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- From: karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer)
- Newsgroups: alt.sources
- Subject: more fortune cookies
- Message-ID: <5425@sugar.hackercorp.com>
- Date: 21 Mar 90 01:59:33 GMT
-
- Here are some fortune cookies that I've collected over the past few
- months. I think this is the ninth cookie file, third update after
- the original six, but I've lost count, so let's just call it the
- first file of the new series...
-
- P.S. Send me email if you need the cookie program.
-
- ------------------------- cut here ----------------------
- %%
- "Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your
- aim."
- -- Santayana
- %%
- "Life is full of surprises when you're up th' stream of consciousness
- without a paddle..."
- -- Zippy the Pinhead
- %%
- "I woudn't recommend sex, drugs, or Unix for everyone, but they work for me."
- Jim Thompson (jthomp@central.sun.com), paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson
- %%
- "This one's got a lot more, uh, 640K that it can memorize."
- -- CVN cable TV shopping channel
- %%
- "Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they
- should live next door and just visit now and then."
- -- Katherine Hepburn
- %%
- "We're the weirdest monkeys ever."
- -- Karl Lehenbauer
- %%
- Uh-oh. Atarians can't hold a candle to the insecurity of Mac owners. You
- rankled Mac owners who feel the need defend yourself, please do so by flaming
- in private. And don't start something you can't finish. I'm sure Apple's OS
- for the 68000-based Macintoshs will support multitasking just as soon as Jean
- Louis-Gasse invents it. In the meantime, do whatever you need to do to make
- sure other systems that have advanced the state of personal computers don't
- enter your peripheral vision. You'll be a lot happier, we'll be a lot happier.
- --Chuck McManis (cmcmanis@sun.com)
- %%
- We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
- %%
- "It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the
- system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine some
- of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very sharp,
- probably not someone here on campus."
- -- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, quoted in "The Technique,"
- Georgia Tech's newspaper, after the computer worm hit the Internet
- %%
- Personally, should I ever form a globe spanning comglomerate,
- I intend to do it fairly and without malice or dirty politics.
-
- I hope you fellows don't make that too difficult a task;
- I would have to have to have you all killed.
- -- David Neal (abbadon@nuchat.uucp)
- %%
- The notion of ideas as infectious diseases is one to which most
- authoritarian religions and governments subscribe, and they hold
- massive "hygienic" burnings of the "viral DNA" behind the ideas.
- Promulgators of these "diseased" ideas are called "carriers of
- spiritual impurity" (to use one phrase now popular in China) and
- attempts are made to prevent the spread of these diseases. This is a
- naive and dangerous view of how ideas work and it is disturbing to see
- it rationalized into Western pop psychology.
- -- Tim Maroney (tim@toad.com)
- %%
- "Every institution I've ever been associated with has tried to screw me."
- -- Stephen Wolfram
- %%
- Fraternities have no SLACK, no matter how slack-jawed they may appear.
- I taught elementary calculus here at the University of SLACK for several
- years, and have observed these folks carefully.
- Although some of them looked like they had SLACK, it's clear to me that
- this was just the result of not getting enough sleep after the puking contest.
- I mean, those guys don't watch enough television to have real SLACK.
- -- William K Glunt (bud@ms.uky.edu)
- %%
- "I'll put an end to the idea that a woman's body belongs to her . . . the
- practice of abortion shall be exterminated with a strong hand."
- -- Adolf Hitler, _Mein Kampf_
- %%
- When asked, "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United
- States, then why do you live here?" Mencken replied, "Why do men go to zoos?"
- %%
- "Is it just me, or does there seem to be an inordinate number of lurkers
- whose heads are imploding lately? Maybe all these alternative viewpoints
- are too much for them to handle."
- -- Trent Wohlschlaeger (jtw@wuee1.wustl.edu)
- %%
- "If projectile vomiting ever becomes an Olympic event, you'll do your country
- proud."
- -- Hobson, "Arthur II"
- %%
- "Oh honey, this is just the beginning. Stick with me and we'll claw our way
- to the top."
