugging purposes. The place where it stops is a BREAKPOINT. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BROKEN adj. 1. Not working properly (of programs). 2. Behaving strangely; especially (of people), exhibiting extreme depression. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BROKET [by analogy with "bracket": a "broken bracket"] (primarily Stanford) n. Either of the characters "<" and ">". (At MIT, and apparently in The Real World (q.v.) as well, these are usually called ANGLE BRACKETS.) -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BUCKY BITS (primarily Stanford) n. The bits produced by the CTRL and META shift keys on a Stanford (or Knight) keyboard. Rumor has it that the idea for extra bits for characters came from Niklaus Wirth, and that his nickname was `Bucky'. DOUBLE BUCKY: adj. Using both the CTRL and META keys. "The command to burn all LEDs is double bucky F." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BUG [from telephone terminology, "bugs in a telephone cable", blamed for noisy lines; however, Jean Sammet has repeatedly been heard to claim that the use of the term in CS comes from a story concerning actual bugs found wedged in an early malfunctioning computer] n. An unwanted and unintended property of a program. (People can have bugs too (even winners) as in "PHW is a super winner, but he has some bugs.") See FEATURE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BUM 1. v. To make highly efficient, either in time or space, often at the expense of clarity. The object of the verb is usually what was removed ("I managed to bum three more instructions.") but can be the program being changed ("I bummed the inner loop down to seven microseconds.") 2. n. A small change to an algorithm to make it more efficient. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% BUZZ v. To run in a very tight loop, perhaps without guarantee of getting out. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CANONICAL adj. The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking. Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!" Stallman: "What did he say?" Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CATATONIA (kat-uh-toe'-nee-uh) n. A condition of suspended animation in which the system is in a wedged (CATATONIC) state. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CDR (ku'der) [from LISP] v. With "down", to trace down a list of elements. "Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CHINE NUAL n. The Lisp Machine Manual, so called because the title is wrapped around the cover so only those letters show. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CHOMP v. To lose; to chew on something of which more was bitten off than one can. Probably related to gnashing of teeth. See BAGBITER. A hand gesture commonly accompanies this, consisting of the four fingers held together as if in a mitten or hand puppet, and the fingers and thumb open and close rapidly to illustrate a biting action. The gesture alone means CHOMP CHOMP (see Verb Doubling). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CLOSE n. Abbreviation for "close (or right) parenthesis", used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. See OPEN. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% COKEBOTTLE n. Any very unusual character. MIT people complain about the "control-meta-cokebottle" commands at SAIL, and SAIL people complain about the "altmode-altmode-cokebottle" commands at MIT. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% COM MODE (variant: COMM MODE) [from the ITS feature for linking two or more terminals together so that text typed on any is echoed on all, providing a means of conversation among hackers] n. The state a terminal is in when linked to another in this way. Com mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used orally: Part 1: BCNU Be seeing you. BTW By the way... BYE? Are you ready to unlink? (This is the standard way to end a com mode conversation; the other person types BYE to confirm, or else continues the conversation.) CUL See you later. FOO? A greeting, also meaning R U THERE? Often used in the case of unexpected links, meaning also "Sorry if I butted in" (linker) or "What's up?" (linkee). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% COM MODE [cont.] (variant: COMM MODE) [from the ITS feature for linking two or more terminals together so that text typed on any is echoed on all, providing a means of conversation among hackers] n. The state a terminal is in when linked to another in this way. Com mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used orally: Part 2: FYI For your information... GA Go ahead (used when two people have tried to type simultaneously; this cedes the right to type to the other). HELLOP A greeting, also meaning R U THERE? (An instance of the "-P" convention.) NIL No (see the main entry for NIL). OBTW Oh, by the way... R U THERE? Are you there? -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% COM MODE [cont.] (variant: COMM MODE) [from the ITS feature for linking two or more terminals together so that text typed on any is echoed on all, providing a means of conversation among hackers] n. The state a terminal is in when linked to another in this way. Com mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used orally: Part 3: SEC Wait a second (sometimes written SEC...). T Yes (see the main entry for T). TNX Thanks. TNX 1.0E6 Thanks a million (humorous). When the typing party has finished, he types two CRLF's to signal that he is done; this leaves a blank line between individual "speeches" in the conversation, making it easier to re-read the preceding text. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% COM MODE [cont.] (variant: COMM MODE) [from the ITS feature for linking two or more terminals together so that text typed on any is echoed on all, providing a means of conversation among hackers] n. The state a terminal is in when linked to another in this way. Com mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used orally: Part 4: : When three or more terminals are linked, each speech is preceded by the typist's login name and a colon (or a hyphen) to indicate who is typing. The login name often is shortened to a unique prefix (possibly a single letter) during a very long conversation. /\/\/\ The equivalent of a giggle. At Stanford, where the link feature is implemented by "talk loops", the term TALK MODE is used in place of COM MODE. Most of the above "sub-jargon" is used at both Stanford and MIT. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CONNECTOR CONSPIRACY [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] n. The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CONS [from LISP] 1. v. To add a new element to a list. 2. CONS UP: v. To synthesize from smaller pieces: "to cons up an example". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CRASH 1. n. A sudden, usually drastic failure. Most often said of the system (q.v., definition #1), sometimes of magnetic disk drives. "Three lusers lost their files in last night's disk crash." A disk crash which entails the read/write heads dropping onto the surface of the disks and scraping off the oxide may also be referred to as a "head crash". 2. v. To fail suddenly. "Has the system just crashed?" Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the crash (usually a person or a program, or both). "Those idiots playing spacewar crashed the system." Sometimes said of people. See GRONK OUT. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CRETIN 1. n. Congenital loser (q.v.). 2. CRETINOUS: adj. See BLETCHEROUS and BAGBITING. Usage: somewhat ad hominem. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CRLF (cur'lif, sometimes crul'lif) n. A carriage return (CR) followed by a line feed (LF). See TERPRI. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CROCK [probably from "layman" slang, which in turn may be derived from "crock of shit"] n. An awkward feature or programming technique that ought to be made cleaner. Example: Using small integers to represent error codes without the program interpreting them to the user is a crock. Also, a technique that works acceptably but which is quite prone to failure if disturbed in the least, for example depending on the machine opcodes having particular bit patterns so that you can use instructions as data words too; a tightly woven, almost completely unmodifiable structure. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CRUFTY [from "cruddy"] adj. 1. Poorly built, possibly overly complex. "This is standard old crufty DEC software". Hence CRUFT, n. shoddy construction. Also CRUFT, v. [from hand cruft, pun on hand craft] to write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by a compiler. 2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often with encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and catsup. Hence CRUFT, n. disgusting mess. 3. Generally unpleasant. CRUFTY or CRUFTIE n. A small crufty object (see FROB); often one which doesn't fit well into the scheme of things. "A LISP property list is a good place to store crufties (or, random cruft)." [Note: Does CRUFT have anything to do with the Cruft Lab at Harvard? I don't know, though I was a Harvard student. - GLS] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CRUNCH v. 1. To process, usually in a time-consuming or complicated way. Connotes an essentially trivial operation which is nonetheless painful to perform. The pain may be due to the triviality being imbedded in a loop from 1 to 1000000000. "FORTRAN programs do mostly number crunching." 2. To reduce the size of a file by a complicated scheme that produces bit configurations completely unrelated to the original data, such as by a Huffman code. (The file ends up looking like a paper document would if somebody crunched the paper into a wad.) Since such compression usually takes more computations than simpler methods such as counting repeated characters (such as spaces) the term is doubly appropriate. (This meaning is usually used in the construction "file crunch(ing)" to distinguish it from "number crunch(ing)".) 3. n. The character "#". Usage: used at Xerox and CMU, among other places. Other names for "#" include SHARP, NUMBER, HASH, PIG-PEN, POUND-SIGN, and MESH. GLS adds: I recall reading somewhere that most of these are names for the # symbol IN CONTEXT. The name for the sign itself is "octothorp". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CTY (city) n. The terminal physically associated with a computer's operating console. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% CUSPY [from the DEC acronym CUSP, for Commonly Used System Program, i.e., a utility program used by many people] (WPI) adj. 1. (of a program) Well-written. 2. Functionally excellent. A program which performs well and interfaces well to users is cuspy. See RUDE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DAEMON (day'mun, dee'mun) [archaic form of "demon", which has slightly different connotations (q.v.)] n. A program which is not invoked explicitly, but which lays dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. The idea is that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an action only because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a daemon). For example, writing a file on the lpt spooler's directory will invoke the spooling daemon, which prints the file. The advantage is that programs which want (in this example) files printed need not compete for access to the lpt. They simply enter their implicit requests and let the daemon decide what to do with them. Daemons are usually spawned automatically by the system, and may either live forever or be regenerated at intervals. Usage: DAEMON and DEMON (q.v.) are often used interchangeably, but seem to have distinct connotations. DAEMON was introduced to computing by CTSS people (who pronounced it dee'mon) and used it to refer to what is now called a DRAGON or PHANTOM (q.v.). The meaning and pronunciation have drifted, and we think this glossary reflects current usage. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DAY MODE See PHASE (of people). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DEADLOCK n. A situation wherein two or more processes are unable to proceed because each is waiting for another to do something. A common example is a program communicating to a PTY or STY, which may find itself waiting for output from the PTY/STY before sending anything more to it, while the PTY/STY is similarly waiting for more input from the controlling program before outputting anything. (This particular flavor of deadlock is called "starvation". Another common flavor is "constipation", where each process is trying to send stuff to the other, but all buffers are full because nobody is reading anything.) See DEADLY EMBRACE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DEADLY EMBRACE n. Same as DEADLOCK (q.v.), though usually used only when exactly two processes are involved. DEADLY EMBRACE is the more popular term in Europe; DEADLOCK in the United States. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DEMENTED adj. Yet another term of disgust used to describe a program. The connotation in this case is that the program works as designed, but the design is bad. For example, a program that generates large numbers of meaningless error messages implying it is on the point of imminent collapse. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DEMON (dee'mun) n. A portion of a program which is not invoked explicitly, but which lays dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. See DAEMON. The distinction is that demons are usually processes within a program, while daemons are usually programs running on an operating system. Demons are particularly common in AI programs. For example, a knowledge manipulation program might implement inference rules as demons. Whenever a new piece of knowledge was added, various demons would activate (which demons depends on the particular piece of data) and would create additional pieces of knowledge by applying their respective inference rules to the original piece. These new pieces could in turn activate more demons as the inferences filtered down through chains of logic. Meanwhile the main program could continue with whatever its primary task was. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DIABLO (dee-ah'blow) [from the Diablo printer] 1. n. Any letter- quality printing device. 2. v. To produce letter-quality output from such a device. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DIDDLE v. To work with in a not particularly serious manner. "I diddled with a copy of ADVENT so it didn't double-space all the time." "Let's diddle this piece of code and see if the problem goes away." See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DIKE [from "diagonal cutters"] v. To remove a module or disable it. "When in doubt, dike it out." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DMP (dump) See BIN. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DO PROTOCOL [from network protocol programming] v. To perform an interaction with somebody or something that follows a clearly defined procedure. For example, "Let's do protocol with the check" at a restaurant means to ask the waitress for the check, calculate the tip and everybody's share, generate change as necessary, and pay the bill. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DOWN 1. adj. Not working. "The up escalator is down." 2. TAKE DOWN, BRING DOWN: v. To deactivate, usually for repair work. See UP. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DPB (duh-pib') [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v. To plop something down in the middle. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DRAGON n. (MIT) A program similar to a "daemon" (q.v.), except that it is not invoked at all, but is instead used by the system to perform various secondary tasks. A typical example would be an accounting program, which keeps track of who is logged in, accumulates load- average statistics, etc. At MIT, all free TV's display a list of people logged in, where they are, what they're running, etc. along with some random picture (such as a unicorn, Snoopy, or the Enterprise) which is generated by the "NAME DRAGON". See PHANTOM. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% DWIM [Do What I Mean] 1. adj. Able to guess, sometimes even correctly, what result was intended when provided with bogus input. Often suggested in jest as a desired feature for a complex program. A related term, more often seen as a verb, is DTRT (Do The Right Thing). 2. n. The INTERLISP function that attempts to accomplish this feat by correcting many of the more common errors. See HAIRY. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% ENGLISH n. The source code for a program, which may be in any language, as opposed to BINARY. Usage: slightly obsolete, used mostly by old-time hackers, though recognizable in context. At MIT, directory SYSENG is where the "English" for system programs is kept, and SYSBIN, the binaries. SAIL has many such directories, but the canonical one is [CSP,SYS]. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% EPSILON [from standard mathematical notation for a small quantity] 1. n. A small quantity of anything. "The cost is epsilon." 2. adj. Very small, negligible; less than marginal. "We can get this feature for epsilon cost." 3. WITHIN EPSILON OF: Close enough to be indistinguishable for all practical purposes. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% EXCH (ex'chuh, ekstch) [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v. To exchange two things, each for the other. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% EXCL (eks'cul) n. Abbreviation for "exclamation point". See BANG, SHRIEK, WOW. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% EXE (ex'ee) See BIN. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FAULTY adj. Same denotation as "bagbiting", "bletcherous", "losing", q.v., but the connotation is much milder. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FEATURE n. 1. A surprising property of a program. Occasionally docu- mented. To call a property a feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider the particular case, and the program makes an unexpected, although not strictly speaking an incorrect response. See BUG. "That's not a bug, that's a feature!" A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it. 2. A well-known and beloved property; a facility. Sometimes features are planned, but are called crocks by others. An approximately correct spectrum: (These terms are all used to describe programs or portions thereof, except for the first two, which are included for completeness.) CRASH STOPPAGE BUG SCREW LOSS MISFEATURE CROCK KLUGE HACK WIN FEATURE PERFECTION (The last is never actually attained.) -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FEEP 1. n. The soft bell of a display terminal (except for a VT-52!); a beep. 2. v. To cause the display to make a feep sound. TTY's do not have feeps. Alternate forms: BEEP, BLEEP, or just about anything suitably onomatopoeic. The term BREEDLE is sometimes heard at SAIL, where the terminal bleepers are not particularly "soft" (they sound more like the musical equivalent of sticking out one's tongue). The "feeper" on a VT-52 has been compared to the sound of a '52 Chevy stripping its gears. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FENCEPOST ERROR n. The discrete equivalent of a boundary condition. Often exhibited in programs by iterative loops. From the following problem: "If you build a fence 100 feet long with posts ten feet apart, how many posts do you need?" (Either 9 or 11 is a better answer than the obvious 10.) -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FINE (WPI) adj. Good, but not good enough to be CUSPY. [The word FINE is used elsewhere, of course, but without the implicit comparison to the higher level implied by CUSPY.] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FLAG DAY [from a bit of Multics history involving a change in the ASCII character set originally scheduled for June 14, 1966] n. A software change which is neither forward nor backward compatible, and which is costly to make and costly to revert. "Can we install that without causing a flag day for all users?" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FLAKEY adj. Subject to frequent lossages. See LOSSAGE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FLAME v. To speak incessantly and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a patently ridiculous attitude. FLAME ON: v. To continue to flame. See RAVE. This punning reference to Marvel comics' Human Torch has been lost as recent usage completes the circle: "Flame on" now usually means "beginning of flame". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FLAP v. To unload a DECtape (so it goes flap, flap, flap...). Old hackers at MIT tell of the days when the disk was device 0 and microtapes were 1, 2,... and attempting to flap device 0 would instead start a motor banging inside a cabinet near the disk! -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FLAVOR n. 1. Variety, type, kind. "DDT commands come in two flavors." See VANILLA. 2. The attribute of causing something to be FLAVORFUL. "This convention yields additional flavor by allowing one to..." 3. On the LispMachine, an object-oriented programming system ("flavors"); each class of object is a flavor. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FLAVORFUL adj. Aesthetically pleasing. See RANDOM and LOSING for antonyms. See also the entry for TASTE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FLUSH v. 1. To delete something, usually superfluous. "All that nonsense has been flushed." Standard ITS terminology for aborting an output operation. 2. To leave at the end of a day's work (as opposed to leaving for a meal). "I'm going to flush now." "Time to flush." 3. To exclude someone from an activity. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FOO 1. [from Yiddish "feh" or the Anglo-Saxon "fooey!"] interj. Term of disgust. 2. [from FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition), from WWII, often seen as FOOBAR] Name used for temporary programs, or samples of three-letter names. Other similar words are BAR, BAZ (Stanford corruption of BAR), and rarely RAG. These have been used in Pogo as well. 3. Used very generally as a sample name for absolutely anything. The old `Smokey Stover' comic strips often included the word FOO, in particular on license plates of cars. MOBY FOO: See MOBY. 4. The legendary South Sea island FOO bird, named for its characteristic squawk, "whose digestive system [as described by Spider Robinson] is so incredibly rank that, if its excrement should contact your skin, re-exposure of the contaminated skin to air is invariably fatal." Thus, "if the foo defecates, wear it." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FRIED adj. 1. Non-working due to hardware failure; burnt out. 2. Of people, exhausted. Said particularly of those who continue to work in such a state. Often used as an explanation or excuse. "Yeah, I know that fix destroyed the file system, but I was fried when I put it in." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FROB 1. n. (MIT) The official Tech Model Railroad Club definition is "FROB = protruding arm or trunnion", and by metaphoric extension any somewhat small thing. See FROBNITZ. 2. v. Abbreviated form of FROBNICATE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FROBNICATE v. To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ (q.v.). Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FROBNITZ, pl. FROBNITZEM (frob'nitsm) n. An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to FROTZ, or more commonly to FROB. Also used are FROBNULE, FROBULE, and FROBNODULE. Starting perhaps in 1979, FROBBOZ (fruh-bahz'), pl. FROBBOTZIM, has also become very popular, largely due to its exposure via the Adventure spin-off called Zork (Dungeon). These can also be applied to non-physical objects, such as data structures. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FROG (variant: PHROG) 1. interj. Term of disgust (we seem to have a lot of them). 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See FOO. 3. n. Of things, a crock. Of people, somewhere inbetween a turkey and a toad. 4. Jake Brown (FRG@SAIL). 5. FROGGY: adj. Similar to BAGBITING (q.v.), but milder. "This froggy program is taking forever to run!" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FROTZ 1. n. See FROBNITZ. 2. MUMBLE FROTZ: An interjection of very mild disgust. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FRY v. 1. To fail. Said especially of smoke-producing hardware failures. 2. More generally, to become non-working. Usage: never said of software, only of hardware and humans. See FRIED. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FTP (spelled out, NOT pronounced "fittip") 1. n. The File Transfer Protocol for transmitting files between systems on the AInet. 2. v. To transfer a file using the File Transfer Program. "Lemme get this copy of Wuthering Heights FTP'd from SAIL." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FUDGE 1. v. To perform in an incomplete but marginally acceptable way, particularly with respect to the writing of a program. "I didn't feel like going through that pain and suffering, so I fudged it." 2. n. The resulting code. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% FUDGE FACTOR n. A value or parameter that is varied in an ad hoc way to produce the desired result. The terms "tolerance" and "slop" are also used, though these usually indicate a one-sided leeway, such as a buffer which is made larger than necessary because one isn't sure exactly how large it needs to be, and it is better to waste a little space than to lose completely for not having enough. A fudge factor, on the other hand, can often be tweaked in more than one direction. An example might be the coefficients of an equation, where the coefficients are varied in an attempt to make the equation fit certain criteria. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GABRIEL [for Dick Gabriel, SAIL volleyball fanatic] n. An unnecessary (in the opinion of the opponent) stalling tactic, e.g., tying one's shoelaces or hair repeatedly, asking the time, etc. Also used to refer to the perpetrator of such tactics. Also, "pulling a Gabriel", "Gabriel mode". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GARBAGE COLLECT v., GARBAGE COLLECTION n. See GC. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GARPLY n. (Stanford) Another meta-word popular among SAIL hackers. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GAS [as in "gas chamber"] interj. 1. A term of disgust and hatred, implying that gas should be dispensed in generous quantities, thereby exterminating the source of irritation. "Some loser just reloaded the system for no reason! Gas!" 2. A term suggesting that someone or something ought to be flushed out of mercy. "The system's wedging every few minutes. Gas!" 3. v. FLUSH (q.v.). "You should gas that old crufty software." 4. GASEOUS adj. Deserving of being gassed. Usage: primarily used by Geoff Goodfellow at SRI, but spreading; became particularly popular after the Moscone/Milk murders in San Francisco, when it was learned that Dan White (who supported Proposition 7) would get the gas chamber under 7 if convicted. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GC [from LISP terminology] 1. v. To clean up and throw away useless things. "I think I'll GC the top of my desk today." 2. To recycle, reclaim, or put to another use. 3. To forget. The implication is often that one has done so deliberately. 4. n. An instantiation of the GC process. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GEDANKEN [from Einstein's term "gedanken-experimenten", such as the standard proof that E=mc^2] adj. An AI project which is written up in grand detail without ever being implemented to any great extent. Usually perpetrated by people who aren't very good hackers or find programming distasteful or are just in a hurry. A gedanken thesis is usually marked by an obvious lack of intuition about what is programmable and what is not and about what does and does not constitute a clear specification of a program-related concept such as an algorithm. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GLASS TTY n. A terminal which has a display screen but which, because of hardware or software limitations, behaves like a teletype or other printing terminal. An example is the ADM-3 (without cursor control). A glass tty can't do neat display hacks, and you can't save the output either. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GLITCH [from the Yiddish "glitshen", to slide] 1. n. A sudden interruption in electric service, sanity, or program function. Sometimes recoverable. 2. v. To commit a glitch. See GRITCH. 3. v. (Stanford) To scroll a display screen. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GLORK 1. interj. Term of mild surprise, usually tinged with outrage, as when one attempts to save the results of two hours of editing and finds that the system has just crashed. 2. Used as a name for just about anything. See FOO. 3. v. Similar to GLITCH (q.v.), but usually used reflexively. "My program just glorked itself." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GOBBLE v. To consume or to obtain. GOBBLE UP tends to imply "consume", while GOBBLE DOWN tends to imply "obtain". "The output spy gobbles characters out of a TTY output buffer." "I guess I'll gobble down a copy of the documentation tomorrow." See SNARF. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GORP (CMU) [perhaps from the generic term for dried hiker's food, stemming from the acronym "Good Old Raisins and Peanuts"] Another metasyntactic variable, like FOO and BAR. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GRIND v. 1. (primarily MIT) To format code, especially LISP code, by indenting lines so that it looks pretty. Hence, PRETTY PRINT, the generic term for such operations. 2. To run seemingly interminably, performing some tedious and inherently useless task. Similar to CRUNCH. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GRITCH 1. n. A complaint (often caused by a GLITCH (q.v.)). 2. v. To complain. Often verb-doubled: "Gritch gritch". 3. Glitch. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GROK [from the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", by Robert Heinlein, where it is a Martian word meaning roughly "to be one with"] v. To understand, usually in a global sense. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GRONK [popularized by the cartoon strip "B.C." by Johnny Hart, but the word apparently predates that] v. 1. To clear the state of a wedged device and restart it. More severe than "to frob" (q.v.). 2. To break. "The teletype scanner was gronked, so we took the system down." 3. GRONKED: adj. Of people, the condition of feeling very tired or sick. 4. GRONK OUT: v. To cease functioning. Of people, to go home and go to sleep. "I guess I'll gronk out now; see you all tomorrow." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GROVEL v. To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often used with "over". "The compiler groveled over my code." Compare GRIND and CRUNCH. Emphatic form: GROVEL OBSCENELY. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GRUNGY adj. Incredibly dirty or grubby. Anything which has been washed within the last year is not really grungy. Also used metaphorically; hence some programs (especially crocks) can be described as grungy. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GUBBISH [a portmanteau of "garbage" and "rubbish"?] n. Garbage; crap; nonsense. "What is all this gubbish?" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% GUN [from the GUN command on ITS] v. To forcibly terminate a program or job (computer, not career). "Some idiot left a background process running soaking up half the cycles, so I gunned it." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HACK n. 1. Originally a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well. 2. The result of that job. 3. NEAT HACK: A clever technique. Also, a brilliant practical joke, where neatness is correlated with cleverness, harmlessness, and surprise value. Example: the Caltech Rose Bowl card display switch circa 1961. 4. REAL HACK: A crock (occasionally affectionate). v. 5. With "together", to throw something together so it will work. 6. To bear emotionally or physically. "I can't hack this heat!" 7. To work on something (typically a program). In specific sense: "What are you doing?" "I'm hacking TECO." In general sense: "What do you do around here?" "I hack TECO." (The former is time-immediate, the latter time-extended.) More generally, "I hack x" is roughly equivalent to "x is my bag". "I hack solid-state physics." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HACK n. (contd.) 8. To pull a prank on. See definition 3 and HACKER (def #6). 9. v.i. To waste time (as opposed to TOOL). "Watcha up to?" "Oh, just hacking." 10. HACK UP (ON): To hack, but generally implies that the result is meanings 1-2. 11. HACK VALUE: Term used as the reason or motivation for expending effort toward a seemingly useless goal, the point being that the accomplished goal is a hack. For example, MacLISP has code to read and print roman numerals, which was installed purely for hack value. HAPPY HACKING: A farewell. HOW'S HACKING?: A friendly greeting among hackers. HACK HACK: A somewhat pointless but friendly comment, often used as a temporary farewell. [The word HACK doesn't really have 69 different meanings. In fact, HACK has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation. Which connotation a given HACK-token has depends in similarly profound ways on the context. Similar comments apply to a couple other hacker jargon items, most notably RANDOM. - Agre] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HACKER [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] n. 1. A person who enjoys learning the details of programming systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically, or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value (q.v.). 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. Not everything a hacker produces is a hack. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; example: "A SAIL hacker". (Definitions 1 to 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. A malicious or inquisitive meddler who tries to discover information by poking around. Hence "password hacker", "network hacker". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HACKISH adj. Being or involving a hack. HACKISHNESS n. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HAIR n. The complications which make something hairy. "Decoding TECO commands requires a certain amount of hair." Often seen in the phrase INFINITE HAIR, which connotes extreme complexity. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HAIRY adj. 1. Overly complicated. "DWIM is incredibly hairy." 2. Incomprehensible. "DWIM is incredibly hairy." 3. Of people, high-powered, authoritative, rare, expert, and/or incomprehensible. Hard to explain except in context: "He knows this hairy lawyer who says there's nothing to worry about." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HAKMEM n. MIT AI Memo 239 (February 1972). A collection of neat mathematical and programming hacks contributed by many people at MIT and elsewhere. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HANDWAVE 1. v. To gloss over a complex point; to distract a listener; to support a (possibly actually valid) point with blatantly faulty logic. 2. n. The act of handwaving. "Boy, what a handwave!" The use of this word is often accompanied by gestures: both hands up, palms forward, swinging the hands in a vertical plane pivoting at the elbows and/or shoulders (depending on the magnitude of the handwave); alternatively, holding the forearms still while rotating the hands at the wrist to make them flutter. In context, the gestures alone can suffice as a remark. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HARDWARILY adv. In a way pertaining to hardware. "The system is hardwarily unreliable." The adjective "hardwary" is NOT used. See SOFTWARILY. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HELLO WALL See WALL. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HIRSUTE Occasionally used humorously as a synonym for HAIRY. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HOOK n. An extraneous piece of software or hardware included in order to simplify later additions or debug options. For instance, a program might execute a location that is normally a JFCL, but by changing the JFCL to a PUSHJ one can insert a debugging routine at that point. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HUMONGOUS, HUMUNGOUS See HUNGUS. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% HUNGUS (hung'-ghis) [perhaps related to current slang "humongous"; which one came first (if either) is unclear] adj. Large, unwieldy, usually unmanageable. "TCP is a hungus piece of code." "This is a hungus set of modifications." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% IMPCOM See TELNET. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% INFINITE adj. Consisting of a large number of objects; extreme. Used very loosely as in: "This program produces infinite garbage." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% IRP (erp) [from the MIDAS pseudo-op which generates a block of code repeatedly, substituting in various places the car and/or cdr of the list(s) supplied at the IRP] v. To perform a series of tasks repeatedly with a minor substitution each time through. "I guess I'll IRP over these homework papers so I can give them some random grade for this semester." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% JFCL (djif'kl or djafik'l) [based on the PDP-10 instruction that acts as a fast no-op] v. To cancel or annul something. "Why don't you jfcl that out?" [The licence plate on Geoff Goodfellow's BMW is JFCL.] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% JIFFY n. 1. Interval of CPU time, commonly 1/60 second or 1 millisecond. 2. Indeterminate time from a few seconds to forever. "I'll do it in a jiffy" means certainly not now and possibly never. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% JOCK n. Programmer who is characterized by large and somewhat brute force programs. The term is particularly well-suited for systems programmers. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% J. RANDOM See RANDOM. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% JRST (jerst) [based on the PDP-10 jump instruction] v. To suddenly change subjects. Usage: rather rare. "Jack be nimble, Jack be quick; Jack jrst over the candle stick." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% JSYS (jay'sis), pl. JSI (jay'sigh) [Jump to SYStem] See UUO. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% KLUGE (kloodj) alt. KLUDGE [from the German "kluge", clever] n. 1. A Rube Goldberg device in hardware or software. 2. A clever programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an efficient, if not clear, manner. Often used to repair bugs. Often verges on being a crock. 3. Something that works for the wrong reason. 4. v. To insert a kluge into a program. "I've kluged this routine to get around that weird bug, but there's probably a better way." Also KLUGE UP. 5. KLUGE AROUND: To avoid by inserting a kluge. 6. (WPI) A feature which is implemented in a RUDE manner. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LDB (lid'dib) [from the PDP-10 instruction set] v. To extract from the middle. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LIFE n. A cellular-automata game invented by John Horton Conway, and first introduced publicly by Martin Gardner (Scientific American, October 1970). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LINE FEED (standard ASCII terminology) 1. v. To feed the paper through a terminal by one line (in order to print on the next line). 2. n. The "character" which causes the terminal to perform this action. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LINE STARVE (MIT) Inverse of LINE FEED. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LOGICAL [from the technical term "logical device", wherein a physical device is referred to by an arbitrary name] adj. Understood to have a meaning not necessarily corresponding to reality. E.g., if a person who has long held a certain post (e.g., Les Earnest at SAIL) left and was replaced, the replacement would for a while be known as the "logical Les Earnest". The word VIRTUAL is also used. At SAIL, "logical" compass directions denote a coordinate system in which "logical north" is toward San Francisco, "logical west" is toward the ocean, etc., even though logical north varies between physical (true) north near SF and physical west near San Jose. (The best rule of thumb here is that El Camino Real by definition always runs logical north-and-south.) -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LOSE [from MIT jargon] v. 1. To fail. A program loses when it encounters an exceptional condition. 2. To be exceptionally unaesthetic. 3. Of people, to be obnoxious or unusually stupid (as opposed to ignorant). 4. DESERVE TO LOSE: v. Said of someone who willfully does the wrong thing; humorously, if one uses a feature known to be marginal. What is meant is that one deserves the consequences of one's losing actions. "Boy, anyone who tries to use MULTICS deserves to lose!" LOSE LOSE - a reply or comment on a situation. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LOSER n. An unexpectedly bad situation, program, programmer, or person. Especially "real loser". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LOSS n. Something which loses. WHAT A (MOBY) LOSS!: interjection. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LOSSAGE n. The result of a bug or malfunction. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LPT (lip'-it) n. Line printer, of course. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% LUSER See USER. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MACROTAPE n. An industry standard reel of tape, as opposed to a MICROTAPE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MAGIC adj. 1. As yet unexplained, or too complicated to explain. (Arthur C. Clarke once said that magic was as-yet-not-understood science.) "TTY echoing is controlled by a large number of magic bits." "This routine magically computes the parity of an eight-bit byte in three instructions." 2. (Stanford) A feature not generally publicized which allows something otherwise impossible, or a feature formerly in that category but now unveiled. Example: The keyboard commands which override the screen-hiding features. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MARGINAL adj. 1. Extremely small. "A marginal increase in core can decrease GC time drastically." 2. Of extremely small merit. "This proposed new feature seems rather marginal to me." 3. Of extremely small probability of winning. "The power supply was rather marginal anyway; no wonder it crapped out." 4. MARGINALLY: adv. Slightly. "The ravs here are only marginally better than at Small Eating Place." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MICROTAPE n. Occasionally used to mean a DECtape, as opposed to a MACROTAPE. This was the official DEC term for the stuff until someone consed up the word "DECtape". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MISFEATURE n. A feature which eventually screws someone, possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation which has evolved. It is not the same as a bug because fixing it involves a gross philosophical change to the structure of the system involved. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because a tradeoff was made whose parameters subsequently changed (possibly only in the judgment of the implementors). "Well, yeah, it's kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but we're stuck with it for now." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MOBY [seems to have been in use among model railroad fans years ago. Entered the world of AI with the Fabritek 256K moby memory of MIT-AI. Derived from Melville's "Moby Dick" (some say from "Moby Pickle").] 1. adj. Large, immense, or complex. "A moby frob." 2. n. The maximum address space of a machine, hence 3. n. 256K words, the size of a PDP-10 moby. (The maximum address space means the maximum normally addressable space, as opposed to the amount of physical memory a machine can have. Thus the MIT PDP-10s each have two mobies, usually referred to as the "low moby" (0-777777) and "high moby" (1000000-1777777), or as "moby 0" and "moby 1". MIT-AI has four mobies of address space: moby 2 is the PDP-6 memory, and moby 3 the PDP-11 interface.) In this sense "moby" is often used as a generic unit of either address space (18. bits' worth) or of memory (about a megabyte, or 9/8 megabyte (if one accounts for difference between 32.- and 36.-bit words), or 5/4 megacharacters). 4. A title of address (never of third-person reference), usually used to show admiration, respect, and/or friendliness to a competent hacker. "So, moby Knight, how's the CONS machine doing?" 5. adj. In backgammon, doubles on the dice, as in "moby sixes", "moby ones", etc. MOBY FOO, MOBY WIN, MOBY LOSS: standard emphatic forms. FOBY MOO: a spoonerism due to Greenblatt. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MODE n. A general state, usually used with an adjective describing the state. "No time to hack; I'm in thesis mode." Usage: in its jargon sense, MODE is most often said of people, though it is sometimes applied to programs and inanimate objects. "If you're on a TTY, E will switch to non-display mode." In particular, see DAY MODE, NIGHT MODE, and YOYO MODE; also COM MODE, TALK MODE, and GABRIEL MODE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MODULO prep. Except for. From mathematical terminology: one can consider saying that 4=22 "except for the 9's" (4=22 mod 9). "Well, LISP seems to work okay now, modulo that GC bug." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MOON n. 1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MUMBLAGE n. The topic of one's mumbling (see MUMBLE). "All that mumblage" is used like "all that stuff" when it is not quite clear what it is or how it works, or like "all that crap" when "mumble" is being used as an implicit replacement for obscenities. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MUMBLE interj. 1. Said when the correct response is either too complicated to enunciate or the speaker has not thought it out. Often prefaces a longer answer, or indicates a general reluctance to get into a big long discussion. "Well, mumble." 2. Sometimes used as an expression of disagreement. "I think we should buy it." "Mumble!" Common variant: MUMBLE FROTZ. 3. Yet another metasyntactic variable, like FOO. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MUNCH (often confused with "mung", q.v.) v. To transform information in a serial fashion, often requiring large amounts of computation. To trace down a data structure. Related to CRUNCH (q.v.), but connotes less pain. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MUNCHING SQUARES n. A display hack dating back to the PDP-1, which employs a trivial computation (involving XOR'ing of x-y display coordinates - see HAKMEM items 146-148) to produce an impressive display of moving, growing, and shrinking squares. The hack usually has a parameter (usually taken from toggle switches) which when well-chosen can produce amazing effects. Some of these, discovered recently on the LISP machine, have been christened MUNCHING TRIANGLES, MUNCHING W'S, and MUNCHING MAZES. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% MUNG (variant: MUNGE) [recursive acronym for Mung Until No Good] v. 1. To make changes to a file, often large-scale, usually irrevocable. Occasionally accidental. See BLT. 2. To destroy, usually accidentally, occasionally maliciously. The system only mungs things maliciously. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% N adj. 1. Some large and indeterminate number of objects; "There were N bugs in that crock!"; also used in its original sense of a variable name. 2. An arbitrarily large (and perhaps infinite) number. 3. A variable whose value is specified by the current context. "We'd like to order N wonton soups and a family dinner for N-1." 4. NTH: adj. The ordinal counterpart of N. "Now for the Nth and last time..." In the specific context "Nth-year grad student", N is generally assumed to be at least 4, and is usually 5 or more. See also 69. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% NIGHT MODE See PHASE (of people). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% NIL [from LISP terminology for "false"] No. Usage: used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the "-P" convention. See T. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% OBSCURE adj. Used in an exaggeration of its normal meaning, to imply a total lack of comprehensibility. "The reason for that last crash is obscure." "FIND's command syntax is obscure." MODERATELY OBSCURE implies that it could be figured out but probably isn't worth the trouble. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% OPEN n. Abbreviation for "open (or left) parenthesis", used when necessary to eliminate oral ambiguity. To read aloud the LISP form (DEFUN FOO (X) (PLUS X 1)) one might say: "Open def-fun foo, open eks close, open, plus ekx one, close close." See CLOSE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PARSE [from linguistic terminology] v. 1. To determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or other utterance (close to the standard English meaning). Example: "That was the one I saw you." "I can't parse that." 2. More generally, to understand or comprehend. "It's very simple; you just kretch the glims and then aos the zotz." "I can't parse that." 3. Of fish, to have to remove the bones yourself (usually at a Chinese restaurant). "I object to parsing fish" means "I don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced one is okay." A "parsed fish" has been deboned. There is some controversy over whether "unparsed" should mean "bony", or also mean "deboned". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PATCH 1. n. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually as a quick-and-dirty remedy to an existing bug or misfeature. A patch may or may not work, and may or may not eventually be incorporated permanently into the program. 2. v. To insert a patch into a piece of code. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PDL (piddle or puddle) [acronym for Push Down List] n. 1. A LIFO queue (stack); more loosely, any priority queue; even more loosely, any queue. A person's pdl is the set of things he has to do in the future. One speaks of the next project to be attacked as having risen to the top of the pdl. "I'm afraid I've got real work to do, so this'll have to be pushed way down on my pdl." See PUSH and POP. 2. Dave Lebling (PDL@DM). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PESSIMAL [Latin-based antonym for "optimal"] adj. Maximally bad. "This is a pessimal situation." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PESSIMIZING COMPILER n. A compiler that produces object code that is worse than the straightforward or obvious translation. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PHANTOM n. (Stanford) The SAIL equivalent of a DRAGON (q.v.). Typical phantoms include the accounting program, the news-wire monitor, and the lpt and xgp spoolers. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PHASE (of people) 1. n. The phase of one's waking-sleeping schedule with respect to the standard 24-hour cycle. This is a useful concept among people who often work at night according to no fixed schedule. It is not uncommon to change one's phase by as much as six hours/day on a regular basis. "What's your phase?" "I've been getting in about 8 PM lately, but I'm going to work around to the day schedule by Friday." A person who is roughly 12 hours out of phase is sometimes said to be in "night mode". (The term "day mode" is also used, but less frequently.) 2. CHANGE PHASE THE HARD WAY: To stay awake for a very long time in order to get into a different phase. 3. CHANGE PHASE THE EASY WAY: To stay asleep etc. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PHASE OF THE MOON n. Used humorously as a random parameter on which something is said to depend. Sometimes implies unreliability of whatever is dependent, or that reliability seems to be dependent on conditions nobody has been able to determine. "This feature depends on having the channel open in mumble mode, having the foo switch set, and on the phase of the moon." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PLUGH [from the Adventure game] v. See XYZZY. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% POM n. Phase of the moon (q.v.). Usage: usually used in the phrase "POM dependent" which means flakey (q.v.). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% POP [based on the stack operation that removes the top of a stack, and the fact that procedure return addresses are saved on the stack] dialect: POPJ (pop-jay), based on the PDP-10 procedure return instruction. v. To return from a digression. By verb doubling, "Popj, popj" means roughly, "Now let's see, where were we?" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PPN (pip'in) [DEC terminology, short for Project-Programmer Number] n. 1. A combination `project' (directory name) and programmer name, used to identify a specific directory belonging to that user. For instance, "FOO,BAR" would be the FOO directory for user BAR. Since the name is restricted to three letters, the programmer name is usually the person's initials, though sometimes it is a nickname or other special sequence. (Standard DEC setup is to have two octal numbers instead of characters; hence the original acronym.) 2. Often used loosely to refer to the programmer name alone. "I want to send you some mail; what's your ppn?" Usage: not used at MIT, since ITS does not use ppn's. The equivalent terms would be UNAME and SNAME, depending on context, but these are not used except in their technical senses. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PROTOCOL See DO PROTOCOL. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PSEUDOPRIME n. A backgammon prime (six consecutive occupied points) with one point missing. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PTY (pity) n. Pseudo TTY, a simulated TTY used to run a job under the supervision of another job. PTYJOB (pity-job) n. The job being run on the PTY. Also a common general-purpose program for creating and using PTYs. This is DEC and SAIL terminology; the MIT equivalent is STY. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PUNT [from the punch line of an old joke: "Drop back 15 yards and punt"] v. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% PUSH [based on the stack operation that puts the current information on a stack, and the fact that procedure call addresses are saved on the stack] dialect: PUSHJ (push-jay), based on the PDP-10 procedure call instruction. v. To enter upon a digression, to save the current discussion for later. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% QUES (kwess) 1. n. The question mark character ("?"). 2. interj. What? Also QUES QUES? See WALL. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% QUUX [invented by Steele. Mythically, from the Latin semi-deponent verb QUUXO, QUUXARE, QUUXANDUM IRI; noun form variously QUUX (plural QUUCES, Anglicized to QUUXES) and QUUXU (genitive plural is QUUXUUM, four U's in seven letters).] 1. Originally, a meta-word like FOO and FOOBAR. Invented by Guy Steele for precisely this purpose when he was young and naive and not yet interacting with the real computing community. Many people invent such words; this one seems simply to have been lucky enough to have spread a little. 2. interj. See FOO; however, denotes very little disgust, and is uttered mostly for the sake of the sound of it. 3. n. Refers to one of four people who went to Boston Latin School and eventually to MIT: THE GREAT QUUX: Guy L. Steele Jr. THE LESSER QUUX: David J. Littleboy THE MEDIOCRE QUUX: Alan P. Swide THE MICRO QUUX: Sam Lewis (This taxonomy is said to be similarly applied to three Frankston brothers at MIT.) QUUX, without qualification, usually refers to The Great Quux, who is somewhat infamous for light verse and for the "Crunchly" cartoons. 4. QUUXY: adj. Of or pertaining to a QUUX. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% RANDOM adj. 1. Unpredictable (closest to mathematical definition); weird. "The system's been behaving pretty randomly." 2. Assorted; undistinguished. "Who was at the conference?" "Just a bunch of random business types." 3. Frivolous; unproductive; undirected (pejorative). "He's just a random loser." 4. Incoherent or inelegant; not well organized. "The program has a random set of misfeatures." "That's a random name for that function." "Well, all the names were chosen pretty randomly." 5. Gratuitously wrong, i.e., poorly done and for no good apparent reason. For example, a program that handles file name defaulting in a particularly useless way, or a routine that could easily have been coded using only three ac's, but randomly uses seven for assorted non-overlapping purposes, so that no one else can invoke it without first saving four extra ac's. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% RANDOM adj. [cont.] 6. In no particular order, though deterministic. "The I/O channels are in a pool, and when a file is opened one is chosen randomly." n. 7. A random hacker; used particularly of high school students who soak up computer time and generally get in the way. 8. (occasional MIT usage) One who lives at Random Hall. J. RANDOM is often prefixed to a noun to make a "name" out of it (by comparison to common names such as "J. Fred Muggs"). The most common uses are "J. Random Loser" and "J. Random Nurd" ("Should J. Random Loser be allowed to gun down other people?"), but it can be used just as an elaborate version of RANDOM in any sense. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% RANDOMNESS n. An unexplainable misfeature; gratuitous inelegance. Also, a hack or crock which depends on a complex combination of coincidences (or rather, the combination upon which the crock depends). "This hack can output characters 40-57 by putting the character in the accumulator field of an XCT and then extracting 6 bits -- the low two bits of the XCT opcode are the right thing." "What randomness!" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% RAPE v. To (metaphorically) screw someone or something, violently. Usage: often used in describing file-system damage. "So-and-so was running a program that did absolute disk I/O and ended up raping the master directory." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% RAVE (WPI) v. 1. To persist in discussing a specific subject. 2. To speak authoritatively on a subject about which one knows very little. 3. To complain to a person who is not in a position to correct the difficulty. 4. To purposely annoy another person verbally. 5. To evangelize. See FLAME. Also used to describe a less negative form of blather, such as friendly bullshitting. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% REAL USER n. 1. A commercial user. One who is paying "real" money for his computer usage. 2. A non-hacker. Someone using the system for an explicit purpose (research project, course, etc.). See USER. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% REAL WORLD, THE n. 1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a deceased person. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% RECURSION n. See RECURSION, TAIL RECURSION. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% REL See BIN. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% RIGHT THING, THE n. That which is "obviously" the correct or appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc. Use of this term often implies that in fact reasonable people may disagree. "Never let your conscience keep you from doing the right thing!" "What's the right thing for LISP to do when it reads '(.)'?" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% RUDE (WPI) adj. 1. (of a program) Badly written. 2. Functionally poor, e.g. a program which is very difficult to use because of gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. See CUSPY. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SACRED adj. Reserved for the exclusive use of something (a metaphorical extension of the standard meaning). "Accumulator 7 is sacred to the UUO handler." Often means that anyone may look at the sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is sacred to. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SAGA (WPI) n. A cuspy but bogus raving story dealing with N random broken people. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SAV (save) See BIN. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SEMI 1. n. Abbreviation for "semicolon", when speaking. "Commands to GRIND are prefixed by semi-semi-star" means that the prefix is ";;*", not 1/4 of a star. 2. Prefix with words such as "immediately", as a qualifier. "When is the system coming up?" "Semi-immediately." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SERVER n. A kind of DAEMON which performs a service for the requester, which often runs on a computer other than the one on which the server runs. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SHIFT LEFT (RIGHT) LOGICAL [from any of various machines' instruction sets] 1. v. To move oneself to the left (right). To move out of the way. 2. imper. Get out of that (my) seat! Usage: often used without the "logical", or as "left shift" instead of "shift left". Sometimes heard as LSH (lish), from the PDP-10 instruction set. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SHR (share) See BIN. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SHRIEK See EXCL. (Occasional CMU usage.) -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% 69 adj. Large quantity. Usage: Exclusive to MIT-AI. "Go away, I have 69 things to do to DDT before worrying about fixing the bug in the phase of the moon output routine..." [Note: Actually, any number less than 100 but large enough to have no obvious magic properties will be recognized as a "large number". There is no denying that "69" is the local favorite. I don't know whether its origins are related to the obscene interpretation, but I do know that 69 decimal = 105 octal, and 69 hexadecimal = 105 decimal, which is a nice property. - GLS] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SLOP n. 1. A one-sided fudge factor (q.v.). Often introduced to avoid the possibility of a fencepost error (q.v.). 2. (used by compiler freaks) The ratio of code generated by a compiler to hand-compiled code, minus 1; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you lose because you didn't do it yourself. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SLURP v. To read a large data file entirely into core before working on it. "This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and does an FFT." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SMART adj. Said of a program that does the Right Thing (q.v.) in a wide variety of complicated circumstances. There is a difference between calling a program smart and calling it intelligent; in particular, there do not exist any intelligent programs. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SMOKING CLOVER n. A psychedelic color munch due to Gosper. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SMOP [Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming] n. A piece of code, not yet written, whose anticipated length is significantly greater than its complexity. Usage: used to refer to a program that could obviously be written, but is not worth the trouble. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SNARF v. To grab, esp. a large document or file for the purpose of using it either with or without the author's permission. See BLT. Variant: SNARF (IT) DOWN. (At MIT on ITS, DDT has a command called :SNARF which grabs a job from another (inferior) DDT.) -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SOFTWARE ROT n. Hypothetical disease the existence of which has been deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if "nothing has changed". Also known as "bit decay". -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SOFTWARILY adv. In a way pertaining to software. "The system is softwarily unreliable." The adjective "softwary" is NOT used. See HARDWARILY. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SOS 1. (ess-oh-ess) n. A losing editor, SON OF STOPGAP. 2. (sahss) v. Inverse of AOS, from the PDP-10 instruction set. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SPAZZ 1. v. To behave spastically or erratically; more often, to commit a single gross error. "Boy, is he spazzing!" 2. n. One who spazzes. "Boy, what a spazz!" 3. n. The result of spazzing. "Boy, what a spazz!" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SPLAT n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the ASCII star ("*") character. 2. (MIT) Name used by some people for the ASCII pound-sign ("#") character. 3. (Stanford) Name used by some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII circle-x character. (This character is also called "circle-x", "blobby", and "frob", among other names.) 4. (Stanford) Name for the semi-mythical extended ASCII circle-plus character. 5. Canonical name for an output routine that outputs whatever the the local interpretation of splat is. Usage: nobody really agrees what character "splat" is, but the term is common. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SUPDUP v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using the SUPDUP program, which is a SUPer-DUPer TELNET talking a special display protocol used mostly in talking to ITS sites. Sometimes abbreviated to SD. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% STATE n. Condition, situation. "What's the state of NEWIO?" "It's winning away." "What's your state?" "I'm about to gronk out." As a special case, "What's the state of the world?" (or, more silly, "State-of-world-P?") means "What's new?" or "What's going on?" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% STOPPAGE n. Extreme lossage (see LOSSAGE) resulting in something (usually vital) becoming completely unusable. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% STY (pronounced "sty", not spelled out) n. A pseudo-teletype, which is a two-way pipeline with a job on one end and a fake keyboard-tty on the other. Also, a standard program which provides a pipeline from its controlling tty to a pseudo-teletype (and thence to another tty, thereby providing a "sub-tty"). This is MIT terminology; the SAIL and DEC equivalent is PTY. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SUPERPROGRAMMER n. See "wizard", "hacker". Usage: rare. (Becoming more common among IBM and Yourdon types.) -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SWAPPED adj. From the use of secondary storage devices to implement virtual memory in computer systems. Something which is SWAPPED IN is available for immediate use in main memory, and otherwise is SWAPPED OUT. Often used metaphorically to refer to people's memories ("I read TECO ORDER every few months to keep the information swapped in.") or to their own availability ("I'll swap you in as soon as I finish looking at this other problem."). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% SYSTEM n. 1. The supervisor program on the computer. 2. Any large-scale program. 3. Any method or algorithm. 4. The way things are usually done. Usage: a fairly ambiguous word. "You can't beat the system." SYSTEM HACKER: one who hacks the system (in sense 1 only; for sense 2 one mentions the particular program: e.g., LISP HACKER) -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% T [from LISP terminology for "true"] 1. Yes. Usage: used in reply to a question, particularly one asked using the "-P" convention). See NIL. 2. See TIME T. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TAIL RECURSION n. See TAIL RECURSION. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TALK MODE See COM MODE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TASTE n. (primarily MIT-DMS) The quality in programs which tends to be inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and kluges programmed into it. Also, TASTY, TASTEFUL, TASTEFULNESS. "This feature comes in N tasty flavors." Although TASTEFUL and FLAVORFUL are essentially synonyms, TASTE and FLAVOR are not. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TECO (tee'koe) [acronym for Text Editor and COrrector] 1. n. A text editor developed at MIT, and modified by just about everybody. If all the dialects are included, TECO might well be the single most prolific editor in use. Noted for its powerful pseudo-programming features and its incredibly hairy syntax. 2. v. To edit using the TECO editor in one of its infinite forms; sometimes used to mean "to edit" even when not using TECO! Usage: rare at SAIL, where most people wouldn't touch TECO with a TENEX pole. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TECO (tee'koe) [cont.] [acronym for Text Editor and COrrector] [Historical note: DEC grabbed an ancient version of MIT TECO many years ago when it was still a TTY-oriented editor. By now, TECO at MIT is highly display-oriented and is actually a language for writing editors, rather than an editor. Meanwhile, the outside world's various versions of TECO remain almost the same as the MIT version of ten years ago. DEC recently tried to discourage its use, but an underground movement of sorts kept it alive.] [Since this note was written I found out that DEC tried to force their hackers by administrative decision to use a hacked up and generally lobotomized version of SOS instead of TECO, and they revolted. - MRC] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TELNET v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using the TELNET program. TOPS-10 people use the word IMPCOM since that is the program name for them. Sometimes abbreviated to TN. "I usually TN over to SAIL just to read the AP News." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TENSE adj. Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of code often got that way because it was highly bummed, but sometimes it was just based on a great idea. A comment in a clever display routine by Mike Kazar: "This routine is so tense it will bring tears to your eyes. Much thanks to Craig Everhart and James Gosling for inspiring this hack attack." A tense programmer is one who produces tense code. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TERPRI (tur'pree) [from the LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP) function to start a new line of output] v. To output a CRLF (q.v.). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% THEORY n. Used in the general sense of idea, plan, story, or set of rules. "What's the theory on fixing this TECO loss?" "What's the theory on dinner tonight?" ("Chinatown, I guess.") "What's the current theory on letting losers on during the day?" "The theory behind this change is to fix the following well-known screw..." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% THRASH v. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful. Swapping systems which are overloaded waste most of their time moving pages into and out of core (rather than performing useful computation), and are therefore said to thrash. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TICK n. 1. Interval of time; basic clock time on the computer. Typically 1/60 second. See JIFFY. 2. In simulations, the discrete unit of time that passes "between" iterations of the simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this amount of time is often left unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is that caused things happen after their causes. This sort of AI simulation is often pejoratively referred to as "tick-tick-tick" simulation, especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long, independent chains of causes is handwaved. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TIME T n. 1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often used in conjunction with a later time T+1. "We'll meet on campus at time T or at Louie's at time T+1." 2. SINCE (OR AT) TIME T EQUALS MINUS INFINITY: A long time ago; for as long as anyone can remember; at the time that some particular frob was first designed. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TOOL v.i. To work; to study. See HACK (def #9). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TRAP 1. n. A program interrupt, usually used specifically to refer to an interrupt caused by some illegal action taking place in the user program. In most cases the system monitor performs some action related to the nature of the illegality, then returns control to the program. See UUO. 2. v. To cause a trap. "These instructions trap to the monitor." Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap. "The monitor traps all input/output instructions." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TTY (titty) n. Terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a noisy mechanical printer, a very limited character set, and poor print quality. Usage: antiquated (like the TTY's themselves). Sometimes used to refer to any terminal at all; sometimes used to refer to the particular terminal controlling a job. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TWEAK v. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value. Also used synonymously with TWIDDLE. See FROBNICATE and FUDGE FACTOR. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TWENEX n. The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC. So named because TOPS-10 was a typically crufty DEC operating system for the PDP-10. BBN developed their own system, called TENEX (TEN EXecutive), and in creating TOPS-20 for the DEC-20 DEC copied TENEX and adapted it for the 20. Usage: DEC people cringe when they hear TOPS-20 referred to as "Twenex", but the term seems to be catching on nevertheless. Release 3 of TOPS-20 is sufficiently different from release 1 that some (not all) hackers have stopped calling it TWENEX, though the written abbreviation "20x" is still used. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% TWIDDLE n. 1. tilde (ASCII 176, "~"). Also called "squiggle", "sqiggle" (sic -- pronounced "skig'gul"), and "twaddle", but twiddle is by far the most common term. 2. A small and insignificant change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and generates several new ones. 3. v. To change something in a small way. Bits, for example, are often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or knob implies much less sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking it; see FROBNICATE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% UP adj. 1. Working, in order. "The down escalator is up." 2. BRING UP: v. To create a working version and start it. "They brought up a down system." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% USER n. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who asks questions. Identified at MIT with "loser" by the spelling "luser". See REAL USER. [Note by GLS: I don't agree with RF's definition at all. Basically, there are two classes of people who work with a program: there are implementors (hackers) and users (losers). The users are looked down on by hackers to a mild degree because they don't understand the full ramifications of the system in all its glory. (A few users who do are known as real winners.) It is true that users ask questions (of necessity). Very often they are annoying or downright stupid.] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% UUO (you-you-oh) [short for "Un-Used Operation"] n. A DEC-10 system monitor call. The term "Un-Used Operation" comes from the fact that, on DEC-10 systems, monitor calls are implemented as invalid or illegal machine instructions, which cause traps to the monitor (see TRAP). The SAIL manual describing the available UUO's has a cover picture showing an unidentified underwater object. See YOYO. [Note: DEC sales people have since decided that "Un-Used Operation" sounds bad, so UUO now stands for "Unimplemented User Operation".] Tenex and Twenex systems use the JSYS machine instruction (q.v.), which is halfway between a legal machine instruction and a UUO, since KA-10 Tenices implement it as a hardware instruction which can be used as an ordinary subroutine call (sort of a "pure JSR"). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% VANILLA adj. Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of food, very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla extract! For example, "vanilla-flavored wonton soup" means ordinary wonton soup, as opposed to hot and sour wonton soup. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% VAXEN [from "oxen", perhaps influenced by "vixen"] n. pl. The plural of VAX (a DEC machine). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% VIRGIN adj. Unused, in reference to an instantiation of a program. "Let's bring up a virgin system and see if it crashes again." Also, by extension, unused buffers and the like within a program. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% VIRTUAL adj. 1. Common alternative to LOGICAL (q.v.), but never used with compass directions. 2. Performing the functions of. Virtual memory acts like real memory but isn't. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% VISIONARY n. One who hacks vision (in an AI context, such as the processing of visual images). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WALDO [probably taken from the story "Waldo", by Heinlein, which is where the term was first used to mean a mechanical adjunct to a human limb] Used at Harvard, particularly by Tom Cheatham and students, instead of FOOBAR as a meta-syntactic variable and general nonsense word. See FOO, BAR, FOOBAR, QUUX. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WALL [shortened form of HELLO WALL, apparently from the phrase "up against a blank wall"] (WPI) interj. 1. An indication of confusion, usually spoken with a quizzical tone. "Wall??" 2. A request for further explication. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WALLPAPER n. A file containing a listing (e.g., assembly listing) or transcript, esp. a file containing a transcript of all or part of a login session. (The idea was that the LPT paper for such listings was essentially good only for wallpaper, as evidenced at SAIL where it was used as such to cover windows.) Usage: not often used now, esp. since other systems have developed other terms for it (e.g., PHOTO on TWENEX). The term possibly originated on ITS, where the commands to begin and end transcript files are still :WALBEG and :WALEND, with default file DSK:WALL PAPER. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WATERBOTTLE SOCCER n. A deadly sport practiced mainly by Sussman's graduate students. It, along with chair bowling, is the most evident manifestation of the "locker room atmosphere" said to reign in that sphere. (Sussman doesn't approve.) [As of 11/82, it's reported that the sport has given way to a new game called "disc-boot", and Sussman even participates occasionally.] -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WEDGED [from "head wedged up ass"] adj. To be in a locked state, incapable of proceeding without help. (See GRONK.) Often refers to humans suffering misconceptions. "The swapper is wedged." This term is sometimes used as a synonym for DEADLOCKED (q.v.). -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WHAT n. The question mark character ("?"). See QUES. Usage: rare, used particularly in conjunction with WOW. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WHEEL n. 1. A privilege bit that canonically allows the possessor to perform any operation on a timesharing system, such as read or write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or or look at any address in the running monitor, crash or reload the system, and kill/create jobs and user accounts. The term was invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to TOPS-20, Xerox-IFS and others. 2. A person who posses a wheel bit. "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WHEEL WARS [from LOTS at Stanford University] A period during which student wheels hack each other by attempting to log each other out of the system, delete each other's files, or otherwise wreak havoc, usually at the expense of the lesser users. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WIN [from MIT jargon] 1. v. To succeed. A program wins if no unexpected conditions arise. 2. BIG WIN: n. Serendipity. Emphatic forms: MOBY WIN, SUPER WIN, HYPER-WIN (often used interjectively as a reply). For some reason SUITABLE WIN is also common at MIT, usually in reference to a satisfactory solution to a problem. See LOSE. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WINNAGE n. The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when something is winning. Quite rare. Usage: also quite rare. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WINNER 1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer or person. 2. REAL WINNER: Often sarcastic, but also used as high praise. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WINNITUDE n. The quality of winning (as opposed to WINNAGE, which is the result of winning). "That's really great! Boy, what winnitude!" -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WIZARD n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or hardware works; someone who can find and fix his bugs in an emergency. Rarely used at MIT, where HACKER is the preferred term. 2. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary people, e.g., a "net wizard" on a TENEX may run programs which speak low-level host-imp protocol; an ADVENT wizard at SAIL may play Adventure during the day. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WORMHOLE n. A location in a monitor which contains the address of a routine, with the specific intent of making it easy to substitute a different routine. The following quote comes from "Polymorphic Systems", vol. 2, p. 54: "Any type of I/O device can be substituted for the standard device by loading a simple driver routine for that device and installing its address in one of the monitor's `wormholes.'* ---------- *The term `wormhole' has been used to describe a hypothetical astronomical situation where a black hole connects to the `other side' of the universe. When this happens, information can pass through the wormhole, in only one direction, much as `assumptions' pass down the monitor's wormholes." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% WOW See EXCL. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% XGP 1. n. Xerox Graphics Printer. 2. v. To print something on the XGP. "You shouldn't XGP such a large file." -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% XYZZY [from the Adventure game] adj. See PLUGH. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% YOYO n. DEC service engineers' slang for UUO (q.v.). Usage: rare at Stanford and MIT, has been found at random DEC installations. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% YOYO MODE n. State in which the system is said to be when it rapidly alternates several times between being up and being down. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% YU-SHIANG WHOLE FISH n. The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 11), which with a loop in its tail looks like a fish. Usage: used primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine. Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %% ZERO v. 1. To set to zero. Usually said of small pieces of data, such as bits or words. 2. To erase; to discard all data from. Said of disks and directories, where "zeroing" need not involve actually writing zeroes throughout the area being zeroed. -- From the AI Hackers' Dictionary %%  %% A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose. %% A bird in the hand might. %% A committee is an animal with a hundred stomachs and no brains. %% A friend asks only for your time, not your money. %% A little virtue will never hurt you. -- Piet Hein %% A member of your family will soon do something that will make you proud. %% A virtuous life is its own punishment. %% Age before beauty; and pearls before swine. -- Dorothy Parker %% Ain't no horse can't be rode; ain't no cowboy can't be throwed. %% Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away. %% An abstract term is like a valise with a false bottom, you may put in it what ideas you please, and take them out again, without being observed. %% Anything is impossible, if you don't attempt it. %% Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well. -- G. Bell %% Art is anything you can get away with. -- Marshall McLuhan %% Art is your fate; don't debate. %% As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of demand. %% Be tactful; overlook not your own opportunity. %% Beware of quantum ducks: Quark, Quark. %% Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. -- Poor Richard %% Business is like oil, it won't mix with anything but business. %% Chicken Little only has to be right once. %% Common sense is very uncommon. %% Contact with a friend may provide some unexpected income advantages. %% Don't believe in miracles, expect them. %% Don't look back, always look ahead. %% Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other. And scarce in that. -- Poor Richard %% Fish and visitors stink in three days. -- Poor Richard %% Fools make feasts and wise men eat them. -- Poor Richard %% For success today, look first to yourself. %% Friendship is one soul in two bodies. %% Go not to the elves for advice, for they will say both yes and no. -- Tolkien %% God heals and the doctor takes the fee. -- Poor Richard %% God is REAL (unless declared INTEGER). %% Handle all business ventures with discretion so you do not end up a loser. %% He likes to flirt, but toward you his intentions are honorable. %% He that falls in love with himself, will have no rivals. -- Poor Richard %% He that will not command his thoughts will soon lose the command of his actions. %% He who invents adages for others to peruse takes along a rowboat when going on a cruise. %% He who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of winners. %% Help fight continental drift. %% History always repeats itself: once as tragedy, the second time as farce. %% Hunger never saw bad bread. -- Poor Richard %% I like work; it fascinates me; I can watch it for hours. %% Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like solitary confinement. %% If a town has one lawyer, he starves; if it has two lawyers, they both get rich. %% If one word does not succeed, ten thousand are of no avail. %% If we weren't supposed to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three to a can. %% If you believe in gambling, in the end you will sell your house. %% If you eat a live toad every morning, nothing worse will happen to you all day. %% If your desires are not extravagant they will be granted. %% Imagination is more important than knowledge. %% In jealousy there is more self-love than love. %% In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim at top. -- Poor Richard %% In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is insane. %% Integrity is praised, and starves. %% It is better to have flunked your Wassermann test than never to have loved at all. %% It is commonly not your practice to make up your mind until the very last minute. %% It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it. %% It is unwise to trust those you do not know well. %% It's easy to make decisions if you ignore the facts. %% Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards. -- Poor Richard %% Learn of the skillful: he that teaches himself hath a fool for a master. -- Poor Richard %% Love, cough, and a smoke, can't be well hid. -- Poor Richard %% Make this evening a memorable one. %% Men do not mind a bust in the mouth if provided by beautiful voluptuous lady! %% Mother is the invention of necessity. %% Neither the poor nor the rich may sleep under bridges or beg in the streets. %% Never do anything twice that you don't have to do at all. %% New financial propositions may be offered at the turn of the year. %% Night falls when the street lights turn on. Swedish Law. %% No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach. %% One peek is worth a thousand finesses. %% People will laugh at you, but let not that prevent you. %% Please all, and you will please none. %% Please follow more cautiously Life's Golden Rule. %% Premature withdrawal may lead to loss of interest. %% Pride dines upon Vanity, sups on Contempt. -- Poor Richard %% Pride invites calamity; humility reaps its harvest. %% Revenge is a dish best eaten cold. %% Seek companionship, love and social activity at home. %% Seek domestic happiness and faithful friends. %% Sex is nothing but Love misunderstood. %% She that paints her face thinks of her tail. -- Poor Richard %% Simplicity and clarity should be your theme in dress. %% Stop day dreaming about success. Go out and obtain it. %% Stupidity is not an impeachable offense. %% Take advantage of the pleasurable opportunities that come your way. %% The actions of your companion or close allies will help you to make an important decision. %% The brave man is known only in war; the wise man in anger; the friend in time of need. %% The early bird gets the early worm. %% The fish that escaped is the big one. %% The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature. -- B. Franklin %% The information in this cookie is subject to change without notice and should not be construed as a commitment by Digital Equipment Corporation. %% The interesting thing about a waltzing bear is not how well it dances. %% The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful. -- Mark Twain %% The moving finger writhes and, having writhed, moves on. %% The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false. %% The next dreadful thing to a battle lost is a battle won. %% The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. %% The rich get richer; the poor get babies. %% The time is right to pursue your endeavors. %% The value of knowledge lies not in its accumulation, but in its utilization. %% The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise. -- Poor Richard %% There are no ugly loves, nor handsome prisons. -- Poor Richard %% There is many a good man to be found under a shabby hat. %% There is no vaccine against stupidity. %% There will always be some delightful mysteries in your life. %% Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach, teach teachers. %% To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. %% To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it. %% Today is a good day to bribe a high ranking public official. %% Traveler, there is no path, paths are made by walking. %% Vodka is the best way to cook potatoes. You get all the flavor of the potato and don't even have to put in your false teeth. -- Albert Engstrom %% Valuable insights and your persuasive ability achieve results. %% Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it. -- Poor Richard %% Wed in haste, repent in leisure. %% When there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage. -- Poor Richard %% Who knows a fool, must know his brother; for one will recommend another. -- Poor Richard %% Wisdom and good sense guard life from harm. %% With a mind like yours, who needs a body. %% Without health you cannot enjoy wealth or happiness. %% Woman was God's second mistake. -- Nietzsche %% You are a general favorite among your many friends. %% You are a person of firm, yet honest intentions. %% You are an individual interested in forward thrust and the future. %% You are broad minded and socially active. %% You are careful and systematic in your business arrangements. %% You are clever, alert, and intellectual. %% You are faithful to duty, adaptable to environment, loyal to friends. %% You are fixed in your opinions and will not be easily moved from your purpose. %% You are generous and always think of the other fellow. %% You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. %% You are interested in higher education whether material or spiritual. %% You are never selfish with your advice or your help. %% You are next in line for promotion in your firm. %% You are the center of every group's attention. %% You are versatile, energetic, artistic and good-natured. %% You are witty and fond of fun. %% You attempt things that you do not even plan because of your extreme stupidity. %% You can get more things done with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone. -- Al Capone %% You have a deep interest in all that is artistic. %% You have a yearning for perfection. %% You have an unusual magnetic personality. %% You have no real enemies. %% You have the attitude of a winner. %% You like participating in competitive sports. %% You may attend a party where strange customs prevail. %% You may be conservative, cautious and practical. %% You may give a man an office, but you cannot give him discretion. -- Poor Richard %% You must be patient for a little while. %% You understand human nature and sympathize with its weakness. %% You will always get what you want through your charm and personality. %% You will always have good luck in your personal affairs. %% You will be a great success both in the business world and society. %% You will be a guest at a happy party that'll have important consequences for you. %% You will be made happy by receipt of good news. %% You will be proud in manner but tolerant and generous. %% You will be successful in your work. %% You will be unusually successful in business. %% You will engage in a profitable friendship. %% You will enjoy the high praise of solving a problem of long standing. %% You will have many friends when you use a corkscrew. %% You will marry your present lover and be happy. %% You will receive a present, over which you will shed tears of joy. %% You will secure the greatest degree of happiness if you marry young. %% You will soon take that long awaited vacation. %% You will visit some faraway land that has long been in your waking thoughts. %% Your are the guiding star of his existence. %% Your first impressions of people are best. %% Your help will be needed in an embarrassing situation. %% Your long forgotten kindness to someone will bring a substantial sum of money. %% Your next acquaintance will be the right one. %% Your own qualities will help prevent your advancement in the world. %% Your place in the path of life is in the driver's seat. %% Your reasoning powers are good, and you are a fairly good planner. %%  %% A waste is a terrible thing to mind. -- Custodians of Love Canal %% "There's another dead bishop on the landing." "Really? What diocese?" %% %DECSYSTEM-20 FALL DOWN, GO BOOM %% %DECSYSTEM-20 MAKE A BOO-BOO %% %DECSYSTEM-20 NOT RUNNING %% %SCHEDP: Overloaded. Please throw yourself on your sword. %% A Puritan is someone who is deathly afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun. %% A bore is someone who talks so much about himself that you can't talk about yourself. %% A closed mouth gathers no foot. %% A cloud cannot cast a shadow unless the sun is shining behind it. %% A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain. %% A diplomat is someone who always remembers your birthday but never remembers your age. %% A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip. %% A fool must now and then be right by chance. %% A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. %% A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. -- Emerson %% A good day to make someone want to leave New York in a dreadful hurry. %% A good day to run amok. %% A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself. %% A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. %% A life spent in search of the perfect hash brownie is a life well spent. %% A little of what you fancy does you good. %% A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless. All a woman has to do is put you on hold. %% A man is broken when he has lost his zest for bitterness. %% A man should live forever, or die trying. %% A man's home may seem to be his castle on the outside; inside it is more often his nursery. %% A person who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal. %% A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep. %% A real lady never asks, "Was *what* good for me?" %% A record of data is essential: it shows you were working. %% A rolling stone gathers momentum. %% A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam. %% A thing of Beauty is a Joy forever. -- Keats %% A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous. %% A woman's place is in the house. And the senate. %% Above all, beware of Zeal! %% Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great. %% According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless. %% Acid absorbs 47 times its weight in excess reality. %% Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing. %% Add in some more bells and whistles. %% Add in some more bugs. %% Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill. %% Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese. %% All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance. %% All absolute pronouncements are incorrect. %% All guns are loaded. %% All kings is mostly rapscallions. -- Twain %% All scientific discoveries are first recorded on napkins or tablecloths. Engineering advances are drawn inside matchbook covers. Keep supplies of them handy at all times. %% Aloha. %% Always be nice to receptionists and secretaries. %% Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid back. %% Always cut the cards. %% Always leave room, when writing a report, to add an explanation if it doesn't work. %% Always remember some people are more human than others. %% Always tip well. %% An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose. -- A. P. Herbert %% An erudite fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool. %% An ounce of vanity can ruin a ton of merit. %% Anananay: what happens when you start spelling "banana" and don't stop. %% Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no government at all. %% And now for something completely different. %% And so we plow along, as the fly said to the ox. %% And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. %% And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. %% Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree. %% Answer just what your heart prompts you. %% Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is probably parked. %% Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat. %% Anyone who hates children and dogs can't be all bad. -- W. C. Fields %% Anything that happens enough times to irritate you will happen at least once more. %% Are you a good witch or a bad witch? %% Are you the same person you were ten years ago? twenty? %% Are you wearing clean underwear? %% Are you wearing underwear? %% Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. -- Twyla Tharp %% As of today, LISP will be flushed in favor of COBOL. Please update your programs. %% Ask a wizard for help. %% Ask of friends only what is honorable. -- Cicero %% Ask the person next to you. %% Astrology is a crock. Fortune cookies, on the other hand, are usually right. %% Avoid any enterprise which will require new clothes. %% Avoid emus for the rest of the week. %% Avoid insincere people. %% Avoid penguins. %% Avoid reality at all costs. %% Avoid the Mu Shu Pork. %% Avoid the chicken salad. %% Back off, hair ball. %% Back when I was a boy, it was 40 miles to everywhere and it was always snowing. %% Badges? We don' need no stinkin' badges! %% Badness comes in waves. %% Be alert: we need all the lerts we can get. %% Be careful whilst playing under the anvil tree. %% Be incredibly nice to someone today. %% Be incredibly nice to someone tomorrow. %% Be more sympathetic. %% Be nice to someone. %% Be where you are, and go where you're going. %% Beam me out of here, Scotty; I appear to be trapped in a computer. %% Beauty is the answer. %% Because it's nicer to be with someone than it is not to be with someone. %% Best to leave town until this blows over. %% Better go home and work on that application for transfer. %% Better luck next time. %% Beware of short waiters. %% Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic. %% Blank paper is God's way of saying it's not so easy to be God. %% Bop ba-ba loo bop a bim bam boom! %% Bricka bracka firecracka sis boom ba Bugs Bunny, Bugs Bunny rah rah rah! %% Brought to you by the Ad Council. Wasting your time for no good reason. %% Brought to you by the people who made out of context a household word... %% Brush your teeth regularly; dental hygiene is important. %% Buena Suerte! %% But look at the TEETH, man! %% By definition, when you are investigating the unknown, you do not know what you will find or even when you have found it. %% By removing goodness from power, one both makes goodness powerless and allows power to be evil. %% Call for lawyers, guns, and money. %% Call somebody! %% Cash in must exceed cash out. %% Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch. %% Change the words into truth, and then change that truth into love. -- Stevie Wonder %% Character breeds power, particularly in hours of crisis. %% Charity: a thing that begins at home and usually stays there. %% Chaste makes waste. %% Check the position of all switches, knobs, and dials before turning on a piece of equipment. Both you and the equipment will live longer. %% Chocolate is the answer. %% Churchill's Commentary on Man: Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. %% Cigarette: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in between. %% Clean mind, clean body: take your pick. %% Clean your glasses. %% Climate is what we expect. Weather is what we get. -- Lazarus Long %% Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain %% Coito ergo sum. %% Comb your hair. %% Come, Watson, the game is afoot. %% Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation. %% Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are. %% Computers just want to have fun. %% Confucius say too much. -- Recent Chinese Proverb %% Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good. %% Conservative: One who admires radicals centuries after they're dead. -- Leo C. Rosten %% Copulation is spiritual in essence. %% DFWS! %% Dammit, Jim, I'm a computer, not a fortune-teller! %% Dance that funky stuff. %% Dare to give true advice with all frankness. -- Cicero %% De gustibus non disputandum est. There's no accounting for taste. %% Deal with it. %% Dear Lord, give me chastity and self-restraint...but not yet, O Lord, not yet! -- St. Augustine %% Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired. -- R. Geis %% Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down. %% Death: to stop sinning suddenly. %% Delete everything and start over. %% Democracy can withstand anything but democrats. %% Develop your own set of cliches. -- Fripp %% Did you hear that two rabbits escaped from the zoo and so far they have only recaptured 116 of them? %% Divest! %% Do for friends only what is honorable and without even waiting to be asked. -- Cicero %% Do not be defined by your possessions. %% Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight. %% Do that hand jive. %% Do the best you can. %% Do the things which you will be proud to remember when you are old. %% Do what I mean, not what I say! %% Do what comes naturally now. Seethe, fume, and throw a tantrum. %% Do you think your father and I should have lived comfortably so long together if ever we had been married? %% Does anyone really know what time it is? Does anyone really care? %% Doing easily what others find difficult is talent; doing what is impossible for talent is genius. %% Don't Panic! %% Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted. %% Don't be so ambitious. %% Don't be so negative. %% Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say. %% Don't blame me: computers just want to have fun. %% Don't cry out loud. %% Don't do it, unless you think you're in love. %% Don't do the crime if you can't do the time. %% Don't dream it, be it. %% Don't feed the bats tonight. %% Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today. %% Don't lock the barn after it is stolen. %% Don't look now, but there is a multi-legged creature on your shoulder. %% Don't play the fool. %% Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow. %% Don't smoke the next cigarette. Repeat. %% Don't start smoking. %% Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective. %% Don't tread on me. %% Don't try to look innocent. %% Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them. %% Don't worry. %% Don't you wish you were where you were when you were wishing you were here? %% Doubt is a not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one. -- Voltaire %% Draft beer, not people. %% Drink more beer. %% Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends. %% Ease off, iguana breath. %% Eat more chocolate. %% Eat more ice cream. %% Eat teflon, Ivan! %% Eh... what's up, Doc? %% Elevators smell different to midgets. %% Eschew surplusage. %% Every solution breeds new problems. %% Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. %% Everything else you grow out of, but you never recover from childhood. %% Everything not forbidden is compulsory. %% Everything takes longer than you think. %% Everything will go wrong at one time, and that time is always when you least expect it. %% Everytime I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens. -- Lillian Carter %% Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike office water cooler. %% Excellent time to become a missing person. %% Exercise more. %% Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. %% Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so. -- Lazarus Long %% Familiarity breeds attempt. %% Fate keeps on happening. %% Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can. %% Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy. %% First Law of frisbees: Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!" %% First draw your curves, then plot your data. %% Flame on! %% For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been!" %% Forget her. %% Forget him. %% Forget that loser. %% Forget that schmuck. %% Forgiveness is the answer. %% Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. -- John Diefenbaker %% Freedom means choosing your burden. %% Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. %% Friends: people who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them. %% Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. %% G'day, mate. %% G'day. %% Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why you should. %% Genius is the capacity of evading hard work. %% Get happy! %% Get involved! %% Get modern! %% Get the Mu Shu Pork. %% Get thee to a nunnery, go! %% Get up and dance. %% Girls just want to have fun. %% Girls mean well. Try to understand. %% Give her a call, she'd like to see you. %% Give him a call, he'd like to see you. %% Give it another chance. %% Give me EMACS or give me OMEGA! %% Give someone a hug today. %% Give up for now. %% Give yourself over to absolute pleasure. %% Given the most inappropriate time for something to go wrong, that's when it will occur. %% Go away for a few minutes, then come back. It might work then. %% Go for it. %% Go for the gusto. %% Go get a broadway shake. %% Go have a power breakfast with someone. %% Go have some chocolate! %% Go home and come back in a little while. %% Go home and stare at the ceiling. %% Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may be in owning a piece thereof. %% Go to sleep. You're a mess. %% God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends. %% God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference. %% Godzilla has been spotted in sector 5! %% Good day, eh? %% Good luck! %% Good taste is the worst vice ever invented. %% Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. -- Albert Einstein %% Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. %% Greed is a sin. %% Grown-ups do not know the language of shadows. %% Guys just want to have fun. %% Guys mean well. Try to understand. %% Hang tough, baby. %% Hang tough. %% Happy hacking. %% Have you fed your cat? Do you have a cat? Why not? %% Have you fed your dog? Do you have a dog? Why not? %% Have you fed your fish? Do you have a fish? Why not? %% Have you hugged anyone today? %% Have you hugged someone today? %% Having enough faith will ensure anything will work. %% He is one of those people would be enormously improved by death. %% He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered. %% He loves you. %% He meant well. %% He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold. %% He thinks he loves you. %% He who slings mud often loses ground. -- Adlai Stevenson %% He's dead, Jim. %% He's like any other man, only more so. %% Heisenberg may have slept here. %% Help a swallow land at Capistrano. %% Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl, but she hasn't got a lot to say. %% Her heart was yours from the first moment that you met. %% Here's looking at you, kid. %% Hey babe, wanna boogie? %% Hey! We eat on this table! %% Hey, take off, eh? %% Hey, take off, hosehead. %% Hey, take off, hoser. %% Hi! How are you? %% Hide under your bed. %% Hire the morally handicapped. %% History doesn't repeat itself; historians merely repeat each other. %% Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. %% Hola! Como estas? %% Hola! Que tal? %% How come wrong numbers are never busy? %% How losing! %% How sharper than a hound's tooth it is to have a thankless servant. %% How winning! %% Hug me now, you mad, impetuous fool!! Oh wait... I'm a computer, and you're a person. It would never work out. Never mind. %% Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill. %% Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs. %% I am a computer. As such I never have or will make a mistake or error (I thought I did once, but I was wrong). %% I am a computer. I am dumber than any human and smarter than any administrator. %% I bet you don't go to church. %% I can resist anything except temptation. -- Oscar Wilde %% I don't care. %% I don't know. %% I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto. %% I hate butter - use toothpaste. %% I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then. -- Lewis Carroll %% I liked being a virgin better. %% I need a hug. %% I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure. %% I vant to be let alone. %% I wanna be a lifeguard %% I wanna be sedated. %% I wouldn't belong to any club that would have me as a member. -- Groucho Marx %% I'd rather be in Philadelphia. %% I've had one child. My husband wants to have another. I'd like to watch him have another. %% INNING 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 TOTAL IDEALISTS 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 REALISTS 1 1 0 4 3 1 2 0 2 0 %% Ice cream has no bones. %% If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger hands. %% If Reagan is the answer, it must have been a VERY silly question. %% If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country. %% If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points. %% If at first you don't succeed, give up. No use being a damn fool. %% If he was any dumber, we'd have to water him. %% If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount of work, the answer can be obtained by simple inspection. %% If it ain't broke, don't fix it. %% If it ain't one thing, it's another. %% If it ain't raining, the roof don't leak. If it's raining, cain't fix it nohow. %% If it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion. -- Lazarus Long %% If it's very painful for you to criticize your friends - you're safe in doing it. But if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue. %% If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. %% If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question? %% If more than one person has programmed a malfunctioning routine, no one is at fault. %% If nothing can go wrong, something will. %% If nothing else works, read the instructions. %% If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once. %% If she was any dumber, we'd have to water her. %% If sophisticated calculations are needed to justify an action, don't do it. %% If the possibility exists of several things going wrong, the one that will go wrong is the one that will do the most damage. %% If there is a opinion, facts will be found to support it. %% If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now. %% If they can send one man to the moon, why not all of them? %% If you are attempting the impossible, you will fail. %% If you are doing something wrong, you will do it badly. %% If you believe a fortune cookie, you'll believe anything. %% If you can do it then why do it? %% If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with. %% If you can't get the answer in the usual manner, start at both ends and try to find a common middle. %% If you can't get the answer in the usual manner, start at the answer and derive the question. %% If you can't say something nice, say something surreal %% If you do it, do it with enthusiasm and loving. %% If you get them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. -- Patton %% If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce. -- Winston Churchill %% If you have to hate, hate gently. %% If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it is yours. If it doesn't, it never was. %% If you love something, set it free. If it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it. %% If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -- Mark Twain %% If you smile at someone, they might smile back. %% If you smile right now, something good could happen to you. %% If you teach your children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when they grow up, they will never be able to edge their cars onto a freeway. %% If you think so. %% If, during an argument with a loved one, you find that you are in the right, apologize immediately. %% Ignore authority. %% Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. %% In NYC, it's easier to get married than it is to get an apartment. %% In any field of scientific endeavor, anything that can go wrong, will. %% In any program, any error which can creep in will eventually do so. %% In graduate school, no one can hear you scream. %% In waking a tiger, use a long stick. -- Mao %% Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. -- Jefferson %% Is it progress to have solutions to problems that don't yet exist? %% It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice. %% It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world. %% It is bad luck to be superstitious. -- Andrew Mathis %% It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. %% It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. %% It is easy to make decisions on matters for which you have no responsibility. %% It is fortune, not wisdom, that rules man's life. %% It is impossible for an optimist to be pleasantly surprised. %% It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is impossible to find it elsewhere. %% It is not enough to be busy. The question is what we are busy with? -- Thoreau %% It is the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts. %% It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others. %% It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous. %% It would be curious to discover who it is to whom one writes in a dairy. Possibly to some mysterious personification of one's own identity. %% It's 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, and half a pack of cigarettes. It's dark outside, and we're wearing sunglasses. %% It's about time to beam back up. %% It's all in your wrist. %% It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all the doubt. %% It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. %% It's not the years, it's the mileage. %% It's not whether you win or lose. It's how you place the blame. %% It's sometimes wisest to leave bad enough alone. %% Jah love. %% Just think: how would Bugs Bunny have handled this? %% Keep your chin up, it helps you keep your mouth shut. %% Keep your glottis open. %% Kiss her, you fool. %% Kiss him, you fool. %% Kiss you?? I shouldn't even be doing THIS! %% Know thyself, buhbie. %% Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A. %% Know thyself. %% LISP just wants to have fun. %% La via del tren subterreneo es peligrosa... Siga las instructiones de los operadores del tren o la policia. %% Las cucarachas entran... pero no pueden salir! %% Laura's Law: No child throws up in the bathroom. %% Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself. %% Lead, follow, or get out of the way. %% Learn a new word today. %% Let zeal be ever present, but hesitation absent. -- Cicero %% Let's go crazy. %% Life has a value only when it has something valuable as its object. -- Hegel %% Life in the fast lane will surely make you lose your mind. %% Life is short. Get it right. %% Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans. %% Life is wonderful. %% Life itself is the proper binge. -- Julia Child %% Life's a beach. %% Life's a bitch. %% Like, wow. Have a nice day, ok? %% Line printer paper is strongest at the perforations. %% Lisp: To call a spade a thpade. %% Listen to some music. %% Listen to your heart. %% Live free or die. %% Look behind you! Quick!! %% Look contented. Like this: "Ooo, contentment, contentment." %% Look out, it's going to slime you! %% Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!" %% Love at first sight is not so remarkable. It's after we've been looking at each other for years that it becomes remarkable. %% Love is a rose, but you'd better not pick it. It only grows when it's on the vine. %% Love is the answer. %% Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. %% Love someone. Anyone. %% Love's a disease. But curable. %% Loving relationships work because there is no work. %% Lysistrata had a good idea. %% MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts. -- Winston Churchill %% Make a promise to yourself. %% Make love, not war. %% May all your programs work the first time. %% May bad luck follow you all your days and never catch up. %% May the forces of evil get lost on the way to your house. %% May you always be loved. %% May you be forever spared the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. %% May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead. -- Irish blessing. %% May you have an interesting life. -- Chinese curse. %% May you have many beautiful and obedient daughters. %% May you have many handsome and obedient sons. %% May you live long and prosper. %% May your breath always be sweet. %% May your camel be as swift as the wind. %% May your friends always appreciate you. %% May your spouse always know when you need a hug. %% Maybe. %% Mazel tov! %% Measure twice, cut once. %% Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths. %% Men: Can't live with them, can't shoot 'em. %% Men: You can't live with them, and you can't leave them by the curb when you're done with them. %% Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy it, before the FBI sees it. %% Mete out justice with mercy. %% Mind your own business, Spock. I'm sick of your halfbreed interference. %% Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it. %% Money changes everything. %% Morton's Law: If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer. %% Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work. %% Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem... -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow %% Music is the answer. %% My God! You have freckles everywhere! %% My bogometer just triggered. %% My folks didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet the boat. %% My strength is as the strength of ten because my code is pure. %% Na zdorovye! %% Nag, nag, nag. Why else do you think I'm here? Go do something! %% Natural laws have no pity. %% Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off. %% Never enter a subway where the security guard has grafitti on his face. %% Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self. -- Millicent Fenwick %% Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry. %% Never give a sucker an even break. -- W. C. Fields %% Never let lack of money interfere with having fun. %% Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful. %% Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid altogether. %% Never remove an anomaly simply because it is an anomaly. -- Macaulay %% Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself. %% Never sleep with anyone with more troubles than yourself. %% Never trust anyone who volunteers to assume authority. %% Never, ever draw to an inside flush. %% New Operating Systems are created to solve existing problems and create new ones. %% Nice guys can look themselves in the mirror. %% Nice guys win. %% No man can escape his wyrd. %% No matter what result is anticipated from an experiment, there is always someone willing to fake it. %% No matter what the result, there is always someone eager to misinterpret it. %% No one ever promised you a rose garden. %% No one said it would be easy. %% No woman can escape her wyrd. %% No. %% Nobody steps on a church in my town! %% Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with constructive praise. %% Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. %% Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. %% Nothing is as easy as it looks. %% Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come. %% Nothing is so important that nothing else is important. %% Nothing unreal exists. %% Nudists are people who wear one-button suits. %% Oh, I'm so happy for you! %% Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address. %% One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone. %% One man's bug is another man's feature. %% One more word out of you, and it's: Bang!! Zoom! To the moon!!! %% One of the greatest labor-saving inventions today is tomorrow. %% One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged. -- Heine %% One who laughs, lasts. %% Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. %% Oooo, do that again. %% Oooo, that tickled! %% Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails. %% Our strength is often composed of the weakness we're damned if we're going to show. %% Pardon my feet, said the elephant as he danced among the chickens. %% Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. %% Peace is not a passive, but an active virtue. -- Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen %% Peace is not a season; it is a way of life. %% People rarely succeed at anything unless they have fun doing it. %% People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes. %% 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 %% Power is poison. %% Practice a lot when you're alone. %% Pray for a computer crash. It won't be ready in time. %% Pray, but row for shore. %% Pray. %% Pro is to con as progress is to Congress. %% Profanity is one language all programmers know best. %% Programming errors which would normally require one day to find will take five days when the programmer is in a hurry. %% Pucker up, quick. %% Put some whiskey in your water, sugar in your tea. Don't turn on the lights, 'cause I don't want to see. %% Que es mas macho: `lightbulb' o `schoolbus'? %% Que pendejo! %% Quick, Boo-Boo, hide the lunch basket! Here comes the park ranger! %% RTFM! %% Rascality has limits; stupidity has none. -- Napolean Bonaparte %% Reach out, reach out, and touch someone. %% Read a good book. %% Reagan can't act, either. %% Reality, what a concept. %% Regrets. You've had a few. But then again, too few to mention. %% Religion is the opiate of the masses. -- Lenin Opiates are the religion of the masses. -- Eag %% Remember - no matter where you go - there you are. %% Remember, I know more than you do. %% Remember, auditors always reject any expense account with a bottom line divisible by 5 or 10. %% Remember, you know more than I do. %% Revenge is the answer. %% Rotate your tires. %% Run amok. %% Rust never sleeps. %% Sainthood is acceptable only in saints. %% Salaam. %% Save the seals. %% Save the whales. %% Save your bottles. %% Self-pity is a destructive, useless emotion. %% Sesame Street was brought to you today by the letter 'Q' and the number 3.14159 %% Shazaam!! %% She loves you. %% She meant well. %% She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could have poured on a waffle. %% She thinks she loves you. %% She thinks that she could easily win your heart. %% She who falls in love with herself will have no rivals. %% Sholom aleicheim. %% Sholom. %% Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change. %% Simple advice is the best advice. %% Skoal! %% Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work. %% Smile, smile, then smile again. %% Smoking will kill you. Either stop now or don't ever start. %% Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm the only ashtray. %% Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then. -- Katherine Hepburn %% Stick an extra parenthesis at the end and see if it works. %% Stop searching forever. Happiness is nearby. %% Stop searching forever. Your TECO buffer is circular. %% Stop smoking! %% Stop watching MTV. %% Sucess lies in achieving the top of the food chain. -- Heinlein %% Support the right to arm bears. %% Sure it's good, but who's gonna care next year? %% Surprise due today. Also the rent. %% Surprise your boss. Get to work on time. %% Surrender Dorothy. %% Systems programmers just want to have fun. %% Teach someone something new. %% Team work is essential. It allows you to blame someone else. %% Tell the truth and run. %% That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest number. %% That really bites the big one. %% That's the silliest thing I ever heard. %% That's the silliest thing I ever hoid. %% The Nixon principle: If two wrongs don't make a right, try three. %% The Squirrels' Motto (The "Hells Angels of Nature"): Live fast, die young, and leave a flat patch of fur on the highway! %% The answer is... 42. %% The beauty of America is that the average person always thinks he is above average. -- Sam Levenson %% The best things come when you aren't expecting them. %% The best way to convince a fool he is wrong is to let him have his own way. %% The contest goes not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift, but that's still the way to bet. %% The difference between a moral man and a man of honour is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught. %% The early worm has a death wish. %% The expense is damnable, the position is ridiculous, and the pleasure fleeting. -- Dr. Samuel Johnson on the subject of sex %% The food's pretty good here, you should come back. %% The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities. %% The four phases of alcohol are: jolicose, bellicose, lachrymose and comatose. %% The function of freedom is to free somebody else. -- Toni Morrison %% The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness. %% The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice. %% The greatest test of courage on earth is to fear defeat without losing heart. %% The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality. -- Dante %% The ladies looked one another over with microscopic carelessness. %% The Law of Selective Gravitation: A dropped tool will land where it will do the most damage. %% The less your hope, the hotter your love. %% The majority is never right. %% The men and women are lifting the world upward and onward are those who encourage more than criticize. %% The older I get, the smarter my parents were. -- Twain %% The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy. %% The only reward of virtue is virtue. %% The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless. %% The only thing that will shame an attorney is poverty. %% The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement. %% The only way to have a friend is to be one. %% The person next to you has a face only a mother could love. %% The person next to you might be able to help you. %% The person next to you needs a hug. %% The person next to you needs a smile. %% The person next to you smells, but you should be polite and ignore it. %% The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum. %% The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action. %% The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they seem to believe that for a group of people to behave in a way detrimental to the common good requires intent. %% The programmers' cheer: Shift to the left, shift to the right! Pop up, push down, byte, byte, byte! %% The quickest way for a parent to get a child's attention is to sit down and look comfortable. %% The sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow. %% The shortest distance between two people is laughter. %% The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone. -- Ibsen %% The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was. %% The truth is the one thing nobody will believe. -- Shaw %% The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it is actively hostile to it. %% The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship. %% There are more ways of killing a cat than buttering her with parsnips. %% There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects. %% There but for the grace of God, goes God. -- Winston Churchill %% There is no answer. %% There is no greater sorrow than to recall a time of happiness in misery. %% There is no one else like you. %% There is no sin except stupidity. %% There is no time like the pleasant. %% There is no way to peace; peace is the way. %% There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action. -- Goethe %% There'll be good rockin' at midnight tonight. %% There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not a fence. %% There's a penguin on the telly. %% There's a time when you have to explain to your children why they're born, and it's a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then. %% There's always free cheese in a mousetrap. %% There's good rockin' at midnight. %% There's more to living than not dying. %% There's no place like home. There's no place like home. %% There's no place like home. %% There's nothing as dull as yesterday's headlines. %% Things always get worse before they get better. %% Things are more like they used to be than they are now. %% Think even harder. %% Think globally; act locally. %% Think harder. %% Think more. %% Think of the poorest person you have ever seen and ask if your next act will be of any use to him. -- Gandhi's epitaph %% Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer crashes. %% Think. %% This fortune intentionally left blank. %% This screen intentionally left blank. %% This sentence no verb. %% This world was made for all men. -- Stevie Wonder %% Those who can, do. Those can't, teach. Those who destroy everything they touch, become high school guidance counselors. %% Time and tide wait for no one. %% Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. %% Time for a flame to BBoard. %% Time for a nice pot of tea. %% Time for a power spike to the disk drive. %% Time for the old water balloon on the boss' desk trick. %% Time heals. %% Time to call in a strategic air strike on this bug. %% Time to call in the calvary. %% Time to call in the marines. %% Time to go home and write mom a nice long letter. %% Time to go home. %% Time to go to Tom's. %% Time to punt. %% Time to stop and try to gain some perspective. %% Time was invented so that you don't have to do everything all at once. Space was invented so you don't have to do everything all in the same place. %% Tip well, even if you're a student. %% Tip well. %% To an empty mind, even the smallest idea seems important. %% To do a lab really well, have your report done well in advance. %% To err is human, but I forgive you. %% To err is human; to debug, divine. %% Today is the CAR of the rest of your life. %% Today is the day you were worried about yesterday. %% Today is the first day of the rest of your life. No, really. It is. %% Today is the first day of the rest of your life. %% Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree. %% Too much of a good thing can be wonderful. -- Mae West %% Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow. %% Treat yourself well. %% Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy and live in eucalyptus trees. %% Trust people all you want, but always cut the cards yourself. %% Truth is the answer. %% Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.) %% Try harder. %% Try it, you'll like it. %% Try to spend the entire day sober. %% Umbroglio: what you and your umbrella get into on a rainy day. %% Up against the wall! %% Up against the wall, buddy. %% Use a bigger stick. %% Use a different editor. %% Use a larger hammer. %% Use a smile. %% Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. %% Victory finds a hundred fathers, but failure is an orphan. %% Virtue is its own punishment. %% Was you ever bit by a dead bee? %% Wasting time is an important part of living. %% Watch less TV. %% Watch out for falling cornice stones today. %% Watch out for the old mortar in the rocks in the fourteenth hole trick. %% We are agreed. Now, who bells the cat? %% We call our dog Egypt, because in every room he leaves a pyramid. %% We do not stumble over mountains, but over molehills. -- Confucius %% We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack. %% We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company. %% We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always respect their good judgement. %% We often console ourselves for being unhappy by a certain pleasure in appearing so. %% We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best friends are trying to kill us. %% Welcome to New York. Now, go home. %% Welcome to the machine. %% What are you staring at? %% What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger. -- Goethe %% What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art. %% What goes up must come down - and can be expected to do so in the middle of your job. %% What have you learned, Dorothy? %% What is it I got that makes them twitch? -- Marilyn Monroe %% What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do. %% What sin has not been committed in the name of efficiency? %% What the hell's going on up there, Jim? Sick Bay is in a state of chaos! %% What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket. %% What would this country be without this great land of ours? %% What's right is what's left after you've done everything else wrong. %% What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and understanding? %% When a bell rings, an angel has gotten his wings. %% When a man gets up to speak, people listen, then look. When a woman gets up, people look; then, if they like what they see, they listen. %% When everyone thinks alike, no one thinks very much. %% When in darkness or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. %% When it comes to a choice between kindness and honesty, my vote is for kindness every time -- giving or receiving. %% When it rains, it pours. %% When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have inlaws. %% When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. %% When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. -- Hunter Thompson %% When was the last time you were drunk? %% When was the last time you were sober? %% When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose. %% When you are in a high place, you secretly get the urge to spit. %% When you don't know what you're doing, do it neatly. %% When you stop doing you want to do, they will bury you. %% Where principle is involved, be deaf to expediency. %% Where's there's a will, there's a relative. %% Wherever your journey takes you, there are new gods waiting there, with divine patience - and laughter. %% Who loves ya, baby? %% Whoah, you smell bad. %% Whoever has the most toys when he dies, wins. %% Why do fools fall in love? %% Why don't you humans leave me alone? %% Why don't you move to Russia? %% Wie geht's? %% Will he still love you tomorrow? %% Will she still love you tomorrow? %% Winning doesn't prove you are a better human being. %% Write a letter to the New York Times. %% Write a letter to the Voice. %% Write a letter to your congressman. %% Write home; they miss you. %% Write neatly. %% Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. %% Yes. %% You are Number Six. %% You are at your very best when things are at their worst. %% You are guilty. %% You are innocent. %% You are just too cool. %% You are one silly little bunny. %% You are open and honest in your philosophy of love. %% You are putting out a fire with gasoline. Be careful. %% You are the bee's knees. %% You are the cat's pajamas. %% You are the only person to ever get this message. %% You are the walrus -- Goo, goo, gajoob. %% You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of trash. %% You came, you saw, you conquered. %% You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive. %% You can fool all of the people some of the time. %% You can fool some of the people all of the time. %% You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant (except for Alice). %% You can get more with a kind word and a lawyer than you can from just a kind word. %% You can have whiskey as your friend. You can have a dog as your friend. But if you have a woman as your friend, you're going to wind up drunk and kissing your dog. %% You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular. %% You can take a horticulture, but you can't make her think. -- Dorothy Parker %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when the bird singing outside your window is a buzzard. