Funeral Instructions: No fuss or bother. Above all, minimal cost. If
you can get away with digging a hole in your back garden then do so.
Alternatively, have me stuffed and placed in your living room as a conversation
piece. (If I am holding a tray, people can put things on me.)
[From the Last Will of Martin Jabez Leese, 1954 to ?]
When I go, just skin me and put me on top of Trigger.
[Roy Rogers, quoted in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
by Tom Robbins, 1976]
This dying is boring.
[The last words of Richard Feynman, 1918 to 1988]
Don't take life so seriously. It isn't permanent.
To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune;
to lose both looks like carelessness.
[Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde, 1894]
One never feels alone when one is wearing squeaky shoes.
[Martin Leese, 1954 to ?]
Life is shit organised by bastards.
[From Grumpy Old Men by Stuart Prebble, 2004]
The meaning of life is that it ends.
[Franz Kafka, 1883 to 1924]
Life is like a shit sandwich from which one is required to take a daily bite.
Life is like a joss stick; it stinks and then it's over.
The most precious things in life are not those one gets for money.
[Albert Einstein, 1946]
Favour moves that increase options; shy from moves that end well but require
cutting off choices; work from strong positions that have many ajoining strong
positions.
[The strategy for playing chess (and life)]
Today is the first day of the rest of your life. But so was yesterday,
and look how you messed that up.
Life ... appears to be a game, but it isn't. In games the object is to win,
but in life the object is not to win. The object of the whole world is to
preserve the game board and the pieces, and there is no such game.
[Kurt Vonnegut in a New York Times interview, 1969]
Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you
any different!
[From Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut, 1997]
I feel like a lost sock in the Laundromat of oblivion.
I don't like to face problems head on.
I think the best way to solve problems is to avoid them.
This is a distinct philosophy of mine.
No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from!
[Copyright © Charlie Brown]
That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't
get worse.
[From The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, 1990]
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads.
One path leads to dispare and utter hopelessness. The other, to
total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
[From Side Effects by Woody Allen, 1980]
Someone in the world has to have bad luck so that the rest of us can enjoy happy and fulfilled lives.
If I had known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of experience. Laugh at your
mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from
them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.
[From Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1915]
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
[From Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1854]
Go outside. Membership is free.
[From www.GetAFirstLife.com, 2007]
The very name Yucatan is derived from "uic aithan" – the phrase
spoken to the Spanish conquistadors by the Maya when asked what their
land was called: it means "what do you say, we do not understand
you".
[From Lost Languages by Andrew Robinson, 2002]
Previously [before 1587] Virginia had been called "Windgancon",
meaning "What gay clothes you wear" – apparently what the locals
had replied when asked what they called this place.
[From Made in America by Bill Bryson, 1994]
Socrates mistrusted books because they could neither ask nor answer
questions and were apt to be swallowed whole. He said that readers
of books read much and learned nothing, that they appeared full of
knowledge, but for the most part were without it, and had the show
of wisdom without its reality.
[From Phaedrus by Plato, 360 BC]
Our future well-being – the well-being of all of us on the planet –
depends on the education of our decendants.
[From Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C Dennett, 1995]
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot,
irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is
known, but to question it.
[From The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski, 1973]
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
[William Butler Yeats, 1865 to 1939]
"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands
anything."
[From The House at Pooh Corner by A A Milne, 1928]
The sea squirt, after an active life, settles on the sea floor
and, like a professor given tenure, absorbs its brain.
[From Darwin's Ghost by Steve Jones, 1999]
In reality (and especially in the case of the United States) one could say
that never have so many stayed in school so long to learn so little.
[From Social Sciences as Sorcery by Stanislav Andreski, 1972]
Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.
[African proverb]
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true;
the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
[Søren Kierkegaard, 1813 to 1855]
One of the most important things I have learned from teaching is that
the presumption of stupidity leads to the production of stupidity.
[From Your Call Is Important to Us by Laura Penny, 2005]
I used to read, but it's easier to make up stuff.
[Wally, in a Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams, 2005]
It's a damn small mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.