- -- John Water's "Hairspray"
- %%
- "The script had been written by this legendary dead guy that we know and there
- were about fifty-eleven-hundred pages of it. Of this eight words were
- completely readable. These were "oranges" in the title and "Close the
- curtains, Geoffrey, I'm amphibious", which was right at the end. To be
- perfectly frank man, I wasn't even 100% sure about amphibious."
- -- Waldo "D.R." Dobbs, "D.R. and Quinch go to Hollywood".
- %%
- "Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on
- your computer."
- -- stolen from Brian Gollum
- %%
- "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; yeah, right. To paraphrase,
- the net finds its own uses for garbage."
- -- Eric Hughes (hughes@math.berkeley.edu)
- %%
- "[Leslie Stahl was] a pussy compared to Rather."
- -- George Bush
- %%
- "Failing to get them to do it your way might mean they're stupid, but it also
- means you failed to get them to do it your way."
- -- Cal Keegan
- %%
- "Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest."
- -- Jimmy Swaggart, TV preacher, self-described pornography addict who paid
- prostitutes to commit "pornographic acts", hypocrite
- %%
- "I think contraception is disgusting -- people using each other for pleasure."
- -- Joseph Scheidler, Director, Pro-Life Action League
- %%
- "We are ... opposed to all forms of birth control with the exception of natural
- family planning [the rhythm method.]"
- -- Judie Brown, President, American Life Lobby
- %%
- "I don't think Christians should use birth control. You consummate your
- marriage as often as you like and if you have babies, you have babies."
- -- Randall Terry, one of the people behind the current campaign to blockade
- health clinics and publicly harass and humiliate women
- %%
- "We are starting a movement in the state legislatures...to forbid the
- installation of clinics that dispense contraceptives."
- -- Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum
- %%
- "I listen to feminists and all these radical gals -- most of them are failures.
- They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some
- Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women
- just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists
- need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And
- they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're
- sexist. They hate men -- that's their problem."
- -- Reverend Jerry Falwell
- %%
- "Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don't like the way
- we're made you've got to take it up with God."
- -- Phyllis Schlafly, hypocrite who has had a successful business career and
- run for public office, who would apparently deny that to other women
- %%
- "Sex education classes are like in-home sales parties for abortions."
- -- Phyllis Schlafly
- %%
- "Incest is a voluntary act on the woman's part."
- -- Charles Rice, Professor of Law, Notre Dame University, in a pamphlet
- published by the American Life League
- %%
- "It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear
- of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility,
- or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain-damage [sic] baby
- even ten years later when she may be happily married."
- -- Phyllis Schlafly
- %%
- "Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey
- wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That's lost."
- -- Ivan Chtcheglov
- %%
- "I've brought Gatsby to life. I've accounted for his money. I've fixed up
- the two weak chapters (VI and VII). I've improved his first party. I've
- broken up his long narrative in Chapter VIII."
- -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, on revising his galley proofs
- %%
- The Law of Software Envelopment
-
- Every program at MIT attempts to expand until it can read mail.
- Those programs which cannot expand are replaced by ones which can.
- %%
- "The chain that can be yanked is not the cosmic chain."
- -- Cal Keegan
- %%
- "Slime is the agony of water."
- -- Jean-Paul Sartre
- %%
- "I have discovered the heart of bushido: to die!"
- -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo
- %%
- "...an animal loses not only its life but also its third dimension."
- -- Roger M. Knutson, in _Flattened Fauna: A Field Guide to Common Animals of
- Roads, Streets,and Highways_
- %%
- "... and I realized, we did not live in a scientific society."
- -- R. P. Feynman, "Cargo cult science"
- %%
- I think the problem isn't the amount of knowledge we have to assimilate
- in our world, but the rate at which we can assimiliate it. Science,
- engineering, and technology do not yield the "whys" of truth.
- only the "hows." In fact, they are not truths, but opinions from
- the current reigning theories of how we think the physical world works.
- -- eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@aurora.arc.nasa.gov
- %%
- "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how
- hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."
