"Time is the fire in which we burn..."
(Newsgroup signature)
(Quote often attributed to Star Trek: Generations (Gene Roddenberry) - but apparantly
really due to Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966) "Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day")
"(This is the school in which we learn...)
(...that time is the fire in which we burn.)"
All information in this post is true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate
"It was just a maddened crocodile hidden in a flower bed. It could have happened to anyone." -- Pratchett(Newsgroup signature)
"It was half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold"
Hunter S Tolkien "Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur"
"You appear to be absolutely incapable of realising that there are
people in this world who can see more than one side to a question..."
On the contrary. I see both sides, and I have evaluated both
sides, and I have found that one side is vastly superior to the
other. This may seem ruthless, but that's how engineering works.
Daniel J. Bernstein, comp.security.unix
'Now my advice for those who die,
declare the pennies on your eyes'
"In a state of bliss, there is no need for a Ministry of Bliss" - John Kenneth Galbraith, page 42, "American Capitalism, the Concept of Countervailing Power"; first published 1952, (1970 reprint)
This E-mail message is a natural product. The slight variations in spelling and grammar enhance its individual character and beauty and are in no way to be considered flaws or defects. (E-mail signature)
"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, 1921
"It is the trade of lawyers to question everything,
yield nothing, and talk by the hour."
- Thomas Jefferson
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? - Thomas Jefferson Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:87 http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/jeffauto.htm
Become a mystic . . .
Help stamp out reality.
I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. - Abraham Lincoln
Last Words:
"I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used."
Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian (1628 - 1702)
LEGEMANVALEMFVTVTVM (Ancient Roman programmers' adage.)
-- Vassil Nikolov [vnikolov@poboxes.com]
* Evolution is an "unproven theory" in the same sense that gravity is. *
"In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is the king."
From Frank Goodman: "In the land of the blind the one eyed man is deemed insane and driven out."
"Hope is a double edged sword"
"This is where the logic of C disappears
up it's own arse."
- Andrew Jupe (stated while assisting a colleague in the
debugging of their C code - and identifying the problem)
"He only reads eighteenth-century newspapers of which he has an enormous stock, for he says the news in them is just the same as it is today. You merely have to substitute the names of countries occasionally, and not invariably." - Professor Sir Albert Richardson, described in National Trust, Summer 1975, No 23, 13. - Quoted in Trevor A. Kletz's "Lessons From Disasters : How organisations have no memory and accidents recur", 1993, ISBN 0 85295 307 0. Page 27.
"Safety is often approached asymptotically"
[text deleted]
"Asymtotes can be illustrated by the story of the engineer who wooed
a reluctant lady mathematician. She suggested that he stood some distance away
and with each step halved the distance between them. As a mathematician she
knew that they would never meet but as an engineer he knew that he would soon
get near enough for all practical purposes. How near is 'near enough'?"
- from Trevor A. Kletz's "Lessons From Disasters : How organisations
have no memory and accidents recur", 1993, ISBN 0 85295 307 0. Page 92.
"The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like
an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the
pig was 'committed'."
--unknown
"You expect me to talk, Goldfinger?
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
"The good ended happily and the bad unhappily.
That is what Fiction means."
- Miss Prism, in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest"
Intellectual dishonesty in religion only increases the number of smart and angry atheists. This is not especially a good thing. -- Louann Miller
Ol' Lazarus Long says: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
(from "White Knight" (Sun, 16 Mar 2003) - "The above quotation from your website is also from Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein".)
And you can add this one. "Natural laws have no pity."
Broadly, this means "crappy" data with a chemically unreasonable model can sometimes give much better figures of merit than a good structure with "good" data. Sad, isn't it? Jon (from the Rietveld users mailing list - Thu, 26 Feb 2004)
"Always put your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark." Issac Asimov, "Time Enough For Love" (from the notebooks of Lazarus Long)
(thanks to Dogz for passing this on)
But a correction from Andrew:
From: Andrew To: lachlan@melbpc.org.au Subject: Correction Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 13:11:48 +0100 Hi If this quote: "Always put your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark." Issac Asimov, "Time Enough For Love" (from the notebooks of Lazarus Long) is really from "Time Enough for Love" (and it probably is - I just don't have the text to hand), then it's by Robert A Heinlein, not Isaac (or Issac!) Asimov. Regards Andrewand further clarification:
From: Andrew To: "Lachlan Cranswick" [l.m.d.cranswick@dl.ac.uk] Subject: Re: Correction Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 18:36:23 +0100 I've checked -"Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark" is indeed from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love, by Robert A(nson) Heinlein. Regards Andrew
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
-Lord Byron
ON HUMILITY: to err is human. To moo, bovine.
(newsgroup signature)
"People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's easier to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs."
"She keeps my feet warm in bed during the cold London nights"
(extract of the London winter ode to "Ladybird-hot-water-bottle" by LMDC)
Moderately inspired by:
She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.
- Robert Graves
Or, to put it another way, a libertarian has been defined as a person who believes the police are a criminal gang, but that in the absence of police, criminals would not gather into gangs. -- S.M. Stirling
I personally think we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.
- Jane Wagner
A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent,
unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one
wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.
- Edward Teller
Life at the top is financially rewarding, spiritually draining, physically exhausting, and short.
- Peter C. Newman : The Canadian Establishment
I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the
bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.
- Frank Moore Colby
ABROAD, adj. At war with savages and idiots. To be a Frenchman abroad is to be miserable; to be an American abroad is to make others miserable.
- Ambrose Bierce : The Enlarged Devil's Dictionary
The idea of an incarnation of God is absurd: why should the human race
think itself so superior to bees, ants, and elephants as to be put in
this unique relation to its maker?... Christians are like a council of
frogs in a marsh or a synod of worms on a dung-hill croaking and
squeaking "for our sakes was the world created."
- Julian the Apostate
Government, today, is growing too strong to be safe. There are no longer
any citizens in the world; there are only subjects. They work day in and
day out for their masters; they are bound to die for their masters at
call. Out of this working and dying they tend to get less and less.
-H.L. Mencken
Everyone is as God has made him, and oftentimes a great deal worse.
- Miguel De Cervantes
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks
anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this
uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into
which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein
they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to
heels with official rubber-stamps.
- H.L. Mencken
"We have been fortunate enough to live to a time when virtue, though it does not triumph, is nevertheless not always tormented by attack dogs." --Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Gulag Archipelago.
antiperistasis: "It seems to have tried in vain to become a settler in England. Johnson thus defines it: " Antiperistasis : The opposition of a contrary quality, by which the quality it opposes becomes heightened or intended; or the action by which a body attacked by another collects itself and becomes stronger by such opposition, or an intention of the activity of one quality caused by the opposition of another. Thus quicklime is set on fire by the effusion of cold water; so water becomes warmer in winter than in summer; and thunder and lightning are excited in the middle region of the air, which is continually cold, and all by Antiperistasis." "
Opsimathy: Education late in life; One who begins to learn late in life. To learn wisdom too late in life for it to be of use. To learn wisdom too late in the day for it to be of useful application. Opsimathy, which means "learning acquired late in life," entered the English language sometime in the 17th century. Both opsimathy and opsimath derive from Greek opsimathein, meaning "to learn late."
Etymology / History: From the Greek "opse" (= late) and "math" (=learning). "Mathematics" also derives from the second part, more exactly from the adjective of "mathema" (= science, learning), which comes from "mathanein" (= to learn). A person who takes on learning late (or too late) in life is an opsimath, while a polymath (the Greek "poly" = many) is someone of great or varied learning.
Nephelococcygia: Definition: 1. Interpreting the shapes of clouds. 2. A dream land cut off from reality.
Nympholepsy: Definition: Original meaning: frenzied emotions resulting from being captured by nymphs or, for weaker souls, simply seeing them; current meaning: emotional anxiety brought on by attempts to attain the unattainable.