[Andrew Jackson, 1829 to 1837, seventh President of the USA]
And he respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anybody who can spell
TUESDAY, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything.
There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count.
[From The House at Pooh Corner by A A Milne, 1928]
The physical universe has this really annoying way of being what it is, and not what you want it to be.
Ye cannae change the laws of physics.
[Engineer Scott]
The animal is always right. When in doubt, ask the animal.
[The essence of animal physiology]
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and
as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
[Albert Einstein, 1879 to 1955]
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not,
however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.
[Albert Einstein, 1879 to 1955]
Which avenues of thinking are apt to be useful and to help yield the truth
depends not on how we might prefer to think about a subject, but rather on
the inherent nature of the subject itself.
[From The Death and Life of Great American Cities
by Jane Jacobs, 1961]
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public
relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
[From What do you care what people think? by Richard
P Feynman, 1988]
To see what none have seen before, you must look where none have looked before.
The Three Laws of Arthur C Clarke, 1917 to 2008
Law 1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist says something is possible,
he is almost certainly right. When he says it is impossible, he is very
probably wrong.
Law 2. But the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture
a little way past them into the impossible.
Law 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for
it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth,
that makes the man of science, but his persistent and reckless critical
quest for truth.
[From The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Sir Karl Popper,
1959]
To name a thing can only ever be to point vaguely in its direction.
[Copyright © Kitty Lloyd-Lawrence]
You do not win battles by debating exactly what is meant by the word
battle. You need to have good troops, good weapons, a good
strategy, and then hit the enemy hard. The same applies to solving a
difficult scientific problem.
[From The Astonishing Hypothesis by Francis Crick, 1994]
The difference between science and the "fuzzy subjects" is that
science requires reasoning, while those others merely require scholarship.
[Robert Heinlein, 1907 to 1988]
It's not right. It's not even wrong.
[Wolfgang Pauli, 1900 to 1958, describing an article by one of his scientific
colleagues]
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking
about.
[John von Neumann, 1903 to 1957]
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.
It is my supposition that the Universe is not only queerer than we
imagine, is queerer than we can imagine.
[John Burton Sanderson Haldane, 1892 to 1964]
A difference is only a difference if it makes a difference.
The essence of science is skepticism. The essence of religion is faith.
Science is not a set of beliefs, it is a method.
Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty
– some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.
[From The Pleasure of Finding Things Out by Richard P Feynman,
1999]
Science does not rest on solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories
rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles.
The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any
natural or "given" base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper,
it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are
satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least
for the time being.
[From The Logic of Scientific Discovery by Sir Karl Popper,
1959]
Science is what scientists do.
Anyway, science should have both a conservative bias – which prevents rapid
and bewildering shifts of views – and ultimate openness, such that persistent
innovators can ultimately triumph if their claims are indeed meritorious.
[From Statistics as Principled Argument by R P Abelson, 1995]
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Nunquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necesitate.
Causes shall not be multiplied beyond necessity.
[William of Occam, 1285 to 1349]
Her breasts were like ripe strawberries, but much bigger, a completely
different colour, not as bumpy, and without the little green things
on top.
by Stephen B. Gray
[From It Was a Dark and Stormy Night compiled by Scott
Rice, 2007]
After a time he [Peter Pan] fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies
had to climb over him on their way home from an orgy.
[From Peter Pan and Wendy by James Matthew Barrie, 1911]
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, 1880 to 1946]
Admittedly, this time he would be dining with some of the richest and
most powerful men in the world, but once you've eaten smoked salmon
mousse out of the bottom of a Penthouse Pet you have high standards
as to what makes a meal swing.
[From Stark by Ben Elton, 1987]
People in the cheaper seats clap, the rest of you just rattle your
jewels.
[John Lennon of The Beatles playing at the Prince of Wales Theatre,
London in 1963]
When Bobby got back from Las Vegas, he said he noticed he was pausing
just a little bit longer than usual after putting his money into parking
meters and Xerox machines.
[From Stories from the Nerve Bible by Laurie Anderson, 1994]
I simply cannot help making money. I will tell you my secret if you wish.