- -- Calvin
- %%
- "These patriots don't mince words... Okay, sure, they *are* dangerous,
- hopelessly ignorant, inbred, retarded borderline lunatics with an
- insatiable lust for the blood of sinners -- but at least they're *honest*
- about it."
- -- Reverend Ivan Stang, cofounder of the Church of the Subgenius, about
- a group known as Free Love Ministries, in his book _High Weirdness By Mail_
- %%
- "Once you've had real champagne, you can never go back to Asti Spimanti."
- -- Georgette Lundberg
- %%
- "Life is a pinball machine. You bounce around for a while, and then you drain."
- -- Joe Bak
- %%
- My aura can beat up your aura.
- %%
- "Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe."
- -- Frank Zappa
- %%
- "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission."
- Grace Murray Hopper.
- %%
- Ask not what you can do for your country,
- but what your country's been doing to you.
- - Avengers
- %%
- >Try staring at someone from a substantial distance.
- >(Eventually they will turn around.)
-
- ASTOUNDING! We all know that without* telepathy staring at the back of a
- person's head would freeze them into helpless immobility!
-
- Corollary: try staring at a cloud. eventually it will MOVE!
- This parapsychology stuff is the GINCHIEST!!
-
- -- Tim Mitchell, (swordfis@pnet51.orb.mn.org)
- %%
- "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."
- -- Mark Twain
- %%
- "...I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by
- reorganizing: and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion
- of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."
- -- Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.
- %%
- "Politics is for the moment. An equation is for eternity."
- -- Albert Einstein
- %%
- POZZO: He used to dance the farandole, the fling, the brawl, the jig,
- the fandango and even the hornpipe. He capered. For joy. Now
- that's the best he can do. Do you know what he calls it?
- ESTRAGON: The Scapegoat's Agony.
- VLADIMIR: The Hard Stool.
- POZZO: The Net. He thinks he's entangled in a net.
-
- -- Samuel Beckett, _Waiting for Godot_
- %%
- "It takes a smart man to know when he's stupid."
- -- Barney Rubble
- %%
- "Hah. I know Tim Maroney. I've smoked pot with Tim Maroney. And K*nt Paul
- Dolan is no Tim Maroney!"
- -- Gary Strand (gary@cgdra.ucar.edu)
- %%
- "They smell, they snarl and they scratch; they have a singular aptitude for
- shredding rugs, drapes and upholstery; they're sneaky, selfish and not at
- all smart; they are disloyal, condescending and totally useless in any
- rodent-free environment."
- -- Jean-Michel Chapereau, on cats
- %%
- "If my film makes one more person miserable, I've done my job."
- -- Woody Allen
- %%
- "I don't believe in god because I don't believe in Mother Goose."
- -- Clarence Darrow
- %%
- "S.F.'S NO GOOD!!" They bellow till we're deaf.
- "But this looks good." "WELL THEN IT'S NOT S.F.!!"
- -- Kingsley Amis
- %%
- "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from
- mediocre minds."
- -- Albert Einstein
- %%
- "And remember, rebooting your brain can be tricky."
- -- Eric Townsend (erict@flatline)
- %%
- "It still brings to mind the question of what (if anything) can be done
- to show the media that 'cyberpunks' aren't just a bunch of pimple-faced
- geeks who sit around trying to break into bank computers or whatever."
- -- James Hartman (phaedrus@flatline.UUCP)
-
- But cyberpunks *are* a bunch of pimple-faced geeks who sit around trying to
- break into bank computers or whatever. Re-read _Neuromancer_ and apply the
- inverse James Bond transformation to Case and his cohorts. They're all
- supposed to be totally out of shape, with their disdain for the "meat".
- -- Peter da Silva (peter@sugar.hackercorp.com)
- %%
- "You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, do you realise that?"
- -- Peter Da Silva (sugar!peter)
- %%
- "A bit of tolerance is worth a megabyte of flaming."
- -- Henry Spencer
- %%
- "How can a man of integrity get along in Washington?"
- -- Richard Feynman
- %%
- "Oh dear, now I've made a terrible mess of things. And all I wanted to do was
- rule the universe."