Orthorexia: Definition: An uncontrollable obsession with eating the right food, especially health food.
The problem with a system that needs competent managers is that it needs competent managers.--Graydon Saunders
Discussion between authors on a reviewed manuscript - which was lambasted for not having enough formulae in it.
To: Lachlan Cranswick [l.m.d.cranswick@dl.ac.uk] Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 18:33:07 GMT > I guess you know that folklore that in a book - each mathematical > formula cuts the potential readership in half? Yes indeed, but it's not something that you can tell a physicist...
We don't really understand it,
so we'll give it to the programmers.
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless
means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." - Freire / OXFAM
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
- Paul Rodriguez
"Our bombs are smarter than the average high school student. At least they can find Afghanistan." --A. Whitney Brown
''Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.'' (Rick Polito, describing film 'The Wizard Of Oz')
'Protest that endures . . . . . is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.' - Wendell Berry
"The most revolutionary act is to name reality." Paulo Freire
"Blessed are they who learn from their mistakes, for they shall make, if not necessarily fewer of them, different and more interesting ones." --Dorothy J. Heydt
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, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road - Steward Brand
And who will tell the people that free speech is a ruse; The corporations run the country and then they make the news. Is it media or mind control heroic victories or crime? Who will tell the people... that we are living in these times. - Song attributed to Willie Nelson
"Lucubration" = a composition that smells of the lamp... a work composed by candlelight... ie composed in the dead of night. Nice word.
#===================================================================# # More dead people have written in support of Microsoft against the # # DOJ than any other single group, leading UMSA (United MS Shills # # of America) President Steve Barkto to lodge a formal complaint. # #===================================================================#
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."
Refer: http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/iemls/postprint/jhill-milt/jm-ch-2.htm:
25. For blue as the colour of hope, see R.C. Fox's note in Explicator, 9 (1950-1), Item 54.
Given Milton's view of the poet's sacerdotal nature and role,
"mantle blue" probably also alludes to the divine instructions for Aaron's robe in Exodus 28: 31,
"And thou shalt make the robe of the ephod all of blue". As
Aaron's vestments are the symbols of his priestly vocation, Milton's blue cloak
symbolises his election as God's poet-priest. For blue as the traditional colour
of the Druid bard's cloak, see J.F. Forrest, "The Significance of Milton's
'Mantle Blue'", MQ, 8 (1974), 41-8. *
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Truth endures but spelling changes -- Anon.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Perfectly exact physics is not so very exact, just as holy men are not so very holy." - Wilhelm Reich
"Even when violence is not the answer it certainly puts the question in a way that is difficult to ignore." - Simon Carr http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/simon_carr/story.jsp?story=283684
"A man who wishes to serve the cause of religion ought to hesitate long before he stakes the truth of religion on the event of a controversy respecting events in the physical world. For a time he may succeed in making a theory which he dislikes unpopular by persuading the public that it contradicts the Scriptures and is inconsistent with the attributes of the Deity. But, if at last an overwhelming force of evidence proves this maligned theory to be true, what is the effect of the arguments by which the objector has attempted to prove that it is irreconciliable with natural and revealed religion? Merely this, to make men infidels. Like the Israelites, in their battle with the Philistines, he has presumptuously and without warrant brought down the ark of God into the camp as a means of ensuring victory :-- and the consequence of this profanation is that, when the battle is lost, the ark is taken. --Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Sadler's Law of Population", July 1830. Published in the 1897 Edinburgh Edition (London : Longmans, Green, and Co.), v. 5, p. 429.
'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 person who lacks the means, within himself, to live a good and happy
life will find any period of his existence wearisome.
- Cicero : "On Old Age"
For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be
such a thing as a superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human
inefficiency.
- Eric Ambler : A Coffin for Dimitrios
Stockbroker (John Cleese): Well, speaking as member of the Stock
Exchange I would suck their brains out with a straw, sell the widows and
orphans and go into South American Zinc.
- Monty Python: "Sex and Violence"
Tetsuo's kind see only the power of Western scientific reductionism.
They wish to combine it with our discipline, our traditional methods of
competitive conformity. With this I fundamentally disagree. What the
West really has to offer -- the only thing it has to offer, my child --
is honesty. Somehow, in the midst of their horrid history, the best
among the gaijin learned a wonderful lesson. They learned to distrust
themselves, to doubt even what they were taught to believe or what their
egos make them yearn to see. To know that even truth must be
scrutinized, it was a great discovery, almost as great as the treasure
we of the East have to offer them in return, the gift of harmony.
- David Brin : "Dr. Pak's Preschool"
Only when the last tree has been cut down, and the last fish has died, will you realise that you cannot eat your money
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
- Oscar Wilde
You know what misery I went through there, listening to lawyers day and
night. If you'd had experience of them yourself, as brave as you think
you are, you'd have preferred to clean out the Augean stables...
- Seneca : The Apocolocyntosis
There is something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that's unbearably
sad. Like most unbearably sad things, it seems incredibly elusive and
complex in its causes and simple in its effect: on board the Nadir --
especially at night, when all the ship's structured fun and reassurances
and gaiety-noise ceased -- I felt despair. The word's overused and
banalified now, despair, but it's a serious word, and I'm using it
seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture -- a weird yearning for
death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility
that presents as a fear of death. It's maybe close to what people call
dread or angst. But it's not these things, quite. It's more like wanting
to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that
I'm small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to
die. It's wanting to jump overboard.
- David Foster Wallace : "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again",
in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again
And that inverted bowl they call the Sky, / Whereunder crawling coop'd
we live and die, / Lift not your hand to It for help -- for It / As
impotently moves as you or I.
- Omar Khayyam
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still
carries any reward.
- John Maynard Keynes
Ignorance is the mother of devotion.
- Attribution: Dean Henry Cole (1500-1580), British prelate.
Disputation with the Papists at Westminster (March 31, 1559).
Ignorance is the mother of Devotion: A maxim that is proverbial, and confirmed by general experience. Look out for a people, entirely destitute of religion: If you find, them at all, be assured, that they are but few degrees removed from brutes. - David Hume, The Natural History of Religion (1757)
A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, "You should make a
point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing."
- Sir Arnold Bax
Mathematics may humbly help in the market-place, but it also reaches to the stars.
- Herbert Westren Turnbull
Dear Lord, I've been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the
Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt a lively,
intelligent bird... a social being... capable of actual affection...
nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it's dead
and we're gonna eat it. Please give our respects to its family...
- Berke Breathed : Bloom Country Babylon
Be as decent as you can. Don't believe without evidence. Treat things
divine with marked respect -- don't have anything to do with them. Do
not trust humanity without collateral security; it will play you some
scurvy trick. Remember that it hurts no one to be treated as an enemy
entitled to respect until he shall prove himself a friend worthy of
affection. Cultivate a taste for distasteful truths. And, finally, most
important of all, endeavor to see things as they are, not as they ought
to be.
- Ambrose Bierce
Our American professors like their literature clear, cold, pure and very dead.
- Sinclair Lewis
I have seen the future and it doesn't work.
- Robert Fulford
Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
- John Dewey
You have perhaps heard the story of the four students -- British,
French, American, Canadian -- who were asked to write an essay on
elephants. The British student entitled his essay "Elephants and the
Empire." The French student called his "Love and the Elephant." The
title of the American student's essay was "Bigger and Better Elephants,"
and the Canadian student called his "Elephants: A Federal or Provincial
Responsibility?"
- Robert H. Winters
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The ultimate evil is the weakness, cowardice, that is one of the
constituents of so much human nature. When, rarely, unalloyed nobility
does occur, its chances of prevailing are slim. Yet it exists, and its
mere existence is reason enough for not wiping the name of mankind off
the slate.