It is this: I never buy at the bottom and I always sell too soon.
[Attributed to Baron Rothchild in Reminiscences of a Stock
Operator by Edwin Lefèvre, 1922]
The speculative public is incorrigible. In financial terms it cannot
count beyond 3. It will buy anything, at any price, if there seems to be
some "action" in progress. It will fall for any company
identified with "franchising," computers, electronics, science,
technology, or what have you [the Internet], when the particular fashion
is raging.
[From The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, 1973]
The man knew everything, apparently because he had a lot of money.
[From The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin, 1974]
If you'd told our ancestors 200 years ago that the poorest people in society
would also be the fattest, they would have been unable to work out how.
[From Grumpy Old Men by Stuart Prebble, 2004]
Destroying people, their beloved kin and their precious possessions
does not bend the survivors to your will .... It produces a cry for
violent retribution, somehow, somewhere.
[Guy ff Bellairs, CEng, FIEE writing in the Engineering &
Technology Journal, July 2007]
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
[Samuel Johnson, 1709 to 1784]
One has to realize that the powerful industrial groups concerned in the
manufacture of arms are doing their best in all countries to prevent the
peaceful settlement of international disputes ...
[From The World As I See It by Albert Einstein, 1956]
That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a
band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain
by mistake; unprotected spinal marrow was all he needed
[From What I believe by Albert Einstein, 1930]
I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I know how the
Fourth will: with sticks and stones.
[Attributed to Albert Einstein, 1879 to 1955]
International law exists only in textbooks on international law.
[Attributed to Albert Einstein, 1879 to 1955]
King Alexander the Great confronted a pirate whom he had caught. Alexander the
Great asked the pirate, "How dare you molest the sea?" The pirate
turned to Alexander the Great and said, "How dare you molest the world?
I have a small boat, so I am called a thief and a pirate. You have a navy, so
you're called an emperor."
[Described in City of God by Saint Augustine]
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to
do nothing.
[Edmund Burke, 1729 to 1797]
Don't cheer, boys, those poor devils are dying.
[Capt J W Philip, Santiago Bay, 1898, after setting ablaze the Cruiser Vizcaya]
Half the people in the world are above average.
(OK, OK, this should be "median" not "average". Try
not to be so picky.)
[Martin Leese, 1954 to ?]
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
[Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 to 1962]
If one goes crazy enough, even sanity – normally so gruesome – becomes
bearable after a while.
[From The Tao is Silent by Raymond M Smullyan, 1977]
Only psychotics are not neurotic.
[From Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here
by Joseph Heller, 1998]
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
[Lord Acton, 1834 to 1902]
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
[George Santayana, 1863 to 1952]
Mr Raphaelson, having scored a considerable success on Broadway and in
Hollywood, bought himself a yacht – and a nautical cap, on which
"Captain" was embroidered. Old Mrs Raphaelson studied the
cap on her proud son's head and won immortality by saying, "By
you you're a captain, and by me you're a captain; but tell me, Sammy,
by a captain are you a captain?"
[From The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten, 1968]
Writing Tip #10 If you encounter some seemingly well-meaning
critic of your writing, an individual with some pretensions to authority in
such matters, be patient. You should be able to recognize most of the
commentary as imperfectly disguised attacks on your talent and character
motivated probably by envy.
[From It Was a Dark & Stormy Night: The Final Conflict
by Scott Rice, 1992]
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, 1856 to 1950]
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.
[From Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1854]
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn
fool about it.
[Attributed to W C Fields, 1880 to 1946]
I've [Douglas Adams has] come up with a set of rules that describe our
reactions to technology:
1. Anything that is in the world when you're born is normal and ordinary and
is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new
and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of
things.
[From The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams, 2002]
Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the
customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
[Cæsar in Cæsar and Cleopatra by
George Bernard Shaw, 1898]
The experimental analysis of behavior has clearly shown that it is not
the quantity of goods that counts ... but the contingent relation between
goods and behavior. That is why, to the amazement of the American tourist,
there are people in the world who are happier than we are, while possessing
far less.