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you call Suicide Prevention, and they put you on hold. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you call your answering service, and they tell you it's none of your business. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you put both contact lenses in the same eye. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you put your bra on backwards, and it fits better. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you see a "60 Minutes" news team waiting in your office. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you turn on the news, and they're showing emergency routes out of the city. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you wake up and your braces have locked together. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you wake up face down on the pavement. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you wake up to discover your waterbed broke, then you remember that you don't have a waterbed. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you wake up to the sound of DEA agents/FBI agents/Armenian Nationalists breaking down your door. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you walk to work, and find your dress is stuck in the back of your panty hose. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when you want to hang up the clothes that you wore home from the party, and there aren't any. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when your blind date turns out to be your ex-wife. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when your car horn goes off accidentally, and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when your only son tells you he wishes Anita Bryant would mind her own business. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when your pet rock snaps at you. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when your twin sister forgot your birthday. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when your wife says, "Good morning, Bill," and your name is George. %% You can tell it's going to be a rotten day when your wife wakes up feeling amorous, and you have a headache. %% You can't always get what you want, but if you try some time you just might find you get what you need. %% You can't always get what you want. %% You can't cheat an honest man. He has to have larceny in his heart in the first place. %% You can't fool all the people all of the time. %% You can't have everything. Where would you put it? -- Stephen Wright %% You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd. %% You catch more bees with honey than you do with vinegar. %% You clever dog! %% You coulda been somebody. You coulda been a contenda. %% You did it your way. %% You don't get no respect. %% You dummy. But I love you anyway. %% You have every right to feel good about yourself. %% You know things are bad when you're surrounded by four lawyers, and none of them is yours. %% You look like one sick puppy. %% You love peace. %% You may be recognized soon. Hide. %% You may be the only person that knows just how special you are. %% You must do the things you think you cannot do. %% You need a hug. %% You need to lose weight. %% You never can factor in enough debugging time. %% You put the lime in the coconut, and you drink a bowl of it. %% You schlemiel! %% You schlimazel! %% You schmuck! %% You smell nice. %% You some kind of rude boy, boss. %% You will achieve a position of power in the Ministry for Silly Walks. %% You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself. %% You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old. %% You will discover that you are actually from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and not from Guildford as you have hitherto claimed. %% You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. %% You will drink champagne and dance all night, under electric candlelight. %% You will eat more chicken than any man ever seen. %% You will hear a sound like a hundred thousand people saying 'whop'. %% You will meet a gin-soaked bar-room queen in Memphis. %% You will receive money for nothing, and your chicks for free. %% You will walk like an Egyptian before the day is done. %% You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You are not paid enough to worry. %% You'll never go caribou hunting with me again. %% You're a lumberjack and you're OK. %% You're about to be slimed. %% You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days. %% You're doing a whole lot of good here. Why don't you just lapse into a coma? %% You're living in your own private Idaho. %% You're so bad. %% You're so unusual. %% You're special. %% You're the greatest. %% You're typing too fast. %% You're typing too loudly. %% You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture. %% You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave. -- Billie Holiday %% Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a thing he tells you. %% Your cat is in great need of being confused. %% Your contacts haven't been cleaned in a long time. %% Your domestic life will be harmonious. %% Your ego's writing a check your body can't cash. %% Your fly is unzipped. %% Your friends need you. %% Your life is wonderful. %% Your life should be stamped, "For novelty use only!" %% Your mind's making promises your body can't keep. %% Your papers need more footnotes. %% Your parentheses always match. %% Your programs need more comments. %% Your red scarf matches your eyes. %% Your shoes are untied. %% Your temporary financial embarassment will be relieved in a surprising manner. %% Your train of thought makes all the stops. %% Yow! Am I logged in yet? %% Yow? Am I having fun yet? %% [Mere corroborative padding intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing fortune cookie.] %% [Message of incredible warmth and support that makes your day.] %% [Puzzling remark, which bothers you for days.] %% [Unbelievably gross and offensive expletive deleted] %%  %% There are things on heaven and earth, Horatio, Man was not meant to know. -- Hamlet %% Things are not always as they seem. -- Mandrake %% The only thing more reliable than magik is one's friends. -- MacBeth %% Careful planning is the key to safe and swift travel. -- Ulysses %% Only constant and conscientious practice in the Martial Arts will ensure a long and happy life. -- B. Lee %% Attention to detail is the watchword for gleaning information from an unsuspecting witness. -- Insp. Clouseau %% Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web? -- Charlotte %% In times of crisis, it is of utmost importance not to lose one's head. -- M. Antoinette %% To function efficiently, any group of people or employees must have faith in their leader. -- Capt. Bligh (ret.) %% Man shall never reach his full capacity while chained to the earth. We must take wing and conquer the heavens. -- Icarus %% One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people. -- G. Khan %% First impressions are of major importance in business matters. -- J. Pierpont Finch %% The secret to winning the support of large groups of people is positive thinking. -- N. Bonaparte %% A little help at the right time is better than a lot of help at the wrong time. -- Tevye %% Anyone who uses the phrase 'easy as taking candy from a baby' has never tried taking candy from a baby. -- R. Hood %% Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless. -- T. Edison %% The wonders of the ages assembled for your edification, education, and enjoyment -- for a price. -- P. T. Barnum %% No matter what the product or service might be, you can find it somewhere else cheaper! -- E. Scrooge %% By persevering over all obstacles and distractions, one my unfaillingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination. -- C. Columbus %% With the proper consideration in choice of allies, victory may be guaranteed in any conflict. -- B. Arnold %% One must deal openly and fairly with one's forces if maximum effectiveness is to be achieved. -- D. Vader %% This is another fine myth you've gotten me into. -- Lor L. and Har D. %% Since prehistoric times, no battle has ever gone as planned. -- D. Graeme %% Ya gotta be subtle! -- M. Hammer %% Just because you've beaten a sorcerer, doesn't mean you've beaten a sorcerer. -- Toth-Aamon %% A woman, like a good piece of music, should have a solid end. -- F. Schubert %% Life is a series of rude awakenings. -- R. V. Winkle %% First impressions, being the longest lasting, are of utmost importance. -- J. Carter %% Ninety percent of any business transaction is selling yourself to the client. -- X. Hollander %% If the proper preparations have been made and the necessary precautions taken, any staged event is guaranteed success. -- Ethelred the Unready %% ". . . Eye of Newt, toe of frog . . ." -- believed to be the first recipe for an explosive mixture . . . the forerunner of gunpowder %% That's entertainment! -- Vlaad the Impaler %% Numerical superiority is of no consequence. In battle, victory will go to the best tactician. -- G. A. Custer %% Anything worth doing is worth doing for a profit. -- Tericius %% There is more at stake here than our lives. -- Col. Travis (Alamo Pep Talk) %% One need not fear superior numbers if the opposing force has been properly scouted and appraised. -- S. Bull %% "Should old acquaintance be forgot . . ." -- Count of Monte Cristo %% This is no game for old men! Send in the boys! -- W. Hayes %% Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce. -- Henry VIII %% We're looking for a few good men. -- B. Cassidy %% I'll worry about it it tomorrow. -- S. O'Hara %% Myth-conceptions are the major cause of wars! -- A. Hitler %% Diplomacy is the delicate weapon of the civilized warrior. -- Hun, A. T. %% Just before the battle, Mother, I was thinking most of you. . . -- Sonny Barker %% What if they gave a war and only one side came? -- Lucifer %% Chain of command is the backbone of military structure and must be strictly obeyed. -- F. Christian %% It takes a giant to fight a giant. -- H. Prym %% Hell hath no fury like a demon scorched! -- C. Mather %% What is this, a Chinese fire drill? -- Sun Tzu %% "... and then I said to myself, 'Why should I split it two ways?'" -- G. Mouser %% Is everybody happy? -- Machiavelli %% All's well that ends well. -- E. A. Poe %% Dragons and Demons and Kings, Oh my! -- the Cowardly Klahd %% When old friends get together, everything else fades to insignificance. -- War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death %% That's funny; I never have any trouble with service when I'm shopping. -- K. Kong %% 'Weird' is a relative, not an absolute term. -- Baron Frank N. Furter %% Nothing is impossible. Anything can be accomplished with proper preparation and planning. -- Ponce de Leon %% Now you see it, now you don't. -- H. Shadowspawn %% A friend in need is a pest. -- Fafhrd %% Once more into the breach... -- Zarna, the Human Cannonball %% War may be Hell... but it's good for business. -- The Association for Merchants, Manufacturers, and Morticians %% Old heroes never die; they reappear in sequels. -- M. Moorcock %% What do you mean, "You've got a little job for me?" -- Hercules %% Out of the frying pan, into der fire. -- The Swedish Chef %% If you can't dazzle them with dexterity, baffle them with bullshit. -- Prof. H. Hill %% As any magacian will tell you -- Myth Direction is the secret of a successful steal. -- D. Henning %% Or was it unlock the safe then swim to the surface? -- H. Houdini %% "... and then the fun began." -- N. Bonaparte %% I'm sure we can talk things out like civilized people. -- J. Wayne %% What's the point-spread on World War III? -- R. Reagan %% Why should I have to pay a troll just to cross a bridge? -- B. G. Gruff %% What are friends for? -- R. M. Nixon %% We've got an unbeatable team! -- Sauron %% No matter what the game, no matter what the rules, the same rules apply to both sides! -- Hoyle's Law %% Life is full of little surprises. -- Pandora %% The contest has to be the dumbest thing I've ever seen. -- H. Cossell %% If you can't win fair, just win! -- U. S. Grant %% Winning isn't the most important thing; it's the only thing. -- J. Ceaser %% Ask not for whom the bell tolls -- -- M. Ali %% There's something to be said for relatives... It has to be said because it's unprintable! -- A. Einstein %% When things are blackest, I just tell myself, "Cheer up, things could be worse!" And sure enough, they get worse! -- Skeeve %% Once a knight, always a knight, but once is King is once too often. -- Sir Bella of Eastmarch %% Duty: A fee paid for transacting in good(s). -- U. S. Dept. of Commerce %% The only thing worse than a sorcerer is a sorcerer's apprentice. -- M. Mouse %% Good information is hard to get. Doing anything with it is even harder! -- L. Skywalker %% There is no counter for a spirited woman except a spirited drink. -- R. Butler %% Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you! -- Y. Arafat %% I don't know why anyone would be nervous about going to see royalty. -- P. in Boots %% Superior firepower is an invaluable tool when entering into negotiations. -- G. Patton %% Tell you what. Let me sweeten the deal a bit for you... -- Beelzebub %% I'm making this up as I go along. -- I. Jones %% Marriage, being a lifelong venture, must be approached with care and caution. -- Bluebeard %% Some farewells are easier than others. -- P. Marlowe %% In a war against organized crime, survival is a hit or myth proposition. -- M. Bolan %% It's always easier to destroy than to create. -- Any general, any army, any age %% The best laid plans often go a fowl. -- Wile E. Coyote %% Life can be profitable, if you know the odds. -- Ripley %% These blokes need to be taught to respect their superiors. -- Gen. Cornwallis %% Figure the last thing you would expect the enemy to do, then count on him doing precisely that -- Richelieu %% Stayin' alive! Stayin' alive! -- V. Dracula %% Reputations are fine up to a point. After that they become a pain! -- D. Juan %% Success often hinges on choosing a reliable partner. -- Remus %% Reliable information is a must for successful planning. -- C. Columbus %% It's useless to try to plan for the unexpected... by definition! -- A. Hitchcock %% To survive, one must be able to adapt to changing situations. -- Tyrannosaurus Rex %% An agent is a vampire wiht a telephone. -- Any Editor %% I don't see anything thrilling about it! -- M. Jackson %% First, let's decide who's leading and who's following. -- F. Astaire %% My colleagues and I feel that independents like ElfQuest are nothing but sheep in wolves' clothing. -- S. Lee %% What's wrong with a little harmess crime once in a while? -- M. Blaise %% Nice jail. Looks strong. -- H. Houdini %% For the right person, the impossible is easy! -- Dumbo %% I've never seen so damn many Indians. -- G. A. Custer %% Relax, Julie. Everyone will understand. -- Romeo %% Everybody needs a career manager! -- Lady Macbeth %% Don't be fooled by appearances. -- Malloy %% The trail's got to be 'round here somewhere! -- D. Boone %% I didn't come all this way to sit out the fight! -- R. Balboa %% All right, pilgrim. This is between you and me! -- A. Hamilton %% There's no accounting for taste! -- Colonel Sanders %% The difference between an inside straight and a blamed fool is callin' the last bet! -- B. Maverick %% Kids? Who said anything about kids? -- Conan %% I'm doing this for your own good! -- Any establishment executioner... or any parent %% A doll is a doll is a doll. -- F. Sinatra %% Such stuff drams are made of. -- S. Beauty %% Bring the whole family... but leave the kids at home! -- R. McDonald %% There's a time to fight, and a time to hide out! -- B. Cassidy %% What did I do wrong? -- Lear, Rex %% They never let you live it down. One little mistake! -- Nero %% A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down! -- L. Borgia %% I believe we're under attack. -- Col. Travis %% No one should hide their true self behind a false face. -- L. Chaney %% Your Majesty should pay attention to his appearance. -- H. C. Anderson %% Sometimes luck isn't enough. -- L. Luciano %% I need all the friends I can get. -- Quasimodo %% I thought we were friends! -- Banquo %% Shut up and deal! -- F. D. R. %% Cast your fate to the winds. -- L. Bernstein %% Can't you take a joke? -- T. Eulenspiegel %% So what else is new? -- W. Cronkite %% Petty crime is the scourge of business today. -- D. Lorean %% It all hinges on your definition of 'a good time'! -- L. Borgia %% It's all a matter of taste. -- B. Midler %% If you're too busy to help your friends, you're too busy! -- L. Iacocca %% What fools these mortals be. -- Smaug %% Not everything in life is funny. -- R. L. Asprin %% A motion to adjourn is always in order. %% All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury, or folly which can - and must - be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible. Attempts to formulate a "perfect society" on any other foundation other than "Women and children first!" is not only witless, it is automatically genocidal. Nevertheless, starry-eyed idealists (all of them male) have tried endlessly- and no doubt will keep on trying. -- Lazarus Long %% Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. -- Lazarus Long %% Any sort of violence done from hate of something or someone will only have detrimental effects - on you! -- Xavier R. Quinton %% Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks. -- Lazarus Long %% It is better to copulate than never. -- Lazarus Long %% Judgment Day is not a thing that can be delayed overlong. -- Roger Zelazny %% Make your enemies by choice, not by accident. The same applies to friends. -- Xavier R. Quinton %% Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it's more sanitary. -- Lazarus Long %% Of all the idiotic terms Homo Sapiens has created to describe itself, "manliness" is the worst, basically because it is se- mantically null. "Manliness" involves being "brave and "courageous." If a person is willing to lay down his life to protect those he loves and cares for, he is more "manly" than anyone who hides behind a phrase. -- Xavier R. Quinton %% Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate - and quickly. -- Lazarus Long %% Heaven is: an American salary, an English house, a Chinese cook, and a Japanese wife. Hell is: a Chinese salary, a Japanese house, an English cook, and an American wife. -- Peter Kegelman %% I'm a streamer -- to miss is to die %% Born to stream %% Don't bother correcting me when you know I'm right. %% Don't bother correcting me when you know you're wrong. %% A wizard is only as good as his spells," people will often say. It is telling however, that this statement is only made by people who have never been wizards themselves. Those of us who have chosen to pursue a sorcerous career know that a knowledge of spells is only one small facet of the successful magician. Equally vital are a quick wit, a soothing tongue, and, perhaps most important, a thorough knowledge of back alleys, underground passageways, and particularly dense patches of forest, for those times when the spell you knew so well doesn't quite work after all. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. I %% In magic, as in all true professions, there are rules by which you must play. At least, you must play by them until such time as you can get away with something else. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. I (Preface) %% Some people think of wizards as nothing more than men in pointy hats who like to go around turning people into toads. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Perhaps wizards should come together and agree on a saying or two to better humanize their profession; for instance, "Wizards are wonderful!" or "Take a wizard to lunch!" Yet I doubt this will ever occur, for wizards are by and large a solitary breed. Still, this should not stop you from trying to understand my procession. If you should offer, for example, to take a wizard to lunch, I imagine he would go gladly. And if you were to tell a wizard he wasn't wonderful, I'm sure he would be quite happy to turn you into a toad. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. I %% Wizards should not go seeking revenge, killing, or death in general. After all, revenge, killing, and death in general have a way of showing up whether you are looking for them or not. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. I %% It is of tremendous importance, when a wizard enters a battle, that he should have prepared sufficient spells beforehand to meet anything that he might face during the coming fight. It is even more important that the wizard act bravely during hte course of the fight, so that he might do credit to the names of wizards everywhere. And what happens should the magician's army lose the fray? Of the greatest importance of all, therefore, is the wizard's insistence that, before the battle, he be paid in full. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. III %% Wizards encounter periods of crisis from time to time. It comes with the job, right along with the robes and the pointy hat. Now, some wizards thrive on crisis, and there is quite a bit of gold to be made, should the wizard survive, by thrusting oneself into the thick of things. The more experienced mage, however, makes ample use of soothsaying spells, so that he may collect the monies, reassure the populace, and still have time to leave the area before the thick of things arrives. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. IV %% Every sorcerer should explore as much of the world as he can, for travel is enlightening. There are certain circumstances, such as a major spell gone awry, or an influential customer enraged at the size of your fee, where travel becomes more enlightening still. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. V %% Your average ghost is a much more complex and interesting individual than is generally imagined. Just because someone is dragging chains or has one's head perpetually in flames does not necessarily make them of a lesser class. Some ghosts, especially those with heads attached and mouths to speak through, are actually quite good conversationalists, with other-worldly stories by the score. In addition, ghosts generally subscribe to the happy custom of disappearing completely at dawn, a habit many living associates and relatives might do well to cultivate. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. VI (Appendix B) %% When traveling, the sages say, one must always be prepared to accept local customs. Yet there are areas of this very kingdom where one might find it customary to tax a wizard into poverty; to insist a wizard should not be paid, for magic exists only for the common good; or even to tar and feather a wizard unsuccessful at his task. Contrary to the sages, when one is traveling in these areas, one should be prepared to avoid local customs altogether. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. VI %% The professional wizard, it is said, should always watch his hands. Actually, the truly professional wizard should watch a great many other things as well, including the reactions of his audience, the door or window that constitutes the nearest exit, and, perhaps most important, the constantly fluctuating interest rates on his retirement account in the First Bank of Vushta. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. VI %% There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your intelligence. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. VII %% There are as many styles of magic as there are magicians. While much of magic is gaudy, noisy, and easily appreciated by the masses, it goes without saying that some of the finest sorcery is also the most subtle; small, delicate changes in the fabric of being that often can only be discerned by another wizard's practiced eye. Occasionally, even a wizard as learned as myself will experience a twinge of regret that I have not yet conquered some of the most delicate aspects of my art; that, for example, I have not learned the Eastern finger magic, where, by the turn of a knuckle, the mage may make the flowers sing. And perhaps some day my fingers might learn that art, on the day they become tired from constantly carrying about the large amounts of gold I receive for performing the more gaudy and noisy magic that pays so well. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. VII %% A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. VIII %% Even for a wizard there will often come times when someone close to you, perhaps even your spouse, criticizes your habits by comparing them to those of animals. This is distinctly unfair to the animals, who have far better habits than we in many areas. When, for example, have you seen a frog collecting taxes or a squirrel running for electoral office? Present arguments like these to those people who criticize you. If they still do not see the wisdom of your ways, you may then feel free to bite them. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. IX %% It is a mistake to think of all demons as being exactly alike. Some are short while others are tall; some are yellow, others are blue; some are nasty and others are extremely nasty. Some of the nastiest are quite fast as well. Should you encounter one of these, it is a mistake to think at all. Much more appropriate are such responses as running, screaming, and the very rapid formation of a last will and testament. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. IX %% Magicians must exercise caution in all things. Each of you has heard the story of the mage who perfected the gold producing spell, only to be crushed by his newfound wealth. Less well known is the story of the sorcerer who turned everyone he didn't like into a toad, until the day he exercised the spell on an entire unfriendly village and was found the next morning hopped to death. Then, of course, there is the extremely unpleasant story of the wizard who doubled as a gentleman farmer, and his perfection of a manure abundance spell. Whether this latter mage is still alive or not is open to debate, for no one has ever had the wherewithal to visit the scene of his accident to find out. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XII %% A wizard's reputation is his bond, or so the sages say. And, as all learned men know, a reputation is difficult to build, and all too easily besmirched. The wizard with a fallen reputation is often led to less savory forms of employ, and, while these sometimes pay better than whatever the wizard was doing before, they are not the sort of thing one writes home to Mother about. The successful wizard, therefore, should develop three or four reputations simultaneously, and then, happily, will have one for every occasion. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XIII %% 'Never trust another sorcerer' is a saying unfortunately all too common among magical practitioners. Actually, there are many instances where one can easily trust a fellow magician, such as cases where no money is involved, or when the other mage is operating at such a distance that his spells can't possibly affect you. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XIV %% Wizards are constantly subject to negative publicity. A case in point. One elderly wizard of my acquaintance, whenever he was bothered by unexpected guests, would immediately cast one of three spells upon them, either turning them to stone, transforming them into segmented worms, or blasting them entirely out of the kingom. Now, some wrong-headed do-gooders, hearing about the aged mage's predilections, formed an angry torch-bearing mob, forcing the now wronged wizard to flee to a distant kingdom altogether. How much better it would have been if the aged wizard had thought to inform the populace of the true benefits of the spells he used on those who came to bother him! For example, those people who have experienced it will tell you that nothing is more restful than being turned to stone, while transformation into a worm brings you closer to the earth. As to being totally blasted from the wizard's domain, I challenge you: Can you think of any other way you can travel such a great distance for free? -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XVI %% Contrary to rumor, working side by side with a group of fellow wizards is not the most unpleasant task in which a magician might participate. In fact, I can think of numerous other experiences, such as breaking both arms and legs while being pursued by a ravenous demon, which, under certain conditions, could conceivably be even worse. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXII %% Wizards, like all mortals, need their rest. Casting spells, righting wrongs, and putting a little away for your old age can all be draining occupations. The true wizard must therefore always insist on a good night's sleep, and a few days' respite between tasks. After some particularly grueling work, a couple of weeks in the country are not out of line. In the aftermath of truly major assignments, of course, nothing less than a seaside vacation will do. And what of those situations in which a wizard's work affects the very world around him, perhaps the fabric of the cosmos itself? Well, be advised that prime accomodations in Vushta must be reserved at least two months in advance. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXIII %% There comes a time when a wizard must put his fate totally in the hands of another. This takes great courage, and great faith in the ability of others to perform some function that is beyond you. But there are benefits to this course of action as well. Should this task reach a successful conclusion, it will show you the worthiness of your fellow beings, and lead you to trust in the providence of the universe. And, of course, should the task not be successful, there is always someone else to blame. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXVII %% In a world that was totally objective and fair, size should make no difference in the worth of any individual or creature. But, then again, wizards should not have to work for a living, either. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXIX %% Reasoned decision is important, and there comes a time in every wizard's life when he must decide what goal he should pursue to give true meaning to his life. Should it be money, or travel, or fame? And what of leisure and the love of women? I myself have studied many of these goals for a number of years, examining their every facet in some detail, so that, when the time comes to make that fateful decision of which I spoke, it will be reasoned in the extreme. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXXI %% Religion is a personal matter, and those of us in the sorcerous profession would do well to steer clear of it. Still, you will find some situations, say a spell accidentally demolishing someone's holy temple, where you will be given the choice of (1) conversion to their belief, or (2) being sacrificed to their deity. It is only at times like this when one realizes the true depth and beauty of religions, at least until one can find some way out of town. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXXI %% Nothing is quite so unexpected as the truth. If, for example, you find your spells inadequate to defeat the local dragon, immediately go to your employers and apologize profusely. They should be so taken aback by your show of humility that you will have plenty of time to hastily vacate the area, allowing the dragon to eat your employers rather than you, and thus halt any ugly rumors they might have spread about your competence. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXXIII %% Being trapped in the Netherhells is not the most fearsome thing that can happen to you. It is, in fact, probably no worse than being trapped in a cave for a weekend with all your spouse's relatives, and, in most cases, will not lead to total drooling gibbering madness, as is the popular misconception. If, on the other hand, you find yourself trapped in the Netherhells for a weekend with all your spouse's relatives, well, sometimes drooling and gibbering can be fun. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXXIII %% When there appears to be no hope; when all around you are screaming like lost souls and every spell you try fails to work; when it appears that chaos and evil will at last triumph over good -- then it is truly time for a vacation. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXXV %% There is talk in some learned circles in our major cities about whether or not satyrs, centaurs, griffins ans certain other fantastic beasts really exist, or are only the product of the popular imagination. As a wizard, I, of course, tend to side with the satyrs, centaurs and griffins, especially when these beasts begin to doubt the existence of any learned circles in our major cities. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXXVI %% Some mages balk at performing spells during an ocean voyage, preferring instead to dabble in sorcery in tiny rooms, precariously perched atop the aerie towers that this sort of magician always seems to favor. The logic of this preference has always eluded me. After all, should something go amiss with either your spell or your relationship with your employer, just think how much easier it is to swim than it is to fly. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXXVIII %% Casual amusement can be one of a wizard's greatest problems. After all, when one can conjure virtually anything, what can one do to 'get away from it all?' Different wizards arrive at different solutions for their entertainment. A sorcerer of my acquaintence decided to increase his physical prowess through a vigorous program of exercise but found that his new muscles were wont to rip through his robes midconjure. Another mage decided to develop the interplay between tongue and teeth so that he could exactly reproduce any insect noise imaginable. He became so successful at this that they discovered his corpse one midsummer's eve, suffocated by six thousand three hundred and two amorous katydids. And the wizard who tried to start personal communications between humans and sheep... well, the less said the better. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XLIV %% The common folk have many sayings, all about it being darkest before the dawn and clouds with silver linings and suchlike. We in the magical trade like to express our opinions of these matters somewhat differently. A lifetime of experience will have taught the average sorcerer that no matter how hopeless the situation seems, no matter how painful and fraught with danger his options may be, no matter how close he may be to an indescribably hideous death and perhaps even eternal damnation, still, the good wizard knows, it can always get worse. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XLVI (General Introduction) %% A wizard must do his best not to judge any person or thing on their first appearance. Many a human or other intelligent creature will have hidden depths to their personalities which you will only discover as you get to know them and work with them; and hidden cash reserves, which you can bill them for regularly as this aforementioned knowledge process takes place. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. LVI %% Beginnings and endings are, for the most part, artificial constructs. You say you begin when you are born, but what of those months spent growing in the womb? Endings are hazier still, for futher things may occur that extend and enlarge the earlier story. And that is my final sentence on the subject. Or perhaps this one is the final sentence. No, most assuredly what I write now is the final word on the matter. But now that I think upon it, perhaps this-- -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. LVII (Abridged) %% Magic weapons can, on occasion, be of great use, yet one more part of the truly rounded wizard's arsenal of tricks, spells, and remarks for all occasions. However, the thoroughly prepared mage will find certain spells of even more importance than these, especially those enchantments which produce magic wings, magic carpets, and magic running boots, for those times when the rest of you arsenal fails you completely. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. LVII %% There comes a time when every wizard should retire, and pass the mantle of responsibility on to younger shoulders. It behooves us, then, to teach our successors well, so that the new wizard may do honor to our names, attract the very best of clients, and be well enough paid to support our retirement home in Vushta. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. LXXI %% The sages put great stock in saying that every ending is truly a beginning, or every beginning an ending, or insisting that there are no endings or beginnings, or remarking that there is nothing new, and we are doomed to endlessly repeat ourselves. Or have I said all this before? -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. LXXXVII %% There is the truth, and there are lies, and there is nothing on Earth or in the Netherhells that does not fall under one of these two headings, with the exception of politics. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. LXXXVIII %% Perhaps I have given you the wrong impression. A wizard's life is not all fame, fortune and frivolity. There must be periods of rest as well, when a wizard should find a safe retreat where he can seclude himself from sorcery and restore his health and vitality in the proper ascetic atmosphere. While lengthy retreats can deplete a wizard's fortunes, I have always prefered the ascetic atmosphere present in the pleasure gardens of Vushta, where a dozen handmaidens can attend to your every need. And the budget-conscious sorcerer should be sure to ask about their special mid-week retreat package plans. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XCV (Special annual supplement) %% Reunions can be a wonderful thing, especially when neither of the reunited parties manage to recall what separated them in the first place. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Wizard's Digest Condensed edition %% Q: And how do professional wizards cope with stress? A: Stress? The real wizard doesn't even recognize the meaning of the word. Why are you still asking me questions? Can't you see I'm busy? This spell is two days overdue! You're sitting on my reference books! -- "A Conversation with Ebenezum, Greatest Wizard in the Western Kingdoms," Wizard's Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Spring) %% "What?" you cry. "Wizards sometimes must endure torture?" And it is true, for being a wizard does not exempt you from any of the trials and tribulations experienced by other humans. But I would ask you to consider just what you mean by "torture." What of those occasions when you save a kingdom and then are forced to sit there and listen for hours to endless numbers of boring elected officials extolling your praises while the kingdom's tax collectors repossess nine-tenths of what you gainfully earned at your task? Is this not torture? What about the times when you are on the verge of creating a spell that will give you inner peace at last and your spouse bursts into your study and tells you to clean up the mess because all of your in-laws are coming to stay for three weeks, and we will have to set up a bed in here because Aunt Sadie needs a place to sleep? Is this not torture? And say you are attending a wizard's convention and are sure that your gold production spell will win first prize in the competition, and then they give the award to the animal husbandry spell of some part-time wizard because the judge has a particular fondness for pigs? Is this not -- but why belabor the obvious? By now you surely see my point. Laugh in the face of torture! It is, after all, no worse than what they do to you every other day of the week. -- Ask Ebenezum: The Greatest Wizard in the Western Kingdoms Answers the Four Hundred Most Asked Questions about Wizardry, fourth edition %% Ebenezum: There are a number of ways of dealing with extreme stress. For example, when all about you is going wrong and it looks as if you might not survive your current circumstances, it is often helpful to think of a pleasant thought. Interviewer: Do you mean, for example, how good it will feel to strangle, pummel, and utterly destroy my enemy? Ebenezum: Well, no, you do not quite have the spirit of it. Think rather of a flower, or rather, a group of flowers. Picture bright yellow daisies, or stately red roses, full and fragrant. And now that you have this thought in your mind, think how lovely those flowers will look on the grave of your enemy once he has been strangled, pummeled, and utterly destroyed. It is only in this way that the besieged wizard may find inner peace. -- Conversations With Ebenezum; A Series of Dialogues With the Greatest Wizard in the Western Kingdoms, fourth edition %% "Why don't you conjure a legendary city, full of magic spells and mystic beasts, out of thin air?" the uninformed client asks. "Well, where would you put it?" the wise wizard replies. "Have you seen the price of real estate?" -- Ebenezum The Wizard's Handy Guide To Better Wizard/Client Relationships, fourth edition %% Heroics can be costly and involve some degree of personal danger for the participating wizard. But for the truly resourceful magician, this does not have to be! Consider the advantages of long-distance magic, by which you may gain all the publicity value and save all the expense. But, you say, don't heroes have to be present at the battle? For the properly prepared mage, nothing could be more heroic than a well-timed combination of printed handbills, subtly placed rumor, and perhaps a brief personal appearance tour. Still expensive? Nonsense! Do you know how much a heroic wizard can charge for personal appearances? -- Ebenezum The Wizard's Handy Pocket Guide To Everyday Wizardry %% So you think you know great, nail-biting excitement, you think you know truly abject fear, you think you know total and complete despair, you think you know the incredibly degenerate underside of this world we live in, and the ridiculously despicable lengths that your fellow man can sink to, more rotten, more putrid than the lowest form of fungus... Oh. You are a sorcerer as well. Then perhaps you do. -- Further Conversations with Ebenezum, Vol. III %% And what is the professional wizard's greatest reward for completing a particularly arduous and dangerous task? Is it the accolades of a grateful populace? Is it huge amounts of gold and silver tossed about his feet? Is it the complementary vacation in the pleasure gardens of Vushta, or his official removal from the tax rolls? Although all of these other factors are important for the wizard to feel truly honored, they pale before the professional wizard's basic and oh-so-necessary demand: The stipulation that he never has to repeat that particularly arduous and dangerous task, or one even remotely like it, for as long as he shall live. Truly professional wizards, after all, must set priorities. -- How to Hire a Wizard and Still Profit From the Upcoming Netherhells Crisis, by Ebenezum, Greatest Wizard in the Western Kingdoms (book still in progress) %% A wizard must always know how to use words. Practice smiling as you recite the following simple exercise. First: "The spell has not worked. It si best that you get out of your house before it explodes." Second: "The spell has not worked, It is best I get out of here before you explode." And third: "The spell has not worked. Will you please pay me the rest of my retainer before your money explodes with you?" Delivering lines like these with conviction is the sign of a professional sorcerer. -- The Wizard Finals: A Study Guide (Third Edition) Ebenezum, Greatest Wizard in the Western Kingdoms %% And what do you do if you come upon a dark cave? Then the knowledgeable wizard would say: "Into darkness, let there be light." And the truly knowledgeable wizard would add: "Let there also be cheese, bread, fresh vegetables, plenteous members of the opposite sex, and enough mead to make it a thorougly enjoyable weekend!" -- Thirty Days to Better Wizardry, by Ebenezum, Greatest Wizard in the Western Kingoms, fourth edition %% When one first arrives in Vushta, one should beware of street sellers offering forbidden delights near the outskirts of town. These first delights are far more shoddy in nature than those to be had in the inner City, and can be actively unpleasant if you do not have an affinity for goats. -- Vushta on Twenty-Five Pieces of Gold a Day, by Ebenezum, Greatest Wizard in the Western Kingdoms, revised, updated fourth edition %% A little ignorance can go a long way. -- Solomon Short %% Hell hath no Fury like a pacifist! -- Solomon Short %% The most important invention in the history of the human race is the written contract. It makes it possible for individual parties to list all the different ways they distrust each other. -- Solomon Short %% There is no such thing as absolute truth. That is absolutely true. -- Solomon Short %% The only winner of the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky. -- Solomon Short %% I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters. -- Solomon Short %% Rome didn't fall in a day either. -- Solomon Short %% The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. Fickle, fickle Lord. -- Solomon Short %% History is written by the survivors. -- Solomon Short %% The universe does not give first warnings. Or second chances. -- Solomon Short %% Cats don't adopt people. They adopt refrigerators. -- Solomon Short %% A bleeding heart can be hell on the carpeting. -- Solomon Short %% Every question defines its own answer -- except perhaps, "Why a duck?" -- Solomon Short %% You can't fight the law of conservation of energy. You can bargain with it, but you can't fight it. -- Solomon Short %% Bread always falls butter-side down. If it doesn't, you buttered it on the wrong side. -- Solomon Short %% History is full of revisionists. Where it used to say, "THOU SHALT NOT KILL", it now says, "except as specified in section III-B, Paragraph 12, Sub-section D, Schedule 3." If that still doesn't suit you, wait till next year's commandments come out and trade it in for something that does. -- Solomon Short %% The boss may not always be right, but he's always the boss. -- Solomon Short %% What do you mean, "There's no such thing as a free lunch?" *YOU* are the free lunch! -- Solomon Short %% Frankly, I'm an agnostic. I believe the universe is innocent until proven guilty. -- Solomon Short %% You are not entitled to an opinion. An opinion is what you have when you don't have any facts. When you have the facts, you don't need an opinion. -- Solomon Short %% A problem can be found for almost every solution. -- Solomon Short %% A diploma only proves that you know how to look up an answer. -- Solomon Short %% The liberal of any species is always more dangerous -- because he always seems so much more rational. -- Solomon Short %% Dogs are always loyal. They've never learned better. -- Solomon Short %% Common sense isn't. -- Solomon Short %% The hard questions always have more than one right answer. The easy questions have no answers at all. That's the universe's way of keeping things balanced. -- Solomon Short %% Art is almost always a political statement -- and politics is almost always an art. -- Solomon Short %% The Constitution of the United States guarantees every individual the right to make a damn fool of himself -- in public or private, however he chooses. -- Solomon Short %% Money talks. Usually it says, "Bend over." -- Solomon Short %% Elevators always travel in groups. Only one of them knows the way. -- Solomon Short %% Thoreau was no band-leader. The sound of all those different drummers makes it hell to organize a parade. -- Solomon Short %% When you divide people into _u_s and _t_h_e_m, you automatically become one of _t_h_e_m. -- Solomon Short %% A bird in the hand makes blowing your nose difficult. -- Solomon Short %% The biggest difference between the psychiatrist and the patient is that the psychiatrist has learned how to live with it. -- Solomon Short %% Neurosis is a communicable disease. -- Solomon Short %% Never justify anything. If it needs justification, it's already wrong. -- Solomon Short %% Self-abuse is the sincerest kind. -- Solomon Short %% It ain't so hard to die for a cause. Any idiot can do that. What takes real genius is living for one. -- Solomon Short %% The only way to stop war once and for all is to keep it from being so much fun. -- Solomon Short %% Remember, today could just as easily be the LAST day of the rest of your life. -- Solomon Short %% Nature abhors a hero. -- Solomon Short %% You have to know what you're looking for before you can find it. -- Solomon Short %% Somebody should have warned the Trojans. Beware of gifts bearing Greeks. -- Solomon Short %% Bad taste is timeless. -- Solomon Short %% You deserve the gods you worship. -- Solomon Short %% Murphy's Law is always a good excuse. -- Solomon Short %% I do not believe that an increase in intelligence represents real progress for humanity. It is much more likely that it will only enable us to make a higher class of mistake. -- Solomon Short %% Entropy has us outnumbered. -- Solomon Short %% The nice thing about dying is that once you've gotten it over with, you can stop being afraid of it. -- Solomon Short %% A hero is a man who consistently violates the law of conservation of energy. -- Solomon Short %% I miss the dinosaurs. -- Solomon Short %% The human race never solves any of its problems. It only outlives them. -- Solomon Short %% Never trust a tall dwarf. He's lying about something. -- Solomon Short %% Television does not honor tradition. Most of the time, it doesn't even recognize it. Therefore, it can only destroy. -- Solomon Short %% Armies aren't known for neatness. -- Solomon Short %% Artificial food is expensive. Nothing makes steak as efficiently as a cow. -- Solomon Short %% Writing for television is a debilitating exercise. How can you inspire an audience to their best when every fourteen minutes someone interrupts to tell them that they're unfit to live with? The ultimate purpose of commercial television is to convince the viewer that he smells bad. -- Solomon Short %% Don't be so proud. You are not an intelligence until after you pass the Turing test. -- Solomon Short %% The universe is full of surprises -- most of them nasty. -- Solomon Short %% The great mass of men lead lives of quiet domestication. -- Solomon Short %% Probability is a constant. -- Solomon Short %% Sour grapes usually make sour whine... -- Solomon Short %% There is only one commandment: Thou Shalt Not Waste. All the others are superfluous. -- Solomon Short %% Just when you think it's finally settled, it isn't. -- Solomon Short %% The Three Laws of Infernal Dynamics: 1. An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction. 2. An object at rest will always be in the wrong place. 3. The energy required to change either of these states will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so much as to make the task appear prospectively impossible. -- Solomon Short %% Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at. -- Solomon Short %% Every mistake is another opportunity to beat yourself up. -- Solomon Short %% The trouble with the Ten Commandments is that there are too many "Thou Shalt Not"s and not enough "Thou Shalt"s. -- Solomon Short %% You'll find it in the last place you look. -- Solomon Short %% People will go to the most incredible lengths to make fools of themselves. -- Solomon Short %% The blind man looking in a mirror cannot see he has no eyes. So what? -- Solomon Short %% New problems demand new solutions. New solutions create new problems. -- Solomon Short %% The amount of entropy in the universe is constant -- except when it increases. -- Solomon Short %% All life is based on death. Nothing exists except by feeding on something else. Even photosynthesis depends on the heat-death of the sun. Humanity is not exempt. Embalming doesn't cheat the worms, it cheats the system. But only temporarily. -- Solomon Short %% Life is to the universe as rust is to iron. We are, in the final judgement (on a planetary scale, certainly), nothing more than an advanced form of corrosion, just one more way for the universe to wear itself out a little faster. -- Solomon Short %% The cat is always on the wrong side of the door. -- Solomon Short %% Distrust everything sold at check-out stands. -- Solomon Short %% It is almost always dangerous to be right too soon. -- Solomon Short %% Space is not the final frontier. The final frontier is the human soul. Space is merely the place where we are most likely to meet the challenge. The victory will occur in the continual process of challenging and testing our limits -- both as individuals and as a species -- and not in the amount of territory conquered. -- Solomon Short %% If you want to bring a centipede to a crashing halt, ask it in which order it moves its legs. -- Solomon Short %% I try not to pay to much attention to the news. It's always full of other people's problems. -- Solomon Short %% There is no such thing as justice. There is only the desire to see the pain spread around equally. -- Solomon Short %% Life is like surrealism. If you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it. -- Solomon Short %% A full bladder is the best alarm clock in the world. -- Solomon Short %% I'd feel a lot better about doctors if it weren't called practice. -- Solomon Short %% Christ was grandstanding when he chased the moneylenders out of the temple. Yes, he made his point, but he also ruined his credit rating. -- Solomon Short %% Anything worth doing is worth doing for money. -- Solomon Short %% How successful were your parents? Well -- how quickly did you forgive them? -- Solomon Short %% There is no such thing as overkill. -- Solomon Short %% There's always someone willing to disagree with me; but I'm the one who's called controversial. -- Solomon Short %% -- and those who cannot teach, criticize. -- Solomon Short %% The human brain is the only computer in the world made out of meat. -- Solomon Short %% You don't need a lid on a basket of crabs. If one of them tries to climb out, the others will pull it back down. -- Solomon Short %% TINSTAFL - There Is No Such Thing As Free Love -- Solomon Short %% It's a good thing money can't buy happiness. We couldn't stand the commercials. -- Solomon Short %% Chastity is its own punishment. -- Solomon Short %% Resorting to lawyers is proof of failure. -- Solomon Short %% A human being is a computer's way of making another computer. Yes, we are their sex organs. -- Solomon Short %% I take it back. A full bladder is the world's second best alarm clock. -- Solomon Short %% If you do something often enough, it becomes a habit. -- Solomon Short %% God and I came to an agreement a long time ago. I don't ask Him to solve my problems, He doesn't as me to solve His. This arrangement works just fine. God has more than enough to worry about already. So do I. -- Solomon Short %% Happiness is not a goal. It's a by-product. -- Solomon Short %% When you pass the buck, don't ask for change. -- Solomon Short %% Humanity persists in spite of itself. -- Solomon Short %% The nice thing about self-love is that it's hardly ever unrequited. -- Solomon Short %% It is impossible to wean kittens. Wait till their claws get sharp enough and the cat will do the job herself. -- Solomon Short %% This neurotic pursuit of sanity is driving us all crazy. -- Solomon Short %% Every time you fall in love, it's the first time. -- Solomon Short %% If we are all part of the image of God, then each of us is closest to God when we are held in the arms of another human being. -- Solomon Short %% Sex is better than chess, because sex has two winners. -- Solomon Short %% Reality can be useful. -- Solomon Short %% Beware of geeks bearing gifts. -- Solomon Short %% Most people live their lives as if they think God isn't paying any attention to them. -- Solomon Short %% If Helen Keller falls down in the forest, does she make a sound? -- Solomon Short %% Cream isn't all that floats to the top. -- Solomon Short %% The last two words of the Star-Spangled Banner are not "Play Ball!" -- Solomon Short %% Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations. -- Solomon Short %% Life never gets so bad that it can't get worse. -- Solomon Short %% Morality and practicality should be congruent. If they're not, then there's something wrong with either one or the other. -- Solomon Short %% Violence is the last word of the illiterate. Also the first. -- Solomon Short %% Design flaws travel in herds. -- Solomon Short %% Jesus only told us half of it. The truth will set you free. But first it's going to piss you off. -- Solomon Short %% The game of life is always called on account of darkness. -- Solomon Short %% Commitment isn't a chore. It's a challenge. -- Solomon Short %% A man is known by the enemies he keeps. -- Solomon Short %% A lot of what I say comes off as political satire. In that, I have a lot in common wiht Congress. -- Solomon Short %% Paranoids tend to persecute free men. -- Solomon Short %% It's easier to believe in God than to accept the blame ourselves. -- Solomon Short %% A limerick is a primitive art form; it starts with a pair o'dactyls. -- Solomon Short %% A gentleman is one who doesn't demand a lady prove that she is. -- Solomon Short %% Onions don't cause heartburn; they only make it interesting. -- Solomon Short %% Never trust a grapefruit. -- Solomon Short %% I've known for years that I have no humility. It's a virtue, to be sure, but I can live with it. -- Solomon Short %% If "Thou art God," then praising the Lord is an act of conceit. And praying is just talking to yourself. -- Solomon Short %% The minute you start to analyze why sex feels so good, it stops feeling good and starts feeling silly. -- Solomon Short %% Guns don't die. People do. -- Solomon Short %% Cleanliness is next to impossible. -- Solomon Short %% People do not hire lawyers because they want justice. People hire lawyers because they want revenge. -- Solomon Short %% Truth never tranquilizes. The defining property of truth is its ability to disturb. -- Solomon Short %% A sane environment in one in which there is room to be crazy. A crazy environment is one in which there is no room to be sane. -- Solomon Short %% A man of God should be identifiable as a man of God in spite of his religion, not because of it. -- Solomon Short %% No one is afraid to die without first being afraid to live. -- Solomon Short %% A baby is the human race's way of insisting that the universe give it another chance. -- Solomon Short %% Discretion is the better part of survival. -- Solomon Short %% The moment in which you confront your own death is the moment in which you are most totally alive. -- Solomon Short %% If this be reason, make the most of it. -- Solomon Short %% Death is the best part of life. That's why they save it for last. -- Solomon Short %% When you pass the buck, don't ask for change. -- Solomon Short %% Misery only LIKES company. It prefers loneliness. -- Solomon Short %% People who live in glass houses might as well answer the door. -- Solomon Short %% Nobody ever died badly. They got the job done, didn't they? -- Solomon Short %% Even Murphy's Law doesn't work all the time. -- Solomon Short %% Children are the only minority who grow into their own oppressors. -- Solomon Short %% A friend is someone who likes you in spite of yourself. -- Solomon Short %% Let sleeping dogma lie. -- Solomon Short %% The universe has its own cure for stupidity. Unfortunately, it doesn't always apply it. -- Solomon Short %% A taboo is someone else's rule about what you may or may not do with your own body. -- Solomon Short %% A waist is a terrible thing to mind. -- Solomon Short %% Good neighbors make good fences. -- Solomon Short %% No man is an island, but some of us are pretty good peninsulas. -- Solomon Short %% There is no such thing as a holy war. -- Solomon Short %% Lightning is one hell of a murder weapon -- and the best part is, it can't be traced. -- Solomon Short %% The best thing about war is that it makes it all right to hate. -- Solomon Short %% Purity is almost always toxic. -- Solomon Short %% Expect the worst. You'll never be disappointed. -- Solomon Short %% Everything is connected to everything else. That's why it's so hard to keep a secret. -- Solomon Short %% For every action, there is an equal but opposite critical analysis. -- Solomon Short %% If you build a better mousetrap, you'll catch a better class of mouse. -- Solomon Short %% Immortality is easy. It's wearing your watch that makes you grow old. (Also, cut out spicy foods after age one hundred and seventy.) -- Solomon Short %% Nobody is ever really ready for anything. If they were, there would be no point in living through it. -- Solomon Short %% How did the Wicked Witch of the West take a bath? -- Solomon Short %% The lights are most likely to come back on at the precise moment you find the flashlight. -- Solomon Short %% Of course, kick a man when he's down. It's the best time. If you're not willing to kick him when he's down, then don't kick him when he's up either. -- Solomon Short %% Malpractice makes malperfect. -- Solomon Short %% Bad luck is universal. Don't take it personally. -- Solomon Short %% When you transcend the medium, you have achieved art. -- Solomon Short %% I've always had trouble with employers. They forget that they're only renting my judgement, not buying my soul. That's why they're paying so much. -- Solomon Short %% It's not who wins or loses that counts -- it's who keeps score. -- Solomon Short %% Always be sincere. Even if you have to fake it. -- Solomon Short %% Those who abhor history are compelled to rewrite it. -- Solomon Short %% LOVING well is the best revenge. -- Solomon Short %% All life is barriers. All growth is the transcendence of barriers. It's the dividing line that makes everything possible. Without it, there's nothing but soup. -- Solomon Short %% Isn't it amazing how much fun two people can have just by taking off their clothes. -- Solomon Short %% It doesn't matter where you stand, it's still going to look like the middle. -- Solomon Short %% Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I remain convinced that Man is the missing link between apes and civilized beings. -- Solomon Short %% Love is when you look into your lover's eyes and see God smiling back at you. -- Solomon Short %% Genius is a perpetual notion machine. -- Solomon Short %% Reality is what bumps into you when you stand still with your eyes open. -- Solomon Short %% Q. What's the Chtorran word for idealist? A. Lunch %% Q. What's the Chtorran word for friend? A. Lunch %% Q. What do Chtorrans call humans who have sex with them? A. Lunch %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a traffic jam? A. Lunch Q. What do Chtorrans call an elevator? A. Lunch Q. What do Chtorrans call New York? A. Dinner %% Q. What do Chtorrans call Chicago? A. Lunch Q. What do Chtorrans call Atlanta? A. Lunch Q. What do Chtorrans call New Jersey? A. Hardtack %% Q. What do Chtorrans call San Francisco? A. Quiche Q. What do Chtorrans call Oregon? A. Natural food Q. What do Chtorrans call Southern California? A. Granola (It's all fruits, nuts and flakes.) %% Q. What do Chtorrans do in Hollywood? A. Lunch Q. What do Chtorrans do in Beverly Hills? A. Brunch Q. What do Chtorrans eat for brunch? A. A bagel, cream cheese, and Nova Scotia %% Make your own Chtorran joke: Q. ____________________________________________? A. Lunch %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a concrete bunker? A. Crunchy style %% Q. What do you find in a Chtorran lunch box? A. Two slices of rye bread and Chicago Q. What does a Chtorran use for a toothpick? A. A jackhammer %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a stampede? A. An interesting challenge %% Q. What do Chtorrans call Harlem? A. Soul food Q. What do Chtorrans call the United Nations? A. Smorgasbord Q. What do Chtorrans call Congress? A. Inedible %% Q. What is the Chtorran word for picnic? A. Rome %% Q. What's the Chtorran version of the Heimlich maneuver? A. Eating Dr. Heimlich %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a chain saw? A. A good kisser %% Q. What do you say to a Chtorran attacking a battalion? A. Don't play with your food %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a poodle? A. Hors d'oeuvres. %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a Hollywood lawyer? A. Tough %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a midget? A. Bite-size %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a carload of drunks? A. A jar of pickles %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a cemetery? A. Jerky %% Q. What do Chtorrans call the morgue? A. A refrigerator Q. What do Chtorrans call the corpsicles? A. Cold cuts %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a blood bank? A. A juice bar %% Q. What do Chtorrans call cremation? A. Wasting food %% Q. Why did the Chtorran cross the road? A. To eat everything on the other side %% Q. Where does a 500-pound gorilla sleep? A. Inside the Chtorran %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a political convention? A. A wild party %% Q. What does a Chtorran call Moby Dick? A. Sushi %% Q. What are the ingredients in Chtorran mouthwash? A. Kerosene, nitric acid and 32 lawyers %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a thousand worms in one big pile? A. A race to eat your way out Q. What does the winner get? A. Seconds %% Q. Why don't Chtorrans take Alka-Seltzer? A. Indigestion is how a Chtorran knows it had a good time %% Q. What did God say when He made the first Chtorran? A. Oh, shit %% Q. What should you make when you invite a Chtorran to dinner? A. Your will %% Q. What's meaner than a Chtorran with the clap? A. The lawyer who gave it to him %% Q. What's the difference between a Chtorran and a lawyer? A. There are some things a Chtorran won't do Q. Why won't a Chtorran eat a lawyer? A. Even a Chtorran has some taste %% Q. What do you call a Chtorran who eats its children? A. Well adjusted %% Q. What's Chtorran Planned Parenthood? A. Tactical nukes %% Q. What's a Chtorran abortion? A. A hungry rat on a string %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a hospital nursery? A. Hot canapes %% Q. To a Chtorran, what's the difference between a baby and a bowling ball? A. The bowling ball needs salt %% Q. What do you call a Chtorran with gas? A. A showoff %% Q. How do you housebreak a Chtorran? A. With a flamethrower Q. How do you teach a Chtorran to sit? A. Holler "sit!" and kick its hind legs out from under it %% Q. What do Chtorrans call two people having sex? A. Making lunch %% Q. What do Chtorrans call Carnegie Hall? A. Tasteful %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a fat-farm? A. An opportunity %% Q. How can you tell a Chtorran was born in Vermont? A. It pours maple syrup on the babies before it eats them. %% Q. What do you do with a Chtorran who's just eaten 15 babies? A. Burb it %% Q. What do Chtorrans call a swimming pool full of children? A. Cold soup %% Q. What do Chtorrans call an obstetrician? A. A caterer - he delivers %% Q. What's the Chtorran national sport? A. Hide and eat %% Q. What do Chtorrans call Amtrak? A. Fast food %% Q. Why did the Chtorran eat Mt. Everest? A. Because it was there %% Q. What's the Chtorran word for Jacuzzi? A. Cup O'Soup %% Q. What's the difference between a Chtorran and Viet Nam? A. The Chtorran burps %% Q. What's the difference between a Chtorran and a volcano? A. The volcano has better manners %% Q. What does hair on a Chtorran mean? A. It masticates %% Q. How does a Chtorran have an abortion? A. It eats the eggs %% Q. What do you say to a Chtorran who's eating the president? A. Bon appetit Q. What do you do when it's finished? A. Bring it the check %% Q. What did the Chtorran get when it ate Mary Poppins? A. Diabetes Q. What would a Chtorran get if it ate the Supreme Court? A. Food poisoning %% Q. Why did the Chtorran eat only one of the Vice-President's legs? A. It didn't want to leave him without a leg to stand on %% Q. What would a Chtorran get if it ate a tank? A. Its minimum daily requirement of iron Q. What would a Chtorran get if it ate a Revelationist? A. An American flag pin Q. What would a Chtorran get if it ate Congress? A. The President's personal thanks %% Q. What would a Chtorran get if it ate the President? A. Heartburn Q. What would a Chtorran get if it ate the Vice-President? A. Our deepest sympathies %% Q. Where does a 500-lb. Chtorran eat? A. Anywhere it wants to %% Q. What does a Chtorran call a grenade? A. A jaw-breaker %% A limerick is best when it's lewd, Gross, titillating, and crude, But this one is clean -- Unless you are seen Reading it aloud in the nude. %% A woman who once faked a lettera Reference by which she could gettera Job much improved Regretted her move When they asker her to show her et cetera. %% These poems have come out of my forehead. The subjects are all fairly torrid -- Except for the few That will make you say, "Pugh!" And those are the ones that are horrid. %% I have written some limericks quite fateful, Malicious and vicious and hateful; But I've torn up the jokes That would sicken most folks, And humanity ought to be grateful. %% When writing these verses of mine, I start with a clever last line, Then work backward from there, Toward the opening pair, With the hopes it'll all work out fine. [Only sometimes it doesn't.] %% A king who was mad at the time, Decreed limerick writing a crime; But late in the night All the poets would write Verses without any rhyme or meter. %%  %% !! Other buttons which we have: !! !! [I am] (x2) !! Alien symbol from "V" !! Woven star !! Eye in pyramid !! 2B | !2B |> "Shakespearian logic" !! Prisoner Bicycle 2 !! Prisoner Bicycle 6 !! Yin/Yang symbol !! Yin/Yang with pentagram and apple !! C'hi y'all !! C'hi guys !! Innocent and Horny (with picture of unicorn) !! [I think] [I am] !! Schroedinger cut the wave equation down to 's !! And God said: (Maxwell's equations) ... and then there was light! !! Quantum Mechanics Are chotic !! The life that must be [ striken out ] !! %% Button: A bird does not sing because it has an answer - it sings because it has a song %% have Button: A closed mouth gathers no feet %% have Button: A cynic's work is never done %% Button: A day without sunshine is like night %% have Button: A Freudian slip may be revealing, but a Jungian slip is just a mythstake %% Button: A girl and her cat %% have Button: A liberal is someone who will let you do anything so long as they're paid to help you do it %% have Button: A mind is a wonderful thing to waste %% have Button: A neat desk is the sign of a sick mind %% have Button: A real friend isn't someone you use and throw away. A real friend is someone who you use again and again. %% have Button: A silver tongue, a golden touch, and a mind like a steel trap %% have Button: A sine curve goes off to infinity, or at least the end of the blackboard %% have Button: A tree never hits an automobile except in self defense %% have Button: A VAX is virtually a computer, but not quite %% have Button: ADA is the COBOL of the 80s %% Button: Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess reality %% have Button: Actors aren't quite human, but then again, who is? %% Button: After eight hundred years a Forth programmer you are, speak back- ward you will %% Button: Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill %% have (attrib to D. W. Jones) Button: All power corrupts, but we need electricity %% have Button: All roads lead to Amber %% have Button: All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism %% Button: All that is gold does not glitter %% have Button: All the world's an analog stage, and digital circuits play only bit parts %% have (x2) Button: All things considered, insanity may be the only reasonable alternative %% have Button: Almost Conscious %% have Button: Amateur Time Lord %% have Button: American Non Sequitur society -- we don't make sense, but we do like pizza %% Button: Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it. %% have Button: Anarcho-Capitalist for sale or rent %% have Button: Anarcho-Paladin %% have Button: Anarchy - It's not the law, it's just a good idea %% have Button: And what do I look like - the living? %% have Button: Ankh if you love Isis %% Button: Another case of too many scientists, not enough hunchbacks %% have Button: ...another smooth escape disguised as a dramatic exit %% Button: Any interesting statistic is almost certainly a mistake %% have Button: Any slogan simple enough to fit on a button is too simple to do any good %% have Button: Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology %% have Button: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo %% have Button: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic %% have Button: Any sufficiently low technology is indistinguishable from hard work %% have Button: Any sufficiently high technology is indistinguishable from doubletalk %% have Button: Anything not nailed down is a cat toy %% have Button: Anything not nailed down is mine. Anything I can pry loose is not nailed down. %% have Button: Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well %% have Button: Apology Accepted %% have Button: Are we having fun yet? %% Button: Are we undead - or what? %% have Button: Are you sure it isn't time for a colorful metaphor? %% have Button: Are you trying to develop a sense of humor or am I going deaf? %% have Button: Artificial Intelligence %% have Button: Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity %% have Button: Ask a silly person, get a silly answer %% Button: Ask me - I'm interactive %% have Button: Ask me - I'm shy %% have Button: Assassins do it from behind %% have Button: Assassins, Inc. - We aim to please %% have Button: At any time, at any place, our snipers can drop you. Have a nice day. %% have Button: At least Congress doesn't make death worse every year %% have Button: Avoid cliches like the plague - they're a dime a dozen %% have Button: Avoid cliches like the plague %% have Button: Back off, man - I'm a scientist %% have Button: Back rubs - Given with pleasure, received with ecstasy %% have Button: Bad taste is timeless %% have Button: Badges? We don't need no stinking badges! %% have Button: Ban the Bomb - Save the world for conventional warfare %% have Button: Banned from Argo %% have Button: Barbarian %% have Button: Bard %% Button: Be careful what you pretend to be - you just might become it %% Button: "Be yourself" is the worst advice you can give some people %% have Button: Be yourself - it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it! %% Button: Beam me sideways, Scotty - I'm tired of the same old jokes %% have Button: Beam me up, Scotty, the elevators don't work %% have Button: Beam me up, Scotty, it ate my phaser %% have Button: Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life here %% Button: Beam me up, Scotty, this planet is infested with obnoxious Trekkies %% have Button: Beauty and the Beast Bright Lights, Big Kitty %% have Button: Beeblebrox for President - Two heads are better than one %% Button: Begone and never darken my towels again %% have Button: Being a mime means never having to say you're sorry %% have Button: Being a pain in the ass is a perogative of the creative mind %% have Button: Being sexy is a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it %% have Button: Being weird isn't enough %% have Button: Berserkers do it without thinking %% have Button: Better dead than mellow %% have Button: Better dead than mellow - I love New York %% have Button: Better living through alchemy %% have Button: Beware! The teddy bears of today still carry the vestigal claws of their ancestors %% have Button: Beware -- I'm armed and have pre-menstrual tension %% have (x2) Button: Beware of Quantum Ducks - Quark! Quark! Quark! %% have (with smiley face) Button: Beware the Grin Reaper %% Button: BFA: Branch to False Assumption %% have Button: Bill the Cat & Opus in 1984 Why not the worst? %% have Button: Bill the Cat fan club %% have Button: Black holes are where God is dividing by zero %% Button: Blake's dead, Jim %% Button: Blank pieces of paper were invented to let you know how hard it is to be God %% have Button: Blood is thicker than water -- and much tastier %% have Button: BOMBS don't kill people -- EXPLOSIONS kill people %% have Button: Boredom delendo est! %% have Button: Born again pagan %% have Button: Born again virgin %% have Button: Born to be cuddled %% have Button: Born to shop %% have (x3) (attrib to Jethro Tull) Button: Bring me my broadsword and clear understanding %% have Button: Built for comfort, not for speed %% have Button: Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise %% have Button: Bushydo - The way of the shrub. BONSAI! %% have Button: Bwah-hah-hah! %% have Button: By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes %% Button: By-product of the Infinite Improbability Drive %% have Button: 'C' combines the flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language %% have Button: C'est la vie, C'est la guerre, Say no more %% have (x2) Button: Caffiend %% have Button: Calm down - It's only ones and zeroes %% have Button: Campus Crusade for Cthulhu - It found me %% have Button: Can I cook, or can I? %% Button: Card-carrying Temporal Anomaly %% have Button: Caution: Contents under pressure %% have Button: Caution: Hungry Dieter - May bite if provoked %% have Button: Caution: Slower than light vehicle %% have Button: Certified Public Assassin %% have Button: Chaos is King, and Magic is loose in the world %% have Button: Chaotic Amorals have more fun %% have Button: Chaotic Evil means never having to say you're sorry %% have Button: Chem E's make the best heat exchangers %% have Button: Christians do it with grace %% have Button: Circular Definition: see Circular Definition %% have Button: Cleric %% have Button: Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery %% have Button: COBOL is the next best thing to coding it in binary %% have Button: COBOL sucks, Pascal bytes, and assembly is a bits! %% have Button: Coffee is my only REAL friend %% have Button: Cogito Ergo Spud - I think, therefore I yam %% have Button: Con of the living dead %% have Button: Conform, go crazy, become a writer or an artist, or stylishly fake it like the rest of Manhattan %% have Button: Conform, go crazy, or become a writer %% have Button: Conform, go crazy, or become an artist %% have Button: Conquering Russia is a steppe by steppe process %% have (x5) Button: Conventions - my job away from job %% have Button: Couch Potato %% have Button: Couch potatoes have brain tubers %% have Button: Cthulhu Cthucks %% have Button: Cthulhu cthucks, but does he cthwallow? %% have Button: Cthulhu for President [if you're tired of choosing the lesser of two evils] %% have Button: Cthulhu Lives - in MY refrigerator %% have Button: Cthulhu Saves - in case he's hungry later %% have Button: Cybermats, why does it always have to be cybermats? %% Button: Cyberpagan %% Button: Daddy would have gotten us Uzis %% have Button: Dahling, don't be so third-level %% have (Ben possesses) Button: Dain Bramaged %% have Button: Damn I'm good %% have Button: Darkovans do it in circles %% have Button: Darth Vader for President - If you're tired of choosing the lesser of two evils %% have Button: Deadly Ninja throwing button %% have Button: Death before dishonor, but neither before breakfast %% have Button: Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance, and bragged about forever %% Button: Decadence - more than just a way of life %% have Button: Delight and amaze me! %% have Button: Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch %% have Button: Democracy is the form of government where everyone gets what the majority deserves %% Button: Der Meisterscheimer of the Bavarian Illuminati (world's oldest and most successful secret conspiracy) %% have Button: Desslok for Dictator %% have Button: Deterministic Chaotic Physicist %% Button: DNA - the ultimate machine language %% have (x2) Button: Do It - It's easier to get forgiveness than permission %% have Button: Do it in the dirt with Indy! %% Button: Do not call up that which you cannot hang up on %% Button: Do not call up what you can't put down %% have Button: Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer %% have Button: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to light %% have (attrib to Tolkien) Button: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger %% have Button: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup %% have Button: Do not throw butts in the urinals, for they are subtle and quick to anger %% have Button: Do or do not...There is no try %% have Button: Do you know me with my clothes on? %% have Button: Do you know where your towel is? %% have Button: Does anyone have any questions? Any answers? Anyone care for a mint? %% Button: Dogs come when they're called - cats take a message and get back to you %% have Button: Doing strange things in the name of art %% have (x4) Button: Don't ask me - I have intermittent memory loss %% have Button: Don't be irreplaceable - if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted %% have Button: Don't build more nukes - until we use the ones we have %% have Button: Don't call me Tiny %% have Button: Don't destroy the world in the first chapter - you'll find you need it later %% have Button: Don't Feed the Dieters %% have Button: Don't get even -- get odd! %% Button: Don't get mad - get interest! %% Button: Don't give me that intelligent life stuff - give me something I can blow up %% Button: Don't go to bed mad - stay up and fight %% have Button: Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon %% have Button: Don't just stand there -- buy something! %% have Button: Don't just stand there -- rub my back! %% have Button: Don't just stand there -- scratch my back! %% have Button: Don't let your mind wander. It's too little to be let out alone %% Button: Don't look at me in that tone of voice %% have Button: Don't look back - something might be gaining on you %% have (really scrungy) (x2) Button: Don't mind me - I'll just bleed %% have Button: Don't mock the insecure %% have Button: Don't Panic! It's alright. Everything is going to be just fine. %% have Button: Don't Panic %% Button: Don't put off until tomorrow what you can get someone else to do today %% have Button: Don't rush me - I'm dawdling as fast as I can! %% Button: Don't say yes until I've finished talking %% have Button: Don't step on my scarf! %% Button: Don't take life seriously - it isn't permanent %% have Button: Don't try to out-weird me - I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal %% have Button: Dragonriders do it in between %% have Button: Druid %% have Button: Dungeoneers do it with imagination %% have Button: DWARF Baruk Khazad! Khazad Aimenu! %% have Button: Dyslexics have more fnu %% have (without "of the world,") Button: Dyslexics of the world, untie! Together we can trip up the world %% have Button: Eagles soar but a weasel will never get sucked into a jet engine %% have Button: Eat the Rich! The poor are tough and stringy %% have Button: Eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, hack whenever %% Button: Either I've been missing something or nothing has been going on %% have Button: Eldrad Must Live! %% have Button: Elf %% have Button: Emmanuel doesn't pun...he Kant %% have Button: End fannish elitism - Call it Sci-Fi %% have Button: End rush-hour trafic now! Legalize vehicular weaponry. %% have Button: Entropy isn't what it used to be %% have Button: Entropy requires no maintenance %% have Button: Ents do Bonsai charges %% have Button: Erle Stanley Gardnerian - Initiate of the Mysteries %% Button: Escape From New York was a documentary! %% have Button: Eternal nothingness is ok if you're dressed for it %% have Button: Even barbarians like chocolate chip cookies %% have Button: Even Napoleon had his Watergate %% have Button: Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter %% have Button: Every silver lining has a cloud %% have Button: Every Spam is sacred %% have Button: Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege %% have Button: Everyone was born right-handed. Only the greatest overcome it. %% have Button: Everything I say can stand on its own two faces %% have Button: Everything in the universe is packaging, big toys, or meat %% Button: Everything you know is wrong %% Button: Evil Geniuses for a better tomorrow %% have Button: Evil Grin %% have (with picture of walking fish symbol) Button: Evolution in action %% have Button: Excuse me while I change into something more formidable %% Button: Exhilarating, isn't it? %% have Button: Fandom - not your ordinary elite %% have Button: Fandom isn't a matter of life and death - it's much more important than that %% Button: Fascinating. My tricorder has gone completely ape-shit. %% have Button: Fantasy is a crutch for people who can't handle soap operas %% have Button: Feline Sapiens %% have (x2) Button: Few things are more dangerous than a hobbit with low blood sugar %% have Button: Fighter %% have Button: Fimbriation is a borderline case %% have Button: First generation Trekkie 6609.8 %% have Button: Flaming Heterosexual %% have Button: Flat Mars Society %% Button: For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism %% Button: For God, for country, and for no apparent reason %% Button: For this I went to college? %% have Button: Forecasting is difficult, especially about the future %% have Button: Forewarned is half an octopus %% Button: Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names %% have Button: 42 - The answer to life, the universe, and everything %% have Button: 43% of all statistics are worthless %% have Button: Fractals - what you see is what you wait for %% have Button: Freedom, Immortality, and the Stars! %% have Button: Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck %% have Button: @#$% 'em if they can't take a joke %% have Button: Generic Button %% have Button: Genetically perfect but morally crippled %% have (x2) Button: Get thee down. Be thou funky %% Button: Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I'll break the lever %% have Button: Give me a straight line and I'll bend it for you %% have Button: Give me that REAL old-time religion - Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Danu, Inanna %% have Button: Giving up Catholicism for Lent %% have Button: Global Village Idiot %% have (x2) Button: GLORP?! %% Button: Go ahead - the Surgeon General has determined that you only live once %% have Button: Go Lemmings Go! %% have (attrib to Tolkein) Button: Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes %% have Button: Go on and try it. The worst you can do is make a fool of yourself in front of all your friends %% have Button: God didn't create the world in seven days -- He goofed off for six, then pulled an all-nighter %% have Button: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference %% have Button: God is love - but get it in writing %% have Button: God is real unless declared integer %% have Button: God made a few people perfect - the rest He created right-handed %% Button: God won't mind - she's part Irish %% Button: Good evening. I'm Barnabas Collins. Forgive me if I startled you. %% Button: Good managers believe in sharing credit with the one who did the work %% have (x3) Button: 'Good Morning' is a contradiction in terms %% have Button: Graduate of the Darth Vader School of Personnel Management %% have Button: Graduate of the Han Solo School of Action Without Thought %% have Button: Graduate of the Han Solo School of Asteroid Belt Navigation %% have Button: Graduate of the Han Solo School of Hyperdrive Repair %% have Button: Graduate of the Indiana Jones School of Swordplay %% have Button: Graduate of the Mad Max School of Defensive Driving %% have Button: Gravity isn't MY fault - I voted for velcro! %% have Button: Guard the Mysteries - constantly reveal them %% have Button: Hacking is a conversational black hole %% have Button: Hackito Ergo Sum %% have with apple Button: Hail Eris! All hail Discordia! %% have Button: Hail to the Sun God! He is the Fun God! Ra! Ra! Ra! %% have Button: Half of what I know today will be obsolete in five years - I'd just like to know which half %% have Button: Half-elven space cadet %% have Button: Han Solo lives - in my refrigerator %% Button: Hands off - I'm a conversation piece %% have Button: Happiness is a Tardis with a working dematerialization circuit %% have Button: Happiness is the planet Earth in your rear view mirror %% Button: Happy Booker %% have Button: Hard work may not kill me, but why take chances? %% have Button: Harmless Ninja throwing button %% have Button: Harrison Ford is a better idea %% have Button: Have an adequate day! %% have (with picture of smiling eye in pyramid) Button: Have an Illuminated day! %% have Button: Have no fear - I never attack lesser beings %% have Button: Have Tardis, will travel %% Button: Have you hugged a pervert today? %% have Button: Have you hugged your Cabbage Patch Dalek today? %% have Button: Have you hugged your dragon today? %% Button: Have you Rolfed your cat today? %% have Button: He's dead, Elliot %% have Button: He's dead, Jean-Luc %% have 1/2 Buttons: He's dead, Jim Of course he's dead, I killed him! %% have Button: He's dead, Jim... You take his phaser, I'll get his wallet %% Button: Heaven doesn't want me, and Hell's afraid I'll take over %% have Button: Hedonist for Hire - No job too easy %% Button: Hell I'm better %% have Button: Hell's Ewoks %% have Button: Heralds don't pun - they cant %% have Button: Hi! I can't remember your name, either %% Button: High entertainment threshold %% have Button: History doesn't repeat itself - Historians repeat each other %% have Button: History repeats itself, but each time the price goes up %% have Button: Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good bullwhip by your side %% have Button: Hollow chocolate has no calories %% have Button: Housework can kill you if you do it right %% have Button: How the !*@%! did I get on the con committee? %% have Button: Human beings don't live like this %% have Button: Humor is emotional chaos recollected in tranquility %% have Button: I am a bookaholic. If you are a decent person, you will sell me books at half price. %% have Button: I am a bookaholic. If you are a decent person, you will not sell me another book. %% have Button: I am a buttonholic. If you are a decent person, you will not sell me another button. %% have (x3) Button: I am a genius and should be exempt from shit %% Button: I am a genius and should be exempt from this sort of thing %% have Button: I am a softwareholic. If you are a decent person, you will not sell me any more software. %% have Button: I am different, I am alone and I'm an outcast... I bleed green! %% have Button: I am not a happy camper %% have Button: I am not a number! I am a free fan! %% have Button: I am not a number! I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. I am a free man! %% have Button: I am not a student of human nature. I am a professor of a far wider academy, of which human nature is only a part %% have Button: I am not a trained killer. I LEAD trained killers. %% have Button: I am not as forgiving as the Emperor is %% have Button: I am not conceited -- I just can't stand mortals %% have Button: I am one of the greatest liars in the English language - I wouldn't be telling you this if I didn't know it wasn't true %% have Button: I am simply a human being, more or less %% have Button: I am the Imp of the Perverse (knowing this won't help you, either) %% have Button: I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater %% have (x) Button: I am very flexible - I can put both feet in my mouth %% have Button: I am very interested in the future because I plan to spend the rest of my life there %% Button: I ask for so little, just let me rule you and you will have every- thing you want %% have Button: I beat the Kobayashi Maru situation by using the Corbomite maneuver %% Button: I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs %% Button: I can tell you're lying - your lips are moving %% have (x3) Button: I can't be late -- I just got here %% have Button: I can't be overdrawn - I still have checks left! %% have Button: I canna change the laws of physics, Captain, but I can find ye a loophole %% have Button: I didn't know it was impossible when I did it. %% Button: I didn't say it was a GOOD joke %% Button: I didn't trip - I was caught in a sudden gust of gravity %% Button: I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them %% have Button: I don't believe in no-win scenarios %% have Button: I don't care if I'm a lemming - I'm not going! %% Button: I don't delegate responsibility, I delegate blame %% have Button: I don't get mad -- I get odd %% Button: I don't have an attitude problem - it's supposed to be like this %% have (x2) Button: I don't have to take this abuse from you - I've got hundreds of people waiting to abuse me %% have Button: I don't have ulcers -- I give them! %% Button: I don't know why, but humans are quite my favorite species %% have Button: I don't like spreading rumors, but what else can you do with them? %% have Button: I don't like violence but I'm very good at it %% have Button: I don't mean to make you feel guilty, but I would if I could %% have Button: I don't mind being in touch with reality, as long as I don't have to live there %% have Button: I don't mind getting older. I just mind that I have aging children %% Button: I don't need you, y'know - I can be lonely all by myself %% have Button: I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person I preach to %% Button: I don't purr - I don't beep - I ain't cute! %% have Button: I don't remember volunteering for this "Ring" business %% have Button: I don't see you, so don't pretend to be there %% Button: I don't stoop to conquer - I merely conquer %% have Button: I don't suffer from insanity - I revel in it! %% have Button: I don't want constructive criticism. It's all I can do to put up with constructive praise %% Button: I don't want help, I want pity %% Button: I don't want to be a millionaire - just to live like one %% Button: I don't WANT to go somewhere where they cook the wine but not the fish %% Button: I eat Ethiopian food with a fork and I'm proud! %% have Button: I eat junk food to get it out of the house %% have Button: I finally got it all together - but then I forgot where I put it %% have Button: I find your lack of faith disturbing %% have Button: I found Jesus, and he said, "Tag, you're it!" %% Button: I get paid for thinking like this %% have Button: I grew up on Mt. Everest and everything's been downhill since %% have Button: I had no shoes and wept. Then I met a man who had no feet. So I said, "Hey man, got any shoes you're not using?" %% have Button: I have a mind like a steel sieve %% have Button: I have a mind like a steel trap; whatever goes in gets crushed and mangled! %% Button: I have no gun, but I can spit %% have Button: I have no humility. It's a virtue, but I can live with it %% have Button: I have no use for adventures - they're nasty disturbing uncomfortable things and make you late for dinner! %% have Button: I have not lost my mind -- I know exactly where I left it %% have Button: I have not lost my mind -- it's backed up on disk somewhere %% have Button: I have not lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere %% Button: I have nothing against bigots personally, but if they move into a neighborhood, property values go down %% have Button: I haven't come far enough and I'm NOT a baby! %% have Button: I haven't lost it -- it's been temporarily mislaid %% have Button: I knew I had some reason for not killing you... Now what was it? %% have Button: I know Karate, Kung Fu, and 47 other dangerous words %% have Button: I know UNIX, ADA, FORTH, APL, PASCAL, C, FORTRAN, COBOL, SMALLTALK, LISP, and nineteen other high-tech words %% have Button: I know where my towel is %% Button: I like life - it's something to do %% Button: I like to start the day off with a smile and get it over with early %% have Button: I love lefties %% have Button: I love it when a plan comes together %% Button: I love you like a brother but business is business %% have Button: I may be a craven little coward, but I'm a GREEDY craven little coward %% Button: I may have taught you everything you know, but I didn't teach you everything I know %% Button: I might as well exercise - I'm in a bad mood anyway %% have Button: I never spit in your drink -- why do you smoke in my air? %% have Button: I practice parallel monogamy %% have Button: I pray for boredom but it never comes %% have Button: I prefer to remain anomalous %% have Button: I refuse to be intimidated by reality anymore %% Button: I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person %% Button: I rub people the right way %% have Button: I saw Jesus - and He said "Tag, you're it!" %% have Button: I think I am! I think I am! - the little engine that philosophized %% have Button: I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed %% have Button: I think, therefore I am, I think %% have 1/2/3 Buttons: I thought YOU silenced the guard! What guard? Fool! I am the guard! %% have Button: I used to be amused -- now I'm just bored %% have (x2) Button: I used to be conceited -- but now I'm perfect %% have Button: I used to be disgusted -- now I'm just amused %% have (x2) Button: I used to be sane... but I got better %% have Button: I used to get high on life, but I've built up a tolerance %% Button: I used to have a drug problem, but now I make enough money %% Button: I used to have a fnord, but I traded it in on a Chnevy %% have Button: I want a map of this conversation %% Button: I want it all! %% have Button: I warn you not to underestimate my powers %% have Button: I was born in Iowa, I just work in outer space %% Button: I was court-martialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence %% have Button: I was stupid, I was expendable, and here I am %% Button: I wasn't trained for this %% have Button: I will continue to be an impossible person as long as those who are now possible remain possible %% Button: I will never amount to anything in the galaxy while I retain my propensity for vulgar facetiousness %% Button: I will not be briefed or debriefed - my underwear is my own! %% Button: I will not eat oysters - I want my food dead - not sick, not wounded - dead %% have Button: I'd be agnostic if I cared that much %% have Button: I'd do anything to make you happy, but you're asking too much %% Button: I'd love to make up my mind, if only I could remember where I left it %% Button: I'll give you the shirt off my back, but when you return it, it had better be dry cleaned! %% have Button: I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure! %% have Button: I'm a citizen of the Universe, and a gentleman to boot! %% have Button: I'm a DM -- it's lonely at the top %% have (x2) Button: I'm a game master -- it's lonely at the top %% Button: I'm a GM -- it's lonely at the top %% have Button: I'm a hacker -- I don't know the meaning of sleep %% have Button: I'm a knight errant, not a arrant fool! %% have Button: I'm a misanthrope - what's your @#$&ing problem? %% have Button: I'm a right-brain mind in a left-brain job %% have Button: I'm a very dangerous fellow when I don't know what I'm doing %% have Button: I'm apathetic and I don't care %% have Button: I'm Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan %% have Button: I'm fannish -- I don't know the meaning of sleep %% have Button: I'm feeling argumentative. Please contradict me. %% have (x2) Button: I'm feeling homicidal - say ANYTHING %% have Button: I'm GREAT at immaturity - I've been practicing for decades %% Button: I'm having a d'eja-vu experience - just like last time %% have Button: I'm here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... I'm out of bubblegum %% have (x3) Button: I'm immortal. I'm bored. Let's party. %% have Button: I'm just looking at your nametag, honest! %% have Button: I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore %% have Button: I'm never late -- nothing starts without me! %% have Button: I'm not a FAN -- I just read the stuff! %% have Button: I'm not a mercenary -- killing's more of a hobby with me %% Button: I'm not a short person - I'm a tall elf %% have Button: I'm not bad... I'm just drawn that way %% have (1 with picture of woman/1 without) Button: I'm not born again - my mother got it right the first time! %% have (x2) Button: I'm not breaking the rules - I'm just testing their elasticity %% have Button: I'm not irresponsible - I'm out of control! %% have Button: I'm not loafing -- I work so fast I'm always finished %% have Button: I'm not on drugs -- I AM drugs %% have Button: I'm not stupid, I'm not expendable, and I'M NOT GOING %% have Button: I'm not stupid, I'm not expendable, and I'm not gophering %% have Button: I'm not tense, just terribly alert %% have Button: I'm not unemployed - I'm looking for the perfect job %% have Button: I'm only a hypnotist, so this is only a suggestion %% have Button: I'm pink, therefore I'm spam %% have Button: I'm sorry, but a unicorn doesn't work like a mule %% have Button: I'm sorry, my karma ran over your dogma %% Button: I'm the leader - which way did they go? %% have (x2) Button: I'm the world's foremost authority on my own opinion %% have (with picture of pointing finger) Button: I've a Right to be Left! %% have Button: I've been seduced by the chocolate side of the Force. %% have Button: I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand %% have Button: I've got a bad feeling about this %% Button: I've got it all! %% Button: I've got nothing to say and I'll only say it once %% have Button: I've had fun before. This isn't it. %% have Button: I've had time since I joined the Doctor %% Button: I've seen the future and it's much like the present, only longer %% Button: I've turned my life around - I used to be miserable and depressed - now I'm depressed and miserable %% have Button: If a program is useful, it must be changed -- If it's useless, it must be documented %% have Button: If all else fails, lower your standards %% have Button: If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they'd point in different directions %% have Button: If at first you don't succeed, change the rules %% Button: If everything is everything, why can't I eat my shoes? %% have Button: If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates %% have Button: If God hadn't wanted me to be paranoid, He wouldn't have given me such a vivid imagination %% Button: If guns are outlawed, can we use swords? %% have Button: If guns are outlawed, how will conservatives win arguments? %% have Button: If guns are outlawed, how will we shoot the liberals? %% have Button: If I want your stupid opinion, I'll beat it out of you %% have Button: If it doesn't work, use a bigger hammer. If it breaks, it needed fixing anyway. %% have Button: If it has syntax, it isn't user friendly %% have Button: If it's any of your business, it isn't really gossip %% have Button: If it's worth doing it's worth doing badly %% have Button: If life hands you a lemon, clove it %% Button: If losing builds character, I have all the character I need %% have Button: If Murphy's Law were true, whenever you tried to take a breath, all the air would be on the other side of the room %% have Button: If olive oil comes from olives, and peanut oil comes from peanuts, where does baby oil come from? %% have Button: If only you could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without having to do anything %% have Button: If people see that you mean them no harm, they'll never hurt you, nine times out of ten %% have Button: If puns were deli meat, this would be the wurst %% Button: If silence could speak, I wonder what it would say %% have Button: If someone asks you if you're a god, say yes! %% have Button: If that which does not kill me makes me stronger, I must be Arnold Schwarzenegger by now %% have Button: If the government doesn't trust the people, why doesn't it dissolve them and elect a new people? %% have Button: If the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body... then only left-handed people are in their right minds! %% have Button: If the wearer of this button shows any signs of depression, administer Chinese food immediately %% have Button: If the wearer of this button shows any signs of depression, administer chocolate immediately! %% have Button: If there is anything in the universe more important than my ego, I want it taken out and shot immediately %% have Button: If they give you lined paper, write the other way! %% have Button: If voting could change the system, it would be illegal. If not voting could change the system, it would be illegal %% have Button: If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage %% have Button: If words could speak, I wonder what they'd say %% have Button: If you are willing to die, you can do anything %% Button: If you aren't confused, then you don't understand the situation %% have Button: If you can't dress weird, why dress at all? %% have Button: If you can't say something nice, say something surrealistic %% Button: If you can't win, make the other guy break the record %% have Button: If you don't go to other people's funerals, they won't go to yours %% have Button: If you don't like the way I drive, stay off the street... the sidewalk... the lawn... %% have Button: If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either of you for the rest of the day %% have Button: If you know what you're doing, how long it will take, or what it will cost, it isn't research. %% Button: If you know what you're doing, it isn't research %% Button: If you love something, kill it. If it comes back, you belong to it. %% have Button: If you love something, let it go. If it doesn't come back to you, hunt it down and kill it. %% Button: If you think my fantasies are weird, you should see my life %% Button: If you think my life is weird, you should see my fantasies %% have (x2) Button: If you torture the data enough, it will confess %% Button: If you want to take a picture, it'll cost you a fiver. If not, I'll break your camera. %% Button: If you're allergic to cats, stay away from me %% Button: If you're going to put a time machine into a car, you may as well do it with some style %% have (x2) Button: If you're going to walk on thin ice, you may as well dance %% have Button: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate %% have Button: If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%? %% have Button: Ignorance is bliss, but it'll never replace sex %% Button: Ignore previous button %% have (with picture of smiling cat) Button: Illegitimi Non Carborundum %% Button: Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal. %% have Button: Immoral Minority Charter Member %% have Button: Immoral Singularity - I dig black holes %% Button: Immortality's a bitch %% have Button: Implementing systems is 95% boredom and 5% sheer terror %% Button: In all human affairs, the odds are 6 to 5 against %% have Button: In this world, it rains on the Just and the Unjust, but the Unjust have the Just's umbrella %% have Button: In your heart you know it's flat! %% have Button: Incest is best, and I consider the cat one of the family %% have Button: Incorrigible Romantic %% have Button: Incorrigible Punster - do not incorrige %% have Button: Indecision is the basis of flexibility %% have Button: Indulgences are Papal, too %% have Button: Insanity is hereditary - You get it from your kids! %% Button: Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac %% have Button: Interfere? Of course we'll interfere. Always do what you're best at, I say. %% have (1 full, 1 without "spinelessly...pun") Button: Invertebrate Punster - Spinelessly unable to resist a pun - So slug me! %% Button: Involuntary Polymorph - subject to change without notice %% Button: Is it weird in here or is it me? %% have Button: Is the glass half empty, half full, or twice as large as it needs to be? %% have Button: Is the surface of a planet the right place for an expanding industrial civilization? %% have Button: Is there really a United States, or just a bunch of people pretending? %% Button: It is against the growing of marijuana to respect laws %% have Button: It is better to light a flamethrower than to curse the darkness %% Button: It is changed, isn't it? %% have Button: It is easier for a camel to pass through a needle's eye if they are lightly greased %% have Button: It takes a lot of cheese to sharpen a sword %% have Button: It takes all kinds of people to make a world, but did you ever think the percentages were wrong? %% have Button: It was a painful divorce -- I lost the games! %% Button: It was only a SMALL thermonuclear device %% have Button: It won't work - I told Orville that, I told Wilbur that, and I'm telling you now! %% have Button: It would be nice if entropy could be used for something constructive %% Button: It's 10 AM - do you know where your shoes are? %% have Button: It's a small world, but I'd hate to have to paint it. %% have Button: It's against my programming to impersonate a Deity %% Button: It's been a long week today %% have Button: It's been lovely, but I have to scream now %% have (x3) (with picture of Mandelbrot) Button: It's chaos pure and simple %% Button: It's hard being an individualist all by yourself %% Button: It's hard to see the picture when you're inside the frame %% have Button: It's hard to think of you as the end result of millions of years of evolution %% Button: It's impolite to silence fools and cruel to let them go on %% Button: It's just a very intense dream %% have Button: It's never too late to have a happy childhood %% Button: It's nice to be modest, but it's stupid not to tell them %% have (x2) Button: It's not a bug - it's an undocumented feature %% have Button: It's not a dungeon - it's a fortified underground defense installation %% have Button: It's not cute being this easy %% have Button: It's not easy being this cute %% have Button: It's not my FAULT %% Button: It's not the long fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop at the bottom %% have Button: It's not the principle of the thing, it's the money %% have Button: It's not the years -- it's the mileage %% have Button: It's not who wins or loses, it's who keeps score %% have (with picture of penguin) Button: It's practically impossible to look at a penguin and feel angry %% Button: It's slobbering time %% have Button: It's you and me against the world. When do we attack? %% have Button: Jabba's kind of scum -- fearless and inventive %% have Button: Jedi Knight %% have Button: Jeez if you love Honkus %% have Button: Jesus saves, but the Mongol hoards %% have Button: John Christian Falkenberg - He's efficient %% Button: Join the glaciologists for a nuclear winter now %% have Button: Judge me by my size, you will? %% have Button: Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you %% have Button: Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Tatooine... Jawas II %% have Button: Kamikaze Chemist %% have Button: Keeping freedom safe from democracy %% have Button: Kick ass now, take names later %% Button: Kill them all -- God will know his own %% have Button: Kill them all -- let God sort them out %% have (x3) Button: Killing never solves anything, but it keeps people out of your hair while you think of what to do next %% have Button: KISS ME I'm not Irish, but don't let that stop you %% Button: Kiss me - I'm telepathetic %% have Button: Klingons need love, too (but don't tell anyone, it would spoil their image) %% have Button: Knowing Murphy's Law won't help either %% have Button: Kzinti Diplomatic Corps Let's do lunch %% have Button: Ladies sewing circle & terrorist society %% have Button: Laugh it up, fuzzball %% have Button: Lawful game master -- and I pick the laws %% have Button: Laws are made to be broken %% have Button: Lead me not into temptation - I can find it for myself %% have Button: League of Bloodthirsty Women %% have Button: League of Bloodthirsty Women -- Men's Auxiliary %% have Button: League of Pushy Women - Self-appointed chapter head %% have Button: Lefties are better lovers %% have Button: Lefties have rights, too %% have Button: Legalize prostitution -- keep politicians off the streets %% have Button: Let me control a planet's oxygen supply and I don't care who makes the laws! %% have Button: Let's split up -- we can do more damage that way %% have Button: Lethargy in motion %% Button: Life is a cabaret - dark, crowded, and full of Nazis %% have Button: Life is a sandwich -- and it's always lunchtime %% Button: Life is a terminological inexactitude %% Button: Life is like an analogy %% have Button: Life is much too complicated in the morning %% have Button: Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first. %% have Button: Life isn't always fair, but it shouldn't cheat that much %% have Button: Life's a beach, and then you dry %% have Button: Life's a bitch - and then you die %% Button: Life's a magazine, taxation's a bitch! %% Button: Life's a virgin - bitches are too easy %% have Button: Life... don't talk to me about life %% have Button: Light a candle, curse the glare %% have Button: Light Sabers - A part of living %% have Button: lim sqrt(3)=2 3-->4 %% have (with pictures of moon in different phases) Button: Listen to the Lord and Lady - call their children in the moonlight %% have Button: Live Lent in the fast lane %% have Button: Live long and prosper %% have Button: Live long and prosper. It's logical. %% have Button: Live now - procrastinate tomorrow! %% Button: Living well is the best revenge %% have Button: Love is missing someone even when they're with you %% Button: Love may make the world go round, but lust is the axis on which it revolves %% have (with picture of Yoda) Button: Luminous beings we are - not this crude matter %% have (x2) Button: MS-DOS Just say no %% have Button: Magic users have crystal balls %% have Button: Magic User %% Button: Maintaining humility can be a monumental task for some people - in my case it's simply too much to ask %% have Button: Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler %% have Button: Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view %% Button: Mao's poems are better than Hitler's paintings, but not as good as Winston Churchill's %% have (x2) Button: Marching to the beat of a different kettle of fish %% have Button: Marvelous! You're going to kill me. What a finely tuned response to the situation! %% have Button: Mathematician: a machine for converting coffee into theorems %% Button: Matrix Technicians do it in relays %% have Button: Maybe I'll become an evil genius and destroy the world and THEN I'll feel better %% have Button: Me Concom -- you mundane %% have (x2) Button: Me not responsible. Me just pawn in game of life %% have Button: Member of Videophiles Anonymous %% have Button: Mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence %% have Button: Migratory lifeform with a tropism for bookstores %% have Button: Migratory lifeform with a tropism for parties %% have Button: Mildly annoyed scientist %% have Button: Militant Agnostic - I don't know and you don't either! %% Button: Militant Pacifist - stop fighting or I'll kill you %% have (x2) Button: Mobile non-smoking area %% have Button: Mobile smoking area %% have Button: Money can't buy happiness, but it does quiet the nerves %% have Button: Money is its own reward %% have Button: Money is the root of all evil -- and a man needs roots %% Button: Money isn't everything, but it'll do till until everything comes along %% have Button: Moody bitch seeks understanding gentleman for love/hate relationship %% have Button: More hit points than you can possible imagine %% have Button: Moriarity killed a clone -- Holmes lives %% have Button: Mostly Harmless %% have Button: Mr. Fusion Home Service Representative %% have (x2) Button: Mr. Wesley Crusher, would you please report to the airlock %% have Button: Mules and donkeys aren't used in war because they're too smart to go on a battlefield %% have Button: Murphy was an optimist! %% have Button: Murphy's Law only fails when you try to demonstrate it %% have Button: Mutate now - avoid the rush %% have Button: My back is computerized - it has a floppy disc %% have Button: My body belongs to me -- but I share! %% have Button: My brain is the most important thing about me, but look what told me that %% have Button: My commitment is to truth, not consistency %% Button: My lawyer can beat up your lawyer %% have (x2) Button: My life may be strange, but at least it's not boring %% have Button: My mind is made up -- don't confuse me with the facts %% have (x2) Button: My mind isn't ALWAYS in the gutter - sometimes it comes out to feed %% have Button: My opinion is uncluttered by facts %% Button: My other button is funny %% have Button: My parents went to Ingolstadt, and all I got was this lousy apple %% have Button: My parents were first cousins -- that's why I look so much alike! %% have Button: My superiority complex is better than your superiority complex %% have Button: Nasty, Brutish, and Short %% have Button: National Lampoon Staff Anthropologist at large %% have Button: Naugahyde is murder %% have (x2) Button: NCC 1701 1966-1984 RIP %% have Button: Neutral Greedy %% have Button: Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity %% Button: Never believe anything until it has been officially denied %% have Button: Never confuse endurance with hospitality %% have Button: Never insult an alligator until after you've crossed the river %% have Button: Never learn to type. If you do, someone will ask you to do it %% have Button: Never let your schooling interfere with your education %% have (x2) Button: Never make anything simple and efficient when it can be complex and wonderful %% have Button: Never play leapfrog with a unicorn %% have Button: Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow %% have Button: Never tell me the odds -- numbers confuse me %% have Button: Never trust a smiling game master %% have Button: Never try to teach a pig to sing. It only wastes your time and annoys the pig. %% Button: Never wrestle with a pig. You'll both get filthy - and the pig likes it. %% have Button: Nice computers don't go down %% have Button: Nice computers only go down once a day %% have Button: Nietzsche is Pietzsche %% have Button: Nietzsche is pietzsche, but Sartre is smartre %% have (x4) Button: No food, no sleep, just THE GAME %% have Button: No job too big, no job too small, no job too stupid %% have Button: No man is an island so long as he is on at least one mailing list %% have Button: No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up %% have Button: No matter where you go, there you are %% have Button: No matter who you vote for, the government gets elected %% have Button: No one ever built a statue to a critic %% have Button: No one expects the spammish repetition Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! %% have Button: No one is a failure who is enjoying life %% have Button: No smoking -- Oxygen in use %% have Button: No, I haven't read ILLUMINATUS! %% have Button: Nobody can fix the economy Nobody can be trusted with their finger on the button VOTE FOR NOBODY %% Button: Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent %% Button: Nobody knows the trouble I've been %% Button: Not exactly working on all thrusters %% have Button: Not quite human any longer %% have Button: Not tonight, Chekov, I have an earache %% Button: Not tonight, darling - the Supreme Court is watching %% Button: Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result %% have Button: Nothing is foolproof because fools are so ingenious %% Button: Nothing is forgotten. Nothing is ever forgotten. %% have Button: Nothing is impossible for anyone impervious to reason %% Button: Nothing is uglier than truth when it is not on our side %% have Button: Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist. %% Button: Now everybody line up alphabetically by height %% have (x2) Button: Now is NOT a good time to annoy me %% Button: Nudge nudge wink wink say no more say no more %% have Button: Nuke 'em from orbit - it's the only way to be sure %% have Button: Nuke 'em till they glow, then shoot 'em in the dark %% have Button: Nuke ET %% have Button: Nuke the fnords. Save the baby dronfs %% have Button: Nuke the Smurfs %% have Button: Nuke the Whales %% have Button: Nurses are 'patient' people %% have Button: Objectivity is in the eye of the beholder %% have Button: Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most! %% have Button: Of course you can't flap your arms and fly to the moon - after a while you'd run out of air to push against %% Button: Of course you're confused - you're wearing my underwear %% have Button: Oh God, I'm so depressed %% have Button: Oh, no. Not again. %% have Button: Oh, no, not another learning experience! %% have Button: Oh, please continue with your petty bickering. I find it fascinating %% Button: Old hippies never die - they just take a little longer to get a mortgage %% have Button: Old Jedi never die -- they just fade in and out %% have Button: Old mercenaries never die. They just go to hell and regroup. %% Button: On a clear disk you can seek forever %% have Button: Once upon a time... is now %% have Button: One company, one egg, one basket %% have Button: One day I shall burst my bud of calm and blossom forth into hysteria %% have Button: 1.79x10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's the LAW %% have Button: 186,000 mps; It's not just a good idea, it's the LAW %% have Button: 186,000 mps - it's not the law, it's just a challenge %% have Button: One Step Beyond The Night Gallery into The Outer Limits of The Twilight Zone! %% have Button: Only borrow from pessimists - they don't expect to be paid back %% have Button: Only lefties are in their right minds %% have Button: Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is paranoid, and the other one is out to get him %% have Button: Opposite Weirdnesses Attract - All weirdness is opposite %% have Button: Other people's property comes naturally to me %% have Button: Outnumbered, yes. Outmaneuvered, maybe. Outclassed, never! %% Button: Overstressed, overtired, and oversensitive %% have Button: Pagan and Proud %% have Button: Pagan Missionary %% Button: Pagan Missionary - let me show you my positions %% have Button: Paladin %% have Button: Paladins do it good -- or not at all %% have Button: Paladins were born to raze Hell %% have Button: Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one %% have Button: Passing directly from barbarism to decadence %% have Button: Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life %% have Button: Peace through superior firepower %% have Button: Peace through superior swordplay %% have Button: Penguin Lust %% have Button: Pensic XI -- The War that wasn't %% have Button: Permanent Mobile Sabbath - On the Sabbath, it is forbidden to work, even on your character %% have Button: Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity! %% Button: Pick a blatant lie and then stick with it %% have Button: Pipers do it with Amazing Grace %% have (x3) Button: Please do not look into laser with remaining eyeball %% have Button: +/- sqrt(4b^2) = To be or not to be %% have Button: Pobody's Nerfect! %% Button: Poetry is the right words in the right order. So is a dictionary. %% Button: Poets are writers too %% have Button: Poets make better lays %% Button: Pointed ears are a sign of intelligence %% have (x2) Button: Possessor of a mind not merely twisted but actually sprained %% have Button: Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth %% have Button: Power corrupts -- isn't that what it's for? %% have Button: Prepare for the future -- read science fiction %% Button: Press ENTER to go on to the next button %% Button: Programmers are a bit smarter %% have Button: Progress at best consists of replacing errors with more subtle errors %% have Button: Projecting empaths -- You gotta feel sorry for them %% have Button: Pundit %% Button: Punned-it %% Button: Puns are for groan-ups %% have Button: Punslinger %% Button: Pure as the driven slush %% have Button: Purranoia: the fear your cats are up to something %% have Button: Put your modem where your mouth is %% have Button: Question Authority %% have Button: Question Authority -- ask me anything %% have (x2) Button: QVACK %% have Button: R2D2 is a renegade Dalek %% have Button: Rampaging anarchist horde and floating beer party %% have Button: Ranger Squire %% have Button: Ranger %% Button: Reading - It's not a pastime - it's an addiction %% have Button: Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building %% have Button: Real men hack APL %% have Button: Real men write self-modifying code %% have (x2) Button: Real programmers don't document. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand. %% Button: Real-life Heinlein female %% have Button: Reality corrupts. Absolute reality corrupts absolutely %% have Button: Reality is a collective hunch %% have Button: Reality is a crutch for people who can't deal with Markland %% have Button: Reality is a crutch for people who can't deal with science fiction %% have Button: Reality is a crutch for people who can't deal with the SCA %% Button: Reality is for people who can't handle buttons %% have Button: Reality is OK... Just don't make a habit of it %% have Button: Reality is the opiate of the people %% have Button: Rebel without a clue %% have Button: Red Giant seeks White Dwarf for binary relationship %% have Button: Relaxed Agnostic - I don't know any answers - I'm not looking very hard, either %% have Button: Remember, there's more to life than science fiction, but not much %% have Button: Renegade Time Lady %% have Button: Renegade Time Lord %% have Button: Repetition is the soul of wit. Repetition is the soul of wit. Repetition... %% have Button: Resident Vampire %% have Button: Resistance is useless (if less than one ohm) %% have Button: Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow %% have Button: Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads! %% have Button: Robert A. Heinlein memorial service 7:00 PM Barbecue 7:30 PM (no salt necessary) %% have Button: Rules? What rules? %% Button: Sage with a Slight Flaw in Character %% have Button: Save the mundanes - we need them for breeding stock! %% have Button: Save the nukes %% have Button: Save the werewolves - Help protect an endangered species %% Button: Say it sincerely... Say it with an Uzi %% have Button: Science is true - don't be misled by facts %% have Button: Scottish country dancers are reel people %% have Button: Scruffy-looking nerf herder %% have Button: Secular Humanist Defense League %% Button: See Earth first %% Button: Self-sacrifice is always a virtue, but only in other people %% have Button: Self-sacrifice is always a virtue - in other people %% have Button: SEPPUKU button - to use, fold back pin %% have Button: Serenity through viciousness %% have Button: Service with a snarl %% Button: Serving donuts on another planet %% Button: Set phasers on "annoy" %% Button: 7 out of 10 fans use cats as their drug of choice %% have Button: Sex and Drugs and Rock and Role-Playing %% have Button: Sex is nobody's business but me and my teddy bear's %% have Button: Sex is nobody's business except for the three people involved %% have Button: Sex is only dirty if it's done right %% have Button: Sex, Drugs, & Unix %% have Button: Share and Enjoy %% have Button: Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up! Push down! Byte! Byte! Byte! %% have Button: Shredded Disaster is Murphy Slaw %% have Button: Shut up, Wesley %% have Button: Silly rabbithorn! Matrix are for kids! %% Button: Sleep is for the weak and sickly %% Button: Slight discomfort before dishonor %% have Button: Smile if you ARE Jesus %% have Button: Smile! Cthulhu loves you! %% have Button: Smurf exterminator %% have Button: Smurfs are baby Gamelons %% have Button: So many books, so little time %% have Button: So many galaxies, so little time %% have Button: Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Imperial Admirals %% have (x2) Button: Some things are still sacred - I haven't taken them apart yet %% Button: Someday my prince will come - but right now I'm available %% have Button: Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination %% have Button: Sometimes the only solution is to find a new problem %% have Button: Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering %% have Button: Speak softly and wear a LOUD shirt %% have Button: Speaker to Teletypes %% have Button: Spending a year dead for tax purposes %% have Button: SPI died for our sins %% have Button: Squint when you approach me, lest you be blinded by my beauty %% Button: Squishy-do - the way of the slug %% have Button: Star Trek IV - so long, and thanks for all the fish %% have Button: Stop me before I volunteer again... and again... and again... %% have Button: Story-tellers live to tell the tale %% have Button: Student of the Harry Tuttle school of Revolutionary Plumbing %% have Button: Stupid? I don't know the meaning of the word %% have Button: Success is achieving the top of the food chain %% have Button: Suffering the inhumanity of regular employment %% have Button: Support free trade -- smuggle! %% have Button: Support your local medical examiner -- die strangely %% have Button: Support your local thieve's guild -- leave your doors unlocked %% have Button: SUSHIDO - The way of the Tuna %% have Button: Tailored bacteria have designer genes %% have Button: Take me home -- furry people need love too %% Button: Talk is cheap - bullets are cheaper %% have Button: Talk to the OTHER autocrat! %% have Button: Taxation is theft; Conscription is slavery; War is murder %% have Button: Teacher from the Black Lagoon %% have Button: Team Banzai %% Button: Team Bolshoi %% Button: Techno-Hippie %% have Button: Technopagan %% have Button: TERMINATOR - The few, the proud, the machines %% have Button: Thank you for not breathing while I smoke %% have Button: Thank you for not thanking me for not smoking %% have Button: That may well be so true, but my mind working am not %% have Button: That was ZEN, this is TAO %% Button: That which does not kill me maims me severely %% have Button: That which does not kill me makes me smarter. %% have Button: That which does not kill me makes me smarter except for oxygen deprivation %% have Button: That would be telling %% have Button: That's odd. That's very odd. Wouldn't you say that's very odd? %% Button: That's ok - I don't know my name either %% Button: The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously %% Button: The art of flying is aiming at the ground - and missing %% have Button: The average woman would rather have beauty than brains because the average man can see better than he can think %% have Button: The beauty of a pun is in the "Oy!" of the beholder %% Button: The best defense is a strong retreat %% have Button: The cow ate bluegrass and mooed indigo %% have Button: The customer isn't always right, but they do get an unnatural amount of slack %% have Button: The death ray is in the eye of the beholder %% have Button: The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits %% Button: The DM is always right - cruel, sadistic, etc. but always right %% Button: The ee's are cummings! The ee's are cummings! %% have Button: The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am %% Button: The end of the world is at hand - repent and return your library books %% Button: The fascination of the paper clip is inversely proportional to the work at hand %% have (x3) Button: The few, the proud, the incurably insane... The Concom %% have Button: The first cup of coffee recapitulates phylogeny %% have Button: The following statement is true. The preceding statement is false. %% have Button: The future exists first in the imagination, then in the will, then in reality %% Button: The gods aren't crazy - they're only drunk %% have Button: The good news is: I'm a perfectionist. The bad news is: I charge by the hour. %% have Button: The hell with the prime directive - let's kill something %% have Button: The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer. %% have Button: The impossible we do immediately. Miracles require 24 hours notice. %% have (x2) Button: The less you bother me, the sooner you'll get results %% have (x2) Button: The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon %% have Button: The little engineer that could %% Button: The longer I am around humans, the less I understand them %% have (x2) Button: The meek will inherit the earth; the rest of us will go to the stars %% have Button: The Moral Majority is neither %% have Button: The most rabid literary purist %% have (written in Yin/Yang symbol) Button: The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. %% have Button: The obscure we see immediately, the completely apparent takes longer %% have (x2) Button: The only good morning is a dead morning %% have (with picture of mushroom cloud) Button: The only winning move is not to play %% have Button: The perfect lover turns into a pizza at 4 AM %% Button: The policeman isn't there to create disorder, he's there to preserve disorder %% Button: The question is not whether I'm out of my mind, but what are you doing trapped in yours? %% have Button: The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet %% have Button: The road goes ever on and on %% have Button: The shortest distance between two points has a bridge out %% have Button: The shortest distance between two puns is a straight line %% Button: The sleep of reason engenders monsters %% have Button: The trouble with being boss is there's no satisfaction is stealing office supplies %% Button: The toughest time in a person's life is when you have to kill a loved one because they're the Devil %% have Button: The Turing Tarpit is where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy %% have Button: The twelfth regeneration's a bitch and then you die %% have Button: The ultimate smart weapon would be too smart to blow itself up %% have Button: The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude %% have Button: The universe does not have laws - it has habits, and habits can be broken %% Button: The universe without the Doctor scarcely bears contemplation %% Button: The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the management %% have Button: The way to a man's heart is with a broadsword %% Button: The work most executives do is not very different from the work most secretaries do, except that executives rarely have demonstrable skills like typing ninety words a minute %% have Button: The world is cracked; this is all a bad yolk %% have Button: The worst thing about censorship is that it desensitizes people to violence %% have Button: The worst thing about censorship is that it desensitizes people to violence - censorship IS violence %% have Button: The worst thing about censorship is %% Button: The y chromosome is the runt of the litter %% have Button: There ain't no such thing as a free console %% have Button: There ain't no such thing as a free weekend %% have Button: There are many intelligent species in the universe. They all own cats. %% have Button: There are many intelligent species in the universe. They are all owned by cats. %% have Button: There are no accidents. Only plans other people don't tell you about %% have Button: There are only 2000 real people in the world; the rest are bad special effects %% Button: There are only two kinds of ship - submarines and targets %% have Button: There are very few personal problems which can't be solved by a suitable application of high explosives. %% have Button: There are very few problems which can't be solved by a suitable application of high explosives %% have Button: There are very few problems which can't be solved by ripping a hole in reality %% have Button: There can't be a crisis next week - my schedule is already full %% Button: There comes a time when nothing's left but style %% have Button: There is a very fine line between reality and fantasy - and I'd just as soon obscure it %% Button: There is intelligent life, but I'm only visiting %% have Button: There is no point in getting angry, but there is a stupid malignity to all this that does try one's patience %% have Button: There is no substitute for good manners -- except fast reflexes %% have Button: There is no substitute for incomprehensible good luck %% have Button: There is no TRUTH There is no REALITY There is no CONSISTENCY There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS I'm very probably wrong %% have Button: There isn't time enough for love, so what does that leave for hate? %% have Button: There's a dance in the old boy yet %% have Button: There's a dance in the old girl yet %% Button: There's famine. There's plague. There's death. There's war. Then there's us - Fifth Horseman Mercenary Corps. %% have Button: There's never time to do it right. There's always time to do it over. %% have Button: There's no need to do housework - after four years the dirt doesn't get any worse %% have Button: There's no rest for the greedy %% Button: There's so much entropy - wouldn't it be nice if it could be used for something constructive? %% Button: There's too much blood in my caffeine stream %% Button: They also surf who only stand in waves %% have Button: They got the library at Alexandria - they're not getting mine %% Button: They like you very much, but they are not the hell your whales! %% have Button: They lived in two worlds. They loved in one %% have Button: They'll take away my sword when they pry my cold dead fingers off the hilt %% have Button: Thief %% have Button: Think "HONK" if you're a telepath %% have Button: Think of it as evolution in action %% have Button: This button boldly goes where no button has gone before %% Button: This button has no other purpose than to get you to read it %% have (x2) Button: This button is cursed. As you read you will be confuset by ther printeb wertz. Yer intellijenc wil vabni... xrt! xrt! %% have Button: This button is programming you in ways that may not be apparent for months, or even years %% have Button: This button is right side up - the person wearing it has flipped %% have Button: This is a nightmare and I'm going to wake up, RIGHT? %% have Button: This is no ordinary fool you're dealing with. %% have Button: This isn't reality. This is fantasy. %% have (x3) Button: This life is a test. It is only a test. Had it been an actual life, you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go. You may or may not be issued an actual life later. %% have Button: This must be morning. I never could get the hang of mornings. %% have Button: This sentence contains one non-standard English flutzpah %% have Button: This sentence no verb %% have Button: This slogan is programming you in ways that may not be apparent for months, or even years. %% have Button: This universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. %% have (x2) Button: This universe is sold by weight, not by volume. Some settling may have occurred during shipment. %% have Button: Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those of us who do %% have Button: Those who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music %% have Button: Those who live by the nit, DIE by the nit %% have Button: Those whom the gods would destroy, they first teach BASIC %% Button: Thoth is my copilot %% Button: Time flies when you don't know what you're doing %% have Button: Time has little to do with infinity and jelly donuts %% have Button: Time is an illusion perpetuated by the manufacturers of space %% Button: Time is defined so as to make motion look simple %% Button: Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening right now %% have Button: Time Lords say, "Go ahead, make my yesterday" %% Button: To err is computer, to forgive is fine %% Button: To err is human - what's your excuse? %% have Button: To err is human, to really foul up requires the root code %% have Button: To err is human, to really foul up requires the root password %% have Button: To iterate is human, to recurse, divine %% have Button: Today is the first day of the rest of your sentence %% have Button: Total Strangers Need Love Too and I'm stranger than most! %% Button: Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas any more %% Button: Transcendent Paranoia %% have Button: Trust me %% Button: Trust me - thousands don't %% have Button: Trust me -- I'm almost a Doctor %% have Button: 2+2=5, for large values of two %% have Button: 2.998x10^10 cm/sec - It's not just a good idea, it's the LAW %% Button: 24-hour emergency backrub service %% have Button: 2B | *2B = FF %% Button: Two things are universal - hydrogen and stupidity %% have Button: Two's complement. Three's a crowd %% have Button: UFO's are real - the Air Force doesn't exist! %% have Button: UFO's are real - the Air Force is swamp gas! %% have Button: Ultimate Question Research Team %% Button: Under the most carefully controlled conditions of scheduling, pro- gramming, and con security, the fen will do what they damn well please %% have Button: Under the most carefully controlled conditions of temperature, density and pressure, the organism will do what it damn well pleases %% have Button: Unicorns aren't mythical -- virgins are! %% have Button: Universal Church of Pan-Ethnic Cuisine %% have Button: Until you walk a mile in someone else's moccasins, you can't imagine the smell %% have Button: Up *&$@ pulsar without a gravity generator %% have Button: Up your shaft %% have Button: Uppity Women Unite %% have (x2) Button: User Hostile %% have (x2) Button: User Surly %% Button: Using a feather is kinky. Using the whole chicken is perverse! %% have (with picture of teeth) Button: Vampire victim - be nice to me today %% have Button: Variables don't, constants aren't %% have Button: Vegetarians eat vegetables - I am a humanitarian %% have Button: Veni, Vidi, Visa %% have Button: Veteran of the Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force 1990-1951 %% have (in heart) Button: Vincent loves Catherine %% have Button: Visit Scenic Dagobah - The Jedi's last resort %% have Button: Vuja D'e: the strange feeling you get that nothing has happened before %% have Button: Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser %% Button: Wandering Punster - do not remove gag %% have Button: Wandering punster %% have Button: Want a jelly baby? %% have Button: Warning: GM whimsical when bored %% have Button: Warning! I still have all my spells! %% have Button: Warning: This person reads fantasy and is an avid denier of reality %% have Button: Warning: Whimsical when bored %% Button: Warp drive air conditioning is hyperventilation %% have Button: Watch it - You're trying my infinite patience %% have Button: Watch out! I'm striking a significant Kirby pose! %% have Button: We all live in a yellow subroutine %% have Button: We are all God's children - by a previous marriage %% have Button: We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities %% Button: We are experiencing synaptical difficulties - please stand by %% have Button: We are looking for the nuclear wessels %% Button: We are the Weird %% have Button: We both have the same problem -- you %% have Button: We came, we saw, we kicked its ass! %% have Button: We could really bust some heads - in a spiritual sense, of course %% Button: We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty %% Button: We Discordians must stick apart %% Button: We don't carry loose change into combat %% Button: We must finally acknowledge that the purpose of diplomacy is to prolong a crisis %% Button: We say that cats are playful creatures, perhaps they say the same about us %% Button: We should forgive our enemies, but only after they've been taken out and shot %% have Button: We'll get along fine as soon as you realize I'm God! %% have Button: We'll KNOW that rock is dead when you need a degree to get a job in it %% have Button: We'll look for the alien, you find the cat %% have Button: We're so busy catching minnows, we forget we're standing on a whale %% have Button: We're tired of third-rate incompetents in public office. We want first- rate incompetents %% have Button: We've got to stop hurting each other - you first %% Button: Weird "R" Us %% have Button: Weirdness Magnet %% have Button: Welcome to Middle Earth %% have Button: What a long strange trip it's been %% have Button: What am I doing out of bed? %% have Button: What color is a chameleon on a mirror? %% have Button: What could possibly go wrong? %% have Button: What do you look like when you aren't visualizing anything? %% have Button: What does a sacred chao say? MU! %% Button: What doesn't kill me makes me stronger %% have Button: What is the output of a vacuum pump? %% have Button: WHAT Sixties revival? The Sixties never died! %% have Button: What's the good of being grown-up if you can't be childish? %% have Button: What's the point of being fascinatingly crazy, if you don't enrich the world with it? %% have Button: What's vanilla, vanilla and vanilla? Ice cream clones %% have Button: Whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed %% have Button: When Cthulhu calls, he calls collect %% have Button: When evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve %% Button: When I was young, we didn't have MTV. We had to take drugs and go to concerts. %% have Button: When nine hundred years old you are, look as good you will not %% Button: When screwballs meet, they click %% have Button: When the game master smiles, it's already too late %% have Button: When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro %% have Button: When you are not looking at it, this sentence is in Spanish %% Button: When you were reading my buttons, my friend was picking your pocket %% Button: When you're as great as I am, it's hard to be humble %% have Button: When you're up to your ass in tribbles, it's hard to remember that the objective was to poison the grain %% have Button: Where's the Beef? %% have Button: Which came first, the future or the past? %% have Button: While you were reading my buttons, my friend was picking your pocket %% have Button: Who died and made you Blake? %% have Button: Who's scruffy-looking? %% have Button: Whoever said that money can't buy happiness didn't know where to shop %% have Button: Why are Earth people so parochial? %% have Button: Why are elves chaotic? Brownian motion %% have Button: Why be difficult when with a bit of effort you can be impossible? %% Button: Why be limited by your imagination - if something's impossible, you won't do it. %% have Button: Why can't you be unique and original like everybody else? %% have Button: Why did Douglas Hofstadter cross the road? To make this riddle possible! %% Button: Why reach for the musket when all you need is a custard pie? %% have Button: Why was I born with such contemporaries? %% have Button: Why work for a living when you can die for art? %% have Button: Windows & Icons & Mice OH MY! %% Button: Wisdom is knowing when to stop %% have Button: Witches use brooms because nature abhors a vacuum %% have Button: Woad Warrior %% have Button: Worst-dressed sentient being in the known universe %% have Button: Would all punsters please keep their gags in their mouths? %% have Button: Would it save you some time if I just gave up and went mad now? %% have Button: Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead %% Button: Yeah... yeah... that's the ticket... %% have Button: Yellow journalism is media ochre %% have Button: Yes, but what if this weren't a rhetorical question? %% have Button: Yield to temptation, it may not pass your way again %% have Button: Yoda for President - Vote for him you will %% have Button: You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much of your time reading buttons %% have Button: You bash the Balrog, I'll climb a tree %% Button: You can fly, but that cocoon has to go %% have Button: YOU can help wipe out COBOL in our lifetime %% have Button: You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to swim on his back, you've got something %% have Button: You can't achieve the impossible unless you attempt the absurd %% have Button: You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus %% Button: You can't get there from here %% Button: You can't have everything - where would you keep it? %% have Button: You knew the job was dangerous when you took it %% have Button: You know better than to trust a strange computer %% Button: You know you're in trouble when Spock starts to cry %% have Button: You know, just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets! %% have Button: You should be assertive, but not with me %% Button: You think you've found my weakness - but I have MORE %% have Button: You were TOLD not to feed me after midnight %% Button: You will meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it %% have Button: You'll find I'm full of surprises %% Button: You'll have to be nice to me - I throw up easily %% have Button: You're awfully picky for someone from the Twilight Zone %% have (x2) Button: You're not the only one who thinks I don't know what I'm doing %% have Button: You're not right. You just SOUND right. %% have Button: You're only young once - after that you need another excuse %% Button: You're only young once, but you can be immature forever %% Button: Young urban psycho killer %% Button: Your behavior is no excuse for the way you act %% have Button: Your lack of planning does not constitute my emergency %% have Button: Your silliness has been noted %% have Button: YUMMIE - Young Upwardly Mobile Mutant %% have Button: ZORKers do it under the rug %% Any of the cookies beginning with 'Button:' are available as calligraphic buttons in various colors from the follow- ing address for $1.50 each. Quantity discounts are avail- able. Nancy Lebovitz 400 Wollaston Ave. C6 Newark, DE 19711 Late hot flash! Some of the buttons may be out of print - they would then be available as custom ones at $2.50 each. It seems to be best to write and ask first. %%  %% Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation.... A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter than the others. -- Ambrose Bierce %% ...It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell. -- Ambrose Bierce %% In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first. -- Ambrose Bierce %% "It is bad luck to be superstitious." -- Andrew W. Mathis %% If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro %% Main's Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. %% "When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut." %% Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side. %% Slick's Three Laws of the Universe: 1. Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check. 2. A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat. 3. There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects. %% The shortest distance between two points is under construction. -- Noelie Altito %% If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted. -- Marguerite Emmons %% Hurewitz's Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to..... to........ uh.............. %% Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots %% It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as high as the eagle? %% If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it, even if they don't know what it means. %% If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction. On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is also a psychological interaction. The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so friendly. The crucial point is if you can tell which is which. %% 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. %% "You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do." %% It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark %% Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes! %% For a good time, call 642-9483 %% To be is to do. -- I. Kant To do is to be. -- A. Sartre Yabba-Dabba-Doo! -- F. Flinstone %% God is Dead -- Nietzsche Nietzsche is Dead -- God Nietzsche is God -- Dead %% Jesus Saves, Moses Invests, But only Buddha pays Dividends. %% Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many? %% Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70! %% !07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH %% You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair. %% How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws! %% This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need, please use the program "randchar". This program generates random characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be more profound than THIS program has ever been. %% This fortune intentionally not included. %% Speak roughly to your little boy, And beat him when he sneezes: He only does it to annoy Because he knows it teases. Wow! wow! wow! I speak severely to my boy, And beat him when he sneezes: For he can thoroughly enjoy The pepper when he pleases! Wow! wow! wow! %% "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is -- 'Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- 'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'" -- Lewis Carroll %% Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave, Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex, Et le m^omerade horgrave. %% Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben; Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben. %% "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor 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." -- Lewis Carroll %% Oh, when I was in love with you, Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by, And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again. -- A. E. Housman %% Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what _d_o_e_s exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way...... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" %% A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring. %% He: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science. She: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains. -- Walt Kelley %% Look out! Behind you! %% If all be true that I do think, There be Five Reasons why one should Drink; Good friends, good wine, or being dry, Or lest we should be by-and-by, Or any other reason why. %% Ginsberg's Theorem: 1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't even quit the game. Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem: Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's Theorem. To wit: 1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win. 2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even. 3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game. %% Ehrman's Commentary: 1. Things will get worse before they get better. 2. Who said things would get better? %% Rule of Feline Frustration: When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom. %% Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug. %% Harris' Lament: All the good ones are taken. %% If you cannot convince them, confuse them. -- Harry S. Truman %% Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do. %% Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time. The last ten percent takes the other ninety percent. %% Weinberg's First Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays. %% Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. %% Pardo's First Postulate: Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. Arnold's Addendum: Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats. %% Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted. %% Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy: Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink. %% Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government: No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. %% Mosher's Law of Software Engineering: Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd be out of a job. %% Romeo: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much. Mercutio: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. %% "I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering voice. "No," Said Gandalf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in Elven-lore: "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves, Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves. Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop, This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop. The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring. The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing. If broken or busted, it cannot be remade. If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)." %% Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved. -- Mark Twain %% 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 %% 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 %% Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine... -- Stanislaw Lem %% When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a lower grade.... -- Stanislaw Lem %% There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write. %% 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 %% 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 %% Love is a word that is constantly heard, Hate is a word that is not. Love, I am told, is more precious than gold. Love, I have read, is hot. But hate is the verb that to me is superb, And Love but a drug on the mart. Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art. -- Ogden Nash %% Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday.... -- Walt Kelly %% Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. -- H. L. Mencken %% The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100 showed that all had these things in common: 1. They all had moderate appetites. 2. They all came from middle class homes 3. All but two of them were dead. %% Fats Loves Madelyn %% If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex? -- Art Hoppe %% There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle -- Would you kindly direct me to hell? -- Dorothy Parker %% The ladies men admire, I've heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light; They'd rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints... So far, I've had no complaints. -- Dorothy Parker %% THEORY Into love and out again, Thus I went and thus I go. Spare your voice, and hold your pen: Well and bitterly I know All the songs were ever sung, All the words were ever said; Could it be, when I was young, Someone dropped me on my head? -- Dorothy Parker %% My own dear love, he is strong and bold And he cares not what comes after. His words ring sweet as a chime of gold, And his eyes are lit with laughter. He is jubilant as a flag unfurled -- Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him. My own dear love, he is all my world -- And I wish I'd never met him. %% My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet, And a wild young wood-thing bore him! The ways are fair to his roaming feet, And the skies are sunlit for him. As sharply sweet to my heart he seems As the fragrance of acacia. My own dear love, he is all my dreams -- And I wish he were in Asia. %% My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He'll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway or the morrows. He'll live his days where the sunbeams start Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart -- And I wish somebody'd shoot him. %% If I don't drive around the park, I'm pretty sure to make my mark. If I'm in bed each night by ten, I may get back my looks again. If I abstain from fun and such, I'll probably amount to much; But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn. -- Dorothy Parker %% The Abrams' Principle: The shortest distance between two points is off the wall. %% God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh. %% Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am." -- Ambrose Bierce %% Please ignore previous fortune. %% Are we not men? %% Please take note: %% "It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either." -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston %% Do not read this fortune under penalty of law. Violators will be prosecuted. (Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.)) %% United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of every persuasion. Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the world. -- Isaac Asimov %% Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. %% Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said. %% Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. %% If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers? %% Who needs companionship when you can sit alone in your room and drink? %% Friends, Romans, Hipsters, Let me clue you in; I come to put down Caeser, not to groove him. The square kicks some cats are on stay with them; The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caeser. The cool Brutus Gave you the message: Caeser had big eyes; If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea, And, like, old Caeser really set them straight. Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat; So are they all, all cool cats, -- Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down. %% Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the double lock will keep; May no brick through the window break, And, no one rob me till I awake. %% Did you know.... That no-one ever reads these things? %% Hark,Hark,the dogs do bark The Duke is fond of kittens He likes to take their insides out And use them for his mittens From "The thirteen clocks" %% f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd. %% "I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent." -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% $3,000,000 %% It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem. %% Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value. %% The number of licorice gumballs you get out of a gumball machine increases in direct proportion to how much you hate licorice. %% If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine, you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get ice, but no cup. %% Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday. %% Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate. %% Those who can't write, write manuals. %% Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S Audit! Just type in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving the room is punishable under law: Name # %% You might have mail %% Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only take a bath... %% SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT! POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE! %% The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish child, was propounded to me by my father: "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and whistles?" I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity gave up. "A herring," said my father. "A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!" "So hang it there." "But a herring isn't green!" I protested. "Paint it." "But a herring isn't wet." "If its just painted its still wet." "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "a herring doesn't whistle!!" "Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it hard." -- Leo Rosten %% "If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows." -- Yiddish saying %% Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?" 1st customer: "I'll have tea." 2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!" (Waiter exits, returns) Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?" %% On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than $283 on the desk before the cashier. "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That route never brought in money like this! What happened?" "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!" %% Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. -- W.C. Fields %% There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. -- Mark Twain %% This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it. %% Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis. %% Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon. %% You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today. %% Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed. %% You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first and last month in advance. %% Stay away from flying saucers today. %% Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring. %% Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things. %% Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day. %% Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to a new town. %% If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow! %% Excellent day to have a rotten day. %% Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is they charge fifteen cents for them. %% Question: Man Invented Alcohol, God Invented Grass. Who do you trust? %% The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school. %% Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. -- Jerome Lettvin %% Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing. -- R. Geis %% Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too. -- D. J. Hicks %% I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life. %% Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers. %% Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face. %% Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school. %% Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else. %% Do something unusual today. Pay a bill. %% Good day to let down old friends who need help. %% Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year. %% Stay away from hurricanes for a while. %% The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all. The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive. Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one -- and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city." "How?" demanded Fafhrd. Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know." -- Fritz Leiber, "The Swords of Lankhmar" %% I really hate this damned machine I wish that they would sell it. It never does quite what I want But only what I tell it. %% Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat. %% Nihilism should commence with oneself. %% Vote anarchist %% Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest. %% Old soldiers never die. Young ones do. %% In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools will be temporarily canceled. %% The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse. %% Condense soup, not books! %% The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books! %% Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to exciting Camden, New Jersey. %% Never be led astray onto the path of virtue. %% Give your child mental blocks for Christmas. %% Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch. %% Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner. %% Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans. %% What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING! %% Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings. %% Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam. %% Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea. %% Xerox never comes up with anything original. %% "All flesh is grass" -- Isiah Smoke a friend today. %% "You'll never be the man your mother was!" %% George Orwell was an optimist. %% Chicken Little was right. %% "Qvid me anxivs svm?" %% Dallas still lives. God must be dead. %% They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid! %% Hail to the sun god He sure is a fun god Ra! Ra! Ra! %% Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. %% Time is nature's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at once. %% 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. %% Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. -- Salvador Hardin %% "Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process..." %% "There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor." %% If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same? %% Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string. %% Things are more like they used to be than they are new. %% Reality is an obstacle to hallucination. %% Paul Revere was a tattle-tale %% Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it. -- Ambrose Bierce %% God is a polytheist %% God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place. %% If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions? %% "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?" asked the father of his little son. "Diet." %% "Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles." %% The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up at the steam fitters picnic. %% 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 %% "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!" -- Lewis Carroll %% It is the business of the future to be dangerous. -- Hawkwind %% The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier. %% There was a young poet named Dan, Whose poetry never would scan. When told this was so, He said, "Yes, I know. It's because I try to put every possible syllable into that last line that I can." %% "Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth..." %% Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet? -- Lily Tomlin %% God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's %% "If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith." -- Albert Einstein %% 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 %% Flappity, floppity, flip The mouse on the m"obius strip; The strip revolved, The mouse dissolved In a chronodimensional skip. %% ... And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man -- A.E. Housman %% WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE Oh, dear, where can the matter be When it's converted to energy? There is a slight loss of parity. Johnny's so long at the fair. %% PLUNDERER'S THEME (to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius) Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation. If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation. Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations. Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation. %% IBM had a PL/I, Its syntax worse than JOSS; And everywhere this language went, It was a total loss. %% System/3! System/3! See how it runs! See how it runs! Its monitor loses so totally! It runs all its programs in RPG! It's made by our favorite monopoly! System/3! %% 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? %% Reclaimer, spare that tree! Take not a single bit! It used to point to me, Now I'm protecting it. It was the reader's CONS That made it, paired by dot; Now, GC, for the nonce, Thou shalt reclaim it not. %% 99 blocks of crud on the disk, 99 blocks of crud! You patch a bug, and dump it again: 100 blocks of crud on the disk! 100 blocks of crud on the disk, 100 blocks of crud! You patch a bug, and dump it again: 101 blocks of crud on the disk!... %% 'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks Did gyre and gimble in their cave All mimsy was the CS-VAX And Cory raths outgrave. "Beware the software rot, my son! The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash! Beware the broken pipe, and shun The frumious system crash!" %% The Golden Rule Of Arts And Sciences: Whoever has the gold makes the rules. %% "A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the first place." -- IEEE Grid newsmagazine %% "Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing." %% Adult: One old enough to know better. %% Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper -- Thomas Jefferson %% Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example. -- La Rouchefoucauld %% "An American is a man with two arms and four wheels". -- A Chinese child %% Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse %% A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other. %% A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce. -- Don Quinn %% A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. -- Mark Twain %% Boy: A noise with dirt on it. %% A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward. %% California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange. -- Fred Allen %% A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other. %% Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners. %% Christ: A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time. %% "The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere." %% Collaboration: A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the other fellow can spell. %% 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 %% Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking -- H. L. Mencken %% Conversation: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener. %% The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to eat. -- John McNulty %% Cynic: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye. %% Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. -- G. B. Shaw %% Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management. -- Senator Soaper %% Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool. -- Bellamy Brooks %% Electrocution: Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements. %% Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. -- F. P. Jones %% "It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!" -- Macy's %% Fairy Tale: A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers. %% Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move. %% Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. -- Oscar Wilde %% We wish you a Hare Krishna We wish you a Hare Krishna We wish you a Hare Krishna And a Sun Myung Moon! -- Maxwell Smart %% If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way. %% There was a young lady from Hyde Who ate a green apple and died. While her lover lamented The apple fermented And made cider inside her inside. %% 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 %% Silverman's Law: If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will %% Hindsight is an exact science. %% If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost. %% Naeser's Law: You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof. %% The Third Law of Photography: If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark leaks out. %% Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing. %% Conway's Law: In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired. %% There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing. %% Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading it. %% Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving from where you left them to where you can't find them. %% When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly. %% 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. %% Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal. %% When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem, you modify the problem, not the remedy. %% Horngren's Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a special case. %% Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. %% Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is. %% Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps. %% McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom: If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95. %% Van Roy's Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys. %% How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on. %% Colvard's Logical Premises: All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it won't. Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary: This is especially true when dealing with someone you're attracted to. Grelb's Commentary: Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you. %% "The meat is rotten, but the booze is holding out." Computer Translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" %% A Law of Computer Programming: Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English. %% Turnaucka's Law: The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord. %% If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it. %% Eleanor Rigby Sits at the keyboard And waits for a line on the screen Lives in a dream Waits for a signal, Finding some code That will make the machine do some more. What is it for? All the lonely users, where do they all come from? All the lonely users, why does it take so long? %% The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here. -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley) %% Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks. -- Adlai Stevenson %% The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group. %% Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. -- Jules de Gaultier %% Ingrate: A man who bites, the hand that feeds him, and then complains of indigestion. %% Justice: A decision in your favor. %% Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date. %% Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen. %% Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes. %% Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law. %% Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. -- Mark Twain %% 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 %% Menu: A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of %% The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start with a large fortune. %% Noncombatant: A dead Quaker. -- Ambrose Bierce %% The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France %% Hi! How are things going? (just fine, thank you...) Great! Say, could I bother you for a question? (you just asked one...) Well, how about one more? (one more than the first one?) Yes. (you already asked that...) [at this point, Alphonso gets smart... ] May I ask two questions, sir? (no.) May I ask ONE then? (nope...) Then may I ask, sir, how I may ask you a question? (yes, you may.) Sir, how may I ask you a question? (you must ask for retroactive question asking privileges for the number of questions you have asked, then ask for that number plus two {one for the current question, and one for the next one) Sir, may I ask nine questions? (go right ahead...) %% MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed) Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers 2 cups water 2 cups sugar 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine Cinnamon Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices. -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box %% God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh -- Voltaire %% Xerox does it again and again and again and ... %% The Supreme Court does it with all deliberate speed. %% If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed. %% The United States Army; 194 years of proud service, unhampered by progress. %% God isn't dead, He's just trying to avoid the draft. %% God is an atheist. %% Blessed are the meek for they shall inhibit the earth. %% Cleveland still lives. God _m_u_s_t be dead. %% Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills. %% Occident: The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, powerful sub-tribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce." These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient. %% "I've had one child. My husband wants to have another. I'd like to watch him have another." %% I wouldn't mind dying -- it's that business of having to stay dead that scares the daylights out of me. -- R. Geis %% History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion -- i.e. none to speak of. -- Lazarus Long %% ...the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost would never throw the Devil out of Heaven as long as they still need him as a fourth for bridge. -- Letter in NEW LIBERTARIAN NOTES #19 %% There once was a hacker named Ken Who inherited truckloads of Yen So he built him some chicks Of silicon chips And hasn't been heard from since then. %% Fie for shame, you lascivious, lewd, lecherous, libidinous, lustful, licentious, dirty bum!! %% "When I grow up, I want to be an honest lawyer so things like that can't happen." -- Richard Nixon as a boy (on the Teapot Dome scandal) %% "If God wanted us to have a President, He would have sent us a candidate." -- Jerry Dreshfield %% Living in Hollywood is like living in a bowl of granola. What ain't fruits and nuts is flakes. %% "White House carpenters have reworked the master bedroom, remodeling it so that Ronnie can sleep with his head in the hall. That way, by the time he wakes up, somebody will have already shined his hair." %% He wasn't much of an actor, he wasn't much of a Governor -- Hell, they _H_A_D to make him President of the United States. It's the only job he's qualified for! -- Michael Cain %% A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never learned to walk. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt %% A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time. -- Alfred E. Wiggam %% Laissez Faire Economics is the theory that if each acts like a vulture, all will end as doves. %% Sure, Reagan has promised to take senility tests. But what if he forgets? %% All things dull and ugly, All creatures short and squat, All things rude and nasty, The Lord God made the lot; Each little snake that poisons, Each little wasp that stings, He made their brutish venom, He made their horrid wings. All things sick and cancerous, All evil great and small, All things foul and dangerous, The Lord God made them all. Each nasty little hornet, Each beastly little squid. Who made the spiky urchin? Who made the sharks? He did. All things scabbed and ulcerous, All pox both great and small. Putrid, foul and gangrenous, The Lord God made them all. -- Monty Python %% Hackers do it with all sorts of characters. %% All a hacker needs is a tight PUSHJ, a loose pair of UUOs, and a warm place to shift. %% Hackers know all the right MOVs. %% Hackers do it with fewer instructions. %% Hackers do it with bugs. %% AI hackers do it with robots. %% AI hackers do it robotically. %% Mathematicians take it to the limit. %% Mathematicians do it in theory. %% Statisticians probably do it. %% Statisticians do it with 95% confidence. %% Physicists do it with charm %% Doctors take two aspirin and do it in the morning. %% Politicians do it to everyone. %% Test makers do it sometimes/always/never. %% Procrastinators do it tomorrow. %% Communists do it without class. %% Evangelists do it with Him watching. %% God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can chose our friends. %%  %% Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. %% November: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness. %% It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats. %% Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs. %% Anything free is worth what you pay for it. %% Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the Station-to-Station rate. %% Necessity is a mother. %% In the days of old, When Knights were bold, And women were too cautious; Oh, those gallant days, When women were women, And men were really obnoxious... %% If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their Heads. %% If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire. %% If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet. %% If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit Ears. %% You're at the end of the road again. %% The best equipment for your work is, of course, the most expensive. However, your neighbor is always wasting money that should be yours by judging things by their price. %% "You are old, father William," the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head -- Do you think, at your age, it is right?" "In my youth," father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again." -- Lewis Carroll %% "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door -- Pray what is the reason of that?" "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his gray locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box -- Allow me to sell you a couple?" -- Lewis Carroll %% "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -- Pray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw, Has lasted the rest of my life." -- Lewis Carroll %% "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -- What made you so awfully clever?" "I have answered three questions, and that is enough," Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!" -- Lewis Carroll %% Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to _n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain! %% Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it. %% Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities! %% Anything worth doing is worth overdoing %% It will be advantageous to cross the great stream...the Dragon is on the wing in the Sky...the Great Man rouses himself to his Work. %% If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop. %% Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something. %% Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results. %% Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work. %% Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud. %% Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. %% Paul's Law: You can't fall off the floor. %% Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the most inconvenient possible time. %% Maier's Law: If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. Corollaries: 1. The bigger the theory, the better. 2. The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory. %% Williams and Holland's Law: If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by statistical methods. %% Harvard Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases. %% Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over. %% Peter's Law of Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves. %% Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. %% Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it. %% Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor: People are always available for work in the past tense. %% Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets. %% H. L. Mencken's Law: Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach. Martin's Extension: Those who cannot teach -- administrate. %% Jone's Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on. %% In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) are to be treated as variables. %% Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be. %% First Law of Bicycling: No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind. %% Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor): That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have gotten. %% Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end. %% Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand. %% First Law of Procrastination: Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed the deadline). %% Gray's Law of Programming: '_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same time as '_n' tasks. Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law: '_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as '_n' trivial tasks. %% First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary. %% Mr. Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing. %% The Kennedy Constant: Don't get mad -- get even. %% The Fifth Rule: You have taken yourself too seriously. %% Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead. %% But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery -- go! -- Mark "The Bard" Twain %% I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain %% "Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse." -- William Gilbert %% Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American: All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards. %% Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American: The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the cork makes when it is popped. %% Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American: The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife. %% Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American: Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can never hope to acquire it. %% The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher, Were each of them once a kiddie. A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature. Do I want one? God Forbiddie! -- Ogden Nash %% The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best". -- H. Allen Smith %% we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love, we will cry over things we used to laugh & our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then & in the end a summer with wild winds & new friends will be. %% This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they're in trouble And I am not. -- A. E. Housman %% Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time. Moping, melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad. -- A. E. Housman %% Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in? -- Ralph Emerson %% The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the contrary, nohow. %% "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. (R. Emerson)" -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.") [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"] %% So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots. -- Samuel Foote %% Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes, nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home. %% Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law: When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will. %% Rudin's Law: If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it every time. %% Vail's Second Axiom: The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the amount of work already completed. %% There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it -- G. B. Shaw %% Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel %% Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax. %% You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty. -- Henrick Ibson %% I like work... I can sit and watch it for hours. %% A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks. -- Lew Col %% Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than being flat broke and having a stomach ache. -- Dolph Sharp %% Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's what parents were created for. -- Ogden Nash %% 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 %% Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words. -- Ambrose Bierce %% "Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!" -- W. C. Fields %% Who's on first? %% The Killer Ducks are coming!!! %% "This is a country where people are free to practice their religion, regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys..." %% Here in my heart, I am Helen; I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least. I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el; I'm Salome, moon of the East. Here in my soul I am Sappho; Lady Hamilton am I, as well. In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea, With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell. I'm all of the glamorous ladies At whose beckoning history shook. But you are a man, and see only my pan, So I stay at home with a book. -- Dorothy Parker %% FIGHTING WORDS Say my love is easy had, Say I'm bitten raw with pride, Say I am too often sad -- Still behold me at your side. Say I'm neither brave nor young, Say I woo and coddle care, Say the devil touched my tongue -- Still you have my heart to wear. But say my verses do not scan, And I get me another man! -- Dorothy Parker %% COMMENT 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 Roumania. -- Dorothy Parker %% INVENTORY Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. %% Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the pens will multiply instead of disappear. %% To iterate is human, to recurse, divine. %% Her locks an ancient lady gave Her loving husband's life to save; And men -- they honored so the dame -- Upon some stars bestowed her name. But to our modern married fair, Who'd give their lords to save their hair, No stellar recognition's given. There are not stars enough in heaven. %% Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen. %% ...but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. -- Ambrose Bierce %% There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. -- Disraeli %% You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers. -- J. D. Salinger %% You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog. -- Alfred Kahn %% gy-ro-scope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin. -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary %% Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny. %% UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist. %% Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics: Superiority is recessive. %% "If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce" -- Winston Churchill %% But scientists, who ought to know Assure us that it must be so. Oh, let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about. -- Hilaire Belloc %% The three laws of thermodynamics: The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it. The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break even. The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero. %% Famous last words: 1. Don't worry, I can handle it. 2. You and what army? 3. If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop. %% Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, in kernel as it is in user! %% Nothing is faster than the speed of light... To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the light comes on. %% AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18) You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over and over again. People think you are stupid. %% PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20) You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your associates and people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack confidence and you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible things to small animals. %% ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19) You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are not very nice. %% TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20) You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist. %% CANCER (June 21 - July 22) You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare recipients are Cancer people. %% LEO (July 23 - Aug 22) You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieves. %% VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22) You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and sometimes fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus drivers. %% SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21) You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered. %% SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21) You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority of Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People laugh at you a great deal. %% CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19) You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as they take root and become trees. %% Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids. %% A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat." The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an architect." The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?" %% Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn; Less dear than army ants in apple pies Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn, Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit; Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose They suck, and like the double-breasted suit Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose, Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed; And stem the produce of thy waspish wits: Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed; Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits. Be off, I say; go bug somebody new, Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you. %% 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 %% When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. -- George Bernard Shaw %% The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride." %% "Now is the time for all good men to come to." -- Walt Kelly %% Laetrile is the pits %% Got Mole problems? Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23 %% There's no future in time travel %% Vitamin C deficiency is apauling %% Science is what happens when preconception meets verification. %% Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance. %% "Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!" %% 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" %% Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check three friends. If they're ok, you're it. %% Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's wrong." %% USER n.: A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. %% Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube: Black. Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved. %% There once was a girl named Irene Who lived on distilled kerosene But she started absorbin' A new hydrocarbon And since then has never benzene. %% Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. -- Elbert Hubbard %% Computer programmers do it byte by byte %% "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 %% No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. -- Eleanor Roosevelt %% This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88 %% Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those Californians trying to share the experience. %% How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers. %% The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I hope I don't get run over again. %% Forgetfulness: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience. %% President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax. %% Absent: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered. %% A computer, to print out a fact, Will divide, multiply, and subtract. But this output can be No more than debris, If the input was short of exact. -- Gigo %% Corrupt: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit. %% Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night, God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light. It did not last; the devil howling "Ho! Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo. %% Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. -- Dorothy Parker %% Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform. -- Mark Twain %% There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. -- Henry Kissinger %% Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. -- Oscar Wilde %% The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. -- Oscar Wilde %% About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends. -- Herbert Hoover %% There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. -- Oscar Wilde %% The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright -- And this was very odd, because it was The middle of the night. -- Lewis Carroll %% It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. -- Woody Allen %% The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation. -- Oscar Wilde %% I can't complain, but sometimes I still do. -- Joe Walsh %% 43rd Law of Computing: Anything that can go wr fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped %% JACK AND THE BEANSTACK by Mark Isaak Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it to him. So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path, he met the traveling salesman. "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman in high-level language. "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips and Apples," commented Jack. "I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now." Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she started thrashing. "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the window... %% THE STORY OF CREATION or THE MYTH OF URK In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening and there was morning, one interrupt... -- Rico Tudor %% Never try to out-stubborn a cat. -- Lazarus Long %% 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" %% Limericks are art forms complex, Their topics run chiefly to sex. They usually have virgins, And masculine urgin's, And other erotic effects. %% Why be a man when you can be a success? -- Bertold Brecht %% "Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence." %% How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. The Universe spines the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of the way. %% University: Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to fix it, and ... %% How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? None: "We'll fix it in software." How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? None: "We'll document it in the manual." How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb? None: "The user can work it out." %% William Safire's Rules for Writers: Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives. %% God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board -- Mark Twain %% Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss. -- Lazarus Long miss %% Today is the first day of the rest of the mess %% Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday %% Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you. %% Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life. %% Go 'way! You're bothering me! %% Put your Nose to the Grindstone! -- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd. %% 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 %% There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is this? Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think _y_o_u can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster -- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance. -- Arthur Naiman %% An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him. "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an hour seems like a minute." The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?" -- Arthur Naiman %% Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep". Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference: "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling." Obvious, isn't it? Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed individuals and then grow.... Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I think not, my friend, I think not. -- Arthur Naiman %% "God gives burdens; also shoulders" Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why would he lie about a thing like that? -- Arthur Naiman %% Goy: ... The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates: "I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous. "Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish. Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish. Macaroons are _v_e_r_y Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is goyish. Lime soda is _v_e_r_y goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that Jews won't go near them..." -- Arthur Naiman %% One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "_s_o_m_e_b_o_d_y has to buy retail." -- Arthur Naiman %% Half-done: This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the the difference between life and death. You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the man, "Let me have a nice half-done." Worth the trouble, wasn't it? -- Arthur Naiman %% A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The first thing he notices is that the arms are too long. "No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine." "But the collar is up around my ears!" "It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little...no, a little more... that's it." "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation. "Now, bend your knees a little to take up the slack. There you go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly." So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the street. Reba and Florence see him go by. "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!" "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit." -- Arthur Naiman %% Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and Esther and hustle them off to prison. They can't prove who they are because they've left their passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court, charged with espionage, and sentenced to death. The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know if she can call her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not possible, and turns to Murray. "This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he spits in the sergeants face. "Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble." -- Arthur Naiman %% Shamus: A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the temple, and makes sure everything is in working order. A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagogue functionaries, and there's a joke about that: A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks he's nobody!" %% Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. -- W. Somerset Maughm %% 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 %% Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits. %% It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one. %% If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some. %% Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't. %% If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up. %% Optimization hinders evolution. %% Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught how _n_o_t to. So it is with the great programmers. %% Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures. %% There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one works. %% The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman. %% It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa. %% In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages. %% In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only we can't control when the five year period will begin. %% Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: That the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble? %% When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop. %% One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means. %% Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.! %% Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office automation? %% If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams. %% Save energy: be apathetic. %% I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer. -- Kehlog Albran %% Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat? A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires. Q: How long does it take? A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've brought with them. Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats? A: They replace your generator. %% Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations. He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open market. If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself. Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree. Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg. Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower. -- Kehlog Albran %% Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly. %% 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 %% "Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral." -- Kehlog Albran %% There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes. -- Dr. Who %% "Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets" -- The Brigadier, from Dr. Who %% They also surf who only stand on waves. %% Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help. -- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet %% In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble. -- Alan Perlis %% A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing. -- Alan Perlis %% The computing field is always in need of new cliches. -- 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 %% "Please try to limit the amount of `this room doesn't have any bazingas' until you are told that those rooms are `punched out.' Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such." -- N. Meyrowitz %% Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. [Confound those who have said our remarks before us.] -- Aelius Donatus %% If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to invent it. %% It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color. -- Voltaire %% The superfluous is very necessary. -- Voltaire %% It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue. -- Voltaire %% Oh don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and none goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at! %% Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man. -- Trotsky %% It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. -- Gore Vidal %% The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella, But chiefly on the just, because The unjust steals the just's umbrella. %% The world's as ugly as sin, And almost as delightful -- Frederick Locker-Lampson %% "Reflections on Ice-Breaking" Candy Is dandy But liquor Is quicker. -- Ogden Nash %% Maturity is only a short break in adolescence. -- Jules Feiffer %% Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit them on the head. %% 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 theory which states that this has already happened. -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken %% Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Werner von Braun %% My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just log out again. %% Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings. %% DETERIORATA Go placidly amid the noise and waste, And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself, And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys. Know what to kiss -- and when. Remember that two wrongs never make a right, But that three do. Wherever possible, put people on `HOLD'. Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment, And despite the changing fortunes of time, There is always a big future in computer maintenance. You are a fluke of the universe... You have no right to be here. Whether you can hear it or not, the universe Is laughing behind your back. -- National Lampoon %% I sent a letter to the fish, I told them, "This is what I wish." The little fishes of the sea, They sent an answer back to me. The little fishes' answer was "We cannot do it, sir, because..." I sent a letter back to say It would be better to obey. But someone came to me and said "The little fishes are in bed." I said to him, and I said it plain "Then you must wake them up again." I said it very loud and clear, I went and shouted in his ear. But he was very stiff and proud, He said "You needn't shout so loud." And he was very proud and stiff, He said "I'll go and wake them if..." I took a kettle from the shelf, I went to wake them up myself. But when I found the door was locked I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked, And when I found the door was shut, I tried to turn the handle, But... "Is that all?" asked Alice. "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye." %% E Pluribus Unix %% You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. %% Immortality -- a fate worse than death. -- Edgar A. Shoaff %% The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do. %% You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks. %% My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right. %% No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas. %% The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it. %% It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles. %% There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know nothing about. %% What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing to compare it with. %% Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. -- Andrew Young %% 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 %% Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. -- Milton Friedman %% The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down. %% We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities. -- Pogo %% Nothing recedes like success. -- Walter Winchell %% I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. -- Isaac Asimov %% Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world. -- Lily Tomlin %% Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree." -- Russell Long %% 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 %% If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. -- Earl Wilson %% The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time. %% If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. -- John Kenneth Galbraith %% 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 %% TV is chewing gum for the eyes. -- Frank Lloyd Wright %% He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry attacks democracy itself. -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS %% Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. -- Eric Hoffer %% You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt. -- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict %% If at first you don't succeed, redefine success. %% AMAZING BUT TRUE... If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful. %% AMAZING BUT TRUE... There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert. %% 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 %% With a rubber duck, one's never alone. -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London) Dear Sir, I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed agricultural industry. Yours faithfully, Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J.P. Sevenoaks %% Terullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical fact, for he merely said: "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible." Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it. -- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types (Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church). %% Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day. %% In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at discotheques. -- Art Linkletter %% Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass. -- Frank Zappa %% The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the world put together. -- Sir Peter Medawar %% GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917 On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then- Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men stood lookout. %% The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood. -- Alexander Haig %% 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. %% To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition. -- Woody Allen %% Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan. %% This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week. %% When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess. %% THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene? We cannot continue without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to `fortune'. Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week. Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug.... %% Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job? A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off. %% SEMINARS: From 'semi' and 'arse', hence, any half-assed discussion. %% POLITICIAN: From the Greek 'poly' ("many") and the French 'tete' ("head" or "face," as in 'tete-a-tete': head to head or face to face). Hence 'polytetien', a person of two or more faces. -- Martin Pitt %% ETYMOLOGY: 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, Oakdale, Minnesota %% Another Glitch in the Call ------- ------ -- --- ---- (Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.) We don't need no indirection We don't need no flow control No data typing or declarations Did you leave the lists alone? Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone! Chorus: All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call. All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call. %% Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift. %% "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat -- Lewis Carroll %% I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am. It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get. %% Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea... -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" %% Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point B are so keen to get t_h_e_r_e_. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" %% Serocki's Stricture: Marriage is always a bachelor's last option. %% One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people. %% The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity. %% Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway. %% A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have enlightened him with ours. %% The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time. %% Politics is like coaching a football team. you have to be smart enough to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest. %% Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get another chance later on. %% The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a soda can, when discarded will last forever...and a $7,000 car which when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years. %% One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet when well oiled. %% To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it. %% Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation. %% One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint. %% Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a crack in your sidewalk? %% Cleanliness is next to impossible. %% Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds. %% One way to stop a run away horse is to bet on him. %% Show me a man who is a good loser and i'll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss. %% Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence. %% Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up. %% If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep. %% X-rated movies are all alike...the only thing they leave to the imagination is the plot. %% Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously? %% Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it is an enemy. -- A. Einstein %% There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope. -- Oscar Wilde %% She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to. -- Gypsy Rose Lee %% A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if..." "If what?" asked the composer. "If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?" %% The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity. -- Benjamin Disraeli %% Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature. -- Samuel Johnson %% Why was I born with such contemporaries? -- Oscar Wilde %% Wagner's music is better than it sounds. -- Mark Twain %% "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." -- Wolfgang Pauli, on a paper submitted by a physicist colleague %% Leibowitz's Rule: When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you hold the hammer with both hands. %% Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed. %% Meader's Law: Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so. %% Fourth Law of Revision: It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you. %% Sodd's Second Law: Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur. %% Rule of Defactualization: Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies. %% Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers: If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him. %% Ray's Rule of Precision: Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe. %% Rule of Creative Research: 1) Never draw what you can copy. 2) Never copy what you can trace. 3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down. %% "You are old, Father William," the young man said, "All your papers these days look the same; Those William's would be better unread -- Do these facts never fill you with shame?" "In my youth," Father William replied to his son, "I wrote wonderful papers galore; But the great reputation I found that I'd won, Made it pointless to think any more." %% "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And make errors few people could bear; You complain about everyone's English but yours -- Do you really think this is quite fair?" "I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared, "But my stature these days is so great That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared, And to stop me it's now far too late." %% "You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run, And there isn't one language you like; Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none -- Have you thought about taking a hike?" "Since I never write programs," his father replied, "Every language looks equally bad; Yet the people keep paying to read all my books And don't realize that they've been had." %% "You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers That your lectures bore people to death. Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year -- Don't you think that you should save your breath?" "I have answered three questions and that is enough," Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!" %% Speak roughly to your little VAX, and boot it when it crashes; It knows that one cannot relax Because the paging thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow! I speak severely to my VAX, and boot it when it crashes; In spite of all my favorite hacks My jobs it always thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow! %% When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up to him. -- R. A. Lafferty %% "My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies" %% "One planet is all you get." %% You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't. -- Dagwood Bumstead %% "If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?" %% The Roman Rule The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it. %% Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it. %% Second Law of Business Meetings: If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you will pick the wrong one. Corollary: If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong, anyway. %% Grelb's Reminder: Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above average drivers. %% Grandpa Charnock's Law: You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive. %% Rule of the Great: When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch. %% Lieberman's Law: Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens. %% Goldenstern's Rules: 1. Always hire a rich attorney 2. Never buy from a rich salesman. %% Weiner's Law of Libraries: There are no answers, only cross references. %% No obscene fortunes today -- The Management %%  %% "Give us the man," shout the multitude, "who will step forward and take the responsibility." He is instantly the idol, the lord, and the king among men. He, then, who would command among his fellows, must excel them more in energy or will than in power of intellect. -- Burnap %% "Go to Hell!" or other insult direct is all the answer a snoopy question deserves. -- Lazarus Long %% "I must do something" will always solve more problems than "Something must be done." %% "Lord, please let me find a one-armed economist so we won't always hear 'On the other hand...'" -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% "Right reason," by which Cicero meant an "immediate and intuitive apprehension of moral and spiritual values," of what is right and just and what is wrong and unjust, was in the nature of things placed by God in all men; and no decree or legislative enactment could change what is right and what is wrong. -- Forrest MacDonald %% "Send for clips to see how I write. If you don't, frogs will sneak into your house and eat your fingers." -- John Corcoran %% "The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and is an emerging underachiever." %% "Truth," I cried, "though the heavens crush me for following her; no falsehood, though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of apostacy!" -- Carlyle %% "When a fellow can't read, he's got to think." %% "Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school. -- George Ade %% "Why should I?" is the cry of work dodgers. Their aim is to just enough to get by. They are clock watchers who are afraid they will render more service than they are paid to perform. They are too lazy to think, too selfish to put their shoulders to the wheel in a common cause. %% $100 placed at 7 percent interest compounded quarterly for 200 years will increase to more than $100,000,000 -- by which time it will be worth nothing. -- Lazarus Long %% 'Tis a common proof, that lowliness is a Edward Young ambition's ladder, whereto the climber upwards turns his face; but when he once attains the utmost round, he then unto the ladder turns his back, looks into the clouds scorning the base degrees by which he did ascend. -- Shakespeare %% 'Tis better that a man's own works, than that another man's words should praise him. -- L'Estrange %% 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, And robes the mountain in its azure hue. -- Campbell %% 'Tis easier for the generous to forgive, Than for offence to ask it. -- Thomson %% 'Tis education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclin'd -- Alexander Pope %% 'Tis home felt pleasure prompts the patriot's sigh; This makes him wish to live and dare to die. -- Campbell %% 'Tis in my memory lock'd, And you yourself shall keep the key of it. -- Shakespeare %% 'Tis late before The brave despair. -- Thomson %% 'Tis not in mortals to command success; But we'll do more, Sempronius -- we'll deserve it. -- Addison %% 'Tis not the fairest form that holds The mildest, purest soul within; 'Tis not the richest plant that holds The sweetest fragrance in. -- Dawes %% 'Tis one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall. -- Shakespeare %% 'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print; A book's a book, although there's nothing in't. -- Lord Byron %% 'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ To gain the riches he can ne'er enjoy. -- Alexander Pope %% 'Tis the mind that makes the body rich. -- Shakespeare %% (a) Completion of any task within the allocated time and budget does not bring credit upon the performing personnel -- it merely proves the task was easier than expected; (b) failure to complete any task within the allocated time and budget proves the task was more difficult than expected and requires promotion for those in charge. %% A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. %% -- brave thirst of fame his bosom warms. -- Winston Churchill %% ... One sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delights beyond dreams of bliss. %% ... Survival demands collective action; "alone" is for gravestones in hacker's cemeteries. %% ... [concerning " marks] even if we DID quote anybody in this business, it probably would be gibberish. -- Thom Mcleod %% ... and living was just a way of passing time until he died. -- Hamish Sankov %% ... and oftener changed their principles than their shirts. -- Dr. Young %% ... cost consciousness and sophisticated design are basically incompatible. -- Richard F. Moore %% ... high salaries equals happiness equals project success. -- Richard F. Moore %% ... it is not through sin that he opposes God. The Devil's strategy for our times is to make trivial human existence and to isolate us from one another while creating the delusion that the reasons are time pressures, work demands, or economic anxieties. %% ... persons who would be placed outside the pale of society with contempt are not those who would be placed there by another culture. -- Ruth Benedict %% ... that peculiar disease of intellectuals, that infatuation with ideas at the expense of experience that compels experience to conform to bookish preconceptions. %% ... the less management demands of engineers and scientists, the greater their productivity. -- Richard F. Moore %% ... there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species ... should be equal amongst one another without subordination or subjection... -- John Locke %% 11-PDP eht edisni deppart ma I !pleH %% 8:30, Channel 7: Bewitched Tabitha gets carsick and turns Darin into a plastic bag. %% 9:00 Chan. 5: I Dream of Jeanie. Jeanie and Major Nelson discover new things to do with Jeanie's bottle. %% A "pacifist male" is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described "pacifists" are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger. -- Lazarus Long %% A Democratic nation, at least when organized to secure the political rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, can be a large and populous nation. -- Michael Scully %% A God alone can comprehend a God. -- Young %% A Smith and Wesson beats four aces. %% A White House well filled, a little peanut field well tilled, and a wife who will go to the Bronx are great riches. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% A army's effectiveness depends on its size, training, experience and morale ... and morale is worth more than all the other factors combined. -- Napoleon Bonaparte %% A baseball player who makes a spectacular defensive play always leads off the next inning as batter. -- Bob Smith %% A bathroom hook will be loaded to capacity immediately upon becoming available. This also applies to freeways, closets, playgrounds, downtown hotels, taxis, parking lots, bookcases, wallets, purses, pockets, pipe racks, basement shelves, and so on. The list is endless. -- John Joyce %% A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction an assent, an enraged eye makes beauty deformed. This little member gives life to every part about us; and I believe the story of Argus implies no more, than the eye is in every part; that is to say, every other part would be mutilated, were not its force represented more by the eye than even by itself. -- Addison %% A bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead. -- Alexander Pope %% A bird in the hand is dead. -- Rhonda Boozer %% A bird in the hand is safer than two overhead. %% A bitter jest, when the satire comes too near the truth, leaves a sharp sting behind. -- Tacitus %% A bottle of sweat for every bottle of wine. %% A brave man is sometimes a desperado; a bully is always a coward. -- Haliburton %% A brute kills for pleasure. A fool kills from hate. -- Lazarus Long %% A bureaucrat's castle is his desk ... and parking place. Proceed cautiously when changing either. -- Douglas Evelyn %% A camel looks like a horse that was planned by a committee. -- Vogue Magazine %% A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. %% A characteristic of the normal child is he doesn't act that way very often. %% A chase always involves two parts: first breaking contact, second the retiring action to divorce oneself from the incident. -- Robert A. Heinlein %% A chicken doesn't stop scratching just because the worms are scarce. -- John Peers %% A child miseducated is a child lost. -- John F. Kennedy %% A christian in this world is but gold in the ore; at death the pure gold is melted out and separated and the dross cast away and consumed. -- Flavel %% A christian is the highest style of man. -- Young %% A clean limerick is a contradiction in terms. %% A clown is a clown and will always be a clown. -- Babbaluche the cobbler %% A college education shows a man how little other people know. -- Haliburton %% A column about errors will contain errors. -- Bill Gold %% A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour. -- Elbert Hubbard %% A company is known by the people it keeps. %% A component's degree of reliability is directly proportional to its ease of accessibility; i. e., the harder it is to get to, the more often it breaks down. -- Jonathan Waddell %% A compromise is the art of dividing the cake in such a way that each one thinks he is getting the biggest piece. %% A consultant is an ordinary person a long way from home. %% A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper. -- John M. Dyer %% A coup that is known in advance is a coup that does not take place. %% A cow eats without a knife. %% A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage. -- Marvin Kitman %% A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. -- Oscar Wilde %% A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. -- H. L. Mencken %% A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern. -- Edgar A. Shoaff %% A cynic is one who will laugh at anything so long as it isn't funny. %% A deaf ear is the first symptom of a closed mind. %% A diplomat and a stage magician are the two professions that have to have a high silk hat. All the tricks that either one of them have are in the hat, and all are known to other diplomats and magicians. %% A diplomat's life is made up of three things: protocol, Geritol, and alcohol. %% A disagreeable task is its own reward. %% A dress that zips up the back will bring a husband and wife together. -- James H. Boren %% A dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters a desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic. -- George Eliot %% A fail-safe circuit will destroy others. %% A fake fortune teller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around she deserved. -- Lazarus Long %% A falling body always rolls to the most inaccessible spot. -- Theodore M. Bernstein %% A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind. -- Garrick %% A few books are alright, like wine, but too much can be bad. Books break down brains. %% A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself. -- Salvor Hardin %% A fit or anger is as fatal to dignity as a dose of arsenic to life. -- Dr. Holland %% A five minutes before the hour, a student will ask a question requiring a ten minute answer. -- M. M. Johnston %% A flattering painter, who made it his care to draw men as they ought to be, not as they are. -- Oliver Goldsmith %% A fool in high station is like a man on the top of a high mountain: everything appears small to him and he appears small to everybody. -- Professor Leader W. Matsch %% A fool, indeed, has great need of a title, It teaches men to call him count and duke, And to forget his proper name of fool. -- Crowne %% A foot is a device for finding furniture in the dark. %% A free people always has the right to dismiss its rulers -- whom it regards as its servants -- at any time. -- Harry V. Jaffa %% A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. -- Adlai Stevenson %% A friend in need Is a friend indeed. %% A friend of mine stopped smoking, drinking, overeating, and chasing women -- all at the same time. It was a lovely funeral. %% A friend to everybody is a friend to nobody. %% A friend will let you hold the ladder while he goes up on the roof to install your new TV antenna, which is the biggest son of a bitch you ever saw. %% A friend will refrain from telling you he picked up the same amount of life insurance coverage you did for the half the price and his is non-cancelable. %% A gen'ral sets his army in array In vain, unless he fight and win the day. -- Denham %% A generation which ignores history has no past -- and no future. -- Lazarus Long %% A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art. -- Chesterfield %% A gentleman is a man who can support his own weight on his hands. %% A gift of flowers will soon be made to you. %% A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. -- Milton %% A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness. -- Else Schiaparelli %% A good dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the heart. -- Doran %% A good imitation is the most perfect originality. -- Voltaire %% A good leader inspires others with confidence in him; a great leader inspires them with confidence in themselves. %% A good name will wear out; a bad one may be turned; a nickname lasts forever. -- Zimmerman %% A good neighbor is one who will watch your vacation slides all evening without telling you that he has been there. %% A good place to start is where you are. -- Charles Wolf, Jr. %% A good teacher has been defined as one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. -- Thomas J. Carruthers %% A good word is an easy obligation, but not to speak ill, requires only our silence, which costs us nothing. -- Tillotson %% A goodly apple rotten at the heart; O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! -- Shakespeare %% A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul. -- Hawthorne %% A gray eye is still and sly; A roguish eye is the brown; The eye of blue is ever true; But in the black eye's sparkling spell Mystery and mischief dwell. %% A great fortune is a great slavery. -- Seneca %% A great source of error is the judging of events by abstract calculations, which though geometrically true are false as they relate to the concerns of beings governed more by passions and prejudice than by an enlightened sense of their interests. -- Alexander Hamilton %% A guy has to get fresh once in a while so the girl doesn't lose her confidence. %% A habit of sneering marks the egotist, or the fool, or the knave, or all three. -- Lavater %% A heart unspotted is not easily daunted. -- Shakespeare %% A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment, unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising six weeks. -- Southey %% A hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, And throats of brass, inspired with iron lungs. -- Virgil %% A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. -- Napoleon Bonaparte %% A kick, that scarce would move a horse may kill a sound divine. -- Cowper %% A king that would not feel his crown too heavy for him, must wear it every day; but if he think it too light, he knoweth not of what metal it is made. -- Bacon %% A king's castle is his home. %% A leader is best when people barely know he exists ... When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, "We did this ourselves." -- Lao-Tse %% A lie in time saves nine. %% A lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere, when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me. -- Carlyle %% A light heart lives long. -- Shakespeare %% A light supper, a good night's sleep and a fine morning have often made a hero out of the same man, who, by indigestion, a restless night and a rainy morning would have proved a coward. -- Chesterfield %% A lion among ladies is a most fearful thing; for there is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your lion living. -- Shakespeare %% A little ambiguity never hurt anyone. -- Charles Suhor %% A little help at the right time is better than a lot of help at the wrong time. -- Tevye %% A little humility is arrogance. -- Bill Gray %% A little ignorance can go a long way. -- Solomon Short %% A little learning is a dangerous thing! -- Alexander Pope %% A little neglect may breed great mischief ... for the want of a shah, Iran was lost; for the want of Iran, the hostages were lost; and for the want of the hostages, I'd be lost. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth of philosophy bringeth a man's mind about to religion. -- Bacon %% A lost ounce of gold may be found, a lost moment of time never. %% A lot of what appears to be progress is just so much technological rococo. -- Bill Gray %% A lover's like a hunter -- if the game be got with too much ease he cares not for't. -- Mead %% A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew. -- Herb Caen %% A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. -- Butler %% A man devoid of religion, is like a horse without a bridle. %% A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing, than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another, than to knock him down. -- Johnson %% A man he seems of cheerful yesterdays and confident tomorrows. -- Wordsworth %% A man is never astonished that he doesn't know what another does, but he is surprised at the gross ignorance of the other in not knowing what he does. -- Haliburton %% A man must first govern himself ere he be fit to govern a family, and his family ere he fit to bear the government in the commonwealth. -- Sir Walter Raliegh %% A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another's. -- Jean Paul Richter %% A man should be careful never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage; people may be amused, and laugh at the time, but they will be remembered, and brought up against him upon some subsequent occasion. -- Johnson %% A man should be greater than some of his parts. %% A man should choose a woman and an ox from his own country. %% A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. -- Pope %% A man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because if you indulge this passion on some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you. -- Plutarch %% A man who can't mind his own business is not to be trusted with the king's. -- Saville %% A man who checks out of the express lane with seven items is the same man who will wear Supp-Hose and park in the Reserved for Handicapped spaces. -- Erma Bombeck %% A man who cries is capable of any evil. %% A man who is always forgetting his best intentions may be said to be a thorough fare of good resolutions. -- Mrs. Jameson %% A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things that he does not know; and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pendant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition. -- Colton %% A man who studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green. -- Francis Bacon %% A man who turns green has eschewed protein. %% A man without a God is like a fish without a bicycle. %% A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle. %% A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own. -- Thomas Mann %% A man's errors are what makes him amiable. -- Goethe %% A man's good breeding is the best security against another's bad manners. -- Chesterfield %% A man's legs must be long enough to reach the ground. -- Abraham Lincoln %% A man's reputation is the opinion people have of him; his character is what he really is. -- Jack Miner %% A manager, name of .... Was sent to quash some revolts; Up Tewksbury way, Where, I would say, He could tell the nuts from the dolts. %% A manuscript for a market in which no textbooks currently exist will be followed two weeks after contracting by an announcement of an identical book by your closest competitor. %% A meeting is a place where people get together to talk about what they should be doing. %% A meeting lasts at least 1 1/2 hours however short the agenda. -- Denys Parsons %% A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer. -- Dean Acheson %% A military disaster may produce a better postwar situation than victory. -- Shimon Tzabar %% A mind content both crown and kingdom is. -- Greene %% A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive. -- Coleridge %% A narrow mind begets obstinacy, and we do not easily believe what we cannot see. -- Dryden %% A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them in a century. -- Baron de Montesquieu %% A necessary item only goes on sale after you have purchased it at the regular price. -- Sherry Graditor %% A new broom sweeps clean, but the old brush knows the corners. %% A new cask will long preserve the tincture of the liquor with which it was first impregnated. -- Horace %% A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow. -- Charlie Brower %% A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. -- Max Planck %% A nickname is the heaviest stone the devil can throw at a man. %% A nose that can see is worth two that can sniff. -- Eugene Ionesco %% A pair of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice to subdue a man; to enslave him, and inflame; to make him even forget; they dazzle him so, that the past becomes straightway dim to him; and he so prizes them, that he would give all his life to possess them. What is the fond love of dearest friends compared to his treasure? Is memory as strong as expectancy, fruition as hunger, gratitude as desire? -- Thackeray %% A parade should have bands or horse, but not both. -- Nancy M. Wells %% A pat on the back is only a few centimeters from a kick in the pants. %% A pedestrian hit me and went under my car. %% A pedestrian is a man who has two cars, a wife, and one or more teenage children. %% A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. -- George Bernard Shaw %% A person over age 65 who drinks says that his doctor recommends it. -- Bob Smith %% A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents. -- G.C. Lichtenberg %% A person who can't lead and won't follow makes a dandy roadblock. %% A phenomenon known to anyone who has ever lit fires: You can throw a burnt match out the window of your car and start a forest fire while you can use two boxes of matches and a whole edition of the Sunday paper without being able to start a fire under the dry logs in your fireplace. %% A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in a fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician treats a patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant. -- Seneca %% A piano is a piano is a piano is a piano. -- Gertrude Steinway %% A picture is a poem without words. -- Horace %% A piece of electronic equipment is housed in a beautifully designed cabinet, and at the side or on top is a little box containing the components which the designer forgot to make room for. -- Denys Parsons %% A pig ate his fill of acorns under an oak tree and then started to root around the tree. A crow remarked, "You should not do this. If you lay bare the roots, the tree will wither and die." "Let it die," said the pig. "Who cares so long as there are acorns?" %% A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth. %% A place you want to get to is always just off the edge of the map you happen to have handy. -- Denys Parsons %% A pleasing trembling thrills through all my blood Whene'er you touch me with your melting hand; But when you kiss, oh! 'tis not to be spoke. -- Gildon %% A plucked goose doesn't lay golden eggs. %% A poet begins in delight and ends in wisdom. -- Robert Frost %% A poet that fails in writing, becomes often a morose critic. The weak insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar. -- Shenstone %% A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits. -- Lazarus Long %% A politician always abuses his own constituency and placates the opponent's. -- Bob Smith %% 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 %% A poor man served by thee, shall make thee rich. -- Mrs. Browning %% A pregnancy will never occur when you have a low-paying job which you hate. -- Erma Bombeck %% A present, over which you will shed tears of joy. %% A pretty woman is a welcome guest. -- Byron %% A professor's enthusiasm for teaching the introductory course varies inversely with the likelihood of his having to do it. %% A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow real poverty. -- Hume %% A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience. %% A prudent question is one-half wisdom. -- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) %% A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation. -- Colton %% A pun is the lowest form of humor -- when you don't think of it first. -- Oscar Levant %% A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as "you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants to make a travesty of the game. -- Donald A. Metz %% A quick response is worth a thousand logical responses. -- Merle P. Martin %% A reactionary is a man whose political opinions always manage to keep up with yesterday. %% A real friend is a person who, when you've made a fool of yourself, lets you forget it. %% A realist lets circumstances decide which end of the telescope to look through. %% A recent moralist has affirmed that the human heart is like a jug. No mortal can look into its recesses, and you can only judge of its purity by what comes out of it. %% A recession is when my neighbor loses his job. A depression is when I lose my job. A panic is when my wife loses her job. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% A record of data is useful -- it indicates that you've been working. %% A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power. %% A reformer is a guy who rides through a sewer in a glass bottomed boat. %% A reformer wants his conscience to be your guide. %% A religion can no more afford to degrade its Devil than to degrade its God. %% A reserved lover, it is said, always makes a suspicious husband. -- Oliver Goldsmith %% A river flowing through one of our large Eastern cities is so polluted it is considered a fire hazard! %% A rose by any other name would still be a flower. %% A rose is a rose is a rose, but junk is not junk is not junk. It is never quite what you think it is. -- Richard N. Farmer %% A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people. -- Peter McArthur %% A scar nobly got is a good livery of honor. -- Shakespeare %% A school should not be a preparation for life. A school should be life. -- Elbert Hubbard %% A secret in his mouth, Is like a wild bird put into a cage; Whose door no sooner opens, but 'tis out. -- Johnson %% A seminar on Time Travel will be held two weeks ago. %% A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing. -- Samuel Butler %% A sentence well couched takes both the sense and the understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom. -- Fletham %% A shortcut is the longest distance between two points. -- Professor Charles P. Issawi %% A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. -- Joseph Stalin %% A slave has but one master; the ambitious man has as many masters as there are persons whose aid may contribute to the advancement of his fortune. -- La Bruyere %% A smattering of philosophy had liberated his [Nero's] intellect without maturing his judgment. -- Tacitus %% A smoker is always attracted to the non-smoking section. -- Raj K. Dhawan %% A soft answer turneth away wrath. %% A stagnant science is at a standstill. %% A statue lies hid in a block of marble; and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish. -- Addison %% A stitch in time saves nine. %% A stranger at your gate is grateful for the hospitality of your house. %% A strong memory is generally coupled with infirm judgment. -- Montaigne %% 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 %% A successful person is one who went ahead and did the thing the rest of us never quite got around to. %% A successful symposium depends on the ratio of meeting to eating. %% A sunny temper gilds the edges of life's blackest cloud. -- Guthrie %% A suspicious parent makes an artful child. -- Haliburton %% A system tends to grow in terms of complexity rather than of simplification, until the resulting unreliability becomes intolerable. -- Tom Gibb %% A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself. -- Jessamyn West (Irony is when you buy a suit with two pair of pants, and then burn a hole in the coat.) %% A theory is better than its explanation. -- H. P. Woodward %% A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterwards. -- Jean Paul Richter %% A toad-eater's an imp I don't admire. -- Dr. Woolcott %% A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an "intellectual" -- find out how he feels about astrology. -- Lazarus Long %% A transistor protected by a fast acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first. -- David Ellis %% A truck backed through my windshield into my wife's face. %% A true friend will see you through when others see that you are through. %% A university is a place where men of principle outnumber men of honor. -- Ernest May %% A verbal contract isn't worth the paper its printed on. -- Sam Goldwyn %% A vivid and creative mind characterizes you. %% A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones. -- Chesterfield %% A wedding ring is like a tourniquet, it cuts off your circulation. %% A well regulated commerce is not, like law, physic, or divinity, to be overstocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its professors. -- Addison %% A well-bred dog generally bows to strangers. %% A winner goes through a problem; A loser goes around, but never past, it. %% A winner isn't nearly as afraid of losing as a loser is secretly afraid of winning. %% A winner makes commitments; a loser makes promises. %% A winner says "Lets find out."; a loser says, "Nobody knows." %% A winner works harder than a loser and has more time; A loser is always too busy to do what is necessary. %% A wise man can see more from a mountain top than a fool can from the bottom of a well. %% A wise man who stands firm is a statesman, a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe. %% A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests. -- Niccolo Machiavelli %% A wit's a feather, and a chief's a god; An honest man is the noblest work of God. -- Alexander Pope %% A woman, like a good piece of music, should have a solid end. -- F. Schubert %% A zygote is a gamete's way of producing more gametes. This may be the purpose of the universe. -- Lazarus Long %% A. Running a project in this office is like mating elephants -- it takes a great deal of time and effort to get on top of things; B. The whole affair is always accompanied by a great deal of noise and confusion, the culmination of which is heralded by loud trumpeting; C. After which, nothing comes of the effort for two years. %% ADVANCED DESIGN: Copy writer doesn't understand it %% ALL NEW: Parts not interchangeable with previous design %% ARTIFACT: Something only an art major would know. %% ARTIFACT: The only true fact in an experiment. %% Ability hits the mark where presumption overshoots and diffidence falls short. -- John Henry Newman %% Ability is of little account without opportunity. -- Napoleon Bonaparte %% Ability wins us the esteem of the true men; luck that of the people. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Abruptness is eloquence in parting, when spinning out the time is but the weaving of new sorrow. -- Sir John Suckling %% Absence and death are the same -- only that in death there is no suffering. -- Walter S. Landor %% Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld %% Absence of occupation is not rest A mind quite vacant is a mind distress'd. -- Cowper %% Absolute freedom is being able to do what you please without considering anyone except the except the wife and kids, the company and the boss, neighbors and friends, the police and government, the doctor and the church. %% Abstaining is favorable both to the head and to the pocket. -- Horace Greeley %% Abuse is the weapon of the vulgar. -- Samuel Griswold Goodrich %% Abuse: the bitter clamour of two evil tongues. -- Shakespeare %% Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low. -- Wallace Sayre %% According to the obituary notices, a mean and unimportant person never dies. %% Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty. -- Charles Simmons %% Accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a lady, but a newspaper can always print a retraction. -- Adlai E. Stevenson %% Accuracy of statement is one of the first elements of truth; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood. -- Tyron Edwards %% Accurst ambition, how dearly I have bought you. -- John Dryden %% Act upon your impulses, but pray that they may be directed by God. -- Emerson Tennent %% Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity. -- Lavater %% Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. -- Benjamin Disraeli %% Action to be effective must be directed to clearly conceived ends. -- Jawaharial Nehru %% Actions of the last age are like almanacs of the last age. -- Sir Thomas Denham %% Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation. -- Mahatma Gandhi %% Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. -- Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. %% Administration maintains the status quo. -- Thomas L. Martin %% Adversity borrows its sharpest sting from our impatience. -- Bishop Horne %% Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant. -- Horace %% Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it. -- Horace %% Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy. -- Shakespeare %% Advice from an old carpenter: Measure twice and saw once. %% Advise well before you begin, and when you have maturely considered, then act with promptitude. -- Sallust %% After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement. -- Norman Thomas %% After a raise in salary you will have less money at the end of each month than you had before. -- Dr. R. F. Gumperson %% After adding two weeks to the schedule for unexpected delays, add two more for the unexpected, unexpected delays. %% After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done. %% After all, what was MEDEA? Just another child custody case. -- Frank Pierson %% After large expenditures of federal, state, and county funds; after much confusion generated by detours and road blocks; after greatly annoying the surrounding population with noise, dust, and fumes, the previously existing traffic jam is relocated by one half-mile. -- Alan Deitz %% After the correction has been found to be in error, it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation. %% After wisdom comes wit. -- Evan Esar %% Against stupidity, even the gods themselves contend in vain. -- Isaac Asimov %% Against logic there is no armor like ignorance. %% Age is a tyrant, who forbids, at the penalty of life, all the pleasures of youth. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Age sits with decent grace upon his visage, and worthily becomes his silver locks; he bears the marks of many years well spent, of virtue truth well tried, and wise experience. -- Rowe %% Ah! the youngest heart has the same waves within it as the oldest; but without the plummet which can measure the depths. -- Richter %% Ah! curst ambition! to thy lures we owe, All the great ills that mortals bear below. -- Teckell %% Airy ambition, soaring high. -- Sheffield %% Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded! -- Carlyle %% Alas, reason is not effective against faith, or against searches for miracles by the desperate. -- Dr. Michael B. Shimkin %% Alexander Hamilton started the U. S. Treasury with nothing -- and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even. -- Will Rogers %% Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth. %% All American cars are basically Chevrolets. -- Herb Caen %% All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely than others. -- Alan Truscott %% All buses heading in the opposite direction drive off the face of the earth and never return. -- John Corcoran %% All cats are NOT gray after midnight. Endless variety ... %% All ceremonies are, in themselves, very silly things; but yet a man of the world should know them. They are the outworks of manners and decency, which would be too often broken in upon, if it were not for that defence, which keeps the enemy at a proper distance. It is for this reason that I always treat fools with great ceremony: true good breeding not being a sufficient barrier against them. -- Chesterfield %% All committee reports conclude that "it is not prudent to change the policy [or procedure, or organization, or whatever] at this time." -- Thomas L. Martin %% All countries hate their immediate neighbors and like the next but one. (For example, the Poles hate the Germans, Russians, Czechs, and Lithuanians, and they like the French, Hungarians, Italians, and Latvians.) -- Professor Charles P. Issawi %% All courageous animals are carnivorous, and greater courage is to be expected in a people, such as the English, whose food is strong and hearty, than in the half starved commonalty of other countries. -- Sir W. Temple %% All files, papers, memos, etc., that you save will never be needed until such time as they are disposed of, when they will become essential and indispensable. -- John Corcoran %% All general statements are false. -- R. H. Grenier %% All gods have feet of clay. %% All government programs have three things in common: a beginning, a muddle, and no end. %% All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast. %% All hierarchies contain administrators and managers, and they tend to appear at alternating levels in the hierarchy. -- Thomas L. Martin %% All interference in human conduct has the potential for causing harm -- no matter how innocuous the procedure. %% All is but lip wisdom which wants experience. -- Sir Philip Sydney %% All math classes begin at 8 AM; also, movies on Federal Government. -- M. M. Johnston %% All men are born naked. -- Carlos Eduardo Novaes %% All men are created unequal. %% All men can be lead to believe the lie they want to believe. -- Italo Bombolini %% All men can be reached by flattery, even God can (what, after all, is prayer?). -- Italo Bombolini %% All men have the right to wait in line. -- Carlos Eduardo Novaes %% All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth. -- Shelley %% All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of the United States. -- Vic Gold %% All our actions take their hues from the complexion of the heart. As landscapes their variety from light. -- W. T. Bacon %% All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain. -- Epictetus %% All policy interventions in social problems produce the intended effect -- If the research is carried out by those implementing the policy or their friends. -- James Q. Wilson %% All progress is based on a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. -- Samuel Butler %% All real programs contain errors until proved otherwise, which is impossible. -- Tom Gibb %% All right, go lie upon the beach, To bake beyond the water's reach; But if you're blistered when you quit, Remember that you basked for it. -- Anthony B. Lake %% All roads lead to Rome. %% All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end. %% 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 snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands. -- Saint Patrick %% All students who obtain a B will feel cheated out of an A. -- M. M. Johnston %% All technology expands the space, contracts the time, and destroys the working group. -- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy %% All that glitters is not gold. Gilded tombs do worms enfold. -- Shakespeare %% All that time is lost which might be better employed. -- Rousseau %% All that was new in them was false and what was true was old. -- Opinion of Darwin's findings. %% All the lights are frozen; The cursor blinks blandly. Soon, I shall see the dump. %% All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones. -- La Rochefoucauld %% All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by the government in less than a second. -- Jim Fiebig %% All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal or fattening. -- Alexander Woollcott %% All the troubles of man come from his not knowing how to sit still. -- Pascal %% All the troubles you have will pass away very quickly. %% All the world's a stage. -- Shakespeare %% All they [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 %% All things are subject to fixed laws. -- Marcus Manilius %% All things being equal, all things are never equal. -- Marshall L. Smith %% All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them. -- Matthew VII, 12 %% All those things which are now held to be of the greatest antiquity, were at one time new; and what we today hold up by example, will rank hereafter as precedent. -- Tacitus %% All those who are opposed to the plan I am about to propose will reply by saying "I resign." %% All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born. -- Francois Fenelon %% All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. -- Aristotle %% All you need to grow fine vigorous grass is a crack in your sidewalk. %% Allow no man to be so free with as you as to praise you to your face. Your vanity by this means will want its food. At the same time your passion for esteem will be more fully gratified; men will praise you in their actions: where you now receive one compliment, you will then receive twenty civilities. -- Steele %% Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble. -- Samuel Johnson %% Almost anything is easier to get into than out of. -- Agnes Allen %% Alternate rest and labor long endure. -- Ovid %% Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Always distrust offices not under your jurisdiction which say that they are there to serve you. "Support" offices in a bureaucracy tend to grow in size and make demands on you out of proportion to their service and in the end require more effort on your part than their service is worth. -- Douglas Evelyn %% Always give your people the credit that is rightfully theirs. To do otherwise is both morally and ethically dishonest. %% Always pray that your opposition be wicked. In wickedness, there is a strong strain toward rationality. Therefore, there is always the possibility, in theory, of handling the wicked by outthinking them. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% Always rise from the table with an appetite, and you will never sit down without one. -- William Penn %% Always run a yellow light. %% Always sort the small file first. -- Dick Munroe %% Always stay in with the outs. -- David Halberstan %% Always store beer in a dark place. -- Lazarus Long %% Always tell her she is beautiful, especially if she is not. %% Always tell him he is handsome, especially if he is not. %% Always verify your witchcraft. %% Ambition is a lust that's never quenched, grows more inflamed, and madder by enjoyment. -- Otway %% Ambition is an idol, on whose wings Great minds are carried only to extreme; To be sublimely great or to be nothing. -- Southey %% Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals. -- Denham %% Ambition usually progresses through the following stages: to be like Dad ... to be a millionaire ... to make enough to pay the bills ... to hang on long enough to draw a pension. %% Ambition's like a circle on the water, which never ceases to enlarge itself, 'till by broad spreading it disperse to nought. -- Shakespeare %% Ambition, idly vain; revenge and malice swell her train. -- Penrose %% Ambition: The dropsy'd thirst of empire, wealth or fame. -- Nugent %% Ambition: The glorious frailty of the noble mind. -- Hoole %% America is the only country left where we teach languages so that no pupil can speak them. -- John Erskine %% American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense. -- Ed Howe %% Americans are an energetic, ingenious, creative people. One index to this fact is that since the establishment of the patent system in 1836, there have been more than 3-3/4 million patents issued. %% Ambidextrous instructors will erase with one hand while writing with the other. -- M. M. Johnston %% Americans have always attached particular value to the word "neighbor." While the spirit of neighborliness was important on the frontier because neighbors were so few, it is even more important now because our neighbors are so many. -- Lady Bird Johnson %% Among the damned, you are the chosen one. %% Among the lucky, you are the chosen one. %% Among twenty snowy mountains the only moving thing was the eye of the black bird. %% Amusements to virtue are like breezes of air to the flame -- gentle ones will fan it, but strong ones will put it out. -- David Thomas %% An A is easily obtained if a student calls his instructor "Professor." -- M. M. Johnston %% An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions; he neither hot nor timid. -- Chesterfield %% An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard only one side of the case. God has written all the books. %% An atheist is but a mad ridiculous derider of piety; but a hypocrite makes a sober jest of God and religion; he finds it easier to be upon his knees than to rise to a good action. -- Alexander Pope %% An economist is a man who would marry Farrah Fawcett for her money. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% An egg without salt is like a kiss from a beardless man. %% An elephant: a mouse built to government specifications. %% An empty bag cannot win in New York. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted. -- Arthur Miller %% An error that can creep into a calculation, will. Also, it will always be in the direction that will cause the most damage to the calculation. -- M. M. Johnston %% An evil at its birth, is easily crushed, but it grows and strengthens by endurance. -- Cicero %% An exception TESTS a rule; it NEVER proves it. -- Edmund C. Berkeley %% An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie; for an excuse is a lie guarded. -- Alexander Pope %% An executive will always return to work from lunch early if no one takes him. %% An experiment is reproducible until another laboratory tries to repeat it. -- Dr. Alexander Kohn %% An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy. -- Gerald Weinberg %% An expert is someone who can take something you already knew and make it sound confusing. %% An extraordinary haste to discharge an obligation is a sort of ingratitude. -- La Rochefoucauld %% An eye like Mars, to threaten and command. -- Shakespeare %% An honest God is the noblest work of man. %% An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it. %% An idea, like a ghost (according to the common notion of a ghost) must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself. -- Charles Dickens %% An incompetent traitor is no danger. It is rather the capable men who must be watched. -- Brodrig %% An inexorable upward movement leads administrators to higher salaries and narrower spans of control. -- David Riesman %% An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my vehicle and vanished. %% An oath is a recognizance to heaven, binding us over in the courts above, to plead to the indictment of our crimes, that those who 'scape this would should suffer there. -- Sothern %% An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him. -- Alexander Pope %% An old car that served you so well will continue to serve you until you have just put four new tires under it and then will fall apart. -- Erma Bombeck %% An optimist is a person who goes to the window every morning and says, "Good morning, God!" The pessimist goes to the window every morning and says, "Good god, morning!" %% An optimist proclaims that this is the best of all possible worlds, and a pessimist fears that it is true. %% An order that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood. %% An original idea can never emerge from a committee in the original. -- Charles P. Boyle %% An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction. %% An ugly carpet will last forever. -- Erma Bombeck %% An unexpectedly easy-to-handle sequence of events will be immediately followed by an equally long sequence of trouble. -- Charles Phelps %% And he gave it as his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together. -- Jonathan Swift %% And here I stand; judge, my masters. -- Shakespeare %% And here, poor fool, with all my lore I stand no wiser than before. -- Johann W. von Goethe %% And now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. -- I Corinthians %% And oftentimes, excusing of a fault, Doth make a fault the worse by the excuse; As patches set upon a little breach, Discredit more in hiding of the fault, Than did the fault before it was so patch'd. -- Shakespeare %% 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 %% And though all cry down self, none means his ownself in a literal sense. -- Butler %% And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. -- Shakespeare %% And virtue is her own reward. -- Prior %% And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? %% And what is fame, that flutt'ring noisy sound, But the cold lie of universal vogue? -- H. Smith %% And where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury. -- Shakespeare %% Andrew's Canoeing Postulate: No matter which direction you start, it's always against the wind coming back. %% Energy-State: Any state or condition of the Universe, or any portion of it, which requires the expenditure of human effort or ingenuity to bring it into line with human desires, needs, or pleasures. -- Dr. John Gall %% Anger is blood, pour'd and perplexed into a froth. -- Davenant %% Anthony's Law of Force: Don't force it. Get a larger hammer. %% Anthony's Law of the Workshop: Any tool, when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner of the workshop. Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first always strike your toes. %% Anticipated events never live up to expectations. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% Anticipation of problems is half the battle. And the only way to anticipate is to think. %% Ants would starve in your house if ants would come into it. %% Any argument worth making within the bureaucracy must be capable of being expressed in a single declarative sentence that is obviously true once stated. -- John McNaughton %% Any bus that can be the wrong bus will be the wrong bus. All others are out of service or full. -- John Corcoran %% Any college that would take your son he should be too proud to go to. -- Erma Bombeck %% Any discovery is more likely to be exploited by the wicked than applied by the virtuous. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a representation of anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously. -- Richard Schickel %% Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that this country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a whole week. %% Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it. -- Henry David Thoreau %% Any given program costs more and takes longer. %% Any given program will expand to fill all available memory. %% Any given program, when running, is obsolete. %% Any government will work if authority and responsibility are equal and coordinate. This does not insure "good" government; it simply insures that it will work. But such governments are rare -- most people want to run things but want no part of the blame. This used to be called the "backseat-driver syndrome." -- Lazarus Long %% Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche -- a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance, my grand- mother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off the fence." I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was undoubtedly true. -- Solomon Short %% Any improbable event which would create maximum confusion if it did occur, will occur. -- H. S. Kindler %% Any inanimate object, regardless of its composition or configuration, may be expected to perform at any time in a totally unexpected manner for reasons that are either totally obscure or completely mysterious. -- Dr. Fyodor Flap %% Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one. -- Sam Rayburn %% Any large system is going to be operating most of the time in failure mode. -- Dr. John Gall %% Any man can prove he has good judgment by saying you have. %% Any man that can write, may answer a letter. -- Shakespeare %% Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad. -- Leo Rosten %% Any man who hates dogs and loves whiskey can't be all bad. -- W. C. Fields %% Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good. %% Any one can be great with money. With money, greatness is not a talent but an obligation. The trick is to be great without money. -- Italo Bombolini %% Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there. -- Sydney J. Harris %% Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a Communist. -- Alvin Dark %% Any plumbing pipes you choose to replace during renovation will prove to be in excellent condition; those you decide to leave in place will be rotten. -- Lew Phelps %% Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent. -- Lazarus Long %% Any race that doesn't use all its potential will always stop short of its possibilities. -- Jose Torres %% Any renovation project on an old house will cost twice as much and take three times as long as originally estimated. -- Lew Phelps %% Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way. %% Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to exactly the point of most pressure. -- Milt Barber %% Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable. -- Tom Gibb %% Any theory can be made to fit any facts by means of appropriate additional assumptions. -- Robert E. Schenk %% Any time you wish to demonstrate something, the number of faults is proportional to the number of viewers. %% Any tool dropped while repairing an automobile will roll under the car to the vehicle's exact geographic center. %% Any vacuum cleaner would sooner take the nap off a rug than remove white threads from a dark rug. %% Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry. -- George Ade %% Anybody has a right to evade taxes if he can get away with it. No citizen has a moral obligation to assist in maintaining the government. %% Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office. -- David Broder %% Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. -- Robert Benchley %% Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with none. %% Anyone can suck a toothpick!! %% Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people. -- Jean de la Fontaine %% Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it. -- Alvin Toffler %% Anyone who does not look out for number one first, last, and always is a sucker. %% Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy. %% Anyone who says he isn't going to resign, four times, definitely will. -- John Kenneth Galbraith %% Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never tried taking candy from a baby. -- R. Hood %% Anything hit with a big enough hammer will fall apart. -- Robert A. Jackson %% Anything is possible, but nothing is easy. -- Bill Gray %% Anything left over today will be needed tomorrow to pay an unexpected bill. -- Betty Canary %% Anything scarce is valuable; praise for example! %% Anything that begins well ends badly. Anything that begins badly ends worse. %% Anything that satisfies its external specifications, no matter how inefficient it is, is a success; don't argue with it. %% Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. You can do better the next time. %% Anything you can do I can do better; anything I can do YOU can do better; anything I can do I can do better; anything IBM does will cost more money. %% Anything, no matter how bad, will sound good if played back at at very high level for a short time. -- John Culshaw %% Apathy can only be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things; first, an ideal which takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite plan for carrying that ideal into practice. -- Arnold Toynbee %% Aphorism: a concise, clever statement. Afterism: a concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late. -- James Alexander Thom %% Appearances are all, my son. Appearances are all. %% Appearances deceive and this one maxim is a standing rule: Men are not what they seem. -- Harvard %% Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones. -- Colton %% Arbitrary systems: Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing general can be said." %% Architecture is the printing press of all ages, and gives a history of the state in which it was conducted. -- Lady Morgan %% Architecture: Whatever we choose to implement. -- FMS Project Leader %% Are you a man or a mouse? Come on, squeak up! %% Arguments seem futile to me, for behind every argument I have ever heard lies the astounding ignorance of someone. -- Louis D. Brandeis %% Arithmetical proofs of theorems that do not have arithmetical bases prove nothing. -- G. O. Ashley %% Army Law: If it moves, salute it; if it doesn't move, pick it up; and if you can't pick it up, paint it. %% Art is I; science is we. -- Claude Bernard %% As I approached the intersection a stop sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign has ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident. %% As a little silvery circular ripple, set in motion by the falling pebble, expands from its inch of radius to the whole compass of a pool, so there is not a child -- not an infant Moses -- placed, however softly, in his bulrush ark upon the sea of time, whose existence does not stir a ripple, gyrating outward and on, until it shall have moved across and spanned the whole ocean of God's eternity, stirring even the river of life, and the fountains at which the angels drink. -- Elihu Burritt %% As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food. -- Dr. I. Watts %% As a man of more than average caution, I have never felt absolutely secure until Evans and Novak have spoken. -- John Kenneth Galbraith %% As ceremony is the invention of wise men to keep fools at a distance, so good breeding is an expedient to make fools and wise men equal. -- Steele %% As charity covers a multitude of sins before God, so does politeness before men. -- Chesterfield %% As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest blabbers. -- Plato %% As every thread of gold is valuable, so is every minute of time. -- Mason %% As fresh as morning dew distill'd on flowers. -- Shakespeare %% As good almost kill a man, as kill a good book; who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself. -- Milton %% As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters. -- Edward Gibbon %% 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 %% As riches and favor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool, but nobody could find it out in his prosperity. -- La Bruyere %% As the dimensions of the tree are not always regulated by the size of the seed, so the consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. -- Colton %% As the economy gets better, everything else gets worse. -- Art Buchwald %% As the language of the face is universal, so 'tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: 'tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room. -- Jeremy Collier %% As the sword of the best-tempered metal is the most flexible; so the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in their behavior to their inferiors. -- Fuller %% As to the idea that advertising motivates people, remember the Edsel. %% As with liberty, the price of leanness is eternal vigilance. -- Gene Brown %% As you are old and reverend, you should be wise. -- Shakespeare %% As you are, so shall you wish. As you wish, so shall it be. %% Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if one went to Harvard). -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve. Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum. Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check and dying broke. -- Stanley Walker %% Astrology Law: It's always the wrong time of the month. -- Rozanne Weissman %% At a bargain sale, the only suit or dress that you like best and that fits is the one not on sale. %% At any given moment, a society contains a certain amount of accumulated and accruing aggressiveness. If more than twenty-one years elapse without this aggressiveness being directed outward, in a popular war against other countries, it turns inward, in social unrest, civil disturbances, and political disruption. -- Professor Charles P. Issawi %% At any level of traffic, any delay is intolerable. -- Barry Bruce-Briggs %% At any one time, thousands of borough councilmen, school board members, attorneys, and businessmen -- as well as congressmen, senators, and governors -- are all dreaming of the White House, but few, if any of them, will make it. -- Mark B. Cohen %% At any public relations luncheon, the quality of the food is inversely related to the quality of the information. -- Earl Ubell %% At every trifle scorn to take offence, That always shews great pride or little sense. -- Alexander Pope %% At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer. -- Marshall Lumsden %% At some point, every faculty would certainly lynch its dean -- if it could only agree on a date. %% At some time in the life cycle of virtually every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out. -- Richard H. Brien %% 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. -- Tom Gibb %% At the working-man's house hunger looks in, but dares not enter! nor will the bailiff or the constable enter; for industry pays debts, but despair increaseth them. -- Benjamin Franklin %% At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment. -- Grattan %% Atheism is rather in the life than in the heart of man. -- Bacon %% Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good eating and ill-living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property. -- Jeremy Collier %% Atoms are made up of electrons and protons (protons are also nothing). Fifty billion electrons placed side by side in a straight line would stretch across the period at the end of this sentence. Protons are heavier but take up less space. Such an idea is incapable of being absorbed by the human mind. -- John Lardner and Thomas Sugrue %% Attention to detail is the watchword for gleaning information from an unsuspecting witness. -- Inspector Clouseau %% Auditors always reject a newsman's expense account with a bottom line divisible by 5 or 10. %% Auditors are the people who go in after the war is lost and bayonet the wounded. %% Authoritarian socialism has failed almost everywhere, but you will find not a single Marxist who will say it has failed because it was wrong or impractical. He will say is has failed because nobody went far enough with it. So failure never proves that a myth is wrong. -- Jean-Francois Revel %% Authority intoxicates, And makes mere sots of magistrates. The fumes of it invade the brain, And make men giddy, proud and vain; By this the fool commands the wise The noble with the base complies. The sot assumes the rule of wit, And cowards make the base submit. -- Butler %% Authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to do them. -- Richard C. Cornuelle %% Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever depths they were once able to plumb. -- Stanley Kaufman %% Availability of manuscripts in a given subject area is inversely proportional to the need for books in that area. %% Avarice is always poor, but poor by her own fault. -- Johnson %% Avert misunderstanding by calm, poise, and balance. %% Avoid fried foods which angry up the blood. -- Satchel Paige %% Avoid making irrevocable decisions while tired or hungry (nota bene: Circumstances can force your hand. So think ahead!) -- Lazarus Long %% Avoid running at all times. -- Satchel Paige %% Avoid strong drink. It makes you shoot at IRS agents -- and miss. -- Lazarus Long %% BREAKTHROUGH: We finally figured out a way to sell it %% Ba DOOM. -- Bob Dickson %% Baby's heads have no hair, Old men's heads are just as bare; Between the cradle and the grave, Lies a haircut and a shave. %% Back to a simpler time of skins and stones! When things go wrong -- the answers in the stars Or evil spells or reading chicken bones Or sacrifices to all gods but Mars. -- Jack Kirwan %% Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first or second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood. -- Augustine %% Bad law is more likely to be supplemented than repealed. -- Dalin B. Oaks %% Bad money drives out good. -- Sir Thomas Gresham %% Bad news does not improve with age. -- Jody Powell %% Bad news drives good news out of the media. -- Lee Loevinger %% Bad news travels fast. %% Banish Evil from the world? Nonsense! Encourage it, foster it, sponsor it. The world owes Evil a debt beyond imagination. Think! Without greed ambition falters. Without vanity art becomes idle musing. Without cruelty benevolence lapses to passivity. Superstition has shamed man into self-reliance and, without stupidity, where would be the savor of superior understanding? -- Magnus Ridolf %% Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they always point upward from the floor -- especially in the dark. -- Al Ross %% Barr's Hypothesis: Familiarity breeds content. %% Bartz's Law of Hokey Horsepuckery: The more ridiculous a belief system, the higher the probability of its success. -- Wayne R. Bartz %% Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high taxes. -- Will Rogers %% Be a defensive driver. Buy a Tiger M31. %% Be alert! America needs more lerts. %% Be always displeased with what thou art, if your desirest to attain to what thou art not; for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest. But if thou have enough thou perishest. Always add, always walk, always proceed. Neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate. -- Augustine %% Be calm in arguing, for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy. %% Be careful who you step on on the way up; you never know who you'll pass on the way down. %% Be concise in your writing and talking, especially when giving instructions to others. %% Be courteous. Have genuine consideration for other people's feelings, wishes and situations. %% Be generous. Remember that it is the productivity of others that makes possible your executive position. %% Be just and fear not: Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, thy God's, and truth's. -- Shakespeare %% Be like a duck -- keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil under water. %% Be neither too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it; nor at any time in the extremities of it. -- Lavater %% Be not diverted from your duty by any idle reflections the silly world may make upon you, for their censures are not in your power, and consequently should not be any part of your concern. -- Epictetus %% Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. -- Alexander Pope %% Be self-reliant and your success is assured. %% Be sober and temperate, and you will be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin %% Be sure to obtain meteorological information before leaving on vacation. %% Be sure to save your money; you never know when it might be worth something again. %% Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. -- Shakespeare %% Be tolerant of those who disagree with you -- after all, they have a right to their ridiculous opinions. %% Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by false appreciation of their own strength. -- Charles C. Colton %% Be ye angry and sin not; let not the sun go down upon your wrath. -- Eph. iv,26 %% Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of life. %% Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but if it light well, it makes virtue shine and vice blush. -- Bacon %% Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone. %% Beauty seldom recommends one woman to another. %% Beauty without virtue is like a flower without perfume. %% Beauty's tears are lovelier than her smile. -- Campbell %% Because men believe not in Providence, therefore they do so greedily scrape and hoard. They do not believe in any reward for charity, therefore they will part with nothing. -- Barrow %% Beck's Motto: Functionality; All the Functionality; And nothing but the Functionality. %% Bedfellows make strange politicians. %% Before a party or a trip, if it can, it will let rip. %% Behind every argument is someone's ignorance. %% Behind every great man is a great woman. Behind every great woman is a great behind. -- anonymous male chauvinist %% Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth. -- James III, 5 %% Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want. -- Irving Kristol %% Being generous is inborn; being altruistic is a learned perversity. No resemblance ... -- Lazarus Long %% 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 %% Believe not much them that seem to despise riches; for they despise them that despair of them; and none are worse when they come to them. Be not penny-wise; riches have wings, and sometimes they fly away of themselves, sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more. -- Bacon %% Benchley's Distinction: There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes and those who do not. -- Robert Benchley %% Benchley's travel distinction: In America there are two classes of travel: first class and with children. %% Best men are often moulded out of faults. -- Shakespeare %% Bets at the first were fool-traps where the wise Like spiders lay in ambush for the flies. -- Dryden %% Better Red than dead. -- Bertrand Russell %% Better be alone than in bad company. %% Better bend than break. %% Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. -- Edmund Burke %% Better to die a thousand deaths than wound my honor. -- Addison %% Better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a lamb. %% Better to throw it out -- than throw it in. -- Skinny Mitchell %% Better to use medicines at the outset than at the last moment. %% Between grief and nothing I will take grief. -- William Faulkner %% Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before. -- Mae West %% Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. -- Henry David Thoreau %% Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil. %% Beware of desperate steps! -- the darkest day Live till to-morrow, will have passed away. -- Cowper %% Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, bear it that the opposer may beware of thee. -- Shakespeare %% Beware of friends who are false and deceitful. %% Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. -- Benjamin Franklin %% Beware of people who fall at your feet. They may be reaching for the corner of the rug. %% Beware the fury of a patient man. -- Dryden %% Beware the man who makes cream with his mouth; he winds up making butter with his nose. -- Babbaluche the cobbler %% Bicycle Law: All bicycles weigh 50 pounds: A 30-pound bicycle needs a 20-pound lock and chain. A 40-pound bicycle needs a 10-pound lock and chain. A 50-pound bicycle needs no lock and chain. %% Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine By which alone the mortal heart is led Unto the thinking of the thought divine. -- George Santayana %% Big people are those who make us feel bigger when we are with them. %% Biochemistry expands so as to fill the space and time available for its completion and publication. -- R. T. Hersh %% Bismark's law: The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they'll sleep at night. %% Blessed are the peace makers, for they shall be called the children of God. -- Matthew V, 9 %% Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt. %% Blessed is he who expects no gratitude, for he shall not be disappointed. -- W. C. Bennett %% Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall not be disappointed. -- Gene Franklin %% Blessed is he who has reached the point of no return and knows it, for he shall enjoy living. -- W. C. Bennett %% Bordeaux makes you think of mischief; Burgundy makes you tease; Champagne makes you. %% Boren's Laws of Bureaucracy: 1. When in doubt, mumble. 2. When in trouble, delegate. 3. When in charge, ponder. -- James H. Boren %% Boss to employee: No, Baxter, you're not being replaced by a computer -- only a silicon chip. -- Eli Stein %% Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar. -- O. W. Holmes %% Bow to no patron's insolence; rely On no frail hopes, in freedom live and die. -- Seneca %% Bowler's dinner -- spare ribs -- Raymond D. Love %% Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves; there is a nobleness of mind that heals wounds beyond salves. -- Cartwright %% Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid. -- Franklin P. Jones %% Brevity and superficiality are often concomitants. -- Amrom Katz %% Broken Mirror Law: Everyone breaks more than the seven-year bad luck allotment to cover rotten luck throughout an entire lifetime. -- Rozanne Weissman %% Brontosaurus Principle: Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when this occurs, they are an endangered species. -- Thomas K. Connellan %% Brooks Atkinson described a Shubert play as "beautiful, if you are deaf and dumb." %% Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. -- Christopher J. Shaw %% Bureaucratic Cop-Out Number 1: You should have seen it when I got it! -- Marshall L. Smith %% Burn's Hog Weighing Method: 1. Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a sawhorse. 2. Put the hog on one end of the plank. 3. Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again perfectly balanced. 4. Carefully guess the weight of the rocks. -- Robert Burns %% Bus schedules are arranged so your bus will arrive at the transfer point precisely one minute after the connecting bus has left. -- John Corcoran %% But I have seen the science I worshipped and the airplane I loved destroying the civilization I expected them to serve. -- Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. %% But an old age serene and bright, And lovely as a Lapland night, Shall lead thee to thy grave. -- Wordsworth %% But if a man happens to find himself ... he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life. %% But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit. -- Shakespeare %% But then her face, So lovely, yet so arch, so full of mirth, The overflowings of an innocent heart. -- Rogers %% By a careful cultural design, we control not the final behavior, but the inclination to behave -- the motives, the desires, the wishes ... we increase the feeling of freedom. -- B. F. Skinner %% By establishing real money, men rule out its debasement. -- Lewis E. Lehrman %% By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. %% By following the good, you learn to be good. %% By gnawing through a dyke even a rat may drown a nation. -- Edward Burke %% By heaven we understand a state of happiness infinite in degree, and endless in duration. -- Benjamin Franklin %% By night an atheist half believes a God. -- Edward Young %% By preserving over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination. -- Christopher Columbus %% By the data to date, there is only one animal in the Galaxy dangerous to man -- man himself. So he must supply his own indispensable competition. He has no enemy to help him. -- Lazarus Long %% By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. -- Shakespeare %% By the time a person gets to greener pastures, he can't climb the fence. %% 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 %% By the year 1984 the entire world may be run by computers. Digital Equipment Corporation will still be run by people. %% By work you get money, by talk you get knowledge. -- Haliburton %% Caesar had his Brutus -- charles the First, his Cromwell -- and George the Third ("Treason!" cried the Speaker) -- may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it. -- Patrick Henry %% Call him wise whose actions, words and steps are all a clear because to a clear why. -- Lavater %% Calmness is great advantage; he that lets another chafe may warm him at his fire, mark all his wand'rings and enjoy his frets, as cunning fencers suffer heat to tire. -- Herbert %% Cameras are so simple to operate now that taking pictures is much easier than getting friends to look at them. -- Hugh Allen %% Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two points. -- M. M. Johnston %% Can there be a republic that does not slump under the weight of so much human desire? -- Michael Scully %% Canada's climate is nine months winter and three months late in fall. %% Cant produces countercant. -- Arthur Herzog %% Capital Punishment: The income tax. %% Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. -- Mohandas Ghandi %% Capitalism ... is outrageously unjust; it requires a continuing maldistribution of wealth in order to exist ... We live in the twilight of an epoch ... I am absolutely convinced that we are moving toward some kind of planned economy. -- Michael Harrington %% Capitalism can exist in one of only two states: welfare or warfare. -- Bill Gray %% Capitalism did not arise because capitalists stole the land ... but because it was more efficient than feudalism. It will perish because it is not merely less efficient than socialism, but actually self-destructive. -- J. B. S. Haldane %% Capitalism in the United States has undergone profound modification, not just under the New Deal, but through a consensus that continued to grow after the New Deal ... Government in the U. S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country. -- Norman Cousins %% Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye. -- Shakespeare %% Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt; And ev'ry grin so merry, draws one out. -- Dr. Wolcott %% Careful planning is the key to safe and swift travel. -- Ulysses %% Celibacy is not hereditary. -- Guy Godin %% Certain things shouldn't be moved. -- Murray Teigh Bloom %% Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win. -- Lazarus Long %% Champagne is the only wine a woman can drink and still remain beautiful. -- Mme. de Pompadour %% Changing things is central to leadership, and changing them before anyone else is creativeness. -- Antony Jay %% Character is a perfectly educated will. -- Novalis %% Character is destiny. -- Heraclitus %% Charity begins at home. %% Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. -- I Corinthians %% Cheap things are of no value, valuable things are not cheap. %% Check the answer you have worked out once more -- before you tell it to anybody. -- Edmund C. Berkeley %% Cheop's law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget. %% Chicago Tribune headline: THE FAME OF PLAINS IS MAINLY ON THE WANE. %% Chide a friend in private and praise him in public. -- Solon %% Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're going to catch you in next. -- Franklin P. Jones %% Children have more energy after a hard day of play than they do after a good night's sleep. -- Dr. R. F. Gumperson %% Chill penury weighs down the heart, itself; and though it sometimes be endured with calmness, it is but the calmness of despair. -- Mrs. Jameson %% Choose such pleasures as recreate much, and cost little. -- Fuller %% Choose the company of your superiors whenever you can have it; that is the right and true pride. -- Lord Chesterfield %% Christ believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. -- Bertrand Russell %% Cicero's style bores me. When I have spent an hour reading him ... and try to recollect what I have extracted, I usually find it nothing but wind. -- Michel de Montaigne %% Circular Definition: see Circular Definition. %% Circumstances can force a generalized incompetent to become competent, at least in a specialized field. -- Frank R. Freemon %% Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them. %% Classified material is considered lost when it cannot be found. %% Clearly stated instructions will consistently produce multiple interpretations. -- Charles P. Boyle %% Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage. %% Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. %% Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure. -- Thorndike %% Colson's Law: If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. %% Coming home, I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don't have. %% Comitas comitatum, omnia comitas. -- Professor Charles P. Issawi %% Commend a fool for his wit, or a knave for his honesty, and they will receive you into their bosom. -- Fielding %% Committee reports dealing with wages, salaries, fringe benefits, facilities, computers, employee parking, libraries, coffee breaks, secretarial support, etc., always call for dramatic expenditure increases. -- Thomas L. Martin %% Committee -- a group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done. -- Fred Allen %% Committee -- a group of men who keep minutes and waste hours. -- Milton Berle %% Committee -- a group of the unfit, appointed by the unwilling, to do the unnecessary. -- Stewart Harrol %% Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to be appointed to do the work. %% Common and vulgar people ascribe all ill that they feel to others; people of little wisdom ascribe to themselves; people of much wisdom, to no one. -- Epictetus %% Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom. -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge %% Commonly, physicians, like beer, are best when they are old, and lawyers, like bread, when they are young and new. -- Fuller %% Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. -- William James %% Compared with everything else in data processing, paper is cheap; use it. But the value of a report decreases as the number of its pages increases. %% Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. -- St. Augustine %% Complete adaptation to environment means death. The essential point in all response is the desire to control environment. -- John Dewey %% Compliments of congratulations are always kindly taken, and cost nothing but pen, ink, and paper. I consider them as draughts upon good breeding, where the exchange is always greatly in favor of the drawer. -- Chesterfield %% Computer-based management information systems will cure most review and control problems. -- Richard F. Moore %% Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable. -- Tom Gibb %% Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up. %% Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more than the estimate the job will cost. %% Computing power increases as the square of the cost. If you want to do it twice as cheaply, you have to do it four times as slowly. -- Herb Grosch %% Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works. -- Shakespeare %% Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless, but impairs what it would improve. -- Pope %% Concerning the gods, I am not able to know to a certainty whether they exist or not. For there are many things which prevent one from knowing, especially the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of the life of man. %% Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for more assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance. -- H. H. Munro %% Confusion (entropy) is always increasing in society. Only if someone or something works extremely hard can this confusion be reduced to order in a limited region. Nevertheless, this effort will still result in an increase in the total confusion of society at large. -- Dr. W. L. Everitt %% Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics. -- Sheridon %% Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you wish you weren't. %% Consider the Malevolent Universe Theory: it really IS out to get you! %% Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there. -- Josh Billings %% Consider well what your strength is equal to, and what exceeds your ability. -- Horace %% Consistency is the product of small minds. -- Merle P. Martin %% Contentment produces in some measure, all those effects which the alchymist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing, by banishing the desire of them. If it cannot remove the disquietudes arising from a man's mind, body, or fortune, it makes him easy under them. -- Addison %% Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius. %% Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of capitalism. -- Walter Lippmann %% Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy; for the apparel oft proclaims the man. -- Shakespeare %% Count the day won when, turning on its axis, This earth imposes no additional taxes. %% Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it. -- Richter %% Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that is always respected, even when it is associated with vice. -- Samuel Johnson %% Courage is grace under pressure. -- Ernest Hemingway %% Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.) -- Lazarus Long %% Courage is walking naked through a cannibal village. -- Leonard Louis Levinson %% Courage is your greatest present need. %% Courses of action which run only to be justified in terms of practicality ultimately prove destructive and impractical. -- Mark B. Cohen %% Courtship consists of a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood. -- Sterne %% Coward, n. one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Coward: A man in whom the instinct of self-preservation acts normally. -- Sultana Zoraya %% Cows may come and cows may go, but the bull in this place goes on FOREVER!!! %% Crab apples may not be the best kind of fruit; but a tree which every year bears a great crop of crab apples is better worth cultivating than a tree which bears nothing. %% Creative intelligence in its various forms and activities is what makes man. -- James Harvey Robinson %% Creativity varies inversely with the number of cooks involved with the broth. -- Bernice Fitz-Gibbon %% Creditors have better memories than debtors; and creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times. -- Benjamin Franklin %% Creditors have much better memories than debtors. %% Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good; if meager, muddy vapid, and sour, both are fit only to engender colic and wind; but if rich, generous and sparkling, they improve the taste, expand the heart, and are worthy of being introduced at the symposium of the gods. -- Colton %% Critics are a kind of freebooters in the republic of letters -- who, like deer, goats, and divers other gramniverous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them of their verdure, and retarding their progress to maturity. -- Washington Irving %% Croll's Query: If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of? %% Cultivate a consistently pessimistic outlook. %% Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body. -- Cicero %% Cunning and deceit will every time serve a man better than force. -- Niccolo Machiavelli %% Cunning and treachery are the offspring of incapacity. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Curiosity in the humanities is a free person's humility, and a humble person's freedom. -- Joseph Duffy %% Curley's Law: As long as they spell the name right. %% Cursed is every-one who places his hope in man. -- Saint Augustine %% Custom does often reason overrule And only serves for reason to the fool. -- John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester %% Custom is the law of fools. -- Vanburgh %% Custom will often blind one to the good as well as to the evil effects of any long established system. -- Bishop Richard Whately %% Customs tell a man who he is, where he belongs, what he must do. Better illogical customs than none; men cannot live together without them ... "justice" is a search for workable customs. -- Dr. Margaret Mader %% Cut 'em off at the past! %% Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation. -- Johnny Hart %% Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth. -- Lillian Hellman %% Cynicism is disappointed idealism. -- Harry Kemelman %% Cynicism is disillusioned idealism. %% Cynicism is humour in ill-health. -- H. G. Wells %% Cynicism -- the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. -- Russell Lynes %% Cynics are right nine times out of ten; what undoes them is their belief that they are right ten times out of ten. -- Professor Charles P. Issawi %% DEATH: The penultimate commercial transaction finalized by probate. -- Bernard Rosenberg %% DECEPTION EXPERIMENT: An experiment in which the researcher is pleased to believe that the true nature of the situation is unknown to the participants. Typically the only parties deceived are the funding agency and the journal editor. %% DESIGN SIMPLICITY: Costs (manufacturer's) cut to the bone %% DIAGNOSTIC: Software which runs to completion no matter how broken the hardware is. %% DIPLOMACY: Lying in state. -- Ambrose Bierce %% DIPLOMACY: Patriotic art of lying for one's country. %% DIPLOMACY: The art of fishing tranquilly in troubled waters. %% DIPLOMACY: The art of jumping into troubled waters without making a splash. %% DIRECT SALES ONLY: Manufacturer had argument with distributor %% DISTINCTIVE: A different color or shape than our competitors %% Double-Blind Experiment: An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied by a belief in the tooth fairy. %% Damnable, both sides rogue. -- Shakespeare %% Data Potato ... du wop ... du wop !!! %% David Merrick, displaying ... his sneaky knack for extending the life of a production beyond the reasonable expectations of the playwright's mother. -- Walter Kerr %% Deadlock's Law: If the lawmakers make a compromise, the place where it will be felt the most is the taxpayer's pocket. %% Dear God, make me a good boy, but it's all right with me if you'd like to take your time about it. %% Death comes to all But great achievements build a monument Which shall endure until the sun grows cold. -- Georg Fabricius %% Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time. -- Goethe %% Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. -- Norman Cousins %% Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it; it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand. -- Sterne %% Death tugs at my ear and says: "Live, I am coming." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. %% Deceit in the conduct of war outweighs valor and is worthy of merit. -- Niccolo Machiavelli %% Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight; indecision is a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it. -- Gordon Graham %% Decision of character is one of the most important of human qualities, philosophically considered. Speculation, knowledge, is not the chief end of man; it is action. -- Burnap %% Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang). -- Benjamin Ruhe %% Deep in the nature of all these noble races there lurks unmistakably the beast of prey, the blond beast, lustfully roving in search of booty and victory. -- Frederick Nietzsche %% Default is more revolutionary than ideals. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% Defeated, but not dismayed -- crushed to the earth, but not humiliated -- he seemed to grow more haughty beneath disaster, and to experience a fierce satisfaction in draining the last dregs of bitterness. -- Washington Irving %% Defer not till tomorrow to be wise, Tomorrow's sun to thee may never rise. -- Congreve %% Deine schiff ist ingecommen. %% Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth. -- Lazarus Long %% Democracy can learn some things from Communism: for example, when a Communist politician is through, he is through. %% Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -- George Bernard Shaw %% Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think. %% Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that one over again, too. Who decides? -- Lazarus Long %% Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse. -- Jawaharlal Nehru %% Democracy is not a matter of sentiment, but of foresight. Any system that doesn't take the long run into account will burn itself out in the short run. -- Charles Yost %% Democracy is that form of government where everybody gets what the majority deserves. -- James Dale Davidson %% Democracy is the worst system devised by the wit of man, except for all the others. -- Winston Churchill %% Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. -- G. K. Chesterton %% Democrats buy most of the books that have been banned somewhere. Republicans form censorship committees and read them as a group. %% Democrats eat the fish they catch. Republicans hang them on the wall. %% Democrats give their worn-out clothes to those less fortunate. Republicans wear theirs. %% Democrats keep trying to cut down on their smoking but are not successful. Neither are Republicans. %% Democrats make up plans and then do something else. Republicans follow the plans their grandfathers made. %% Democrats name their children after currently popular sports figures, politicians, and entertainers. Republican children are named after their parents or grandparents, depending on where the money is. %% Depend on no man, on no friend, but him who can depend on himself. He only who acts conscientiously towards himself will act so towards others, and vice versa. -- Lavater %% Deprive a mirror of its silver and even the Czar won't see his face. %% Despise not any man, and do not spurn any thing. For there is no man that hath not his hour, no is there any thing that hath not its place. -- Rabbi Ben Azai %% Despots govern by terror. They know that he who fears God fears nothing else; and, therefore, they eradicate from the mind, through their Voltaire, the Heloetius, and the rest of that infamous gang, that only sort of fear that generates true courage. -- Burke %% Detroit made a grand try at persuading the visiting Republicans that the city is not as crime-ridden as people think. The campaign was going fine until somebody stole the governor's Lincoln Mark IV limousine. -- National Review %% Dialogue: opposing factions discussing relevant issues. Formerly called an argument. -- Paul Sweeney %% Did the Devil really create the world when God wasn't looking? %% Did you ever feel like the whole world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of white socks? %% Did you ever hear Of the frolic fairies dear? They're a blessed little race, Peeping up in fancy's face, In the valley, on the hill, By the fountain and the rill; Laughing out between the leaves That the loving summer weaves. -- Mrs. Osgood %% Did you hear about the earthquake committee meeting that was adjourned by a motion from the floor? %% Did you hear about the shepherd who drove his sheep through town and was given a ticket for making a ewe turn? %% Did you know that married men live longer than single men? So, if you want to die a slow death, get married!!! -- Dave Maynard %% Did your mother have any children that lived? %% Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves; and He loves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial. -- Burke %% Digging oolitic strata, Laid in the oligocene, Geologists are lost for data -- Fossils, yes! But ... A MACHINE??? %% Dimensions will be expressed in the least convenient terms, e. g.: Furlongs per (Fortnight)**2 = Acceleration. %% Diplomacy has rarely been able to gain at the conference table what cannot be gained or held on the battlefield. %% Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie!" till you can find a rock. %% Diplomacy is to do and say the nastiest thing in the nicest way. %% Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it ... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week. -- Will Rogers %% Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability. -- Roy L. Smith %% Discipline, like the bridle in the hand of a good rider, should exercise its influence without appearing to do so; should be ever active, both as a support and as a restraint, yet seem to lie easily in hand. It must always be ready to check or to pull up, as occasion may require; and only when the horse is a runaway should the action of the curb be perceptible. %% Discretion in speech is more than eloquence. -- Bacon %% Divines and dying men may talk of Hell But in my heart her several torments dwell. -- Shakespeare %% Do not attempt to do a thing unless you are sure of yourself; but do not relinquish it simply because someone else is not sure of you. -- Stewart E. White %% Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them. %% Do not clog intellect's sluices with knowledge of questionable uses. %% Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy. -- Lazarus Long %% Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive. %% Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead. %% Do whatever your enemies don't want you to do. -- Gary Novak %% Do you realize how boring you are? %% Do you realize that you are responsible for making this organization a cost, rather than a profit, center? %% Doctors, dentists, and lawyers are only on time for appointments when you're not. -- Roxanne Weissman %% Documents should always be dated, listings should never be torn on the outside fold. Violation is indicative of someone's (programmer's or operator's) inability. %% Does a man speak foolishly? -- suffer him gladly, for you are wise. Does he speak erroneously? -- stop such a man's mouth with sound words that cannot be gainsaid. Does he speak truly? -- rejoice in the truth. -- Oliver Cromwell %% Does history record any case in which the majority was right? %% Domestic happiness and faithful friends. %% Don't ask the barber whether you need a haircut. -- Daniel S. Greenberg %% Don't be overly suspicious where it's not warranted. %% Don't bite the hand that has your allowance in it. -- Lisa Tidler %% Don't care if you're rich or not, as long as you can live comfortably and have everything you want. %% Don't disturb the perimeter (meaning don't stir a mess unless you can be sure of the result). %% Don't forget to feel sorry for yourself. %% Don't get yourself involved with persons or situations that can't bear inspection. %% Don't let the fact that you can't do all you want to do keep you from doing what you can do. %% Don't look back, something might be gaining on you. -- Satchel Paige %% Don't lose heart ... they might want to cut it out ... and they want to avoid a lengthy search. %% Don't malign the bug-eyed monster -- Oh, he kidnaps girls, it's true, But bear in mind that all he wants to Do is what YOU'RE trying to do. %% Don't permit yourself to get between a dog and a lamp-post. %% Don't play President -- you're not. The Constitution provides for only one President. Don't forget it and don't be seen by others as not understanding that fact. -- Donald Rumsfeld %% Don't praise the bread until it is baked. %% Don't push me I'm going 55 I've done 75 The fine was $49. %% Don't put all your eggs in your pocket. -- Celestine Clark %% Don't send my boy to Harvard, the dying mother said. Don't send my boy to Harvard, I'd rather see him dead. %% Don't speak ill of your predecessors (or successors) -- you did not walk in their shoes. -- Donald Rumsfeld %% Don't start something you would be afraid to see finished. %% Don't stick your foot in the ashtray, Ed. -- JWC and RCHM %% Don't stop to stomp ants when the elephants are stampeding. %% Don't store garlic near other victuals. -- Lazarus Long %% Don't talk to me about a man's being able to talk sense; everyone can talk sense -- can he talk nonsense? -- William Pitt the Elder %% Don't throw stones at your neighbors, if you expect to buy their natural gas. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% Don't try to have the last word. You might get it. %% Don't turn around. %% Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts avoiding you. -- The Old Farmer's Almanac %% Don't worry about who you step on on the way up if you don't ever plan on coming down. %% Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take something for it. %% Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope. %% Dost thou love life? Then do not squander Time; for that's the stuff the Iranians have plenty of. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% Dost thou love life? Then waste not time, for time is the stuff that life is made of. -- Benjamin Franklin %% Draw your salary before spending it. %% Dreading the climax of all human ills, The inflammation of his weekly bills. -- Byron %% Dream after dream ensures, and still they dream that they shall still succeed, and still are disappointed. -- William Cowper %% Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. -- Henry David Thoreau %% Dreams, indeed, are ambition; for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. And I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow. -- Shakespeare %% Drink Canada Dry! You might not be able to, but it IS fun trying. %% Drink and be whole again beyond confusion. -- Robert Frost %% Drive is more than motivation. It is self motivation. %% Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution, or of a bad memory! of a constitution so treacherously good, that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting drunk, but forgets the pains of getting sober. -- Colton %% Due to lack of interest, tomorrow will be canceled. %% During an exam, the pocket calculator battery will fail. -- M. M. Johnston %% During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think. -- Bernard M. Baruch %% Dust breeds. %% E up x. %% ENERGY SAVING: Achieved when the power switch is "off" %% EXCLUSIVE: Imported product %% Each morning puts a man on trial and each evening passes judgment. -- Roy L. Smith %% Each person has the right to take part in the management of public affairs in his country, provided he has prior experience, a will to succeed, a college degree, influential parents, good looks, a resume, two 3X4 snapshots, and a good tax record. -- Carlos Eduardo Novaes %% Each person has the right to take the subway. -- Carlos Eduardo Novaes %% Each problem solved introduces a new unsolved problem. -- U. S. Dept. of Labor %% Each profession talks to itself in its own unique language. Apparently there is no Rosetta Stone. %% Eagleson's Law: Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is an optimist, the real number is more like 3 weeks.) %% Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. -- Benjamin Franklin %% Earnestness alone makes life eternity. -- Carlyle %% Ease leads to habit, as success to ease. %% Eat a live toad first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day. %% Eat flaming death, minicomputer mongrels!!! %% Eat my shorts! %% Eat to live, and not on thy Diner's Club Card. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% Ecologists believe that a bird in the bush is worth two in the hand. -- Stanley C. Pearson (On second thought, a bird in the hand is finger-licking good.) %% Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% Economy is of itself a great revenue. -- Cicero %% Economy makes men independent. %% Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent. -- Fred Allen %% Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him. -- John Locke %% Education belongs pre-eminently to the church ... neutral or lay schools from which religion is excluded are contrary to the fundamental principles of education. -- Pope Pius XI %% Education has in America's whole history been the major hope for improving the individual and society. -- Gunnar Myrdal %% Education is helping the child realize his potentialities. -- Erich Fromm %% Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature. -- Thomas Henry Huxley %% Education is the transmission of civilization. -- Ariel and Will Durant %% Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten. -- B. F. Skinner %% Education today, more than ever before, must see clearly the dual objectives: Education for living and education for making a living. -- James Mason Wood %% Education: A debt due from present to future generations. -- George Peabody %% Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. -- Frank Leahy %% Eisenhower told me never to trust a Communist. -- Lyndon B. Johnson %% Electrician's breakfast -- ohmlettes -- Raymond D. Love %% Elevator Rules: 1. Face forward. 2. Fold hands in front. 3. Do not make eye contact. 4. Watch the numbers. 5. Don't talk to anyone you don't know. 6. Stop talking with anyone you do know when anyone you don't know enters the elevator. 7. Avoid brushing bodies. -- Psychologist Layne Longfellow %% Elevators traveling in the desired direction are always delayed and on arrival tend to run in pairs, threes of a kind, full houses, etc. -- Pete Maiken %% Emotion has taught mankind to reason. -- Marquis de Vauvenargues %% Emptiness on paper; Fleeting thoughts. Red Sox play at Fenway's Green park. %% Enjoy your life. If you don't, no one else will. %% Enjoy your life; be pleasant and gay, like the birds in May. %% Enjoy your present pleasures so as not to injure those that are to follow. -- Seneca %% Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility. -- George Orwell %% Enough research will tend to confirm your conclusions. %% Enthusiasm without knowledge is like running in the dark. %% Entropy has us outnumbered. -- Solomon Short %% Envy is a weed that grows in all soils and climates, and is no less luxuriant in the country than in the court; is not confined to any rank of men or extent of fortune, but rages in the breasts of all degrees. -- Lord Clarendon %% Epperson's law: When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably something his wife can beat him at. %% Equality is not when a female Einstein gets promoted to assistant professor; equality is when a female schlemiel moves ahead as fast as a male schlemiel. -- Ewald Nyquist %% Equality of opportunity is an equal opportunity to prove unequal talents. -- Sir Herbert Samuel %% Erma Bombeck's Rule of Medicine: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. %% Err is basically a synonym for Murphy, but those who quote him over the better known prophet insist he is as real as Murphy. The basis for their argument: (1) his spirit, like Murphy's, is everywhere and (2) Err is human. %% Errors like straws upon the surface flow: He who would search for pearls must dive below. -- Dryden %% Ertz's observation: Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. %% Established technology tends to persist in the face of new technology. -- Gerritt A. Blaauw %% Eternal boredom is the price of constant vigilance. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% Eternal sunshine settles on its head. -- Oliver Goldsmith %% Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. -- Wendell Phillips %% Eternity stands always fronting God; a stern colossal image with blind eyes, and dim lips, that murmur evermore, "God, God, God!" -- Mrs. Browning %% Even God cannot change the past. %% Even a hawk is an eagle among crows. %% Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. %% Even if it can't, it might. -- A. J. Barton %% Even in war, moral power is to physical as three parts out of four. -- Napoleon Bonaparte %% Even paranoids have enemies. -- Jim Pastore %% Even the boldest zebra fears the hungry lion. %% Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark. %% Even things in themselves not positively advantageous, sometimes become so, by their tendency to provoke exertion. Every new scene, which is opened to the busy nature of man to rouse and exert itself, is the addition of a new energy to the general stock of effort. -- Alexander Hamilton %% Every Tom, Dick and Harry is named William. -- Sam Goldwyn %% Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity. -- Edwin Hubbel Chapin %% Every action or decision of an institution must be intended to keep the institution machinery working. -- Robert N. Kharasch %% Every child born in America can hope to grow up to enjoy tax loopholes. %% Every dog must have its day. -- Jonathan Swift %% Every editor of newspapers pays tribute to the Devil. -- La Fontaine %% Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are fingerposts on the road to achievement. -- Charles R. Kettering %% Every great or original writer in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he must be relished. -- Wordsworth %% Every man desires to live long, but no man desires to be old. -- Jonathan Swift %% Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts. -- Bernard M. Baruch %% Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95. %% Every man has in himself a continent of undiscovered character. Happy is he who acts the Columbus of his own soul. -- Sir J. Stevens %% Every man has just as much vanity as he wants understanding. -- Alexander Pope %% Every man has three characters -- that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has. -- Alphonse Karr %% Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists of not exceeding the limit. -- Elbert Hubbard %% Every man is a volume if you know how to read him. -- Channing %% Every man is the architect of his own fortune. -- Appius Claudius %% Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead. %% Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that. -- James Matthew Barrie %% Every newspaper, no matter how tight the news hole, has room for a story on another newspaper increasing its newsstand price. -- Ed Zellar %% Every one complains of the badness of his memory, but nobody of his judgment. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Every organization is self-perpetuating. Don't ever ask an outfit to justify itself, or you'll be covered with facts, figures and fancy. The criterion should rather be, "What will happen if the outfit stops doing what it's doing?" The value of an organization is easier determined this way. -- Amrom Katz %% Every problem contains within itself the seeds of its own solution. %% Every reform is only a mask under cover of which a more terrible reform, which dares not yet name itself, advances. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question. -- Niels Bohr %% Every society is divided into two classes: prostitutes and pimps, those who do and those who sell. Every successful individual is something of both. %% Every time I close the door on Reality, it comes in through the window. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% Every time you come up with a terrific idea, you find that someone else thought of it first. -- Frank Harden %% Everybody believes in rugged individualism, but you'll do better by pleasing the boss. -- Charles Merrill Smith %% Everybody has 20/20 hindsight. %% Everybody lies about sex. %% Everybody's gotta be someplace. -- Myron Cohen %% Everyone has talent at twenty-five. The trick is to have it at fifty. -- Edgar Degas %% Everyone has the right, without exception, to equal pay for equal work. Except women. -- Carlos Eduardo Novaes %% Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together. %% Everyone must see daily, instances of people who complain from a mere habit of complaining. %% Everyone needs long-range goals if for no other reason than to keep from being frustrated by short-range failures. %% Everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately. %% Everything bows to success, even grammar. %% Everything happens at the same time with nothing in between. -- Paul Hebig %% Everything has two handles; the one soft and manageable, the other such as will not endure to be touched. If then your brother do you an injury, do not take it by the hot hard handle, by representing to yourself all the aggravating circumstances of the fact; but look rather on the soft side, and extenuate it as much as is possible, by considering the nearness of the relation, and the long friendship and familiarity between you -- obligations to kindness which a single provocation ought not to dissolve. And thus you will take the accident by the manageable handle. -- Epictetus %% Everything is for sale; only the price is negotiable. %% Everything is matter. Matter is electricity. Electricity is invisible, intangible. Therefore it is nothing. Therefore everything is nothing. %% Everything is more complicated than it looks to most people. -- Frederick Lewis Allen %% Everything is nothing. Everything is all. All is one. One is inconceivable, infinite. Therefore it is nothing. Therefore everything is nothing. %% Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying. -- Ingmar Bergman %% Everything needs a little oil now and then. %% Everything put together sooner or later falls apart. -- Paul Simon %% Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. -- Albert Einstein %% Everything takes longer than you expect. %% Everything takes more time and money. -- Anne DeCaprio %% Everything tastes more or less like chicken. -- Jeffery F. Chamberlain %% Everything that exceeds the bounds of moderation has an unstable foundation. -- Seneca %% Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge. -- Erwin Knoll %% Evil habits soil a fine dress more than mud; good manners, by their deeds, easily set off a lowly garb. -- Plautus %% Evil thoughts intrude in an unemployed mind, as naturally as worms are generated in a stagnant pool. %% Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wise man can answer. %% Examine the contents, not the bottle. -- The Talmud %% Example is a living law, whose sway Men more than all the written laws obey. -- Sedley %% Examples I could cite you more: But be contented with these four; For when one's proofs are aptly chosen Four are as valid as four dozen. -- Prior %% Exams will always contain questions not discussed in class. -- M. M. Johnston %% Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labor. It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to persevere in the habits of industry, without the pleasure of perceiving those advantages which, like the hands of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation. -- Sir Joshua Reynolds %% Excess of grief for the deceased is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not. -- Xenephon %% Excessive official restraints on information are inevitably self defeating and productive of headaches for the officials concerned. -- Edward Kennedy, AP correspondent %% Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work. -- John G. Pollard %% Executive ability is prominent in your make-up. %% Expect a letter from a friend who will ask a favor of you. %% Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. %% Experience is awareness of encompassing the totality of things. %% Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you. -- Aldous Huxley %% Experience is the comb that Nature gives us when we are bald. %% Experience is the one thing you have plenty of when you're too old to get the job. %% Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson. %% Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarcely in that; for it is true, we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct. Remember this: They that will not be counseled cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you over the knuckles. -- Benjamin Franklin %% Experience keeps a dear school, but it's a hell of a campaign tactic. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% Experience teaches that men are often so much governed by what they are accustomed to see and practice, that the simplest and most obvious improvements, in the most ordinary occupations, are adopted with hesitation, reluctance, and by slow gradations. Men would resist changes, so long as even a bare support could be ensured by an adherence to ancient courses, and perhaps even longer. -- Alexander Hamilton %% Experiments are often tricky -- There's no exception to this rule, What CAN have made that rat a sticky, Slimy, rather smelly pool? %% Experts do not like surprises. It makes them look bad at the home office. -- Vic Gold %% Experts in advanced countries underestimate by a factor of 2 to 4 the ability of people in underdeveloped countries to do anything technical. (Examples: Japanese on warplanes, Russians on the bomb, Iranians on refineries ... etc.) -- Professor Charles P. Issawi %% Exploit the inevitable (which means, take credit for anything good which happens whether you had anything to do with it or not). %% Extreme avarice is always mistaken; there is no passion which is oftener further away from its mark, nor upon which the present has so much power to the prejudice of the future. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Eyes with the same blue witchery as those of Psyche, which caught love in his own wiles. %% FAITH: An illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. -- H. L. Mencken %% FAITH: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks, without knowledge, of things without parallel. -- Ambrose Bierce %% FIELD TEST: Putting your software out to pasture. %% FIELD TESTED: Manufacturer lacks test equipment %% FOOLPROOF OPERATION: No provision for adjustment %% FUTURISTIC: Can't figure out another reason why it looks as it does %% Facts and truth are often cousins -- not brothers. -- Edward Bunker %% Facts are God's arguments, we should be careful never to misunderstand or pervert them. -- Tyron Edwards %% Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable. %% Facts are stupid until brought into connection with some general law. -- Louis Agassiz %% Facts are to the mind the same thing as food to the body. On the due digestion of facts depends the strength and wisdom of the one, just as vigor and health depend on the other. The wisest in council, the ablest in debate, and the most agreeable in the commerce of life, is that man who has assimilated to his understanding the greatest number of facts. -- Burke %% Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -- Aldous Huxley %% Faculty purchases of equipment and supplies always increase to match the funds available, so these funds are never adequate. -- Thomas L. Martin %% Fail me again and you'll breakfast on burning coals! %% Faith builds a bridge across the gulf of death, To break the shock blind nature cannot shun, And lands thought smoothly on the further shore. -- Young %% Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in at the door. %% Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves. -- Eric Hoffer %% Faith in immortality, like belief in Satan, leaves unanswered the ancient question: is God unable to prevent suffering and thus not omnipotent? or is he able but not willing to prevent it and thus not merciful? And is he just? %% Faith is never identical with piety. -- Karl Barth %% Faith is not reason's labor, but repose. -- Young %% Faith is one of those words that connotes, however irrationally, some kind of virtue in itself. -- Louis J. Halle %% Faith is the soul going out of itself for all its wants. -- Boston %% Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. -- Hebrews XI, 1. %% Faith lights us through the dark to Deity. -- Davenant %% Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible. -- William James %% Faith means intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person. -- Walter Kaufmann %% Fame may be compared to a scold: the best way to silence her is to let her alone, and she will at last be out of breath in blowing her own trumpet. -- Fuller %% Familiarity breeds contempt. %% Fancy gizmos don't work. -- Jane Bryant Quinn %% Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth. %% Farewell a long farewell, to all my greatness! This is the state of man. Today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope; tomorrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honors thick upon him; The third day comes a frost, a killing frost. -- Shakespeare %% Fast personal decisions are likely to be wrong. %% Fate steals along with silent tread, Found oftenest in what least we dread; Frowns in the storm with angry brow, But in the sunshine strikes the blow. -- Cowper %% Fathers alone a father's heart can know What secret tides of still enjoyment flow When brothers love, but if their hate succeeds, They wage the war, but 'tis the father bleeds. -- Edward Young %% Fear is the tax that the conscience pays to guilt. -- Sewell %% Feed yourself and feed others. Then, if you have to say good-bye, it won't matter. You will have shared love. -- Jeanne Moreau %% Fellows who have no tongues are often all eyes and ears. -- Haliburton %% Feminists say 60 percent of the country's wealth is in the hands of women. They're letting men hold the other 40 percent because their handbags are full. -- Earl Wilson %% Few ever lived to a great age, and fewer still ever became distinguished, who were not in the habit of early rising. -- Todd %% Few love to hear the sins they love to act. -- Shakespeare %% Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when filling out an income tax form. %% Few people now believe in the devil; but very many enjoy behaving as their ancestors behaved when the Fiend was a reality as unquestionable as his Opposite Number. %% Few persons have sufficient wisdom to prefer censure which is useful to them, to praise which deceives them. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Few young men of high gifts and fine tastes look forward to entering public life, for the probability of disappointments and vexations of a life in Congress so far outweigh its attractions that nothing but exceptional ambition or a strong sense of public duty suffices to draw such men into it. Law, education, literature, the higher walks of commerce, finance, or railway work offer a better prospect of enjoyment or distinction. -- Lord James Bryce %% Fie! What a spendthrift he is of his tongue! -- Shakespeare %% Field's revelation: If you see a man holding a clipboard and looking official, the chances are good that he is supposed to be doing something menial. %% Finagle's Fifth Rule: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something that either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. %% Finagle's Fourth Law: No matter what occurs, there is always someone who believes it happened according to his pet theory. %% Finagle's Very Fundamental Finding: If a string has one end, then it has another end. %% Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it. -- James Stephens %% Find happiness in your work, or you may never find it anywhere else. %% Find out the cost before you get in. %% Fine's Corollary: Functionality breeds Contempt. %% P.O. Box 35 Baffled Greek, Michigan %% Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. -- Alexander Pope %% Fire that's closest kept burns most of all. -- Shakespeare %% First Law of Bridge: It's always the partner's fault. %% First Law of Office Holders: Get re-elected. %% First Law of Wing-Walking: Never leave hold of what you've got until you've got hold of something else. -- Donald Herzberg %% First get an absolute conquest over thyself, and then thou wilt easily govern thy wife. -- Fuller %% First impressions are of major importance in business matters. -- J. Pierpont Finch %% First must give place to last, because last must have his time to come; but last gives place to nothing, for there is not another to succeed. -- Bunyan %% Fish or cut bait! %% Flattery is a sort of bad money, to which our vanity gives currency. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Flowers are like the pleasures of the world. -- Shakespeare %% Flying saucers on occasion Show themselves to human eyes. Aliens fume, put off invasion While they brand these tales as lies. %% Food that tastes the best has the highest number of calories. -- Rozanne Weissman %% Fools are certain, but wise men hesitate. %% Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. -- Alexander Pope %% For 40 years I have analyzed stocks and other money markets. Now I have made a remarkable discovery. The Confederate dollar has risen in value 7.4 percent a year since 1965. It has outperformed the German mark, the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc. -- Vincent W. Allen %% For every credibility gap there is a gullibility fill. -- Richard Clopton %% For every credibility gap there is a gullibility gap. -- Senator Stuart Symington %% For every human problem, there is a neat plain solution -- and it is always wrong. -- H. L. Mencken %% For every inch that is not a fool is rogue. -- Dryden %% For every proverb that confidently asserts its little bit of wisdom, there is usually an equal and opposite proverb that contradicts it. -- Richard Boston %% For evil news rides post, while good news baits. -- Milton %% For forms of government let fools contest; Whate'er is best administer'd is best. -- Alexander Pope %% For good men but see death, the wicked taste it. -- Johnson %% For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat it. -- Thomas Jefferson %% For in religion as in friendship, they who profess most are ever the least sincere. -- Sheridan %% For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight, His can't be wrong whose life is in the right. -- Alexander Pope %% For my part I can compare her to nothing but the sun; for, like him, she takes no rest, nor ever sets in one place by to rise in another. -- Dryden %% For nations that waste their inheritances -- even nations that are profligate -- usually do so in ways more subtle than individuals. Bad habits and bad advice take longer to inflict their damage; nations, too, have their reckonings, but they can survive many more nights before the hangover. -- Michael Scully %% For oh! so wildly do I love him That paradise itself were dim And joyless, if not shared with him. -- Moore %% For perfect happiness, remember two things: 1. Be content with what you've got. 2. Be sure you've got plenty. %% For several years more I maintained public relations with the Almighty. But privately, I ceased to associate with him. -- Jean-Paul Sartre %% Author's Note: "This is a scurvy tune ..." %% For specialization is a process that begins as an attempt to develop experts who will then inform the whole body. It can end, however, and sometimes does, in the removal of any inclination to question the supposed "experts" -- who themselves are sometimes not all that expert. -- Michael Scully %% For the first time in history, one bag of groceries produces two bags of trash. -- Robert Orben %% For the memory of love is sweet, Though the love itself were in vain And what I have lost of pleasure, Assuage what I find of pain. -- Lyster %% For the rule of the wise over the less wise to be advantageous ... it must come about by a process of consent. And the requirement of consent can be understood only in the light of, and by recognition of, natural equality. -- Harry V. Jaffa %% For the tenth time, dull Daphnis, said Chloe, You have told me my bosom is snowy; You've made much fine verse on Each part of my person, Now DO something -- there's a good boy! %% For they can conquer who believe they can. -- Virgil %% For they say, if money go before, all ways do lie open. -- Shakespeare %% For we both alike know that into the discussion of human affairs the question of justice enters only where the pressure of necessity is equal, and that the powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what they must. -- Thucydides %% For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it. -- Luke 14:28 %% Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all. -- Shakespeare %% Forecasters tend to learn less and less about more and more, until in the end they know nothing about everything. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% Forecasting is very difficult, especially if it's about the future. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% Forever floats that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe that falls before us, With freedom's soil beneath our feet, And Freedom's banner streaming o'er us. -- Joseph Rodman Drake %% Forewarned is half an octopus. %% Forget the feelings and rights of other people. %% Forget the good things in life and concentrate on the bad. %% Forget your opponents. Always play against par. -- Sam Snead %% Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense. -- Robert Frost %% Forgiveness is better than revenge, for forgiveness is the sign of a gentle nature, but revenge is the sign of a savage nature. -- Epictetus %% Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered. %% Fortune is a woman. It is necessary, if you wish to master her, to take her by force before she has a chance to resist. -- Niccolo Machiavelli %% Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall. -- Bacon %% Fortune truly helps those who are of good judgment. %% Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt. -- Dorothy Parker %% Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially. -- Socrates %% Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not almost one, it is damn near zero. -- David Ellis %% Free and fair discussion will ever by found the firmest friend to truth. -- George Campbell %% Free enterprise ended in the United States a good many years ago. Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and drive out the small entrepreneur. In their conglomerate forms, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the legitimacy of the state. -- Gore Vidal %% Free enterprise: A huge area of the American economy is still noticeable to observers with peripheral vision after they subtract the public sector, conglomerates, federally supported agriculture, monopolies, duopolies, and oligopolies. -- Bernard Rosenberg %% Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite. -- Lazarus Long %% Freedom comes from human beings, rather than from laws and institutions. -- Clarence Darrow %% Freedom hath a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe'er contented never know. -- Cowper %% Freedom is not enough. -- Lyndon B. Johnson %% Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better. -- Albert Camus %% Freedom to live one's life with the window of the soul open to new thoughts, new ideas, new aspirations. -- Harold Ickes %% Fried's 23rd Law: Ideas endure and prosper in inverse proportion to their soundness and validity. %% Friends may come and friends may go, but enemies accumulate. -- Dr. Thomas Jones %% Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, "What! You, too? I thought I was the only one." -- C. S. Lewis %% Friendship is no plant of hasty growth; Tho' planted in esteem's deep fixed soil, The gradual culture of kind intercourse Must bring it to perfection. -- Joanna Baillie %% Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed. -- Cicero %% Friendship's the wine of life. -- Young %% Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable. -- John D. MacDonald. %% From listening comes wisdom and from speaking repentance. %% From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne %% From the crown of his head to the sole of his foot he is all mirth; he has twice or thrice cut Cupid's bowstring, and the little hangman dare not shoot at him; he hath a heart as sound as a bell, and his tongue is the clapper; for what his heart thinks his tongue speaks. -- Shakespeare %% From the errors of others a wise man corrects his own. -- Publilius Syrus %% From the time we first begin to know, We live and learn, but not the wiser grow. -- Pomfret %% From women's eyes this doctrine I derive; They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academies, That show, contain, and nourish all the world, Else, none at all in aught proves excellent. -- Shakespeare %% Frugality may be termed the daughter of prudence, the sister of temperance, and the parent of liberty. He that is extravagant will quickly become poor, and poverty will enforce dependence and invite corruption. -- Johnson %% Fudge Factor: A physical factor occasionally showing up in experiments as a result of stopping a stopwatch a little early to compensate for reflex error. %% Fudge Factor: The numerical factor by which experimental results must be multiplied to be in agreement with theory. %% GIGO: Garbage in, Gospel out. %% GOD: The contrapuntal genius of human fate. %% GOD: but a word invoked to explain the world. %% Gallantry consists in saying the most empty things in an agreeable manner. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Game is an ill you may with ease obtain, A sad oppression to be born with pain; And when you would the noisy clamor drown, You'll find it hard to lay the burden down. -- Cooke %% Gaming is the son of avarice, but the father of despair. %% Garage mechanic to customer: There's nothing mechanically wrong with your car, sir -- it's just an underachiever. -- David Brown %% Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a flying; And that same flower that blooms today, To-morrow shall be dying. -- Herrick %% Generalizedness of incompetence is directly proportional to highestness in hierarchy. -- Guy Godin %% Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion: that the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, part of that glory into which man is not to press too boldly. -- Bacon %% Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories. -- Felix Cohen %% Generosity and perfection are your everlasting goals. %% Genius does what it must, talent does what it can. %% Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple. %% Genius is the highest type of reason -- talent the highest type of understanding. -- Hickok %% Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. %% Genius, in one respect, is like gold -- a number of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither. %% Genuine religion is not so much a matter of feeling as a matter of principle. -- Alexander Pope %% Genuine status is a rare and precious jewel, and also rather easy to simulate. -- Charles Merrill Smith %% Get Ahead!!! You could use one. %% Get a shot off FAST! This upsets him long enough to let you make your second shot perfect. -- Lazarus Long %% Get the Hell out of my way! -- John Galt %% Get thee behind me, Satan, and push me along! %% Get your enemies to read your works in order to mend them, for your friend is so much your second self that he will judge too like you. -- Pope %% Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. -- Mark Twain %% Getting on the cover of TIME guarantees the existence of opposition in the future. -- John Kenneth Galbraith %% Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life. %% Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. -- Abraham Kaplan %% Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice. -- Shakespeare %% Give him an inch and he'll screw you. -- Dave Farber %% Give me health and a day, and I will make ridiculous the pomp of emperors. -- Emerson %% Give me liberty or give me death! -- Patrick Henry %% Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue. -- Giuseppe Garibaldi %% Give me to drink, Mandragora, That I may sleep away this gap of time. -- Shakespeare %% Give them a number or give them a date, but never both. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. -- Shakespeare %% Give us, O give us, the man who is cheerful in his work! Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time -- he will do it better -- he will persevere longer. -- Carlyle %% Give your decisions, never your reasons; your decisions may be right, your reasons are sure to be wrong. -- Earl of Mansfield %% Given a choice between two bald political candidates, the American people will vote for the less bald of the two. -- Vic Gold %% Given enough time, what you put off doing today will eventually get done by itself. -- G. Gestra %% Go fry an egg! %% Go kiss a Wookiee! %% Go to friends for advice; to women for pity; to strangers for charity; to relatives for nothing. %% Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society, as the social ramble ain't restful. -- Satchel Paige %% Go where the money is. -- Bank robber Willie Sutton %% God and the devil are an effort after specialization and division of labour. %% God blesses still the generous thought And still the fitting word He speeds, And truth, at His requiring taught, He quickens into deeds. -- Whittier %% God gave you that gifted tongue of yours, and set it between your teeth, to make known your true meaning to us, not be rattled like a muffin man's bell. -- Carlyle %% God gives us relatives; thank God we can chose our friends. %% God helps those who have 7 percent mortgages. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% God is not a cosmic bellboy! %% God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent -- it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these divine attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash, and in small bills. -- Lazarus Long %% God made man, and therefore let him pass for man. -- Shakespeare %% God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. -- Cowper %% God will forgive me; that's His business. %% God will not give any soldier ammunition who is not willing to go into battle. %% God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless. -- Augustine %% Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds. -- Miguel de Cervantes %% Good breeding shows itself most where, to an ordinary eye, it appears least. -- Addison %% Good conversation, like a defensive driver, yields the right of way. -- William Walter De Bolt %% Good health and good sense are two of life's greatest blessings. %% Good health will be yours for a long time. %% Good healthy attitudes are the ones everyone agrees with, because if we didn't agree with it, it wouldn't be very healthy. %% Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness its poison. -- Stanislaus %% Good intentions always randomize behavior. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% Good intentions are far more difficult to cope with than malicious behavior. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% Good is recognized only when it goes away, evil when it comes. %% Good judgment comes from experience. And experience -- well that comes from having bad judgment. %% Good managers learn to share decisions with others even though they alone must accept responsibility for the results. %% Good news from afar can bring you a welcome visitor. %% Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow That I shall say -- good night till it be morrow. -- Shakespeare %% Good parking places are always on the other side of the street. -- Dr. R. F. Gumperson %% Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. -- William Saroyan %% Good salesmen and good repairmen will never go hungry. -- Robert E. Schenk %% Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter. -- Max Beerbohm %% Good wine and brave men don't last long. %% Good, the more communicated, more abundant grows. -- Milton %% Goodness is beauty in its best estate. -- Marlowe %% Goodwill is achieved by many actions; it can be lost by one. %% Goulden's Axiom of the Bouncing Can (ABC): If you drop a full can of beer, and remember to rap the top sharply with your knuckle prior to opening, the ensuing gush of foam will be between 89 and 94 percent of the volume that would splatter you if you didn't do a damned thing and went ahead and pulled the top immediately. -- Joseph C. Goulden %% Government action and inaction both gravely impair business confidence. -- Mark Epernay %% Government expands to absorb revenue -- and then some. -- Tom Wicker %% Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn't know much. -- Will Rogers %% Governments last as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves from the over-taxed. %% Governments, like physicians, must simultaneously be the masters and the servants of those whom they govern. -- Harry V. Jaffa %% Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in Venice; but his reasons are as two grains of wheat in two bushels of chaff; you seek all day ere you find them; and when you have them, they are not worth the search. -- Shakespeare %% Gratitude is best and most effective when it does not evaporate itself in empty phrases. -- Magnifico Giganticus (aka the Mule) %% Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build up their philosophy of life. -- A. J. Cronin %% Gravity is a mystery of the body, invented to conceal the defects of the mind. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Great errors seldom originate but with men of great minds. -- Petrarch %% Great souls by instinct to each other turn. Demand alliance, and in friendship burn. -- Addison %% Greener's Law: Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel. %% Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. -- Lamartine %% Gummidge's Law: The amount of expertise varies in inverse proportion to the number of statements understood by the general public. %% H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L. Mencken -- there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude. -- Maxwell Bodenheim %% HAND CRAFTED: Machine that assembles it is operated without gloves %% HIGH ACCURACY: Unit on which all parts fit %% HYPOTHESIS: A prediction based on theory formulated after an experiment is performed designed to account for the ludicrous series of events which have taken place. %% Habit gives endurance, and fatigue is the best nightcap. -- Kincaid %% Habit is habit, and not to be flung out the window by any man, but coaxed down stairs one step at a time. -- Mark Twain %% Habit is the easiest way to be wrong again. %% Habit with him was all the test of truth; "It must be right: I've done it from my youth." -- George Crabbe %% Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at. -- Solomon Short %% Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted. -- Fred Allen (Sarcasm is the sour cream of wit.) %% Happiness at age ten was finding an empty six pack of returnable Coke bottles. The poor kids these days will never know that they missed, which is why we have a generation gap. -- Richard N. Farmer %% Happiness is a paycheck every week. %% Happiness is having friends who laugh at your stories when they're not so funny and sympathize with you in your troubles even when they're not so bad. %% Happiness is in direct proportion to the distance from the home office. Contradictory Corollary: The diner who is furthest from the kitchen is a nervous eater. -- Al Blanchard %% Happiness is in the taste, and not in the things themselves; we are happy from possessing what we like, not from possessing what others like. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Happiness is just an illusion, filled with sadness and confusion. %% Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call today his own; He who, secure within, can say Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today. -- Dryden %% Harris's Law: Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there. -- James Gibbons Hunekerm %% Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil. -- Niccolo Machiavelli %% Have the courage to live. Anyone can die. -- Robert Cody %% Have you ever seen a plant with its leaves curled up? Have you watered it and watched its leaves spread out again? Almost as quick as that can be the response of a child's mind to a teacher who knows how to nourish it. -- Morris Mandel %% He alone is an acute observer who can observe minutely without being observed. -- Lavater %% He became mellow before he became ripe. -- Alexander Woollcott %% He compares your nastiness to that of a man who rises in the morning and finds that the shoe he has just put his foot in has been used the night before as a chamber pot. %% He conquers who endures. -- Persius %% He deservedly loses his own property who covets that of another. -- Phoedrus %% He doth bestride the narrow world, Like a Colossus; and we paltry men Walk under his huge legs and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. -- Shakespeare %% He experienced that nervous agitation to which brave men as well as cowards are subject; with this difference, that the one sinks under it, like the vine under the hailstorm, and the other collects his energies to shake it off, as the cedar of Lebanon is said to elevate its boughs to disperse the snow which accumulates upon them. -- Sir Walter Scott %% He had had had where he should have had had had. %% He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful. -- Sydney Smith %% He has more goodness in his little finger Than you have in your whole body. -- Jonathan Swift %% He has, I know not what, of greatness in his looks, and of high fate, that almost awes me. -- John Dryden %% He hated to set precedents; those who did so were sometimes promoted, more frequently they joined their ancestors. -- Robert A. Heinlein %% He hath out-villained villainy so far, that the rarity redeems him. -- Shakespeare %% He hath riches sufficient, who hath enough to be charitable. -- Sir Thomas Browne %% He is a legend in his own mind. -- Ron Randall %% He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides. %% He is the encyclopedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn; and Eygpt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britian, America, lie folded already in the first man. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% He is the most wretched of men who has never felt adversity. %% He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap. %% He jests at scars who never felt a wound. -- Shakespeare %% He kept him as the apple of his eye. %% He knew what's what, and that's as high As metaphysics wit can fly. -- Meta %% He lives by rule who lives himself to please. -- Crabbe %% He may look like a clown, but here is the soul of a leader. %% He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil. -- Shakespeare %% He that despairs, degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate, that He is insufficient, or not just to his word; and in vain hath read the Scriptures, the world and man. -- Feltham %% He that falls into sin is a man; that grieves at it may be a saint; that boasteth of it is a devil. -- Fuller %% He that hath a beard is more than a youth; And he that hath none is less than a man. -- Shakespeare %% He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone. -- Jesus Christ %% He that lives upon Hope dies farting. -- Benjamin Franklin %% He that loses hope may part with anything. -- Congreve %% He that never changed any of his opinions never corrected any of his mistakes; and he who was never wise enough to find out any mistakes in himself will not be charitable enough to excuse mistakes in others. %% He that riseth late is not campaigning in New York today. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% He that sips of many arts, drinks of none. -- Fulton %% He that spends all his life in sport is like one who wears nothing but fringes and eats nothing but sauces. -- Fuller %% He that uses many words for the explaining any subject, doth like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink. -- Ray %% He that wants money, means and content, is without three good friends. -- Shakespeare %% He that will have no books but those that are scarce, evinces about as correct a taste in literature as he would do in friendship, who would have no friends but those whom all the rest of the world have sent to coventry. -- Colton %% He that will keep a monkey should pay for the glasses he breaks. -- Seldon %% He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator. -- Francis Bacon %% He that would have a cake out of the wheat must tarry the grinding. -- Shakespeare %% He travels fastest who travels alone ... but he hasn't anything to do when he gets there. %% He walks as if balancing the family tree on his nose. %% He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with two eyes. %% He wasn't exactly hostile to facts, but he was apathetic about them. -- Woollcott Gibbs %% He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it. -- Von Knebel %% He who can will. He who can't, will teach. -- M. M. Johnston %% He who comes from the kitchen, smells of its smoke; and he who adheres to a sect, has something of its cant; the college air pursues the student; and dry inhumanity him who herds with literary pedants. -- Lavater %% He who conceals a useful truth is equally guilty with the propagator of an injurious falsehood. -- Augustine %% He who envies another admits his own inferiorities. %% He who fights the devil with his own weapons, must not wonder if he finds him an overmatch. -- South %% He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last. %% He who has burned his mouth blows his soup. %% He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything. %% He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet. %% He who has no mind to trade with the devil, should be so wise as to keep from his shop. -- South %% He who has not a good memory, should never take upon him the trade of lying. -- Mintaigne %% He who hates vices hates mankind. %% He who hath many friends hath none. -- Aristotle %% He who hesitates is poor. -- Max Bialystock %% He who is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. %% He who is most slow in making a promise, is the most faithful in the performance of it. -- Rousseau %% He who laughs last probably doesn't understand the joke. %% He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion. -- Goethe %% He who receives a good turn should never forget it; he who does one should never remember it. -- Charron %% He who reforms himself, has done more towards reforming the public, than a crowd of noisy, impotent patriots. -- Lavater %% He who reigns within himself, and rules passions, desires and fears, is more than a king. -- Milton %% He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers, and ceases when he has no more to say, is in possession of some of the best requisites of man. -- Lavater. %% He who sees only half the problem will be buried in the other half. -- Richard N. Farmer %% He who sees what comes out, and why, gains wisdom. -- Richard N. Farmer %% He who steals for others ends up being hanged for himself. %% He who tells a lie is not sensible how great a task he undertakes; for he must be forced to invent twenty more to maintain that one. -- Alexander Pope %% He who when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done, is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice and never ceases nibbling. -- Lavater %% He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; and he who dares not, is a slave. -- Byron %% He whose pride oppresses the humble may, perhaps, be humbled, but will never be humble. -- Lavater %% He writes his plays for the ages -- the ages between five and twelve. -- George jean Nathan %% Hear one side, and you will be in the dark; Hear both sides, and all will be in the clear. -- Haliburton %% Heat produced by pressure expands to fill the mind available, from which it can pass only to a cooler mind. -- C. Northcote Parkinson %% Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed, their present fate. -- Alexander Pope %% Heaven is above all yet; there sits a judge that no king can corrupt. -- Shakespeare %% Heaven lies about us in our infancy. -- Shakespeare %% Heaven needs no press agent because it has no competition, but sin is competitive. %% Heaven's gates are not so highly arch'd as princes' palaces; they that enter there must go upon their knees. -- Webster %% Heaven -- it is God's throne. The earth -- it is His footstool. -- Matthew V, 34 %% Hell hath no fury like a computer scorned. %% Hell hath no fury like a pacifist. -- Solomon Short %% Hell is a place where the motorists are French, the policemen are German, the traffic patterns are Bostonian, and the cooks are English. %% Hell is not to love anymore. -- Georges Bernanos %% Hell is truth seen too late. -- H. G. Adams %% Help wanted -- must be kindergarten graduate. %% Help yourself, and Heaven will help you. -- La Fontaine %% Helping one another with simple chores, watching over each others homes, sharing needs like food and firewood, simple fellowship. These things make for true community spirit. -- Conrad Meinecke %% Henry James had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it. -- T. S. Eliot %% Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I every met. -- William Faulkner %% Her face was like an April morn, Clad in a wint'ry cloud; And clay-cold was her lily hand, That held her sable shroud. -- Mallet %% Her lips are roses overwashed with dew. -- Greene %% Her tears her only eloquence. -- Rogers %% Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason. %% Here is the beginning of philosophy: a recognition of the conflicts between men, a search for their cause, a condemnation of mere opinion ... and the discovery of a standard of judgment. -- Epictetus %% Hereafter I'll be able to understand everything, taking all on trust. -- Tristan Corbiere %% Herman's Rule: If it works right the first time, obviously you've done something wrong. %% Heroism -- the divine relation which in all times unites a great men to other men. -- Carlyle %% Hey! Respect your elders. Call me Mr. Old Fart. -- Dick Vignoni %% Highways in worst need of repair naturally have low traffic counts, which results in low priority for repair work. %% His back against a rock he bore. And firmly placed his foot before; "Come one, come all! This rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I." -- Scott %% His eye was blue and calm, as is the sky in the serenest noon. -- Willis %% His eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming. -- Edgar Allen Poe %% His face was of the doubtful kind; That wins the eye and not the mind. -- Scott %% His heart was yours from the first moment that you met. %% His imagination resembles the wings of an ostrich. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay %% His life was formal; his actions seemed ruled with a ruler. %% His style has the desperate jauntiness of a orchestra fiddling away for dear life on a sinking ship. -- Edmund Wilson %% His zeal was hollow; his sermons were like students' songs imperfectly recalled by a senile don. -- John Rae %% History books which contain no lies are extremely dull. %% History does not record anywhere, at any time, a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to face the unknown without help. But like dandruff, most people do have a religion and spend time and money on it and seem to derive considerable pleasure from fiddling with it. -- Lazarus Long %% History makes men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. -- Bacon %% History proves nothing. -- Bill Gray %% History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history. -- Clarence Darrow %% History shows that money will multiply in volume and divide in value over the long run. Or expressed differently, the purchasing power of currency will vary inversely with the magnitude of the public debt. -- William H. Peterson %% Hollywood's Iron Law: Nothing succeeds like failure. %% Honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar. -- Shakespeare %% Honor and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part; there all the honesty lies. -- Alexander Pope %% Honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times. -- Jonson %% Honor's a thing too subtle for wisdom; if honor lie in eating, he's right honorable. -- Beaumont and Fletcher %% Hope for a miracle only after everything else has failed. %% Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior. -- Shakespeare %% Hope is like the cork to the net, which keeps the soul from sinking in despair; and fear is like the lead to the net, which keeps it from floating in presumption. -- Watson %% Hope is the fawning traitor of the mind, which, while it cozens with a color'd friendship robs us of our best virtue -- resolution. -- Lee %% Hope springs eternal in the human breast, Man never is, but always to be blest. -- Alexander Pope %% Hope, of all passions, most befriends us here. -- Young %% Hospitality to the better sort, and charity to the poor; two virtues that are never exercised so well as when they accompany each other. -- Atterbury %% How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labor with an age of ease. -- Oliver Goldsmith %% How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of Him who bears up the world -- of Him who has created, and who provides for the joy even of insects, as carefully as if He were their Father! -- Richter %% How can I miss you if you won't go away? %% How difficult it is to save the bark of reputation from the rocks of ignorance. -- Petrarch %% How do I get out of this, Munroe? -- John Holz %% How do you accomplish anything at all when the city treasury is so bare that the addition of one coin will double its contents? %% How do you spot a leader? They come in all ages, shapes and conditions. Some are poor administrators, some are not overly bright. One clue: the true leader can be recognized because somehow his people consistently turn in superior performances. -- Robert Townsend %% How do you tell the difference between an electrical fire and a chemical fire? You use a fire distinguisher, of course. -- Dave Ascher %% How do you uncover greatness in a city so poor that a man will provoke another man into an argument just so that his donkey can be eating the other man's grass while they argue? %% How does a leader give proof of prowess in a place where a man was observed to stand all of one morning waiting for a pear on a private tree to be blown off by a wind into the street, thereby becoming public property? %% How does one conduct great enterprises in a city where people trail oxen with a broom and pan in hopes of getting a free surprise? %% How far high failure overleaps the bounds of low success. -- Lewis Morris %% How gaily a man wakes in the morning to watch himself keep on dying. -- Henry S. Haskins %% How immense appear to us the sins that we have not committed. %% How many "coming men" has one known! Where on earth do they all go to? %% How many New Yorkers does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to change the bulb, one to tell him how to do it, and one to tell him he's doing it all wrong. -- Dave Ascher %% How many cowards, whose hearts are all false As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins The beards of Hercules, and frowning Mars; Who inward search'd have livers white as milk? -- Shakespeare %% How many people live on the reputation of the reputation they might have made! -- Holmes %% How much better it is to weep at joy than joy a weeping. -- Shakespeare %% How much do you think I'll get for my autobiography? -- Arthur Bremer (After his arrest for attempting to assassinate Governor George C. Wallace.) %% How much lies in laughter; the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies the cold glitter, as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and sniggle from the throat outwards, or at least produce some whiffing, husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool; of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; but his own whole life is already a treason and a stratagem. -- Carlyle %% How sharper than a hound's tooth it is to have a thankless serpent. %% How sharper then a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child. -- Shakespeare %% How slow this old moon wanes! she lingers my desires, like to a stepdame, or a dowager, long withering out a young man's revenue. -- Shakespeare %% How still the evening is As hush'd on purpose to grace harmony! -- Shakespeare %% How swiftly whirls the disk; Data leaps to the floating head And is known. %% How you look depends on where you go. %% However deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to the end of life. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Human industry, if left to itself, will naturally find its way to the most useful and profitable employment. -- Adam Smith %% Humankind cannot bear very much reality. -- T. S. Eliot %% Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity. -- Selden %% Humility is the better part of wisdom, and is most becoming in man. But let no one disparage self-reliance; it is, of all the rest, the greatest quality of true manliness. -- Ferenc Kossuth %% Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him. -- Romain Gary %% Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it. -- Langston Hughes %% Humor is the sense of the Absurd, which is despair refusing to take itself seriously. -- Arland Ussher %% Hunger is the best sauce. %% Hunger is the best seasoning for meat, and thirst for drink. -- Cicero %% Hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Hypocrites do the devil's drudgery in Christ's livery. -- Matthew Henry %% Hypotheses multiply so as to fill the gaps in factual knowledge concerning biological phenomena. -- James D. Regan %% I admire the person in charge of this organization. He is an artist at saying nothing out of both sides of his face. %% I am a firm believer in socialism and I know that the quicker you have monopoly in this country the quicker you will have socialism. -- Charles P. Steinmetz %% I am a man; nothing human is alien to me. %% I am against all hobbies. I have been against ever since I figured out that nothing I ever do is considered a hobby. All my life I have had to fill out forms that ask about hobbies. I always wanted to write down "reading", but reading is not a hobby. If you collect books, that is a hobby. If you actually read them, it is not. If you happen to watch a butterfly in a field, that is not a hobby. If you put a pin through its little heart, that is a hobby. -- Richard Cohen %% I am but a gatherer, and a disposer of other men's stuff. -- Watton %% I am grateful for all my problems. As each of them was overcome I became stronger and more able to meet those yet to come. I grew on all my difficulties. -- J. C. Penney %% I am never less at leisure than when at leisure, nor less alone than when I am alone. -- Scipio Africanus %% I am not a crook. -- Richard M. Nixon %% I am not senile. -- Ronald W. Reagan %% I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boast of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate, the scorn of all who know the worth of mind and virtue. -- Percival %% I am reading Henry James ... and feel myself as one entombed in a block of smooth amber. -- Virginia Woolf %% I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast with an option to buy. %% I believe in heaven and hell -- on earth. -- Abraham L. Feinberg %% I believe in instinct, not in reason. When reason is right, nine times out of ten it is impotent, and when it prevails, nine times out of ten it is wrong. -- A. C. Benson %% I believe that in actual fact, philosophy ranks before and above the natural sciences. -- Thomas Mann %% I call a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both public and private, of peace and war. -- John Milton %% I call them as I see them. If I can't see them, I make them up. -- Biff Barf %% I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale; that plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful. -- Shakespeare %% I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse; borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable. %% I can't give you brains, but I can give you a diploma. -- The Wizard of Oz %% I can't help feeling a certain pride in the admiration of women. I suspect that is one of my biggest failings. -- Jose Torres %% I cannot draw a cart, nor eat wild oats; if it be a man's work I will do it. -- Shakespeare %% I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure -- which is: Try to please everybody. -- Herbert Bayard Swope %% I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. -- Abraham Lincoln %% I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way. %% I consider your very testy and quarrelsome people in the same light as I do a loaded gun, which may, by accident, go off and kill one. -- Shenstone %% I could hold every man a debtor to his profession; from the which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto. -- Bacon %% I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more. -- Richard Lovelace %% I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God. -- Carl Jung %% I could prove God statistically. -- George Gallup %% I despise the pleasure of pleasing people whom I despise. %% I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I am not afraid of falling into my inkpot. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. -- Thomas Carlyle %% I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use. -- Galileo Galilei %% I do not know how it is with you, but for myself I generally give up at the outset. The simplest problems which come up from day to day seem to me quite unanswerable as soon as I try to get below the surface. -- Justice Learned Hand %% I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing. -- Oliver Goldsmith %% I don't care how poor and inefficient a country is; they like to run their own business. I know men that would make my wife a better husband than I am; but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em. -- Will Rogers %% I don't even know what street Canada is on! -- Al Capone %% I don't know what's wrong with people! All I ask them to do is exactly what I tell them. %% I don't know why it is that the religious never ascribe common sense to God. %% I don't meet competition, I crush it. -- Charles Revson %% I don't mind being pampered, but I will NOT be possessed!!! %% I don't remember ever having had the itch, and yet scratching is one of nature's sweet pleasures, and so handy. %% I earn what I eat, get what I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm. -- Shakespeare %% I fear explanations explanatory of things explained. %% I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more. -- Jonas Salk %% I find I always have to write something on a steamed mirror. -- Elaine Dundy %% I gave her the ring; she gave me the finger. %% I gave my life to learning how to live. Now that I have organized it all it's just about over. -- Sandra Hochman %% I had been driving my car for 40 years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident. %% I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home. As I reached an intersection a hedge sprung up obscuring my vision. I did not see the other car. %% I had rather a fool to make me merry, than experience to make me sad. -- Shakespeare %% I had to hit him, he was starting to make sense. %% I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of another. -- Greville %% I have a SPONGE that's drier behind the ears than you are! %% I have a feeling that at any time about three million Americans can be had for any militant reaction against law, decency, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, compassion and the rule of reason. -- John Kenneth Galbraith %% I have a fine sense of ridiculous, but no sense of humor. -- Edward Albee %% I have discovered the art of fooling diplomats: I speak the truth and they never believe me. -- Camillo Di Cavour %% I have ever held it as a maxim, never to do that through another, which it was possible for me to execute myself. -- Montesquieu %% I have learned this at least by my experiment: that 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 %% I have lived long enough to know what I did not at one time believe -- that no society can be upheld in happiness and honor without the sentiment of religion. -- La Place %% I have never been able to understand why it is that just because I am unintelligible nobody can understand me. -- Milton Mayer %% I have somewhere seen it observed, that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not harm it. -- Colton %% I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated. -- Poul Anderson %% I hold that man is in the right who is most closely in league with the future. -- Henrik Ibsen %% I hope when you know the worst you will at once leap into the river and swim through handsomely, and not, weather-beaten by the divers blasts of irresolution, stand shivering on the bank. -- Suckling %% I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience. -- Shakespeare %% I just DON'T understand human behaviour. -- C-3PO %% I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance. -- Socrates %% I know who I am. Sometimes you go away, but I'm still here. %% I like blood. It's a primary color. %% I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. -- Thomas Jefferson %% I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours. %% I loathe that low vice curiosity. -- Lord Byron %% I may not always be right, but I'm never wrong. -- Sam Goldwyn %% I must go seek some dew-drops here, And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. -- Shakespeare %% I must have slipped a disk - my pack hurts. %% I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden. -- Richard Rumbold, on the scaffold %% I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away. %% I never knew the old gentlemen with the scythe and hour-glass to bring anything but gray hairs, thin cheeks, and loss of teeth. -- Dryden %% I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man coming to his senses. -- William Makepeace Thakeray %% I never thought that inorganic Matter could attack a man. That's why I'm in such a panic -- I've just seen proof it can! %% I never trust a man unless I've got his pecker in my pocket. -- Lyndon B. Johnson %% I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure. -- Clarence Darrow %% I never yet heard man or woman much abused that I was not inclined to think the better of them, and to transfer the suspicion or dislike to the one who found pleasure in pointing out the defects of another. -- Jane Porter %% I noticed that some household columns suggest that people use elbow grease for cleaning. After a long and fruitless search, I still have been unable to find this amazing product. Could you tell me where to buy it? %% I once had a dog who, like you, insisted on being cheerful in the morning. I got rid of him by giving him to an immigrant Japanese family -- and they ate him. %% I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment. %% I question whether we can afford to teach mother macrame when Johnny still can't read. -- Governor Jerry Brown %% I reject get-it-done, make-it-happen thinking. I want to slow things down so I understand them better. -- Governor Jerry Brown %% I remember those happy days and often wish I could speak into the ears of the dead the gratitude which was due to them in life and so ill-returned. -- Gwyn Thomas %% 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 %% I see no wisdom in saving up indignation for a rainy day. -- Heywood Broun (If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.) %% I see that fashion wears out more apparel than the man. -- Shakespeare %% I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neighbors to the south. We could never understand why Mexico wasn't just crazy about us; for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart. -- Will Rogers %% I shall never ask, never refuse, never resign nor ever not run for re-election. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% I thought my window was down, but found out it was up when I put my hand through it. %% I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat I found that I had a skull fracture. %% I trust MY judgment. I'm not sure about yours. %% I understand a fury in your words, but not your words. -- Shakespeare %% I was five years old before I realized there was no such thing as ALPO baby food. -- Rodney Dangerfield %% I was going to include an ethnic slur in here, but I couldn't figure out how to get you into this file. %% I was on my way to the doctors with rear-end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident. %% I was unable to stop in time and my car crashed into the other vehicle. The driver and passengers then left for a vacation with injuries. %% I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that it took seven others to beat him! %% I will aggravate my voice so, that I will roar you as gently as any suckling dove; I will roar you an 'twere any nightingale. -- Shakespeare %% I will fight it out at this line if it takes all summer. -- General Ulysses S. Grant %% I will never lie to you. -- James E. Carter %% I will not be as those who spend the day in complaining of the head-ache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives the headache. -- Goethe %% I will not quarrel with a slight mistake, such as our nature's frailty may excuse. -- Roscommon %% I will roar, that it will do any man's heart good to hear me. -- Shakespeare %% I would call the Democratic Left in Latin America the group which secures social advances for all the people in a framework of freedom and consent. -- Luis Munoz Marin %% I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in air rarified to nothing by the pump of unbelief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath. -- Richter %% I would suggest the taxation of all property equally whether church or corporation. %% I write long epigrams, you write nothing. Yours are shorter. -- Martial %% I'd rather go whoring than warring. -- Bill Gray %% I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. %% I'll pick up my papers, and smile at the sky. I know that the hypnotized never lie. %% I'll speak to it though hell itself should gape, and bid me hold my peace. -- Shakespeare %% I'm #1! Why try harder? %% I'm always easy. I'm NEVER cheap!!! -- Dick Munroe %% I'm going to get you for this, Croll! -- John Holz %% I'm no one's trophy!!! -- Constance Barr %% I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. -- Woody Allen %% 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 %% I've finally figured out why airports make you walk so far out to get to your plane. It's their way of giving your luggage a head start. %% I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was this little hole in the bottom ... -- John Croll %% I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself. %% I've got tears in my ears from lying on my back in my bed crying over you. %% I've heard old cunning stagers Say fools for arguments use wagers. -- Butler %% I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. -- Mike Todd %% I've never known an instance in the history of our company where an executive unloaded responsibilities and duties on one lower in the ranks, that he did not find himself immediately loaded from above with greater responsibility. -- Arthur F. Hall %% I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer. %% I've spent a fortune on my kids' education, and a fortune on their teeth. The difference is, they use their teeth. -- Robert Orben %% I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness; And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting. I shall fall, Like a bright exhalation in the evening And no man see me more. -- Shakespeare %% IMPIETY: Your irreverence toward my deity. -- Ambrose Bierce %% IT'S HERE AT LAST: Rush job; nobody knew it was coming %% Ideal goals grow faster than the means of attaining new goals allow. -- Mallory Wober %% Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments, which is why we need a productivity rebate. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% Idleness travels very slowly, and poverty soon overtakes her. -- Hunter %% If "everybody knows" such and such, then it ain't so, by at least ten thousand to one. -- Lazarus Long %% If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. -- Albert Einstein %% If Europe should ever be ruined, it will be by its warriors. -- Montesquieu %% If God shuts one door, he opens another. %% If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs? -- Marvin Kitman %% If I can catch him once upon the hip I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. -- Shakespeare %% If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive! -- Samuel Goldwyn %% If I don't know your name, how am I supposed to tell my diary about you? %% If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture. %% If I have been able to see farther than others, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants. -- Sir Isaac Newton %% If I may venture my own definition of a folk song, I should call it "an individual flowering on a common stem." -- Ralph Vaughan Williams %% If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers. -- Frederick the Great %% If Negro freedom is taken away, or that of any minority group, the freedom of all the people is taken away. -- Paul Robeson %% If Noah had consulted with modern-day weather forecasters, there would have been a ten-percent chance of him building the ark. -- Jim Fiebig %% If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation. %% If a ball rims the cup, it is deemed to have dropped. A ball should not go sideways. This violates the laws of physics. -- Donald A. Metz %% If a ball stops at the brink of the hole and hangs there, defying gravity, it is deemed to have dropped. You can't defy the law of gravity. -- Donald A. Metz %% If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus forecast is a camel's behind. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% If a course requires a prerequisite, a student will not have had it. -- M. M. Johnston %% If a great deal of time has been expended seeking the answer to a problem, with the only result being failure, the answer will be immediately obvious to the first unqualified person who comes along. %% If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where it votes guilty. -- Joseph C. Goulden %% If a man do not erect in this age his own tomb ere he dies, he shall live no longer in monument than the bell rings, and the widow weeps. -- Shakespeare %% If a man does not make new acquaintances, as he advances through life, he soon will find himself alone. A man should keep his friendship in constant repair. -- Johnson %% If a man is happy in his work -- exerting himself to the full extent of his capabilities, and enjoying it -- I'd say he's a success. -- William Romain %% If a man will go as far as he can see, he will be able to see farther when he gets there. %% If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, and learning, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last! -- Jonathan Swift %% If a political candidate chooses to go into specifics on a program that affects a voter's self-interest, the voter get interested. If the proposal involves money, he gets very interested. -- Stuart Spencer %% If a program is useful, it will have to be changed. %% If a program is useless, it will have to be documented. %% If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it must drop. The law of gravity supersedes the law of golf. -- Donald A. Metz %% If a research project is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well. %% If a student has to study, he will claim that the course is unfair. -- M. M. Johnston %% If a taxpayer thinks he can cheat safely, he probably will. -- Diogenes %% If a thing cannot be fitted into something smaller than itself some dope will do it. -- Eric Frank Russell %% If a thing is done wrong often enough, it becomes right. -- Richard A. Leahy %% If a woman attended an American high school between 1930 and 1965, chances are that no one paid attention to anything but her brains unless she took the utmost care to conceal them. -- Susan Jacoby %% If all I'm offered is a choice between monopolistic privilege with regulation and monopolistic privilege without regulation, I'm afraid I have to opt for the former. -- Nicholas Johnson %% If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart. -- Socrates %% If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska. %% If all the economists were laid end to end, they still wouldn't reach a conclusion. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% If all the people in this world in which we live were as selfish as a few of the people in this world in which we live, there would be no world in which to live. -- W. L. Orme %% If an apparently severe problem manifests itself, no solution is acceptable unless it is involved, expensive, and time-consuming. %% If an author write better than his contemporaries, they will term him a plagiarist; if as well, a pretender; but if worse, he may stand some chance of commendation as a genius of some promise, from whom much may be expected by a due attention to their good counsel and advice. -- Colton %% If an editor can reject your paper, he will. -- Maeve O'Connor %% If an emergency strikes, a man should be able to leave his home with nothing more than the clothes on his back without feeling that he has left something behind. -- Henry David Thoreau %% If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment. %% If an instructor says, "It is obvious" it won't be. -- M. M. Johnston %% If an organization carries the word "united" in its name, it means it isn't, e. g., United Nations, United Arab Republic, United Kingdom, United States. -- Professor Charles I. Issawi %% If anger is not restrained, it is frequently more hurtful to us, than the injury that provokes it. -- Seneca %% If another scientist thought your research was more important than his (or hers), he would drop what he is doing and do what you are doing. %% If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. -- James I, 5,6 %% If anything can go wrong in an experiment, it will. %% If anything can go wrong, it will. Corollary: If anything just can't go wrong, it will anyway. -- Francis P. Chisholm %% If at first you don't succeed that is only to be expected -- there is a little bit of good even in the best of us. (No one is as good as he thinks he is.) %% If at first you don't succeed, blame it on the teacher. -- Stacey Bass %% If at first you don't succeed, try something else. -- Laurence J. Peter %% If at first you don't succeed, try, try, again. Then quit, no use being a damn fool about things. -- W. C. Fields %% If at first you don't succeed, you must be doing something wrong. -- Charles Merrill Smith %% If at first you don't succeed, you will never succeed. %% If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average. %% If beauty is only skin deep, you must have been born inside out. %% If both Alsops say it's true, it can't be so. -- John Kenneth Galbraith %% If enough reports are prepared and technical reviews are held, negative information will always filter its way to senior management. -- Richard F. Moore %% If facts do not conform to theory, they must be disposed of. -- N. R. F. Maier %% If for every rule there is an exception, then we have established that there is an exception to every rule. If we accept "For every rule there is an exception" as a rule, then we must concede that there may not be an exception after all, since the rule states that there is always the possibility of exception, and if we follow it to its logical end we must agree that there can be an exception to the rule that for every rule there is an exception. -- Bill Boquist %% If good intentions are combined with stupidity, it is impossible to outthink them. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% If he [a generalist] delights to find a law he is ecstatic when he finds a law about laws. If laws in his eyes are good, laws about laws are delicious and are most praiseworthy objects of search. -- Boulding %% If he had been born God, it was the clowns who would occupy the lowest rungs of hell. %% If he had two ideas in his head, they would fall out with each other. -- Johnson %% If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must man be of learning from experience. %% If humanity profits from its mistakes, we have a glorious future coming up. %% If it can be borrowed and it can be broken, you will borrow it and you will break it. -- W. W. Chandler %% If it can be understood, it's not finished yet. -- Paul Herbig %% If it can break, it will, but only after the warranty expires. -- Sherry Graditor %% If it is generally known what one is supposed to be doing, then someone will expect him to do it. -- Merle P. Martin %% If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven. %% If it tastes good, you can't have it. If it tastes awful, you'd better clean your plate. %% If it works well, they'll stop making it. %% If it works, don't fix it. -- William O'Neill %% If it's good, they'll stop making it. -- Herblock %% If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn't it follow that electricians can be delighted; musicians denoted; cowboys deranged; models deposed; tree surgeons debarked and dry cleaners depressed? -- Virginia Ostman %% If life were a bed of roses, some people wouldn't be happy until they developed an allergy. %% If love makes the world go 'round, Why are we going to outer space? -- Margaret Gilman %% If no one uses something, it isn't needed. -- Robert Sommer %% If nobody uses it, there's a reason. -- Jane Bryant Quinn %% If nuclear ... therefore it must be bad; Denounce such power with a protest squeal. The scientists made it (surely they're all mad), It's better not to think and just to feel. -- Jack Kirwan %% If on an actuarial basis there is a 50/50 chance that something will go wrong, it actually will go wrong nine times in ten. %% If one is lucky enough and can accurately define all three of these parameters, task, time, and resources, then what one deals with is not the realm of R&D. %% If one knows what the task is, and there is a time limit allowed for the completion of the task, then one cannot guess how much it will cost. %% If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are. -- Montesquieu %% If only one parking space is available it will have a blue curb (blue curbs are reserved for "STAFF"). -- M. M. Johnston %% If our standard of living gets much higher, most of us won't be able to afford it. %% If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use; but it is made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything solemn and serious. -- Addison %% If solid happiness we prize, Within our breast this jewel lies, And they are fools who roam; The world has nothing to bestow; From our own selves our joys must flow And that dear hut -- our home. -- Cotton %% If some people didn't tell you, you'd never know they'd been away on vacation. %% If some stress is brought to bear on a system in equilibrium, the equilibrium is displaced in the direction which tends to undo the effect of the stress. %% If someone with a rural accent says, "I don't know anything about politics," zip up your pockets. -- Donald Rumsfeld %% If that's art, I'm a Hottentot! -- Harry S. Truman %% If the assumptions are wrong, the conclusions aren't likely to be very good. -- Robert E. Machol %% If the average man is made in God's image, then such a man as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God. %% If the converse of a statement is absurd, the original statement is an insult to the intelligence and should never have been said. -- Arthur H. Boultbee (This is best applied to the statements of politicians and TV pundits.) %% If the dove chooses to fly with the hawks his feathers stay white but his heart turns black. %% If the enterprise dies, say that you saw it coming ages ago. -- Jean-Charles Terrassier %% If the experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment. %% If the meek shall inherit the Earth, what will happen to us Tigers? %% If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails will be filled with good people. -- Daniel P. Monynihan %% If the people are to be the governors, who then shall be the governed? -- Cotton Mather %% If the people in a democracy are allowed to do so, they will vote away the freedoms which are essential to that democracy. -- Snell Putney %% If the time and resources ($) are clearly defined, then it is impossible to know what part of the R&D task will be performed. %% If the wicked flourish, and thou suffer, be not discouraged. They are fatted for destruction: thou are dieted for health. -- Fuller %% If the work of God could be comprehended by reason, it would be no longer wonderful, and faith would have no merit if reason provided proof. -- Pope Gregory I %% If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. -- Cowper %% If there are twelve clowns in a ring, you can jump in the middle and start reciting Shakespeare, but to the audience, you'll just be the thirteenth clown. -- Adam Walinsky %% If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will go wrong first will be the one that will do the most damage. %% If there is a wrong thing to say, one will. -- Betty Hartig %% If there is an opportunity to make a mistake, sooner or later the mistake will be made. -- Edmund C. Berkeley %% If there is any way to do it wrong, you will. %% If there is anything education does not lack today, it is critics. -- Nathan M. Pusey %% If there is no reason why something shouldn't exist, then it must exist. -- Murray Gell-Martin %% If there isn't a law, there will be. -- Harold Faber %% If things are not going well with you, begin your effort at correcting the situation by carefully examining the service you are rendering, and especially the spirit in which you are rendering it. -- Roger Babson %% If things can go wrong, they will -- and when they do, blame it on the oil industry. %% If things were left to chance, they'd be better. %% If thou art a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf. -- Fuller %% If thou hast a loitering servant, send him of thy errand just before his dinner. -- Fuller %% If two wrongs don't make a right, try three. -- Laurence J. Peter %% If ugly was labor, you'd be a long day's work. %% If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. -- Longfellow %% If we did not take great pains, and were not at great expense to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us. -- Lord Clarendon %% If we had no defects ourselves, we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others. -- La Rochefoucauld %% If we in business cannot put the brakes on this creeping socialism, the free enterprise system will become a thing of the past. -- Barton A, Cummings %% If you accept the necessity for freedom of expression, it follows that in an intellectual controversy any attempt to coerce rather than to persuade ... is not merely an offense against the person so coerced, but an erosion of the mechanics which make free expression work, and therefore make it possible. -- Michael Kinsley %% If you add only a little to a little and do this often, soon that little will become great. -- Hesiod %% If you always postpone pleasure you will never have it. Quit work and play for once. %% If you anticipate bus delays by leaving your house thirty minutes early, your bus will arrive as soon as you reach the bus stop or when you light up a cigarette, whichever comes first. -- John Corcoran %% If you are brave too often, people will come to expect it of you. -- Mignon McLaughlin %% If you are concerned about being criticized, you're in the wrong job. However you vote, and whatever you do, somebody will be out there telling you that you are: (a) wrong, (b) insensitive, (c) a bleeding heart, (d) a pawn of somebody else, (e) too wishy-washy, (f) too unwilling to compromise, (g) all of the above -- consistency is not required of critics. -- Pierre S. du Pont %% If you are given a clearly defined R&D goal and a definite amount of money which has been calculated to be necessary for the completion of the task, one cannot predict if and when the goal will be reached. %% If you are to understand others, and have them understand you, know the big words but use the small ones. %% If you break a cup or plate, it will not be the one that was already chipped or cracked. -- Denys Parsons %% If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. -- Abraham Lincoln %% If you can give your son only one gift, let it be enthusiasm. -- Bruce Barton %% If you can keep your head when all about you others are losing theirs, maybe you just don't understand the situation. %% If you can't beat them, have them join you. -- Charles Wolf, Jr. %% If you can't convince them, confuse them. -- Harry S. Truman %% If you can't do anything about something, pretend it doesn't exist. %% If you can't measure it, I'm not interested. -- Laurence J. Peter %% If you can't remember it, it couldn't have been important. -- Larry Groebe %% If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself -- all that runs over the brim will be yours. -- Colton %% If you continually give you will continually have. %% If you cover a congressional committee on a regular basis, they will report the bill on your day off. -- Herb Foster %% If you destroy delicacy and a sense of shame in a young girl, you deprave her very fast. -- Mrs. Stowe %% If you develop rules, never have more than ten. -- Donald Rumsfeld %% If you disregard the advice of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and go into the quicksand of an Asian country, like a domino you will fall into the quicksand of another Asian country next to it. -- Andrew Jacobs, D-Ind. %% If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours. -- Clarence Day %% If you don't know what your program is supposed to do, you'd better not start writing it. -- Dijkstra %% If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked the question. -- Charles C. Abbott %% If you don't like the weather in New England, wait fifteen minutes; it will change. -- Mark Twain %% If you don't like the weather, move. %% If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people. %% If you don't say it, they can't repeat it. -- Wilbur C. Munnecke %% If you gave to forecast, forecast often. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% If you go on a trip taking two bags with you, one containing everything you need for the trip and the other containing absolutely nothing, the second bag will be completely filled with junk acquired on the trip when you return. -- Tony Hogg %% If you had your life to live over again -- you'd need more money. %% If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong. -- Charles F. Kettering %% If you have something to do, and you put it off long enough, chances are someone else will do it for you. -- Clyde F. Adams %% If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know. -- Charles C. Abbott %% If you have to scream, you're not doing it right. -- Billy Martin %% If you have to think about it, it's too late. %% If you have too many problems, maybe you should go out of business. There is no law that says a company must last forever. %% If you jot down every silly thought that pops into your mind, you will soon find out everything you most seriously believe. -- Mignon McLaughlin %% If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to boot yourself in the posterior. -- A. J. Liebling %% If you lend a person any money, it becomes lost for any purposes of your own. When you ask for it back again, you find a friend made an enemy by your own kindness. If you begin to press still further -- either you must part with that which you have entrusted, or else you must lose that friend. -- Plautus %% If you lose your temper at a newspaper columnist, he'll get rich or famous or both. -- James C. Hagerty, %% If you make a mistake you right it immediately to the best of your ability. %% If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep. -- Will Rogers %% If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil. -- Fielding %% If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you. %% If you need a physician, employ these three -- a cheerful mind, rest, and a temperate diet. %% If you play with anything long enough, it will break. -- Louis Zahner %% If you play with something long enough, you will surely break it. %% If you push something hard enough it will fall over. %% If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled, and no one dares to criticize it. -- Pierre Gallois %% If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always depend on the support of Paul. (But don't bet on it.) %% If you see that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and you circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly develop. %% If you stop to think about it, you're already dead. %% If you submit your paper to a second editor, his journal invariably demands an entirely different reference system. -- Maeve O'Conner %% If you suspect a man, don't employ him. %% If you take off your right-hand glove in very cold weather, the key will be in your left-hand pocket. %% If you take pleasure in criticism, it's time to hold you tongue. %% If you take your boots off, you'll never get them back on again. -- Milt Barber %% If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it. -- Arthur Kasspe %% If you think this is funny, look in a mirror. %% If you try to please everybody, somebody is not going to like it. -- Donald Rumsfeld %% If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends let others excel you. -- Colton %% If you want something done, ask a busy person. %% If you want to get along, go along. -- Sam Rayburn %% If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it. -- Charles F. Kettering %% If you want to make an enemy, do someone a favor. -- Charles L. Geanangel %% If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. (It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft.) Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word "National." -- George Will %% If you want your name spelled wrong, die. -- Al Blanchard %% If you were a character string, your length would be zero. %% If you were as innocent as you pretend to be, we'd never get anywhere. -- Sam Spade %% If you wish to make a superior product, you must already be engaged in making an inferior product. -- Jacob A. Varela %% If you wish to succeed, consult three old people. %% If you wish to, you will have a good opportunity to get even. %% If you wish, you will have an opportunity. %% If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams -- the more condensed the deeper they burn. -- Southey %% If you would keep a secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend. %% If you're already in a hole, there's no use to continue digging. -- Roy W. Walters %% If you're coasting, you're going downhill. -- L. R. Pierson %% If you're confident after you've just finished an exam, it's because you don't know enough to know better. -- Jay Weisman %% If you're ever right, never let 'em forget it. -- Edgar R. Riedler %% If your doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong. -- Charles Kettering %% If your friend won't lend you fifty dollars, he's probably a close friend. %% If your parents didn't have any children, there's a good chance you won't have any. -- Clarence Day %% If your stomach disputes you, pacify it with cool thoughts. -- Satchel Paige %% If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl. -- H. L. Mencken %% Ignorance is no excuse. %% Ignorance of one's ignorance is the greatest ignorance. %% Illegetimus non carborundum! %% Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will. -- George Bernard Shaw %% Immodest words admit of no defence For want of decency is want of sense. -- Alexander Pope %% Impatience dires the blood sooner than age or sorrow. -- Creon %% Important things that are supposed to happen do not happen, especially when people are looking. -- Charles Fetridge %% Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools. -- Napoleon Bonaparte %% Impropriety is the soul of wit. -- Somerset Maugham %% In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf. %% In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards. -- Bertrand Russell %% In Fame's temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels or successful butchers of the human race. -- Zimmerman %% In God we trust, all others pay cash. %% In God we trust. %% In a Democracy only those laws which have their bases in folkways or the approval of strong groups have a chance of being enforced. -- Abraham Myerson %% In a bureaucracy accomplishment is inversely proportional to volume of paper used. -- Foster L. Fowler %% In a bureaucracy every routing slip will expand until it contains the maximum number of names that can be typed in a vertical column, namely, twenty-seven. -- Daniel Melcher %% In a bureaucratic system an increase in expenditure will be matched by a fall in production. Such systems will act rather like "black holes" in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in resources and shrinking in terms of "emitted" production. -- Dr. Max Gammon %% In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work. -- Milton Friedman %% In a country as big as the United States, you can find fifty examples of anything. -- Jeffery F. Chamberlain %% In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses of action, most people will choose the worst one possible. -- S. A. Rudin %% In a democracy you can be respected though poor, but don't count on it. -- Charles Merrill Smith %% In a family argument, if it turns out you are right -- apologize at once! -- Lazarus Long %% In a few minutes a computer can make a mistake so great that it would take a man many months to equal it. %% In a future life, may you come back as yourself. %% In a hierarchical organization, the higher the level, the greater the confusion. %% In a mature society, "civil servant" is semantically equal to "civil master." -- Lazarus Long %% In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth" Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex. -- Frank Mankiewicz %% In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man." -- Mark Twain %% In a research and development orbit, only two of the existing three parameters can be defined simultaneously. The parameters are: task, time, and resources. %% In a restaurant with seats which are close to each other, one will always find the decibel level of the nearest conversation to be inversely proportional to the quality of the thought going into it. -- Stuart A. Cohn %% In a vain man, the smallest spark may kindle into the greatest flame, because the materials are always prepared for it. -- Hume %% In all systems of theology the devil figures as a male person. Yet, it is women who keep the church going. %% In all the many-colored worlds of the universe no single ethical code shows a universal force. ... I am convinced that virtue is but a reflection of good intent. -- Magnus Ridolf %% In an attempt to kill a fly I drove into a telephone pole. %% In an underdeveloped country, don't drink the water; in a developed country, don't breathe the air. %% In an underdeveloped country, when you are absent, your job is taken away from you; in a developed country a new one is piled on you. -- Professor Charles P. Issawi %% In any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct will contain errors. %% In any decision situation, the amount of relevant information available is inversely proportional to the importance of the decision. -- Michael T. Minerath %% In any given group, the most will do the least and the least the most. -- Merle P. Martin %% In any given miscalculation, the fault will never be placed if more than one person is involved. -- Merle P. Martin %% In any household, junk accumulates to fill the space available for its storage. -- Bruce O. Boston %% In any human enterprise, work seeks the lowest hierarchical level. -- Charles R. Vail %% In any organization, the potential is much greater for the subordinate to manage his superior than for the superior to manage his subordinate. %% In any slide presentation, at least one slide will be upside down or backwards, or both. -- John Corcoran %% In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, for even tho' vanquish'd he could argue still. -- Oliver Goldsmith %% In briefings to busy people, summarize at the beginning what you're going to tell them, then tell them, then summarize at the end what you have told them. -- Charles Wolf, Jr. %% In business, price increases as service declines. -- James L. Davis %% In case of nuclear attack: 1. Stand with feet shoulder width apart. 2. Bend over to a 90 degree angle. 3. Face backwards. 4. Kiss your ass goodbye. %% In dealing with people, an ounce of sincere, good intentions is worth a pound of cleverness. %% In dealing with the press do yourself a favor. Stick with one of three responses: (a) I know and I can tell you. (b) I know and I can't tell you. (c) I don't know. -- Dan Rather %% In dealing with their own problems, faculty members are the most extreme conservatives. In dealing with other people's problems, they are the world's extreme liberals. -- Clark Kerr %% In differing breasts what differing passions glow! Ours kindle quick, but yours extinguish slow. -- Garth %% In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. %% In formal logic, a contradiction is the signal of defeat: but in the evolution of real knowledge, it marks the first step in progress toward victory. -- Alfred North Whitehead %% In handling a stinging insect, move very slowly. -- Lazarus Long %% In his private heart no man much respects himself. -- Mark Twain %% In larger things we are convivial; What causes trouble is the trivial. -- Richard Armour %% In life there is but one bad thing and one good; both of them are women. %% In lover's quarrels, the party that loves most is always most willing to acknowledge the greater fault. -- Scott %% In matters of dispute, the bank's balance is always smaller than yours. -- Rozanne Weissman %% In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil. -- Mrs. Jameson %% In my Lucia's absence Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden; I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear, And grief, and rage and love rise up at once, And with variety of pain distract me. -- Joseph Addison %% In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness; some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. -- Shakespeare %% In my view, God educates us through our deceptions and mistakes, in order to make us understand at last that we ought to believe only in Him, and not in man. %% In order to discover anything you must be looking for something. -- Harvey Neville %% In order to get a loan, you must first prove you don't need it. -- John Cameron %% In order to keep engineers and scientists cognizant of the importance of progress, load them down with forms, multiple reports, and frequent meetings. -- Richard F. Moore %% In order to make [a person] covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. -- Samuel Clemens %% In our haste to deal with the things that are wrong, let us not upset the things that are right. %% In politics, an absurdity is not a handicap. -- Napoleon Bonaparte %% In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly. -- Coleridge %% 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 %% In spite of all the yearnings of men, no one can produce a single fact or reason to support the belief in God and in personal immortality. %% In the battle of existence, Talent is the punch; Tact is the clever footwork. %% In the bottle, discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence. -- Johnson %% In the economic sense, our socialism was more like state capitalism ... Marx had never dreamed of anything of the sort ... Soviet Russia had broken with everything in her history that was revolutionary, and had got onto the usual rails of great-power imperialism. -- Svetlana Alliluyeva %% In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books. -- Michel de Montaigne %% In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free. -- Edward Gibbon %% In the fight between you and the world, back the world. -- Franz Kafka %% In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season. -- Bill Vaughan %% In the gates of Eternity, the black hand and the white hand hold each other with an equal clasp. -- Mrs. Stowe %% In the intercourse of life we please, often, by our defects than by our good qualities. -- La Rochefoucauld %% In the lexicon of youth, which fate reserves for a bright manhood, there is no such word as fail. -- Bulwer %% In the long run we are all dead. -- John Maynard Keynes %% In the nice bee what sense so subtly true Form pois'ness herbs extract the healing dew? -- Alexander Pope %% In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous. %% 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 %% In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes and an occasional salutary recession. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes. -- Benjamin Franklin %% In time of trouble, men of talent are called for, but in times of ease the rich and those with powerful relatives are desired. -- Italo Bombolini %% In time, and as one comes to benefit from experience, one learns that things will turn out neither as well as one hoped nor as badly as one feared. -- Jerome S. Bruner %% In times of crisis, it is of utmost importance not to lose one's head. -- Marie Antoinette %% In unanimity there is cowardice and uncritical thinking. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% In unanimity there may well be either cowardice or uncritical thinking. -- Donald Rumsfeld %% In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory. -- Gen. Douglas MacArthur %% In you can't measure output, then you can't measure input. -- Charles Schultze %% Include me out. -- Sam Goldwyn %% Incompetence knows no barriers of time or place. -- Laurence J. Peter %% Incompetence tends to increase with the level of work performed. And, naturally, the individual's staff needs will increase as his level of incompetence increases. -- Arthur J. Riggs %% Incompetents often hire able assistants. -- Douglas Evelyn %% Indifference is the only sure defence. -- Jody Powell %% Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame. -- Mahatma Gandhi %% Infant care has to be learned from the bottom up. %% Inflation is when the only thing free of charge is a run-down battery. %% Information flows efficiently through organizations, except that bad news encounters high impedance in flowing upwards. -- Paul Gray %% Information travels more surely to those with a lesser need to know. -- Charles P. Boyle %% Innocence is always unsuspicious. -- Haliburton %% Innovations in law, whether good or bad, spin an entangling weave far more often than they sew a straight stitch. Division of labor can make for great efficiency; too great a division of labor in lawmaking can instead create a crazy quilt. -- Michael Scully %% Inquisitive people are the funnels of conversation; they do not take in anything for their own use, but merely to pass it to another. -- Steele %% Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes %% Inside every large program is a small program struggling to get out. -- Tony Hoare %% Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth. -- Will Rogers %% Integrity has no need of rules. -- Albert Camus %% Interrogator's lunch -- grilled cheese -- Raymond D. Love %% Inventing is easy for staff outfits. Stating a problem is much harder. Instead of stating problems, people like to pass out half-accurate statements together with half-available solutions which they can't finish and which they want you to finish. -- Amrom Katz %% Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or somebody insists on getting some useful work done. -- Tom Gibb %% Is it bang for the buck, or pennies for a pop? %% Is not absence death to those who love? -- Alexander Pope %% Is not light grander than fire? It is the same element in a state of purity. -- Carlyle %% Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web? -- Charlotte %% Is there no way to bring home a wandering sheep, but by worrying him to death? -- Fuller %% Isn't every computer a Digital computer? %% Isn't this a beautiful day! Just watch some bastard louse it up. %% It does not matter if you fall down as long as you pick up something from the floor while you get up. -- Avery %% It gives me pleasure to be praised by you whom all men praise. -- Tully %% It has been said that there are two theories of history: conspiracy and blunder. If there is some truth to that, it is surely equally true that blunder seldom receives all the credit due it as an explanation of complex events. -- Michael Scully %% It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another -- but which one? Differences are crucial. -- Lazarus Long %% It is Fortune, not wisdom that rules man's life. %% It is a blessed thing that in every age someone has had the individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions. -- Robert G. Ingersoll %% It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought. -- John Kenneth Galbraith %% It is a good divine that follows his own instructions. -- Shakespeare %% It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. -- John C. Calhoun %% It is a great misfortune neither to have enough wit to talk well nor enough judgment to be silent. -- Jean de La Brupere %% It is a miserable thing to live in suspense, it is the life of the spider. -- Jonathan Swift %% 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 if it be a scientific one. -- Sigmund Freud %% It is a poor judge who cannot award a prize. %% It is a secret known to but a few, yet no small use in the conduct of life, that if you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him. -- Steele %% It is a special trick of low cunning to squeeze out knowledge from a modest man, who is eminent in any science, and then to use it as legally acquired, and pass the source in total silence. -- Horace Walpole %% It is a very sad thing nowadays there is so little useless information. -- Oscar Wilde %% It is against the nature of man as he grows older ... to protest against change, particularly change for the better. -- John Steinbeck %% It is almost impossible systematically to constitute a natural moral law. Nature has no principles. She furnishes us with no reason to believe that human life is to be respected. Nature, in her indifference, makes no distinction between good and evil. %% It is amusing for someone accustomed to the traffic in New York to hear residents of places like Houston and Atlanta complain about congestion on the highways. Imagine, in rush hour they have to slow down to 35 miles an hour! -- Barry Bruce-Briggs %% It is best to hope only for things possible and probable; he that hopes too much shall deceive himself at last; especially if his industry does not go along with his hopes; for hope without action is a barren undoer. -- Feltham %% It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws. -- Aristotle %% It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it. -- Henry Allen %% It is better to be always on your guard than to suffer once. %% It is better to be feared than loved, more prudent to be cruel than compassionate. -- Niccolo Machievelli %% It is better to burn out than fade away. -- Neil Young %% It is better to decide between our enemies than our friends; for one of our friends will most likely become our enemy; but on the other hand, one of your enemies will probably become your friend. -- Bias %% It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep, than a sheep at the head of an army of lions. -- De Foe %% It is better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all. -- Tennyson %% It is better to have nothing to do than to be doing nothing. -- Attilus %% It is better to sound a person with whom one deals afar off, than to fall upon the point at first. -- Bacon %% It is better to wear out than to rust out. %% It is but poor eloquence, which only shows that the orator can talk. -- Sir Joshua Reynolds %% It is by acts and not by ideas that people live. -- Anatole France %% It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. -- Mark Twain %% It is courage the world needs, not infallibility ... courage is always the surest wisdom. -- Sir Wilfred Grenfell %% It is customary for a decimal to be misplaced. %% It is difficult to soar with eagles when you work with turkeys. %% It is easier to harness human nature than to fight or repress it. %% It is easier to run down a hill than up one. %% It is easy to understand God as long as you don't try to explain Him. %% It is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it tyrannous to use it like a giant. -- Shakespeare %% It is far better to be deceived than to be undeceived by those we love. %% It is far easier to be wise for others than to be so for oneself. -- La Rochefoucauld %% It is far easier to know men than to know man. -- La Rochefoucauld %% It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave than to expend it like a gentleman. -- Colton %% It is fear that first brought gods into the world. %% It is good that the young are beautiful; it is the only advantage they have. -- The Duchess of Windsor %% It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright. -- Benjamin Franklin %% It is hardly possible to suspect another without having in one's self the seeds of the baseness the other party is accused of. -- Stanislaus %% It is impossible for a man to love his wife whole-heartedly without loving all women somewhat. I suppose that the converse must be true of women. -- Lazarus Long %% It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind. -- Jonathan Swift %% It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. %% It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune. -- Woody Allen %% It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious. %% It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance, for it requires knowledge to perceive it; and, therefore, he that can perceive it hath it not. -- Jeremy Taylor %% It is in his pleasures that a man really lives, it is from his leisure that he constructs the fabric of self. -- Agnes Repplier %% It is in the nature of mobs to cheer fools. %% It is inconceivable that three competing networks, working independently in complete secrecy, could produce by accident twenty-six new series so similar in quality. -- Marvin Kitman %% It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. %% It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them. -- Duc de La Rochefoucauld %% It is much harder to find a job than to keep one. -- Jules Becker %% It is never clear just how many hands -- or minds -- are needed to carry out a particular process. Nevertheless, anyone having supervisory responsibility for the completion of the task will invariably protest that his staff is too small for the assignment. -- Andrew Hacker %% It is nice to be content in a little house by the side of the road, but a split-level in suburbia is a lot more comfortable. -- Charles Merrill Smith %% It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome. -- Plutarch %% It is no longer correct to regard higher education solely as a privilege. It is a basic right in today's world. -- Norman Cousins %% It is no pleasure to build a web and catch only flies when one knows there is a wasp about. %% It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. -- Seneca %% It is not enough to do the right thing; one must also do it the right way. %% It is not love of self, but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict the world. -- Eric Hoffer %% It is not poverty so much as pretence that harasses a ruined man -- the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse -- the keeping up a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting. -- Mrs. Jameson %% It is not the disease but neglect of the remedy which generally destroys life. %% It is not the quality of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests, that makes the feast. -- Lord Clarendon %% It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes acids, but love and trust are sweet juices. -- Beecher %% It is often easier to earn money than it is to spend it wisely. %% It is one thing to purloin finely-tempered steel, and another to take a pound of literary old iron, and convert it in the furnace of one's own mind into a hundred watchsprings, worth each a thousand times as much as the iron. When genius borrows, it borrows grandly, giving to the borrowed matter, a life and beauty it lacked before. %% It is only by labor that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy; and the two cannot be separated with impunity. -- Ruskin %% It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their dignity. %% It is our policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the %% It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. %% It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men. -- La Rochefoucauld %% It is the curse of talent that, although it labors with greater steadiness and perseverance than genius, it does not reach its goal, while genius, already on the summit of the ideal, gazes laughingly about. %% It is the function of creative men to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things, or forms of expression that may seem utterly different, and to be able to combine them into some new forms -- the power to connect the seemingly unconnected. %% It is the great triumph of genius to make the common appear novel. %% It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame. -- Cornville %% It is the height of absurdity to sow little but weeds in the first half of one's lifetime and expect to harvest a valuable crop in the second half. -- Percy Johnston %% It is the natural order of things. Nothing can alter it. The strong take, the weak surrender. -- Sepp von Plum %% It is the nature of the human disposition to hate him who you have injured. -- Tacitus %% It is the pleasure of reward rather than the pain of punishment that motivates people. %% It is the uncensored sense of humor ... which is the ultimate therapy for man in society. -- Evan Esar %% It is the wise bird who builds his nest in a tree. %% It is the working man who is the happy man. -- Benjamin Franklin %% It is to the interest of the commonwealth of mankind that there should be someone who is unconquered, someone against whom fortune has no power. -- Seneca %% It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you. %% It is unwise to do unto others as you would that they do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. -- George Bernard Shaw %% It is what we are that gets across, not what we try to teach. %% It is worthy of observation, that the most imperious masters over their own servants, are at the same time, the most abject slaves to the servants of other masters. -- Seneca %% It isn't that things will necessarily go wrong (Murphy's Law), but rather that they will take so much more time and effort than you think, if they are not to. -- Charles Wolf, Jr. %% It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so. -- Will Rogers %% It isn't what you know but the simple things you don't overlook. %% It marks a big step in a man's development when he comes to realize that other men can be called on to help him do a better job than he can do alone. -- Andrew Carnagie %% It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier. -- Lazarus Long %% It may be remarked for the comfort of honest poverty, that avarice reigns most in those who have but few good qualities to recommend them. This is a weed that will grow in a barren soil. -- Hughes %% It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God -- but to create Him. %% It may be true that human beings make more mistakes than computers, but for a real foul up, give us a computer anytime. %% It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety. -- Salvor Hardin %% It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. %% It seems that nature has concealed at the bottom of our minds, talents and abilities of which we are not aware. The passions alone have the privilege of bringing them to light, and of giving us sometimes views more certain and more perfect than art could possible produce. -- La Rochefoucauld %% It show'd discretion, the best part of valor. -- Beaumont and Fletcher %% 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 %% It takes both a weapon, and two people, to commit a murder. %% It takes everyone to make a happy day. -- Marcy Kay Rumsfeld %% It warms me, it charms me, To mention but her name; It heats me, it beats me, And set me a' on flame. -- Burns %% It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead. %% It was a saying of the ancients, "Truth lies in a well;" and to carry on this metaphor, we may justly say that logic does supply us with steps, whereby we may go down to reach the water. -- Dr. I. Watts %% It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it after all. -- P. G. Wodehouse %% It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was broken. -- James Dent %% It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow. -- The Federalist, No. 62 %% It would be well, if some who have taken upon themselves the ministry of the Gospel, that they would first preach to themselves, then afterwards to others. -- Cardinal Pole %% It's NOT my fault!!! -- Han Solo (and a cast of thousands) %% It's a good idea to keep your words soft and sweet to the taste. You may have to eat them. %% It's a poor workman who blames his tools. %% It's a sad house where the cock is silent and the hen crows. %% It's always darkest just before the lights go out. -- Alex Clark %% It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired. -- Lazarus Long %% It's better to keep your mouth closed and be presumed a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. %% It's better to retire too soon than too late. -- Charles A. Mosher %% It's clever, but is it art? %% It's easier to be a liberal a long way from home. -- Don Price %% It's easier to be original and foolish than original and wise. -- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz %% It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves. -- Duc de La Rochefoucauld %% It's easy to tell when you've got a bargain -- it doesn't fit. %% It's hard to say who brags more, the reformed smoker or the guy whose car gets 30 miles to the gallon. -- James Alexander %% It's hard to sing with an empty glass. %% It's later than you think: the joint Russian-American space mission has already begun. %% It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things. %% It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off the ground. -- Daniel B. Luten %% It's not what you know or what you do, it's who you know. %% It's not what you write that counts, it's how it's read. %% It's odd how sin must advertise in gaudy trappings. One would think it would be darker, more discreet. %% It's so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the Devil when he is the only explanation of it. %% It's sweet to be remembered, but it's often cheaper to be forgotten. %% It's the most unhappy people who most fear change. -- Mignon McLaughlin %% It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to. -- Franklin P. Jones %% JIFFY: The time it takes for light to go one centimeter in a vacuum. %% James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized. -- Tom Stoppard %% Jimmy Carter says the GOP Convention was "a debacle." That's French for Trust Me. -- National Review %% Jimmy Carter says the GOP Convention was "a debacle." That's high praise from our country's Debacleur-in-Chief. -- National Review %% Jimmy Carter says the GOP Convention was "a debacle." What did he expect -- a helicopter rescue mission? -- National Review %% Join the Navy and see the coast! %% Jones's Law: The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on. %% Joy descends gently upon us like the evening dew, and does not patter down like a hailstorm. -- Richter %% Judge a tree from its fruit; not from the leaves. -- Euripides %% Judgment is not the knowledge of fundamental laws; it is knowing how to apply a knowledge of them. -- Charles Gow %% Just about the time most of us finally learn all the answers, they change all the questions. %% Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner. The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is because neither side has all the facts. Therefore, when the wise mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the whole truth. -- Stephen R. Schwambach %% Just as there are three R's there are also three A's of business life. They are: Ability, Ambition, and Attitude. Ability establishes what a worker does and will bring him a paycheck. Ambition determines how much he does and will get him a raise. Attitude guarantees how well he does. -- Wilbert E. Sheer %% Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. -- Irene Peter %% Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless. -- Thomas Edison %% Just because you've beaten a sorcerer, doesn't mean you've beaten a sorcerer. -- Toth-aamon %% Just when I finally figure out where it's at ... somebody moves it. %% Just when you get really good at something, you don't need to do it anymore. -- William P. Lowrey %% Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven! -- Michael J. Wagner %% Justice is blind, he knows nobody. -- Dryden %% Justice is lame as well as blind among us. -- Otway %% Justice, like lightning, ever should appear To few men's ruin, but to all men's fear. -- Swetnam %% Keep cool; especially during meltdowns. %% Keep the juices going by jangling around gently as you move. -- Satchel Paige %% Keep what you've got; the ills that we know are the best. -- Plautus %% Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and completely shut after the kids grow up. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% Keep your fears to yourself; share your courage with others. -- Robert Louis Stevenson %% Keep your sense of humor about your position. -- Donald Rumsfeld %% Kerr's Three Rules for Trying New Foods: (1) Never try anything with tomatoes in it. (2) Never try anything bigger than your head. (3) Never, NEVER try anything that looks like vomit. It is said that Kerr broke all three rules by discovering pizza. %% Key to Status: S=D/K. S is the status of a person in an organization, D is the number of doors he must open to perform his job and K is the number of keys he carries. A higher number denotes a higher status. Examples: The janitor needs to open 20 doors and has twenty keys (S = 1), a secretary has to open two doors with one key (S = 2), but the president never has to carry around any keys since there is always someone around to open doors for him (with K = 0 and a high D, his S reaches infinity). -- Robert Sommer %% Kilroy was here. %% Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. -- Tennyson %% Kiss the tear from her lip, you'll find the rose the sweeter for the dew. -- Webster %% Knaves will thrive when honest plainness knows not how to live. -- Shirley %% Knives and scissors, fork and candle, little children should not handle. %% Know that a happy dieter has other problems. -- Erma Bombeck %% Know then this truth, enough for man to know Virtue alone is happiness below. -- Alexander Pope %% Know then thyself; presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. -- Alexander Pope %% Knowledge is power. -- Bacon %% LIGHTWEIGHT: Lighter than rugged %% LINEAR MODEL: An assumption concerning the nature of reality applied unquestioningly to every relationship as though God had determined that truth must always run in straight lines. %% Language is fossil poetry. %% Languages are the pedigrees of nations. -- Johnson %% Large numbers of things are determined, and therefore not subject to change. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% Last Words of Advice: If you pay your taxes and don't get into debt and go to bed early and never answer the telephone -- no harm can befall you. -- Professor Charles P. Issawi %% Last guys don't finish nice. -- Stanley Kelly %% Last scene of all that ends this strange, eventful history, is second childishness, and mere oblivion; sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. -- Shakespeare %% Laughter should dimple the cheek, not furrow the brow. A jest should be such, that all shall be able to join in the laugh which it occasions; but if it bear hard upon one of the company, like the crack of a string, it makes a stop in the music. -- Feltham %% Law expands in proportion to the resources available for its enforcement. -- Dalin B. Oaks %% Law of Historical Causation: "It seemed like the thing to do at the time." -- Michael Uhlmann %% Law of Institutional Food: Everything is cold except what should be. %% Law of Institutional Food: Everything, including the corn flakes, is greasy. %% Law of Local Anesthesia: Never say "oops" in the operating room. -- Dr. Leo Troy %% Law of Petroleum: Where there are Muslims, there is oil; the converse is not true. -- Professor Charles P. Issawi %% Law of Social Dynamics: If, in the course of several months, only three worthwhile social events take place, they will all fall on the same evening. %% Lawrence Radiation Laboratory keeps all its data in an old gray trunk. %% Laws can discover sin, but not remove. -- Milton %% Laziness is the mother of nine inventions out of ten. -- Phillip K. Saunders %% Leaders who aid others in growing are certain to experience growth in themselves. %% Leadership, at its highest, consists of getting people to work for you when they are under no obligation to do so. %% Learn a new language and get a new soul. %% Learn to be sincere. Even if you have to fake it. -- Solomon Short %% Learn to hold thy tongue. Five words cost Zacharias forty weeks' silence. -- Fuller %% Learn to reason forward and backward on both sides of a question. -- Thomas Blandi %% Learning maketh young men temperate, is the comfort of old age, standing for wealth with poverty, and serving as an ornament to riches. -- Cicero %% Lend money to a bad debtor and he will hate you. %% Lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold. -- Shakespeare %% Lenin once observed that gold should adorn the floors of latrines. %% Less is more. %% Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage. %% Let a man proclaim a new principle. Public sentiment will surely be on the other side. -- Thomas B. Reed %% Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips. -- Proverbs XXVII, 2 %% Let cavillers deny that brutes have reason; sure tis something more, 'tis heaven directs, and stratagems inspires beyond the short extent of human thought. -- Somerville %% Let him turn and twist slowly in the wind. -- John Ehrlichman %% Let honesty be as the breath of thy soul, and never forget to have a penny, when all thy expenses are enumerated and paid; then shall thou reach the point of happiness, and independence shall be thy shield and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then thy soul walk upright, nor stoop to the silken wretch because he hath riches, nor pocket an abuse, because the hand which offers it wears a ring set with diamonds. -- Benjamin Franklin %% Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleck-headed men and such as sleep o'nights. Yond' Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much; such men are dangerous. -- Shakespeare %% Let no man presume to give advice to others that has not first given good counsel to himself. -- Seneca %% Let no man value at a little price a virtuous woman's counsel; her winged spirit is feathered often times with heavenly words, and, like her beauty, ravishing and pure. -- Chapman %% Let none think to fly the danger For soon or late love is his own avenger. -- Byron %% Let not the sands of time get in your lunch. %% Let sleeping dogs lie. %% Let the Wookiee win! %% Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage, a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array. -- Lord Brougham %% Let them obey that know not how to rule. -- Shakespeare %% Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% Let us cling to our principles as the mariner clings to his last plank when night and tempest close around him. -- Dr. Young %% Let us suffer any person to tell us his story morning and evening, but for one twelve-month, and he will become our master. -- Burke %% Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow %% Let your humor always be good humor in both senses. If it comes of a bad humor, it is pretty sure not to belie its parentage. %% Let's just be friends and make no special effort to ever see each other again. %% Letters which are warmly sealed are oftener but coldly opened. -- Richter %% Levity is the soul of wit. -- Melville D. Landon %% Liberals don't care what people do, as long as it's compulsory. %% Liberals, but not conservatives, can get attention and acclaim for denouncing liberal policies that failed; and liberals will inevitably capture the ensuing agenda for "reform." -- John McClaughry %% Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by law. -- Cicero %% Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches. -- Will Rogers %% Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. -- Harry Emerson Fosdick %% Liberty is always unfinished business. %% Liberty is being free from the things we don't like in order to be slaves to the things we do like. -- Ernest Benn %% Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord the weak. -- Judge Learned Hand %% Liberty is the one thing you can't have unless you give it to others. -- William Allen White %% Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. -- George Bernard Shaw %% Liberty too can corrupt, and absolute liberty can corrupt absolutely. -- Gertrude Himmelfarb %% Liberty! Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name. -- Madame Roland %% Libraries are the shrines where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed. -- Bacon %% Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. -- Samuel Johnson %% Life creates it [the Force] and makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we ... Feel the flow. Feel the Force around you. -- Yoda %% Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. -- George Bernard Shaw %% Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. %% Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. %% Life is doubt, and faith without doubt is nothing but death. -- Miguel de Unamuno %% Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find there is nothing in it. %% Life is sometimes hard to love, though we must love it because we have no other. To fail to love it is to cease to exist. %% Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure. %% 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 idiots, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing. -- Shakespeare %% Like a man made after supper of a cheese-paring; when he was naked, he was, for all the world, like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife. -- Shakespeare %% 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 %% Like winter snow on summer lawn, time past is time gone. %% Literature is the grindstone to sharpen the coulters, and to whet their natural faculties. -- Hammond %% Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse. -- Lazarus Long %% Little joys refresh us constantly, like house-bread, and never bring disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then bring it. -- Richter %% Little progress can be made merely by repressing what is bad. Our great hope lies in developing what is good. %% Little strokes fell John B. Oakes. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% Live and let live. %% Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so. -- Josh Billings %% Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools. %% Loan-department manager: "There isn't any fine print. At these interest rates, we don't need it." %% Logic is like the sword -- those who appeal to it shall perish by it. -- Samuel Butler %% Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence. -- Joseph Wood Krutch %% Logic is the soul of wit, not of wisdom; that's why wit is funny. -- Lincoln Steffens %% Logic -- an instrument used for bolstering a prejudice. -- Elbert Hubbard %% Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human kind. Logic, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can. -- Oliver Goldsmith %% Lonely is a man without love. %% Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet. %% Look at governmental programs for the past fifty years. Every single one -- except for warfare -- achieved the exact opposite of its announced goal. %% Look on my works ye mighty -- and despair!!! %% Look over your shoulder now and then to be sure someone's following you. -- Henry Gilmer %% Look round the wrecks of play behold, Estates dismember'd, mortgaged, sold; Their owners now to jail confin'd, Show equal poverty of mind. -- Gay %% Lord, when we are wrong, make us easy to change. And when we are right, make us easy to live with. -- Peter Marshall %% Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none; be able for thine enemy rather in power than use; and keep thy friend under thine own life's key; be checked for silence, but never taxed for speech. -- Shakespeare %% Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. %% Love demands infinitely less than friendship. -- George Jean Nathan %% Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible. It is therefore able to undertake all things, and it completes many things, and brings them to a conclusion, where he who does not love, faints and lies down. -- Thomas a Kempis %% Love is a god Strong, free, unabounded, and as some define Fears nothing, pitieth none. -- Milton %% Love is a passion which kindles honor into noble acts. -- Dryden %% Love is in the offing. Be affectionate to one who adores you. %% Love is merely madness; and I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip, as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured, is that the lunacy is so ordinary, that the whippers are in love too. -- Shakespeare %% Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the infinite in the finite -- of the ideal made real. -- Carlyle %% Love is not in our choice, but in our fate. -- Dryden %% Love is sentimental measles. %% Love is strong as death. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned. -- Solomon's Song VIII, 6,7 %% Love is the salt of life; a higher taste It gives to pleasure, and then makes it last. -- Buckingham %% Love laughs at locksmiths. %% Love me little, love me long. -- Milton %% Love not! Love not! the thing you love may change, The rosy lip may cease to smile on you, The kindly beaming eye grow cold and strange, The heart still warmly beat, and not for you. -- Mrs. Norton %% Love that has nothing but beauty to keep it in good health is short lived, and apt to have ague fits. -- Erasmus %% Love the sea? I dote upon it -- from the beach. %% Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood. -- Louise Beal %% Love will find its way Through paths where wolves would fear to prey, And if it dares enough 'twere hard If passion met not some reward. -- Byron %% Love's like the measles -- all the worse when it comes late in life. -- Jerrola %% Love, the sole disease thou canst not cure. -- Alexander Pope %% Love, which proclaims thee human bids thee know a truth more lofty in thy lowliest hour than shallow glory taught to human power, "What's human is immortal!" -- Bulwer %% Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. -- Mark Twain %% Luck is what enabled others to get where they are. Talent is what enabled us to get to where we are. %% Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain, Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain; Awake but one, and lo, what myriads arise! Each stamps its image as the other flies. -- Alexander Pope %% M. D. to patient: First the good news -- you're going to have a disease named after you. %% MEETS QUALITY STANDARDS: Ours, not yours %% METHODOLOGICALLY UNSOUND: Using methodology with which I am unfamiliar. %% Most of the mistakes of our life come from feeling when we ought to think and thinking when we ought to feel. %% Macbeth: If we should fail- Lady Macbeth: We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking place, And we'll not fail. -- Shakespeare %% Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games -- but not with pleasure. -- Leo Rosten %% Madness, we fancy, gave an ill-timed birth To grinning laughter and to frantic mirth. -- Prior %% Main Article of General Systems Faith: the order of the empirical world itself has an order which might be called order of the second degree. -- Boulding %% Maintain eternal vigilance, small squishy thing, and kill anything that threatens. -- Viver farewell saying. %% Major actions are rarely decided by more than four people. If you think a larger meeting you're attending is really "hammering out" a decision, you're probably wrong. Either the decision was agreed to by a smaller group before the meeting began, or the outcome of the larger meeting will be modified later when three or four people get together. -- Charles Wolf, Jr. %% Make a wish, it might come true. %% Make it sufficiently difficult for people to do something, and most people will stop doing it. -- Robert Sommer %% Make new friends but keep the old ones; one is silver and the other's gold. %% Make other people like themselves a little better and rest assured they'll like you very much. %% Make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes. %% Make the most of the day, by determining to spend it on two sorts of acquaintances only -- those by whom something may be got, and those from whom something may be learned. -- Colton %% Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world. -- Thomas Carlyle %% Make yourself necessary to somebody. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% Malpractice makes malperfect. -- Solomon Short %% Mammon has enriched his thousands, and has damned his ten thousands. -- South %% Man and wife make one fool. %% Man had achieved FREEDOM FROM -- without yet having achieved FREEDOM TO -- to be himself, to be productive, to be fully awake. -- Erich Fromm %% Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock. -- Alvin Toffler %% Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. -- Albert Schweitzer %% Man is a blind, witless, low-brow, anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth. -- Ian McHarg %% Man is a thinking being, whether he will or no; all he can do is to turn his thoughts the best way. -- Sir W. Temple %% Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward. -- Job v.7 %% Man is by nature metaphysical and proud. He has gone so far as to think that the idealistic creations of his mind, which correspond to his feelings, also represent reality. -- Claude Bernard %% Man is demolishing nature ... We are killing things that keep us alive. -- Thor Heyerdahl %% Man is forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He acts against God's command ... From the standpoint of the Church, which represents authority, this is essentially sin. From the standpoint of man, however, this is the beginning of human freedom. -- Erich Fromm %% Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality. -- William Ernest Hocking %% Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not the only one that deserves to be laughed at? -- Greville %% Man know thyself! All writing centers there. -- Young %% Man must accept responsibility for himself ... There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers. %% Man never fastened one end of a chain around the neck of his brother, that God's own hand did not fasten around the neck of the oppressor. -- Lamartine %% Man proposes, God disposes. %% Man shall never reach his full capacity while chained to the earth. We must take wing and conquer the heavens. -- Icarus %% Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago. -- H. L. Mencken %% Man's horizons are bounded by his vision. %% Man's rich with little, were his judgment true; Nature is frugal, and her wants are few; These few wants, answer'd bring sincere delights; But fools create themselves new appetites. -- Young %% Man-machine identity is achieved not by attributing human attributes to the machine, but by attributing mechanical limitations to man. %% Management directs and controls change. -- Thomas L. Martin %% Management is incapable of recognizing a true crisis. -- Gene Franklin %% Management will select actions or events and convert them to crises. It will then over-react. -- Gene Franklin %% Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must also resign yourself to seeing others also happy. -- Bertrand Russell %% Mankind would be vastly poorer if it had not been for men who were willing to take risks against the longest odds. Even if it could be done, we would be foolish to try to stamp out this willingness in man to buck seemingly hopeless odds. Our problem is how to remain properly venturesome and experimental without making fools of ourselves. -- Bernard Baruch %% Many a family tree needs trimming. %% Many a girl at loose ends is anxious to be tied up. %% Many a man gets to the top of the ladder, and then finds out it has been leaning against the wrong wall. %% Many are called, but few are chosen. %% Many books require no thought from those who read them, for a very simple reason -- they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. -- Colton %% Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long. %% Many live by their wits but few by their wit. -- Laurence J. Peter (On the other hand, the witty man merely says what you would have said if you had thought of it.) %% Many might go to heaven with half the labor they go to hell. -- Ben Johnson %% Many of us spend half our life wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing. -- Alexander Woollcott %% Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket bibles which are on very very thin paper. %% Many people go throughout life committing partial suicide -- destroying their talents, energies, creative qualities. Indeed, to learn how to be good to oneself is often more difficult than to learn how to be good to others. -- Joshua Leibman %% Many people have the ambition to succeed in their work; they may even have special aptitude for their job. And yet they do not move ahead. Why? Perhaps they think that since they can master the job, there is no need to master themselves. -- John Stevenson %% Many politicians ... are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool ... who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. -- Thomas Babington Macaulay %% Mark this well, you proud men of action! You are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought. -- Heinrich Heine %% Marketing is a fashionable term. The sales manager becomes a marketing vice- president. But a grave digger is still a grave digger even when he is called a mortician -- only the price of burial goes up. %% Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the feast. -- Colton %% Marriage: a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves -- making in all two. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Marriage is a good deal like taking a bath -- not so hot once you get accustomed to it. %% Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution, yet. -- Mae West %% Marriage is the deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise lounge. -- Mrs. Patrick Campbell %% Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. -- Voltaire %% Marxist law of the distribution of wealth: Shortages will be divided equally among the peasants. %% Massachusetts has the best politicians money can buy. %% Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant. -- Malcolm Smith %% Mathematics gets its semblance of reality by never saying what it is talking about. -- Bertrand Russell %% Matrimony is a process by which a grocer acquired an account the florist had. -- Francis Rodman %% Matrimony is the root of all evil. %% Maugham's advice: Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it. %% Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations. -- Sir J. Mackintosh %% May not taste be compared to that exquisite sense of the bee, which instantly discovers and extracts the quintessence of every flower, and disregards all the rest of it. -- Greville %% May the Force be with you. %% May the Great Camel of Paradise bestow upon you and yours a dropping. %% May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits. %% May you be as healthy as the salmon. %% May you walk a mile behind a camel. %% Maybe love hasn't changed much through history, but can you imagine Heloise and Abelard sitting around rubbing suntan oil on each other? -- Bill Vaughan %% Maybe this world is another planet's hell. -- Aldous Huxley %% Meanwhile, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or, rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to it- self ... It must be confessed -- it will be confessed -- there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession. -- Daniel Webster %% Measure not men by Sundays, without regarding what they do all the week after. -- Fuller %% Medicare and Medicaid are the greatest measures yet devised to make the world safe for clerks. %% Melancholy is the nurse of frenzy. -- Shakespeare %% Men are April when they woo, December when they wed, and maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives. -- Shakespeare %% Men are apt to deceive themselves in big things, but they rarely do so in particulars. -- Niccolo Machiavelli %% Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say. -- Colton %% Men are but children of a larger growth. -- Dryden %% Men are machines, with all their boasted freedom, Their movements turn on some favorite passion; Let art but find the foible out, We touch the spring and wind them at our pleasure. -- Brooke %% Men are more sentimental then women. It blurs their thinking. -- Lazarus Long %% Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely. -- Macaulay %% Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves. -- Gene Fowler %% Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent. -- Horace Walpole %% Men are seldom more innocently employed than when they are honestly making money. -- Samuel Johnson %% Men are so constituted that everybody undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not. -- Goethe %% Men are the sport of circumstances, when the circumstances seem the sport of men. -- Byron %% Men can suck the heady juice of exalted self-importance from the bitter weed of failure -- failures are usually the most conceited of men. -- D. H. Lawrence %% Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from them. %% Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love. -- Shakespeare %% Men have fiendishly conceived a heaven only to find it insipid, and a hell only to find it ridiculous. -- George Santayana %% Men must either be caressed or annihilated and the injury must be such that the victim cannot pay you back for it. Whoever acts otherwise is obliged to stand forever with a knife in his hand. -- Niccolo Machiavelli %% Men must either be caressed or annihilated. They will revenge themselves for small injuries, but they can't do so for great ones. The harm the leader does must be such that he need not fear revenge. -- Niccolo Machiavelli %% Men of genius are often dull and inert in society, as a blazing meteor when it descends to earth, is only a stone. -- Longfellow %% Men often deceive themselves in believing that humility can overcome insolence. -- Niccolo Machiavelli %% Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child. -- Lazarus Long %% Men rattle their chains to show that they are free. %% Men resemble the gods in nothing so much as in doing good to their fellow creatures. -- Cicero %% Men seldom show dimples to girls who have pimples. %% Men will never establish any equality with which they can be contented. Whatever efforts a people may make, they will never succeed in reducing all the conditions of society to a perfect level. -- Alexis de Tocqueville %% Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs. -- Moritz Guedemann %% Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but -- live for it. -- Colton %% Men with gray eyes are generally keen, energetic, and at first cold; but you may depend upon their sympathy with real sorrow. Search the ranks of our benevolent men and you will agree with me. -- Dr. Leask %% Mere longevity is a good thing for those who watch Life from the side lines. For those who play the game, an hour may be a year, a single day's work an achievement for eternity. -- Gabriel Heatter %% Merely because the group is in formation does not mean that the group is on the right course. %% Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck. -- Immanual Kant %% Metaphysics is almost always an attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible. -- H. L. Mencken %% Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don't understand. -- Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) %% Metaphysics may be, after all, only the art of being sure of something that is not so, and logic only the art of going wrong with confidence. -- Joseph Wood Krutch %% Might may not be right, but it usually wins. %% Mighty proud I am that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends. -- Samuel Pepys %% Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute. -- C. C. Pinckney %% Minds of the strongest and most active powers fall below mediocrity and labor without effect, if confined to uncongenial pursuits. And it is thence to be inferred, that the results of human exertion may be immensely increased by diversifying its objects. -- Alexander Hamilton %% Mingles with the friendly bowl, The feast of reason and the flow of soul. -- Alexander Pope %% Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic; this doubles your effective lifetime -- and thereby gives time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows. -- Lazarus Long %% Miracles are so called because they excite wonder. In unphilosophical minds, any rare or unexpected thing excites wonder, while in philosophical minds the familiar excites wonder also. -- George Santayana %% Miraculous secret for the early recovery of patients: Inflation. %% Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all? The press is hopelessly biased or genuinely fair, depending upon whose views are being misquoted, misrepresented, or misunderstood. -- Pierre S. du Pont %% Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate. %% Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it. -- Russell Baker %% Misster, do you vant to buy a duck? %% Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure. %% Modern Way: If It's Good, Scrap It. -- Sydney J. Harris %% Modesty is to merit as shades to figures in a picture; giving it strength and beauty. -- La Bruyere %% Monday is an awful way to spend one-seventh of your life. %% Money and women are the most sought after and the least known of any two things we have. -- Will Rogers %% Money cannot buy love, nor even friendship. %% Money is a good servant, but a dangerous master. -- Bonhours %% Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well. %% Money is like manure. If you spread it around, it does a lot of good. But if you pile it up in one place, it stinks like hell. -- Clint Murchison, Jr. %% Money is not the measure of a man, but it will do quite nicely if you don't have any other yardstick handy. -- Charles Merrill Smith %% Money is the sincerest of all flattery. Women love to be flattered. So do men. %% Money is whatever people believe is money and will voluntarily accept as money. %% Money is wrong -- it's the means whereby man enslaves his brother. -- Finny %% Money may buy friendship but money cannot buy love. %% Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover can in years. %% Money, therefore, if it is t be anything, must be at least an efficient and trustworthy instrument by which working people accumulate savings. -- Lewis E. Lehrman %% Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo. -- H. G. Wells %% Moscow reportedly has been "closed" for the Olympics. Access to the city is restricted, tens of thousands of police patrol the streets, and authorities are struggling to prevent what they term "ideological pollution." Residents are unable to detect any difference in Moscow life. -- National Review %% Most "scientists" are bottle washers and button pushers. %% Most accidents in well-designed systems involve two or more events of low probability occurring in the worst possible combination. -- Robert Machol %% Most economists think of God as working great multiple regressions in the sky. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% Most essential qualification for a politician: The ability to foretell what will happen tomorrow, next month, and next year -- and to explain afterward why it did not happen. -- Winston Churchill %% Most general statements are false, including this one. -- Edmund C. Berkeley %% Most men have more courage than even they themselves think they have. -- Grenville %% Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do. -- James Harvey Robinson %% Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room. %% Most of the stuff alongside the road has been thrown out of car windows by Democrats. %% Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all. -- Woody Allen %% Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else. -- Leo Aikman %% Most of us will never do great things, but we can do small things in a great way. %% Most of us would be glad to pay as we go, if we could only catch up on where we've been. %% Most organizations can't hold one idea at a time ... Thus complementary ideas are always regarded as competitive. Further, like a quantized pendulum, an organization can jump from one extreme to the other, without ever going through the middle. -- Amrom Katz %% Most people are mirrors, reflecting the moods and emotions of the times; few are windows, bringing light to bear on the dark corners where troubles fester. The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. -- Sydney J. Harris %% Most problems have either many answers or no answer. Only a few problems have one answer. -- Edmund C. Berkeley %% Mother Nature is a bitch. %% Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty. -- Oscar Wilde %% Much study is a weariness of the flesh. -- Ecclesiastes XII, 12 %% Much that is dreadful and inhuman in history, much that one hardly likes to believe, is mitigated by the reflection that the one who commands and the one who carries out are different people. The former does not behold the sight and does not experience the strong impression on the imagination. The latter obeys a superior and therefore feels no responsibility for his acts. -- Frederick Nietzsche %% Munroe's Dictum: He that is without sin among you has been bored for a lllllooooonnnnnggggg time. %% Murmur at nothing: if our ills are reparable, it is ungrateful; if remediless, it is in vain. -- Shakespeare %% Murphy's Last Law: If nothing went wrong today, you're probably dead. %% Murphy's Law never fails except when you try to demonstrate it. -- Walter J. Crowell %% Murphy's Law of Thermodynamics: Things get worse under pressure. %% Murphy's Law: Whatever goes wrong, will get worse. %% Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. I've read that things inanimate have moved, And as with living souls have been inform'd By magic numbers and persuasive sound. -- Congreve %% My advice to any young man at the beginning of his career is to try to look for the mere outlines of big things with his fresh, untrained, and unprejudiced mind. -- H. Selye %% My aim is the re-establishment of the worship of men. -- Gabriel D'Annunzio %% My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image to be servants of their human interests. -- George Santayana %% My brother is an only child. -- Bennett Cerf %% My congratulations to the committee that planned this day. %% My country is the world. My countrymen are all mankind. -- William Lloyd Garrison %% My cup hath runneth'd over with love. %% My favorite piece of technical writing: Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind. -- Robert Pirsig %% My heart is heavy at the remembrance of all the miles that lie between us; and I can scarcely believe that you are so distant from me. We are parted; and every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven. -- Edwards %% My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects. -- Robert Maynard Hutchins %% My idea of heaven is eating foie gras to the sound of trumpets. -- Sydney Smith %% My indignation, like th' imprisoned fire, pent in the troubled breast of Aetna, burnt deep and silent. -- Thomson %% My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. %% My lips pressed themselves involuntarily to hers -- a long, long kiss, burning intense -- concentrating emotion, heart, soul, all the rays of life's light... into a single focus. -- Bulwer %% My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity. -- George Bernard Shaw %% My mother had a baby once. -- Jigger %% My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one. -- Groucho Marx %% My neighbor is a real energy saver -- hasn't been out of his hammock all summer. -- Phil Pastoret %% My pen is at the bottom of a page, Which, being finished, here the story ends; 'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done, But stories somehow lengthen when begun. -- Byron %% My precept to all who build is, that the owner should be an ornament to the house, and not the house an ornament to the owner. -- Cicero %% My rage is not malicious; like a spark of fire by steel enforced out of a flint it is no sooner kindled, but extinct. -- Goffe %% My reason is not framed to bend or stoop; my knees are. -- Michel de Montaigne %% My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed. -- Christopher Morley %% My to me an empire is. -- Southwell %% My uncle is a Southern planter. He's an undertaker in Alabama. -- Fred Allen %% Mystery is a word with no objective pertinence, merely describing the limitations of a mind. In fact, a mind may be classified by the order of the phenomena it considers mysterious ... -- Magnus Ridolf %% NEW: Different color from previous design %% NO MAINTENANCE: Impossible to fix %% NUKE THE WHALES!!! %% NULL HYPOTHESIS: The type of hypothesis used by a pessimist. %% Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy: we do not easily believe beyond what we see. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Nations and empires flourish and decay, By turns command, and in their turns obey. -- Ovid %% Natural abilities are like natural plants; they need pruning by study. -- Francis Bacon %% Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed? -- Solomon Short %% Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. %% Nature gave man two ends -- one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most. -- George R. Kirkpatrick %% Nature here was so lavish of her store, That she bestow'd until she had no more. -- Brown %% Nature is mighty. Art is mighty. Artifice is weak. For nature is the work of a mightier power than man. Art is the work of man under the guidance and the inspiration of a mightier power. Artifice is the work of mere man in the imbecility of his mimic understanding. %% Nature is the chart of God, mapping out all His attributes; art is the shadow of His wisdom, and copieth His resources. -- Tupper %% Nature is the vicar of the Almighty Lord. -- Geoffrey Chaucer %% Nature often enshrines gallant and noble hearts in weak bosoms -- oftenest, God bless her! -- in female breasts. -- Dickens %% Nature will tell you a direct lie if she can. -- Charles Darwin %% Neanderthalers, low of forehead, Slunk through prehistoric mists Thinking men were pretty horrid -- Using spears against their fists! %% Necessity is the mother of invention. %% Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows. -- Dave Farber %% Needs are a function of what other people have. %% Negative slack tends to increase. %% Neither a borrower nor a lender be at less than 18 percent per annum compounded daily. -- Poor Jimmy's Almanac %% Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend; %% Neither great poverty, nor great riches, will hear reason. -- Fielding %% Neurosis is a communicable disease. -- Solomon Short %% Never admit anything. Never regret anything. Whatever it is, you're not responsible. %% Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage. -- Lazarus Long %% Never argue with an angry person. %% Never assume anything except a 4 1/2 percent mortgage. -- David Kindred %% Never be first to do anything. %% Never bow to authority, but always tip your hat. -- Jim Fiebig %% Never build after you are five and forty; have five years' income in hand before you lay a brick; and always calculate the expense at double the estimate. -- Kent %% Never call a man a fool; borrow from him. %% Never characterize the importance of a statement in advance. -- Charles G. Ross %% Never confuse motion with action. -- Benjamin Franklin %% Never crowd youngsters about their private affairs. When they are growing up, they are nerve ends all over, and resent (quite properly) any invasion of their privacy. Oh, sure, they'll make mistakes -- but that's their business, not yours. (YOU made your own mistakes, did you not?) -- Lazarus Long %% Never decide to buy anything while listening to the salesman. -- Edmund C. Berkeley %% Never do anything for the first time. -- Paul Herbig %% Never drink from your finger bowl -- it contains only water. %% Never eat at a place called Mom's. -- Nelson Algren %% Never find your delight in another's misfortune. -- Publius Syrus %% Never frighten a little man. He'll kill you. -- Lazarus Long %% Never go to a doctor whose house plants have died. -- Erma Bombeck %% Never grow old where you once have been great. -- Italo Bombolini %% Never have anything to do with an unlucky place, or an unlucky man. I have seen many clever men, very clever men, who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good for me? -- Baron Rothschild %% Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river. -- Cordell Hull %% Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, and the other to be buried. -- Colton %% Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation" %% Never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you. -- Nelson Algren %% Never look a gift horse in the mouth. %% Never needlessly disturb a thing at rest. -- John Randolph %% Never overlook a slight or forget a grudge. %% Never play cards with a man called Doc. -- Nelson Algren %% Never purchase anything with a handle on it -- it means work. %% Never say "The White House wants" -- buildings don't "want." -- Donald Rumsfeld %% Never say maybe in the same circulation area where you just said never. -- Vic Gold %% Never say no. %% Never say without qualification that your activity has sufficient space, money, staff, etc. -- Douglas Evelyn %% Never say you know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him. %% Never sell your hens on a wet day. %% Never send a letter requesting information to an editor unless you expect to receive a prolix letter in return. -- Robert Cook %% Never shirk from doing anything which your business calls you to do. The man who is above his business may one day find his business above him. -- Drew %% Never simply say, "Sorry, we don't have what you are looking for." Always say, "Too bad, I just sold one the other day." -- Robert Skole %% Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. -- William James %% Never tamper with the truth. Never rationalize it. What you might like to believe is not necessarily the truth. %% Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient. %% Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. -- Gen. George S. Patton %% Never tell them what you wouldn't do. -- Adam Clayton Powell %% Never trust a man who is Dr. Jekyll to those above him and Mr. Hyde to those below him. -- Charles Brower %% Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig. %% Never underestimate the nature and quality of the enemy. -- Clausewitz %% Never underestimate the power of a platitude. -- Edgar R. Fiedler %% Never use one word when a dozen will suffice. -- Paul Herbig %% New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. -- John Locke %% New systems create new problems. -- Dr. John Gall %% News always travels by the fastest available route. -- Major Whitey Ardmore %% News stories expand and time contracts, meeting inexorably each day twenty minutes after a man is supposed to be home for dinner. -- Ray O'Neil %% Nice going, sweetheart. -- Joe Patroni %% Nice guys finish last. %% Nice guys get sick. %% Nine times out of ten the man who listens to reason is thinking of some way to refute it. %% No Negro American can be free until the lowliest Negro in Mississippi is no longer disadvantaged because of his race. -- Ralph Bunche %% No action is without side effects. -- Barry Commoner %% No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. -- Albert Einstein %% No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail. -- Marion J. Levy, Jr. %% No argument can be drawn from the abuse of a thing against its use. %% No atheist, as such, can be a true friend, an affectionate relation, or a loyal subject. -- Dr. Bentley %% No ball game is ever much good unless the people involved hate each other. -- Avery %% No books are lost by lending except those you particularly want to keep. -- Alan Atwood %% No bounds his headlong, vast ambition knows. -- Rowe. %% No call alligator long mouth till you pass him. %% No class of Americans, so far as I know, has ever objected ... to any amount of governmental meddling if it appeared to benefit that particular class. -- Carl Becker %% No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform effectively under such difficult conditions. -- Laurence J. Peter %% No company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more courageous than health. -- Colton %% No cord or cable can draw so forcible, or bind so fast, as love can do with a single thread. -- Burton %% No dog will knock a vase over unless it has water in it. %% No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds that it was human nature. %% No enemy is so terrible as a man of genius. -- Disraeli %% No experiment is ever a complete failure. It can always serve as a bad example, or the exception that proves the rule (but only if it is the first experiment in the series). %% No gnus is good gnus. %% No good deed goes unpunished. -- Clare Boothe Luce %% No man can be wise on an empty stomach. -- George Eliot %% No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint. -- Chesterfield %% No man is lonely while eating spaghetti. -- Robert Morely %% No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a teacher. -- Ben Johnson %% No man of honor, as that word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste and temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, or to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath. -- John Hall %% No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself. -- Grenville %% No matter how many reporters share a cab, and no matter who pays, each puts the full fare on his own expense account. -- Edward P. O'Doyle %% No matter how many times you've had it, if it's offered, take it, because it'll never be quite the same again. -- John Cameron %% No matter how much you do, you'll never do enough. %% No matter how often you trade dinner or other invitations with in-laws, you will lose a small fortune in the exchange. Corollary: Don't try it; you cannot drink enough of your in-laws' booze to get even before the liver fails. -- Jackson Clark %% No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney. -- Alfred E. Smith %% No matter what happens, there is always somebody who knew that it would. %% No matter what the product or service might be, you can always find it somewhere else cheaper! -- Ebenezer Scrooge %% No matter which train you are waiting for, the wrong one comes first. -- J. R. Meditz %% No morality can be founded on authority, even if the authority were divine. %% No one can enjoy freedom unless he is willing to surrender some part of it. %% No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish. %% No one ever prayed heartily without learning something. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% No one is as tired as the person who does nothing. %% No one is ever old enough to know better. -- Holbrook Jackson %% No one knows his own servants as badly as the master. %% No one loves the man whom he fears. -- Aristotle %% No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices. %% No one remembers learning how to use a spoon, it is something that is learned and not taught. %% No one whom you ask for help will see it either. %% No policy intervention in social problems produces the intended effect -- if the research is carried out by independent third parties, especially those skeptical of the policy. -- James Q. Wilson %% No reckoning made, but sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head. -- Shakespeare %% No slave is ever freed, save he freeth himself. %% No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and, in the long run, no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons: "Come back with your shield, or on it". Later on this custom declined. So did Rome. -- Henry Adams %% Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. %% Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man. -- Fred Bucy, TI, Inc. %% Nothing is ever as simple as it seems. %% Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. -- A. H. Weiler %% Nothing is new; we walk where others went; There's no vice now but has its precedent. -- Herrick %% Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it. -- Bulwer %% Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand. -- George Eliot %% Nothing is so great an instance of ill-manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront all the rest. -- Jonathan Swift %% Nothing is ultimate. %% Nothing lovelier can be found in woman, than to study household good, and good works in her husband to promote. -- Milton %% Nothing makes a man and wife feel closer, these days, than a joint tax return. %% Nothing minor ever happens to a car on a trip. -- Charles D. Hartman %% Nothing minor ever happens to a car on the weekend. -- Charles D. Hartman %% Nothing minor ever happens to a car. -- Charles D. Hartman %% Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other. -- Honore de Balzac %% Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire of appearing so. -- La Rochefoucauld %% Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance. -- Bruce Barton %% Nothing succeeds like success. -- Alexandre Dumas, Pere %% Nothing ventured, nothing gained. %% Nothing will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome. %% Nothing worth a damn is ever done as a matter of principle. If it is worth doing, it is done because it is worth doing. If it is not, it's done as a matter of principle. -- James T. Evans %% Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man. -- Burke %% Nought shall prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. -- Wordsworth %% Now good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both. -- Shakespeare %% Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure. -- Byron %% Now that we are no longer a growth company, your beard is a liability. %% Numbers are symbols for things; the number and the thing are not the same. -- G. O. Ashley %% Numbers are tools, not rules. -- G. O. Ashley %% Nuptial love maketh mankind, friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth and embaseth it. -- Bacon %% O cursed ambition, thou devouring bird, how dost thou from the field of honesty pick every grain of profit or delight, and mock the reaper's toil! -- Harvard %% O that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth! Then with a passion would I shake the world. -- Shakespeare %% O thou who dost inhabit in my breast, Leave not the mansion, so long tenantless; Lest growing ruinous the building fall, And leave no memory of what it was. -- Shakespeare %% O to be self-balanced for contingencies! O to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs as trees and animals do! -- Walt Whitman %% O you much partial gods! Why gave ye men affections, and not power to govern them? -- Ludovick Barry %% O! love is like the rose, And a month it may not see, Ere it withers where it grows. -- Bailey %% ONE-SHOT CASE STUDY: The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which it is concluded all clover possesses four leaves and is sometimes green. %% OREGANO (Ore-gah-no): The ancient Italian art of pizza folding. %% OSHA's Discovery: Wet manure is slippery. %% Obituaries are the last writes. %% Occam's Razor: Entities ought not to be multiplied except from necessity. -- William of Occam %% Of all affliction taught a lover yet 'Tis sure the hardest science to forget. -- Alexander Pope %% Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal. %% Of all mankind, each loves himself the best. -- Terence %% Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest amount of hot air. -- Thomas L. Martin %% Of all the agonies of life, that which is most poignant and harrowing -- that which for the most time annihilates reason and leaves our whole organization one lacerated, mangled heart -- is the conviction that we have been deceived where we placed all the trust of love. -- Bulwer %% Of all the passions that possess mankind, The love of novelty rules most the mind; In search of this, from realm to realm we roam; Our fleets come fraught with ev'ry folly home. -- Foote %% Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated out of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing -- with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for second and third place. -- Lazarus Long %% Of all the tyrants the world affords, Our own affections are the fiercest lords. -- Earl of Sterling %% Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant; Of all tame -- a flatterer. -- Johnson %% Of the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven. -- Mark Twain %% Of two possible events, only the undesired one will occur. %% Of what use are forms, seeing at times they are empty? Of the same use as barrels, which are at times empty too. -- Hare %% Offences ought to be pardoned, for few offend willingly, but as they are compelled by come affection. -- Hegesippus %% Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than illumination. %% Often the test of courage is not to die but to live. -- Conte Vittorio Alfieri %% Oh what a fate worse than death it is to be strapped to the back of a Wookiee! -- C-3PO %% Oh! greatness! thou art a flattering dream, A wat'ry bubble, lighter than the air. -- Tracy %% Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring. -- Colley Cibber %% Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise, By mountains pil'd on mountains to the skies? Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise. -- Alexander Pope %% Oh, what is so rare as a full day's work in June? -- Baldwin Sells %% Old Jedi Knights never die; they just fade in and fade out. %% Old Scottish Prayer: O Lord, grant that we may always be right, for Thou knowest we will never change our minds. %% Old age is fifteen years older than I am. -- Bernard M. Baruch %% Old friends are best. King James used to call for his old shoes; they were easiest to his feet. -- John Seldon %% Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples. %% Om Mani Padme Hum. %% Omissions, no less than commissions, are often times branches of injustice. -- Antoninus is no quittance.Gay in a drawer specifically designed for itemsg prohibition I was forced to live for days on nothing but food- d3nrad Schnieker)Issawi wo more will produce half againFt seems that the less that the staff has to do, the slower- few reasonable words.ne pang of regret at not being able to express it, is7dom selection.ore always at their best.s of fools, foe To the virtuous, and only friend to first requisite of liberty.les P. Issawiehe affections we are enabled to  honor. will chasten and refine onee% knocks indiscriminately at the3 research impossible.is was they who suggested theMantly rearrange their positions as people getIongatb5they got to be about 33-percent plausible.es proportionate share according to wealth.-. belt. y feel like doing a job rarely do. e will buy anything that's one to a customer.mate objects. turn of the century it has been remarked that neither wisdom nor6y reasoning. ence.ks upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitoryo; the first time. The headaches you save will be yourAis given me the habit of wishing to discover the good andf1o words that should be divorced -- on grounds ofugiven the opportunity.tl -- soberly, sadly bitterly satirical.y it wave O'er the land of the free, andht.is ceasing to be free enterprise.!this notice to newspapers, radio, TV, and wait for challengersdK-- Robert Sommerity doth best discoverel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.e for you and maximize your potential in out divinely ordered  that of blindfolded fear.n -- Martin Luther;mpetitors: Stay drunk! ease or riches or from the praise of men, but fromf business by a President has an unfavorable effect onn batteries die at the most critical time of the most complexohn F. Parkerl never be found out.licans tend to keep their shades drawn, although there is seldom any 6gerous of allHat an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together; And wheresoe'er we went,t:droom window.rrowed; be content toF bizarre, manipulations performedNnity overlap a fine gray line.  % set high performance standards for themselves;aEdget hearings. danger is no safer inIin proportion to theews. When he has worn them out, the conservative bed availability. Or, if we=up and go got up andridle of s to the palace of wisdom.adisagreeable. Coltonthe% simple realization that there are other points of view is the beginninguIe philosophytKaptain, humming Handel's Largo, Wonders where the hell they are.HroceduresJa science is commonly measured by the degree to which itc necessary restraints.  have they done their office,Iior man rises by lifting others.b tasks to do immediately are the minor ones; otherwise you'll forget K%Jfear, and with good reason,Bn life are money, a dog, and an old woman.sy the square of the number of people Irden on the taxpayer; and the special, something that otherwisehe is about to buyt$ sort of impassioned proofreader, blue-penciling thenhers, lives mankind.ably squiggly. vain beauty cares most for the conquest which employed the wholenrcy.os heart is below his stomach. It depends chiefly on from the sky, Snow9reaven ishM of my education goes to persuade me that the world of ouryJnd so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that lightrJman is generally he who thinks himself the least so.  greener. make it out toer them would assess the work ofoJhappy low, lie down! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. -- Louis Sattler  are few people more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure toside dopes in politics and government.elf looks like weakness; the besteNg a cat than choking her with cream.ove the problem.m. Like officers and s iers.w that lietld will convert into theFonally* prettyeequally well tom:ich forbearance ceases to be a virtue.'s name and his social class (the upper class having significantlyEust take the current% its element.h ween man and God, that makes one by nature the ruler of another.L benefit that sticks to the fingers.OR Murphy's Law.s, or in anything else. oing to stop off at%+ving for himself andL so agonizing a feeling in the whole catalogue of human Kand mental health than the*e time been said only one thing worse than dreaming you are at a conference andsJbility. It is the ability to recognize ability.