- John Simon
An educator should consider that he has failed in his job if he has not
succeeded in instilling some trace of a divine dissatisfaction with our
miserable social environment.
- Anthony Standen
samizdat: [Russ., lit., self published.] a
system by which manuscripts denied official
publication in the Soviet Union are circulated
clandestinely in typescript or in mimeograph
form, or are smuggled out for publication.
verisimilitude: [L. verisimilitudo, from verisimilis; see verisimilar]
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
simple system that worked ...A complex system designed from scratch never
works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over,
beginning with a working simple system.
-- Grady Booch
Hostility towards Microsoft is not difficult to find on the Net, and it
blends two strains: resentful people who feel Microsoft is too powerful, and
disdainful people who think it's tacky. This is all strongly reminiscent of
the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from
both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the
intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments.
--Neal Stephenson, "In the Beginning was the Command LIne."
You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that wh at our civilization needs is more "drive," or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or "creativity." In s ort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. -C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads: One path leads to despair and hopelessness, and the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." Woody Allen
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.
-Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)
"Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem"
-- Nicholas C. Weaver
"There is only one cause of poverty in the modern world: failure to own an adequate supply of capital"
--Louis Kelso
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
(Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X interfaces.)
[In many circumstances,] the most important thing about a proposition is not that it be true, but that it be interesting. - Whitehead
I have read Professor Whitehead's theory of relativity, but I didn't
understand it. attrib. - Albert Einstein
From: http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes2.html
It sounds good if you say it fast.
J. Alton Templin on The Chalcedonian Formula, which describes the nature
of Christ as being both "fully God and fully man."
From: http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes2.html
Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
- Alfred North Whitehead, 1861-1947
From: http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes2.html
If the Devil can get into the church, nine times out of ten he'll come in through the choir. -
The Rev. Thomas Brantley Winstead, 1875-1956
From: http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes2.html
"They paint the walls to cover my pen, but the Shit House Bandit has struck again!"
--Shit House Bandit
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname
empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
- Tacitus, Rome, 54-119 A.D.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." Edward Abbey "The good Lord set definite limits on man's wisdom, but set no limits on his stupidity and that's just not fair." Konrad Adenauer "What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork." Pearl Bailey "It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiats can be trusted to speak the truth." A.J. Balfour
All my sins are grey.
- Archbishop William Temple, 1881-1944, reacting
to evangelists' fondness for quoting Isaiah 1:18, "Though your sins be
as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow...."
From: http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes2.html
When a man firmly believed that if he violated the sacredness of a
particular sanctuary he would be struck dead on the spot or smitten
suddenly with a mortal disease, he doubtless took care not to incur the
penalty; but when anyone had had the courage to defy the danger and
escaped with impunity, the spell was broken. . . . Unquestionably the
conviction which experience in time forced on all but the very ignorant,
that divine punishments were not to be confidently expected in a
temporal form, contributed much to the downfall of the old religions and
the general adoption of one which, without absolutely excluding
providential interferences in this life for the punishment of guilt or
the reward of merit, removed the principal scene of divine retribution
to a world after death. But rewards and punishments postponed to that
distance of time . . . must be awarded not definitely to particular
actions but on a general survey of the person's whole life, and he
easily persuades himself that, whatever may have been his peccadilloes,
there will be a balance in his favor at the last. . . . The sole quality
in these punishments which might seem calculated to make them
efficacious, their overpowering magnitude, is itself a reason why nobody
(except a hypochondriac here and there) ever really believes that he [or
she] is in any very serious danger of incurring them. Even the worst
malefactor is hardly able to think that any crime he has had it in his
power to commit, any evil he can have inflicted in this short space of
existence, can have deserved torture extending through an eternity.
Accordingly religious writers and preachers never tire of complaining
how little effect religious motives have . . . on lives and conduct,
notwithstanding the tremendous penalties which are alleged to await.
John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873, Utility of Religion.
From: http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes2.html
"For Allah created the English mad - the maddest of all mankind"
-- unknown Bengali soldier-poet, translated by Rudyard Kipling, Kitchener's School, 1898
if it is there and you can see it it is real if it is there and you can not see it it is transparent if it is not there and you can see it it is virtual if it is not there and you can not see it it is gone roy wilks 1983, tcp/ip networking(Newsgroup signature)
"I'm sure they'll listen to REASON"
"Hiro Protagonist"
"Physics is not a religion. If it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money."
-Leon Lederman
"If you practice an art, be proud of it and make it proud of you.
. . . It may break your heart, but it will fill your heart before it breaks it."
- Maxwell Anderson
Horace admonishes us to wait nine years before publishing the
product of our pen:
. . . If ever you write anything,
. . . Keep it to yourself for nine years,
For what has never been divulged can be destroyed,
But once published, it is beyond recall.
"Failure is just a step along the way to success." - Fast Company, March 2001
Most people, at some point in their lives,
will approach the abyss. . . .
Nothing can help you,
nothing will save you.
- Professor Paul Cook, Arizona State University
I'm afraid you deceive yourself.
You are not by any means free.
You are only looking out
of the window of your prison....
The doors are locked, just the same.
-Harold Frederick
from The Damnation of Theron Ware
"If you could lick my heart, it would poison you."
- Itzhak Zuckerman, leader and survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
"Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects which may
at any moment be wrenched away by the hand of violence?"
-Harriet Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl)
"It may be that we have all lived before and died,
and this is hell."
- A.L.Prusick
I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast
and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight
amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
--Henry David Thoreau, Walden
We speak for the dead. --Frank ("Homicide: Life on the Street") Pembleton
Every blade of grass has its angel which bends over it and whispers "Grow, grow." --the Talmud
The Bal Shem Tov said "Behind every blade of grass there are Angels who sing "Grow, Grow, Grow."
They went off, and I got aboard the raft, feeling bad and low, because I
knowed very well I had done wrong, and I see it warn't no use for me to
try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right when he's
little, ain't got no show--when the pinch comes there ain't nothing to
back him up and keep him to his work, and so he gets beat. Then I
thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on,--s'pose you'd a done
right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No,
says I, I'd feel bad--I'd feel just the same way I do now. Well, then,
says I, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome
to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the
same? I was stuck. I couldn't answer that. So I reckoned I wouldn't
bother no more about it, but after this always do whichever come
handiest at the time.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885. Huck has just lied to protect
his friend, Jim, a runaway slave. With this simple argument Twain
demolishes at least two or three of the most commonplace modern
approaches to morality.
From: http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes.html
He was such a good man that people hated to see him coming.
Mark Twain, 1835-1910
From: http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes.html
"We have witnessed a decline in scholarship, few scholars are
left, and those who remain experience vexations. Their troubled
times stop them from concentrating on deepening and bettering
their knowledge. Most so-called scholars today mask the truth
with lies.
In science, they go no further than plagiarism and hypocrisy and
use the little knowledge they have for vile material ends. And if they
come across others who stand apart for their love of the truth and
rejection of falsehood and hypocrisy, they attack them with insults
and sarcasm"
- attributed to Omar Khayyam/Umar ibn Ibrahim Khayyam-i Nayshapuri /
Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami
(1048-1122 / 1048-1131) (Mathematical Treatise)
(With reference to a correspondent)
The young specialist in English Lit, ...lectured me severely on the fact that
in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at
last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows
that the one thing we can say about our modern "knowledge" is that it is wrong.
... My answer to him was, "... when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Isaac Asimov,The Relativity of Wrong, Kensington Books,
New York, 1996, p 226.
From: http://naturalscience.com/dsqhome.html
At two-tenths the speed of light, dust and atoms might not do significant damage even in a voyage of 40 years, but the faster you go, the worse it is--space begins to become abrasive. When you begin to approach the speed of light, hydrogen atoms become cosmic-ray particles, and they will fry the crew. ...So 60,000 kilometers per second may be the practical speed limit for space travel.