[From Walden Two Revisited by Burrhus Frederic Skinner, 1976]
Remember that only liars swear they're telling the truth.
[From Dinosaur Brains by Albert J Bernstean and Sydney Craft Rozen, 1989]
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good
ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of
rational conviction.
[From Let the People Think by Bertrand Russell, 1941]
The lady does protest too much, methinks.
[From Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1603]
If three people call you a horse, buy a saddle.
[From Dinosaur Brains by Albert J Bernstean and Sydney Craft Rozen, 1989]
Just because people have talent, that doesn't
mean they have to do something with it.
[Alice Vonnegut, 1917 to 1958]
To have only intelligence and talent is too little. One must also have energy,
real interest, clarity of thought and a sense of obligation.
[Daniil Kharms, 1937 from Today I Wrote Nothing edited and
translated by Matvei Yankelevich, 2007]
The seven deadly sins are: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
[Albert Einstein, 1879 to 1955]
I ain't tryin' to preach no sermon, but I never seen nobody that's
busy as a prairie dog collectin' stuff that wasn't disappointed.
[From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, 1939]
People on TV are not your friends. They're not in the room with you.
You are alone in the dark, staring at a plastic box. Think about it.
This is like a science fiction horror story; but it's really happening.
[From the instructions for "TV-B-Gone", a remote control
which powers off all TVs, 2005]
The only two things that are infinite in size are the universe, and human
stupidity. And I'm not completely sure about the universe.
[Albert Einstein, 1879 to 1955]
One can't teach a cat not to catch birds.
[From a letter by Albert Einstein, 1936]
There are perhaps 5% of the population that simply can't think. There are
another 5% who can think, and do. The remaining 90%
can think, but don't.
[Robert Heinlein, 1907 to 1988]
Only nut cases want to be president. This was true even in high school.
Only clearly disturbed people ran for class president.
[From A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut, 2005]
Recite to yourself what Stanley Milgram taught us about obedience: At
least six out of ten people will blindly obey to the bitter end an
official-looking authority in their midst.
[From "The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout, 2005]
Only small minds want always to be right.
[Louis XIV of France, 1638 to 1715]
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the
intelligent are full of doubt.
[Bertrand Russell, 1872 to 1970]
It [The Prisoner] is solidly grounded in the perpetual struggle
between the right of the individual to be individual and the right of the state
to govern. The struggle between the individual and society is seen as a
perpetual struggle, but one that must be taken seriously and fought. If the
individual fights, he or she is guaranteed only that the war will continue. If
the individual doesn't fight, however, the war is over; the individual loses,
and the future looks very bleak indeed.
[From The Official Prisoner Companion by Matthew White and Jaffer
Ali, 1988]
Age and Treachery will always overcome Youth and Skill.
The public invents celebrities mainly in order to revel in their decay and
extinction, and fame always breeds sickness and self-abuse.
[From Sexual Chemistry by Brian M Stableford, 1991]
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.
[Bertrand Russell, 1872 to 1970]
It's easy to be a malcontent, but much more challenging (and rewarding) to be a
constructive participant.
[Henry Pasternack]
Patience and good judgement should not be confused with stubbornness and
prejudice.
[Brant Watson]
Conformity and monotony, even when they are embellished with a froth of
novelty, are not attributes of developing and economically vigorous cities.
They are attributes of stagnant settlements.
[From The Economy of Cities by Jane Jacobs, 1969]
I did not know that mankind was suffering for want of gold.
[From Life Without Principle by Henry David Thoreau, 1863]
We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to
Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to
communicate.
[From Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1854]
The best way to convince a skeptic that you are trustworthy and generous
is to be trustworthy and generous.
[From The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, 2002]
Great civilizations are not constructed by the hopeless and the
skeptical and the permanently unamused.
[From Captured by Aliens by Joel Achenbach, 1999]
History is a foreign country, and the old are unwilling emigrants, tired
out by the constant travel.