- -- Dr. Zachary Smith
- %%
- "It took no computation to dance to the rock 'n roll station."
- -- VU
- %%
- "???"
- -- DEC's RSTS/E operating system
- %%
- "IT'S THE TWO GODDAMNED CULTURES AGAIN !*! Bit-brained nerdery on one
- side, effete fin-de-siecle malaise on the other. And kingdoms of hybrid
- delight abandoned in the middle."
- -- Jonathan Burns, burns@latcs1.oz
- %%
- "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."
- -- Albert Einstein
- %%
- "Using an IBM PC is like juggling straight razors.
- Using a Mac is like shaving with a bowling pin."
- -- Ted Nelson, _Computer Lib_
- %%
- **ROG** writes
- > ...who have no clue about reality. Nothing could compare with
- > the beauty of the real world around us and you should work as hard
- > at preserving the environment and making the world safe for our progeny as
- > you do at hiding in your computer screens. I bet you couldn't
- > read a story from alt.sex.bondage without getting an erection.
-
- Could someone please tell me how to access the "alt.sex.bondage"
- newsgroup?
- -- Robert Ward (rw23+@andrew.cmu.edu)
- %%
- The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
- authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
- the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
- the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
- radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
- as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
- receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
- Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
- heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
- the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
- heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
- radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute temperature of the
- earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell
- cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
- fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
- burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means
- that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We
- have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
- -- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
- %%
- "Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him
- before he cuts himself."
- -- Peter da Silva, peter@sugar.hackercorp.com
- %%
- Now I lay me down to sheep
- I pray the Lord the sheep's asleep
- If, perchance, the sheep should wake
- Simple friendship shall I fake.
- -- Frances Grimble
- %%
- "All I ask of my body is that it carry around my head."
- -- Thomas Alva Edison
- %%
- "Sudden de-compression Sucks!"
- -- Dennis Robert Gorrie, GORRIEDE@UREGINA1.BITNET
- %%
- "You cannot really know anything."
- -- William Payne (wpayne@digi.UUCP)
-
- "How do you know?"
- -- Dan'l DanehyOakes (djo@PacBell.COM)
- %%
- "I believe in a God which doesn't need heavy financing."
- -- Fletch
- %%
- "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism
- by those who have not got it."
- -- George Bernard Shaw
- %%
- "... You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't."
-
- "But that's not *fair*!"
-
- "Of course it's not fair. We're *evil*. Look it up."
- %%
- "When people aren't stupid Usenet is even more useful. Too bad this
- happens so rarely."
- -- Jef Poskanzer <jef@well.sf.ca.us>
- %%
- "Xerox sues somebody for copying?"
- -- David Letterman
- %%
- If you're not part of the solution,
- you must be part of the precipitate.
- %%
- "And if You exist, why do you let your Evil churchs exist????"
- -- Michael S. Schechter
-
- "Maybe because He is a libertarian?"
- -- Mike Van Pelt
- %%
- "...Or, I may not feel that my belief-system needs to be self-consistent
- in a post-Goedelian epoch."
- -- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
- %%
- "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."
- -- Patti Smith
- %%
- "It is not possible to convey sarcasm to certain members of the
- net without using a 2x4. The smiley face merely reminds them
- of why their head is being dented."
- -- John Woods
- %%
- "Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy."
- -- John Dewey
- %%
- "There has been opposition to every innovation in the history of man, with the
- possible exception of the sword."
- -- Benjamin Dana
- %%
- "Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen
- to weather forecasts and economists?"
- -- Kelvin Throop, III
- %%
- "It does not pay a prophet to be too specific."
- -- L. Sprague de Camp
- %%
- "One macine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of
- one extraordinary man."
- -- Elbert Hubbard
-
- ...yet.
- -- Karl Lehenbauer
- %%
- "The important thing is never to stop questioning."
- -- Albert Einstein
- %%
- "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course,
- powerful muscles, but no personality."
- -- Albert Einstein
- %%
- "What is inconceivable about the universe is that it is at all conceivable."
- -- Albert Einstein
- %%
- "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible,
- he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he
- is very probably wrong."