Isaac Asimov, Sail On! Sail On! In The
Relativity of Wrong, Kensington Books, New York, 1996, p 220. (1)
From: http://naturalscience.com/dsqhome.html
Life is a disease from which sleep gives us relief every sixteen hours.
Sleep is a palliative, death is a remedy.
- Sebastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort (1741-1794)
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and
by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate
the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the
case. Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are
like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they
require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
I don't write music for sissy ears.
Charles E. Ives, 1874-1951, eminent composer whose music is deemed
excessively dissonant by traditionalists.
From: http://www.csd.net/~connect2/quotes.html
"An individual man or woman, carrying to a comfortless job
through clanging streets the cheapest editions of some immortal
book, can mount the stairs of his secret psychic watch-tower
and think the whole ant heap into invisibility."
--John Cowper Powys, The Meaning of Culture, 1930.
quoted in Vanity Fair April 1993 p88
Real Programmers consider "what you see is what you get" to be just as bad a concept in Text Editors as it is in women. No, the Real Programmer wants a "you asked for it, you got it" text editor -- complicated, cryptic, powerful, unforgiving, dangerous. (From an Email signature)
Prediction is hard. Especially of the future.
--Niels Bohr
Justice is when you get what you deserve. Mercy is when you don't get what you deserve. Grace is when you get what you don't deserve.
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
"We (he and Halmos) share a philosophy about linear algebra: we think basis-free, we write basis-free, but when the chips are down we close the office door and compute with matrices like fury." -Irving Kaplansky
Logic is invincible, because in order to combat logic it is necessary to do logic. - Pierre Boutroux
Pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves. - - Marcus Lucan (39-65)
"We are as dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants" -Bernard of Chartres (12th-13th century)
A dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants sees farther than a giant himself. - Robert Burton (1577-1640)
"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of giants" -Isaac Newton
"The absolutely pure battle between mathematician and nature, without the corrupting influence of a lot of distracting structure, is surely the highest form of intellectual activity" -Robert C. Thompson (AMM DEC 1983)
The government of Hapsburg Vienna in 1765 published a catalogue of forbidden books. Twelve years later this catalogue had to be included in itself because people were using it as a guide to interesting reading.
"The referendum went as most people hoped it would" -Irish Times editorial
"What we are doing is in the interest of everybody, bar possibly the consumer" - Aer Lingus spokesman.
If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. -- Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1729)
A dwarf standing on the shoulders of giants sees farther than a giant himself. -- Robert Burton (1577-1640)
"We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size." - Bernard of Chartres ca.1120.AD,
Pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves. -- Marcus Lucan (39-65)
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics - Homer Simpson
Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God.
Logan Pearsall Smith
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? - Albert Einstein (attributed to others also)
"Dost thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed?"
Count Oxenstierna, (Swedish Statesman,1648)
"However great then the indignity, we must submit to it and yield to the compulsion of necessity, a compulsion which the gods themselves cannot evade!" - "History of Rome" by Livy - Book IX Chapter: 3
I belong to a bizarre cult which engages in weird ceremonies including ritual cannibalism, and decorates its temples with pictures and statues of a man being tortured to death. I got into it by meeting some people in college, and my mother was very upset about it. It's called the Episcopal Church. -- John Fast
'Injustice is not anonymous, it has a name and address.' Berthold Brecht
I used to program my IBM PC to make hideous noises to wake me up. I
also made the conscious decision to hard-code the alarm time into the
program, so as to make it more difficult for me to reset it. After I
realised that I was routinely getting up, editing the source file,
recompiling the program and rerunning it for 15 minutes extra sleep,
before going back to bed, I gave up and made the alarm time a
command-line option.
--B.M. Buck
"More important than recognizing the shared significance of Abraham [in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths] would be acknowledging that the story itself is fiction. People rarely kill one another over the differences between Star Wars and Star Trek." A New Jersey reader of Time Magazine, in a letter to the editor, October 21, 2002
It seems to me that in the "Encyclopedic Dictionary" the opinion of the Jesuit Richeome, on atheists and idolaters, has not been refuted as strongly as it might have been; opinion held formerly by St. Thomas, St. Gregory of Nazianze, St. Cyprian and Tertullian, opinion that Arnobius set forth with much force when he said to the pagans: "Do you not blush to reproach us with despising your gods, and is it not much more proper to believe in no God at all, than to impute to them infamous actions?" opinion established long before by Plutarch, who says "that he much prefers people to say there is no Plutarch, than to say-'There is an inconstant, choleric, vindictive Plutarch'"; opinion strengthened finally by all the effort of Bayle's dialectic.
Attributed to the monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona; unable to identify published source: "For him that stealeth a book from this library, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck by palsy and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease for his agony until he sink to dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final punishment let the flames of hell consume him for ever and aye."
As I let go of my feelings of guilt, I am in touch with my inner sociopath. --"Life Affirmations that are Attainable"
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. -- James D. Nicoll
[Christianity is] crime on credit. - Robert G. Ingersoll
New Medals Announced:
The Distinguished Agreement Medal: For Going Along to Get Along
Victoria Day Fête de la Reine As you are aware, the Monday preceding May 25 is observed annually in Canada as Victoria Day - the celebration of Her Majesty's birthday. The rules for flying the Canadian Flag and other flags in Canada provide that, where physical arrangements make it possible, the Royal Union Flag (known as the Union Jack) will be flown along with the Canadian Flag on all Government of Canada buildings and establishments across Canada to mark this day.
"Victory awaits him who has everything in order -- luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time -- this is called bad luck."-- Roald Amundsen.
"In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which."-- George R.R. Martin, interviewed by Nick Geyvers.
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. - William Shakespeare, MacBeth
In the land of toast The butter is spread very thin
"Of all the responsibilities of power,
restraint is the one that impresses most"
- Thuycidides
There is a certain charm to seeing someone happily advocate a triangular
wheel because it has one less bump per revolution than a square wheel does.
- Chuck Swiger
"A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as
vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so
strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty,
dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a
holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in
possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?"
-- Marcus Tillius Cicero
"The triumph of hope over experience"
- Dr Samuel Johnson, talking of second marriages
"When I marched off to war in 1917, I remember a Civil War veteran, over
seventy years old, telling me, Son, you are all heroes now. But someday
theyll treat you like dogs."
- Benjamin B. Shepherd, World War I Veteran
The Romans didn't build their empire by holding committee meetings. They did it by killing all those who stood in their way.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness.
- Kahlil Gibran
Heaven has a road, but no one travels it; Hell has no gate but men will dig to get there.
Chinese Proverb
Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
Mark Twain
"Poor dear, he hasn't anything between his ears"
- (supposedly) Prime minister Margaret Thatcher talking about President Ronald Reagon
If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains
unprovable statements, then Godel has taught us that, not
only is methematics a religion, it is the only religion that can
prove itself to be one.
- W. Mark Stuckey (August 2001 Physics Today, Page 74)
(correction passed on 15 Mar 2003 by an ex student - the name is "Professor W. Mark Stuckey")
"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us." - George Orwell
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell
Alas, to wear the mantle of Galileo it is not enough that you be persecuted by an unkind establishment, you must also be right. -- Robert Park
Perfect consistency is possible only for the Almighty . . . and a careful reading of scripture will indicate that even he failed to attain it in all cases. -- Poul Anderson, quoted by David Weber
The British Empire has always encountered the greatest difficulty in identifying its heroes and monsters (Campion Bond)
We live in troubled times, where fretful dreams settle upon the Empire's brow. (Campion Bond) (Issue #1)
"Warning: May contain math"
(Newsgroup signature)
"There was a compelling persuasiveness about the famous cry - 'Give us the tools and we will finish the job.' One may be forgiven for responding less eagerly to the scholar, be he sociologist or anything else, who says - 'Give me a job, and I will spend the rest of my life polishing the tools'." - Professor T. H. Marshall - Sociology at the Crossroads (London, 1947) p. 19
""The more sociological history becomes, and the more historical sociology becomes, the better for both. Let the frontier between them be kept wide open for two-way traffic". But let us hope that the two-way traffic will keep to the right side of the road" - David Hackett Fischer commenting on E. H. Carr's quote in 'Historical Fallacies - Toward a Logic of Historical Thought' Harper Torchbooks, 1970, ISBN: 0-6-131545-1
"The weakness of much social thought, it seems to me, is that it is so largely concerned with packing its bag (or even with working out a general theory about the way in which a bag should be packed) for a journey which is never taken" - Alfred Cobban, 'The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution' (Cambridge, 1964), p. 23.