[From Accelerando by Charles Stross, 2005]
Living abroad anywhere forces you to define, in a new way, who you
are and what you believe, because when you're in the same place with
the same people year after year after year you find yourself ...
mostly surrounded by people who think pretty much the same things
you do. And so you don't have to think critically or form your
opinions in the same way you do when you're surrounded by people who
think very differently from you
[Lauren Beverley Davis interviewed in FreeFall Volume XVII, Number 2, 2007]
But I have not met anyone who seriously argues that the world could support
12 times the current [human] impact, although an increase of that factor
would result from all [current] Third World inhabitants adopting First World
living standards.
[From Collapse by Jared Diamond, 2005]
The promotion of growth is simply a sophisticated way to steal from our
children.
[David Bower, economist]
The certain result if we do not act is that we will be leaving our
grandchildren to die.
[From Shores of Tomorrow by Roger MacBride Allen, 2003]
In the long run, rich people do not secure their own interests and those of
their children if they rule over a collapsing society and merely buy
themselves the privilege of being the last to starve or die.
[From Collapse by Jared Diamond, 2005]
We must admit that we do not own the earth. Ownership is a human convention
that allocates present control, sufficient for human purpose, among existing
people. It is neither permanent nor total.
[From A Theory of Good City Form by Kevin Lynch, 1981]
In brief, [in a future utopia] human beings are no longer an uncontrolled
disease of nature, but have come to accept some responsibility for being a
dominant species – stewards and not masters.
[From A Theory of Good City Form by Kevin Lynch, 1981]
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math,
that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.
[From Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut, 1990]
How unfortunate that the Earth's first intelligent social animal is a
tribal carnivore.
[From The Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock, 2009]
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from religious conviction.
[Blaise Pascal, 1623 to 1662]
The historical Jesus as a civilizing influence has now been tried for nearly
twenty centuries. With a weird irony, not only has it not in large measure
elevated humanity in the West above an earlier barbarism, but it has in fact
been used as a cloak for the worst atrocities and inhumanities that history
records. The foulest cruelties were perpetrated in the very name of the
gentle Nazarene!
[From "The Root of All Religion" by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, 1944]
But what really got under Londa's skin, I soon learned, was not the Messiah's
sermon per se but the discontinuity between its sublime directives and the
ignominious course of Western history, ... though I hastened to point out
that the chronicles of other civilizations were likewise awash in blood. What
had gone wrong? she wanted to know. When and why had the teachings of Jesus
Christ become an optional component of Christianity?
[From The Philosopher's Apprentice by James Morrow, 2008]
It doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you don't believe it completely.
[Attributed to Bertrand Russell, 1872 to 1970]
While Eeyore frets ... and Piglet hesitates
... and Owl pontificates ... Pooh just is.
[From The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, 1982]
Once you're born, the worst has already happened.
[Zen saying in The Secret of Life by Rudy von Bitter Rucker, 1985]
He who regards his intellectual knowledge as ignorance, has deep insight.
He who overrates his intellectual achievement as definite truth is deeply
sick.
Only when one is sick of this sickness can one cease to be sick.
One who returns his mind to the simplicity of the subtle truth is not sick,
Because he knows to break through conceptual knowledge
in order to directly reach the subtle truth.
This is the foundation of his health!
[Chapter Seventy-one of Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu, circa 500 BC]
The highest sage shares his moral possessions with others.
The next in wisdom shares his material possessions with others.
The man who because of his own wisdom looks down on others has
never won men's hearts.
The man who in spite of his own wisdom is humble to others has
never failed to win men's hearts.
[Chapter Six of The Book of Lieh-Tzu, circa 300 AD]
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
[Bokonon]
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
[Vique's Law (but who was Vique?)]
Religion is the opium of the masses.
[From Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right by Karl Marx, 1844]
This was what Zoroaster, Moses, and Jesus taught, and what
Brahmans, Magi, and Essenes believed: the Truth literally
sets you free, whereas institutionalized religion is just
another prison.
[From Journey of the Magi by Paul William Roberts, 1995]
"God is dead," Nick said. "They found his carcass in 2019.
Floating out in space near Alpha."
"They found the remains of an organism advanced several thousand times
over what we are," Charley said. "And it evidently could create
habitable worlds and populate them with living organisms, derived from itself.
But that doesn't prove it was God."