- -- Arthur C. Clarke
- %%
- "When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by
- distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fevor
- and emotion--the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all,
- probably right."
- --Isaac Asimov
- %%
- Poverty: An unhappy state that persists as long as anyone lacks anything he
- would like to have.
- %%
- Statistics: A system for expressing your political prejudices in convincing
- scientific guise.
- %%
- Unfair competition: Selling cheaper than we do.
- -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
- %%
- Zero defects: The result of shutting down a production line.
- -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
- %%
- Conference: A place where conversation is substituted for the dreariness of
- work and the loneliness of thought.
- -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
- %%
- "A survey is being made of this": We need more time to think of an answer.
- --Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
- %%
- "Note and initial": Let's spread the responsibility of this.
- -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
- %%
- Program: Any assignment that cannot be completed with one telephone call.
- -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
- %%
- Status quo: The mess we're in.
- -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
- %%
- "Under consideration": We never heard of it.
- -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
- %%
- "Under active consideration": We're searching the files for it.
- -- Kelvin Throop III, "The Management Dictionary"
- %%
- Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
- -- G.K. Chesterton
- %%
- When you don't have an education, you've got to use your brains.
- -- Anonymous
- %%
- Why explore the Universe? It is almost ironic that we should have to ask this
- question because it is almost as though we have to apologize for our highest
- attributes... we went to Mars, not because of our technology, but because of
- our imagination.
- -- Norman Cousins
- %%
- OLTION'S COMPLETE, UNABRIDGED HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE
- Bang! ...crumple.
- -- Jery Oltion
- %%
- "Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does
- the better."
- -- Andre Gide
- %%
- "Freedom" has no meaning of itself. There are always restrictions, be they
- legal, genetic, or physical. If you don't believe me, try to chew a radio
- signal.
- -- Kelvin Throop, III
- %%
- "There are two was to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to
- doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking."
- -- Alfred Korzybski
- %%
- "It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations, if you live near
- him."
- -- J.R.R. Tolkien
- %%
- "I'm a self-made man, but I think if I had to do it over again, I'd call in
- someone else."
- -- Roland Young
- %%
- "It is a faith (not alwaays justified) of theoretical physics that if man
- proposes what is sufficiently elegant, nature, pleased and flattered, will say
- yes."
- -- Leon N. Cooper, "Introduction To The Meaning & Structure Of Physics"
- %%
- "Better late than before anybody has invited you."
- -- Ambrose Bierce
- %%
- "The difference between a rabbit and a rock is the information content, and the
- difference between a living and a dead rabbit is in the availability or
- usability of the information."
- -- Dr. John A. Ball
- %%
- "To rebel against a powerful political, economic, religious, or social estab-
- lishment is very dangerous and very few people do it, except, perhaps, as part
- of a mob. To rebel against the "scientific" establishment, however, is the
- easiest thing in the world, and anyone can do it and feel enormously brave,
- without risking as much as a hangnail. Thus, the vast majority, who believe in
- astrology and think that the planets have nothing better to do than form a code
- that will tell them whether tomorrow is a good day to close a business deal or
- not, become all the more excited and enthusiastic about the bilge when a group
- of astronomers denounces it."
- -- Isaac Asimov
- %%
- "If scientific discovery has not been an unalloyed blessing, if it has conferred
- on mankind the power not only to create but also to annihilate, it has at the
- same time provided humanity with a supreme challenge and a supreme testing."
- -- John F. Kennedy
- %%
- "Even if the propeller had the power of propelling a vessel, it would be found
- altogether useless in practice, because the power being applied in the stern
- would be absolutely impossible to make the vessel steer."
- -- Sir William Symonds - British Royal Navy, 1837
- %%
- "Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training."
- -- Anna Freud
-
- Well, sometimes, anyway.
- -- Mark Brader, utzoo!sq!msb
- %%
- "A man about to speak the truth should keep one foot in the stirrup."
- -- Old Mongolian Saying
- %%
- "The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we *can*
- suppose."
- -- J.B.S. Haldane
- %%
- "There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan
- for."