The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship. - Francis Bacon
It is as natural to die as to be born, and to a little infant, the one is as painful as the other. - Francis Bacon
Occasionally we sigh for an earlier day when we could just look at the stars
without worrying whether they were theirs or ours.
--Bill Vaughan
"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over." -- Samuel Johnson
May the fourths be with you (very small musician joke...) - passed on by Nikki (who claims not to be a Star Wars fan)
In time of war, the laws are silent. (A Latin phrase: inter arma silent leges)
'the calculations of the palace are different from the calculations of the field'
Your crypto-asceticism is not my emergency. -- Eric Oppen, on vegetarian diets
"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a
really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually
change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again.
They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because
scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens
every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened
in politics or religion."
- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
Register Logo, Red Stripe, True Missive, Vulture Circling Round. I thought haiku meant five-seven-five syllables but I'm no expert http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/18185.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/18304.html
Three things are certain: Death, taxes, and lost data Guess which has occurred.
Delusion, precisely because it is delusion, has a stronger hold on human minds than mere fact. Delusions are produced by strong, innate mechanisms built into every human mind; facts are outside of us and need to be hunted down. --Christopher J. Hinrich
"But where are the savants of the yesteryears?"
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." - Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1706).
Heroes, proceed! What Bounds your Pride shall hold? What Check restrain your Thirst of Pow'r and Gold? Behold rebellious Virtue quite o'erthrown, Behold our Fame, our Wealth, our Lives your own. To such, a groaning Nation's Spoils are giv'n, When publick Crimes inflame the Wrath of Heav'n: But what, my Friend, what Hope remains for me, Who start at Theft, and blush at Perjury? - Samuel Johnson
By the time the Sun's power output starts dropping noticeably, the human race will probably have advanced technologically to the point where practical fusion power is only 15-30 years off. --Wim Lewis, in a discussion of alternate energy on rec.arts.sf.written
Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us. -Jean Baudrillard
The sage awakes to light in the night of all creatures. That which the world calls day is the night of ignorance to the wise. - Bhagavad Gita c. BC 400, Sanskrit Poem Incorporated Into the Mahabharata.
Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you
come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is
people who have come alive. -Harold Whitman
Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor, was imprisoned by the Nazis for eight years
because he spoke out against Hitler:
"First, they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was
not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak
out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I
did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there
was no one left to speak for me."
"A standard for copy protection is as premature as a standard for teleportation."
--- Noted computer security expert and Princeton University Professor Edward Felten.
Paraphrasing Benjamin Franklin:
"Those that can give up general purpose computers for the sake of a little eye candy deserve neither computers nor eye candy"
http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~djm/ntk/
"When I was in my twenties, I concluded one day that I was not a poet.
It was the bitterest moment of my life."
Ambrose Bierce
Failure: When Your Best Just Isn't Good Enough
The Greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the
hijacking of morality by religion. However valuable -- even
necessary -- that may have been in enforcing good behavior on
primitive peoples, their association is now counterproductive.
Yet at the very moment when they should be decoupled,
sanctimonious nitwits are calling for a return to morals based
on superstition.
--- Arthur C. Clarke
"Before engaging in a battle of wits, make sure your opponent is armed." -- East Texas Proverb
(http://www.neosoft.com/texas/default.html)
"Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed
to come from Texas." - Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
(http://www.neosoft.com/texas/default.html)
The hotel [in Kiev] checked us in very quickly. Unlike the one in Moscow,
the door guard smiled, did not check our passes and did not wear a gun. The hotel serves
excellent country food for lunch, including dumpling soup, pork and
homemade ice cream. The waitress is friendly. Going from Moscow to Kiev is like going from
New York to Texas. -- T. J. Rodgers, "High tech in the Ukraine", E. E. Times, 8/13/90, p. 16
(http://www.neosoft.com/texas/default.html)
Do not meddle in the affairs of hamsters. Just don't. It's not worth it. - Ailbhe on #afp
You cannot see the world dying If you have dollar signs in your eyes
Mr. Speaker, I smell a rat; I see him forming in the air and darkening the sky; but I'll nip him in the bud.'
Sir Boyle Roche 1743-1807 (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 1981)
Quoted in The Story of Rats by S. Anthony Barnett
What of my dross thou findest there, be bold To throw away, but yet preserve the gold What if my gold be wrapped in ore? None throws away the apple for the core: But if thou shalt cast all away as vain . . - John Bunyan (quoted in What Went Wrong : Case Histories of Process Plant Disasters by Trevor Kletz)
This book will make a traveller of thee, If by its counsel thou wilt ruled be. It will direct thee to a safer land If thou wilt its directions understand. - Adapted from R. Vaughan Williams' libretto for The Pilgrim's Progress (quoted in What Went Wrong : Case Histories of Process Plant Disasters by Trevor Kletz)
Mr Randall (factory inspector) said he was surprised at the system of work, as he knew the company's safety documents were very impressive. Unfortunately they were not acted upon. - Health and Safety at Work, April 1996 (quoted in What Went Wrong : Case Histories of Process Plant Disasters by Trevor Kletz)
"Well, you have a pretty good case in technical law, but a pretty bad one in equity and justice. You'll have to get some other fellow to win this case for you. I couldn't do it. All the time while standing talking to that jury, I'd be thinking, 'Lincoln, you're a liar,' and I believe I should forget myself and say it out loud." - Abraham Lincoln
The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. -- Thomas Macaulay
Today, when I throw away a musical birthday card, I am tossing out more computer power than existed in the entire world in 1948. - Denis Waitley
Some of the most famous books are the least worth reading. Their fame was due to their having done something that needed to be doing in their day. The work is done and the virtue of the book has expired. - John Morely
A few more days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust and silence of the upper shelf... For a month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then be withdrawn, to make room for the forthcoming novelties. - Thomas B. Macaulay
Mad, adj.:
Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Now George has fallen and Fred is dead
And John got lost in the shooting.
Blood, however, is still blood-red
And the army is again recruiting.
- Song of the Three Soldiers (Bertolt Brecht 1927)
'To the unknown Wehrmacht deserter. To the victims of Nazi military justice. To all those who refused to serve the Nazi regime. Be sand, not oil, in the works of the world!' - from a German "Deserter Memorial" in Erfurt, Germany
"Be uncomfortable; be sand, not oil, in the machinery of the world"
- German poet Gunter Eich (1907-72)
"I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man."
"It is us."
-- Konrad Lorenz
"What is one life in the affairs of the state?"