[From Our Friends from Frolix 8 by Philip K Dick, 1970]
A climber, seeking wisdom, climbed the mountain and asked the guru, "What
is the secret of life?"
The guru answered, "All is One."
The climber said, "Are you kidding?"
"You mean it isn't?" asked the guru.
I was an atheist until I realised I was God.
When God made man, she was having one of her off days.
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere is happy.
[Henry Louis Mencken, 1880 to 1956]
Morning people may be respected, but night people are feared.
[Elaine Richards]
One morning, Dougal woke up very slowly. First he opened one eye – then
he opened the other; then he closed the first eye and tried using just one;
then he closed the second eye and started all over again by opening both
very wide and very suddenly.
It was a terrible shock, so he closed them and went back to sleep.
[From Dougal's Scottish Holiday by Eric Thompson]
Mr. Axelroot himself is boring to watch; on a typical day he sleeps till
noon, then takes a nap. You can just tell he isn't saved.
[From The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, 1998]
Peeled plum tomatoes
To check that the residents of a house are truly English, check the kitchen
cupboard. There will be a small sacred space filled with dusty, dented tins of
Peeled Plum Tomatoes. It is a form of shrine. They are believed to be
provisions for the after-life. This superstition derives from Egypt.
[From My Nightmare in England by Colin Lynes & Kotaro Sarai,
1996]
Wanda, do you have any idea what it's like being English? Being so correct all
the time, being so stifled by this dread of doing the wrong thing, of saying to
someone "Are you married?" and hearing "My wife left me this
morning", or saying "Do you have children?" and being told
"They all burned to death on Wednesday." You see, Wanda, we're all
terrified of embarrassment. That's why we're so ... dead.
Most of my friends are dead, you know. We have these piles of corpses to
dinner.
[From A Fish Called Wanda by John Cleese and Charles Crichton, 1988]
Home. I have no home. Hunted, despised, living like an
animal. This jungle is my home. For twenty years I have lived in this jungle
hell. I was classed as a madman, a charlatan, outlawed in the world of science
which had previously hailed me as a genius. Now, here in this jungle hell, I
have proved that I was right.
[Bela Lugosi, in the film The Bride of the Monster, 1955, written
and directed by Ed Wood Junior]
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
[Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1890.
Similar maxims appear in The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet, 1891,
The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, 1908, and The
Adventure of the Blanched Soldier, 1927]
Inspector Gregory: "Is there any point to which you would
wish to draw my attention?"
Sherlock Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in
the night-time."
Inspector Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the
night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
[From Silver Blaze by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892]
Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.
[Said to Malcolm Muggeridge, 1964]
Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.
Why can't I be different and original like everybody else?
[Vivian Stanshall, 1943 to 1995]
[Academics would] all love to run the whole show, but they don't have the guts
to take responsibility for their own decisions, so it's much more comforting
to sit on the sidelines and carp.
[From Wheelers by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, 2000]
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
[Science Officer Spock]
Remember; if the logs float upstream, they are not logs.
"Name me one "talker" who's been remembered by Posterity. Eh?
Name me one! Yes, all right, Dr Johnson. But he had Boswell didn't he. All
I've got is you." Frank is inclined to do that. Ask you a question,
answer it himself, then tell you you were wrong.
[From You can't have your kayak and heat it by Frank Muir &
Denis Norden, 1973]
Never let anyone take your picture naked.
Never eat ground meat out.
Never forget to send a thank-you note.
Never wear white after Labor Day.
Never borrow money from a friend.
Never wear diamonds after five.
[From Jacqueline Susann's Shadow of the Dolls by Rae Lawrence,
2001]
Anything that cannot go on forever, will stop.
[Herbert Stein, 1916 to 1999, economist]
Modesty remains my most flamboyant characteristic.
[From Catch As Catch Can by Joseph Heller, 2003]
There's something deeply disturbing about wearing clothes made from
dead animals. There's stuff called "silk" that's basically
bug vomit, and the idea of it makes my skin crawl.
[From Glasshouse by Charles Stross, 2006]
Over the years I have worked on the theory that if you have no
specific destination in mind you can't be lost.