- -- Fred Hoyle
- %%
- "Science is not a sacred cow. Science is a horse. Don't worship it. Feed it."
- -- Aubrey Eben
- %%
- "There is no knowledge that is not power."
- -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- %%
- "It is important to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall
- out."
- -- Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.
- %%
- Hugh Downs' Four Rules for Investigating the Universe:
- Rule #1-- When confronted with an apparent infinite or infinitely repeating
- pattern, expect some variant that keeps it from being infinite.
- Rule #2-- When all investigation supports Rule 1, look for a situation which
- violates it.
- Rule #3-- Be prepared for an infinite oscillation between Rules 1 and 2.
- Rule #4-- Apply Rule 1.
- %%
- "Although plastic was brought into industrial use in 1909 by L.H. Baekeland of
- Yonkers, it was not until after World War II that the modern miracle substance
- was used in a wide variety of consumer goods, among them speedboats, dentures
- and flamingos. Previously flamingos were made of cement. Before that they were
- made by other flamingos."
- -- William E. Geist, The New York Times
- %%
- "We don't inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
- -- David Brower
- %%
- "The mass media is supported and sustained by commercial entities. And corn
- flakes and Shakespeare are simply not kissing cousins. Leonard Bernstein and
- living bras are incompatible. And you cannot sustain adult, probing,
- meaningful drama when the proceedings are interrupted every twelve minutes by
- a dozen dancing rabbits with toilet paper."
- -- Rod Serling
- %%
- "If people behaved like governments, you'd call the cops."
- -- Kelvin Throop
- %%
- "Put all your eggs in one basket, and WATCH THAT BASKET!"
- -- Jerry Buchmeyer
- %%
- "Any fully matured science of ecology will have to grapple with the fact that
- from the ecological point of view, man is one of those animals which is in
- danger from its too successful participation in the struggle for existence."
- -- Joseph Wood Krutch
- %%
- "All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as
- video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal
- value."
- -- Carl Sagan
- %%
- "The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow
- sharper."
- -- Eden Phillpots
- %%
- "The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at
- children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end,
- which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games which
- it is most attached is called, "Keep tomorrow dark," and which is also named
- (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The
- players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have
- to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait
- until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. Then they go and do
- something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is
- great fun."
- -- G.K. Chesterton
- %%
- "You can't depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus."
- -- Mark Twain
- %%
- "The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly
- fact."
- -- Thomas Henry Huxley
- %%
- "The religion that is afraid of science dishoners God and commits suicide."
- -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- %%
- "Judging a piece of fiction by the quality of its writing without considering
- its subject matter is like buying a car because it has a pretty paint job,
- without considering the state of its engine and transmission."
- -- Kelvin Throop
- %%
- "If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy."
- -- Kurt Vonnegut
- %%
- "It's better to be silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all
- doubt."
- -- Abraham Lincoln
- %%
- "Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."
- -- H. G. Wells
- %%
- "Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies."
- -- Honore de Balzac
- %%
- "I have a perfect cure for a sore throat. Cut it."
- -- Alfred Hitchcock
- %%
- "Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it
- flies. We have to pounce on it earlier."
- -- Stanislaw Lem
- %%
- "We will rediscover a [New York City] river so extravagantly polluted that new
- life forms will emerge from it spontaneously, demanding welfare and voting
- rights."
- -- Douglas Adams
- %%
- "The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one
- which will last forever."
- -- Anatole France
- %%
- "My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn."
- -- Louis Adamic
- %%
- "Pessimists have already begun to worry about what is going to replace
- automation."
- -- John Tudor
- %%
- "The totality is present even in the broken pieces."
- -- Aldous Huxley
- %%
- "Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth."
- -- Lillian Hellman
- %%
- "Behind every successful man is a surprised woman."
- -- Maryon Pearson
- %%
- "We are on a threshold of a change in the universe comparable to the transition
- from nonlife to life."
- -- Hans Moravec (on artificial intelligence)
- %%
- "Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to
- experience it."
- -- Max Frisch
- %%
- "A stitch in time would have confused Einstein."
- -- Anonymous
- %%
- "The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be
- missing."