- Mussolini
From: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Picture/3391/latin/seneca.htm
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the Younger 4 B.C. - A.D. 65 Aliquando et insanire iucundum est It is sometimes pleasant even to act like a madman Bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem It is not goodness to be better than the worst Colossus magnitudinem suam servabit etiam si steterit in puteo A giant will keep his size even though he will have stood in a well Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence Docendo discitur We learn by teaching Errare humanum est To err is human Exigo a me non ut optimis par sim, sed ut malis melior I require myself not to be equal to the best, but to be better than the bad Facilius per partes in cognitionem totius adducimur We are more easily led part by part to an understanding of the whole Fallaces sunt rerum species The appearances of things are deceptive Gladiator in arena consilium capit The gladiator is making his plan in the arena (i.e. too late) Licentia poetica Poetic license Nemo liber est qui corpori servit No one is free who is a slave to his body Non est ad astra mollis e terris via There is no easy way from the earth to the stars Non est ars quae ad effectum casu venit That which achieves its effect by accident is not art Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit There has not been any great talent without an element of madness Nullum saeculum magnis ingeniis clausum est To great talents no era is closed Otium sine litteris mors est et hominis vivi sepultra Leisure without literature is death, or rather the burial of a living man Per aspera ad astra To the stars through bolts and bars Potest ex casa magnus vir exire A great man can come from a cabin Praeceptores suos adulescens veneratur et suspicit A young man respects and looks up to his teachers Quaedam iura non scripta sed omnibus scriptis certiora sunt Some laws are unwritten but they are better established than all written ones Quos amor verus tenuit tenebit Those whom true love has held, it will go on holding Timendi causa est nescire Ignorance is the cause of fear
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Tertullian 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).
"Chance favours the prepared mind" - Louis Pasteur
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. -- John Morely
"When will justice come? When those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are."
"We that are young/Shall never see so much, nor live so long."
King Lear,
"He is even more cowardly than vain, and, because of this, he will tremble before all those sycophants when, urged on by the General Staff, they draw the sword in earnest . . . It is not by his will that he will unleash a war, but by his weakness." - King Edward VII on the German Kaiser (quoted on page 75, in "November 1918" by Gordon Brook-Shepherd)
"Eat slowly. You will need less food" - Example of WWI British Home-front propaganda (quoted on page 216, in "November 1918" by Gordon Brook-Shepherd)
"'If there is a God, why does he not stop the war? What is the good of another day of prayer when we have held so many already?' And his answer was even more disturbing, particularly to any very new of England's nouveaux riches who were sitting in his congregation. Perhaps, the bishop suggested, the Lord was turning a deaf ear because 'many people were not sincere in praying for the war to end'; and the reason for this lack of fervour on the delinquents' part might well be that 'never before in their lives had hey made so much money'." - on the Bishop of London's sermon, Sunday 4th of August 1918 at St Paul's Cathedral (quoted on page 31, in "November 1918" by Gordon Brook-Shepherd)
"It has been said, only too truly, that Plato was the inventor of both
our secondary schools and our universities. I do not know a better
argument for an optimistic view of mankind, no better proof of their
indestructible love for truth and decency, of their originality and
stubbornness and health, than the fact that this devastating system of
education has not utterly ruined them."
- Karl R. Popper
"There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there
is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy."
-- Joseph Pulitzer
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide. -- Dame Rebecca West
From: http://olohof.et.tudelft.nl/~skornini/pages/moto.html
" Incoming fire has right of way " " Another victory for truth,justice,and automatic weapons " " Someday your ship will come in...and you'll be at the airport " " Winning is not everything...it's also important to humiliate your opponent " " Has suicide become a way of life in British prisons? " " Due to recent cutbacks,the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off " " Money dosen't grow on trees,because the banks own all the branches " " Be alert...you're country needs lurts " " They said 'Smile, it could be worse' , I did and it was " " He who turns the other cheek gets his jaw broken " " Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love " " I've never lost,....I've just been a little behind when the time ran out " " People who say you can't buy happiness, don't know where to shop " " You really put the 'fun' in 'funeral " " God is love. Love is blind. Ray Charles is blind. Ray Charles is God. " " Todays word is legs... spread the word. " " I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something." " It takes a big man to cry... but it takes an even bigger man to laugh at that man. " " I used to be indisisive, but now I'm not sure " " I think I'm apathetic, but I can't be bothered to find out " " I used to be discrete, but no-one noticed " " I used to be conceited, but now I am perfect " " A bit of sadism never hurt anyone " " The meak shall inherit the earth... they are too weak to refuse " " Don't think the world owes you a living... it was here first " " Other than that, how'd you like Dallas Mrs Kennedy? " " Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock. " ---- That which does not kill us, makes us stronger. The best proof of love is trust. People need your love the most when they appear to deserve it the least We are sane because we care. It is not true that life is one damn thing after another-- it's one damn thing over and over. "Life is a snowmobile racing across the tundra,then suddenly it flips over pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come..."
"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer
god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other
possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
-- Stephen Roberts
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Rhymes.html
Franklin's adage
For want of a nail , the shoe was lost: For want of the shoe , the horse was lost; For want of the horse , the rider was lost; For want of the rider , the battle was lost; For want of the battle , the kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a nail.
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. -Francis Bacon
"According to long-serving British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the power to deprive an individual of life is inseparable from the sovereignty of the state. Why nations choose, therefore, to deny themselves this power over life and death is, I think, a compelling question and one deserving of scholarly attention." Mr Bernard Carpenter (Boston College) 'A Punishment in Search of a Crime: Murder and the Death Penalty in Postwar Britain' "Abstracts of the Papers and Lectures given at the Permissive Society and its Enemies Conference" http://www.ihrinfo.ac.uk/icbh/abstracts.html
I stood among them, but not of them; in a shroud of thoughts which were not their thoughts. -Lord Byron
Roger David Carasso, Founder of the Internet Roger Carasso ______________________GOD IS MY MODERATOR_____ My thoughts are my own and do not represent Inference Corp. _______________Will betray country for food_________________
'''
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| The geek shall |
| Inherit the earth |
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ooO Ooo
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.:.
.:::.
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*******.:::::::::.*******
********.:::::::::::.********
********.:::::::::::::.******** AND NOW,
*******.::::::'***`::::.*******
******.::::'*********`::.****** E N G A G E !!!!!
****.:::'*************`:.****
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|"""""<`.THE PRINCE ,'>"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""| | `.`/""""""\,',' my sig is too big, | |SEE HIS ( / \ \' SEE HIS but its really cool. | | FACE \/<> <>\/ SMILE | | / W \ Visit my ascii art site: | | ,'\_|||||_/`. http://www.gtcom.net/~krogg/ascii/ | | ,',' ||| `.`. krogg.no.to.spam@gtcom.net | |____<,' TIME TO DIE `.>____Remove no.to.spam to reply____|
* S Novym Godom!
*.* Buone Feste e Buon Anno.
*#* *o* Feliz Natal, e Prospero Ano Novo.
**o *@ **.* Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano Nuevo.
*.%.#.* Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes Neues Jahr.
*.#+*.#+*.* Joyeux Noel, Bonne Annee.
^v*-:*=-* *#=.* Kala Christougena ke
*o-:*+#* @+.*$v^*.* Eftixismenos o Kenourgios Chronos
*%&-=#%.-%*o:=@#* *+* Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.
*#=-*+.o$!@%^v-.:.*-=#o** Prettige kerstdagen en gelukkig Nieuwjaar
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(2) Role Playing and Game playing. I shall make
only quite dogmatic remarks. Role playing is for
those who do not dare to be what they are. It is
itself already a shoddy and dangerous substitute for
genuine learning, that is, for genuinely changing
oneself to become more nearly what one wants to be.
This learning new roles is not the kind of learning
which is really desirable, and an end in itself.
Learning a new role has only an instrumental
value - for survival. But none of us survives long;
and instrumental values are not enough. Learning - as
opposed to learning a new role - and growing up, until
we die, is, or can be, a value in itself. To perform
constantly the miracle of lifting oneself out of the
swamp by one's own shoelaces is, indeed, a purpose.
Karl Popper correspondance with Doctor Thomas Szasz
(
http://www.enabling.org/ia/szasz/popper.html)
Lack of planning on your part doesn't consitute an emergency on my part.
| On nights such as this, evil deeds are done. And good deeds, of / | course. But mostly evil, on the whole. / \ -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) /
An ounce of clear thinking is worth a pound of research into the mysteries of the obvious.