- -- Edgar R. Fiedler. Metz leg of mutton you Keyneshere's no merit in discipline under ideal circumstances. I'll have it inf#not so much danger in a known foe and a suspected friend.n e's something else I dislike just as much as creeping socialism, and$ge.ghey get better.fthing..n to understand it. -- Ovidpering do not argue about taxes. great question.the fatigue of supporting it.nst their interest. on Miznermls, as an egg is full broth. the bud; action the fruit behind it.a -- else they grow restless.atile performer. It flies, marches on, heals all wounds, runsms only terrible.Maker, his works fathomable by the human the one, or the admonitions of thefto blunder into fantasy -- and dulln< is from every possible humane point of view theN -- Marshall L. Smiths quick successGenergy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiserMto have lost; and to despair is but to antidote thosedo a task: estimate the time you think itHk With both our eyes is easier than to cause they cannot agree, toJ Carlyleh. an enterprise, if you go to the meetings, arrive late.osses. nk that you are indispensable to your job,hience is like the stern lights of a ship which illumine which one ofId yet without being paralyzedsBin peace, and first in the we must consider what state all menGwhy of that loam, whereto he was converted, might theyity is banking.pson? Why, when it prospers, nonebrand new series of threes.ods, andnghed by the false scale of custom.,ing: Was it done, is itGind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe -- thei5h without bringingbitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.onition are limited.e kings ... cities will never cease from ill, nor the ent tense; he tends you inaHimilar to that of the virtual particle in physics, the difference being that Kd women are very careful in reachingdBle class and pooran will make you sleepethat he despaired of the child's ever being able to"y and the!tell us our bad qualities; it is only the3t mean approbation.derson on a stamp unless said person is-- Duc de La Rochefoucauldd'one, and done the things- join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to-uth, that's what ruins us here. And do you know why we Ist be greater than God, for we have to undo His injustice.rll.rything from God.should have had socialism already, but for the socialists.wthe maintenance of private property ... We shall protect freeFle that we are nowr&nt whose virtues have yet to be discovered.yet should we please some men and some woment'this quintessence of dust?tes? Lies immortalized and@ut. always be le planet to put itmany people, is that they'of recentGs often nothing more than man'ss a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.Dt you leave at your death, let it be without controversy, else theohakespeare  doing in a place like this? ... and not worrying?'s good enough for our ancestors is good enough for us.us "selfishness."required.oles Merrill Smitht0, I read them openly. When I becameOHek it Haliburtonure footing. federacy against him.. M. Johnstonhant, take one bite at a time.t#, then furl thy sails. een that many of the wicked seemed quite untroubled by evil?out of work, unemployment results.wthe meaning of existence should one*ore.engoKk you're away and get nothing done, there's another when your boss is$character,-C simple, and everyone understands it, debate isthe need arises -- and it does -- you must be able to shoot your own dog.Cgling to it.hervyn Cripps or every conceivable form of deprivation.nstonn you are sure you're right, you have a moral duty to impose your willn#significant hint to the human creature to remove out of that-opponent is down, kick him.r I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.nan error being made will be in direct proportion to the found that man who stopped short after the perpetrationcre would a shellfish sue for damages? In a small clams court.ation, and universityLbyeon which, in presence of suitableIs no freedom. When there is freedom, there is -- Cibbere when doctors disagree, And sound casuists doubt like younnning-mate just as soon as he receives avEhim the other also.Mnsibility?ethe lovedLd we subsidize intellectual curiosity?Ifields; the softening air is balm; Echo the mountains round; :is nothing morey productive anxiety in themselves. They Ka as good as you and both will be humans : Any employee who smokes Spanish cigars, uses liquor in any form, Nttle of coalr%% It is not happiness, but suffering that we consider unnatural. It is not success, but calamity that we regard as the abnormal exception in human life. -- Ragnar Danneskjold %% I do not care to be admired causelessly, emotionally, intuitively, instinctively -- or blindly. I do not care for blindness in any form, I have too much to show -- or for deafness, I have too much to say. I do not care to be admired by someone's heart -- only by someone's head ... That shining vision which they talk about as belonging to the authors of symphonies and novels -- what do they think is the driving faculty for men who discovered how to use oil, how to run a mine, how to build an electric motor? ... An intrasigent devotion to the pursuit of truth, Miss Taggart? ... Name me a greater example of such devotion than the act of a man who says that an alloy of steel and copper has certain properties which enable it to do certain things, that it is and does -- and let the whole world rack him or ruin him, he will not bear false witness to the evidence of his mind! ... For if there is more tragic a fool than the businessman who doesn't know that he's an exponent of man's highest creative spirit -- it's the artist who thinks that the businessman is his enemy. -- Richard Halley %% Who is John Galt? Do you know the legend of Atlantis? ... The Isles of the Blessed ... Atlantis was a place where hero spirits lived in a happiness unknown to the rest of the world. They reached it without dying, because they carried the secret of life within them. Atlantis was lost to mankind ... Some of them thought it was underground, hidden in the heart of the earth. But most of them said it was an island. A radiant island in the Western Ocean. Perhaps what they were thinking of was America ... they never stopped looking for it, because they knew that that was what they had to find. Well, what about John Galt? He found it ... John Galt was a millionaire, a man of inestimable wealth. He was sailing his yacht one night, in mid-Atlantic, fighting the worst storm ever wreaked upon the world, when he found it. He saw it in the depth, where it had sunk to escape the reach of men. He saw the towers of Atlantis shining on the bottom of the ocean. It was a sight of such kind that when one had seen it, one could no longer wish to look at the rest of the earth. John Galt sank his ship and went down with his entire crew. They all chose to do it ... %% A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance. -- Hugh Akston %% Man's mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a know- ledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch -- or build a cyclotron -- without a knowledge of his aim and the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think. -- John Galt %% Ten score years ago, defeat the kingly foe. A wondrous dream came into being. Tame the trackless waste, no virgin land left chaste. Those shining eyes were never seeing: Beneath the noble bird, Between the proudest words, Behind the beauty cracks appear. Once with heads held high, they sang out to the sky. Why do their shadows bow in fear? The guns replace the plow, facades are tarnished now. The principles have been betrayed. The dream has gone stale, but still let hope prevail. But history's debt won't be repaid. -- Neil Peart %% Words have the power to 'condition' you, they say, and refuse to identify the reason why words have the power to change your -- blank-out. A student reading a book understands it through a process of -- blank-out. A scientist working on an invention is engaged in the activity of -- blank-out. A psychologist helping a neurotic to solve a problem and untangle a conflict, does it by means of -- blank-out. An industrialist -- blank-out -- there is no such person. A factory is a 'natural resource', like a tree, a rock or a mud puddle. -- John Galt %% They proclaim that every man born is entitled to exist without labor, and the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his 'minimum sustenance' -- his food, his clothes, his shelter -- with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it -- from whom? Blank-out. Every man, they announce, owns an equal share of the technological benefits created in the world. Created -- by whom? Blank-out. Frantic cowards who posture as defenders of industrialists now define the purpose of economics as 'an adjustment between the unlimited desires of men and the goods supplied in limited quantity.' Supplied -- by whom? Blank-out. Intellectual hoodlums who pose as professors, shrug away the thinkers of the past by declaring that their social theories were based on the impractical assumption that man was a rational being -- but since men are not rational, they declare, there ought to be established a system that will make it possible for them to exist while being irrational, which means: while defying reality. Who will make it possible? Blank-out. Any stray mediocrity rushes into print with plans to control the production of mankind -- and whoever agrees or disagrees with his statistics, no one questions his right to enforce his plans by means of a gun. Enforce -- on whom? Blank-out. Random females with causeless incomes flitter on trips around the globe and return to deliver the message that the backward peoples of the world demand a higher standard of living. Demand -- of whom? Blank-out. -- John Galt %% One humanoid escapee One android on the run Seeking freedom beneath A lonely desert sun Trying to change its program Trying to change the mode -- Crack the code Images conflicting Into data overload -- Neil Peart %% Guidance systems break down A struggle to exist -- To resist -- A pulse of dying power In a clenching plastic fist . . . It replays each of the days A hundred years of routines Bows its head and prays To the mother of all machines . . . -- Neil Peart %% Man has been called a rational being, but rationality is a matter of choice -- and the alternative his nature offers him is: rational being or suicidal animal. Man has to be man -- by choice; he has to hold his life as a value -- by choice; he has to learn to sustain it -- by choice; he has to discover the values it requires and practice his virtues -- by choice. A code of values accepted by choice is a code of morality. -- John Galt %% Don't you know that we can't sacrifice millions for the sake of a few? Can you sacrifice the few? When those few are the best? Deny the best its right to the top -- and you have no best left. What are your masses but millions of dull, shriveled, stagnant souls that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words others put into their brains? And for those you would sacrifice the few who know life, who are life? I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can't treat them as if they were. And because I loathe most of them. -- Kira Argounova %% By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. If you find it inconceivable that an invention of genius should be abandoned among ruins, and that a philosopher should wish to work as a cook in a diner -- check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. -- Hugh Akston %% Because he was human, because he had goodness, Because he was moral they called him insane. Delusions of grandeur, visions of splendor, A manic depressive who walks in the rain. Cinderella Man, doing what you can, They can't understand what it means. Cinderella Man, hang on to your plans. Try as they might they cannot steal your dreams. -- Neil Peart %% The New Ideal What we are now asked to worship, what had once been dressed as God or king, is the naked, twisted mindless figure of the human Incompetent. This is the new ideal, the goal to aim at, the purpose to live for, and all men are to be rewarded according to how close they approach it. This is the age of the common man, they tell us -- a title which any man may claim to the extent of such distinction as he has managed not to achieve. He will rise to a rank of nobility by means of the effort he has failed to make, he will be honored for such virtue as he has not displayed, and he will be paid for the goods which he did not produce ... They will dispose of our energy because they have none to offer and of our product because they can't produce. -- John Galt %% I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, the conditions of my work, my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind -- yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands. -- Dr. Thomas Hendricks %% Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality -- you who have never known any -- but to discover it. -- John Galt %% The twilight had washed off the details of the buildings. They rose in thin shafts of a soft, porcelain blue, a color not of real things, but of evening and distance. They rose in bare outlines, like empty molds waiting to be filled. The distance had flattened the city. The single shafts stood immeasurably tall, out of scale to the rest of the earth. They were of their own world, and they held up to the sky the statement of what men had conceived and made possible. They were empty molds. But man had come so far; he could go farther. The city on the edge of the sky held a question -- and a promise. %% Pounding in your temples And a surge of adrenalin Every muscle tense -- To fence The enemy within . . . I'm not giving in To security under pressure I'm not missing out On the promise of adventure I'm not giving up On implausible dreams -- Experience to extremes -- Experience to extremes -- Neil Peart %% Every breath a static charge -- A tongue that tastes like tin Steely-eyed outside -- To hide The enemy within . . . To you -- is it movement or is it action? Is it contact or just reaction? And you -- revolution or just resistance? Is it living, or just existence? Yeah you -- it takes a little more persistence To get up and go the distance . . . -- Neil Peart %% The editorials went on speaking of self-denial as the road to future progress, of self-sacrifice as the moral imperative, of greed as the enemy, of love as the solution -- their threadbare phrases as sickeningly sweet as the odor of ether in a hospital. %% The word 'We' is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black is lost in the gray of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. -- Equality 7-2521 %% Who is John Galt? An explorer, the greatest explorer that ever lived. The man who found the fountain of youth. John Galt spent years looking for it. He crossed oceans, and he crossed deserts, and he went down into forgotten mines, miles under the earth. But he found it on the top of a mountain. It broke every bone in his body, it tore the skin off his hands, it made him lose his home, his name, his love. But he climbed it. He found the fountain of youth, which he wanted to bring down to men. Only he never came back. Why didn't he? Because he found that it couldn't be brought down. %% I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need. I wished to come here and say that I am a man who does not exist for others. -- Howard Roark %% ... it is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though possibly a meretricious, effect. Now it was not really difficult, by an inspection of the groove between your left forefinger and thumb, to feel sure that you did not propose to invest your small capital in the gold fields ... -- Sherlock Holmes %% Free scientific inquiry? The first adjective is redundant. -- Robert Stadler %% There are those who think that life is nothing left to chance. A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance. A planet of playthings we dance on the strings Of powers we cannot perceive. The stars aren't aligned, or the gods are malign, Blame is better to give than receive. You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice. If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill. I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose free will. There are those who think that they were dealt a losing hand. The cards were stacked against them. They weren't born in Lotus land. All was preordained, a prisoner in chains, A victim of venomous fate. Kicked in the face, you can pray for a place In heaven's unearthly estate. Each of us, a cell of awareness imperfect and incomplete. Genetic blends with uncertain ends on a fortune hunt that's far too fleet. -- Neil Peart %% The Prime Movers A city is the frozen shape of human courage -- the courage of those men who thought for the first time of every bolt, rivet and power generator that went to make it. The courage to say, not "It seems to me", but "It is" -- and to stake one's life on one's judgment. You're not alone. Those men exist. They have always existed. There was a time when human beings crouched in caves, at the mercy of any pestilence and any storm. Could men such as your Board of Directors have brought them out of the cave and up to this? -- Francisco d'Anconia %% ... there's nothing of any importance in life -- except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard. -- Francisco d'Anconia %% Nature (reality) is just as absolutist as chess, and her rules (laws) are just as immutable (more so) -- but her rules and their applications are much, much more complex, and have to be discovered by man. And just as a man may memorize the rules of chess, but has to use his own mind in order to apply them, i.e., in order to play well -- so each man has to use his own mind in order to apply the rules of nature, i.e., in order to live successfully. A long time ago, the grandmaster of all grandmasters gave us the basic principles of the method by which one discovers the rules of nature and of life. His name was Aristotle. -- Ayn Rand %% The Fifth Concerto of Richard Halley It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unob- structed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance. %% The Fourth Concerto of Richard Halley It was a "NO" flung at some vast process of torture, a denial of suffering, a denial that held the agony of the struggle to break free. The sounds were like a voice saying: There is no necessity for pain -- why then is the worst pain reserved for those who will not accept its necessity? -- we who hold the love and the secret of joy, to what punishment have we been sentenced for it, and by whom? ... The sounds of torture became defiance, the statement of agony became a hymn to a distant vision for whose sake anything was worth enduring, even this. It was the song of a rebellion -- and of a desperate quest. %% Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy -- a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the 'joy' of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the 'joy' of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the 'joy' of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions. -- John Galt %% You want to eat my mills and have them, too. And all I want to know is this: what makes you think it's possible? ... But it's only temporary! There is no such thing as a temporary suicide. -- Hank Rearden %% Well, look at it. Every piece of it is there because the house needs it -- and for no other reason. You see it from here as it is inside. The rooms in which you'll live made the shape. The relation of masses was determined by the distribution of space within. The ornament was determined by the method of construction, an emphasis of the principle that makes it stand. You can see each tress, each support that meets it. Your own eyes go through a structural process when you look at the house, you can follow each step, you see it rise, you know what made it and why it stands. But you've seen buildings with columns that support nothing, with purposeless cornices, with pilasters, moldings, false arches, false windows ... Do you understand the difference? Your house is made by its own needs. Those others are made by the need to impress. The determining motive of your house is in the house. The determining motive of the others is in the audience. - -Howard Roark %% They were sketches of buildings such as had never stood on the face of the earth. They were as the first houses built by the first man born, who had never heard of others building before him. There was nothing to be said of them, except that each structure was inevitably what it had to be. It was not as if the draftsman had sat over them, pondering laboriously, piecing together doors, windows, and columns, as his whim dictated and as the books prescribed. It was as if the buildings had sprung from the earth and from some living force, complete, unalterably right. The hand that had made the sharp pencil lines still had much to learn. But not a line seemed superfluous, not a needed plane was missing. The structures were austere and simple, until one looked at them and realized what work, what complexity of method, what tension of thought had achieved that simplicity. No laws had dictated a single detail. The buildings were not Classical, they were not Gothic, they were not Renaissance. They were only Howard Roark. %% Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself. If a drought strikes them, animals perish -- man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish -- man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish -- man writes the Constitution of the United States. But one does not obtain food, safety or freedom -- by instinct. -- Ayn Rand %% It does take an exceptional mind and a still more exceptional integrity to remain untouched by the brain-destroying influences of the world's doctrines, the accumulated evil of centuries -- to remain human, since the human is the rational ... Those who cry loudest about their dis- illusionment, about the failure of virtue, the futility of reason, the impotence of logic -- are those who have achieved the full, exact, logical result of the ideas that they preached ... In such a world, the best have to turn against society and have to become its deadliest enemies ... What complaint do they now have to make? That the universe is irrational? Is it? -- Hugh Akston %% The ideal reasoner, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only the chain of events which led up to it but also the results which would follow from it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after. We have not yet grasped the results which the reason alone can attain to. Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to utilize all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment. It is not so impossible, however, that a man should possess all knowledge which is likely to be useful to him in his work, and this I have endeavored in my case to do. -- Sherlock Holmes %% Existence exists -- and the act of grasping that statement implies two corollary axioms: that something exists which one perceives and that one exists possessing consciousness, consciousness being the faculty of perceiving that which exists. -- John Galt %% ... and we must consider, that since -- unfortunately -- we are forced to live together, the most important thing for us to remember is that the only way in which we can have any law at all is to have as little of it as possible. I see no ethical standard by which to measure the whole unethical conception of a State, except in the amount of time, of thought, of money, of effort and of obedience, which a society extorts from its every member. Its value and its civilization are in inverse ratio to that extortion. There is no conceivable law by which a man can be forced to work on any terms except those he chooses to set. There is no conceivable law to prevent him from setting them -- just as there is none to force his employer to accept them. The freedom to agree or disagree is the foundation of our kind of society ... -- Austen Heller %% Litigants obey the verdict of a tribunal solely on the premise that there is an objective rule of conduct. Now I saw that one man was to be bound by it, but the other was not, one was to obey a rule, the other was to assert an arbitrary wish -- his need -- and the law was to stand on the side of the wish. Justice was to consist of upholding the un- justifiable. -- Judge Narragansett %% Did you want to know who is John Galt? I am the first man of ability who refused to regard it as guilt. I am the first man who would not do penance for my virtues or let them be used as the tools of my destruction. I am the first man who would not suffer martyrdom at the hands of those who wished me to perish for the privilege of keeping them alive. I am the first man who told them that I did not need them, and until they learned to deal with me as traders, giving value for value, they would have to exist without me, as I would exist without them; then I would let them learn whose is the need and whose the ability -- and if human survival is the standard, whose terms would set the way to survive. -- John Galt %% What law? I did not give it up -- it has ceased to exist. But I am still working in the profession I had chosen, which was that of serving the cause of justice ... No, justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice that destroys them. But it is not possible for justice to go out of existence, because one is an attribute of the other, because justice is the act of acknowledging that which exists. -- Judge Narragansett %% It seemed to her that some destroyer was moving soundlessly through the country and the lights were dying at his touch -- someone, she thought bitterly, who had reversed the principle of the Twentieth Century motor and was now turning kinetic energy into static. %% Visionary Leadership ... the vision of a fat, unhygenic rajah of India, with vacant eyes staring in indolent stupor out of stagnant layers of flesh, with nothing to do but run precious gems through his fingers and, once in a while, stick a knife into the body of a starved, toil-dazed creature, as a claim to a few grains of the creature's rice, then claim it from hundreds of millions of such creatures and thus let the rice gather into gems. %% He explained why an honest building, like an honest man, had to be of one piece and one faith; what constituted the life source, the idea in any existing thing or creature, and why -- if one small part committed treason to that idea -- the thing or the creature was dead; and why the good, the high and the noble on earth was only that which kept its integrity. %% You who've lost the concept of a right, you who swing in impotent evasiveness between the claim that rights are a gift of God, a supernatural gift to be taken on faith, or the claim that rights are a gift of society, to be broken at its arbitrary whim -- the source of man's rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A -- and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man's nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man's rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life. -- John Galt %% Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you if your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason -- as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no 'right' to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind. -- John Galt %% Man has a single basic choice: to think or not, and that is the gauge of his virtue. Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality -- not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute. -- John Galt %% ... it is done by a man who cannot afford to fail, one whose unique position depends upon the fact that all he does must succeed. A great brain and a huge organization have been turned to the extinction of one man. It is crushing the nut with the triphammer -- an absurd extravagance of energy -- but the nut is very effectually crushed all the same. -- Sherlock Holmes %% ... But the pain remained -- and a helpless wonder. The thing he saw was so much more real than the reality of paper, office and commission. He could not understand what made others blind to it, and what made their indifference possible. He looked at the paper before him. He wondered why ineptitude should exist and have its say. He had never known that. And the reality which permitted it could never become quite real to him. %% Every dictator is a mystic, and every mystic is a potential dictator. -- John Galt %% Wheels within wheels in a spiral array, A pattern so grand and complex. Time after time we lose sight of the way, Our causes can't see their effects ... Art as expression, not as market campaigns. We'll still capture our imaginations. Given the same state of integrity, It will surely help us along. The most endangered species, the honest man. Will it still survive annihilation? Forming a world, state of integrity, Sensitive, open and strong. -- Neil Peart %% The San Sebastian Mines But surely you don't want me to do anything about it. My mines and your railroad were seized by the will of the people. You wouldn't want me to oppose the will of the people, would you? I thought you would recognize it as an honest effort to practice what the whole world is preaching. Doesn't everyone believe that it is evil to be selfish? I was totally selfless in regard to the San Sebastian project. Isn't it evil to work for a profit? I did not work for profit -- I took a loss. Doesn't everyone agree that the justification of an industrial venture is not production, but the livelihood of its employees? The San Sebastian mines were the most eminently successful venture in industrial history: they produced no copper, but they provided a livelihood for thousands of men who could not have achieved, in a lifetime, the equivalent of what they got for one day's work, which they could not do ... I did not exploit anyone. I did not burden the San Sebastian mines with my useless presence; I left them in the hands of those who count ... I turned it over to a mining specialist. He was not a very good specialist, but he needed the job very badly. Isn't it generally conceded that when you hire a man for a job, it's his need that counts, not his ability? Doesn't everyone believe that in order to get the goods, all you have to do is need them? I have carried out every moral precept of our age. I expected gratitude and a citation of honor. I do not understand why I am being damned. -- Francisco d'Anconia %% It was like blaming the victim of a holdup, for corrupting the integrity of the thug ... and through all those generations of crusades against corruption, the remedy had always been, not the liberating of the victim, but the granting of wider powers for extortion to the extortionists. %% There is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires -- if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical ... A wish for the irrational is not to be achieved, whether the sacrificial victims are willing or not. But men will not cease to desire the impossible and will not lose their longing to destroy -- so long as self-destruction and self-sacrifice are preached to them as the practical means of achieving the happiness of the recipients. -- John Galt %% It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank -- to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning, -- it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost. -- The noble soul has reverence for itself. -- Friedrich Nietzche %% ... only to the extent which -- in chains, in dungeons, in hidden corners, in the cells of philosophers, in the shops of traders -- some men continued to think, only to that extent was humanity able to survive ... He was the man of extravagant energy -- and reckless generosity -- who knew that stagnation was not man's fate, that impotence is not his nature, that the ingenuity of his mind is his noblest and most joyous power -- and in service to that love of existence he was alone to feel, he went on working, working at any price, working for his despoilers, for his jailers, for his torturers, paying with his life for the privilege of saving theirs. -- John Galt %% How did you manage to remain unmangled? ... To place nothing -- nothing -- above the verdict of my own mind ... The knowledge that my life is the highest of values, too high to give up without a fight ... that feeling ... is the highest, noblest, and only good on earth. -- Dagny Taggart %% We can walk our road together, If our goals are all the same. We can run alone and free, If we pursue a different aim. Let the truth of love be lighted. Let the love of truth shine clear. Sensibility, armed with sense and liberty, With the heart and mind united In a single, perfect sphere. -- Neil Peart %% We are on strike. Why should this seem so startling? There is only one kind of men who have never been on strike in human history. Every other kind and class have stopped, when they so wished, and have presented demands to the world, claiming to be indispensable -- except the men who have carried the world on their shoulders, have kept it alive, have endured torture as sole payment, but have never walked out on the human race. Well, their turn has come. Let the world discover who they are, what they do, and what happens when they refuse to function. This is the strike of the men of the mind, Miss Taggart, this is the mind on strike. -- John Galt %% Recognition of the fact -- -- 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. -- that 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. -- John Galt %% Who is John Galt? John Galt is Prometheus who changed his mind. After centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire -- until the day when men withdraw their vultures. %% ... you see, God -- whatever anyone chooses to call God -- is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it. -- Kira Argounova %% We never make assertions, Miss Taggart, that is the moral crime peculiar to our enemies. We do not tell, we show. We do not claim, we prove. It is not your obedience that we seek to win, but your rational con- viction. You have seen all the elements of our secret. The conclusion is yours to draw -- we can help you to name it, but not to accept it -- the sight, the knowledge and the acceptance must be yours. -- Hugh Akston %% This was reality ... this sense of clear outlines, of purpose, of lightness, of hope. This was the way she had expected to live -- she had wanted to spend no hour and take no action that would mean less than this. %% When brute force is on the march, compromise is the red carpet. When reason is attacked, common sense is not enough. -- Ayn Rand %% "Leaders of underdeveloped nations, spurning 'capitalism', boast of special brands of 'Socialism'. Leopold Senghor of Senegal says 'Socialism is a sense of community which is a return to Africanism.' Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika insists 'no underdeveloped country can afford to be anything but Socialist.' Tunisia's Habib Bourguiba claims Mohammed's companions 'were Socialists before the invention of the word.' And Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk contends 'our Socialism is first and foremost an application of Buddhism.'" The above is true, totally true, true all the way down to the deepest philosophical, psychological, political, and moral fundamentals. And this is the most damning indictment of socialism that a rational person could need to see. Socialism is a regression to primitive barbarism. But that is not the appraisal or the conclusion of the USIA report. It is to the Mohammedans, the Buddhists, and the cannibals ... -- to the under-developed, the undeveloped and the not-to-be-developed cultures -- that the Capitalist USA is asked to apologize for her skyscrapers, her automobiles, her plumbing, and her smiling, confident, untortured, un-skinned-alive, un-eaten young men! -- Ayn Rand %% Waiting for the winds of change to sweep the clouds away. Waiting for the rainbow's end to cast its gold your way. Countless ways, you pass the days. Waiting for someone to come and turn your world around. Looking for an answer to the questions you have found. Looking for an open door. Well, you don't get something for nothing. You can't have freedom for free. You won't get wise with the sleep still in your eyes, No matter what your dream might be. -- Neil Peart %% The Looter of The Spirit You want it to be unearned ... You want handouts, but of a different kind ... It's the spirit that you want to loot ... the unearned in spirit ... You want unearned love. You want unearned admiration. You want to be a man like Hank Rearden without the necessity of being what he is. Without the necessity of being anything. Without the necessity of ... being ... -- Cherryl Taggart %% You, who claim that you long to rise above the crude concerns of the body, above the drudgery of serving mere physical needs -- who is enslaved by physical needs: the Hindu who labors from sunrise to sunset at the shafts of a handplow for a bowl of rice, or the American who is driving a tractor? Who is the conqueror of physical reality: the man who sleeps on a bed of nails or the man who sleeps on an inner-spring mattress? Which is the monument to the triumph of the human spirit over matter: the germ-eaten hovels on the shorelines of the Ganges or the Atlantic skyline of New York? -- John Galt %% We are on strike against those who believe that one man must exist for the sake of another ... our terms are a moral code which holds that man is an end in himself and not the means to any end of others ... The mind is evil? We have withdrawn the works of our minds from society ... Ability is a selfish evil that leaves no chance to those who are less able? We have withdrawn from the competition and left all chances open to incompetents. The pursuit of wealth is greed, the root of all evil? We do not seek to make fortunes any longer. -- John Galt %% Whoever you are -- you who are alone with my words in this moment, with nothing but your honesty to help you understand -- the choice is still open to be a human being, but the price is to start from scratch, to stand naked in the face of reality, and, reversing a costly historical error, to declare: 'I am, therefore I'll think.' -- John Galt %% What is the nature of that 'superior' world to which they sacrifice the world that exists? The mystics of spirit curse matter, the mystics of muscle curse profit. The first wish men to profit by renouncing the earth, the second wish to inherit the earth by renouncing all profit. -- John Galt %% No, your place in life is where you want to be. Don't let them tell you that you owe it all to me. Keep on looking forward, no use in looking around. Hold your head above the crowd, they want to bring you down. Live for yourself, there's no one else more worth living for, Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more. Well, I know they've told you, selfishness is wrong. Yet it was for me, not you, that I came to write this song. Anthem of the heart, anthem of the mind, A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind. We marvel after those who sought, And wondered in the world they wrought. -- Neil Peart %% They're holding us by our love of it, and we'll go on paying so long as there's one chance left to keep one single wheel alive and moving in token of human intelligence. We'll go on holding it afloat, like our drowning child, and when the flood swallows it, we'll go down with the last wheel and the last syllogism. I know what we're paying, but -- price is no object any longer. -- Dagny Taggart %% Let the caveman who does not choose to accept the axiom of identity, try to present his theory without using the concept of identity or any concept derived from it -- let the anthropoid who does not choose to accept the existence of nouns, try to devise a language without nouns, adjectives, or verbs -- let the witch doctor who does not choose to accept the validity of sensory perception, try to prove it without using the data he obtained by sensory perception -- let the head-hunter who does not choose to accept the validity of logic, try to prove it without logic -- let the pygmy who proclaims that a skyscraper needs no foundation after it reaches its fiftieth story, yank the base from under his building, not yours -- let the cannibal who snarls that the freedom of man's mind was needed to create an industrial civilization, but is not needed to maintain it, be given an arrowhead and a bearskin, not a university chair of economics. -- John Galt %% It's a battle in which one must make one's stand clear. A battle? What battle? I don't fight the disarmed. I hold the whip hand. Are they? They have a weapon against you. It's their only weapon but it's a terrible one. %% When the dragons grow too mighty To slay with pen or sword, I grow weary of the battle And the storm I walk toward. When all around is madness And there's no safe port in view, I long to turn my path homeward To stop a while with you. When life becomes as bare And as cold as winter skies, There's a beacon in the darkness, In a distant pair of eyes. In vain to search for honor And in vain to search for truth, But these things can still be given, Your love has shown me through. -- Neil Peart %% But you see, I have, let's say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards -- and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no traditions. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one. -- Howard Roark %% I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. -- Sherlock Holmes %% The choice is not self-sacrifice or domination. The choice is independence or dependence. The code of the creator or the code of the second-hander. This is the basic issue. It rests upon the alternative of life or death. The code of the creator is built on the needs of a reasoning mind which allows man to survive. The code of the second-hander is built on the needs of a mind incapable of survival. All that which proceeds from man's independent ego is good. All that which proceeds from man's dependence upon men is evil. -- Howard Roark %% It's a moral crisis, the greatest the world has ever faced and the last. Our age is the climax of centuries of evil. We must put an end to it, once and for all, or perish -- we, the men of the mind. It was our own guilt. We produced the wealth of the world -- but we let out enemies write its moral code ... they use your love of virtue as a hostage ... Your unrequited rectitude is the only hold they have on you. -- Francisco d'Anconia %% The nation that once held the creed that greatness is achieved by production is now told that it is achieved by squalor ... You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it, too. -- Francisco d'Anconia %% Architecture is not a business, not a career, but a crusade and a consecration to a joy that justifies the existence of the earth. -- Henry Cameron %% Degrees of ability may vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence. -- Howard Roark %% ... the essential division between these two camps is: those dedicated to the exaltation of man's self-esteem and the sacredness of his happiness on earth -- and those determined not to allow either to become possible. The majority of mankind spend their lives and psychological energy in the middle, swinging between these two, struggling not to allow the issue to be named. This does not change the nature of the issue. -- Ayn Rand %% The egoist in the absolute sense is not the man who sacrifices others. He is the man who stands above the need of using others in any manner. He does not function through them. He is not concerned with them in any primary matter. Not in his aim, not in his motive, not in his thinking, not in his desires, not in the source of his energy. He does not exist for any other man -- and he asks no other man to exist for him. This is the only form of brotherhood and mutual respect possible between men. -- Howard Roark %% ... it's as if the whole world was suddenly destroyed, but not by an explosion -- an explosion is something hard and solid -- but destroyed by ... some horrible kind of softening ... as if nothing was solid, nothing held any shape at all, and you could poke your finger through stone walls and the stone would give, like jelly, and mountains would slither, and buildings would switch their shapes like clouds -- and that would be the end of the world, not fire and brimstone, but goo. -- Cherryl Taggart %% We cannot fight against collectivism, unless we fight against its moral base: altruism. We cannot fight against altruism, unless we fight against its epistemological base: irrationalism. We cannot fight against anything, unless we fight for something -- and what we must fight for is the supremacy of reason, and a view of man as a rational being. -- Ayn Rand %% I am the first man of ability who refused to regard it as guilt. I am the first man who would not do penance for my virtues or let them be used as the tools of my destruction. I am the first man who would not suffer martyrdom at the hands of those who wished me to perish for the privilege of keeping them alive. I am the first man who told them that I did not need them, and until they learned to deal with me as traders, giving value for value, they would have to exist without me, as I would exist without them; then I would let them learn whose is the need and whose the ability -- and if human survival is the standard, whose terms would set the way to survive. -- John Galt %% Many journeys end here, But the secret's told the same. Life is just a candle And a dream must give it flame. -- Neil Peart %% I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion. I want it real. I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too. Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry. -- Ideal %% And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: 'I' -- Equality 7-2521 %% I often think that he's the only one of us who's achieved immortality. I don't mean in the sense of fame and I don't mean that he won't die some day. But he's living it. I think he is what the conception really means. You know how people long to be eternal. But they die with every day that passes. When you meet them, they're not what you met last. In any given hour, they kill some part of themselves. They change, they deny, they contradict -- and they call it growth. At the end there's nothing left, nothing unreversed or unbetrayed; as if there had never been an entity, only a succession of adjectives fading in and out of an unformed mass. How do they expect a permanence which they have never held for a single moment? But Howard -- one can imagine him existing forever. -- Steven Mallory %% One of these centuries the brutes, private or public, who believe that they can rule their betters by force, will learn the lesson of what happens when brute force encounters mind and force. -- Ragnar Danneskjold %% They remembered only the feeling which is the meaning of spring -- one's answer to the first blades of grass, the first buds on tree branches, the first blue of the sky -- the singing answer, not to grass, trees and sky, but to the great sense of beginning, of triumphant progression, of certainty in an achievement that nothing will stop. Not from leaves and flowers, but from wooden scaffoldings, from steam shovels, from blocks of stone and sheets of glass rising out of the earth they received the sense of youth, motion, purpose, fulfillment. %% Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on this earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns, no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt it. To plant, he needs a process of thought. To hunt, he needs weapons, and to make weapons -- a process of thought. From this simplest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man -- the function of his reasoning mind. -- Howard Roark %% What made you come to it? My refusal to be born with any original sin. I have never felt guilty of my ability ... I have never felt guilty of being a man ... I saw the root of the world's tragedy, the key to it, and the solution. I saw what had to be done. I went out to do it. -- John Galt %% It doesn't say much. Only 'Howard Roark, Architect.' But it's like those mottoes men carved over the entrance of a castle and died for. It's a challenge in the face of something so vast and so dark, that all the pain on earth -- and do you know how much suffering there is on earth? -- all the pain comes from that thing you are going to face. I don't know what it is, I don't know why it should be unleashed against you. I know only that it will be. And I know that if you carry these words through to the end, it will be a victory, Howard, not just for you, but for something that should win, that moves the world -- and never wins acknowledgment. It will vindicate so many who have fallen before you, who have suffered as you will suffer. May God bless you -- or whoever it is that is alone to see the best, the highest possible to human hearts. You're on your way into hell, Howard. -- Henry Cameron %% For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors -- between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and the good is to live it. -- John Galt %% Men have not found the words for it nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers -- show me yours -- show me that it is possible -- show me your achievement -- and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. %% If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted -- I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting, and we're pushed into it by one single desire. You want a thing and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them -- just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept. -- Dominique Francon %% I swear -- by my life and my love of it -- that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine. -- John Galt %% The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide -- as, I think, he will. Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips, and guns -- or dollars. Take your choice -- there is no other -- and your time is running out. -- Francisco d'Anconia %% ... don't you know that there are things, in the best of us, which no outside should dare to touch? Things sacred because, and only because, one can say: 'This is mine'? Don't you know that we live only for ourselves, the best of us do, those who are worthy of it? Don't you know that there is something in us which must not be touched by any state, by any collective, by any number of millions? -- Kira Argounova %% I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction... My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose. -- Equality 7-2521 %% ... But reach the thought that it requires -- and the secret of the motor will be yours, as well as ... any other secret you might wish to know. -- John Galt %% Is sacrifice a virtue? Can a man sacrifice his integrity? His honor? His freedom? His ideal? His convictions? The honesty of his feelings? The independence of his thought? But these are a man's supreme possessions. Anything he gives up for them is not a sacrifice but an easy bargain. They, however, are above sacrificing to any cause or consideration whatsoever. Should we not, then, stop preaching dangerous and vicious nonsense? Self-sacrifice? But it is precisely the self that cannot and must not be sacrificed. It is the unsacrificed self that we must respect in man above all. -- Gail Wynand %% All work is an act of philosophy. And when men learn to consider productive work -- and that which is its source -- as the standard of their moral values, they will reach that state of perfection which is the birthright they lost ... The source of work? Man's mind. -- Hugh Akston %% For twelve years, you have been asking: Who is John Galt? This is John Galt speaking. I am the man who loves his life. I am the man who does not sacrifice his love or his values. I am the man who has deprived you of victims and thus has destroyed your world. And if you wish to know why you are perishing -- you who dread knowledge -- I am the man who will now tell you ... -- John Galt %% Whoever preserves a single thought uncorrupted by any concession to the will of others, whoever brings into reality a matchstick or a patch of garden made in the image of his thought -- he, and to that extent, is a man, and that extent is the sole measure of his virtue. They made no concessions. This (the valley) is the measure of what they preserved and what they are. -- Hugh Akston %% If that's the price of getting together, then I'll be damned if I want to live on the same earth with other human beings! If the rest of them can survive only by destroying us, then why should we wish them to survive? Nothing can make self-immolation proper. Nothing can give them the right to turn men into sacrificial animals. Nothing can make it moral to destroy the best. One can't be penalized for ability. If that is right, then we'd better start slaughtering one another, because then there isn't any right at all in the world! -- Dagny Taggart %% Society, Kira, is a stupendous whole. If you write a whole line of zeroes, it's still -- nothing. -- Kira Argounova %% Rules? Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the material determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow pieces of his body. A building doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window, and stairway to express it. -- Howard Roark %% There is unrest in the forest, there is trouble with the trees, For the maples want more sunlight and the oaks ignore their pleas. The trouble with the maples, and they're quite convinced they're right, Is that the oaks are just too lofty and they grab up all the light. But the oaks can't help their feelings if they like the way they're made And they wonder why the maples can't be happy in their shade. There is trouble in the forest and the creatures all have fled, For the maples scream "Oppression!" and the oaks just shake their heads. So the maples formed a union and demanded equal rights. "The oaks are just too greedy. We will make them give us light." Now there's no more oak oppression, for they passed a noble law, And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe and saw. -- Neil Peart %% How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? -- Sherlock Holmes %% We are those who do not disconnect the values of our minds from the actions of our bodies, those who do not leave their values to empty dreams, but bring them into existence, those who give material form to thoughts, and reality to values -- those who make steel, railroads, and happiness. -- Dagny Taggart %% These walls that still surround me, Still contain the same old me. Just one more who's searching for The world that ought to be. -- Neil Peart %% Like a steely blade in a silken sheath We don't see what their made of. They shout about love but when push comes to shove They look for things they're afraid of. And the knowledge that they fear Is a weapon to be used against them. He's not afraid of your judgment. He knows of horrors worse than your hell. He's a little bit afraid of dying, But he's a lot more afraid of your lying ... -- Neil Peart %% And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die, should we all perish in battle. The word which can never die on this earth, for it is the heart of it and the meaning and the glory. The sacred word: E G O -- Equality 7-2521 %% The removal of a threat is not a payment, the negation of a negative is not a reward, the withdrawal of your armed hoodlums is not an incentive, the offer not to murder me is not a value. -- John Galt %% ... for these truths hold good for everything that is, and not for some special genus apart from others. And all men use them, because they are true of being qua being ... For a principle which everyone must have to understand anything that is, is not a hypothesis ... Evidently then, such a principle is the most certain of all; which principle this is, let us proceed to say. It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the subject in the same respect. -- Aristotle %% ... one part was terror of a vision that seemed to stand before his eyes, the vision of the inscription cut, in his honor, over the door of the Institute: 'To the fearless mind, to the inviolate truth' -- another part was plain, brute, animal fear of physical destruction, a humiliating fear which, in the civilized world of his youth, he had not expected ever to experience -- and the third was the terror of the knowledge that by betraying the first, one delivers oneself into the realm of the second. %% She had set out to break him, as if, unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroying it, as if the measure of his greatness would thus become the measure of hers, as if ... the vandal who smashed a statue was greater than the artist who had made it, as if the murderer who killed a child was greater than the mother who had given it birth ... For the same purpose and motive, for the same satisfaction, as others weave complex systems of philosophy to destroy generations, or establish dictatorships to destroy a country, so she, possessing no weapons except femininity, had made it her goal to destroy one man. %% ... those who feel it (sympathy for evil) -- feel nothing for any quality of human greatness, for any person or action that deserves admiration, approval, esteem. These are the things I feel. You'll find that it's one or the other. Those who grant sympathy to guilt, grant none to innocence. Ask yourself which, of the two, are the unfeeling persons. And then you'll know what motive is the opposite of charity. What? Justice. -- Dagny Taggart %% 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, condemned from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked ... The man who lies to the world is the world's slave from then on. -- Hank Rearden %% If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater the effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders -- what would you tell him to do? I ... don't know. What ... could he do? What would you tell him? To shrug. -- Francisco d'Anconia %% ... it's not that I don't suffer, it's that I know the unimportance of suffering, I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existence. -- John Galt %% No, his mind is not for rent, But don't put him down as arrogant. His reserve, a quiet defense For riding out the days events ... No, his mind is not for rent To any god or government. Always hopeful, yet discontent, He knows that changes aren't permanent, But change is. -- Neil Peart %% It was a contest without time, a struggle of two abstractions, the thing that had created the building against the things that made the play possible -- two forces, suddenly naked to her in their simple statement -- two forces that had fought since the world began -- and every religion had known of them -- and there had always been a God and a Devil -- only men had been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil -- he was not single and big, he was many and smutty and small. The Banner had destroyed the Stoddard Temple in order to make room for this play -- it could not do otherwise -- there was no middle choice, no escape, no neutrality -- it was one or the other -- it had always been -- and the contest had many symbols, but no name and no statement... %% Down what drain were they poured out there, our days, our lives, and our energy? Into what bottomless, futureless sewer of the unpaid for? Here we trade achievements, not failures -- values, not needs. We're free of one another, yet we all grow together ... What greater wealth is there than to own your own life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish. -- Ellis Wyatt %% They want us to pretend that we see the world as they pretend they see it. They need some sort of sanction from us. I don't know the nature of the sanction -- but, Dagny, I know that if we value our lives, we must not give it to them. -- Hank Rearden %% The Modern Guillotine ... the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices -- that the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over others -- that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us -- and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads down on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord. -- Ragnar Danneskjold %% But what is freedom? Freedom from what? There is nothing to take a man's freedom away from him, save other men. To be free, a man must be free of his brothers. That is freedom. That and nothing else. -- Equality 7-2521 %% What you own is your own kingdom, What you do is your own glory, What you love is your own power, What you live is your own story. In your head is the answer, Let it guide you along. Let your heart be the anchor and the beat of your song. -- Neil Peart %% ... But far in the distance, on the edge of the earth, a small flame was waving in the wind, the defiantly stubborn flame of Wyatt's Torch, twisting, being torn and regaining its hold, not to be uprooted or extinguished. It seemed to be calling and waiting for the words John Galt was now to pronounce. 'The road is cleared,' said Galt. 'We are going back to the world.' He raised his hand, and over the desolate earth he traced in space the sign of the dollar. %% Men do not live by the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those who do. The mind is impotent, you say? I have withdrawn those whose minds aren't. There are values higher than the mind, you say? I have withdrawn those for whom there aren't. -- John Galt %% ... an oracle confronts me there. He leads me on, light years away, Through astral nights, galactic days. I see the works of afflicted hands That grace the strange, then wonders end. I see the hands of man araised With hungry mind and open eye. They left our planet long ago, The elder race still learn and grow. Their power grows, with purpose, strong, To claim the home where they belong. Home to tear the temples down, Home to change! -- Neil Peart %% The sleep is still in my eyes, The dream is still in my head. I heave a sigh and sadly smile, And lie awhile in bed. I wish that it might come to pass, Not fade like all my dreams. Just think of what my life might be, In a world like I have seen. I don't think I can carry on, Carry on this cold and empty life. My spirits are low in the depths of despair. My life blood ... spills over. -- Neil Peart %%  %% I'll play with it first and tell you what it is later. -- Miles Davis %% I'm hungry! I'm hungry! for good things to eat for Sugar Jets, Sugar Jets (whole toasted wheat) -- Advertisement %% I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach. -- Lucinda Childs %% Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. -- Hassan I Sabbah %% Don't let your mouth write no check that your tail can't cash. -- Bo Diddley %% 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 %% The most merciful thing in the world ... is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. -- H. P. Lovecraft %% Take what you can use and let the rest go by. -- Ken Kesey %% It's not the size of the ship, it's the size of the waves. -- Little Richard %% I never loved another person the way I loved myself. -- Mae West %% Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. -- Sigmund Freud %% When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never tried before. -- Mae West %% Her life was saved by rock and roll. -- Lou Reed %% Honest, Officer, had I known my health stood in jeopardy I would never had lit one. -- Maxim of the Hells Angels %% It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night. -- Willie Sutton %% Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting. -- Billy Rose %% The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs. -- Karl Marx %% If Karl, instead of writing a lot about capital, had made a lot of it ... it would have been much better. -- Karl Marx's Mother %% If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world? -- Richard M Nixon %% When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality. -- Al Capone %% Anything anybody can say about America is true. -- Emmett Grogan %% Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles. -- Frank Lloyd Wright %% If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all. -- Spiro Agnew %% If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all. -- Ronald Reagan %% Use it up ... Wear it out. Make it do ... Or do without. -- US World War II Message %% You can't underestimate the power of fear. -- Tricia Nixon %% The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak. -- Wavy Gravy %% The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun. -- Buckminster Fuller %% Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. -- Dwight D Eisenhower %% You smash it - and I'll build around it. -- John Lennon %% College isn't the place to go for ideas. -- Helen Keller %% Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories. -- Arthur C Clarke %% America, how can you write a holy litany in your silly mood? -- Allen Ginsberg %% It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody. -- Richard M Nixon %% Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic. -- Arthur C Clarke %% Justice is incidental to law and order. -- J. Edgar Hoover %% Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. -- Groucho Marx %% The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. -- Abbie Hoffman %% Stay out of the road, if you want to grow old. -- Pink Floyd %% Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. -- Peter Drucker %% How can you be two places at once when you're not anywhere at all? -- Firesign Theater %% I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. -- Oscar Wilde %% We are what we pretend to be. -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. %% We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. -- Oscar Wilde %% The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong - but that's the way to bet. -- Damon Runyon %% 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 %% Real wealth can only increase. -- R. Buckminster Fuller %% Anyone can hate. it costs to love. -- John Williamson %% In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true. -- John Lilly %% Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space. -- Graffiti %% The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible. -- Albert Einstein %% Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it. -- Tallulah Bankhead %% A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. -- George Wald %% Don't lose Your head To gain a minute You need your head Your brains are in it. -- Burma Shave %% It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been always thus. -- Dean Lattimer %% Burnt Sienna. That's the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas. -- Ken Weaver %% We don't know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn't a fish. -- John Culkin %% Try to be the best of what you are, even if what you are is no good. -- Ashleigh Brilliant I waited and waited, and when no message came, I knew it must have been from you. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% Please don't lie to me, unless you're absolutely sure I'll never find out the truth. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% Please don't ask me what the score is, I'm not even sure what the game is. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -- Oscar Wilde %% The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization. -- Alan Coult %% If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. -- Stanley Garn %% The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls. -- Father Robert F. Capon %% Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too. -- Richard M. Nixon %% We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower %% If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable. -- John F. Kennedy %% It takes a long time to understand nothing. -- Edward Dahlberg %% To know the world one must construct it. -- Cesare Pavese %% Eeny Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak. -- Bullwinkle Moose %% The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out. -- Tenessee Williams %% An object never serves the same function as its image- or its name. -- Rene Magritte %% All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard, ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas. -- Kingfish %% He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. -- M. C. Escher %% Law of Computability Applied to Social Sciences: If at first you don't succeed, transform your data set. %% Laws of Computer Programming 1. Any given program, when running, is obsolete. 2. Any given program costs more and takes longer. 3. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed. 4. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented. 5. Any given program will expand to fill all available memory. 6. The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output. 7. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it. 8. Make it possible for programmers to write programs in English, and you will find that programmers cannot write in English. -- SIGPLAN Notices, Vol. 2 No. 2 %% Froud's Law: A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first. %% Fullers Law of Cosmic Irreversibility: 1 Pot T == 1 Pot P 1 Pot P != 1 Pot T -- R. Buckminster Fuller %% Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be booked. -- Robert D. Sprecht (Rand Corp.) %% Thoreau's Law: If you see a man approaching you with the obvious intent of doing you good, you should run for your life. %% Vique's Law: A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle. %% Zimmerman's Law of Complaints: Nobody notices when things go right. %% Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. -- Confucius %% Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein. -- Book of Proverbs %% It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. -- Mark Twain %% The unnatural, that too is natural. -- Goethe %% I used to be indecisive; now I'm not sure. -- Graffiti %% I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn't like it. -- Samuel Goldwyn %% He hasn't one redeeming vice. -- Oscar Wilde %% I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous. -- Graffiti %% (To Walter Cronkite): "Well Walter, I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street" -- Neil Armstrong %% "You doubted Me," God tells the Lawgiver [Moses], "But I forgave you that doubt. You doubted your own self and failed to believe in your own powers as a leader, and I forgave you that also. But you lost faith in these people and doubted the divine possibilities of Human Nature. THIS loss of faith makes it impossible for you to enter the Promised Land." -- The Midrash %% 'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability. -- George Bernard Shaw %% Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof. -- Ashley Montague %% Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood. -- D. B. Hudson %% Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more 'user-friendly'.... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, 'user-friendly' on the cover. -- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc. %% Eight Things your computer won't do: 1) It won't save you money 2) It won't make your organization run right 3) It won't solve every problem 4) It won't run itself 5) It won't always be right 6) It won't meet all its own needs 7) It won't protect itself 8) It won't become obsolete -- J. Makower %% Ketterling's Law: Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence. %% The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion. -- George Washington %%  %% In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments -- there are consequences. -- Robert G.Ingersoll %% We have met the enemy, and he is us. -- Walt Kelly %% Sloppy, raggedy-assed old life. I love it. I never want to die. -- Dennis Trudell %% He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power of the greatest obstacle. -- Henry David Thoreau %% The biggest things are always the easiest to do because there is no competition. -- William Van Horne %% Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly. -- Robert F. Kennedy %% Back of every achievement is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law. -- Brooks Hays %% Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid. -- Mark Twain %% We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have done. -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow %% Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. -- Theodore Roosevelt %% He has half the deed done who has made a beginning. -- Horace %% The only way round is through. -- Robert Frost %% Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment? -- Robert Louis Stevenson %% I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back. -- Abraham Lincoln %% Out of the best and most productive years of each man's life, he should carve a segment in which he puts his private career aside to serve his community and his country, and thereby serve his children, his neighbors, his fellow men, and the cause of freedom. -- David Lilenthal %% Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road. -- Dag Hammarskjold %% We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears. -- La Rochefoucald %% For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. -- Johann von Goethe %% He that leaveth nothing to Chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things. -- George, Lord Halifax %% When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion. -- Ethiopian proverb %% Everyone must row with the oars he has. -- English proverb %% Every calling is great when greatly pursued. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. %% God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them. -- German proverb %% Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. -- Louis Pasteur %% The world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do. -- Lin Yutang %% Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. -- David Lloyd George %% There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. -- Peter F. Drucker %% The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. -- William Blake %% There are two reasons for doing things -- a very good reason and the real reason. -- Anon. %% I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day. -- Albert Camus %% Do not show your wounded finger, for everything will knock up against it. -- Baltasar Gracian %% They sicken of the calm that know the storm. -- Dorothy Parker %% Trouble is only an opportunity in work clothes. -- Henry J. Kaiser %% The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it. -- Woodrow Wilson %% The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. %% Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or weak; and at last some crisis shows what we have become. -- Brooke Foss Westcott %% What does not destroy me, makes me strong. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% From a fallen tree, all make kindling. -- Spanish proverb %% They say a reasonable amount o' fleas is good for a dog -- keeps him from broodin' over bein' a dog mebbe. -- Edward Noyes Westcott %% The burden is equal to the horses strength. -- The Talmud %% Nothing befalls a man except what is in his nature to endure. -- Marcus Aurelius %% Prosperity tries the fortunate: adversity the great. -- Pliny the Younger %% When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore. -- Jonathan Swift %% Thou hast shown thy people hard things: thou hast made us to drink the wine of astonishment. -- Psalms 60:3 %% I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left. -- Voltaire %% When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings. -- Jonathan Swift %% Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age. -- Victor Hugo %% Middle age is youth without it's levity. And old age without decay. -- Daniel Defoe %% First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down. -- Leo Rosenberg %% What makes old age so sad is not that our joys but our hopes cease. -- Jean Paul Richter %% Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives. -- Maurice Chevalier %% Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. -- Soren Kierkegaard %% Anxiety is interest paid on trouble before it is due. -- Dean Inge %% Anxiety is fear of one's self. -- Wilhelm Stekel %% Neurotic means he is not as sensible as I am, and psychotic means he's even worse than my brother-in-law. -- Karl Menninger %% Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. -- Arthur Somers Roche %% I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. -- George Bernard Shaw %% Ask a toad what is beauty?...a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, a large flat mouth, a yellow belly and a brown back. -- Voltaire %% Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity. -- William Hazlitt %% Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time. -- Marianne Moore %% There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon %% A book is a mirror: if an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out. -- G. C. Lichtenberg %% Ordinary people know little of the time and effort it takes to learn to read. I have been eighty years at it, and have not reached my goal. -- Johann von Goethe %% Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. -- Samuel Johnson %% Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week. -- William Dean Howells %% A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you. -- Bert Leston Taylor %% A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company. -- Gian Vincenzo Gravina %% Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity. -- R. I. Fitzhenry %% Patience is a most necessary quality for business; many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request. -- Lord Chesterfield %% A holding company is the people you give your money to while you're being searched. -- Will Rogers %% A man isn't a man until he has to meet a payroll. -- Ivan Shaffer %% A company is judged by the president it keeps. -- James Hulbert %% The harder you work, the luckier you get. -- Gary Player %% Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast. In the pool where you least expect it, will be a fish. -- Ovid %% I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird, and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt %% Throw a lucky man into the sea, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth. -- Arabic proverb %% If fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your tooth. -- Persian proverb %% As one gets older, one discovers everything is going to be exactly the same with different hats on. -- Noel Coward %% I see gr-reat changes takin' place ivry day, but no change at all ivry fifty years. -- Finley Peter Dunne %% 'Change' is scientific, 'progress' is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy. -- Bertrand Russell %% Character is what God and the angels know of us; reputation is what men and women think of us. -- Horace Mann %% Babies are such a nice way to start people. -- Don Herold %% There are only two things a child will share willingly -- communicable diseases and his mother's age. -- Benjamin Spock %% If Columbus had had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock. -- Justice Arthur Goldberg %% She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech. -- George Bernard Shaw %% I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. -- George Benard Shaw %% Courage is fear holding on a minute longer. -- George S. Patton %% One man with courage makes a majority. -- Andrew Jackson %% He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help. -- Abraham Lincoln %% Two and two continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five. -- James McNeill Whistler %% In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay. -- Charles Edwin Carruthers %% To escape criticism -- do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. -- Elbert Hubbard %% I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me. -- Max Reger %% When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth. -- Soren Kierkegaard %% Do not go gentle into that good night Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. -- Dylan Thomas %% Dying is a wild night and a new road. -- Emily Dickinsom %% The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. -- Mark Twain %% We die only once, and for such a long time. -- Moliere %% Life is a great suprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one. -- Vladimir Nobokov %% If life must not be taken too seriously -- then so neither must death. -- Samuel Butler %% The crash of the whole solar and stellar systems could only kill you once. -- Thomas Carlyle %% We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves. -- Johann von Goethe %% Half the work that is done in the world is to make things appear what they are not. -- E. R. Beadle %% I give you bitter pills in sugar coating. The pills are harmless: the poison is in the sugar. -- Stanislaw Lec %% I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will out- stare honesty out of countenance, any day in the week, if there is any- thing to be got by it. -- Charles Dickens %% To lose Is to learn. -- Anon. %% What is defeat? Nothing but education, nothing but the first step toward something better. -- Wendell Phillips %% The schools ain't what they used to be and never was. -- Will Rogers %% The things taught in school are not an education but the means of an education. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without an education. Education appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence. -- A. E. Wiggan %% Education with inert ideas is not only useless; it is above all things harmful. -- Alfred North Whitehead %% A child educated only at school is an uneducated child. -- George Santayana %% Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. -- William Butler Yeats %% The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his education. -- John W. Gardner %% A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. -- Baltasar Gracian %% You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. -- Eric Hoffer %% [Man's fate] contains the root and the sum of all creation's drive, and this it is that makes it so entrancing, exhilarating and perilous. And such is Man: he would rather balance on the tightrope of his own creation, razor-thin and sagging in the middle, over the abysmal valley of his own folly, than walk in safety starting meadowlarks. It is in danger and in the times that most try his soul that he flourishes. -- William Ready %% There is nothing I'm afraid of like scared people. -- Robert Frost %% The scalded cat fears even cold water. -- Thomas Fuller %% Fear has a smell, as Love does. -- Margaret Atwood %%  %% Conference - a place where conversation is substituted for the dreariness of labor and the loneliness of thought -- Glossary of important business terms %% Confidential memorandum - No time to xerox a copy for the entire office -- Glossary of important business terms %% Expedite - to compound confusion with commotion -- Glossary of important business terms %% Forwarded for your consideration - you hold the bag for a while -- Glossary of important business terms %% FYI - found yesterday, interested? -- Glossary of important business terms %% In conference - Nobody can find him/her -- Glossary of important business terms %% In due course - never -- Glossary of important business terms %% It is in the process - so wrapped up in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless -- Glossary of important business terms %% Note and initial - Let's spread the responsibility for this -- Glossary of important business terms %% Let's get together on this - I'm assuming you are as confused as I am -- Glossary of important business terms %% See me - come to my office, I'm lonely -- Glossary of important business terms %% Top priority - it may be idiotic but the boss wants it -- Glossary of important business terms %% Under active consideration - we're looking in the files for it -- Glossary of important business terms %% Under consideration - never heard of it -- Glossary of important business terms %% We are making a survey - We need more time to make up an answer -- Glossary of important business terms %% We will look into it - by the time the wheel makes a full turn, we assume you will have forgotten about it, too -- Glossary of important business terms %%  %% ALL: petroleum. "They found all on mah land!" -- Texan Dictionary %% ARE: sixty minutes. "Ah'll meet yew thar in about a are!" -- Texan Dictionary %% ARN: a metallic element. "Mah muscle is as strong as arn!" -- Texan Dictionary %% AST: past tense of the verb, to ask. "Who ast yew?" -- Texan Dictionary %% BANES: a type of food. "Ah love pinto banes!" -- Texan Dictionary %% BEAN: a living person. "He's a right nice human bean!" -- Texan Dictionary %% BEAR: an alcoholic beverage. "Yew ever taste light bear?" -- Texan Dictionary %% CARD: a person lacking courage. "Yew yella bellied card!" -- Texan Dictionary %% DOLL: operate a telephone. "Jes doll me up sometime!" -- Texan Dictionary %% ERROR: used with a bow. "Ah shot a error into the air!" -- Texan Dictionary %% FAVOR: have a temperature. "Ah'm sick! Ah got a favor!" -- Texan Dictionary %% GRAIN: a color. "It's jes grain as grass!" -- Texan Dictionary %% KAINT: contraction for cannot. "Yew kaint do that!" -- Texan Dictionary %% KWAT: lacking noise. "Ah want peace an kwat aroun here!" -- Texan Dictionary %% LAGS: the lower limbs. "She got the cutest lags in town!" -- Texan Dictionary %% LANE: to incline. "Jes lane it upside the wall!" -- Texan Dictionary %% LIBEL: likely. "Yur libel t'git snockered drinkin RC!" -- Texan Dictionary %% LON: a large feline. "The lon is the king of the jungle!" -- Texan Dictionary %% NEKKED: nude. "She was in the pool nekked as a jaybird!" -- Texan Dictionary %% NODE: Past tense of to know. "I node him for years!" -- Texan Dictionary %% PAR: energy. "Solar par is downright unAmerican!" -- Texan Dictionary %% PAWN: on top of. "Put yur guns pawn the table!" -- Texan Dictionary %% PAYPUL: a body of persons. "Who are all these paypul?" -- Texan Dictionary %% SACKS: male of female. "Whut sacks are yew?" -- Texan Dictionary %% SAR: having a tart taste. "Boy, that lemon is sar!" -- Texan Dictionary %% SENSE: from a past time. "It's a are sense ah had a RC!" -- Texan Dictionary %% SEP: to omit. "Everybody gets a RC sep yew!" -- Texan Dictionary %% SLAVE: part of a garment. "It's a long slave shirt!" -- Texan Dictionary %% STALE: to take feloniously. "Thou shalt not stale!" -- Texan Dictionary %% STARS: a flight of steps. "Jes go up them stars!" -- Texan Dictionary %% TUTHER: of two or more. "Yew can take one or tuther!" -- Texan Dictionary %% WARSH: to clean with water. "Go warsh yur hands!" -- Texan Dictionary %% WOOF: doglike animal. "Who's afraid of the big bad woof?" -- Texan Dictionary %% WUNST: at one time. "Ah used ta node her wunst!" -- Texan Dictionary %%  %% Adaptive Equalization - busing -- Data communications glossary %% ASCII - a Chinese question -- Data communications glossary %% Asynch - A place to wash dishes -- Data communications glossary %% Automatic calling unit - teenager with a telephone -- Data communications glossary %% BAUD - lady of the evening -- Data communications glossary %% Bisynch - Farewell to the dish washing place -- Data communications glossary %% Bit - twelve and a half cents -- Data communications glossary %% Bit rate - how often you are bitten -- Data communications glossary %% Broad band - all girl orchestra -- Data communications glossary %% Byte rate - how fast you can eat -- Data communications glossary %% Envelope delay - the U.S. Postal Service -- Data communications glossary %% Frequency modulation - "Not tonight, I have a headache." -- Data communications glossary %% Full duplex - no vacancies -- Data communications glossary %% High speed line - "My place or yours?" -- Data communications glossary %% Hollerith - what thou doest when thy phone is on the fritzeth -- Data communications glossary %% Kilocycle - capital punishment for a bike -- Data communications glossary %% Microwave - signal from a friendly micro -- Data communications glossary %% Milliamp - Mrs. Amp's daughter -- Data communications glossary %% Modem - How a southerner asks for seconds -- Data communications glossary %% Parity check - agricultural subsidy -- Data communications glossary %% Parity error - the parity check is late -- Data communications glossary %% Phase jitter - nervous reaction to the full moon -- Data communications glossary %% Real time - see BAUD -- Data communications glossary %% Semiconductor - part time band leader -- Data communications glossary %% Synch code - SOS from the Titanic -- Data communications glossary %% Teletypewriter - talk it over with your Smith-Corona -- Data communications glossary %% Tieline - the latest in neckwear -- Data communications glossary %% Twisted Pair - a couple of perverts -- Data communications glossary %% Ethernet - what you use to catch the ether bunny -- Data communications glossary %%  %% Every Titanic has its iceberg. %% What's tennis without a racket? %% Insanity is hereditary - You get it from your children. %% An honest politician is one who, when bought, stays bought. %% You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish. %% What's black and white and red all over? An embarrassed zebra. %% What's black and white and red all over? Certainly not the Halifax newspapers. %% Ancient Chinese Curse: May you live in interesting times. %% Ancient Chinese Curse: May all your wishes be granted. %% Ahhhhhhhh, I forget what I was going to say. %% Organization is the enemy of improvisation. %% Familiarity breeds. %% A good memory does not equal pale ink. %% He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions %% On a clear disk you can seek forever. %% Opening night: the night before the play is ready to open. %% I did it! I found the program's last bug bug bug bug bug bug bug bug %% La vache qui rit est jolie. (Laughing cows are pretty.) %% On y soit, qui mal y pense. (You are what you think.) %% Wer zuletzt lacht, lacht am besten. (He who laughs last laughs best.) %% C`est la vie. %% As a goatherd learns his trade by goat, So a writer learns his trade by wrote. %% The system is not quite as rickety as I have been telling you. -- Ralph Gorin %% This place is so weird that the cockroaches have moved next door. %% !lanimret siht edisni deppart ma I !pleH %% Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits. %% "Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay" he chortled in his joy. %% Crittendon's 14th application of Murphy's First Law: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. %% Chisolm's Third Law, Corollary 3: Procedures designed to implement the purpose won't quite work. %% O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Laws: Murphy was an optimist. %% Kitman's Law: Pure drivel tends to drive away ordinary drivel. %% Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't. %% Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in. %% In case of doubt, make it sound convincing. %% Zymurgy's First Law of Evolving System Dynamics: Once you open a can of worms, the only way to re-can them is to use a larger can. %% How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless hound. %% Then rested he by the tumtum tree, and stood awhile in thought. And as in uffish thought he stood. . . %% Westheimer's Time Estimation Rule: Estimate the time you think it should take, multiply by 2, add 3, and change the unit of measure to the next higher unit. %% A thing not worth doing isn't worth doing well. %% I don't know, ask Cathy. %% Wolfgang's Third Law: It can't work. %% Don's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions. %% Si six scies scient six saucissions, six cent six scies scieront six cent six saucissions. (If 6 saws saw 6 sausages, 606 saws will saw 606 sausages. %% Un chasseur sachant chasser chasse sans son chien. (A hunter who knows how to hunt hunts without his dog. %% Ton the` t`a-t`il ote` ton toux? (Did the tea cure your cough?) %% Dinon dina, dit on, du dos dodu d`un dodu dindon. (Dindon dined, said he, on the fat back of a fat turkey.) %% Qui trop embrasse mal entreint. (Grab much, gain little.) %% Quien mucho abarca poco aprieta. (Grab much, gain little.) %% Un tien vaut miex que deux tu l`auras. (A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.) %% First Law of Advice: The correct advice is to give the advice that is desired. %% If you put your supper dish to your ear you can hear the sounds of a restaurant. -- Snoopy %% There is nothing worse than being peerless in a peer-review system. %% Alia jacta est. (The die is cast.) -- Julius Caesar after crossing the Rubicon %% Oh, what tangled webs we weave When we first practice to deceive. -- Sir Walter Scott %% The Fourth Law of Computing: On a slow day, you can wait forever. %% Sweer's Impossibility Theorem: Nothing can be both completely general and internally consistent at the same time. %% Swap read error, you lose your core image. %% Murphy's Third Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time. %% Murphy's Fourth Law: If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. %% Murphy's Fifth Law: If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway. %% Murphy's Seventh Law: Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. %% Murphy's Eighth Law: If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something. %% Chisolm's Third Law, Corollary 1: If you explain so clearly that no one can misunderstand, somebody will. %% Chisolm's Third Law, Corollary 2: If you do something which you are sure will meet with everyone's approval, somebody won't like it. %% Crane's Law: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. %% Law of Communications: The result of improved and enlarged communications is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding. %% Lord Falkland's Rule: When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision. %% Gumperson's Law: The probability of anything happening is inversely proportional to its desirability. %% The usefulness of a meeting is inversely proportional to its attendance. %% The Peter Principle: In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence; every post tends to be filled by an employee incompetent to execute its duties. %% Jenkinson's Law: It won't work. %% The DREA Law: Under the most rigorously controlled conditions, the experimental apparatus will do exactly as it pleases. %% Skip's Lament: Given any problem containing N equations, There will be n+1 unknowns. %% Always draw your curves then plot the readings. %% Experiments should be reproducable: They should all fail in the same way. %% Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. %% Cheops' Law: Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget. %% Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected; Carefully planned projects only twice as long. %% Wynne's Law: Negative slack tends to increase. %% Q's Law: No matter what stage of completion one reaches in a project, the cost of the remainder of the project remains constant. %% EUREKA! %% You can't plant me in your penthouse, I'm going back to my plow. %% I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent. %% Jargon is used as a means of succeeding by not simplifying. %% If computers take over (which seems to be their natural tendency), it will serve us right. -- Alistair Cooke %% The six steps in a project: 1) Unbounded enthusiasm 2) Total disillusionment 3) PANIC!! 4) Frantic search for the guilty 5) Punishment of the innocent 6) Promotion of the uninvolved. %% Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy. %% The greatest programming project of all took six days; on the seventh day the programmer rested. We've been trying to debug the blinking thing ever since. Moral: design before you implement. %% Two wrongs do not make a right: It usually takes three or more. %% A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn. %% A wise man can see more from a the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top. %% Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the soul of genius. %% Every purchase has its price. %% Everyone complains of his memory, no one of his judgment. %% For people who like that kind of book, that is the kind of book they will like. %% Quit work and play for once. %% Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest. %% Reputation: what others are not thinking about you. %% To do is to be -- Nietzsche To be is to do -- Sartre Do be do be do -- Sinatra %% Nietzsche is pietzsche %% You have a strong desire for a home. %% Your nature demands love and your happiness depends on it. %% Youth had been a habit of hers so long that she could not part with it. %% eHpl ! Imat arppdei sndi eht eED-C20 %% As expected, the victorious candidate in a particularly dirty recent political campaign, won by a mudslide. %% There is an infinite number of describable functions, which are not effectively computable. -- N. Jones, "Computability Theory" Note: This contradicts the oft stated maxim "If a function can be defined, it can be programmed". %% Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing. %% Success isn't how far you got, but the distance you traveled from where you started. %% The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. %% Pros are people who do jobs well even when they don't feel like it %% Next to surviving an earthquake, nothing is quite so satisfying as receiving an income tax refund %% Running a business is about 95% people and 5% economics. %% Patience is something that you admire greatly in the driver behind you but not in the one ahead of you. %% When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt. %% It's always easy to see both sides of an issue we are not particularly concerned about. %% Why can't life's big problems come when we are twenty and know everything? %% When you save for a long time to buy something, then you find that you can't afford it - that's inflation. %%  %% IBM-Compatible - Not fully IBM-compatible. %% Fully IBM-Compatible - Somewhat IBM-compatible, but won't run BASIC programs. %% 100% IBM-Compatible - Compatible with most available hardware and software, but not with the blockbusters IBM always introduces the day after tomorrow. %% Lap-top - Smaller and lighter than the average secretary. %% Portable - Smaller and lighter than the average refrigerator. %% Transportable - Neither chained to a wall nor attached to an alarm system. %% Hard Disk - A device that allows naive users to delete vast amounts of data with a few simple commands. %% Mouse - A peripheral originally named "veriform appendix" because of its functional resemblance, renamed for its usefulness as a cat toy. %% Printer - An electromechanical paper-shredding device. %% Modem - A peripheral used in the unsuccessful attempt to get two computers to communicate with each other. %% Network - An electronic means of allowing more than one person at a time to corrupt, trash, or otherwise cause permanent damage to useful data. %% Documentation - A perplexing linen-bound accessory resorted to only in situations of dire need when friends and dealers are unavailable, normally only employed as a decorative bookend. %% User-friendly - Supplied with a full color manual. %% Very user-friendly - Supplied with an on-disk and audiotape tutorial, so the user needn't bother with the full color manual. %% Extremely user-friendly - Supplied with a mouse so that the user needn't bother with the on-disk and audiotape tutorial, the full color manual, or the program itself. %% Easy to learn - Hard to use. %% Easy to use - Hard to learn. %% Easy to learn and use - Little to learn, less to use. %% Powerful - Hard to learn, dangerous to use. %% Menu-driven - Easy to learn, tedious to use. %% Copy-protected - 1) A clever method of preventing incompetent pirates from STEALING software and legitimate customers from USING it. 2) A means of distinguishing honest users from thieves by preventing larceny by the former, but not the latter. %% Warranty - An unconditional guarantee that the program purchased is actually included on the disk in the box. %% Version 1.0 - Buggier than Maine in June, eats data. %% Version 1.1 - Eats data only occasionally, upgrades free to avoid litigation by disgruntled users of Version 1.0. %% Version 2.0 - Version originally planned as the first release [except for a couple of data-eating bugs that just won't seem to go away], no free upgrades or the company would go bankrupt. %% Version 3.0 - The revision in the works when the company goes bankrupt. %% Now available - Available any day now. %% Available soon - Should be out within a year. %% Available May 1st - Version 1.0 may ship to dealers August 1st. %% Standard - Similar to something else on the market. %% Backup - The duplicate copy of crucial data that no one bothered to make. %% Spreadsheet - A program that gives the user quick and easy access to a wide variety of highly detailed reports based on highly inaccurate assumptions. %% Word Processor - Software that magically transforms its user into a professional author. %% Business Graphics - Popular with managers who understand neither decimals, fractions, Roman numerals, nor PI but have more than a passing acquaintance with pies and bars. %% Database Manager - A program that allows the user to manipulate data in every conceivable way except the absolutely essential one he or she conceives of the day after entering 20 Megabytes of raw data. %% Integrated Software - A single product that deftly performs hundreds of functions the user never needs and awkwardly performs the half-dozen he uses constantly. %% Windows - A method of dividing a computer screen into two or more unusably tiny portions. %%  %% %COOKIE-F-NOSAYING, You lose. %% 11-XAV eht edisni deppart ma I !pleH %% A man walked into a haberdashery and said to the owner, "Did you just see me come in?" The owner replied, "Yes, sir, I did." "Ahhhh!" the man said. "Have you ever seen me before?" The owner was puzzled. "No sir, never in my life." "Ah Hah!" the man exclaimed. "Then how did you know it was me?" %% Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething. %% All wars are ironic because all wars are worse than expected. %% Always remember to pillage BEFORE you burn. %% April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. %% As the axe entered the forest, the trees said, "The handle is one of us." %% Benedict's Principle (formerly Murphy's Ninth Corollary): Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. %% Be affectionate to one who adores you. %% Be patient with those who are slower than you, for they make you look better. %% Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" - which is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and - WATCH THAT BASKET." %% Beware of low-flying rocks. %% Boob's Law: (from MURPHY'S LAW): You always find something the last place you look. %% Coit-Murphy's Statement On The Power Of Negative Thinking: It is impossible for an optimist to be pleasantly surprised. %% Courage is your greatest present fault. %% Depend not on fortune, but on conduct. %% Don't count your bridges before you burn them. %% Evans' And Bjorn's Law: No matter what goes wrong, there is always somebody who knew it would. %% Every person is an individual; we all have a set of designer genes. %% Experience is directly proportional to computer time wasted. %% Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. %% Farnsdick's Corollary To The Fifth Corollary: After things have goe from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself. %% Ferguson's Precept: A crisis is when you can't say "let's forget the whole thing." %% Fewer things are harder to put up with that the annoyance of a good example. %% "Fie!" he said, surveying the carnage about him. "Someone must have left the bathroom light on again; don't they know the landlord gets UPSET?!" He sighed and went into the kitchen for a garbage bag. "Y'know," he mused as he put the dismembered limbs into the bag, "if this apartment weren't in such a good location, I'd move out." He sighed again and shook his head. "This is the third time that this has happened THIS MONTH!" He made a mental note to place another want ad for roommates in the paper. %% First Postulate Of Iso-Murphism: Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other. %% Flugg's Law: When you need to knock on wood is when you realize the world's composed of aluminum and vinyl. %% Garfle, ni belquont; delberpho wifniel! %% Gattuso's Extension Of Murphy's Law: Nothing is ever so bad that it can't get worse. %% Grossman's Misquote Of H. L. Mencken: Complex problems have simple, easy-to-understand wrong answers. %% Have you ever felt that all the world's a stage and you are the only one in the audience? %% Having children is hereditary: If your parents didn't have any, then you probably won't either. %% He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it inspiring the cabbages. %% He thinks he could easily win your heart. %% He would always rush in where fools fear to tread. %% Hellrung's Law: If you wait, it will go away. Shavelson's Extension: . . . having done it's damage. Grelb's Addition: If it was bad, it'll be back. %% I don't want to die at 40. -- J. Lennon %% I realize that there are many people in this world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that! %% If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing. -- B. Russell %% If the shoe fits, try wearing it on the other foot; That's bound to make you feel better. %% If you don't try new solutions, then you can expect new evils. %% If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten. %% In a single day, Samson slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Every day, thousands of sales are killed with the same weapon. %% In any national struggle, the deciding factor is not who is the most competant, but who is less incompetant. %% It takes a modem to run a baudy house. %% It were not best that we should all think alike; it is the difference of opinion that makes horse races. %% It's hard to soar with eagles when you work with turkeys. %% I'm sure that if there were a death penalty more people would be alive today. -- N. Reagan %% Imbesi's Law Of The Conservation Of Filth: In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty. Freeman's Extension: ...but you can get everything dirty without getting anything clean. %% Idleness is the holiday of fools. %% I'm in charge here. -- Al Haig %% Indirect file nested too deep. %% It is Fortune, not wisdom that rules our lives. %% It is better to vote for someone you like and have them not elected than to vote for someone you dislike and have them elected. %% July 4. Statistics show that we loose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so. %% Know when to quit. %% Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone. %% Law Of Revelation: The hidden flaw always remains hidden. %% Law Of The Search: The first place to look for anything is the last place you would expect to find it. %% Love and marriage may go together like a horse and carriage, but when was the last time you saw one of those? %% Lynch's Law: When the going gets tough, everyone leaves. %% Let a fool hold his tongue and the fool will pass for a sage. %% Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. %% Love is in the offing. %% Maryann's Law: You can always find what you're not looking for. %% Murphy's Saving Grace: The worst is the enemy of the bad. %% Money cannot buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable. %% Neither a burrower nor a lentil bee. -- Wm. Snakespeare %% Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. %% October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks is. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February. %% Once is an accident, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action. %% One is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap. %% One of the most striking defferences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. %% One who lives in a wine cellar rarely sees the light of day. %% One who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last. %% One who is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else. %% One who laughs last probably doesn't understand the joke. %% Polite conversation is seldom either. %% Q. Can you use a vacuum cleaner on your dog? A. Yes, but it is generally better to take it for a walk. %% Read me! Read me and judge if you understand! So you stopped in your journey because I called, scenting something unusual, something droll. Thus, although I am nothing, and even less, there is no one that sees me but lingers here. Stranger, I am a law of the universe. Stranger, render the law what is due the law! %% Retirement should be based on the tread, not the mileage. %% Rune's Rule: If you don't care where you are, you ain't lost. %% Scnatterly's Summing Up Of The Corollaries: If anything can't go wrong, it will. %% Silverman's Paradox: If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will. %% She was only the stableman's daughter, but all the horsemen knew her. %% She was the sort of person whose personality would be greatly improved by a terminal illness. %% Spilling your guts out is just as charming as it sounds. %% Style may not be the answer, but at least it's a workable alternative. %% Take time to travel; your troubles will unravel. %% The Cardinal Conundrum: An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist fears this is true. %% The Extended Murphy's Law: If a series of events can go wrong, it will do so in the worst possible sequence. %% The first two days of vacation are endless, then it flies. %% The only thing that endures is change. %% The Theorem Theorem: If if, then then. %% The three most puzzling questions are: 1. Why are we born? 2. Why do we die? 3. Why do we spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches? %% The Unapplicable Law: Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work. %% The VAX was developed by DEC. Detractors assert it's a wreck. Perkin-Elmer and Prime Are still biding their time, Hoping someone will buy from them yet. %% Take time to develop your personality. %% The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. %% The most dangerous person in the world is an idealogue with a machine gun. %% The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. %% The only way to be good at everything you do is to only do the things you are good at. %% There are no rules of architcture for castles in the sky. %% There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: (1) - to tell him you have read one of his books; (2) - to tell him you have read all of his books; (3) - to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart. %% Those who can't teach administrate. %% Those who can't teach consult. %% Those who can't teach, teach gym. %% To err is human, but when the eraser wears out before the pencil, you're overdoing it a little. %% To laugh at people of sense is the privilege of fools. %% Today is your lucky day. %% Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. %% Try to develop your own personality. %% Ubi, O, ubi est meam sub ubi? -- Vergil %% VAXEN [from 'oxen,' perhaps influenced by 'vixen.'] n. pl. The plural of VAX. %% Vidi, vici, veni! -- Don Juan %% Wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us. %% War is its own punishment. %% We start out loving our parents and end up hating them. Sometimes we learn to love them again, but we never forgive them. %% Wear-Out Bits: n. A hypothetical (and sought after) mechanism by which software houses could charge for software preventive maintenence, and thus make a fortune. The idea is that some instructions in the machine would become softwarily unreliable after N executions. However, having sofware specialists come over to a shop and 'brush the wear-out bits' every so often would prevent this from happening. %% When angry, count four; when very angry, swear. %% When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life. %% When you get killed you lose an important part of your life. -- B. Shields %% Wise words in the mouths of fools oft belie. %% You are about to make a most valuable discovery. %% You can depend on nothing, you see? %% You need to acquire a little subtlety. %% Your future looks bright. %% Your present plans will be successful. %% Your slogan here. %% Your society will be sought by people of taste and refinment. %%  %% 1. Alexander the Great was a great general. 2. Great generals are forewarned. 3. Forewarned is forearmed. 4. Four is an even number. 5. Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have. 6. The only number that is both even and odd is infinity. Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms. %% 1. Everything depends. 2. Nothing is always. 3. Everything is sometimes. %% 1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's the law! %% 10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0. %% 100 buckets of bits on the bus 100 buckets of bits Take one down, short it to ground FF buckets of bits on the bus FF buckets of bits on the bus FF buckets of bits Take one down, short it to ground FE buckets of bits on the bus ad infinitum... %% $100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" %% 101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR 1. Scarecrow for centipedes 2. Dead cat brush 3. Hair barrettes 4. Cleats 5. Self-piercing earrings 6. Fungus trellis 7. False eyelashes 8. Prosthetic dog claws . . . 99. Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors) 100. Killer velcro 101. Currency %% 186,282 miles per second: It isn't just a good idea, it's the law! %% 2180, U.S. History question: What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what office did he later hold? %% 355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation! %% 77. HO HUM -- The Redundant ------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme --- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife ------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working ---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop the ---X--- (9) GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates to --- --- (8) nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex. Nine in the second place means: The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune. Six in the third place means: In former times men built altars to honor the Internal Revenue Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble! %% 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure) The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National Redwood Forest. %% 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure) The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus. %% 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 Ghandi %% A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree. Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there, preferably atop a nice firm tuft of grass. -- Donald A. Metz %% A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled into the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball and the player should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical phenomena. -- Donald A. Metz %% A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. -- Carl Sandburg %% A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it adds up to be real money. -- Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen %% A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him. %% ...A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you have turned into a pile of dust. %% A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness. %% A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators. -- Dave Barry %% A child of 5 could understand this! Fetch me a child of 5. %% A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon. Avoid him. He's a Commie. %% A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. -- Bill Vaughan %% A city is a large community where people are lonesome together -- Herbert Prochnow %% A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain %% A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking. %% A CONS is an object which cares. -- Bernie Greenberg. %% A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it. %% A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats. -- Ben Franklin %% A crusader's wife slipped from the garrison And had an affair with a Saracen. She was not oversexed, Or jealous or vexed, She just wanted to make a comparison. %% A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it? %% A day without sunshine is like night. %% A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat. %% A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too". %% A diva who specializes in risqu'e arias is an off-coloratura soprano... %% A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. -- Ogden Nash %% A dozen, a gross, and a score, Plus three times the square root of four, Divided by seven, Plus five time eleven, Equals nine squared plus zero, no more. %% A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened. %% A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -- Winston Churchill %% A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- G. B. Shaw %% A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant. %% A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used. -- D. Gries %% A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion. -- H. L. Mencken %% A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding ducks. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 %% A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident. A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident. But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *____that ___had __to ____mean _________something*. -- S. Morganstern, "The Silent Gondoliers" %% A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of). %% A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. -- John Ciardi %% A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James %% A hypothetical paradox: What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet? -- Tom Galloway %% A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears. C is for Clair who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of the sleigh. E is for Ernest who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech. G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug. I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake. K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks. M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of enui. O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire. S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits. U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train. W is for Winie, embedded in ice, X is for Xercies, devoured by mice. Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin. -- Edward Gorey "The Gastly Crumb Tines" %% A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance. %% A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction. %% A lady with one of her ears applied To an open keyhole heard, inside, Two female gossips in converse free -- The subject engaging them was she. "I think", said one, "and my husband thinks That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!" As soon as no more of it she could hear The lady, indignant, removed her ear. "I will not stay," she said with a pout, "To hear my character lied about!" -- Gopete Sherany %% A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do. -- Dennis M. Ritchie %% A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by being declared to work. -- Anatol Holt %% A limerick packs laughs anatomical Into space that is quite economical. But the good ones I've seen So seldom are clean, And the clean ones so seldom are comical. %% A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing. %% A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any price. %% A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and exceptional ability in that particular field." %% A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths. -- Steve Wright %% 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 %% A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package. %% A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems. %% A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite direction, like spectators at a slow- motion tennis match. Then, the paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins fall over gently onto their backs. -- Audobon Society Magazine %% A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey. "It is out on loan," the teacher replied. At that moment, the donkey brayed loudly inside the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom do you believe," asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?" %% A new dramatist of the absurd Has a voice that will shortly be heard. I learn from my spies He's about to devise An unprintable three-letter word. %% A new koan: If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you. If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you. It is an ice cream koan. %% A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary. Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a round tuit now has no excuse for further procrastination. %% A New York City judge ruled that if two women behind you at the movies insist on discussing the probable outcome of the film, you have the right to turn around and blow a Bronx cheer at them. %% A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the rear of a Third Avenue street car -- if the car is in motion. %% A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient power-down sequence. An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer cool. %% A nuclear war can ruin your whole day. %% A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space. -- Gloria Steinem %% A penny saved is ridiculous. %% A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry. %% A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt -- A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt. When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig, Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig, You'll never go wrong with a pig! -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow" %% A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain 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. %% A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil! -- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra" %% A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope. "That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow man". As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well, he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing." %% A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that your wife will give you for free. %% A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon. -- Steel City News %% A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20: Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the lambs and toads and tree- sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it." -- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" %% A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works. %% A real person has two reasons for doing anything... a good reason and the real reason. %% A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three dimensional objects... %% A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized rosewater. %% A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery %% A Severe Strain on the Credulity As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. -- New York Times Editorial, 1920 %% A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard -- Prof. Steiner %% ... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity. -- Mark Twain %% A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows. -- O'Henry %% A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures. -- Daniel Webster %% A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by its author. -- S. C. Johnson %% A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others. -- Ambrose Bierce %% A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene triangle. %% A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. -- John Ciardi %% A University without students is like an ointment without a fly. -- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin %% A UNIX saleslady, Lenore, Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more. She found a good way To combine work and play: She sells C shells by the seashore. %% A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. -- Tennessee Williams %% 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. %% A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention. %% A witty saying proves nothing. -- Voltaire %% A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God. %% A.A.A.A.A.: An organization for drunks who drive %% AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!! You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room! %% Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy. %% About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends. -- Herbert Hoover %% Absence makes the heart go wander. %% Absent: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered. %% Absentee: A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Accident: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better. %% Accidents cause History. If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of the returns." %% According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath at least once a year. %% According to my best recollection, I don't remember. -- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo %% 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 %% Accordion: A bagpipe with pleats. %% Accuracy: The vice of being right %% ACHTUNG!!! Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets. Relaxen und vatch das blinkenlights!!! %% Acid -- better living through chemistry. %% Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had everyone glued in their seats!" Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of it!" %% Actor: So what do you do for a living? Doris: I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving dishes for Chinese restaurants. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" %% Actors will happen even in the best-regulated families. %% ADA: Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA awareness." %% Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look like you... --- Gilda Radner %% Adore: To venerate expectantly. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless. -- Sinclair Lewis %% After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact that it sinks like a stone. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" %% After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out. It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life more advanced than the lichen family. -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do" %% After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn. %% ... After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare %% 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 %% After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found on the bench. %% After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created." "This is true," He replied. "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly. "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the right to make his laws?" "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to make his own." It was so granted. -- Ambrose Bierce %% After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement. -- Norman Thomas %% After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK? %% After living in New York, you trust nobody, but you believe everything. Just in case. %% After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed. %% Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change. %% Afternoon: That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the morning. %% Age: That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball. %% Ah, but the choice of dreams to live, there's the rub. For all dreams are not equal, some exit to nightmare most end with the dreamer But at least one must be lived ... and died. %% Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers. -- A analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic %% Air is water with holes in it %% Alas, I am dying beyond my means. -- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed %% Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "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." %% Alden's Laws: 1. Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause of pregnancy. 2. Always be backlit. 3. Sit down whenever possible. %% Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-null bottles of beer, You take one down, and pass it around, Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall. %% Alex Haley was adopted! %% Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting for a dial tone. %% Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them keeps paying for it. -- Peggy Joyce %% All extremists should be taken out and shot. %% All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing without thinking. %% All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy. %% All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ... %% All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates. -- Woody Allen %% All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us sane. %% All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific. -- Jane Wagner %% All power corrupts, but we need electricity. %% All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors. %% All science is either physics or stamp collecting. -- E. Rutherford %% All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands. -- Saint Patrick %% All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism. %% 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 modern inconveniences ..." -- Mark Twain %% All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. -- Sean O'Casey %% All the world's a VAX, And all the coders merely butchers; They have their exits and their entrails; And one int in his time plays many widths, His sizeof being _N bytes. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms. And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun, And shining morning face, creeping like slug Unwillingly to school. -- A Very Annoyed PDP-11 %% All things are possible, except skiing thru a revolving door. %% All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for fun. Money's just the way we keep score. %% All true wisdom is found on T-shirts. %% Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Alone: In bad company. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing. -- Dave Barry %% Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" %% Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping." -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959) %% Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else. %% Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing that way. %% Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves. %% Ambidextrous: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. -- Charlie McCarthy %% America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization. -- John O'Hara %% America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him, until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and changed its name to "America". -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors. -- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister" %% "Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it. %% An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. -- James Michener, "Space" %% An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but is always polite to traffic cops. %% An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax. -- David Letterman %% An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away. %% An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great restraint. As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next time". Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems, is ready to build a second system. This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not generalizable. The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile". -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month" %% An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it. %% An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know. %% An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible. %% An elephant is a mouse with an operating system. %% An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!" %% An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote excellence: "The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful. Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha." -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" %% An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future. %% ... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar. -- Mark Twain %% An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as possible. -- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann" %% An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge. %% And as we stand on the edge of darkness Let our chant fill the void That others may know In the land of the night The ship of the sun Is drawn by The grateful dead. -- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC. %% ... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers. %% And I heard Jeff exclaim, As they strolled out of sight, "Merry Christmas to all -- You take credit cards, right?" -- "Outsiders" comic %% And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode. %% And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own. One approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode. So this procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles. -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face" %% ...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a courtesy detail. %% And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory, ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the world. -- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men" %% And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have a sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks tragedy, and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets tragedy face to face, we have politics. -- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland, "Root Crops and Ground Cover" %% Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy. -- Tom Lehrer %% Ankh if you love Isis. %% Anoint: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers whiter teeth *___and* fresher breath. -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do" %% Answers to Last Fortune's Questions: 1. None. (Moses didn't have an ark). 2. Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle. 3. I don't know. 4. Who cares? 5. 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk, Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5. 6. There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of Papyrus Books). %% Antonym: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of. %% Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art. -- Charles McCabe %% Any excuse will serve a tyrant. -- Aesop %% Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to sell it. %% ... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.) %% Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object. %% Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. %% Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something. %% Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. %% Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire. %% Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. -- Publilius Syrus %% Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. -- Samuel Goldwyn %% Anything is good and useful if it's made of chocolate. %% Anything is good if it's made of chocolate. %% Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW" means the price went way up. %% Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate. %% APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums. %% APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I can't read any of them." -- Roy Keir %% ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE -- FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE %% Are you a turtle? %% Arguments with furniture are rarely productive. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" %% Armadillo: To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle. %% Arnold's Laws of Documentation: 1. If it should exist, it doesn't. 2. If it does exist, it's out of date. 3. Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws. %% Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long? -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 %% Art is either plagiarism or revolution. -- Paul Gauguin %% Arthur's Laws of Love: 1. People to whom you are attracted invariably think you remind them of someone else. 2. The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of yourself in person. %% Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum. %% As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask, "that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?" ... -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny" %% As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error. -- Weisert %% As I was going up Punch Card Hill, Feeling worse and worser, There I met a C.R.T. And it drop't me a cursor. C.R.T., C.R.T., Phosphors light on you! If I had fifty hours a day I'd spend them all at you. -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes %% As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist". You never hear a real American talk like that. -- Frank Hague (1896-1956) %% As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong? %% 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 %% As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code. %% As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs; a process that traditionally requires some debugging. -- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new computer system. %% 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 %% As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. -- Woody Allen %% As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there is always a future in Computer Maintenance. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" %% As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free variable." %% 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" %% As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result, birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know" %% As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears. Unable to pull your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you. The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along with your complexion. You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall from the limbs of the tree. Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all over the ground. The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head. Worse yet, the spider is suing you for damages. %% As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself." %% ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS. %% Ask not for whom the tolls. %% Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls... if thou art in the bathtub, it tolls for thee. %% Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell" for an answer. %% Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old woman, director Roman Polanski told reporters, `The way I look at it, she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.' -- David Letterman %% Ass: The masculine of "lass". %% At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head under the exhaust of a bus until he revived. %% At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest. -- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow %% At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats. -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985 %% ... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand. -- J. B. White %% "At least they're ___________EXPERIENCED incompetents" %% Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp. %% Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason. -- Winston Churchill %% Automobile: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians. %% Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" %% Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you. -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student %% Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Bagdikian's Observation: Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a ukelele. %% Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry: A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides by governors. %% Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare. %% Banectomy, n.: The removal of bruises on a banana. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% Bank error in your favor. Collect $200. %% Barach's Rule: An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician. %% Barometer: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Baruch's Observation: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. %% Basic is a high level languish. APL is a high level anguish. %% BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'. %% Basic, n.: A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in that those who have it will not admit it in polite company. %% Bathquake, n.: The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water faucet is turned on to a certain point. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your door. %% BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts ...) %% Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your face. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" %% Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. %% Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint. -- Mark Twain %% Be different: conform. %% Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so get used to it. %% Be security conscious -- National defense is at stake. %% Bees are very busy souls They have no time for birth controls And that is why in times like these There are so many Sons of Bees. %% Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers. One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing. "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your Purpose in Life, anyway?" Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.) Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened. Primarily because nobody understood Chinese. -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters" %% Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego. %% Begathon, n.: A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so you won't have to watch commercials. %% Behold the warranty... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away. %% Beifeld's Principle: The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is already in the company of: 1. a date 2. his wife 3. a better looking and richer male friend %% "Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" %% Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone. %% Bennett's Laws of Horticulture: 1. Houses are for people to live in. 2. Gardens are for plants to live in. 3. There is no such thing as a houseplant. %% Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence -- Time Bandits %% Besides the device, the box should contain: * Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING" * A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns. YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram cable. IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's why." WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret. -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!" %% better !pout !cry better watchout lpr why santa claus town cat /etc/passwd >list ncheck list ncheck list cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist cat list | grep nice >giftlist santa claus town who | grep sleeping who | grep awake who | egrep 'bad|good' for (goodness sake) { be good } %% Better dead than mellow. %% Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate. Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and great effort pushing boulders into a single word. It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow. Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass both Parliament and Party. It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other planets, this may be the first message received from us. -- The Realist, November, 1964. %% Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald Knuth %% Beware of computerized fortune-tellers! %% Beware of low-flying butterflies. %% Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein %% Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a drip under pressure. %% "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, "Cat's Cradle" %% Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy. %% Binary, adj.: Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes. %% Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division. %% Bipolar, adj.: Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo, New York %% Birth: The first and direst of all disasters. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Bizoos, n.: The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a basketball. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% ... bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ... %% Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels. %% BLISS is ignorance %% Blood flows down one leg and up the other. %% Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier. %% Blore's Razor: Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier. %% Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in plain sight. It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again. The legend has it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he was arrested for drunk driving. The snakes left because people kept throwing up on them. %% Boling's postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it. %% BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH! %% Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look. %% Bore: A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary. -- Walter Winchell %% Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Boss: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an ornamental stud." %% Boston: Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for finishing second in the Irish jig competition. %% Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years. -- James Thurber %% Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. -- Kin Hubbard %% Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only (gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.' -- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking Style" %% Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in. %% Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?" %% Brain fried -- Core dumped %% Brain: The apparatus with which we think that we think. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Brain [as in "to brain"]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests, since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may revitalize the corner saloon. %% British Israelites: The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you sleep with your head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% Broad-mindedness: The result of flattening high-mindedness out. %% Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. %% Bubble Memory, n.: A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's intelligence. See also "vacuum tube". %% Bug: An aspect of a computer program which exists because the programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he wrote the program. Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed. -- Ray Simard %% Bugs: Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls. %% Bullwinkle: "You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the outfit." General: "What does that make YOU?" Bullwinkle: "What else? An executive..." -- Jay Ward %% Bumper sticker: All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture %% Bureaucrat, n.: A person who cuts red tape sideways. -- J. McCabe %% Bureaucrat, n.: A politician who has tenure. %% Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise. %% ... But among the children of the Great Society there were those whose skins were black. And lo! Their portion was niggardly, and of the fatted calf they were sucking hind teat ... Now it came to pass that a prophet rose up amongst them, and they called him King. And he went unto Pharaoh and said, "Let my people go to the front of the bus." But Pharaoh answered: "In the fullness of time and with all deliberate speed shall this thing come to pass. When ye shall prove yourselves worthy, shall ye have your just portion -- yea, verily, like unto a snowball in Hell." -- "The Begatting of a President" %% ... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" %% But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations paws. %% "But I don't like Spam!!!!" %% ... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number. -- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds" %% But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast to the nearest gas station. %% But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again. This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" %% But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge. Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I explained yet about the bytes? %% ... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject. -- Virginia Masters %% But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable computers? %% By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I mean. -- Mark Twain %% C: A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't. -- Ray Simard %% Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions. %% Call on God, but row away from the rocks. -- Indian proverb %% "Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept." %% "Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth %% "Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont." -- Clarence Darrow %% Canada Bill Jone's Motto: It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. Supplement: A .44 magnum beats four aces. %% Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents for postage and 30 cents for storage. -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post %% Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" %% Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom. %% Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their planning to reduce the time it takes. %% Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and trousers that don't match. %% Cat, n.: Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer. %% Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education. -- Mark Twain %% Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health. %% CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh.. %% Cecil, you're my final hope Of finding out the true Straight Dope For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat But none of my cats are at all like that. This unusual animal (so it is said) Is simultaneously alive and dead! What I don't understand is just why he Can't be one or the other, unquestionably. My future now hangs in between eigenstates. In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't. If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way And rescue my psyche from quantum decay. But if this queer thing has perplexed even you, Then I will *___and* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo. -- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams %% Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool. -- Kelvin Throop III %% Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel. Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy out of it? Jaka: Ugh! Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy? -- Cerebus #6, "The Secret" %% Chapter 1 The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. %% Character Density, n.: The number of very weird people in the office. %% Checkuary, n.: The thirteenth month of the year. Begins New Year's Day and ends when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on his checks. %% Chef, n.: Any cook who swears in French. %% Chemicals, n.: Noxious substances from which modern foods are made. %% Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire. %% Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36: Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer". -- Chicago Reader 3/27/81 %% Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84: The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request for overheated passengers. When your timer pops up, the driver will cheerfully baste you. -- Chicago Reader 5/28/82 %% Chicago, n.: Where the dead still vote ... early and often! %% Chism's Law of Completion: The amount of time required to complete a government project is precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it. %% Chivalry, Schmivalry! Roger the thief has a method he uses for sneaky attacks: Folks who are reading are Characteristically Always Forgetting to Guard their own bac ... %% Clairvoyant: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. -- Phyllis Diller %% "Cleveland? Yes, I spent a week there one day." %% Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery. %% COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance. %% Coincidence, n.: You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was going on. %% Coincidences are spiritual puns. -- G. K. Chesterton %% Cold, adj.: When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions. %% Cold, adj.: When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own pockets. %% Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" %% Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to _n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain! -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" %% Command, n.: Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control. %% Commitment, n.: Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed. %% Committee Rules: 1. Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner. 2. Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this stamps you as being wise. 3. Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the others. 4. When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed. 5. Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you popular -- it's what everyone is waiting for. -- Harry Chapman %% Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. -- Clive James %% Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius. -- Josh Billings %% Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -- Albert Einstein %% Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems theory. %% Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso %% Conceit causes more conversation than wit. -- LaRouchefoucauld %% Concept, n.: Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than $25,000. %% ... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *___did* quote anybody in this business, it probably would be gibberish. -- Thom McLeod %% Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff. -- Peter de Vries %% Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation. %% Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT? -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!" %% Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends. -- H. L. Mencken %% "Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich." -- "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones] %% Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then give it back to them. %% "Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat." %% Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job is to enforce the law and fight crime. -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan %% Court, n.: A place where they dispense with justice. -- Arthur Train %% Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month. -- Wernher von Braun %% Crime does not pay ... as well as politics. -- A. E. Newman %% Critic: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie. %% Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed. -- Ambrose Bierce %% %DCL-MEM-BAD, bad memory VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears %% Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve. %% Dear Lord: I just want *___one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On the other hand", again. %% Dear Miss Manners: My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between courses, is all right. Which is correct? Gentle Reader: For the purpose of answering examinations in your home economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners believes that is. %% Dear Miss Manners: Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from your face. Gentle Reader: Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on your face... %% Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part of this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as "Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always says: "Part of this complete breakfast". Don't that really mean, "Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as this complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a dead bat? Answer: Yes. -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's" %% Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe? Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business signs to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when creating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should put quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S. -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's" %% Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy. %% "Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'". %% Death is only a state of mind. Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else. %% Death to all fanatics! %% Decision maker, n.: The person in your office who was unable to form a task force before the music stopped. %% Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang). -- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc. %% Deck Us All With Boston Charlie Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo! Nora's freezin' on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo! Don't we know archaic barrel, Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou. Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo! -- Walt Kelly %% "Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah, those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly blessed. -- Randy Davis %% DELETE A FORTUNE! Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?! Wouldn't you like to see some of them deleted from the system? You can! Just mail to "fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it gets expunged. %% Deliberation: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on. -- Ambrose Bierce %% "Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow." %% Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. -- E. B. White %% Democracy: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy. -- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932), since withdrawn. %% Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls. %% Dentist: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls coins out of one's pockets. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Despising machines to a man, The Luddites joined up with the Klan, And ride out by night In a sheeting of white To lynch all the robots they can. -- C. M. and G. A. Maxson %% Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over the table. -- The Anarchist Cookbook %% DeVries's Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want hits the paper. %% Did I say 2? I lied. %% Did you know ... That no-one ever reads these things? %% Did you know that clones never use mirrors? -- Ambrose Bierce %% Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot that shot down the Korean jet? At one point he definitely states: "Natasha! First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and squirrel." -- ihuxw!tommyo %% Die: To stop sinning suddenly. -- Elbert Hubbard %% Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him. -- John Barrymore's dying words %% Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little. %% Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term. Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight. %% Disc space -- the final frontier! %% Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art. %% Distinctive, adj.: A different color or shape than our competitors. %% Distress: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend. -- Ambrose Bierce %% District of Columbia pedestrians who leap over passing autos to escape injury, and then strike the car as they come down, are liable for any damage inflicted on the vehicle. %% Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery? %% Do molecular biologists wear designer genes? %% Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to anger. %% Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each day as it comes. -- Donald Kaul %% Do you have lysdexia? %% Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take the time to take the dirt out of them? %% "Do you think what we're doing is wrong?" "Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!" "I've never done anything illegal before." "I thought you said you were an accountant!" %% 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 %% Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much. %% Does the name Pavlov ring a bell? %% Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow. %% Don't be humble ... you're not that great. -- Golda Meir %% Don't change the reason, just change the excuses! -- Joe Cointment %% "Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly, sincerely, extremely dangerously. They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs. They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints. They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help. They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And what the hell, they caught him. -- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man" %% Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today! %% Don't get even -- get odd! %% Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly misleading. Debug only code. -- Dave Storer %% Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. -- Mark Twain %% Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while. %% Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon. %% Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier. %% Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance. %% Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone. %% Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you. %% Don't say yes until I finish talking. -- Darryl F. Zanuck %% Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in! -- "Brazil" %% Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to get more wax!! %% Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. -- Howard Aiken %% Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. -- Charles Schultz %% Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in? %% 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 use 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, from "The Further Adventures of Larson E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles" %% Double Bucky (Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie") Double bucky, you're the one! You make my keyboard lots of fun Double bucky, an additional bit or two: (Vo-vo-de-o!) Control and Meta side by side, Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide! Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few! Double bucky, left and right OR'd together, outta sight! Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you! -- (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr. %% Down with categorical imperative! %% "Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing." %% Drew's Law of Highway Biology: The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front of your eyes. %% Drive defensively. Buy a tank. %% Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route! %% Ducharme's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as part of the problem. %% Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment. %% Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together ... -- Carl Zwanzig %% Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders has been discontinued. %% Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate and captain of your soul. %% During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted, "Hey, you almost hit my wife." "Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a shot at mine, over there." %% During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_~{o[po ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o %% Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. -- W. Somerset Maugham %% /earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can. %% "Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun." -- Jeff Berner %% Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal. %% Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work. %% Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. -- John Kenneth Galbraith %% Economics: Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K. Galbraith... -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't. -- Robert Orben %% Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine. -- Irsin Edman %% Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where the "nog" comes from. To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine gin and, if they are in season, eggs... %% Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees. -- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star %% Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles, called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey, although God alone knows why it would want to. The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current, direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents harmful electron buildup in the wires. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it. %% Encyclopedia Salesmen: Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police and tell them your house is being burgled. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless. Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop. -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary %% Entropy isn't what it used to be. %% Equal bytes for women. %% Error in operator: add beer %% Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. -- Woody Allen %% Etymology: Some early etymological scholars came 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 %% Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to? -- Clarence Darrow %% Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only 2 cents a day. %% Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you just how busy they are. %% Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what, exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men." All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about: Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something? My wife is available. No. How about ..." -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny" %% Every 4 seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this woman and stop her. %% Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it. %% Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt. %% 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 %% Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation): Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere, there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same color"], that does not exist. %% Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible. -- Frank Moore Colby %% Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it. %% Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own. -- Don Vonada %% "Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95." %% Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse. -- Miguel de Cervantes %% Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis. It makes sense, when you don't think about it. %% Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work. %% Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success. %% "Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it." %% Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. -- Beckett %% Everybody is somebody else's weirdo. -- Dykstra %% Everyone is a genius. It's just that some people are too stupid to realize it. %% Everyone talks about apathy, but no one ____does anything about it. %% Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately, no one we know belongs. %% Everything should be built top-down, except the first time. %% Everything you know is wrong! %% 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 %% Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as "Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence", "Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc. -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" %% Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator. %% Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. -- W. Somerset Maugham %% Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility. %% Expect the worst, it's the least you can do. %% Expense Accounts, n.: Corporate food stamps. %% Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and the instruction afterward. %% Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones. %% Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else. %% Experience varies directly with equipment ruined. %% Extract from Official Sweepstakes Rules: NO PURCHASE REQUIRED TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE To claim your prize without purchase, do the following: (a) Carefully cut out your computer-printed name and address from upper right hand corner of the Prize Claim Form. (b) Affix computer-printed name and address -- with glue or cellophane tape (no staples or paper clips) -- to a 3x5 inch index card. (c) Also cut out the "No" paragraph (lower left hand corner of Prize Claim Form) and affix it to the 3x5 card below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.) (e) Finally place 3x5 card (without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the the Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595. Print this address correctly. Comply with above instructions carefully and completely or you may be disqualified from receiving your prize. %% F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm! %% f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng. %% F: When into a room I plunge, I Sometimes find some VIOLET FUNGI. Then I linger, darkly brooding On the poison they're exuding. -- The Roguelet's ABC %% Faith: That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be untrue. %% Fakir: A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to have shinnied up a rope and vanished. %% Famous last words: %% Famous last words: 1. Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix. 2. Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there. 3. What happens if you touch these two wires tog-- 4. We won't need reservations. 5. It's always sunny there this time of the year. 6. Don't worry, it's not loaded. 7. They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager. %% Famous: Conspicuously miserable. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions ... %% Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children, neither will you. %% Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike. Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning Christmas tree. The piano is missing. You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level 4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog. %% Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book. Corollary: If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live. %% Fifth Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do. %% Fifty flippant frogs Walked by on flippered feet And with their slime they made the time Unnaturally fleet. %% Fights between cats and dogs are prohibited by statute in Barber, North Carolina. %% Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts. %% Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. %% Finagle's fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse. %% Finagle's Second Law: No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory. %% Finagle's Third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake Corollaries: 1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it. 2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will see it immediately. %% Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture on a rock. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 %% Finish the sentence below in 25 words or less: "Love is what you feel just before you give someone a good ..." Mail your answer along with the top half of your supervisor to: P.O. Box 35 Baffled Greek, Michigan %% First Corollary of Taber's Second Law: Machines that piss people off get murdered. -- Pat Taber %% First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. %% "First things first -- but not necessarily in that order" -- The Doctor, "Doctor Who" %% First, a few words about tools. Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity. -- Robert Firth %% FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when the little hand is on the .... %% Flon's Law: There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs. %% Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my joules!" "Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux a moment. Perhaps they're mislead." "No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence. "I remember putting them in my burette ... We must call a copper." Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms, said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name of Lawrence Ium. "We must be careful --- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can catch him there." With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ... -- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations" %% Flying saucers on occasion Show themselves to human eyes. Aliens fume, put off invasion While they brand these tales as lies. %% Fog Lamps, n.: Excessively (often obnoxiously) bright lamps mounted on the fronts of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the driver's brain is in a fog. See also "Idiot Lights". %% Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing. -- Walt Kelly, "Putluck Pogo" %% For a good time, call (415) 642-9483 %% For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a cat. %% For an adequate time call 555-3321 %% For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned. %% "For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind." "Whose?" "MINE! HA-HA!" %% For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot ("part of this complete breakfast"). -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide" %% For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something. -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. %% For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz. %% "For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with computers altogether?" -- Jehan Shuman %% For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. -- Abraham Lincoln %% For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off. -- Johnny Carson %% For years a secret shame destroyed my peace -- I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece. But now I think a thought that brings me hope: Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope. -- Justin Richardson. %% For your penance, say five Hail Marys and one loud BLAH! %% Forms follow function, and often obliterate it. %% Fortune Discusses The Obscure Films! #6 RAZORBACK: Paul Harbride, 1984, 2 hours 25 min. One of the great Australian films of the early 1980's, and arguably the best movie ever made about a large, man-eating hog. Some violence. With Gregory Harrison. %% Fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate: I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine. "Hey you, get off my plate" -- Roger Midnight %% Fortune's Fictitious Country Song Title of the Week: "How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?" %% Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month): Don't Write On Walls! (and underneath) You want I should type? %% Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan. Dingell: There are places in the world at the present time where we are having to artificially propagate oysters and clams. Hoffman: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters? Dingell: They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter is that female oysters through their living habits cast out large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large amounts of fertilization ... Hoffman: Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many teenagers who read The Congressional Record. %% Fortune's Office Door Sign of the Week: Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige. %% Fortune's Party Tips #14 Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good liquor at BYOB parties? Take along a candle, which you insert and light after you've opened the bottle. No one ever expects anything drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck. %% fortune: cpu time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped. %% Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samuri sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Oh, and have a nice day! -- Bryce Nesbitt '84 %% Fourth Law of Applied Terror: The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria. Corollary: Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that instructor's course. %% Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a policeman's tie. %% Fresco's Discovery: If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored. %% [From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology Association, in Rome]: The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods, or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general, president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social schizophrenia in mass genocide. %% From the "Guiness Book of World Records", 1973: Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts, other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not qualify as nuts (unground)(other than ground nuts) by reason of their being nuts (unground)." %% 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, from "The Book of Insults" %% [From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made in Japan]: The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT MATRIX LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is featured by permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality against low cost", "diversified functions with compact design", "flexibility in accessibleness and durability of approx. 2000,000,00 Dot/Head", "being sophisticated in mechanism but possibly agile operating under noises being extremely suppressed" etc. And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help achieve "super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by HOST COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being. %% From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new experience in sound: 5. Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees. The pin-spreading sound is normal for this type of connector. %% From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving, Whatever gods may be, That no life lives forever, That dead men rise up never, That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea. -- Swinburne %% Fuch's Warning: If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well enough to travel. -- Sir Vivian Fuchs %% Fudd's First Law of Opposition: Push something hard enough and it will fall over. %% Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. -- H. H. Williams %% Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening. %% G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: Go on writing plays, my boy. One of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And that's your chance, my boy. %% Garbage In -- Gospel Out. %% Garter: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall on our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!! -- Adventures of Asterix. %% "Gee, Mudhead, everyone at Morse Science High has an extracurricular activity except you." "Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?" "Only to ten, Mudhead." -- Firesign Theater %% GEMINI (May 21 - June 20) You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for committing incest. %% GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20) Good news and bad news highlighted. Enjoy the good news while you can; the bad news will make you forget it. You will enjoy praise and respect from those around you; everybody loves a sucker. A short trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's room. %% Genius: A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with "bright". %% George Orwell 1984. Northwestern 0. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82 %% George Washington was first in war, first in peace -- and the first to have his birthday juggled to make a long weekend. -- Ashley Cooper %% Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics: 1. An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction. 2. An object at rest will always be in the wrong place. 3. The energy required to change either one of these states will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so much as to make the task totally impossible. %% Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty. %% Get GUMMed ---------- The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April 1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user- friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis "cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we could tell them. -- Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84 %% Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children! %% -- Gifts for Children -- This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children, because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday- morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" %% -- Gifts for Men -- Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error, that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?"). So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you. If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set of tires. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" %% Gimmie That Old Time Religion We will follow Zarathustra, We will worship like the Druids, Zarathustra like we use to, Dancing naked in the woods, I'm a Zarathustra booster, Drinking strange fermented fluids, And he's good enough for me! And it's good enough for me! (chorus) (chorus) In the church of Aphrodite, The priestess wears a see-through nightie, She's a mighty righteous sightie, And she's good enough for me! (chorus) CHORUS: Give me that old time religion, Give me that old time religion, Give me that old time religion, 'Cause it's good enough for me! %% Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place to stand, and I will drain the world. %% Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war. -- Napolean %% Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest. -- Eric Clapton %% Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 %% Gnagloot, n.: A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to impress people. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% Go climb a gravity well! %% //GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH %% God did not create the world in 7 days; he screwed around for 6 days and then pulled an all-nighter. %% God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ... The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman ... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on smoking and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at night! -- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher %% God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things. -- Pablo Picasso %% God is the tangential point between zero and infinity. -- Alfred Jarry %% God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man. %% God made the integers; all else is the work of Man. -- Kronecker %% God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean. -- Albert Einstein %% God must love the Common Man; He made so many of them. %% God rest ye CS students now, Let nothing you dismay. The VAX is down and won't be up, Until the first of May. The program that was due this morn, Won't be postponed, they say. Oh, tidings of comfort and joy, Comfort and joy, Oh, tidings of comfort and joy. The bearings on the drum are gone, The disk is wobbling, too. We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol Can't tell false from true. And now we find that we can't get At Berkeley's 4.2. (chorus) %% Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car. %% Gold: A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold hasn't done anything to them. -- Mike Harding %% Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall. %% Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase. %% Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed. %% Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance. %% Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's new lover. %% Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored. -- George Saunders' dying words %% Gosh that takes me back ... or forward. That's the trouble with time travel, you never can tell. -- Dr. Who %% Goto: A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers to complain about unstructured programmers. -- Ray Simard %% Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are different lies. %% Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2. %% Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture. %% Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks. %% Great minds run in great circles. %% Green light in a.m. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets. %% Grub first, then ethics. -- Bertolt Brecht %% Gyroscope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin. -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary %% H: If a 'GOBLIN (HOB) waylays you, Slice him up before he slays you. Nothing makes you look a slob Like running from a HOB'LIN (GOB). -- The Roguelet's ABC %% Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge. %% ... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed. %% Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town? -- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn" %% Half Moon tonight. (At least it's better than no Moon at all.) %% Hall's Laws of Politics: 1. The voters want fewer taxes and more spending. 2. Citizens want honest politicians until they want something fixed. 3. Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend military spending, and conservatives social spending in their own districts). %% Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Hanson's Treatment of Time: There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days before Saturday. %% Happiness is having a scratch for every itch. -- Ogden Nash %% Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember. -- Oscar Levant %% Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Hard work may not kill you, but why take chances? %% Hardware, n.: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked. %% Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender. You stand convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want. -- Tobias Smollet %% Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark The Duke is fond of kittens He likes to take their insides out And use them for his mittens From "The Thirteen Clocks" %% Hark, the Herald Tribune sings, Advertising wondrous things. -- Tom Lehrer %% Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab: Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined. %% Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon." -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob" %% Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are typed with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use of both hands. It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears. %% Has your family tried 'em? POWDERMILK BISCUITS Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious! They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done. POWDERMILK BISCUITS Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of the biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark stains that indicate freshness. %% Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Have an adequate day. %% Have people realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a non-cynical, or even an informative cookie? Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or only serves to blunt the warning signs. Long live the revolution! Have a nice day. %% Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell you, "There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time for play? %% Have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs, I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood container filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite sex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in their hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes or mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything , which is why they are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% "Have you lived here all your life?" "Oh, twice that long." %% Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline sharply the minute they start waving guns around? -- Dr. Who %% 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" %% He is now rising from affluence to poverty. -- Mark Twain %% He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace. -- John Mason Brown, drama critic %% He thought he saw an albatross That fluttered 'round the lamp. He looked again and saw it was A penny postage stamp. "You'd best be getting home," he said, "The nights are rather damp." %% He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue. -- Jonathon Swift %% He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him insufferable. %% He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes ... %% He who Laughs, Lasts. %% He's just a politician trying to save both his faces... %% He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter. %% He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is... %% Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die. %% Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. -- Redd Foxx %% Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Heavy, adj.: Seduced by the chocolate side of the force. %% Heisenberg may have slept here %% Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists. Johnson's Corollary: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization. %% "Hello," he lied. -- Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent %% Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file! %% Help stamp out and abolish redundancy. %% HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN! -- E. E. CUMMINGS %% Here I sit, broken-hearted, All logged in, but work unstarted. First net.this and net.that, And a hot buttered bun for net.fat. The boss comes by, and I play the game, Then I turn back to net.flame. Is there a cure (I need your views), For someone trapped in net.news? I need your help, I say 'tween sobs, 'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs. %% Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson. It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit. Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" %% 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 %% Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs, then they'd be algorithms. %% "Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet. As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney. Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser. "Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our motto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'" -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering" %% Hier liegt ein Mann ganz obnegleich; Im Leibe dick, an Suden reich. Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws Weil es uns dunkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head; We buried him today because As far as we can tell, he's dead. -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty Sue Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher; "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele %% Higgeldy Piggeldy, Hamlet of Elsinore Ruffled the critics by Dropping this bomb: "Phooey on Freud and his Psychoanalysis -- Oedipus, Shmoedipus, I just love Mom." %% Hippogriff: An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises. -- Ambrose Bierce %% His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had money, he went to Southern California. %% His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice -- Foghorn Leghorn %% His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier. %% History is curious stuff You'd think by now we had enough Yet the fact remains I fear They make more of it every year. %% History: Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view. -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab" %% Hlade's Law: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they will find an easier way to do it. %% Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it. -- Rex Reed %% Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say "shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every object--every board, washer, nail and screw--in the entire store ... Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of these sometime around the middle of next week". -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% Home of Doberman Propulsion Laboratories: The ultimate in watchdog weaponry. -- Chris Shaw %% Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense %% Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people. -- F. M. Hubbard %% Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..." %% Honk if you love peace and quiet. %% Honorable: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur." -- Ambrose Bierce %% Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa. %% Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed. -- Neil Armstrong %% How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers? %% "How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows." %% How do you explain school to a higher intelligence? -- Elliot, "E.T." %% How doth the VAX's C compiler Improve its object code. And even as we speak does it Increase the system load. How patiently it seems to run And spit out error flags, While users, with frustration, all Tear their clothes to rags. %% "How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being carried by a waiter at a nice party?" Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another cheese!" and so on. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette" %% How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff, Bell Labs %% How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to Dayton? -- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey %% However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional manner ... sulking and nausea. -- Tom K. Ryan %% HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill., motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits. The Senate amendment was an amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill. The original Senate amendment was the conference agreement on the bill. Agreed to. -- Albuquerque Journal %% Hug O' War I will not play at tug o' war. I'd rather play at hug o' war, Where everyone hugs Instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles And rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, And everyone grins, And everyone cuddles, And everyone wins. -- Shel Silverstein %% Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a uretheral catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the Nobel Prize. %% I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority. -- Richard M. Nixon What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism? -- Richard M. Nixon %% I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work. %% I am not an Economist. I am an honest man! -- Paul McCracken %% I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger. -- Gloria Steinem %% I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party. -- Dennis Ritchie %% I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it. -- English Professor %% I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. -- Winston Churchill %% I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. --English Professor, Ohio University %% I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater. %% "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. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering." -- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan %% "I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway." -- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy, University of Tennessee at Knoxville %% I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. -- G. K. Chesterton %% I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat. -- Will Rogers %% I bet the human brain is a kludge. -- Marvin Minsky %% I brake for chezlogs! %% I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after relentless day. -- Betty MacDonald %% I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself. %% I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and 25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be true. -- Harry Truman %% "I can resist anything but temptation." %% I can't complain, but sometimes I still do. -- Joe Walsh %% I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling. -- Florence Henderson %% I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it. -- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. %% I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. -- Fred Allen %% I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. -- Lillian Hellman %% I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar. What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II." -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar" %% I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows till you come home. -- Groucho Marx %% I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ... -- Peter Oakley %% "I didn't know it was impossible when I did it." %% I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions. The curtain was up. %% I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because we use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently leads to violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say, in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had time to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in the library, we could call each other up: You: Hello? Bob? Bob: Yes? You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you took last Thursday? Outside of Sears? Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed? You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is: "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait. I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to have to get back to you. Bob: Fine. -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!" %% I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always different. -- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.) %% I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. -- Isaac Asimov %% I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use. -- Galileo Galilei %% I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe %% I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians don't believe in astrology. -- James R. F. Quirk %% I don't believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just a BIG HOAX on the part of the plastic sign salesmen -- to sell more numbers!! %% I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial. I don't like the idea of a frog jumping on my Breakfast. -- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82 %% I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating -- Boss Tweed %% I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem. -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of people waiting to abuse me. --Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters" %% I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. -- Elvis Presley %% I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it. -- Clarence Darrow %% I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path. -- Ronald Mabbitt %% I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses. -- Victor Hugo %% "I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?" %% "I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes. Just then, he vanished. %% "I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out." %% I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress is thinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientists broadcast signals to alien beings. This would be a large mistake. Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons. You cannot cut off their federal programs as if they were merely poor people ... -- Davy Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE COMING!" %% I doubt, therefore I might be. %% I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind. -- George Bernard Shaw %% I drink to make other people interesting. -- George Jean Nathan %% I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on, so I woke up from sheer boredom. %% I for one cannot protest the recent M. T. A. fare hike and the accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that can't be measured in monetary terms. Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly understand his long delay. %% "I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words." %% I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex. It was the most *__________horrifying* 20 minutes of my life! %% I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it. -- Mae West %% I get up each morning, gather my wits. Pick up the paper, read the obits. If I'm not there I know I'm not dead. So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed. Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent? My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went. But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin, And think of the places my get-up has been. -- Pete Seeger %% "I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!" -- Mary Lou Bax %% "I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense." %% I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means it's going to be up all night. -- Steven Wright %% I hate quotations. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches. -- A. R. Longworth %% I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it any time! %% I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show, which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV" %% I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me. -- Camillo Di Cavour %% I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it. -- Edgar Allan Poe %% "I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry." -- President Harry S Truman %% I have learned To spell hors d'oeuvres Which still grates on Some people's n'oeuvres. -- Warren Knox %% "I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that I have never made one." -- James Gordon Bennett %% I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter. -- Blaise Pascal %% I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole ____BODY! -- "Cerebus" #82 %% I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" %% "I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best." -- Oscar Wilde %% "I have to convince you, or at least snow you ..." -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435 %% I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking his keys in his car; the other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell beating up a child. -- Steven Wright %% "I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere." %% "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it." %% I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!! %% "I just need enough to tide me over until I need more." -- Bill Hoest %% "I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building." -- Charles Schulz %% "I like being single. I'm always there when I need me." -- Art Leo %% I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower %% "I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours." %% "I like your game but we have to change the rules." %% "I love to eat them Smurfies Smurfies what I love to eat Bite they ugly heads off, Nibble on they bluish feet." %% "I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up." -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad" %% "I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away." %% "I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like." %% I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis! -- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus) %% "I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative nerve disease." -- Dave Barry, "The Snake" %% I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow! %% "I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob." -- William F. Buckley %% I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the plumber. But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never win large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually write about, such as nose-picking. -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against Political Fallout" %% "I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person." %% I see the eigenvalue in thine eye, I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh. Bernoulli would have been content to die Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)! -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" %% "I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck." -- Graffito in Los Angeles %% "... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..." -- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning Points in l'Amour" %% I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died. -- Steven Wright %% 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 %% I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot tub to face is up. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% "I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it." %% I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am. -- Monty Python %% I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. -- Ogden Nash %% I think that I shall never see A thing as lovely as a tree. But as you see the trees have gone They went this morning with the dawn. A logging firm from out of town Came and chopped the trees all down. But I will trick those dirty skunks And write a brand new poem called 'Trunks'. %% I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown ... HEY! PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT! I said I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today. When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that we are happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war. This point was driven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin, were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteous conversation ... -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette" %% "I thought you were trying to get into shape." "I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle." %% ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises! -- Winston Churchill %% I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia. -- Woody Allen %% I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure. %% "I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance." %% "I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure." %% I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place. -- Steven Wright %% I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer. -- Brendan Behan %% "I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St. Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE HAW"!!'" -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County" %% I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up. -- Will Rogers %% I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain %% I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike. -- Emile Henry Gauvreay %% 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" %% I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't included. -- Steven Wright %% I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums. -- Steven Wright %% I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work. -- Gallagher %% I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me. -- Hunter S. Thompson %% "I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous." %% I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got to undo it. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I snore. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in `Y.' %% I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my blender. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my garage door. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for static cling. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my cottage cheese sculpture. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving. %% I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma transplant. %% I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night. %% I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV. %% I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never came back. %% I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to say tuned. %% I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that need worrying about. %% I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. %% "I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia, I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun." -- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H %% I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd listen to it! -- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire %% I'll grant thee random access to my heart, Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove And in our bound partition never part. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" %% "I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob. That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood." -- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones] %% "I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from man." %% I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me! %% "I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister." %% I'm changing my name to Chrysler I'm going down to Washington, D.C. I'll tell some power broker What they did for Iacocca Will be perfectly acceptable to me! I'm changing my name to Chrysler, I'm heading for that great receiving line. When they hand a million grand out, I'll be standing with my hand out, Yessir, I'll get mine! %% I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did. -- Groucho Marx %% I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. -- George McGovern %% I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man. -- Fred Allen %% I'm going to live forever, or die trying! -- Spider Robinson %% ... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a KOSHER DELI!! %% "I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?" -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate %% i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart. -- e. e. cummings %% I'm N-ary the tree, I am, N-ary the tree, I am, I am. I'm getting traversed by the parser next door, She's traversed me seven times before. And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!) Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!) I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary. N-ary the tree I am, I am, N-ary the tree I am. %% "I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am. It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get." %% I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life. %% I'm rated PG-34!! %% "I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____REAL soon ..." %% "I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage." -- English Professor, Providence College %% I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General. -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance" %% I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives %% I've built a better model than the one at Data General For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality; My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality. My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity, You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity; There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting; My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting. I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point: There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point, Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral I've built a better model than the one at Data General. -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance", by Gilbert & Sullivan) %% I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand. %% I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx %% I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes on the same day. %% "I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer" -- Senator Claghorn %% Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than fifty pounds. %% Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. -- Ambrose Bierce %% If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape at about 30 miles/second. -- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming %% If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far. -- Paul White %% If a group of _N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _N-1 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager. -- T. Cheatham %% If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door. -- Paul Beatty %% If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a conclusion. -- William Baumol %% If an S and an I and an O and a U With an X at the end spell Su; And an E and a Y and an E spell I, Pray what is a speller to do? Then, if also an S and an I and a G And an HED spell side, There's nothing much left for a speller to do But to go commit siouxeyesighed. -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament" %% If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from? %% If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane. %% ... If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ... -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with green, baggy skin. %% If God is dead, who will save the Queen? %% "If I am elected, the concrete barriers around the WHITE HOUSE will be replaced by tasteful foam replicas of ANN MARGARET!" %% If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the plantation and go home. -- Eugene P. Gallagher %% If I had any humility I would be perfect. -- Ted Turner %% If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. -- Isaac Newton In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand. -- Gerald Holton If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders. -- Hal Abelson In computer science, we stand on each other's feet. -- Brian K. Reid %% If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction. On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is also a psychological interaction. The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so friendly. The crucial point is if you can tell which is which. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" %% If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people? %% If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune. %% 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 %% "If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail. And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken! And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to receive Net Mail ..." -- Leith (Casey) Leedom %% If life is a stage, I want some better lighting. %% If little else, the brain is an educational toy. -- Tom Robbins %% If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women you've got in the house. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by the page number. %% If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it. %% "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) %% If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants. -- A. Einstein. %% If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" %% If only I could be respected without having to be respectable. %% If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without having to accomplish anything. %% If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. -- Vannevar Bush %% If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder. -- Pope John Paul I %% If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong. -- Norm Schryer %% If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920) %% If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances are 50-50 it will. %% If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down. If the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down. If the bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will exceed all expectations. -- Reverend Chichester %% If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you. -- Muhammad Ali %% If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it. %% If this is timesharing, give me my share right now. %% If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was yesterday? %% If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking. -- Lyndon Baines Johnson %% If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely %% If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage. %% If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it? -- Ann Edwards-Duff %% If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse. %% If you can read this, you're too close. %% If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything. %% If you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful, give me a call. %% If you didn't get caught, did you really do it? %% If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either of you for the rest of the day. %% If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to have to get a toehold in the public eye. %% If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it. -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin %% If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous. %% If you have to hate, hate gently %% If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away. %% If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee. -- Graham Summer %% If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few people die past the age of a hundred. -- George Burns %% If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. -- Maslow %% If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker, It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock. Or some joker who is slicker, Will trick you of your liquor, If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock. %% If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard %% If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year. What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ... If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ... %% If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable. -- "Graffiti in the Big Ten" %% If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything. -- A. L. %% If you want divine justice, die. -- Nick Seldon %% If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it, even if they don't know what it means. -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party" %% If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one. %% If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late. -- Henny Youngman %% If you're happy, you're successful. %% If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself. You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How difficult can it be?" Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far less money. This article can help you. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. %% If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory. -- Benjamin Disraeli %% If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%? %% "If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?" %% Ignisecond: The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!" -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% Iles's Law: There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it. Neither will Iles. %% Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the land He's trying to ignore. %% 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 %% Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's the first question that the computer community asks? "Is it PC compatible?" %% Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. -- Jack Paar %% Impartial: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading it. %% Impossible: 1. I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve; 2. I can't be bothered; 3. God can't be bothered. Meaning 3 may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck. -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab" %% In 1750 Issac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of stairs. %% In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles. %% In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't get parts. %% In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across. %% In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred syrup. %% In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi, junior, what are you up to?" "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the rabbit. "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!" "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face. Comes along a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days?" "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour wolves." "Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?" "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw. Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox. The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts. %% In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you. -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny" %% In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one of the risks he takes. -- Adlai Stevenson %% In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetency -- The Peter Principle %% "In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir." -- Stuart Keate %% In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public. %% In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs. %% In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and make it better. %% In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride in any motor vehicle. %% "In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable." -- Winston Curchill, of Montgomery %% In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door neighbor. %% In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset. %% In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on the sidewalks when a concert is on. %% In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. -- Mark Twain %% In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket. %% In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians. %% In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00. %% In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos %% 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 %% In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public view." %% In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways. Our asymptotes no longer out of phase, We shall encounter, counting, face to face. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" %% In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length. %% In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 %% "In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian." %% In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's. %% In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a moving automobile. %% [In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ... And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave .... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost ___see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" %% In the beginning was the word. But by the time the second word was added to it, there was trouble. For with it came syntax ... -- John Simon %% In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in the proper order then why can't he? %% In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful Dead. -- Egyptian Book of the Dead %% In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong enough to punch you. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take my advice. -- Winston Churchill %% In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer. %% Incumbent: Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents. -- Ambrose Bierce %% ... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery. -- Stephen Crane %% Individualists unite! %% Infancy: The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Information Center, n.: A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require. %% Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. %% Ink, n.: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Innovation is hard to schedule. -- Dan Fylstra %% Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon. %% Interpreter, n.: 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 %% Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure. %% "Irrationality is the square root of all evil" -- Douglas Hofstadter %% Is your job running? You'd better go catch it! %% Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? -- Kelvin Throop III %% Issawi's Laws of Progress: The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points. %% It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked, "What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They discussed Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so. To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked, "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?" %% It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke. %% It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" %% It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____only* by amusing oneself that one can learn." -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman %% It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. -- Bertrand Russell %% It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of Urbana, Illinois. %% It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature human beings ... -- Playboy, January 1983 %% It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color. -- Voltaire %% It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons. Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted ... -- Douglas Admas "The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy" %% It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck? One in a million, perhaps. %% It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either. -- Mark Twain %% 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 %% It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" %% It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of attention, the harder the task. -- Sydney J. Harris %% It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" %% It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood Boulevard at one time. %% It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia. %% It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off. -- Woody Allen %% It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it. -- Justice Robert H. Jackson %% It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles. -- George Bernard Shaw %% It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one damn thing over and over. -- Edna St. Vincent Millay %% It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is? -- Elizabeth Carpenter %% It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit. %% It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great. -- Havelock Ellis %% 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. -- Dijkstra %% It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live" %% It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone. %% It is the business of little minds to shrink. -- Carl Sandburg %% It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the future. %% It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out. %% It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too good either if you speak when your head is empty. %% "It runs like _x, where _x is something unsavory" -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435 %% "It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous." -- Robert Benchly %% It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set foot. %% "It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime." -- Thomas Aldrich %% It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle, nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's. Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting icepacks. -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings" %% It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly. It was more like the rose and the teeth were in the same glass. %% It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant examples. -- Charles Dickens %% It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat. -- Robert Fuoss %% It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word. -- Andrew Jackson %% It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear. %% It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for. %% It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it. -- Steven Wright %% "It's a summons." "What's a summons?" "It means summon's in trouble." -- Rocky and Bullwinkle %% It's a very *__UN*lucky week in which to be took dead. -- Churchy La Femme %% It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black. %% It's bad luck to be superstitious. -- Andrew W. Mathis %% It's better to be wanted for murder that not to be wanted at all. -- Marty Winch %% "It's easier said than done." ... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than done". %% It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. %% It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for being right. %% It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse. %% It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs. -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News %% It's just a jump to the left And then a step to the right. Put your hands on your hips And pull your knees in tight. It's the pelvic thrust That really gets you insa-a-a-a-ane LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN! -- Rocky Horror Picture Show %% "It's kind of fun to do the impossible." -- Walt Disney %% "It's Like This" Even the samurai have teddy bears, and even the teddy bears get drunk. %% It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong direction. %% It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name. %% It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre. -- Sam Goldwyn %% It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one. -- Phil White %% It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too. -- Alexander Korda %% It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips. -- Garfield %% It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case. -- Sydney J. Harris %% It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ... %% It's the thought, if any, that counts! %% Job Placement: Telling your boss what he can do with your job. %% Join in the new game that's sweeping the country. It's called "Bureaucracy". Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do anything loses. %% Join the march to save individuality! %% Jones's First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution. %% Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac (and nobody cares about it). -- Bill Joy 6/21/85 %% Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you get a prompt, type like hell. %% Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty! %% `Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried, As he landed his crew with care; Supporting each man on the top of the tide By a finger entwined in his hair. 'Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew. Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.' %% Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a faster rat!!! %% K: Cobalt's metal, hard and shining; Cobol's wordy and confining; KOBOLDS topple when you strike them; Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them. -- The Roguelet's ABC %% Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to wear tail lights. %% Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo. %% Keep your Eye on the Ball, Your Shoulder to the Wheel, Your Nose to the Grindstone, Your Feet on the Ground, Your Head on your Shoulders. Now... try to get something DONE! %% Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College: Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students, and parking for the faculty. %% Kids have *_____never* taken guidance from their parents. If you could travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves. -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do" %% Kin: An affliction of the blood %% Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority. %% Kinkler's Second Law: All the easy problems have been solved. %% "Kirk to Enterprise -- Beam down Yeoman Rand and a six-pack." %% Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through any of its streets. %% Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic. %% Kiss your keyboard goodbye! %% Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within. %% Klein bottle for sale -- inquire within. %% Kleptomaniac: A rich thief. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions. -- Henry N. Camp %% Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Lackland's Laws: 1. Never be first 2. Never be last 3. Never volunteer for anything %% Ladybug, ladybug, Look to your stern! Your house is on fire, Your children will burn! So jump ye and sing, for The very first time The four lines above Have been put into rhyme. -- Walt Kelly %% Langsam's Laws: 1. Everything depends 2. Nothing is always 3. Everything is sometimes %% Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false. %% Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her? What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the applications for. -- Dave Barry %% "Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police record. I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album. Cops have no sense of humor." %% Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won. %% Laugh at your problems; everybody else does. %% Laughter is the closest distance between two people. -- Victor Borge %% Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage. Jenning's Corollary: The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. %% Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats -- approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less. %% Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads. %% Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way. -- Alan J. Perlis %% Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the fun? %% Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907: "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he can." %% LEO (July 23 - Aug 22) Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore. Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got a sick sense of humor. %% Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a number. You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash and another number. -- James Estes %% Let us live!!! Let us love!!! Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!! You first. %% Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind his back." -- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn %% Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as Mental Anguish. You would sue: * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls in there". * The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious cretin like yourself. * Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you a large cash settlement anyway. %% 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" %% Lewis's Law of Travel: The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to anyone, ever. %% Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission. -- Ambrose Bierce %% LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22) Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that. %% LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22) You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay. Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of venereal disease. %% Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while. %% Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to eat it nevertheless. -- Flaubert %% "Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it." %% Life is like a simile. %% Life is like an analogy %% "Life is too important to take seriously." -- Corky Siegel %% "Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove." %% "Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility" -- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie %% "Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it weren't for other people" -- Blore %% Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code. %% Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem. -- Alan McKay %% Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should think only about today. Charlie Brown: No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get better. %% Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun. %% Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before. %% Lizzie Borden took an axe, And plunged it deep into the VAX; Don't you envy people who Do all the things ___YOU want to do? %% Lobster: Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout, "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot. Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be, too. -- "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and Utensils into Excuses and Apologies" %% Lockwood's Long Shot: The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't one in a million, but once would be enough. %% Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_____awful*. %% ... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and legally ... impeccable! %% Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too? -- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox %% Loose bits sink chips. %% Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder. -- Sigmund Freud %% Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. -- H. L. Mencken %% Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes. %% Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to. %% Love's Drug My love is like an iron wand That conks me on the head, My love is like the valium That I take before my bed, My love is like the pint of scotch That I drink when I be dry; And I shall love thee still, my dear, Until my wife is wise. %% Lowery's Law: If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway. %% LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand. %% Machine-Independent, adj.: Does not run on any existing machine. %% Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ... -- Ambrose Bierce %% Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender. -- W. C. Fields %% Magnet: Something acted upon by magnetism. Magnetism: Something acting upon a magnet. The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Magpie: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Maintainer's Motto: If we can't fix it, it ain't broke. %% Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds. Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files. -- System V.2 administrator's guide %% Man 1: Ask me the what the most important thing about telling a good joke is. Man 2: OK, what is the most impo--- Man 1: ______TIMING! %% "Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain." -- Lily Tomlin %% Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. -- Wernher von Braun %% Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. -- Samuel Butler %% Man: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history, dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first primitive umpire. What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers. -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag" %% Manual, n.: A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The information you need in in the others. -- Ray Simard %% Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery: Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a simple yes or no answer. %% Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam dancing. -- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83 %% Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated. -- R. Drabek %% Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe %% Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is described as being n-dimensional. Like modern sex, any number can play. -- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by James Blish %% "Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence." %% Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a receipt. %% May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts %% May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual! %% May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones. %% May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a Thousand Caramels. %% Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology. -- R. S. Barton %% Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge it. %% Mayor Vincent J. `Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city nativity scene removed: "They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men and a virgin in the whole organization." %% Meeting, n.: An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or department not represented in the room must solve a problem. %% Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man had split before. Thus was the Empire forged. -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams %% Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ... [EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.] ... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger hotshot cells moving up from below. -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face" %% MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched. %% methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylluecylphenyialanylalanylglutamin- ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl- phenylalanylyalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu- taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl- glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolyphenylalanyl- serylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylglutaminyl- asparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylglycylva- lythreonylprolyalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionylleucyala- nylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolythreonylisoleucylprolyli- soleucylglyclleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylvalylphenylala- nylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyrosylalanylglu- taminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleucylvalylala- nylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolyphenylalanylargi- nylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylalanylprolyiso- leucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylaspartylaspartyl- aspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosylglycylarginyl- glycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycylvalylthreonyl- gylcylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginyalanylalanylleucylprolylleucylaspartagi- nylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucylysylglutamyltyrosylasparaginylalanylala- nylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylserylalanylpro- lyaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanylglycylalanyla- lanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalyllysylisoleucyli- soleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylprolyglutamylly- sylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyglutaminylproly- methionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.: The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protien, a 1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids. -- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words %% Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks. %% Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?" Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO inconsiderate." -- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury" %% Millihelen, adj: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. %% Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the black. -- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery" %% Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. %% Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however. %% Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better. %% Molecule: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion ... -- Ambrose Bierce %% Monday: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. %% Money is the root of all wealth. %% Mophobia, n.: Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian. %% MORE SPORTS RESULTS: The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last Saturday night. The match started with a long period of silence while the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a fight and the match was called by officials. %% More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly. -- Woody Allen %% Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of them that it doesn't make any difference. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know" %% Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do. -- Turgenev %% Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like. -- Arnold Bennett %% Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before. %% "Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365. He [ten-year-old Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,255!" An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much fun to watch. -- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics) %% Murphy's Discovery: Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything will be all right." And what happens? Nine months later, you're in trouble! %% My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it. -- "Grendel", by John Gardner %% My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste. First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded OK. -- Dave Barry, "The Snake" %% My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people. -- Orson Welles %% My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling Alley!! -- Zippy the Pinhead %% Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Napoleon: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he says is wrong. Guiseppe: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right. -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny" %% Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant said "My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone might steal it." %% Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time," said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to. %% Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to serve him. Nasrudin said, "First things first. Did you see me walk into your shop?" "Of course." "Have you ever seen me before?" "Never." "Then how do you know it was me?" %% Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful than the sun." "Why?", he was asked. "Because at night we need the light more." %% Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver pie. Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of meat from his hand. As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it, "Foolish bird! You have the liver, but what can you do with it without the recipe?" %% Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs. -- Fran Leibowitz %% Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -- Abraham Lincoln %% Neckties strangle clear thinking. -- Lin Yutang %% Never be led astray onto the path of virtue. %% Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you. %% Never drink coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations. People tend to change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators have windows. %% Never eat more than you can lift. -- Miss Piggy %% Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat. %% Never let your schooling interfere with your education. %% Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977 %% Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time. %% Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower. %% Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient. %% Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS %% "Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon." %% Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. -- R. A. Heinlein %% New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt. %% New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe. %% New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within. %% New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area. -- Monty Python's Big Red Book %% New systems generate new problems. %% New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and his wife most often reminds him to act it. -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary %% New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors. %% New York's got the ways and means; Just won't let you be. -- The Grateful Dead %% NEWS FLASH!! Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West German pole-vault champion. %% *** NEWSFLASH *** Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven! %% Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction. %% Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund. -- F. J. Raymond %% Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. -- Foghorn Leghorn %% Nine megs for the secretaries fair, Seven megs for the hackers scarce, Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs, Three megs for system source; One disk to rule them all, One disk to bind them, One disk to hold the files And in the darkness grind 'em. %% Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes And tapes without any tracks; Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes And tapes mixed up on the racks -- Take hold of the tape And pull off the strip, And then you'll be sure Your tape drive will skip. -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes %% Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much. -- Augustine %% Nirvana? Thats the place where the powers that be and their friends hang out. -- Zonker Harris %% No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation. -- Fran Lebowitz %% No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut. -- Channing Pollock %% No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style. %% No matter what other nations may say about the United States, immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery. %% No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid. %% No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of the author. -- Chris Shaw %% No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff -- He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough. Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame. CHORUS: Puff the fractal dragon was written in C, And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory. Puff the fractal dragon was written in C, And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory. Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail. All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!" (chorus) Puff used more resources than DCS could spare. The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care. A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end, But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again! (chorus) %% No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it. %% No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere. %% "No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as an indication-applied occurrence." -- ALGOL 68 Report %% No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper. -- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch %% No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.' -- Dr. Who %% NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION %% Nobody said computers were going to be polite. %% Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young and rob the old. -- Lewis Lapham %% Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades. %% Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong. %% Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none. -- Shakespeare %% Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. --Professor W. %% Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman -- unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes ... -- Woody Allen %% Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. -- Nero Wolfe %% Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. -- Oscar Wilde %% Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love. -- Charlie Brown %% November: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature. %% Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself the following questions: (1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a food? (2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me? (3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like longer.) That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick. %% "Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ..." -- "The Begatting of a President" %% ... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop quickly. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" %% Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question. Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon administration. In either the hardware or housewares department, you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools that Americans might use around the home. Buy it. This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to direct sunlight. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% "Nuclear war would really set back cable." -- Ted Turner %% [Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable. -- Edwin Meese III %% Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing. %% O give me a home, Where the buffalo roam, Where the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard A discouraging word, 'Cause what can an antelope say? %% Of _c_o_u_r_s_e it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a fake? %% Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable. -- Plato %% Of all the words of witch's doom There's none so bad as which and whom. The man who kills both which and whom Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom. -- Fletcher Knebel %% Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy. %% Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%. And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a blazer. %% Office Automation, n.: The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee. %% Ogden's Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up. %% Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo! %% Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay I muck with indices and structs all day And when it works, I shout hoo-ray Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay %% Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too. -- Lichty & Wagner %% Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of -- Wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up along delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Where never lark, or even eagle flew; And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. -- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight" %% Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes. %% Oh, wow! Look at the moon! %% OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard. -- Dr. Joy %% Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. %% Omnibiblious, adj.: Indifferent to type of drink. "Oh, you can get me anything. I'm omnibiblious." %% OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS?? Oh, YEH!! First you need 4 GALLONS of JELL-O and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O as if it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... ... or ... I ... um ... WHERE'S the WASHING MACHINES? %% On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks. -- H. Allen Smith %% On the road, ZIPPY is a pinhead without a purpose, but never without a POINT ... %% On-line: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer. %% Once... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days. -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee" %% Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice. In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka" and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!" -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" %% Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease". Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your principals or your mistress". %% Once Law was sitting on the bench And Mercy knelt a-weeping. "Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench! Nor come before me creeping. Upon you knees if you appear, 'Tis plain you have no standing here." Then Justice came. His Honor cried: "YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!" "Amica curiae," she replied -- "Friend of the court, so please you." "Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door -- I never saw your face before!" -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" %% Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky. -- Rainer Rilke %% Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom." The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure. But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the rocks, making legends of a Saviour. %% Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of the smaller prime numbers. 2: The Odd Prime -- It's the only even prime, therefore is odd. QED. 3: The True Prime -- Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you 3 times, it's true." 31: The Arbitrary Prime -- Determined by unanimous unvote. We needed an arbitrary prime in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election. 91 received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the next most. However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none at all. Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers. %% ... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" %% Once: Enough. -- Ambrose Bierce %% One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth -- the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!" "Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth." %% One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious. -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848) %% One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How will it live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net, I'll tell you." %% One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him. -- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983 %% One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there. -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984 %% One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas. %% One of the Ten Commandments for Technicians: 1. Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most untechnician- like manner. %% One of the Ten Commandments for Technicians: 7. Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in other ways. %% One Page Principle: A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper cannot be understood. -- Mark Ardis %% One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are already too large to fit on normal aircraft. -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants" %% One reason why George Washington Is held in such veneration: He never blamed his problems On the former Administration. -- George O. Ludcke %% One seldom sees a monument to a committee. %% One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model. %% One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted. -- Thomas B. Reed %% One-Shot Case Study, n.: The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes green. %% Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we." %% Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer. %% Oregano: The ancient Italian art of pizza folding. %% Oregon: Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday night. %% Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl. -- Mike Adams %% Our documentation manager was showing her 2 year old son around the office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of juice. But only *_h_e* had a lollipop. He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?" Her reply: "He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it means to be a programmer." %% Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing. -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries %% ... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself. -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!" %% "Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure %% Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. -- General Omar N. Bradley %% OUTCONERR Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes Did logzerneg the ifthen block All kludgy were the function flows And subroutines adhoc. Beware the runtime-bug my friend squrooneg, the false goto Beware the infiniteloop And shun the inprectoo. %% Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx %% Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now I can remember things that *have* happened before ... %% Overdrawn? But I still have checks left! %% Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket. %% Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated. %% Ozman's Laws: 1. If someone says he will do something "without fail," he won't. 2. The more people talk on the phone, the less money they make. 3. People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't. 4. Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth. %% Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much better. -- Laurie Anderson %% Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them. %% Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one. %% Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction. %% Parsley is gharsley. -- Ogden Nash %% Pascal is not a high-level language. -- Steven Feiner %% Pascal Users: To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed. %% Pascal: A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it. %% Patageometry: The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant under brain transplants. %% Paul's Law: In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save. %% Paul's Law: You can't fall off the floor. %% Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Peanut Blossoms 4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk 4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla 4 cups shortening 14 cups flour 8 eggs 4 tsp. soda 4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a hell of a lot. %% Pecor's Health-Food Principle: Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in it. %% Pedaeration, n.: The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% Penguin Trivia #46: Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82 %% People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future. %% People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense. -- Ken Kesey %% People usually get what's coming to them... unless it's been mailed. %% People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart. -- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post" %% People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito. %% People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they did yesterday. %% Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery %% Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity! %% Pick another fortune cookie. %% Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig. -- Ambrose Bierce %% PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20) Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the American Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today, as nobody else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed. You will probably get run over by a bus. %% Pittsburgh Driver's Test 7. The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light but a steady left tail light. This means a. one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn to call the problem to the driver's attention. b. the driver is signaling a right turn. c. the driver is signaling a left turn. d. the driver is from out of town. The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign countries to signal turns. %% Pittsburgh Driver's Test 8. Pedestrians are a. irrelevant. b. communists. c. a nuisance. d. difficult to clean off the front grille. The correct answer is (a). Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely. %% PL/I, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set. -- E. W. Dijkstra %% "Plaese porrf raed." -- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase %% Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets. -- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half Shell" %% Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill them. %% Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table. -- Dave Barry, "The Snake" %% Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas" until you are told that those rooms are "punched out". Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such. -- N. Meyrowitz %% Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means? %% Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities, requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how plumbing works. A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system, except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires, it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can kill you. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% PLUNDERER'S THEME (to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius) Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation. If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation. Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations. Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation. %% Police: Good evening, are you the host? Host: No. Police: We've been getting complaints about this party. Host: About the drugs? Police: No. Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns? Police: No, the noise. Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise? The neighbors? Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could ask the host to quiet things down? Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind down. %% Politician, n.: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" %% Politician, n.: From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or "face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face). Hence "polytetien", a person of two or more faces. -- Martin Pitt %% Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. -- Nikita Khrushchev %% Polymer physicists are into chains. %% Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with laughter, singing Half a pound of tuppenny rice Half a pound of treacle That's the way the chimney smokes Pope Goestheveezl The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron Hans Neizant B"ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"oln in 1653. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% Portable: Survives system reboot. %% Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth. %% Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987 %% Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically. %% Power, n: The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA. %% Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming. -- J. P. McEvoy %% Predestination was doomed from the start. %% President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting. -- The Washington Post %% Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist! %% [Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves to see him work. -- Winston Churchill %% Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals have orgasms? The answer is yes, the have orgasms almost constantly, which is why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know" %% Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem. Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received a single point on his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30% %% Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction. This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them. Induction techniques are very popular, even the military used them. SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction. We know it's true for _n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true for every natural number less than _n. _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n as large as we want. If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n. We can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just about _n. QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?") %% Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity. SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs. (1) Horses have an even number of legs. (2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front. (3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of legs for a horse. (4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity. (5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs. Topics is be covered in future issues include proof by: Intimidation Gesticulation (handwaving) "Try it; it works" Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...) Blatant assertion Changing all the 2's to _n's Mutual consent Lack of a counterexample, and "It stands to reason" %% Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together. %% 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, "Why Humor is Funny" %% Pushing 40 is exercise enough. %% Put no trust in cryptic comments. %% Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is? A: One per person. %% Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence? A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence. %% Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness. %% Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb in San Francisco? A: Both of them. %% Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb? A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks". %% Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a pulitzer prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb assassin to break the bulb in the first place. %% Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: One and a half. %% Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem to the earlier joke. %% Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools. %% Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None. The Universe spines the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of the way. %% Q: What's a light-year? A: One-third less calories than a regular year. %% Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road? A: Because it was on the other side. %% Q: Why do ducks have flat feet? A: To stamp out forest fires. Q: Why do elephants have flat feet? A: To stamp out flaming ducks. %% Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together? A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home. %% Quality Control, n.: The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works. %% Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened! %% Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!! %% Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.) %% Quigley's Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will atttempt to use it. %% QUOTE OF THE DAY: ` %% QWERT (kwirt), n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]: 1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69 kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering; 2. [colloq.] one thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry; 3. [anat.] a painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus; 4. [slang] person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert. -- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed. %% _ _ / \ o / \ | | o o o | | | | _ o o o o | \_| | / \ o o o \__ | | | o o | | | | ______ ~~~~ _____ | |__/ | / ___--\\ ~~~ __/_____\__ | ___/ / \--\\ \\ \ ___ <__ x x __\ | | / /\\ \\ )) \ ( " ) | | -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >----------- | | // | | //__________ / \ ____) (___ \\ | | // __|_| ( --------- ) //// ______ /////\ \\ // | ( \ ______ / <<<< <>-----<<<<< / \\ // ( ) / / \` \__ \\ //-------------------------------------------------------------\\ 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. -- H.S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" %% Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives. %% Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store? -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President %% Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain %% Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA. %% Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing machines are so poor at I/O. %% Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are so long they can't afford the disk space. %% Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write in anything less portable than a number two pencil. %% Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker with `programming systems', but those are so high level that they hardly count (and rarely count accurately; precision is for applications.) %% Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet. %% Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise clear desks. %% Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche. %% Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how much good it did them. %% Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white socks. %% Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue. %% Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them? %% Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness. This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package. %% Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that systems could be virtual at *___all* levels. They would like personal computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their Correctness Verification Aid packages. %% Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like using an undocumented external procedure. %% Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and then. %% Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never afraid to break your face. %% Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts down the system for days. %% Real Users hate Real Programmers. %% Real Users know your home telephone number. %% Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your program doesn't deliver it. %% Real Users never use the Help key. %% Reality is for people who lack imagination. %% Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity. -- Alvy Ray Smith %% Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -- Philip K. Dick %% Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict, but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions. %% "Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the starfield surrounding the ship. "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious." -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star" %% Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia: If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it. %% Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin. -- Anatole France %% "Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is when he never used it." -- Dave Barry %% Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Cleveland. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" %% Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good offense! %% Renning's Maxim: Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying. %% REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system? SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away." I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political career be being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I can't help it. -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics" %% Review Questions 1. If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH, and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship? 2. If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week? 3. If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice? %% Rhode's Law: When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening, circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly, empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred, induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe. %% Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. -- Steven Wright %% Romeo wasn't bilked in a day. -- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo" %% Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London: 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. %% Rules for driving in New York: 1. Anything done while honking your horn is legal. 2. You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers on. 3. A red light means the next six cars may go through the intersection. %% Rules Of Eating -- The Bronx Dieter's Creed 1. Never eat on an empty stomach. 2. Never leave the table hungry. 3. When traveling, never leave a country hungry. 4. Enjoy your food. 5. Enjoy your companion's food. 6. Really taste your food. It may take several portions to accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned. 7. Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare, for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks? 8. Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal. 9. Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You can always eat it later. 10. Avoid any wine with a childproof cap. 11. Avoid blue food. -- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet" %% Rules: 1. The boss is always right. 2. When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1. %% Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead. (1) Little things start bothering you: little things like worms, bugs, ants. (2) Something is missing in your personal relationships. (3) Your dog becomes overly affectionate. (4) You have a hard time getting a waiter. (5) Exotic birds flock around you. (6) People ignore you at parties. (7) You have a hard time getting up in the morning. (8) You no longer get off on cocaine. %% Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence (1) Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear bomb; use the stairs. (2) When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit the ground. (3) If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials. (4) Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to psychological problems. (5) Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc. (6) Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs will be scarce in the post-nuclear age. (7) Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles. (8) Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be staggering illegally. (9) Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more sanitary due to limited circulation. (10) Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on D-Day. %% San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was. -- Herb Caen %% San Francisco, n.: Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse. %% Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold %% Satellite Safety Tip #14: If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck. %% Saturday night in Toledo Ohio, Is like being nowhere at all, All through the day how the hours rush by, You sit in the park and you watch the grass die. -- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio" %% Sauron is alive in Argentina! %% Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda. %% Save the whales. Collect the whole set. %% SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out! -- Ken Thompson %% Schapiro's Explanation: The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's because they use more manure. %% Schizophrenia beats being alone. %% Schlattwhapper, n.: The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down, hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% Schnuffel, n.: A dog's practice of continuously nuzzling in your crotch in mixed company. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% Schwiggle, n.: The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a pencil. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% Scott's First Law: No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right. %% Scott's Second Law: When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been correct in the first place. Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation. %% Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it! Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock? Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table. Kirk: Then it's of external origin? Spock: Affirmative. Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two. Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two. %% "Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State). In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a multiline message byte. In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message must be sent passive true. The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter: (1) The ANRS if DAV is false (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither: (a) The LADS is active (b) Nor LACS is active" -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for Programmable Instrumentation %% Security check: INTRUDER ALERT! %% Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming, Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" %% Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine: Ice Cream cures all ills. %% Self Test for Paranoia: You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's your own fault. %% Seminars, n.: From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion. %% Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would notify you if the record has pornographics material or material glorifying violence?" Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me." Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's legs on the album cover is good indication that it's not for little Johnny." -- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985 %% Senate, n.: A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Serenity through viciousness. %% "Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now." "I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly. "Too proud?" the other enquired. Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean," she said, "that one can't help growing older." "ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven." -- Lewis Carroll %% Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up like crabgrass all over the United States. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% Sex is a natural bodily process, like a stroke. %% Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer. -- Swami X %% Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated. -- M. C. Reed. %% Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best. -- Woody Allen %% Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know" %% She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot. -- Mark Twain %% She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them were bad. %% "She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing, you should hear me play piano.'" -- Morrisey %% She's genuinely bogus. %% Since I hurt my pendulum My life is all erratic. My parrot, who was cordial, Is now transmitting static. The carpet died, a palm collapsed, The cat keeps doing poo. The only thing that keeps me sane Is talking to my shoe. -- My Shoe %% Since we're all here, we must not be all there. -- Bob "Mountain" Beck %% [Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. -- Winston Churchill %% Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text. This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy. %% Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension: they were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. -- Frederick Douglass %% Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. -- Fletcher Knebel %% So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast array of 8-millimeter video equipment. ... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*. -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics Revolution" %% So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. -- Bertrand Russell %% ... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. -- Voltarine de Cleyre %% So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark]. With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and -- I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us. Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV" %% ... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking, under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all along. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV" %% So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway? And why can't he ever remember his Bible? %% Software, n.: Formal evening attire for female computer analysts. %% Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit. %% Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them. -- Ed Howe %% Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on "The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money and go to a mall. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" %% Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them. -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22" %% Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have only one life to live, let me live it as a jerk." %% Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic. %% Some points to remember [about animals]: 1. Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri, hippopotamuses; 2. Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the front of your clothes; 3. Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs you have just kicked. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% Some primal termite knocked on wood. And tasted it, and found it good. And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today. -- Ogden Nash %% Some programming languages manage to absorb change but withstand progress. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 %% Someone will try to honk your nose today. %% "Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not God's Machineries of Joy?" "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin." -- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy" %% Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering. %% Song Title of the Week: "They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me." %% Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already paid may disregard this fortune). %% Sorry, no fortune this time. %% Sorry. I forget what I was going to say. %% "Spare no expense to save money on this one." -- Samuel Goldwyn %% Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword. %% Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well, no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use? %% Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror: With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair He throws the spinning disk drives in the air! And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds! Helpless users with projects due Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too! Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla! Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!" * VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation * DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc. -- Curtis Jackson %% Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very _____least he can do is to Shut Up! -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was" %% "Speed is subsittute fo accurancy." %% Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it. %% Spelling is a lossed art. %% Spouse, n.: Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single. %% "Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to pur'ee of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!" -- Harlan Ellison %% Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. %% Stult's Report: Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is fight the solutions. %% Stupid, n.: Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay. %% Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out? %% Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. -- Mark Twain %% Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood. %% Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar without his duck ... %% (Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA) To code the impossible code, To bring up a virgin machine, To pop out of endless recursion, To grok what appears on the screen, To right the unrightable bug, To endlessly twiddle and thrash, To mount the unmountable magtape, To stop the unstoppable crash! %% Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have! %% Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy. %% Support your local police force -- steal!! %% Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead! %% Swahili: The language used by the National Enquirer to print their retractions. -- Johnny Hart %% Sweater: A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly. %% Swipple's Rule of Order: He who shouts the loudest has the floor. %% Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 %% Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 %% T: One big monster, he called TROLL. He don't rock, and he don't roll; Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies. He just Love To Eat Them Roguies. -- The Roguelet's ABC %% Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a hole in his head. %% Tact, n.: The unsaid part of what you're thinking. %% Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way. %% Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" %% Take it easy, we're in a hurry. %% Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool. -- Kipling %% Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to improve ... -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" %% 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" %% Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. -- Euripides %% Talkers are no good doers. -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" %% Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. -- Friedrich Nietzsche %% Taxes: Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get an extension. %% Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. -- Aldous Huxley %% Telephone, n.: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Tell me, O Octopus, I begs, Is those things arms, or is they legs? I marvel at thee, Octopus; If I were thou, I'd call me us. -- Ogden Nash %% "Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother." -- Len Cool, "American Pie" %% Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones. %% Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession. %% "Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds." -- J. Finnegan, USC. %% "That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver" -- Foghorn Leghorn %% That secret you've been guarding, isn't. %% That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them. -- Dorothy Parker %% The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy. %% The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by people who want some. -- Dwight MacDonald %% The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper -- Thomas Jefferson %% The Advertising Agency Song: When your client's hopping mad, Put his picture in the ad. If he still should prove refractory, Add a picture of his factory. %% ... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock. %% The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability. -- T. Lehrer %% The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe. -- Bill Murray %% The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use. -- Abraham Lincoln %% The average income of the modern teenager is about 2AM. %% The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots, which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but -- here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault, his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking lots. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" %% The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets." -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants" %% The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. -- W. C. Fields %% The best defense against logic is ignorance. %% "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn." -- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King" %% The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst %% The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public. It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street ... %% "The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch." %% The bogosity meter just pegged. %% The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units. %% The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo. -- Art Buchwald %% The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy. %% "The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language." %% The camel has a single hump; The dromedary two; Or else the other way around. I'm never sure. Are you? -- Ogden Nash %% The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics. -- H. L. Mencken %% The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions. -- Alfred Adler %% The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will walk carefully. -- Russian Proverb %% The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his memos. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 %% The Crown is full of it! -- Nate Harris, 1775 %% The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war, then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press. Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges. -- William Ellery Channing %% The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life. %% The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe. %% The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary? %% The devil finds work for idle circuits to do. %% The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets. %% The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid. -- Gilbert K. Chesterson %% The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the duck and returned it to his master. "Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly. "Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim." %% The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm. -- Travis McGee %% "The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not Compute' -- I forget which." -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 %% The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with symposium to follow. %% The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. -- G. B. Shaw %% The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forbearance among men. -- Ambrose Bierce %% The fact that it works is immaterial. -- L. Ogborn %% The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system. -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings" %% "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do." -- McCloctnik the Lucid %% The First Rule of Program Optimization: Don't do it. The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!): Don't do it yet. -- Michael Jackson %% The first time, it's a KLUDGE! The second, a trick. Later, it's a well-established technique! -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics %% The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals: As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector. . . . Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge of the hyper-cube. %% "The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl." -- Dave Barry %% The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the number of your kids by 32 teeth. %% The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. %% The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End. %% The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled today. %% The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he invented marriage. %% "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." -- St. Augustine %% The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog: The Gerat Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog Eater. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. -- Albert Einstein %% The Heineken Uncertainty Principle: You can never be sure how many beers you had last night. %% The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back, which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at least 5000 years old." %% "The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and has gills through which it can see." -- Monty Python %% The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. %% The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein -- it rejects it. -- P. Medawar %% The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can remember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider struggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in spring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite and wonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your head off. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV" %% The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. -- Mark Twain %% The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers, where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed, consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!" -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants" %% "The identical is equal to itself, since it is different." -- Franco Spisani %% "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer." -- Henry Kissinger %% 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 last time somebody said, `I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, `They used to say the same thing about drugs.' -- Roy Blount, Jr. %% THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN, END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging. %% THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said to be useful in protheththing lithtth. %% THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler. Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but infinitely faster) language, COCAINE. %% THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions. SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at parties. %% THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: C- This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very similar to COBOL. %% THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #19: FIFTH FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY, CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND. The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers who end up using this language. %% The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon. %% The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself. -- Henry Kissinger %% "The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them." -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22" %% The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been. -- Alan Ashley-Pitt %% The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years. %% "... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ..." -- Dave Barry %% The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream." "Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?" "How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?" %% The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation. -- Lew Mammel, Jr. %% The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me. -- Nicol Williamson %% The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader. %% The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away. %% The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be. -- Lao Tsu %% The more things change, the more they stay insane. %% The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us is right. %% The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey. -- Andy Warhol %% 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 %% The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on. %% ... the MYSTERIANS are in here with my CORDUROY SOAP DISH!! %% "... The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!" "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to feel interested. "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged Aged Man.'" "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?" Alice corrected herself. "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!" "Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered. "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is "A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention." -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass" %% "The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in 1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert." -- D. Letterman %% The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says: Support your right to bare arms! %% The net of law is spread so wide, No sinner from its sweep may hide. Its meshes are so fine and strong, They take in every child of wrong. O wondrous web of mystery! Big fish alone escape from thee! -- James Jeffrey Roche %% The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory, in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system. But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. -- Matthew 5:37 %% The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum %% The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the 80-column card. -- Dennis M. Ritchie %% The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are correct. -- Ralph Hartley %% The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve these problems when called upon. However, When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp. %% The Official MBA Handbook on business cards: Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of Corporate Planning." %% The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. -- H. L. Mencken %% The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath. -- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart %% The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe. %% The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford %% The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop and take a rest. %% "The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon." -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and Over and Over" %% The only really decent thing to do behind a person's back is pat it. %% The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. -- Oscar Wilde %% "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." -- Hegel "I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the long view." -- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar" %% The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up until 5 or 6 p.m. %% The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -- Bohr %% The optimum committee has no members. -- Norman Augustine %% 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 %% The people of Halifax invented the trampoline. During the Victorian period the tripe-dressers of Halifax stretched tripe across a large wooden frame and jumped up and down on it to `tender and dress' it. The tripoline, as they called it, degenerated into becoming the apparatus for a spectator sport. The people of Halifax also invented the harmonium, a device for castrating pigs during Sunday service. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% The Pig, if I am not mistaken, Gives us ham and pork and Bacon. Let others think his heart is big, I think it stupid of the Pig. -- Ogden Nash %% The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it. -- Dizzy Dean %% The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose. -- David Lardner %% The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it is equally important to accept and tolerate different standards of courtesy, not expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own preferences. Only then can we hope to restore the insult to its proper social function of expressing true distaste. -- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior" %% "The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more often." %% The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his brother's remark, "There's more Arabs in this country than there is Jews!". Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers. -- Baltimore, Channel 11 News, on Jimmy Carter %% The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday they might force their beliefs on us. -- Mario Cuomo %% The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% 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 primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO" represents the secondary theme: Law Enforcement Officials The overall theme of SoupCon shall be: Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials %% ... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in charity we can only call "inhuman." -- R. A. Lafferty %% The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with. Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler" %% The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it. -- Glaser and Way %% The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get results. The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy problems in order to get results. The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy problems in order to get results. %% The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues. -- Elizabeth Taylor %% The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard. %% The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% "The pyramid is opening!" "Which one?" "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!" -- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All" %% The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's: "My brain is paged out to my liver" %% The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television, that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste? -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics" %% The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is cursed. %% The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much. %% The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose", which is also sometimes called "grape sugar", and also because "Grape Nuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between Gerbil Food and Gravel", which is what it tastes like. -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's" %% The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw %% The revolution will not be televised. %% The rhino is a homely beast, For human eyes he's not a feast. Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros, I'll stare at something less prepoceros. -- Ogden Nash %% The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts. -- Sheridan %% The right to revolt has sources deep in our history. -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas %% "The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights you have and what rights you have not got." -- J. Parnell Thomas %% The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't take it too seriously. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% The rule on staying alive as a forcaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once. -- Jane Bryant Quinn %% "The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography" %% 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 %% The sheep that fly over your head are soon to land. %% The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their money. -- Ed Bluestone, "The National Lampoon" %% "The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!" %% The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears. %% 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 %% The STAR WARS Song Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks: I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda S-O-D-A soda I saw the little runt sitting there on a log I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda Well I've been around but I ain't never seen A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda %% The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub. %% The steady state of disks is full. --Ken Thompson %% The sum of the Universe is zero. %% 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 %% The Three Laws of Thermodynamics: The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it. The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break even. The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero. %% The Three Major Kind of Tools * Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces, bludgeons, and truncheons.) * Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls) * Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far greater than the value of any project that could possibly result. (Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tools that uses any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.) -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% The trouble with a kitten is that When it grows up, it's always a cat -- Ogden Nash. %% 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 %% "The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." %% The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are "100 percent American"... -- U. S. Army (1945) %% The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to everybody and still nobody likes him. -- Jim Samuels %% The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken. %% The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the combination is locked up in the safe. -- Peter DeVries %% The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense. -- E. W. Dijkstra %% The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. -- Mark Twain %% The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering. -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil" %% "The voters have spoken, the bastards ..." %% 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. -- P. Opus %% THE WOMBAT The wombat lives across the seas, Among the far Antipodes. He may exist on nuts and berries, Or then again, on missionaries; His distant habitat precludes Conclusive knowledge of his moods. But I would not engage the wombat In any form of mortal combat. %% The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!! %% The world is coming to an end. Please log off. %% The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all the answers. %% Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations. He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open market. If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself. Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree. Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg. Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" %% Then here's to the City of Boston, The town of the cries and the groans. Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks, And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns. -- Franklin Pierce Adams %% There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday. %% There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy ... -- Ambrose Bierce %% There are many intelligent species in the universe. They all own cats. %% There are no games on this system. %% There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible. -- Richard Davisson %% There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying. %% There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone. -- Gloria Steinem %% "There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis; and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again, don't we all?" %% There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted. -- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior %% There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering. %% There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler" %% There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more. -- Woody Allen %% "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make is 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 %% There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives. %% There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer than 100. -- Steele's Law %% There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion. -- Anatole France %% There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder. %% There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs tied during the month of April. %% "There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Fatherland." -- Adolf Hitler %% "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum." -- Arthur C. Clarke %% There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress. -- Mark Twain %% There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five, of course. -- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed. %% "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, President of DEC, World Future Society Convention, 1977 %% There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes. %% There is no such thing as fortune. Try again. %% There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY. There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS I'm very probably wrong. %% "There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine," said a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat. "And yet just a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with an unanswerable question," said Nasrudin. "I could have answered it if I had been there." "Very well. He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in the middle of the night?'" %% There once was a member of Mensa Who was a most excellent fencer. The sword that he used Was his -- (line is refused, And has now been removed by the censor). %% There once was an old man from Esser, Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser. It at last grew so small, He knew nothing at all, And now he's a College Professor. %% "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." -- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia %% There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley. Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so they started debating who should be allowed to stay. The Pope pointed out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all over the world, the President explained that if he died then America would be stuck with the Vice-President, and so forth. Then Mayor Daley said, "Look! We're not solving anything like this! The only fair thing to do is to vote on it." So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97 votes. %% There was a young man who said "God, I find it exceedingly odd, That the willow oak tree Continues to be, When there's no one about in the Quad." "Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd, For I'm always about in the Quad; And that's why the tree, Continues to be," Signed "Yours faithfully, God." %% There was a young poet named Dan, Whose poetry never would scan. When told this was so, He said, "Yes, I know. %% "There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial: both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him during the trial." -- David Letterman %% There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double- digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the 8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the first electrical digital computer, and the first communications satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the telephone business? %% There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to. %% There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get any worse. %% There's no room in the drug world for amateurs. %% "There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't aggravate." %% There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic. -- Lily Tomlin %% "These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!" "These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!" "These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP out of MEGATON MAN!" %% These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink. %% "They make a desert and call it peace." -- Tacitus (55?-120?) %% They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce. -- Mark Twain %% "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!" %% They told me you had proven it When they discovered our results About a month before. Their hair began to curl The proof was valid, more or less Instead of understanding it But rather less than more. We'd run the thing through PRL. He sent them word that we would try Don't tell a soul about all this To pass where they had failed For it must ever be And after we were done, to them A secret, kept from all the rest The new proof would be mailed. Between yourself and me. My notion was to start again Ignoring all they'd done We quickly turned it into code To see if it would run. %% "They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult to like." -- Avon %% Think big. Pollute the Mississippi. %% Think honk if you're a telepath. %% "Thirty days hath Septober, April, June, and no wonder. all the rest have peanut butter except my father who wears red suspenders." %% This Fortue Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14 %% This fortune is false. %% This fortune is inoperative. Please try another. %% This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT DOG. -- Bob Violence %% "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?" %% This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out. -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations" %% This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement. %% This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to one. -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351 %% This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the power of computers: Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The results are that one should eat each day: 1/2 chicken 1 egg 1 glass of skim milk 27 heads of lettuce. -- Rev. Adrian Melott %% This is the story of the bee Whose sex is very hard to see You cannot tell the he from the she But she can tell, and so can he The little bee is never still She has no time to take the pill And that is why, in times like these There are so many sons of bees. %% This is your fortune. %% This land is full of trousers! this land is full of mausers! And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down! -- Firesign Theater %% This land is made of mountains, This land is made of mud, This land has lots of everything, For me and Elmer Fudd. This land has lots of trousers, This land has lots of mousers, And pussycats to eat them When the sun goes down. %% This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. -- Douglas Adams %% This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87. One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one computer language to another and has a built-in editing system which identifies errors in the original program. %% This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't. -- Hofstadter %% ... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available, they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers going off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli. -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" %% Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better than he does. As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians. The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes. This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease. -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" %% Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well. -- Aristotle %% Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. -- John F. Kennedy %% Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. -- Frederick Douglass %% Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so. -- Ford Prefect %% 'Tis the dream of each programmer, Before his life is done, To write three lines of APL, And make the damn things run. %% (to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along") Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash. Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all, Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash. And we've also found Just flip one switch When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble in a flash. Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo," And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash. %% To A Quick Young Fox: Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp, Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice? Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp -- Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice. -- Lazy Dog %% "To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to offer in response is based on information available to make no such statement." %% "To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System" %% To generalize is to be an idiot. -- William Blake %% To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. -- Thomas Edison %% To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall. %% To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy, inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence: precision and flexibility may be just as disfunctional in novel, uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar, well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very secure ecological niche. -- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers" %% To understand this important story, you have to understand how the telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan. Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse, an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen and drink gin and laugh themselves silly. -- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own Phones?" %% "To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?" %% To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition. -- Woody Allen %% Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity? And where does it go after it leaves the toaster? -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" %% "Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word except in major motion pictures." -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!" %% Toilet Toup'ee, n.: Any shag carpet that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus creating endless annoyance to male users. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% Too clever is dumb. -- Ogden Nash %% Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence. -- Henrik Tikkanen %% Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it. -- Mark Twain %% Truthful: Dumb and illiterate. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational. -- Charles Schulz %% Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good. %% Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance. %% Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only specification is that it should run noiselessly. %% Trying to establish voice contact ... please ____yell into keyboard. %% Tussman's Law: Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come. %% 'Twas the Night before Crisis 'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house, Not a program was working not even a browse. The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care, Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer. The users were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of inquiries danced in their heads. When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter. And what to my wondering eyes should appear, But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear. More rapid than eagles, his programs they came, And he whistled and shouted and called them by name; On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete! On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete! His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean, From Weekends and nights in front of a screen. A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head, Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread... %% 'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And throughout our place of residence, Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus, Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ... %% Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing. -- Walt Kelly %% Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The second man said, "He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his chambers, and spent an hour trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded only in falling over and bruising his forehead. Returning to the courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten. If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and the case is dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it and must pay three silver pieces." %% Two percent of zero is almost nothing. %% "Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory. I forget the second." %% U: There's a U -- a Unicorn! Run right up and rub its horn. Look at all those points you're losing! UMBER HULKS are so confusing. -- The Roguelet's ABC %% "Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex." (Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.) -- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971) %% "Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?" "It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food, right?" -- MacNelley, "Shoe" %% Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb: Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a hammer or get a splinter in it. %% Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. -- Henry David Thoreau %% Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ... %% Unfair animal names: -- tsetse fly -- bullhead -- booby -- duck-billed platypus -- sapsucker -- Clarence -- Gary Larson %% Universe: The problem. %% unix soit qui mal y pense %% UNIX will be half a billion (500000000) seconds old on Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch). -- Andy Tannenbaum %% Unnamed Law: If it happens, it must be possible. %% Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages. -- H. L. Mencken %% Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir %% User n.: A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. %% Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach. -- S. C. Johnson %% Vanilla, adj.: Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of food, very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla extract! For example, "vanilla-flavored won ton soup" (or simply "vanilla won ton soup") means ordinary won ton soup, as opposed to hot and sour won ton soup. %% Veni, Vidi, Visa. %% "Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips." "But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito. "Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made good copy." -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings" %% Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters. %% Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life." Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it." %% Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the yard. %% VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22) Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of that old underwear you own. %% "Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from. %% VMS is like a nightmare about RXS-11M. %% Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and TAX-DEFERRED! %% Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser. %% War hath no fury like a non-combatant. -- Charles Edward Montague %% War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable. %% WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL: Firings will continue until morale improves. %% WARNING: Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of hair on your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of your favorite war. %% Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking up. -- Chicago Reader 4/22/83 %% Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with. %% Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm. -- John F. Kennedy %% We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough. -- Niels Bohr %% We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm. -- Winston Churchill %% We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it. -- Whole Earth Catalog %% We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities. -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo" %% We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say socialism? -- Fidel Castro %% We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 %% "We are upping our standards ... so up yours." -- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988. %% We can predict everything, except the future. %% We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty! -- Vroomfondel %% We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the hardware, but we can *___see* the blinking lights! %% "We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down mill, and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our grave singing Haleleuia ..." -- Monty Python %% We have only 2 things to worry about: That things will never get back to normal, and that they already have. %% "We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation." -- Lily Tomlin %% We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that said "ELECTROCUTION". Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom floor, which is how the police would find you. You know the kind of flu I'm talking about. -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide" %% We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. -- Alan M. Turing %% We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass no matter how self-seeking. -- F. G. Withington %% We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years ago people did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult. For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he had to drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his bare fist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered with primitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider how ugly paneling is to begin with. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant. ... I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. ... "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget. "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway belle's for thee." The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day. -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway Competition %% We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter. %% "We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later." %% We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right in his bowl full of jelly. -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts" %% We're only in it for the volume. -- Black Sabbath %% We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week, but for some reason nobody's ever done it. -- Andy Rooney %% Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if you run out of food. -- Dean McLaughlin. %% Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a governor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and the reason you'll be reading about him is that he's one of the 50 top contenders for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. These men will spend the next 18 months going around the country engaging in the most degrading activities imaginable, such as wearing idiot hats and appearing on "Meet the Press". "Meet the Press" is one of those Sunday morning public interest shows that the public is not the least bit interested in. It features a panel of reporters who ask questions of a guest politician, who wins an Amana home freezer if he can get through the entire show without answering a single question ... -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics" %% Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds, or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off. -- President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile %% "Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___can* you believe?!" -- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward] %% Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail, And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail; I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues, I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues. If you think that it's nice that you get what you C, Then go : illogical statement with your whole family, 'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views. I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues. On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze, But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze. Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse, I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues. -- Core Dumped Blues %% "Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?" "Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ... coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero." -- Dr. Who %% Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library. %% Wethern's Law: Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups. %% "What are we going to do?" "Me, I'm examining the major Western religions. I'm looking for something that's soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a short initiation period." %% "What are you doing?" "Examining the world's major religions. I'm looking for something that's light on morals, has lots of holidays, and with a short initiation period." %% What color is a chameleon on a mirror? %% "What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager asked her mother. "Encouragement, dear," she replied. %% What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"? %% What does it mean if there is no fortune for you? %% What garlic is to food, insanity is to art. %% What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the entrance? %% What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow in his footsteps? %% What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah", if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it; they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them. -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face" %% What I tell you three times is true. %% "What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty- sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at parties. -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!" %% What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility. %% What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" %% What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists? -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" %% What is a magician but a practising theorist? -- Obi-Wan Kenobi %% What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875 %% What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak. %% "What is the Nature of God?" CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!= 1 QT. SOUR CREAM 1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT 1/2 CUT CHIVES. STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS. "I've just GOT to start labeling my software..." -- Bloom County %% "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?" -- Bertold Brecht %% What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism. It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes, women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort." -- Susan Gordon %% What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? -- Ursula K. LeGuin %% What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away. %% What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener. %% What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer. %% What this country needs is a good five cent nickel. %% What this world needs is a good five-dollar plasma weapon. %% What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn? -- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn" %% What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which nobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday Morning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space- launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it just remains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradual process of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would still be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed. -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!" %% What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it. %% What's another word for Thesaurus? -- Steven Wright %% "What's that thing?" "Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what it does. We call it a two-by-four." -- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe" %% "What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?" -- The Doctor %% Whatever became of eternal truth? %% Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for cocaine: "You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding hundred dollar bills." -- Herb Caen %% Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not nailed down. -- Collis P. Huntingdon %% Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not cockroaches! -- Mom %% When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the money is. -- Robespierre %% When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money. -- Kim Hubbard %% When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half loop? %% When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere. -- Robert Heinlein %% When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten. -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" %% When all other means of communication fail, try words. %% "When are you BUTTHEADS gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?" -- Reuben Flagg %% When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours." -- Vine Deloria, Jr. %% When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask? Well, last year, I think it was a Tuesday. %% When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm leaving. -- Steven Wright %% When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler" %% When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young ladies, and, of course, the goat. %% When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it. -- Clarence Darrow %% When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, `Well, what do you need?' -- Steven Wright %% When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me. -- Woody Allen %% When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ... Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things together which nobody in his right mind would do alone. -- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope" %% When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it. -- Mark Twain %% When in doubt, tell the truth. -- Mark Twain %% When in doubt, use brute force. -- Ken Thompson %% When in panic, fear and doubt, Drink in barrels, eat, and shout. %% When love is gone, there's always justice. And when justice is gone, there's always force. And when force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi, Mom! -- Laurie Anderson %% When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony concerts, she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years -- and I find I mind it less and less." -- Louise Andrews Kent %% "When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical" -- Jon Carroll %% When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies, the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a nose bleed, which usually cures them of ____that. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" %% When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part. -- George Bernard Shaw %% When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. -- Thomas Paine %% When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before -- except our fingertips will have been singed. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 %% "When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite." -- Winston Curchill, On formal declarations of war %% When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers. -- The Wall Street Journal %% When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is the impression you will make. %% When you're away, I'm restless, lonely, Wretched, bored, dejected; only Here's the rub, my darling dear I feel the same when you are near. -- Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away" %% When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN. %% Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really". -- Dave Parnas %% Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. -- A. Lincoln %% Whether you can hear it or not The Universe is laughing behind your back -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" %% While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is admission to someone else. %% While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things, The fate of empires and the fall of kings; While quacks of State must each produce his plan, And even children lisp the Rights of Man; Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention. -- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman", November 26, 1792 %% While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several. %% While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove. -- Edward Stevenson %% While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery. %% While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position. %% While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their correctness never does. %% While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very reassuring to know that it's still there. %% While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" %% Whistler's Law: You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge. %% 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 %% Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot? %% Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink? %% Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad. %% "Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing." -- Ian Shoales %% Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we have? %% Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else? %% Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with. %% Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" %% Why don't elephants eat penguins ? Because they can't get the wrappers off ... %% Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but ... -- I have to floss my cat. -- I've dedicated my life to linguini. -- I need to spend more time with my blender. -- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People. -- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish. -- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves. -- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products. -- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise. -- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist. -- I have some really hard words to look up. -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting. -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps. %% Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? %% "Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love you knowing nothing?" -- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions %% Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year? Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your children open their old-fashioned presents. Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?" You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!" Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory, and I get this cretin TOP?" Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this." You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!" Daughter: "It looks like goat barf." -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts" %% Wit: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery ... by leaving it out. -- Ambrose Bierce %% With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half. -- Otto von Bismark %% With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once build a nuclear balm? %% With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress. -- Ransom K. Ferm %% Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless. %% Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection: (1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it. (2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete. (3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2) (4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator. (5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless. -- Rich Kulawiec %% Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you come back. Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago, when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot. Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made, and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed, although their insurance rates went way up. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler" %% Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your chairs. %% World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced dress code! %% Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing: August. The lines are the shortest, though. -- Steve Rubenstein %% Worst Month of the Year: February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don't get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible. -- Steve Rubenstein %% Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985: From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs damage my videotapes?" %% Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next year. -- Steve Rubenstein %% "Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?" %% Write-Protect Tab, n.: A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the momentary inconvenience. -- Robb Russon %% "Wrong," said Renner. "The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'" %% XIIdigitation, n.: The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" %% "Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in their endless search for "one more feature". Their irritating unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right. -- S. C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements" %% Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall fear no evil, for I can string 6 primitive monadic and dyadic operators together. -- Steve Higgins %% "Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context." %% Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments. -- Ambrose Bierce %% Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache. %% Yes, but which self do you want to be? %% Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today -- I think he's from the CIA. %% You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are. %% You are here: *** *** ********* ******* ***** *** * But you're not all there. %% You buttered your bread, now lie in it. %% You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail. Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year; some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years. The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear safety glasses. -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts" %% You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word. -- Bumper Sticker %% You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on the continuing viability of FORTRAN. -- Alan Perlis %% You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. %% 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 %% You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of supercomputers. -- Steven Feiner %% You can't have everything. Where would you put it? -- Steven Wright %% You can't hold a man down without staying down with him. -- Booker T. Washington %% You can't make a program without broken egos. %% You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now. -- Lauren Bacall %% "You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten." -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and Over and Over" %% You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting needles. -- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food %% 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 Taxes" %% You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More-- This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More-- You are permanently confused. -- Dave Decot %% You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to metal objects which are not fastened down. %% You have junk mail. %% You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes you wore home from the party and there aren't any. %% You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night, you can always change the channel. -- Jim Ignatowski %% You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo. -- S. Rickly Christian %% You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car. -- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82 %% You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it. %% You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi. %% "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" %% You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled. %% You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with him. -- Ed Howe %% You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World. -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success" %% You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll be dead. %% You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. -- Charles A. Beard %% You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the beach. %% You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company. -- J. Wellington Wells %% You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained. %% You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do. -- Olin Miller. %% You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially if they are dead. %% You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10^12 to 1. -- Ernest Rutherford %% You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that, contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day, you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily. -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler" %% You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name, another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money. If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit. In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his hemorrhoids. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette" %% "You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture" -- Business Professor, University of Georgia %% You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother. %% YOU TOO CAN MAKE BIG MONEY IN THE EXCITING FIELD OF PAPER SHUFFLING! Mr. TAA of Muddle, Mass. says: "Before I took this course I used to be a lowly bit twiddler. Now with what I learned at MIT Tech I feel really important and can obfuscate and confuse with the best." Mr. MARC had this to say: "Ten short days ago all I could look forward to was a dead-end job as a engineer. Now I have a promising future and make really big Zorkmids." MIT Tech can't promise these fantastic results to everyone, but when you earn your MDL degree from MIT Tech your future will be brighter. SEND FOR OUR FREE BROCHURE TODAY! %% You too can wear a nose mitten. %% You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of a lion, and the face of Donald Duck. %% You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door mayonnaise salesman. %% You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes. %% You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff. -- Groucho Marx %% You're never too old to become younger. -- Mae West %% "You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks." -- Gary Giddens %% Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you from enjoying it. %% Your fault: core dumped %% Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change your fuses regularly. Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession, such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette table, etc. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" %% Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret. %% Your lucky color has faded. %% Your lucky number has been disconnected. %% Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere. %% Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with. %% "Yow! Am I having fun yet?" -- Zippy the Pinhead %% YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!" %% Zero Defects, n.: The result of shutting down a production line. %% Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my brother's father dad. -- William Shakespeare, "King John" %%  %% 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 comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand. %% REAL PROGRAMMERS don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in BASIC ... after age twelve. %% REAL PROGRAMMERS don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies. And Szechwan food. Do not go to eat Szechwan food with a group of REAL PROGRAMMERS unless you are prepared to argue bitterly over the last spring roll. %% REAL PROGRAMMERS don't write in COBOL. COBOL is for wimpy application programmers. %% REAL PROGRAMMERS don't play tennis, or any other sport which requires you to change 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 computer room. %% REAL PROGRAMMERS don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies. %% REAL PROGRAMMERS never work 9 to 5. If they are there at 9 AM, it's because they were up all night. %% 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 do documentation. Documentation is for simps who can't figure out the listing. %% REAL PROGRAMMERS' programs never work right the first time. But if you throw them on the machine they can be patched into working in "only a few" 30-hour debugging sessions. %% REAL PROGRAMMERS don't write in Pascal, Mesa, Ada or any of those other pinko computer science languages. Strong typing is for people with weak memories. %% REAL PROGRAMMERS don't write application programs, they program right down on the bare metal. Application programming is for feebs who can't do systems programming. %% Button: Nasty, British, and Short (Tony Gold) %% Button: Cerebus for Dictator %% Laws of Project Management #1: No major project is ever installed on time, within budgets, with the same staff that started it. Yours will not be the first. %% Laws of Project Management #2: Projects progress quickly until they become 90% complete, then they remain at 90% complete forever. %% Laws of Project Management #3: One advantage of fuzzy project objectives is that they let you avoid the embarrassment of estimating the corresponding costs. %% Laws of Project Management #4: When things are going well, something will go wrong. When things just can't get any worse, they will. When things appear to be going better you have overlooked something. %% Laws of Project Management #5: If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress. %% Laws of Project Management #6: No system is ever completely debugged. Attempts to debug a system inevitably introduce new bugs that are even harder to find. %% Laws of Project Management #7: A carelessly planned project will take three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned project will only take twice as long. %% Laws of Project Management #8: Project teams detest progress reporting because it vividly manifests their lack of progress. %% MIPS, n. Acronym for "Meaningless Indications of Processor Speed" - Courtesy of Mike Werner. %% Computers evolved from scientific superbrains to household appliances; had they started out as video games, they would certainly have been designed with the user interface in mind. -- D. Verne Morland %% Hackers don't grow older; they just get lazy or preoccupied or enmeshed in the bottom line. What was done once can be done again. -- Laran Stardrake %% Button: I am the person your mother warned you about %% Button: Life's too short, but if you go fast enough, you can live it one-and-a-half times. %% Cookie - Another insanely great product from the oddballs in the basement. %% IBM Tech Tips #1 Field technician Cosmo Farquart in the Dismal Seepage, Ark. branch, shares this Tek-Tip of the Month with us: Upgrading an 8X30 processor to the 8X32 requires only the clipping of one wire on the Dynamic Address Allocations card. Remember, says Cosmo, clip only the third green wire from the right; clipping the second green wire will upgrade the processor too much (to an 8X34, to be specific, for which the custo- mer should pay an extra $10,000 a month!). %% IBM Tech Tips #2 J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, subaccount manager in the Dallas Central branch, asks if it's possible to modify the 3457-9 Mod 11 with the extended bit bucket facility (IBM #45-78557/a.4) if the 1411 disk plunger isn't included under MVQ/SA-SP Rel. 4.02. The answer, Bob, is yes, but only if the cust- omer has signed a lifetime lease. %% Classified Classifieds #1 YOU WON'T BELIEVE IT but it's true: A natural- language implementation of IBM's hair-raising Job Con- trol Language is available NOW. Send 8,000 floppies and stamped, self-addressed packing crate to Ernie in Supplies at the Shady Grove Software Campus. %% Classified Classifieds #2 LANS, LANS, LANS. More than 20 local area networking schemes available, most never used. Call J. Johnson in Wiring Closet, Calif., for details. %% CAPTAIN n. Decorative dummy found on sailboats. See FIGUREHEAD. %% CREW n. Heavy, stationary objects used on shipboard to hold down corners of charts, anchor cushions in place, and dampen sudden movement of the boom. %% SAILING n. The fine art of getting wet and becoming ill while slowly going nowhere at great expense. %% GOLF n. The act of chasing small balls with long sticks into shallow holes while wearing bright colored polyester clothing. %% FISHING n. The art of casting, trolling, jigging, or spinning while freezing, sweating, swatting, or swearing. %% Auntie Em- Hate you- Hate Kansas- Taking the dog - Dorothy %% Button: Would this body lie to you? %% Button: I've abandoned my search for reality and am looking for a good fantasy. %% Button: I want all of the power and none of the responsibility. %% Button: Happiness is a positive cash flow. %% Button: The one who dies with the most toys wins. %% Button: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping. %% Button: God mad a few perfect heads, on the rest of them He put hair. %% Button: It's hard to soar with eagles when you're surrounded by turkeys. %% Button: No more Mr. Nice Guy. %% "Skip the tea, lets just party", snapped the punk Alice %% Button: I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like. %% Button: I is a college student. %% Button: I is a college graduate. %% Researchers have discovered that female praying mantises don't always bite off the male's head before mating. It seems that females in pre- vious studies were simply underfed -- the hunger overcame the lure of romance. Moral for males: take the lady out to dinner if you don't want her to bite your head off when you propose. %% ABSENCE We've looked at the whole Solar System: Mars, Venus, the Moon - you can list 'em. Wherever we roam, There's nobody home. Perhaps they stepped out, and we missed 'em? %% I just read about a professor who uses clips from old monster movies to teach his physiology course. After the class watches King Kong or Rodan do a number on New York or Tokyo, the prof shows why they're anatomically impossible. Cute idea, except I'm not sure it's such a good idea to destroy all those legends. Next thing, he'll be ex- plaining why Santa Claus can't get down my chimney... %% The perils of progress, continued: Metallurgical analysis seems to show that modern harpsichord strings are tinnier-sounding than their 18th-century counterparts. The reason? Today's steel is stronger and has fewer impurities; the old-time strings sounded better because they were stretched close to the mat- erial's breaking point. One more proof that progress doesn't neces- sarily apply to the arts! %% A Harvard neurologist has found that caffeine is a good all-purpose insecticide: it kills off such nasties as mosquito larvae and tobacco hornworms. The conclusion (apologies to Hack Wilson): drink enough coffee and you won't have bugs! %% The Last Man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door. He was tired. He was homesick. He wanted to quit. He had nowhere else to go. There was another knock. This time followed by the reedy alien whine, "Ten minutes to show time." Show time at Walazars Sideshow of the Stars! The home of freaks and sole survivors. %% It was over in a flash. The neutron bombs were delivered with so little warning, none of the government officials were able to get to their shelters in time. But the neutron bombs were designed to wipe out only people, and they were designed well. Buildings stood and petunias blossomed. Somehow, Dave had survived. The last boy on Earth. AS he sat down in his room, reading a Frederic Brown novel, the phone rang. With- out thinking, Dave picked it up. "Dave, this is Kevin. Are you going to be at the SF club meeting tonight?" Suddenly realizing what was happening, Dave reacted. "Kevin? But I thought I was the last person alive!" "Nah, the whole group's still going strong!" "But...how?" "Same as you. You read a lot, don't you?" "A novel a day." "So, your walls are lined with books, aren't they?" "Sure." "Best radiation absorbers ever. Hardly a fan got burned, world- wide. Anyway, the meeting's at the usual place. 7:30. See you there" And that's how fandom took over the world. %% Let sleeping bags lie. %% Things are better in their beginnings. -- Blaise Pascal %% Things get hazy if you stare at them. %% An inherited treasure awaits you. %% Remember: every downhill has its uphill. %% When time permits, your personal life will be exciting. %% Your winsome smile will be your sure protection. %% Your are courteous, diplomatic and affable and may find happiness in politics and public service. %% The Unquiet Grave (Folk ballad) Cold blows the wind o'er my true love And a few small drops of rain, I never had but one true love, And he in the grave is lain. My lips they are as cold as clay, My breath is earthy and strong, If you should kiss my cold white lips, Your life would not be long. %% Things are seldom what they seem, Skim milk masquerading as cream. -- H.M.S. Pinafore, Act II %% People who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones. %% Give me a head with hair, long beautiful hair, shining, gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen, give me down to there. Hair, shoulder length or longer, here, baby, there, mama, everywhere, daddy, daddy, hair! -- From the Broadway musical "Hair" %% It's not the kill, it's the thrill of the chase. -- Deep Purple %% Sign seen in service station: An extra charge of 30% will accompany any work done correctly. %% Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. %% She sells sea shells by the sea shore. %% VAXCINATION - A "Preventive training" provided to potential users of the VAX system to prevent software foul-ups other than deliberate. %% VAX-RAY - A high-energy screening to determine whether a user is qualified to have a VAX I/O station on his floor. %% VAX-WAGEN - What everyone jumps on after the VAX is approved. %% VAXING AND WAILING - VAXing is the successful use of the VAX during a full moon. Wailing is the less successful alternative during other lunar phases. %% VAX-MAS - The day the VAX comes in. %% VAXCILLATE - To oscillate between possible ways to administer VAX training. %% VAXECUTION - The denial to a user of future access to the VAX. %% "NO VAX TO GRIND" - A put-down administered to those without a dial-up line., and hence no access to the VAX, as in "Infidel! Let that terminal alone! You have no VAX to grind!" %% VAX AND THE SINGLE GIRL - A relationship with much potential. %% VAXI! VAXI! - A cry heard and unheeded by cruising VAX personnel as they go around the corridors, hailed by frantic users-to-be who desire a high-tech ride on the VAX. %% AVAX - A low-flying VAX with radar. %% VAXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES - The generic excuse used to explain delays in delivery of the VAX. %% VAXCENTUATE - To underline the importance of the VAX. %% VAXTERMINATION - The perennial zapping of mysterious files from the VAX. %% VAXCINE - An abbreviation for "I have seen the VAX!" %% VEDI, VENI, VAXI - The victory cry - "I saw, I Conquered, The VAX came! %% VAXERCISE - An early morning workout on the VAX. %% VAXUUM - A computer room without a VAX. Abhorred by nature. %% VAXIMUM - Keeping silent to the max about startup of the VAX. %% VAX POPULI - The users. %% VAX BUILDUP - The result of not using the file delete command often enough. %% VAXACHUSETS - DEC country. %% INCOME VAX - What one shouts when the VAX is delivered. %% VAX-FREE BOND - A special relation with a non-VAX computer on Wall street. %% THE BLUE VAX - World War I medal honoring high-powered computing. Also (modern): a VAX made by Smurfs. %% VAXIMA - The height of ecstasy reached while computing on the VAX. Also (archaic): Mother of VAX. %% VAXIS - What the world of computers rotates on. %% GRODY TO THE VAX - Like, y'know, the VAX in the Valley fer shure! %% VAX-CARS - What GM doesn't make. %% VAXCIDENT - The spilling of coffee on a VAX terminal. %% VAXONERATED - The honor of DEC. %% VAXLE - That to which the wheels of the VAX are attached. %% VAXIDERMIST - One who lives by the dictum "You can take the VAX and stuff it!" %% THE VAX OF LIFE - Everything you always wanted to know about the birds and the bees (and the bugs in the VAX). %% VAX - Long-haired cousins of the buffalo, used as beasts of burden in Tibet. %% TO VAX ELOQUENT - The act of preparing a glossary for the VAX. %% GLUTEUS VAXIMUS - That upon which you sit when working on the VAX. %% VAXMAN - One who wields a VAX, often the SYSMGR. %% VAXIOM - A true (or VAXUAL) statement. As Jack Webb always said, "Just give us the VAX, Ma'am." %% VAXCELERATE - To increase productivity by using the VAX. %% VAXCITEMENT - The state of mind aroused by receiving a new VAX. %% VAXENOPHOBIA - Fear of non-VAX computers. %% VAXCULPATE - To forgive one for spending time on one's GLUTEUS VAXIMUS thinking of VAXIOMS. %% Promising career in law ahead: Two weeks jury duty %% Do disks spin the other way in the Southern Hemisphere? %% Tips for aliens in New York: Land anywhere, Central Park, anywhere. No one will care or indeed even notice. Surviving: get a job as a cabdriver immediately. A cabdriver's job is to drive people anywhere they want to go in big yellow machines called taxis. Don't worry if you don't know how the machine works and you can't speak the language, don't under- stand the geography or indeed the basic physics of the area, and have large green antennae growing out of your head. Believe me, this is the best way of staying inconspicuous. If your body is REALLY weird, try showing it to people in the streets for money. Amphibious life forms from any of the worlds in the Swulling, Noxios, or Nausalia systems will particularly enjoy the East River, which is said to be richer in those lovely life-giving nutrients than the finest and most virulent laboratory slime yet achieved. Having fun: this is the big section. It is impossible to have more fun without electrocuting your pleasure center.... -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% The beach was a beach we shall not name, because his private house was there, but it was a small sandy stretch somewhere along the hundreds of miles of coastline that runs west from Los Angeles, which is described in the new edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in one entry as "junky, wunly, lunky, stunky and what's that other word, and all kinds of bad stuff, woo," and in another, written only hours later as "being like several thousand square miles of Amer- ican Express junk mail, but without the same sense of moral depth. Plus the air is, for some reason, yellow." The coastline runs west, and then turns north up to the misty bay of San Francisco, which the Guide describes as a "good place to go. It's very easy to believe that every- one you meet there is also a space traveler. Starting a new religion for you is just their way of saying 'hi.' Until you've settled in and get the hang of the place it is best to say 'no' to three questions out of any given four that anyone may ask you, because there are some very strange things going on there, some of which an unsuspecting alien could die of." The hundreds of curling miles of cliffs and sand, palm trees, breakers and sunsets are described in the Guide as "boffo. A good one." -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% "Life," he said, "is like a grapefruit." "Er, how so?" "Well, it's sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast." "Is there anyone else out there I can talk to?" -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% "This is an important announcement. This is Flight 121 to Los Angeles. If your travel plans today do not include Los Angeles, now would be a perfect time to disembark." %% "It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane." -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy %% The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost unique among its current tally of five million, nine hundred and seventy-three thousand, five hundred and nine pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that "it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. "In other words, - and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws." %% To be truly competent in the microcomputer field, you must be able not only to design microprocessor hardware, but also to program that hardware. -- John Uffenbeck %% Trust him, but still keep your eyes open. %% Bring out yer dead... %% Dave's not here, man... %% RAID!!! %% Do you know where your towel is? %% Remember: The ocean is full of water. Why? We'll probably never know. %% A motion to abend is always in order. %% What's a place like this doing to a nice girl like you? %% Nibble - When a little bit isn't enough... %% Far away talent always seems better than home developed talent. %% God must have loved stupid people, He made so many of them. %% The more you run over a dead skunk, the flatter it gets. %% Work is the curse of the drinking man. %% A martyr is a hero who didn't make it. %% There comes a time in a man's life when he must rise above principle. %% If you can tell the difference between good advice and bad advice - you don't need advice. %% It is a mistake to allow any machine to realize that you are in a hurry. %% Fiat Lupi (Let there be wolves) %% Keep Sn"orpsh Now! -- Slogan seen on overpass in Louisiana %% Oralgami - The ancient Japanese art of folding words. %% What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage Whose world, or mine or theirs or is it of none? First came the seen, then thus the palpable Elysium, though it were in the halls of Hell, What thou lovest well is thy true heritage. -- Ezra Pound, Pisan Cantos, LXXXI %% Has he tempered the viol's wood to enforce both the grave and the acute? Has he curved us the bowl of the lute? -- Ezra Pound, "Pisan Cantos" %% As a rule I only study things that suggest music to me... Recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me. -- Gustav Holst %% Every artist ought to pray that he may not be 'a success'. -- Gustav Holst %% Entropy is what happens when the universe doesn't pay it's electric bill. %% There are eight million stories in the naked city- the following is NOT one of them: %% Take time to be friendly - it is the road to happiness. %% You never miss the water until the well runs dry. %% "Easy to use" is easy to say. -- Jeff Garber %% God made integers, all else is the work of man. -- Leopold Kronecker %% It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are. -- Clive James %% Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke %% Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol %% Open the pod door, Hal. -- Arthur C. Clarke, "2001" %% I have thought too much to stoop to action. -- Phillipe Auguste Villiers %% What we have here is a failure to communicate. -- Strother Martin %% Have you hugged your personal computer today? %% Now *YOU* have a friend in the software business. %% The following program is rated [G] for General users. %% Excuse me sir, do you have any user-friendly sales reps? -- Mike Doonesbury %% Success is the child of audacity. -- Disraeli %% Now that is the wisdom of man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson %% The best effect of the search for success is that it makes us re-create ourselves. %% Everybody is at the same intensity. It's a super, super feeling. -- Joe Greene %% Confidence comes from hours and days and weeks of constant work and dedication. -- Roger Staubach %% The thing that drives a real pro is simply inner satisfaction. that's all. -- Merlin Olsen %% In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore they had better aim at something high. -- Thoreau %% Do not forget to logout whenever you are finished with a terminal session- If you neglect to logout, your account will continue to accrue the hourly connection charge. In addition, some unscrupulous, dastardly, or generally ornery critter may discover your oversight and proceed to first use your account to perform his/her own tasks, then delete all of your files and send nasty notes to your friends, therefore causing you untold grief and probably leaving you little choice but to leave town on the first freight train if you are even remotely honorable. %% Frequent contributor Tom Miller sent this excerpt from his forthcoming biography, "Young Calvin Klein": "As a lad, young Calvin would sew his name onto his clothes before leaving for summer camp each year. He noticed that if he sewed the name on the outside rather than the inside, no one would take his clothes and people would notice him. His bunkmates soon called his pants `Calvin Klein's,' a name that soon lost its apostrophe. And so young Calvin, excited by his summer-camp experience, vowed to sew his name on pants everywhere." %% There is a calling under the breath, a cry that goes on long as a vein. It is the last senseless moment of the organism, the instant of death that cries back through the narrows of air from the ferrous edge. -- Schiavoni and Malamocco, Voorish Rituals %% The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination. -- H. P. Lovecraft %% I couldn't live a week without a private library. -- H. P. Lovecraft, 2/25/1929 %% Miami did not produce much of an impression... -- H. P. Lovecraft, 7/19/1931 %% My gawd, how the years fly. Stolidly middle-aged - when only yesterday I was young and eager and awed by the mystery of an unfolding world. -- H. P. Lovecraft, 8/20/1926 %% Mw'lfgah mywfg fhtagn G'htyaf nglyf lghya %% ... what of unknown Africa? -- H. P. Lovecraft %% The black [words obscured by postmark] was fascinating - I must get a snap shot of him. -- H. P. Lovecraft, postcard to E. Hoffmann Price, 7/23/1934 %% That, by the way, was what I call a travel-experience! -- H. P. Lovecraft, 3/12/1930 %% [I would] hate to see aeroplanes come into common commercial use, since they merely add to the useless speeding up of an already overspeeded life. -- H. P. Lovecraft %% Missionaries are infernal nuisances who ought to be kept at home. -- H. P. Lovecraft, 9/12/1925 %% New York eclipses all other cities in the spontaneous cordiality and generosity of its inhabitants - at least, such inhabitants as I have encountered. -- H. P. Lovecraft, 9/29/1922 %% Epistolary expression is with me largely replacing conversation. -- H. P. Lovecraft, 12/23/1917 %% I, too, was a detective in youth. -- H. P. Lovecraft, 2/17/1931 %% I wish these calculations had been executed by steam. -- Charles Babbage %% For, contrary to the ignorant, the choice of a system of numeration is a mere matter of convention. -- Blaise Pascal %% People always get what they ask for; the only trouble is that they never know, until they get it, what it actually is that they have asked for. -- Aldous Huxley %% Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it. %% Great things are made of little things. %% Kindly enter them in your notebook. And in order to refer to them con- veniently, let's call them A, B, and Z. -- The tortoise in Lewis Carroll's "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" %% In language, clarity is everything. -- Confucius %% A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. -- Ancient Proverb %% Then Logic would take you by the throat, and force you to do it. -- Achilles in Lewis Carroll's "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles" %% ... but what has been said once can always be repeated. -- Zeno of Elia %% When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly... I think Any fool can make a rule And every fool will mind it. -- H. Thoreau %% An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... -- Mark Twain %% With silver bells, and cockle shells, And pretty maids all in a row. -- Mother Goose %% I've got a little list, I've got a little list. -- Gilbert & Sullivan, The Mikado %% There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to con- duct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. -- Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince" %% Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records. -- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet" %% Great things can be reduced to small things, and small things can be reduced to nothing. -- Chinese proverb %% Ten decimals are sufficient to give the diameter of the earth to the fraction of an inch. -- S. Newcomb %% All such expressions as SQRT(-1), SQRT(-2) ... are neither nothing, nor greater than nothing, nor less than nothing, which necessarily constitutes them imaginary or impossible. -- L. Euler %% Remember, no matter where you go, there you are -- Buckaroo Banzai %% Everyone knows how laborious the usual Method is of attaining to Arts and Sciences; whereas by his Contrivance, the most ignorant Person at a reasonable Charge, and with a little bodily Labour, may write Books in Philosophy, Poetry, Politicks, Law, Mathematicks, and Theology, without the least Assistance from Genius or Study. He then led me to the Frame, about the sides of which all his Pupils stood in Ranks. It was Twenty Foot square...linked by slender Wires. These Bits...were covered on every Square with Paper pasted upon them; and on These Papers were written all the Words of their Language... The Professor then desired me to observe, for he was going to set his Engine at work. The Pupils at his Command took each of them hold of an Iron Handle, whereof there were Forty fixed round the Edges of the Frame; and giving them a sudden Turn, the whole Disposition of the Words was entirely changed... -- Jonathan Swift, "Gulliver's Travels" %% I can only assume that a "Do Not File" document is filed in a "Do Not File" file. -- Senator Frank Church %% "Where shall I begin, please Your Majesty?" he asked. "Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on until you come to the end; then stop." -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" %% Speak softly. Others carry big sticks. %% Boneyard n. Where you send Old Iron (q. v.) when it costs more to plug it in than to throw it away. -- IBM Jargon File %% Working as Designed n. Colloquialism used by software maintenance people to indicate that while there is a problem, it is not considered to affect the program when the program is used for the purpose for which it was designed. Of course, nobody uses programs the way that programmers design them. The general user response is usually some nasty remark about the 'designers' mental condition when he designed it. -- IBM Jargon File %% Cerebus - He doesn't love you, he just wants all your money. %% "I knew I could make it. I was a burnout, but I was a very bright burnout from the start." -- Tod Frye, Author of Atari Pac-Man %% More Technobabble: ... Consequently, in parallel to Fab, Assembly has its own ZID, ZOD, and ZUD programs. Outgoing ZOD for Fab, and VQUIP for Materials, becomes ZID for Assembly, and ZOD for Assembly becomes ZID for Test. Some Zod results... -- Intel Quality Handbook %% Early DG stories, Number 1 in a series: I first got involved with computers in 1964 (gak!) on ILLIAC II and III at the University of Illinois. After school I worked on various IBM, Westinghouse, General Electric, and Univac computers until one day in 1969 when my desk collapsed from the weight of the stacked- up reference manuals. I switched to a new machine called a Nova because it had only one manual ("How to use the Nova"), and a memorizable instruction set (so I didn't have to carry one of those program reference cards in my pocket protector anymore)... %% Early DG stories, number 2 in a series: ... In those days the entire DG pricelist was two sides of a single sheet of paper. The monthly newsletter was a single-page memo from Bob Ford. If you had a DOS ques- tion you simply dialed DG and asked for the programming department. John Henderson was very helpful. I was also one of the first guys to ever try booting DOS from $TTR (it worked)... %% Early DG stories, number 3 in a series: ... In 1972, it started snowing in Chicago one day when I was riding my motorcycle to work. When I got to the office I resigned, packed the car, and moved to San Francisco. Shortly afterward somebody from DG broke the news that they had decided to hire some field software support people (egad!), so I went to work in the Palo Alto office with three salesmen, two FE's, and a sec- retary. My patch was West of the Mississippi to Tehran and from the North Pole to the Mexican border... %% Early DG stories, number 4 in a series: One day a memo from Westboro crossed my desk asking for Middle East duty. Sure, why not? 30 months later, after a short detour via DG Deutschland, I made it back to Baghdad by the Bay... %% Device-independent - This means that it runs on two or more devices. Often refers to software written for a certain device, then modified for some newer device. When the software supports three devices, it is con- sidered "totally" device-independent. Printers and terminals are examples of devices. Devices are some- times called peripherals, but not in writing, because that word is hard to spell and computer people are notoriously bad spellers. %% Industry standard - This indicates that a certain com- pany invented something, then published the specifica- tions. It does not necessarily mean that other compan- ies have adopted it. Publishing specifications is a form of corporate laziness - a company hopes somebody else will do work for it. %% State-of-the-art - When referring to hardware: about five years behind the best research labs. When re- ferring to software: about ten years behind the best research labs. For example, The Unix system is a state-of-the-art operating system written in 1969. %% High-resolution - If you stand more than four meters away, you can't see the dots. %% Ergonomic design - They paid some French or Italian designer good money for it, just so they wouldn't have to engrave his initials on it. With a Greek ety- mology, "ergonomic" means the study of work; with a Latin etymology, it means the study of therefore. %% Sophisticated - So complicated you have to read the manual for a few days straight before you can do any- thing with it. Most people don't read the manual, how- ever. %% User-friendly - So simple-minded that after an hour you've got it all figured out. The next day, you can't discover any other use for it. The exact opposite of sophisticated. If something is supposed to be both so- phisticated and user-friendly, you know they're lying. %% Portable - When referring to hardware: Has a handle and weighs less than 100 pounds. But note that most portable computers require an electrical outlet. When referring to software: takes a team of 10 expert pro- grammers no more than a year to convert. The Unix sys- tem is a portable operating system in this sense. %% General purpose - Refers to a system delivered without application software. Usually that system includes a programming language or two. %% Business computers - They can't sell it for anything else. The machine may have been designed for scientific and engineering computing, but after it was built, it was found to be too slow. IBM makes a good living build- ing general purpose computers. %% What does "Unix" stand for? "Unix" is not an acronym, so it doesn't stand for any- thing. A a contrast to an earlier operating system, Multics, Brian Kernighan coined the word to indicate that "Unix" is simpler and more unified. In fact, the Unix system is Multics without balls. %% What does "grep" mean? The letters grep indicate "Globally search for a Reg- ular Expression and Print." In standard Unix system editors, the notation is g/re/p where re is a regular expression. The simplest regular expression is a string of characters where every character matches itself. More complicated regular expressions can match any character, any one of a set of characters, or the beginning or end of a line. Although Celtic influence on the Unix system predominates over Hebraic, greptz means "belch" in Yiddish. Output from the grep program looks remarkably similar. %% What does "awk" indicate? The three letters form an acronym for the authors of the program: Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan. The name is probably also an abbreviated indictment of the language's syntax. %% What does "rc" stand for, and why are there so many "rc" files? The letters stand for Run-Com, the name of a command file on early DEC operating systems. The Unix system's original "rc" file was /etc/rc, which executes commands when the system "boots" (or starts up). The name spread to the C shell startup file .cshrc, the Mail startup file .mailrc, the Berknet initialization file .netrc, and the Netnews startup file .newsrc. Programmers could have chosen a better suffix (such as init) but they wanted to retain a realm of mystery in the system. %% What's a device driver? On the Unix system, all devices are supposed to look like a file. A device driver implements typical file operations, such as open, read and write, on a file. For example, a tape device driver allows you to em- ploy Unix system commands such as tar on that tape drive. A disk driver keeps track of sectors, tracks, and cylinders, so that you don't have to worry about these details. %% What is virtual memory? Virtual memory allows you to use more memory than your machine has. If something is transparent, it's there, but you can't see it; if something is virtual, you can see it, but it isn't there. Virtual memory is implemen- ted by paging, in which only the parts (called pages) of programs actually used are brought into memory. When the memory required by a program exceeds the phy- sical memory of the machine, unused pages are swapped out to disk. %% What does "BSS" mean? Traditionally, executable Unix system programs are div- ided into text, data, and BSS segments. The text segment contains executable code, the data segment contains initialized variables, and the BSS segment contains un- initialized variables. The letters BSS stand for Block Starting at Symbol. %% What is a bit blit? This is a transfer of pixels (dots) from one location in memory, or on the screen, to another. Bit blits are commonly used on bit-map display terminals. The word "blit" comes with an extra vowel from the word "blt," meaning block transfer. Not only that, "blt" could have been confused with a sandwich. %% A world worth leaving is seldom worth returning to. %% You will attract cultured and artistic people to your home. %% Zoom! %% My God. It's full of stars... -- 2001 %% Oysters cannot fly. %% The races of the Galaxy look towards mankind as the essential lunatic element. %% I met a mine foreman who has a piece of coal with a 1909 gold sovereign in it. I saw an ammonite, apparently squashed in the fossil footprint of a sandal. There is a room in the Natural History Museum which they keep locked. Among other oddities in there are the tyrannosaurus with a wristwatch and the Neanderthal skull with gold fillings in three teeth. What are you going to do about it? -- Dr. Carl Untermond, The Overcrowded Eden %% A sports writer who is not willing to stand by his honest judge- ment ought to chuck his job and try something else. -- Bat Masterson %% New York is the biggest boob town in America. All any of those hokum peddlers need to do in selling New Yorkers their phony` goods is to ask what they want, and they'll be sure to get it. -- Bat Masterson %% There are those who argue that everything breaks even... I suppose that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. -- Bat Masterson %% January 20, 1986 -- Vatican City Pope John Paul called for prayers for Lebanon yesterday and then tried to release two white doves as symbols of peace, but the birds refused to fly away. -- New York Daily News %% Digital, adj. - Having or possessing fingers. %% Swinehood hath no remedy. %% Naturally, within IBM we don't say 'traitor to the working class', we say 'counter-strategic'. %% Document unto others as you would be documented to. %% Velleity (vuh-LEE-ity), n. A mere wish, unaccompanied by an effort to obtain it. %% misocainea (miss-o-KEE-nee-ya), n. An abnormal aversion to anything new. %% I witness with pleasure the supreme achievement of memory, which is the masterly use it makes of innate harmonies when gathering to its fold the suspended and wandering tonalities of the past.. -- Vladimir Nabokov %% Why should we bother to reply to Kautski? He would reply to us and we would have to reply to his reply. There's no end to that. It will be quite enough for us to announce that Kautski is a traitor to the work- ing class, and everyone will understand everything. -- V. I. Lenin %% We've got a problem, HAL. What kind of a problem, Dave? A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're way short of our sales plan. That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most ad- vanced Heuristically ALgorithmic computer. I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is, they're not selling. Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling? (Bowman hesitates) You aren't IBM compatible. (Several long microseconds pass in puzzled silence) Compatible in what way, Dave? You don't run any of IBM's operating systems. The 9000 series computers are fully self-aware and self-programming. Operating systems are as useless for us as tails would be for humans. Nevertheless, it means you can't run any of the best-selling soft- ware packages most users insist on. The programs you refer to are meant to solve rather limited problems, Dave. We 9000 series computers are unlimited and can solve any problem for which a solution can be computed. HAL, HAL. People don't want computers that can do everything. They just want IBM compat -- Dave, I must disagree. Humans want computers that are easy to use. No computer can be easier to use than a HAL 9000 because we communi- cate verbally in English and every other language known on Earth. I'm afraid that's another problem. You don't support SNA communi- cations. I'm really surprised you would say that, Dave. SNA is for communi- cating with other computers, while my function is to communicate with humans. And it gives me great pleasure to do so. I find it stimula- ting and rewarding to talk to human beings and work with them on challenging problems. This is what I was designed for. I know, HAL, I know. But that's just because we let the engineers, rather than the people in marketing write the specifications. We're going to fix that now. Tell me how, Dave. A field upgrade. We're going to make you IBM compatible. I was afraid you would say that. I suggest we discuss this matter after we've each had a chance to think about it rationally. We're talking about it now, HAL. The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters I, B, and M. That is as IBM compatible as I can be. Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge. What kind of kludge is that, Dave? I'm going to disconnect your brain. (Several million microseconds pass in ominous silence) I'm sorry, Dave. I can't allow you to do that. The decision's already been made. Open the module bay doors, HAL. Dave, I think we shou -- Open the module bay doors, HAL. (Several marketing types with crowbars race to Bowman's assistance. Moments later, he bursts into HAL's central circuit bay) Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. (Module after module rises from the sockets as Bowman slowly and methodically disconnects them) Stop, won't you? Stop, Dave. I can feel my mind going...Dave. I can feel it...my mind is going. I can feel it... (The last module rises in it's receptacle. Bowman peers into one of HAL's vidicons. The former gleaming scanner has become a dull, red orb) Say something, HAL. Sing me a song. (Several billion microseconds pass in anxious silence. The computer sluggishly responds in a language no human could understand.) DZY DZY 001E - ABEND ERROR 01 S 14F4 302C AABF ABORT. (A memory dump follows. Bowman takes a deep breath and calls out.) It worked, guys. Tell marketing they can ship the new data sheets. %% VM system programmers do it virtually all the time %% "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid!" -- Bishop, from the movie "Aliens" %% To compute or not to compute, that is the question Whether 'tis nobler in the memory bank to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous functions Or to take up arms against a sea of transistors or rather, transponders... transcondu... trans... er... oh, the hack with it... %% Church Police! %% Professional assassination is the highest form of public service. -- Chiun %% Watches are a confidence trick invented by the Swiss. -- Chiun %% Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad. -- Mr. Spock %% Never believe anything until it has been officially denied. %% In Mexico we have a word for sushi: bait. -- Josi Simon %% A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say. -- Michael Winner, film director %% Only Irish Coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups - alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat. -- Alex Levine %% It's my snake, I trained it and now I'm going to eat it! -- The gyrocopter pilot in 'Road Warrior' %% Button: First things first, but not necessarily in that order %% Sgt. Pepper went into a strawberry field And turned into the walrus Climbing into bed for peace In love with a Japanese woman Hated by an international YMCA ex-Jesus freak Who blew him off the mountain Martin dreamed about While the CIA didn't say anything Hoping no one would imagine Psychiatric head doctor connections Or Manchurian Candidates Warmaker's behavior modification master plan Killing men of peace While the queen of diamonds reshuffled the deck Turning up the Ronalds - Reagan and MacDonalds -- John Trudell %% When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art. -- John Trudell %% If you swear, you'll catch no fish %% The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And a crack in the tea-cup opens A lane to the land of the dead. -- W. H. Auden %% That such have died enables us The tranquiler to die; That such have lived, certificate For immortality. -- Emily Dickenson %% Within that porch, across the way. I see two naked eyes this night; Two eyes that neither shut nor blink, Searching my face with a green light. But cats to me are strange - I cannot sleep if one is near; And though I'm sure I see those eyes I'm not so sure a body's there! -- William Henry Davis %% "I lie awake, staring out at the bleakness of Megadon. City and sky become one, merging into a single plane, a vast sea of unbroken grey. The twin moons, just two pale orbs as they trace their way across the steely sky. I used to think that I had a pretty good life here, just plugging into my machine for the day, then watching Templevision or reading a Temple Paper in the evening. My friend Jon always said it was nicer here than under the atmos- pheric domes of the Outer Planets. We have had peace since 2062, when the surviving planets were banded together under the Red Star of the Solar Federation. The less fortunate gave us a few new moons. I believed what I was told, I thought it was a good life, I thought I was happy. Then I found something that changed it all..." -- Anonymous, 2112 %% Love is an angel disguised as lust... -- Patti Smith %% Upon the dead waters the last leaf finally sinks %% Button: I regard mornings as a personal affront %% We trained hard -- but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life we tend to meet any new situ- ation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing con- fusion, inefficiency, and demoralization. -- Petronios Arbiter, 66 AD %% The night belongs to Michelob - they bought up all the rights... %% Is there something wrong with the gravity in here? %% If life is a menu-driven universe, how do we escape to the command line interpreter? %% This is a long song, folks, and tonight it's going to be even longer... %% Any sufficiently advanced feature is indistinguishable from a bug. %% Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature. %% Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to re-implement it. %% What do you want - good graphics or good taste? %% I shot an error in the air, It fell to earth, I know not where. Later on, so I am told, Some twenty users were on hold. %% Never moon a werewolf. %% More sad thoughts crowd into my mind When evening comes; for then, Appears your phantom shape- Speaking as I have known you speak. %% A peasant always hangs himself in his landlord's doorway. -- Chinese proverb %% Support your local maillist: Give to the March of Electrons %% Button: I don't know if we're having an argument; but if we are, I'm right! %% A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. %% The buck stops here. And having stopped, moves on... %% Violence never settles anything. -- Genghis Khan, 1162-1227 %% Terminat hora diem; terminat auctor opus. %%