- -- William J. Broad
- %%
- "Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a
- room."
- -- Blaise Pascal
- %%
- "I've gone to hundreds of fortune-tellers' parlors, and have been told
- thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready
- to arrest her."
- -- New York City Detective
- %%
- "The experimenter who does not know what he is looking for will not understand
- what he finds."
- -- Claude Bernard
- %%
- "Is not the whole world a vast house of assignaion to which the filing system
- has been lost?"
- -- Quentin Crisp
- %%
- "I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is
- us."
- -- Konrad Lorenz
- %%
- "If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."
- -- George Benard Shaw
- %%
- "If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known
- will go to heaven, and very, very few persons."
- -- James Thurber
- %%
- "We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get
- run over."
- -- Aneurin Bevan
- %%
- "Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published every
- day, like those of a baseball player."
- -- Anonymous
- %%
- "It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as
- one's hat keeps blowing off."
- -- Woody Allen
- %%
- "In ecology, as in economics, TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free
- Lunch) is intended to warn that every gain is won at some cost. Failure to
- recognize the "no free lunch" law causes the buffalo-hunter mentality
- syndrome -- the unthinking assumption that there will always be plenty because
- there alwayss has been plenty."
- -- Dr. Robert W. Prehoda
- %%
- "Only a mediocre person is always at his best."
- -- W. Somerset Maugham
- %%
- "No one can forbid us the future."
- -- Inscription on the base of Paris's monument to Leon Gambetta
- %%
- "Perhaps the best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a
- time."
- -- Dean Acheson
- %%
- "Evolution is what it is. The upper classes have always died out; it's one of
- the most charming things about them."
- -- Germaine Greer
- %%
- "Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything,
- except over technology."
- -- John Tudor
- %%
- "New and stirring things are belittled because if they are not belittled, the
- humiliating question arises, 'Why then are you not taking part in them?'"
- -- H. G. Wells
- %%
- "There is considerable evidence that great empires and civilizations have been
- undone not by barbarian invaders but by climatic change."
- -- 1977 CIA report
- %%
- "We all worry about the population explosion -- but we don't worry about it at
- the right time."
- -- Arthur Hoppe
- %%
- "Hold still while I flame you."
- -- Karl Lehenbauer
- %%
- "Where does he get those wonderful toys?"
- -- The Joker
- %%
- "A book is the product of a contract with the Devil that inverts the Faustian
- contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two
- dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and
- gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least.
- Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins."
- -- Salman Rushdie, _The Satanic Verses_
- %%
- "...Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise
- anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear
- and certain, must be exceedingly simple-minded..."
- -- Plato, _Phaedrus_
- %%
- There are two ways to improve on human factors in computing:
- Make the programmers less stupid and/or make the users less stupid.
- Both are necessary, neither are likely.
-
- -- Digital Teddy Bear (dlarson@blake.acs.washington.edu)
- %%
- "If I didn't have a Unix machine, I'd feel naked."
- -- Guess Who
- %%
- "I love you for your beauty; love me although I am ugly."
- -- Miguel Cervantes, _Don_Quixote_
- %%
- "May the Lord open your eyes and heart so that you may understand him more
- clearer."
- -- Patrick Harubin, pgh@cs.duke.edu, soc.religion.islam
- %%
- 'Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power
- and magic in it.'
- -- Goethe
- %%
- "...The Universe is thronged with fire and light,
- And we but smaller suns, which, skinned, trapped and kept
- Enshrined in blood and precious bones, hold back the night."
- -- Ray Bradbury
- %%
- "Keep the wind in your solar sails..."
- -- Glenn Clapp
- %%
- "Nothing can stop him. Not even common sense."
- -- Mark Komarinski
- %%
- "The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics."
- -- Plato
- %%
- "I believe in eight of the ten commandments; and I believe in going to church
- every Sunday unless there's a game on."
- -- Steve Martin
-
-
- --
- -- uunet!sugar!karl "As long as there is a legion of superheros, all else
- -- can surely be made right." -- Sensor Girl
- -- Usenet access: (713) 438-5018
-