From Black Adder 4:
http://morpho.dar.net/~northrup/ba/ba4-4.html
von Richthoven: "How lucky you English are to find the toilet so amusing.
For us, it is a mundane and functional item. For you, the
basis of an entire culture."
"Yet mothers can ponder many things in their hearts which their lips cannot express"
- Alfred North Whitehead
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. - Thomas Paine
As per the "Neutral President" on Futurama - "All I know....IS MY GUT SAYS MAYBE!!" "If I don't survive...tell my wife I said "Hello"" "I have no strong opinion one way or the other" "It's a beige alert Mr President"
She's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot. Well, that's love for you. (from Futurama - I dated a Robot)
"the gravitational effect of the other planets is negligible. In fact, the gravitational pull of a football held at arms length has more effect than the pull of the distant planet Mars."
I have criticised absent people so often, and then discovered, to my
humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have
grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.
Mark Twain
"When we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to his father and saying, "Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present". Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction." -- CS Lewis, Mere Christianity
"I suppose one metric is what force can the Union exert on management
or government. If we went on strike it'd hardly start a Winter Of
Discontent, would it? No power cuts, no bins unemptied, hospital
patients untreated... "Boffins work to rule - equations left unsolved"
isn't exactly a headline that'd win the public's sympathy and lead to
nationwide demands for us to be treated fairly."
(The glory that is ral.general)
'Lost time can never be found.' - Benjamin Franklin
CYNIC, n. 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.
"PERL has been described as "the duct tape of the Internet" and "the Unix Swiss Army chainsaw" - Computer Shopper 12/99" (Newsgroup signature)
"When I said 'we', officer, I was referring to myself, the four young ladies, and, of course, the goat."
"Heedless of grammar, they all cried 'It's him!'"
-- R.H. Barham, _Misadventure at Margate_
(Newsgroup signature)
"AMD, Cyrix, Intel Debate: the Truth. Continuing the long running argument of "To Cyrix or not to Cyrix, Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous Intel prices, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by upgrading end them.""
'Yes? It was an affair - I wasn't killing anyone. What's all the fuss about? What's wrong with you?'
Alan Clark
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.
Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.
Thomas Carlyle
(keeping people up to date with the goss from New York) To: Lachlan Cranswick Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 > Spring is a bit wet and cloudy here at the moment. Though the lady > at the post office mentioned that tis the season here for > husbands to hire someone to kill their wives. Presumably cheaper than a US divorce? On a similar theme(?), Graham Greene defined the third world as any country where it was cheaper to sleep with a whore than at a hotel. He didn't explain how he decided this!
When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for
the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of
rights and the most indispensable of duties.
- Marquis De Lafayette
(Newsgroup signature)
floody "netgod: I also have a "Evil Inside" T-shirt (w/ Intel
logo).. on the back it states: "When the rapture comes, will
you have root?""
""...I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is
the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft
ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an
interpreter."
-- Nick Petreley
Reply-To: "Lee Kolinsky"
To: [lachlan@melbpc.org.au]
Subject: More sig stuff
""What the big print giveth, the small print taketh away."
"If we relied exclusively on scientific data for every one of our findings, I'm afraid all our work would be inconclusive." - Henry Hudson, chair of Ronald Reagan's anti-pornography commission
"I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every
other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the
locks, they are always locking three."
-- Elayne Boosler
Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
In Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada has at last produced a political
leader worthy of assassination.
- Irving Layton
Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is
to the soul what the water bath is to the body.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."
-Italian Proverb
"Perhaps Debian is concerned more about technical excellence rather
than ease of use by breaking software. In the former we may excel. In
the latter we have to concede the field to Microsoft. Guess where I
want to go today?"
-- Manoj Srivastava
"It wasn't always like this? Perhaps it wasn't but it is. Put the car away; when life fails, What's the good of going to Wales?" W.H. Auden, It's no use Raising a Shout (quoted in the Royal Commision on Environmental Pollution Twentieth Report "Transport and the Environment Developments since 1994")
The position of a sincere solipsist is unassailable.
- Charles S. Milligan
(Solipsist,..one who believes in his own existence only.)
"There is this one thing America drips of which is absent in the UK:
Nationalistic ego. You have no idea how the "We are America, and everything
is possible if you try coz we are so great!" attitude will grate on a
person who lives in a country whose motto is: "We're shit! Life sucks
and then you die (if you're lucky)! Don't try to change that, you'll
only make a fool of yourself!""
- backup of the above comment on what is it like to be English/British
(Editorial by a UK webcomic author on a UK webcomic webpage
http://www.poisonedminds.com/ - October 3rd 2001)
"Good, quick, cheap - pick any two" (supposedly from a UNIX Fortune program)
"... your scientists were so concerned about whether or not they could do it, they never stopped to think about whether they should.'' - Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park (the movie)
Open a new Word document and type: = rand (200,99) then press on "enter" Wait for three seconds and look again... ...Not even Microsoft can explain that one
Ford's efficiency expert
An efficiency expert was making his report to Henry Ford. "As you will see,
sir, the report is highly favorable, except for that man down the hall. Every time I
pass by he's sitting with his feet on his desk. He's wasting your money."
Said Ford, "That man once had an idea that earned us a fortune. At the time I believe
his feet were exactly where they are now.
Ford was once queried about the fact that even if people did buy his car, there were few paved roads to drive them on. To which he replied: They will build them!
"For myself I can say that I have never believed that "all history" can
or must be "explained" in economic terms, or any other terms. He who
really "explains" history must have the attributes ascribed
by the theologians to God. It can be "explained," no
doubt, to the satisfaction of certain mentalities at certain
times, but such explanations are not universally accepted and
approved."
Charles A. Beard "An Economic
Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States" by Charles A. Beard
(First Published 1913). From the "Introduction to the 1935 Edition"
(1) What Morely has said of Macaulay is true of many eminent American historical
writers: "A popular author must, in a thoroughgoing way, take the accepted maxims
for granted. He must suppress any whimsical fancy for applying the Socratic
elenchus; or any other engine of criticism, scepticism, or verification to those
sentiments or current precepts or moral which may in truth be very equivolcal and may
be much neglected in practice, but which the public opinion of his time requires to
be treated in theory and in literature as if they had been cherished and help
sempor ubique, et ab omnibus." Miscellanies Vol. I, p. 272.
Charles A. Beard "An Economic
Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States" by Charles A. Beard
(First Published 1913). From footnote 1. page 4 of the Chapter on Historical Interpretation.
On Karl Marx and people Marx was influenced by and also wrote on
economics and history: Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, etc
"By those who use his name to rally political parties or to frighten Daughters
of the American Revolution, students of history concerned with the
origins of theories need not be disturbed"
Charles A. Beard "An Economic
Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States" by Charles A. Beard
(First Published 1913). From the "Introduction to the 1935 Edition"
"Seldom, if ever, is there total class-solidarity in historial conflicts"
Charles A. Beard "An Economic
Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States" by Charles A. Beard
(First Published 1913). From the "Introduction to the 1935 Edition"
We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their acts. -- Harold Nicolson
'The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history;
but progress is not a law of nature. The ground gained by one
generation may be lost by the next.'
H. A. L. Fisher
These days man knows the price of everything,
but the value of nothing.
