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What are words for? QuotesGeorge Orwell Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like. Will Smith I came out for exercise,gentle exercise,and to notice the scenery and to botanise. And no sooner do I get on that accursed machine than I go off hammer and tongs. H.G. Wells,about the bicycle You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body. C.S. Lewis Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. random sigfile quote nicked from a marriage forum I frequent I can guarantee there will be no new taxes... What we're doing is doubling the old taxes. Senator Batson D. Belfry,in "Shoe" I would rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. William F. Buckley Jr. Always vote for principle,though you may vote alone,and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost. John Quincy Adams No man's life,liberty,or property are safe while the legislature is in session. Gideon J. Tucker,in Final Accounting in The Estate of A. B. (1866) In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame,two is a law firm,and three or more is a congress. John Adams ...the generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. Robert Coveyou,mathematician at Oak Ridge National Laboratory Suffice it to say that when the lid is left off a box of entropy this large,there is money to be made for the soldier of fortune. Howard Taylor,delightfully twisted mentality behind Schlock Merceneary, discoursing on warfare and civil disorder on a galactic scale The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money. Margaret Thatcher Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal,well meaning but without understanding. Louis Brandeis,in Olmstead v. United States (1928) I am not a vegetarian because I love animals. I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. A. Whitney Brown If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency,first by inflation and then by deflation,the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. Thomas Jefferson ...banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity,under the name of funding,is but swindling futurity on a large scale. Thomas Jefferson Of all the contrivances for cheating the laboring classes of mankind,none has been more effectual than that which deludes them with paper money. Daniel Webster Paper money has had the effect in your State [Rhode Island] that it ever will have,to ruin commerce--oppress the honest,and open the door to every species of fraud and injustice. George Washington Gentlemen,I have had men watching you for a long time,and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won,you divided the profits amongst you,and when you lost,you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter,I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true,gentlemen,but that is your sin! Should I let you go on,you will ruin fifty thousand families,and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out,and by the eternal God,I will rout you out. Andrew Jackson,meeting with bankers about the Bank Renewal Bill of 1832 So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause... Padme Amidala,as Palpatine declares the Empire,Star Wars: Revenge of The Sith Build a man a fire,and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire,and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. Terry Pratchett The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. Sir Edward Grey,English Foreign Minister,on the eve of World War One An open mind is all very well in its way,but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. It should be capable of shutting its doors sometimes',or it may be found a little drafty. Samuel Butler Hurry up and put that code into production; we need to test it! An applications programmer at UF,to a CICS systems programmer You see,wire telegraph is a kind of a very,very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here,they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. Albert Einstein,explaining radio There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies,and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. C.A.R. Hoare Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in the mud; after a while you realize you are muddy and the pig is enjoying it. yet another cool random .sig quote When we are planning for posterity,we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. Thomas Paine It's true... your speakers sound a whole lot better with a really big TV. My ever-quotable co-cubicle-rat Eli Bothe,shortly after acquiring a 56" TV I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion,and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake,or an eternal fever. Besides,who would ever shave themselves in such a state? Lord Byron,in a letter to Thomas Moore,5 July 1821 Americans hate music. But they love entertainment. Frank Zappa He is a Frenchman,and I do not say how far one should trust him. Henry VIII of England,on Francis I of France If USENET is anarchy,IRC is a paranoid schizophrenic after 6 days on speed Mlman,on IRC - slashnet channel #ufies You know you're doing it right when you have to install a heatsink on your credit card Eli Bothe,fellow cuberat You have an amazing capacity for self-deception. How do you do that? Number Six,to Gaius Baltar,in the Battlestar Galactica miniseries Trust your brain; it knows more than you do. The Midnight Skulker,in Johnny Hart's "BC" We live in an era where your office computer and your living room television have exactly the same capacity to entertain,with only differences in production values. Eric,the meister of Websnark The moment you buy into the idea you're above anyone else is the moment you need to be slapped in the face. Natalie Portman We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing,which is one reason why they write so little. Anne Lamott - snagged from a .sig file online somewhere That conversation made sense right up to when I started talking. Eli Bothe,fellow cuberat Under capitalism,man exploits man. Under communism,it's just the opposite. J.K. Galbraith All nervous fliers well know that when a pilot signals "moderate turbulence," he is implying,"If you have any religious beliefs,it is time to start expressing them." Ravi Zacharias I'm not going to make a standard anything I'm willing to break at the drop of a hat. Sheard Goodwin,our infrastructure top dog,on walljack labelling Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy. Henry Kissenger Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself being silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing. George Orwell If only there were a way to negotiate with cats. coworker Eli Bothe,while discussing bathing housecats Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. random sigfile quote,attributed to Ben Franklin Love is like riding a snowmobile on the tundra. Suddenly,it flips over! You are trapped underneath it! At night,the ice weasels come. Matt Groening,Love is Hell Our inability to alter what is actual frustrates our grandiose delusions of being sovereign over everything. Ravi Zacharias Of all the dispositions and teachings of thinkers and ethicists,the one doctrine that I have no sufficient counter for is Jesus on that Cross. Mohandas Gandhi America will always do the right thing,once it has exhausted all the alternatives. Winston Churchill I'm improving myself by shooting aliens. So tell me...how has watching sitcoms made YOU a better person? Canine,on undernet.org IRC channel #userfriendly People never lie so much as after a hunt,during a war or before an election.... Otto von Bismarck Software QA is like cleaning my cat's litter box: Sift out the big chunks. Stir in the rest. Hope it doesn't stink. Random /. quote It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. Charles A. Beard ... a Christian's decision should never be based upon the potential outcome of his decision,but upon the rightness of his decision. As John Quincy Adams succinctly stated,"Duty is ours; results are God's." Chuck Baldwin,Constitution Party Vice Presidential nominee Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor,200 megabytes of RAM,1500 megabytes of disk storage,a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels,relies entirely on voice recognition for input,fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's the first question that the computer community asks? "Is it PC compatible?" /usr/games/fortune (circa 1989) Make God laugh; plan for the future Anonymous Today was a good Monday. I actually felt like I knew almost everything I was behind on." Dan Miller,my boss,on this Monday A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history - with the possible exception of handguns and Tequila. Mitch Radcliffe I once spoke with a Harvard professor who told me that it is quite easy to get a Harvard undergraduate degree without ever once encountering a tenured member of the faculty inside a classroom; I don't know if this is actually true but it's a delightful piece of slander regardless Chip Morningstar,"How to Deconstruct Almost Anything -- My Postmodern Adventure" Genius may have its limitations,but stupidity is not thus handicapped." Elbert Hubbard I was captivated by how ambitiously bad it was. Flewellyn,on #userfriendly, about the Logan's Run tv series The Seven P Theorem: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance unknown,it's been on my whiteboard for weeks now The Apathy Party should not have a majority. mitrian,on #userfriendly I used to say that the state of programming was medieval,but that's unfair to the middle ages - they knew a lot about learning craft skills. Tim Bradshaw When the anthropologists look back on the 1980s and 1990s and do the archaeological digs,and get their callipers and brooms and microscopes out,they will blame the massive reduction in productivity during the 1980s and 1990s entirely on Microsoft Office. Scott McNeally,in a Press Club presentation in Australia It's not important until it fails when you need it. Dan Miller (my boss),on network hardware IRC is just multiplayer notepad. martin__ on irc #userfriendly Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers. Leonard Brandwein We don't think that the popularity of an error makes it the truth. Richard Stallman EMACS: It's a nice OS,but to compete with Linux or Windows it needs a better text editor. Alexander Duscheleit They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin Especially apropos now that the Homeland
Security Act has been passed
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