[From An Explorer's Handbook by Christina Dodwell, 1986]
Try not! Do! Or do not. There is no try.
[Yoda, in the film The Empire Strikes Back, 1980]
Poisoning children is cruel. But something has to be done about them!
[Daniil Kharms, late 1930s from Today I Wrote Nothing edited
and translated by Matvei Yankelevich, 2007]
Ahh the scum of the earth, those are my people.
[Robert Crumb quoted in The R. Crumb Handbook
by R. Crumb and Peter Poplaski, 2005]
If you have an ID card, it is solely for the purpose of allowing
the government to compel you to produce it. This would essentially
give the government the power to demand that we show our papers.
It is a very dangerous thing.
[Tom Campbell, 1952 to ?, Professor of law]
I am indeed imprisoned in a Chinese fortune-cookie factory, but
have you pondered the subtle cognitive snares in which you yourself
may be trapped?
Ling Po Fat
[From The Eternal Footman by James Morrow, 1999]
Buy manure, expect smell.
The names of Father Xmas' reindeer were Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and, of course, Rudolf.
The names of the Seven Dwarfs were Dopey, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Bashful and Doc. Why can nobody remember Bashful and Doc?
The names of the Other Seven Dwarves were Nasty, Touchy, Snooty,
Spacey, Dumpy, Noisy and Smarmy.
[According to A Difficulty With Dwarves by Craig Shaw
Gardner, 1987]
No developments are reported on the armadillo front
[From The Selfish Gene (2nd Edition) by Richard Dawkins, 1989]
A wise Elbonian once said "In a race between a rock and a pig, don't
varnish your clams".
[From Seven Years of Highly Defective People by Scott Adams, 1997]
I have a report of a flimsy rationalization in progress.
– Phil, Ruler of Heck, The Prince of Insufficient Light
[From Seven Years of Highly Defective People by Scott Adams, 1997]
Sometimes the pool-pah* exceeds the power of humans to
comment.
[Bokonon]
* pool-pah = shit storm / wrath of God
Live by the foma* that make you brave and kind and healthy
and happy.
[The Books of Bokonon. I:5]
* foma = harmless untruths, for example "Prosperity is
just around the corner."
If you can do no good, at least do no harm.
[Hippocrates, 460 BC to 370 BC (uncertain)]
The Sun rises.
The Sun sets.
The Sun rises.
The Sun sets.
I can hardly wait 'till tomorrow.
Another jam-packed day of celestial thrills.
If you read this you are mad because you think it is going to be interesting. Sucker.
What you are, I once was.
What I am, you will never become.
I say. I say I keep. I say I keep my feathers numbered for just this
occasion.
[Foghorn Leghorn]
So – just because things are impossible isn't any reason not to do them!
[Joan Feynman]
Musical instruments produce sound.
Composers produce music.
Musical instruments reproduce music.
CD players reproduce sound.
A wind-up music box produces sound and reproduces music.
[John Oswald]
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that
cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong
goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
[From Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams, 1992]
If it holds water, it's craft. If it leaks, it's art.
[A standard line among potters]
The unexpected, when it happens, generally happens when you least expect it.
Appearances are often more important than they appear.
[From Programming Perl (3rd Edition) by Larry Wall, Tom
Christiansen, and Jon Orwant, 2000]
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you
may be mistaken.
[Oliver Cromwell in a letter to the General Assembly of the Kirk
of Scotland, 1650]
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck, is probably the day
they start making vacuum cleaners.
[Ernst Jan Plugge]
I was walking around in the Word group one time, and they had this
couch behind these guys....I said, "Well, what's that?"
And they said, "That's the mail-merge couch. Whenever we get a
mail-merge call we know it's a thirty-minute call, so a guy takes
it and just walks over and lays on the couch, and talks the user
through it."
[Mike Maples, quoted in Microsoft Secrets by
Michael A Cusumano and Richard W Selby, 1995]
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.
[Richard W Hamming, 1915 to 1997]
All software is bug-free, assuming sufficiently clever definitions of
"feature" and "expected behaviour".