-- Oscar Wilde
From another CCP14 user:
Lachlan, I take it you are downunder now? On the trail of the bizarre, there was an entire column of "cheese news" in one of the national newspapers the other day. The first concerned the development of a cheese eating machine. It is under development by the Italians to taste-test mozzarella. Second was that US govt regulations have now officially reduced the minimum size of holes in Grade A Swiss cheese to 3/8" to prevent jamming in high-speed slicing machines. Last, but the greatest, and it is a real shame if you were out of the UK at this crucial time in human history, is that a woman in London discovered the image of Lord Neminath, 1st cousin of Krishna, and 22nd prophet of Jainism in a tub of cream cheese in a local supermarket. Her home has apparently become some sort of shrine with hundreds of people coming around to see what has ben proclaimed as a miracle. Apparently Lord Neminath's nose was slightly injured when she tried to put the gold foil back over to protect him, otherwise he is doing fine. If you were still in the UK I was hoping you could find out more, since it only made a tiny column here.
Following the divine revelation of Lord Neminath in the creamcheese, I have furthered my search for truth, and believe I have finally found it: KELVIN IS LORD!!! ALL PRAISE THE LORD KELVIN!! Only The One, True Lord KELVIN Can Conserve You From Entropy! Because the Lord Kelvin gave us the gift of the Knowledge of the Absolute Temperature, we honor His wisdom and the beauty of His creation by measuring Temperature in Kelvins. Do not use the hurtful and deceitful Celsius and Fahrenheit scales! They are the tools of Relativists and other sad, twisted haters of the Lord Kelvin. And remember: never say "degrees Kelvin", just say "Kelvins", as in "273.16 Kelvins". Every time you do, you bring a smile to His face. Law The Third: A Pure Crystal's Entropy Is Zero At Zero Kelvins The Purest Crystal of them all is The Lord Kelvin himself! The Lord Kelvin is without Entropy. Furthermore, since Absolute Zero is unattainable via a finite series of processes, it follows that the Lord Kelvin is Infinite! This implies that His powers are also Infinite, meaning that the Lord Kelvin can transcend His own Law The Second and Conserve you from Entropy! all this and lots, lots more at:http://zapatopi.net/lordkelvin.html
Whereever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents. This is a truth of great importance, but not yet sufficiently attended to, and is probably more strongly impressed upon my mind by facts, and reflections suggested to them, than on yours which has contemplated abuses of power issuing from a very different quarter. Wherever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done, and not less readily by a powerful and interested party than by a powerful and interested prince." - James Madison in a letter to Thomas Jefferson (1788) (relating to the US Constitution)
"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 own good will torment us without end, for they do so
with the approval of their own conscience."
- C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock"
(Extracted from Ludwig Plutonium Webpage)
"I never submitted the whole system of my opinion to the creed
of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy,
in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of
thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation
of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but
with a party, I would not go there at all."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, (1789)
"Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the
rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to
declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and
to take none of them from us."
-- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to F. W. Gilmer, 1816
Economists regularly engage in political theory, masking normative judgements with seeming objective analysis. - Conrad P. Waligorski From J.K. Galbraith's "Culture of Contentment" In this world the follies of the rich pass for wise sayings. - From J.K. Galbraith's "Culture of Contentment" Thought for many is hard work, which is why it often commands high pay. It also, alas is compulsively delegated. - From J.K. Galbraith's "Culture of Contentment"
Bandwagons have bad steering, poor brakes, and often no certificate of roadworthiness. As means of public transport, I find them terrifying. Michael O'Hara, 1984
Dr Leonard McCoy <mccoy@ncc1701.starfleet.fed> quotes:
I'm a doctor, not a brick layer! No, I'm a doctor, not a mechanic! I'm a doctor, not an engineer! What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor? I will not peddle flesh! I am a physician! Are you out of your Vulcan mind? Where are you going to look for Spock's brain? He's Dead, Jim!
For I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin.... I am the barren one, and many are her sons.... I am the silence that is incomprehensible.... I am the utterance of my name - ISIS?
From: "DanH" [danielg@ankylosaur.com] Subject: UNIX Quote > The second line "choice of a GNU generation" is one that I saw on many > Linux pages and just liked so I picked that one up but it's not mine > originally.
"UNIX - Not just for vestal virgins anymore
Linux - Choice of a GNU generation"
(Newsgroup signature)
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." (from Anatole France in The Red Lily, 1894)
http://charon.sfsu.edu/maximfolder/%20RochefoucauldMaxims.html
http://www.assumption.edu/HTML/Academic/history/Hi118net/LaRochefoucauldmaxims.html
Renoir once remarked, almost regretfully, that he could not be a true genius bacause he alone had not caught syphilis.
"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." - Samuel P. Huntington
From: http://www2.arkansas.net/~mycabin/quotes.htm
"The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel." -- Horace Walpole (1717-1797), Letters "Whenever I'm caught between two evils, I take the one I've never tried." -- Mae West "The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong." -- C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections "Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table "There's a certain inefficiency in constantly questioning me on things you've already made up your mind about." -- Spock to Captain Kirk "The telephone does not have the constitutional right to be answered." -- Walter Matthau, First Monday in October Good Morning! This is God! I will be handling all of your problems today. I will not need your help. "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." -- Salvor Hardin (Mayor of Terminus) (Isaac Asimov, Foundation) "To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated." -- James Carse "Be uncomfortable; be sand, not oil, in the machinery of the world." -- German poet Gunter Eich (1907-72) Late one night at the insane asylum one inmate shouted, "I am Napoleon!" Another one said, "How do you know?" The first inmate said, "God told me!" Just then, a voice from another room shouted, "I did not!" "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away." -- Henry David Thoreau "You must know the rules. Only then will you understand why you must break them." Frustra fit perplura, quod fieri per pauciora. (It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.) -- William of Occum 1300-1349 Occum's Razor (The simplest answer is probably the right one.) "The tears of those who never cry, the calm, the levelheaded ones, are terrible to see." -- John Crowley, Little, Big ----------------- A few great bumper stickers... You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me. I'm not suffering from insanity, I'm quite enjoying it. I'm not a complete idiot. Some parts are missing. Out of my mind. Back in five minutes. Lord, save me from your followers. The gene pool could use a little chlorine. Consciousness: that annoying time between naps. You can't run a circus without any clowns. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Too many clowns, not enough circuses. Chaos, panic, disorder-my work here is done.
These epitaphs are taken from actual tombstones
_______________________________________________
On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:
Here lies
Ezekial Aikle
Age 102
The Good
Die Young.
In a London, England cemetery:
Ann Mann
Here lies Ann Mann,
Who lived an old maid
But died an old Mann.
Dec. 8, 1767
In a Ribbesford, England, cemetery:
Anna Wallace
The children of Israel wanted bread
And the Lord sent them manna,
Old clerk Wallace wanted a wife,
And the Devil sent him Anna.
Ruidoso, New Mexico, cemetery:
Here lies
Johnny Yeast
Pardon me
For not rising.
Memory of an accident in a Uniontown, Pennsylvania cemetery:
Here lies the body
of Jonathan Blake
Stepped on the gas
Instead of the brake.
In a Silver City, Nevada, cemetery:
Here lays Butch,
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger,
But slow on the draw.
A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:
Sacred to the memory of
my husband John Barnes
who died January 3, 1803
His comely young widow, aged 23, has
many qualifications of a good wife, and
yearns to be comforted.
A lawyer's epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.
Stowe, Vermont:
I was somebody.
Who, is no business
Of yours.
Lester Moore was a Wells, Fargo Co. station agent for Naco, Arizona in
the cowboy days of the 1880's. He's buried in the Boot Hill Cemetery in
Tombstone, Arizona:
Here lies Lester Moore
Four slugs from a .44
No Les No More.
John Penny's epitaph in the Wimborne, England, cemetery:
Reader if cash thou art
In want of any
Dig 4 feet deep
And thou wilt find a Penny.
On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:
She always said her feet were killing her
but nobody believed her.
In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:
On the 22nd of June
- Jonathan Fiddle -
Went out of tune.
Anna Hopewell Enosburg Falls, Vermont:
Here lies the body of our Anna
Done to death by a banana
It wasn't the fruit that laid her low
But the skin of the thing that