[Steve Rehrauer]
The hardest part of building a software system is deciding precisely
what to build. ... No other part of the work so cripples the resulting
system if done wrong. No other part is more difficult to rectify later.
[Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man-Month, writing in 1987]
A user interface isn't done until there's nothing left to remove.
[Will Wright, 1960 to ?, designer of SimCity, SimAnt, and The Sims.]
Learning programming is a matter of first making every possible mistake,
so the faster you make your mistakes the faster you're learning.
[From Software Engineering and Computer Games
by Rudy von Bitter Rucker, 2003]
Network management is like nailing jello to the wall.
Paul Evans' Laws on System Administration
1. If users are made to understand that the system administrator's job is to
make the computers run, and not to make users happy, they can, in fact, be made
happy most of the time.
2. If users are allowed to believe that the system administrator's job is to
make users happy, they can, in fact, never be made happy. Furthermore, in
their quest for happiness, they will cause enough resources to be diverted to
trying to make them happy that the computers will no longer run.
Being a systems administrator is like being a plumber. If you do your job right, nobody knows. If you screw up, everyone gets covered in shit.
Arthur ... reached out and pressed an invitingly large red button on a nearby
panel. The panel lit up with the words Please do not press this button
again.
[From The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, 1979]
SCSI is not magic. There are fundamental technical
reasons why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain
now and then.
[John Woods, 1960 to ?]
Don't ever fear having good and popular people around you, because
they can only enhance your own performance. The more you can play
to these people the better the show.
[Gene Roddenberry. From Star Trek Memories by William Shatner,
1994]
One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.
[Dennis A Peer in National Enquirer]
Among you Chieftains and Huns will be those whose spirits cling to our past
ways. We will show patience with you unenlightened ones. Yet, if you choose not
our new course and cause dissension, you will be stricken from our ranks.
[Attila the Hun, circa 450 AD, on his new leadership style]
Effective strategy requires a deep analysis of the present, the construction
of an integrated future, and a grasp of the dynamics of some social and
environmental change which might connect the two.
[From A Theory of Good City Form by Kevin Lynch, 1981]
Phases of a Project
1. Exaltation
2. Confusion
3. Disenchantment
4. Search for guilty
5. Punishment of innocent
6. Distinction for the uninvolved
Here's one way to make a Dinosaur Brain business decision:
1. Get an idea from some authority figure.
2. Tell everybody that this idea is the basis for all the changes
you're going to make.
3. Do things the way you've always done them.
4. If something good happens, take credit for it. If something bad
happens, point out that it just goes to show that the old ways are best.
[From Dinosaur Brains by Albert J Bernstean and Sydney Craft Rozen, 1989]
Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.
[Robert Heinlein, 1907 to 1988]
Now my helplessness makes my uselessness seem unimportant.
[Wally, in a Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams, 2008]
Are you aware that all jobs require you to do things you'd rather not do?
That's why they have to pay you.
[Dilbert, in a Dilbert cartoon by Scott Adams, 2006]
I mean, let me give you a clue here. This is work, and work
sucks. That's why we don't call it fun.
[From Headcrash by Bruce Bethke, 1995]
The corporate world is a stagnant, superficial, unsatisfying, dishonest,
horrible environment. Why would anybody want to join it?
[Marquis Visich de Visoko, quoted in The Popcorn Report by
Faith Popcorn, 1992]
If someone attempts to revolt against them, the corporation would simply
throw the person out and replace her or him with someone who would play
by the rules. Form determines content. Corporations are machines.
[Jerry Mander in The Case Against the Global Economy edited
by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, 1996]
I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
[From Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1854]
How To Cheat on Personality Tests
1. When asked for word associations or comments about the world, give the
most conventional, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian answer possible.
2. To settle on the most beneficial answer to any question, repeat to yourself:
(a) I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little bit more.
(b) I like things pretty well the way they are.
(c) I never worry much about anything.
(d) I don't care for books or music much.
(e) I love my wife and children.
(f) I don't let them get in the way of company work.
[From The Organization Man by William Hollingsworth Whyte, 1956]
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.
We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible, for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
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